Sixteen-year-old Anna had the kind of black hair that caught shadows and held them, framing her pale face like ink spilled on parchment. When she found the weathered book buried among her late father's novel collection, her dark eyes had that excitement children have for forbidden things.
The book was lighter than she expected. She wrestled it outside, stumbling once on the threshold, her grey dusty dress catching around her knees. Roy her elder brother had already been waiting in their usual spot beneath the old oak, his golden hair bright even under the grey sky. At twenty, he resembled a handsome young man from nobility.
"What'd you find?" he asked, scooting closer as Anna settled cross-legged in the dirt.
The tome's leather cover was cracked with age. Anna traced the gilt letters with one finger: Compiled Entries of my Various Research by Zekiel Haman.
"It's from the first Hand of the Kingdom of Backlund." she said excitedly, then cleared her throat importantly and began to read:
Date of Entry: 12th day of the seventh month in the creation calender
Time: I can't particularly tell, the sky has been covered in black clouds for the most part of the day, instinctively though, I might say around the 8 or 7pm.
Anna raised her eyebrow a bit, "Creation Calendar?, never heard of that."
"It's the calender that was used right before the establishment of 'Hands' as rulers, so approximately 3 thousand years ago, this must be before he became a Hand" Roy explains blankly before reading the book from after the entry information.
"Recently a mission appeared at the guild I occasionally worked for, it was a request to wipe out a cluster of Derons who had made nest in a sparsely populated settlement. The settlers claimed that the Derons had been draining the life out of animals and farmlands. This particular claim had been seen as impossible and a lie, Derons, as everyone knows, might take the forms of beasts of land and sky in appearance, but other than that, they are pretty docile and stupid. They hardly even react when maltreated.*
*For the past 4 months these reports had been flooding into various guilds. As time went by the rewards for these missions increased incredibly enough to not be ignored. The guild assigned me and a few others for this particular mission.*
*I had no interest in the name of the town nor the type of people residing in it, as long as I'm paid my share I do not particularly care.*
Date of Entry: 14th day of the seventh month.
Time of Entry: 2:00 pm I think.
It's been two days since I and my team came into the settlement. We just found the nest of the Derons in the report. We made camp a few feets away from their nest simply to observe. These Derons seemed as docile as any other Deron I've encountered.*
A day ago I and a few of my team members had asked to see the corpses of the animals and the barren farmlands.*
The Village head claimed that the corpses had already been burnt up and the houses were built on the barren farmlands due to late response by the guilds, so instead we decided to observe the Derons before coming to a conclusion on whether to wipe them out or leave them be.
As we observed the Derons during the first three days of the week, We began noticing the odd degradation of the grass around their nest, at first I didn't think it much, but over the course of the week, all plants including trees and flowers had all withered, the soil itself had turned black and oozed of sulphur.
We stared in shock at the once healthy nest turned barren.
It seems the words of the villagers were in fact true for the deterioration of their farmlands.
For some reason I was oddly curious on how these Derons had caused lands to grow barren.
In a normal situation, seeing this was enough grounds for I and my team members to slaughter these derons. But right now all I felt was the thrill of a new discovery and I'm sure the others felt the same.
Being the team leader I ordered or rather instructed my team to capture this Derons and with the money I had saved for a better time of my life I bought a small peice of land from the Settlement chief and put the Derons on it. Just like before it took 3 days for the part of the land they made their nest to start to deteriorate.
Now, I have come to the conclusion that after they had turned a particular place barren they immediately moved onto a healthier place. Looked like a process of feeding. Next thing we did was putting a livestock in their nest, we chose a healthy looking Ram.
They showed no hostility towards the Ram and aimlessly walked around the land all day like usual. Unlike with the case of plants, it took 5 days for livestock to show signs of it's health degrading. After a day the animal looked like it's blood had been completely drained. It's body wash so stiff that I was sure that if I used enough pressure on its torso would crushed like dust with just enough pressure.
My hypothesis after this week and a half experiment was simple, derons in clusters had the ability to drain the vitality of living organisms just by being close to them. I also noticed that the derons could only showcase this ability in their clusters.* If a Deron was isolated and put on a different part of the land, the land showed no sign of deteriorating.
By the end of the next week I personally slaughtered the derons on the deteriorated land with the assumption that their blood would re-vitalize the land. I was very wrong, their blood as I found out was slimy and icy cold to the touch but as it touched the ground it evaporated. A shocking scene that I couldn't understand. Without the means to study their blood as it seemed to evaporate the moment it touched a surface.
Steeling my curious mind I sighed wistfully before slaughtering the remaining Derons.
Thunder rumbled overhead. Their mother's voice drifted from the house: "Children! Inside, now! These clouds are ready to burst, and I won't have you catching cold before the Festival of Aaro Eeu!"
Anna snapped the book shut with a frustrated huff.
Her brother Roy laughed. "We can read the book later, it's not going anywhere, besides Mother is right, it's going to rain soon" He frowned thoughtfully.
Anna clutched the chronicle to her chest as they raced for the door, rain beginning to speckle the dust around their feet. She returned it to late father's stock pile of books.