Chapter 4: Rotten Actions

Disclaimer: trigger warning for death and gore

Lily had woken up, she felt the pinkish-red fur on her hands and face. She was unaware of the dried blood covering her clothing and hair. Her pale face was stiffined by the cold night.

She was still half asleep, unaware of her fate, as she tried to grab her phone from a non-existent table. As she extends her hand and fails to grab anything, she is hit with the dreaded cold of hell, waking her up completely. It sadly was not a nightmare. She was in a hell world, a god showed up and forced her into this position.

She recalls her mission and her actions of yesterday, the screams, the fear, her failed attempt at a humane death, her final realization was becoming aware that the bed she was sleeping in was the demon's corpse.

Lily felt like vomiting, disgusted by her own actions and sickened by the situation she was in, she would have vomited if it wasn't for the fact that she had not eaten in a while.

She feels the fur in her hand and pulls it. "Real..." it was all so real, the death, the blood, the fear, the disgust, all of those emotions she had read in novels and watched on TV were now her reality, however, unlike those stories, hers was crude, there was no magic she could use, no instant knowledge on how to use a sword, not even the god that she had met was in any way similar to those from fiction. The memories of her rotten actions flood her mind.

She simply sat, for a few seconds, she simply stood on top of her victim's corpse, the rotten smell invading her nose was now more bearable, the cold wind from outside the cave hit her uncaring body and stiffened her face, and her hands were cold but remained steady gripping the sword like it was her only line of sanity. She regretted meeting the god, she regretted treating her father like that, and she regretted being born.

However, she couldn't just die in self-pity, crying in a cold lonely cave was not a way Lily Starfallen could die! She won't die in loathing, "I just gotta accomplish my mission" she said to herself, like a soldier following terrible and inhumane orders, setting a goal to create a sense of control in her now cursed life.

She steadied herself, shoved down all her feelings and fears, stood up slapped her face a couple of times and started distracting herself with different ideas.

She needed warm clothing, food and water, and fire. That was the main thing she needed for survival, lucky for her, snow was all over the place in hell, so the water was not an issue, she looked at the demon she had killed, it had plenty of furs to use as a coat and its meat was probably edible.

She looked at the demon, "looks like a yeti" she thought, a giant white snowy monster with humanoid features, "it fits the theme".

Her line of thought is interrupted by the awful smell inside the cave. "What is that smell?!" She questioned once again, it stank of rotting flesh, like if a dumbster full of rats was burned and then placed inside the cave. Yesterday she couldn't even think about it, the stress and fear of being killed had helped her greatly at ignoring the smell. However, now that the danger had temporarily dissapeared, she was reminded of it, she needed to investigate it if she wanted to try making that cave her place to sleep. No one could endure that smell for long.

Lily looked at the hole behind her victim's body, the closer she got to there the stronger the smell was and the less willing to walk there she was, when she got closer her face froze from surprise, her sword almost dropping from her hands. In that poorly dug hole laid dead another one of the yetis, its face was rotting, some pieces of the skull could be seen with its eyes sinking deeper and deeper into its cavities, its hands were thin and its fur was dirty and separated from what seemed to be bluish skin. She then looked at the rock that was right on the edge of the hole, there was something written in symbols she had never seen, modulated and straight lines forming shapes of alien origin.

"Was it a gravestone?" Was her first thought, did she kill a being mourning, however, she rejected that idea, "No, it has to be something else" In Lily's mind how could that demon, which looked like a beast and sounded like a monster, be mourning, and even creating tombstones. "If it was intelligent, then I'm sure it would have talked to me!" She lied to herself, desperatly holding to some twisted sense of logic.

She kept staring at the dead bodies, expecting them to wake up and tell her that everything was fine, she waited to wake up, to realize it was all a nightmare, to forget about it, and go to school. She wanted to go home, she wanted to see her dad, and she was afraid. Reality hit her again like the cold wind from outside the cave.

Tears fell to the floor melting the snow and leaving tiny holes the size of her tear drops.

Sadly, some of those tears never dropped, frozen as soon as they left her face, she felt the cold, uncaring wind on her skin as it dried her face a little and froze the drops of water into her skin. Even crying hurts in this horrible world.

Lily was hungry and her stomach was begging for nutrition. Lily, immediately grabbed a fistful of snow and began biting it, it was just cold water, which filled her stomach a bit, she tended to stress eat when nervous, filling her stomach so no dread could fill it's space, in exam weeks she tended to gain a fair bit of weight because of that. Now was no different, except that the only thing to calm her down was snow, not sweets or chips, but she needed something stronger to which she could distract herself with.

Her eyes inmediatly went to the Yeti, her stomach growled, she was used to preparing chicken to eat, so she knew how to cut parts and bits of a supermarket's unfettered chicken, "it can't be so different" she thought to herself. She grabbed her sword, she lifted it a bit, she froze for a second, was she willing to do further humiliate the body of this creature. Before her morals could think properly, her stomach grumbled again, the hunger was starting to be painful, without thinking much, she closed her eyes and stabbed its belly, the softest part of the yeti.

"They are not human, they are demons, they are monsters" She repeated this mantra in her head, her hunger was strong, her morality was weak, what else could she do? She didn't want to think about it.

She moved her sword, still pierced deep into the yeti's skin, she opened Its stomach, there were a few weird organs, that spilt out, she had never seen those in her biology classes.

She was far too hungry to care nor to find something to use as fire, she grabbed what looked to be a spherical, soft sac of flesh that was the size of a chicken leg. There was no way to get fire in that frozen hell. She took a bite of it, chewing it slowly, it tasted weird, not bad, but not good either. But her stomach wasn't rejecting it.

She took another bite. And another, and another, and she kept eating it until it was gone, she was full, but dissatisfied, the aftertaste was disgusting, shameful and saddening.

She sat there, observing the body of the yeti, she could have food for a while, she wouldn't need to go outside in the cold.

She remembered her failed attempts of execution the day before, she needed to be better with her sword, she needed practice and strength.

She stood up, her hands positioned around the golden hilt. She took the same posture as before, one leg to the back, the other to the front, and she began swinging down, over and over again, as if repetition would help her. The sword was heavy, every time she swung it down she would be taken together, it was a workout at the very least...

She remained swinging the sword until her hands and arms could no longer hold it, she went to the dead Yeti's body and grabbed another organ, this time she ate it and washed the taste with the snow after it.

She stared at the white fur, it looked ever so similar to her hair, cold, dirty and stained with blood. However, it was soft to the touch, like petting a dog. She liked dogs, they were always so cute. "Where this yetis like the dogs of this world?" Her thoughts run through making her no longer pet the dead demon's fur.

She stared at the outside, the tundra, the red sky turning a darker shade of blue, the white bluish sun fadding into nothingness, the wind turning stronger and stronger. The cave was cold yet it still was protecting her from the more powerful and dangerous wind of the outside.

She snuggled behind the yeti's body, using it as an extra shield against the frozen world outside, the snow hurt her face and moistened her clothing further, but at least some side of her remained warm, and so, another night came and she fell asleep while observing the unburied tombstone just in front her.

"Just 10 years" was her mantra as she fell asleep, trying to think of happy memories.

"Tomorrow will be another day"