approximate
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The two men looked out over the cliff. Below them was a sea of bodies. Monsters of all shapes and sizes. They trampled the ground as they moved, roaring and screeching and crying. None of those monsters had seen the two observers. At least, not yet.
“So, we have to get through them.” One of the men, Larr, said.
“Yup.” The other man, Terai, replied.
“Why do we have to do that again?”
“To deliver critical intelligence that, if not delivered, could easily result in the death of anything that isn’t a monster.”
“Oh yeah. That.”
They were quiet, listening to the cacophony below them.
“We’re going to die if we go down there, aren’t we?” Larr said.
“Yep.”
“Do you think there’s any chance we survive?”
The smaller man thought for a moment. “I’d say the odds of survival are approximately…zero.”
“Yeah. That’s what I thought.”
The monster horde was moving at a slow pace. Where it was moving was anyone’s guess. Well, anyone except Larr and Terai. And that was exactly the problem.
“We could try and go around them.” Larr suggested.
“Do you have any idea how big this army is?”
“Nope. Do you?”
“No, but I’m pretty good at guessing.”
“And?”
“And by the time we make it, it’ll be way to late to get anywhere important in time.”
“We can’t just sit here.”
“I know.”
Each man took a few minutes to think of a plan. Neither got very far.
“Messenger bird?”
“We don’t have one.”
“Disguises?”
“Nobody to be disguised as.”
This went on for several minutes. Each man came up with several ideas. The other shot those ideas down. There were simply too many monsters, and too much variety among them. They ended up just sitting, legs dangling over the cliff. None of the monsters were looking up, and stealth was neither of their strong suits, so they did not bother to hide.
“It’s hopeless, isn’t it?” Terai said.
“Yup.”
“The entire world of man, gone because we couldn’t deliver a message.”
“Sucks, doesn’t it?”
Larr leaned back, changing his view to the sky. It was a mostly cloudless sky, and the sun was shining brightly. The only clouds there were long thin and meandering. The sight of them stirred something in him.
“Hey, Terai?”
“Yeah, Larr?”
“There’s a river not too far away from us, right?”
“Hm, I’d say about two miles west.”
“And it’s flowing mostly south, right?”
“Yeah?”
“That’s the direction we need to go, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, but we don’t have a boat, and the hoard made bridges, so that wouldn’t get us through.”
“Not us, no.”
He let the words hang. Terai picked up on his meaning immediately.
“I guess it doesn’t need to be us specifically who get the message out, does it?” He said.
“No. It doesn’t.”
The two men nodded and stood. Larr took his water skin out and emptied it, working to dry out the insides as much as he could. They placed the message in the skin. Then they wrote out their final words. With that done, they started walking. There was nothing else they needed to do, or say. They just needed to deliver the message, no matter the cost.
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Messengers have a tough job, especially in a world without modern technology.
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