The architecture was strange. It reminded me of some of the buildings I had seen in the merchant quarters of Itzarriol, but very basic in nature, with simpler structures and a much smaller scale. Everything was simple here.
"Can you sense what happened to this place?" Cam asked, after taking a swig from his canteen. “I’ve heard sometimes memories are left in immortal places like Vanim.”
"No, unfortunately my senses don't allow me to pick up history about a place," I explained, then hesitated. Vanim was the only place that sometimes gave a reaction, but humans were much more susceptible to it. "It looks immortal in construction, but I can't pick out a specific style, if that makes sense. I have no idea who built this place." I studied a squat building across from us. We had stopped by a crumbling well, and Cam's new spiked companion limped around the ruined bricks curiously. Even the material of the bricks was a bit off, with dull stonework. These buildings weren't opulent like Itzarriol, and yet they were more complex than the sturdy structures we had in Vanim.
A scent hit my nostrils. I recognized it easily enough as the smell of death that I’d sensed the night before. It was old death. Otherwise, the blood would've been fresh to my senses, since there was a familiar metallic tang to new blood. I glanced in the direction of the breeze, which had brought the smell to me. Cam followed my gaze. He was perceptive to a fault.
"There's something there," I told him. "It might be unpleasant. These bodies aren’t like you’re used to seeing…"
"Are there bodies?" Cam asked with a serious face.
"I highly suspect so."
He followed me as I tracked the scent and confessed that I had also smelled it last night, but it had been too far away to be of concern. A pile of rubble sat near the outskirts of the destroyed city. It was oddly placed, as if the stones had crumbled apart only recently. The building might've just collapsed, explaining why the smell was everywhere.
I grabbed a few pieces of rubble, shoving them out of the way. Cam did the same. His creature sat watching us, playing with a strange nut it had found on the ground. It seemed to be miming our actions of unearthing the building by dropping the nut and picking it back up over and over again.
My fingers hit fabric. Our first body. I exhaled slowly and knocked the stack of rocks off to the side. In the excavated hole, the sight of a dead wildling made me pull back a few inches. I had seen dead wildlings, but never in this preserved state. Cam made a strange sound in his throat but was unable to say anything. I kept digging as he stilled for a moment.
Three bodies lay beneath this area of rubble. They were old and dried out, not rotted in any way. Had the climate done that to them? I frowned, unsure of what could cause these properties in wildlings. They looked peaceful in death, but their bodies were worn and thin.
"They starved," I realized aloud. Behind me, Cam cleared his throat and turned his face toward the sight. More than that, these corpses had been drained of any moisture. The thin ends of tree roots curled around the legs of the bodies. I crouched down to look at them, noting how healthy the roots were. Sadness for the wildlings passed through me. They probably couldn't find any sustenance here, given the differences between the Immortal and Mortal planes.
"How did it happen?" Cam asked.
I shook my head, spinning theories in my brain. "It could have been that there's not enough ambient dark energy. The wildlings eat plants, but the plants are nourished by dark energy." I glanced up at the sky. "Maybe a change of climate would have done it, too…"
"Interesting," Cam noted. The full color had come back into his face. "You touched the roots. Do you think that the trees trapped them, like they did to us? It looks like they drained them of water or dark energy or whatever exists inside a creature like that."
I scratched my chin in thought. The scent of death made me feel antsy, like my skin was prickling with tiny insects. "Maybe," I admitted. "The trees might have been trying to do the same thing to us before we escaped." There was something else in the air, but I was unable to identify it.
"The trees might only be able to feed on dead bodies, so they figured out a way to survive in the Leftovers by preying on sentient beings like this and killing anything alive." Cam looked down at the bodies with a sympathetic expression. His companion rodent ran up his pant leg and hopped up to his shoulder.
The discovery soured the mood, but I had to follow what else was around us. The smell of death continued to grow, so I suspected this wasn’t the only grave site. Unfortunate. I led Cam around the outskirts of the town as the breeze whipped through this place at an odd angle. I sniffed the air and scowled as I followed the trail, growing frustrated by the way a place like this could play with my senses. We returned to the squat building across from the well that had caught my eye before. Now, I recognized the scent of death on it as we grew closer. The breeze had obscured it earlier.
"Wind is a tricky thing when following smells," I told Cam as we came to the entrance of the building. If he’d had a notebook with him, I was sure that he’d have been taking down notes on vampire biology. "This one smells more human." It was always good to give a warning.
"I'm ready," Cam
