Liliana kept her eyes fixed on the path ahead, still listening with a half-focused sense of awareness. Her lids slipped a little as the rhythmic sound of her boots on the fresh snow lulled her into a sense of calm, the pattern seeming to match the thumping of her heart behind her sternum. She was used to traveling this way, strangely enough; a group of people all walking at a steady pace, the hum of voices entwined in their own various conversations, providing a backdrop to the monotony of the harsh landscape. As though reminded by her own thoughts, the half-lidded eyes dropped their gaze to the unbroken powder that stretched before them, a glimmer of focus flickering in and out of their depths.<br/><br/>The snow had obviously not stopped coming down for all their brushes with death, but she still would have expected some sign of them by now. Legko did not move at a fast pace, and regardless of how quickly the men had wanted to return to the potential safety of the buried city, there would be only so fast they could collectively move. There should have been faint, half-covered imprints of men’s boots and tortoise feet, the edges softened by the fresh powder but still clearly there for the one who knew what to search for. There should have been signs of disturbed brush, rocks or trunks nicked with little blades. Liliana tried to align herself, time and distance wise, but no matter how she considered she truly believed that there should have been some sign of them. Maybe not the sound of voices, but… well, something.<br/><br/>Her paces continuing with an unfazed steadiness, she turned her head up to face the huge man. He was twice – three times – well, he was a lot taller than she, and must have several times her own sightline. “Do you see – “ she started, but her voice abruptly cut off as her eyes fell to something just off the right edge of the traveled path.<br/><br/>A hand.<br/><br/>To the right, the edges of the path were almost totally concealed with a random patch of thick, mutated shrubs that looked like it could have evolved from some ancient kudzu or ivy. A few Redwoods, smaller and paler with their immaturity, dotted the small thicket just beyond the tangled patch. The left hand of a human stretched from behind one of those juvenile trees, the rest of the view obscured by the hulking shrubbery and trunks. The hand lay on its knuckles, fingers loosely curled and fresh snow filling the palm. Liliana stood still for a second, then promptly adjusted her course for the thicket beyond the would-be ivy without a word.<br/><br/>As the thicket came into view, her first thought was how<span style="font-style: italic">blinding</span>the color red could be.<br/><br/>It filled the clearing. Within a wide radius, the various shades of crimson had actually increased its surface area over that of the white snow, the thick colors causing a heady wave of coppery smell to wash over the observer. Instinctively ignoring the bile that rose in her throat with the smell, Liliana’s eyes scanned the entire scene and searched for any signs of movement or life, anything that would suggest different than what she already knew. No one moved. No one moved, and they were all there. Even Legko: she could see the huge mound of his ancient shell, the jutting pattern a harsh level-change against the flatness of the scene. The only indication she had of his lifelessness was the single hind leg still extended from his portable house, limp and unresponsive to the sound of her approach. He was situated over a blanket of vermillion, but that blood may nor may not have been his; there seemed more than enough donation from the other corpses that littered the snow. Bits of the harvested bark from the packs, and even slashes of bark from the young trees in this area, decorated the raw graveyard and the thick, harshly-scented juices mingled with the blood of the harvesters. Liliana found herself staring into a shallow puddle where the two liquids had just barely touched, noticing for the first time just how different they looked; the blood was darker. So, so much darker.<br/><br/>Demitri had been decapitated. She wouldn’t have known it was him, but he still had the drill strapped to his broken back. Her optics moved smoothly from one corpse to the next, as though mentally imprinting every last fatal injury and unnatural twist to the cadavers. They had gouging slash marks, some of them raked from collar to hip and some of them seeming mostly bisected at the waist. Guns lay beside them in varying degrees of discarded or dropped, more than half of them snapped somewhere along the barrel, and the pack that had been strapped to the back of the faithful animal had been sliced open; bits of armor and clothing and leather shredded and flung about the carnage like some disturbing confetti. If she had to venture a guess, she would suspect Hounds; she had never faced any herself, but she had heard the stories and knew enough to know the signs. No bodies of demons lay alongside the harvesters, and something about that sent the tiniest tendril of anger from the blonde woman’s core.<br/><br/>Still, she demonstrated no expression, her swamp-colored eyes maintaining a sort of distant, glassy shine that belied her current attention to detail. She let her eyes fall to the corpse closest to her feet, recognizing it as the face-down carcass of her boss. He had four puncture holes along the back of his shoulders, and without inspection the woman was sure that they went all the way through his thoracic cavity. Liliana turned her gaze back up, feeling her stomach finally adjust to the sickly, nauseating scent of mingling blood and Redwood sap. She usually had no trouble with the smell of blood, but she could not remember the last time she had been around so<span style="font-style: italic">much</span>of it. Or if she had ever been.<br/><br/>“I’ll see if there’s anything to be salvaged,” she said in her customary monotone, finally putting one booted foot into the arterial-stained snow. Moving as though she were harvesting potatoes or picking flowers, the young woman squatted smoothly beside the husk of her employer’s body, her ungloved fingers moving to his pockets with no hesitation. If the rest of the party wanted to press ahead, that would be fine with her; per usual, she had no intention of encroaching upon the freedom of her fellow man-or-mutant. She, however, would stay to find the bits of supplies that could still be used, regardless. Resources were valuable, and though much of what the harvesters had packed was obviously damaged beyond use, some of it must still be good.