'I have to get moving…' she thought, picking herself up from the grass.

Grabbing the small travel pouch she had carelessly slung next to her, the woman moved silently back onto the road. She silently stopped there and listened for a few moments. There was no sounds outside those of nature, the birds and the wind, and that meant no one had been on the roads for a while.

When she came to Ryube Village, things would be different. As they had been in Toto Village and the other places she'd dwelt in for a while, there would be noise the moment she came a few hundred feet away. The sounds of human labor, carriages and livestock.

She still had some ways to go. Hannah slowly began to make her way down the road again, hoping to reach Ryube before it became completely dark.

"HELP, HELP…HELP!!!" someone's voice whimpered.

Hannah turned in the direction of the sudden noise, coming from the woods nearby. She grimaced somewhat, since it was the forest, most likely it was a monster attack that whoever was screaming had not been prepared for…

There was another sound this time, only this one was a piercing shriek instead. A girl's voice, by the sound of it.

Unsheathing her sword, the warrior from the Grasslands ran quickly into the darkening forest. Her body moved lithely through the trees and shrubs, which she sometimes had to jump over in an effort to keep from falling. It would be a delay on her part, but her conscience was not one that would let her walk away from someone in trouble.

"Sudda!" a boy cried to her left. Her feet moved swiftly in that direction. Up ahead, she could see a clearing…

There was a snail-like creature there, which Hannah had often seen before in the forests near Toto. It's body was a creamy yellow, and it was rather large, much larger than the two children who were cowering nearby it.

One of the children, it turned out, was not cowering. As Hannah approached, she realized that the girl was knocked out cold on the ground. The boy was bent over her, his eyes dark pools as he gazed at the creature that approached them.

Giving a large cry, Hannah jumped forward. Her sword was already out low in front of her, the blade ripping into the giant snail's soft underbelly. A guzzle of white mucous came from where the cut was, and the thing gave an outraged cry. It tried to lash out by stretching it's head, but the woman quickly dodged. Using her Double-Strike Rune to her advantage, she sent two successive cuts into the snail's outstretched neck, which managed to neatly cut it.

A spray of the mucous from before hit onto the makeshift armor and leather covering her body, and the decapitated creature fell to the ground, a gurgle escaping its mouth one last time.

'That gurgle was a signal…' Hannah, who had studied many of the forest monsters in the area, realized. She had seen a hunter kill one of these things before. When a gurgle sounded, a whole grouping of the snails would come…

The bushes near the back of the clearing started to move slightly, and Hannah quickly sheathed her blade.

"Sudda…" the boy gasped again, touching the black-haired girl's shoulder, "Wake up…"

She turned to the children, scooping up the girl in one of her arms, she grabbed the boy's wrist and started dragging him. He gave a yelp, but started to try and keep up with her when he noticed what was behind the bushes.

Expertly moving through the woods, Hannah headed back towards the direction the road was in. She knew that the snails were only comfortable in the forest areas, unlike other monsters, so getting out into the open road would be safer. They wouldn't follow then, and until she reached the road, Hannah continued running. There was no point in trying to fight five of the snail creatures, alone, she would not have a chance.

"Hey…" the brown-haired boy gasped slightly as she promptly let go of his wrist, sending him sprawling onto the ground near the dirt road.

Hannah ignored him for the moment, setting the unconscious girl down gently. She was the most immediate thing to worry about…

The girl, probably somewhere in her early teens, groaned and twisted her face in pain. Her arm was in an odd position, bent, and there was a trickle of blood. She frowned, ripping a piece of cloth off the child's long brown skirt and setting the bone as best she could. A doctor would have to look at it when they reached Ryube, but for the moment, a simple bandage made from the torn cloth covered the wound.

Footsteps approached behind her, and the boy bent down over the girl. His eyes were wide with fear, "Is…is my sister going to be okay, Miss?" he asked quietly.

