Elder Verna lowered herself with the careful stiffness of age, staff planted firmly in the dirt beside the three men. Up close, the smell of sweat, dried blood, and forest rot clung to them like a second skin. She studied each one in turn, sharp eyes missing nothing.
The unconscious man still lay flat where Selene and John were almost finished healing him fully to life. His breathing had evened out under the combined glow of their magic, but the lines of exhaustion cut deep into his face.
The second man, the one with the axe, leaned against the wall with his eyes half-closed, chest rising in shallow pulls, till now he seemed fine. But after a while he had sat down without anyone noticing.
The third one, the boss of the men, sat with his back to a big stone, one arm braced across a bruised side. He watched Verna just as a cornered animal watches its new predator.
While she crouched down, Verna noticed the small details on each of these men. There were thin sword cuts along the boss's forearm, already scabbed but still angry. An arrow mark high on the axe-man's shoulder, the kind that comes from a short-range shot rather than a long hunt. There were scratches on all three of their bodies that did not match claw or fang. It was clear to her that monsters from the forest might've left their share of bruises and bites on them, yes, but people had drawn steel on these three as well.
They were not ordinary people, at least. That much was clear to her.
Even though she noticed all of this just from this quick glance, she kept her face calm.
"You three have been through worse than a simple forest walk, it seems," she said. Her voice stayed low, almost gentle. "Can you tell this old woman how you ended up at our gate?"
Looking at how the old woman's gaze seemed to pierce through him, the boss hesitated at first. His eyes flicked once toward the open road behind him, then back to Verna. For a moment the words seemed stuck. When he finally spoke, the story came out measured, careful.
"Uhh, yes. We were returning from the capital. Took the forest road to cut time. Everything was quiet, until… until the monsters attacked us from out of nowhere. Those things were unlike anything I have ever seen. I'm sure of it; those things were for sure from a dungeon or something. They shouldn't be possible outside a dungeon."
"And? What happened after that?" Verna asked as the man stopped midway. Everyone around them had their attention on what this man was saying now.
He picked up from where he was, "Yes, we fought, ran, fought again. Lost most of our supplies, and barely made it out. Just then we saw the village wall, so we headed straight here."
He stopped. The silence that followed between all of the people present here now felt heavier than the earlier shouting.
Verna noticed the small hesitation in his wording when he mentioned the capital. She noticed the way his fingers tightened on his knee when he skipped past whatever had driven them into the forest in the first place. But she did not call him on it. Not yet.
Instead she rose slowly, leaning on the staff, and offered a small, almost grandmotherly smile that never quite reached her eyes.
"Ohh, you poor souls. You must have had a rough time out there. Don't worry. Here you are safe for now. Well… at least if nothing happens tonight."
Hearing her talk of the danger tonight once again, the boss frowned with curiosity. "Uhh… sorry, but I don't understand something. For a while I've been hearing you all talk about a dungeon and danger tonight. But what exactly is going on here? Can somebody explain it to us? Is this somehow related to those monsters we encountered back in the forest road?"
Verna turned her head toward John. The look she gave him was quiet and precise, an unspoken question of who would speak and how much. John finished the last pulse of healing light over the unconscious man's chest, then sat back on his heels. Though sweat beaded at Selene's temples, there wasn't any trace of sweating, let alone even a little exhaustion on his face, indicating how much of a difference there was between him and his daughter's divine magic ability.
He met Verna's eyes for a brief second. Both of them understood the same thing in that glance: as if getting on the same page with each other almost telepathically about how these men were not just simple travelers who had simply run into bad luck on the forest road. The wounds on each of their bodies told a different story. Plus the hesitation in the man's voice told another.
John stood, brushing dirt from his robes.
Without answering the man's question, John said, "Well, we can talk about all of that after we have settled you somewhere safe inside the village." His tone stayed even, priestly, the kind that soothed more than it revealed. "Let's go."
Lys noticed the subtle exchange between John and Verna from a few steps away. He had kept quiet once the healing began, but his mind kept working non-stop to understand what exactly was going on.
Though he hadn't noticed the sword cuts., arrow marks on these men, he still understood something was wrong in these men's story, seeing how John and Verna were not acting themselves properly, which was supposed to be overly cautious. Yes, he didn't know Verna well enough, but he knew John. This Priest wouldn't talk about letting some strangers in the village just like this.
Sensing something might be wrong, he just nodded to John and didn't raise any questions.