The long walk was terrible, it hurt my feet. They were raw as uncooked hamburger meat, and smelt as such too.The so called trail was rough, and not much progress was being made by the group. I was just a women, with a husband, and a child. I cannot understand how the Centary can climb such steep and dangerous paths.



Centary started this war, this dreaded, deadly war. Already they have shot us with poison darts from high up the trees. We must pass this forest however. Women and children are becoming to weak to walk. They fall in the red mud.



We came to a cursed, muddy piece of land. Once we were two yards away, we began to hear a terrible screaming. It was of a women, she must have been lit on fire to make such a dreadful sound. My men ran forward, finding her, but she was only a face. A face in the pond of red mud.



She looked up at us with small green eyes. A single large tear sprang forward, rolling down her face. She whispered over and over again.



"Save my body, save my mind. My child, my child. Allow me to join my child! This is the devil's, it's all the devil's!"



Her wild brown hair was flying around her face, getting more and more violent with her emotions. Her voice screeched through the trees, there was no wind to blow the leaves anymore, it was all gone. Just her voice echoed through the valleys of the Centary's forest, we feared being caught because of this being. The men jumped in, trying to save her, but they were just swallowed into the mud and swamp. I yelled for my husband not to go, but he was a man, and he needed to help, I always loved him for that.



"I was walking here with my child years ago, decades, before the Centary came here. My child ran ahead of me on this trail, and he looked back at me and said, 'Mama, why is there a man in the water?'. I came running, knowing of the being that possessed the water. It was a Yan, the devil's guard. He captures one person at a time and keeps them in great agony. Ripping their face from their head and displaying it at the gate of hell. I was to warn you of it before I leave to find my child, he jumped in before me."



The women thanked us with large eyes and a gaping mouth, she was then swallowed by the monster again. Leaving to the proper realm she needed to be. I understood her need to be with her child, but her child was gone, must she understand? my husband had now left me, and was taken, he was almost dead, hung in the balance, without the choice of choosing one or the other, I cried for my husband, and for my father-less child, in my arms.



She was gone, but in her place, all the men came, screaming, yelling for help. The rest of my group gathered around the pond, crying aloud for their brothers, sons, fathers and husbands.I screamed with my husband, who looked at me with full eyes and tears, he looked at out child, and yelled all the more, I wished to join him, but our child needed one parent, and he forced me to stay.



So now, everyday, a person is posted outside the pond, weeping with our fallen men. I was never chosen to stand guard.