Seth speedwalked back to the acolyte’s dormitory and changed into the plain robes his dad kept stocked for when they had to heal particularly nasty injuries. Once he was ready, Seth headed for the south gate where a group of guards, soldiers, and wanderers was forming to return to the ritual site. The group let him mingle without question, until one of the wanderers with an impractically narrow sword sidled over.

“Hey kid, you’re the son of one of the priests, aren’t you?” The man asked. “I’ve seen you around, but you haven’t been part of any of the readiness drills.”

“I am,” Seth said. “I’m not a priest though, just an acolyte, so I head to the temple basement for the drills. How long have you been in town? Most people only stay as long as they’re assigned, if that.”

The man laughed. “Wanderers don’t really have assignments, but we do tend to work closely with churches. A strong suggestion from y’all can get us wandering somewhere specific, I’ll admit. In my case, I just wanted to see one of the most dangerous outposts on the island for myself, maybe help out a bit. Anyway, you're pretty grown up to still be just a priest in training. I know the rituals are expensive, but if you told the church you wanted to work in the field with wanderers, they’d probably give you the go ahead. We always need a good healer!”

Seth nodded politely while discreetly looking around to see if his dad was here yet. He only saw Priest Joe but decided that was a good enough excuse.

Seth stepped back a bit. “Well, it was nice to meet you Mr, ah, wanderer, but one of the Priests is here and I need to talk to him about how I’ll be helping.”

Fortunately, the man seemed to get the hint and moved off as Seth headed for Priest Joe. Despite the humid jungle air, Joe was wearing a thick, plain robe that could cover him head to toe. As Seth approached, he noticed that the priest was concentrating and had an air about him like the church basement. Seth decided not to interrupt and stood nearby, wondering if he should have worn heavier robes. The cloth was already clinging to him, but he didn’t want to look unprepared.

A couple minutes later, Joe’s eyes refocused and he looked over at Seth.

“Your dad should have told you more about what we’ll be doing, but I suppose you could have chosen a worse outfit.” He said. “It isn’t just that you won’t be able to wear it again, you won’t want to either, I can promise you that.”

“You mean after handling the bodies?” Seth asked, “because I’ve helped Dad with bad injuries and people we couldn’t get to in time before.”

“I know you have,” Joe said, “but what the ritual backlash did to them isn’t like what you’ve seen. The other issue is the effect of the Chaotic environment. Most of the people here have some way of filling themselves with an essence as a buffer, and your Virtue circulation should keep you safe, but you aren’t strong enough to protect your robes as well. If they start to turn into something, be ready to get rid of them.”

As Seth was wondering what would happen to someone without protection, his dad finally reached the impromptu staging area, and the guard captain addressed them.

“Alright everyone!” She yelled, “remember, the first priority is to keep an eye on the Priests; they are the ones who can clean this mess up in any reasonable amount of time. Other than that, focus on gathering bodies into the carts. Move in groups, and keep your eyes open for any odd openings in the ground. We do not think the Ain have any tunnels this far down the mountain, but we do not want to get blindsided. Stay alert, stay alive, and let us go!”

The large wooden gate flanked by towers of green-gray stone was slowly dragged open and the group of about fifty moved through the opening. As they headed toward the mountain, the tall rubber trees and thick undergrowth slowly growing further apart, Seth asked his dad about how purification worked with the Chaos essence. Annoyingly, Joe just told him area purification was beyond his ability, and to focus on regular cleanup and helping the plants if he noticed any that looked off.

Seth became less annoyed with his unimportant role when they reached the edge of the area in question and he felt the unpleasant difference in the world around him. It felt like tiny hands were tugging on his insides, and the jungle around them had trees bent at impossible angles. The humidity was gone, and he almost missed its constant stickiness. Not that it was any cooler here, if anything the mangled patch of the jungle’s edge was hotter, just a dry heat. Further in, it looked like a tray of cookie cutters had been hurled through the trees. The jungle animals, plants, and orange-robed cultists all had large angular cuts in them that were roughly the shape of a doorway.

“Alright Seth,” his dad stressed as the group began to spread out, “you should keep to the edge of the area. Is that understood?”

Seth knew how pointless it was to lie to a Priest of Virtue, so he was relieved that he didn’t have to admit that he didn’t want to get any closer.

He nodded and asked, “do you have anything I can use to cover my nose? I didn’t think about how quickly they would start to rot out here.”

The jungle teemed with the Plant and Fungal essences that the nearby Orc tribes used. Until they could get the bodies back to the temple, the smell would be unbearable. His dad handed him a bandana, which Seth tied over his nose and mouth as Priest Joe and Levi followed the impatient-looking guard captain.

Seth tried to be clinical as he helped gather up the bodies and body parts nearby, then started moving around the west side of the Chaos area. As he walked, he looked up and around at the towering trees around him, listening to the calls of birds and insects deeper in the jungle. He’d lived in the outpost ‘town’ of Lith for as long as he could remember, but he hadn’t been outside the walls unless a supply boat came. The dangers there could threaten even a well-prepared adult, let alone a child.

After a few more minutes of walking, he noticed that the bark on one of the jungle trees looked distorted, almost like it was melting. He approached and touched a section of bark below the blueish, runny area. As usual, he could barely feel the tree’s essence, and he decided to try the Plant essence again before pushing only Virtue through. As he pulled on his Plant essence, he tried to make it flow like the tree’s. The action left him with an unsettling feeling of familiarity, despite never having done this before. It was almost as if there was a dormant part of himself that was similar to the tree.

After he got used to moving the Plant essence around more naturally, Seth had a bad idea.

He muttered to himself, “This is stupid…” as he moved his right hand to the distorted bark and tried to imitate the essence flow.