"Don't call me "miss," child," Hannah advised, stepping up and away from the girl's form, "My name's Hannah."

"Is Sudda going to be all right, Miss Hannah?" the boy asked her.

She sighed inwardly, it was because of this that she felt so uncomfortable around children. She looked over at the boy, who couldn't have been less than a few years younger than the girl, Sudda, "I believe so. Her arm's broken, but the doctors in Ryube should be able to take care of it."

"I knew it." the boy looked down at the girl's prone form, tears swelling in his eyes, "I shouldn't have run away, but I was upset because Papa had said all that mean stuff about Mama, and Sudda came after me. When the monster attacked, she got in front and…" he sniffled some, "I…I shouldn't have run away!"

"Perhaps you shouldn't have." She moved down and quickly scooped up Sudda's body again. She was lighter than she looked, but the burden of carrying her would definitely slow her down some.

The boy looked at the ground, and the tears started to fall. They hit onto the road, causing specks of dust to fly up. With her free hand, Hannah reached over and patted his shoulder, "You can't have regrets now, you know. It'll be all right. Let's just get your sister back to Ryube."

He nodded, and started following Hannah as she slowly began walking down the road. There were a few moments of silence, and she noticed that he was looking at her strangely.

"Miss Hannah?"

A sigh, "What is it?"

"…Thank you for saving us. Your sword arm's impressive!"

The woman almost smiled at this, and she turned a brown eye towards him, "What's your name, boy?" she asked.

"Richi Clarsdale." he told her after a few seconds of hesitation.

"You're very welcome, Richi."

The rest of the walk was in silence, save for the occasional groans of the girl in Hannah's arms. The sounds of nature were starting to thicken, due to the night coming on, and Richi seemed somewhat tense by it. Hannah, however, always one for nature, relished the sounds in the silence of human activity.

Something was wrong.

Hannah kept her intuition silent for the moment, due to the fact that she did not wish to startle Richi or the still unconscious Sudda. However, the road and the forest beyond had become strangely quiet. That was unnatural, especially this late at night.

'If the village is nearby, then there should be travelers, or noise…'

"It's quiet." Richi commented, looking up at the sky.

She nodded, saying nothing. Her brown eyes trailed along the skyline above the forest trees. There was a strange cloud in the black sky, gray in color and thick.

…Not to mention rising…

"Is that smoke?" the boy, pointing up at the cloud, asked. He stopped walking when he noticed that she had completely stopped, and looked up at her face. The woman's eyes were wide now, a look of momentary disbelief on her face, "Miss Hannah?"

"No…" it took the native Grasslander only a moment to recover from the shock her body had just gone into. Placing Sudda gently on the ground, she unsheathed her sword and turned to Richi, "Stay here, all right?"

Eyes wide, he nodded, watching her run off down the road.

The first realization that came to her was how much it was like looking into a mirror. The desecrated bodies of villagers, all of whom had once been lively and had stories, lay on the ground, which was now covered in rubble and the ruddy color of blood. Burned out shells formed Ryube, most of which were charred and caved in.

It was so much like Toto…

Hannah stepped up to the village's entrance, her free hand tightening into a fist. She swallowed hard as she looked down at the massacre. It brought back memories, once again, of her failure.

In a way, it felt like she had failed the people of Toto again by not being able to protect this other village.

"DAMN IT!!!" her voice echoed through the dead village, and her fist hit into the stone wall of Ryube Village's entrance.

She stood there for a long while, body prone, her fist against the wall. The woman simply looked on at massacre, as a hot wind blew through the place, sending the smell of decay into her nostrils.

"Oh no…" Richi's voice sounded from behind her, as the boy stared at his former friends in almost mute horror.

Hannah turned her head, watching as he stumbled forward. Behind him was the black-haired girl, Sudda. She looked a little dizzy still, and her hand was on the makeshift bandage Hannah had put on, tears were in her eyes, "Papa!" she said in a hoarse whisper.