After a minute, the back of his hand started to itch, and the skin suddenly started to take on a shifting, rough texture. The feeling was like having a cheese grater rolling over his skin, and he jerked his hand away. To his horror, the skin on the back of his hand writhed for a few seconds before shattering, leaving the back of his hand shredded. It felt like a thousand paper cuts all at once. Seth hopped around, flailing his hand and trying very hard not to scream. He only stopped when he slammed his toes into another tree so hard that he saw stars. Flopping down on the damp ground, he focused on circulating more Virtue through his right hand. The wounds had already started closing, and with some focus the skin was back after twenty long seconds.

Seth stood back up, unsuccessfully tried to brush mud off the back of his robes, and went back to the tree. Putting his other hand on the affected area, he started pushing Plant and Virtue essence into the tree at the same time, but also tried to pay attention to what the Chaos was doing as it was subsumed. He thought he had a little better idea of what was happening, but his split attention meant he didn’t actually follow the flow of the tree very well. The area stabilized, but looked like a popped balloon.

Reaching a sparser part of the jungle, Seth found another Chaos-tainted plant and stabilized it more properly. It didn’t look perfect, but it was better. After several trees, bushes, and one spiny, bubbling beetle he ended up putting out of its misery, Seth felt a tired ache beginning to settle into his core. His Virtue essence didn’t flow as well in plants as it did in people, and he was still trying to get comfortable with Plant essence. As he began to doze off on a boulder near the edge of a clearing, he heard a low, angry grunt that left him wide awake.

Looking around, he finally noticed how far he’d moved away from the Chaotic area and all of the guardsman and wanderers. He realized that, one, he’d have to tell his dad that the Chaos was affecting a larger area than they’d thought, and, two, he was about four feet away from a group of boars eating a corpse. He saw a glowing rectangle lying on the ground next to the body and considered examining it, but decided not annoying the boars would be more prudent.

As he slowly backed away from the boars, he felt a deep chill pass through his body as everything took on a light blue tint. Seth staggered sideways, looking around wildly until his gaze settled on a washed out, translucent figure standing where he had been with wide eyes.

“——? —— —— —, — —— — — —— —.” It said unintelligibly, “— — — —— —— —, — — — — — — —?”

It sounded confused and concerned, but Seth barely noticed. He could feel something deep and sad lingering inside him from passing through it, and he ran back in the direction of his father with tears sliding down his cheeks. By the time he reached the Chaos area and saw his dad, his Virtue circulation had flushed away the strange sensation.

Seth’s dad looked annoyed at first when he saw Seth so far into the Chaotic area, but his expression softened when he saw the dried tears in Seth’s eyes.

“What’s wrong?” He asked softly as he stepped to the side, placing a hand on Seth’s shoulder.

Seth opened his mouth, then paused. Now that the strange essence was out of his system, he could think more clearly. What he saw must have been a ghost, and an oddly dressed one at that. If he told his dad about it, then they would go back and purify it before it could cause any problems. But the ghost itself hadn’t seemed hostile or despairing, just confused. Seth had another bad idea.

“I went further away from the ritual area to fix the plants, and found a bunch of boars eating a body.” He continued, “it looked like it had an enchanted object too.”

His father nodded seriously and turned back to the group. “Seth may have found the body of one of the cult leaders. He says that boars are eating it, and he saw enchanted objects. Sheldon, can you go take a look?”

A grizzled man looked over and gave them a nod.

Levi turned back to Seth and asked, “are you alright with going back to show Sheldon where it was? He’s got a good defender birthright and can keep you safe if something happens.”

Seth nodded as the guard walked over. Sheldon wasn’t as tall as Seth, but he looked like he wrestled boars for their lunch. Seth could see the man had a buckler on one arm and a shortsword in its scabbard.

“Let’s go, lad.” Sheldon grunted.

Seth led them a bit further south than necessary on the way to the body, avoiding where he had run through the ghost. As they approached the sound of squealing and chewing, Sheldon put a hand out to stop him.

“The boars are normal.” He muttered, “I’ll drive ‘em off. Stay close and they’ll only be able to see me as a threat.”

Sheldon moved in confidently, and Seth did his best to hide behind the shorter man. The boars barely pretended to challenge Sheldon before taking off.

“Hmm, boars are usually stubborn, dangerous.” Sheldon said. “Something scared ‘em. Is the body’s essence unusual?”

As Seth stepped over to the mangled corpse, Sheldon picked up the hand-sized black rectangle Seth had noticed before. It wasn’t glowing anymore, and it had cracks across the odd fruit-shaped hieroglyph on one side. Seth tied the bandana over his mouth and nose again and put a finger on the body, then paused. He shifted and put his finger on a different part, then a third.

Sheldon leaned over and asked, “what’s wrong lad? It unstable?”

“Not at all.” Seth replied. “There’s almost no essence in the body at all, not even Vital. If I didn’t know better, I would assume this was one of the quartermaster's mannequins.”

“Strange,” Sheldon said. “Let’s get the body back. Bring the artifact too, I haven’t the like.”

Seth paused. “Do you think the boars will come back?”

“I took the corpse,” Sheldon said, bundling it into a bag. “And they were spooked. Why?”

“I was thinking about looking around for anything else strange and purifying more plants,” Seth replied.

“Mmh, the other Priest mentioned that your birthright’s a priest and gardener mix,” Sheldon looked empathetic. “Should be fine, keep an eye out. I’ll mention this to your pa.”

Seth saw him off and went over to a bush that was ringing like a bell. After purifying it, he felt the tiredness return in force, and decided to go back after all. He walked past the boulder near the ghost and saw it again, even more transparent than before. He could barely make out its build, but it might have been male, possibly with a hunchback.

“I’ll come back later!” He called from a safe distance.

“—?” It asked, but Seth was already gone.