“New stone acquired,” Wilkes said. “Radiant feldspar: useful to soak in certain, niche potions to slightly increase their potency, according to some researchers.”

Emma had been carefully following the path Bartok had laid out on the map he had given her, of course. But how could she ignore all these resources?

“New plant acquired: fig leaf,” said Wilkes. “Useful for restoring energy and in certain stews to increase flavor.”

“New insect acquired: bat-spider. Useful as an ingredient to make certain basic attack potions.”

“Blade of grass acquired. Useful for virtually nothing.”

Perhaps she had gone a bit overboard.

About ten miles after she departed from Bartok and Barb’s camp, she guessed, Emma climbed atop yet another enormous pile of black rocks. From that vantage point she saw to her great relief the narrow valleys widen in the not-so-far distance into a wide-open green plain. Some distance below her perch, down the steep mountainside, a barely-discernible dirt path curled through the dry, waving brush and stretched out into the empty, mountainless land beyond.

“Wilkes, inventory.”

She had withdrawn and deposited items from her inventory several times since leaving camp the previous night, but she had yet to get used to seeing her items shrink and enlarge as she pinched them in and out of the box on Wilkes’ round, glassy body. The screen opened up almost immediately and Emma, who had been struggling to read Bartok’s hand drawn map and now suspected she wouldn’t need it thanks to the path, shoved it towards the screen. The map shrunk and took a spot next to her Necrotas with its blinking and whizzing eye, her dagger, the dozens of small resources she had gathered, and the scorpion-scorpion-panther’s raw meat, hyde, bones, and prowling, smoky soul, which was completely black besides the two yellow, slitted eyes leering at her.

She waved the inventory away with a grimace. She had taken Bartok’s potion as soon as she’d departed the camp. Her wounds soon after began to close and fuse into white bumps which were in the process of sinking back into her flesh. They left her skin so smooth that one would never guess she had been mortally wounded. But she still felt an itch where the scars were disappearing into and, though she knew she was imagining it, she could still feel those teeth deep inside her like knives through the still-open wounds of memory.

As Emma began descending the steep mountainside, trying to negotiate her bare feet between unsteady sharp rocks, she took stock of her immediate needs. According to Bartok’s map (she cringed as she slipped on a loose piece of gravel and a sharp rock cut into her toe), she was about a day and a half’s journey from Telegrad. She had the scorpion-panther’s meat if she got hungry, though starting a fire would prove troublesome if she couldn’t find any of the flint Barb had mentioned, or at least kindling, and she had never exactly been an Eagle Scout where fire-starting was concerned.

For a moment she was suddenly reminded of long, cold nights spent warming her hands beside a campfire with Evan while their father strummed his old guitar with its charmingly worn-out strings and wood, singing classic smooth rock. She pushed the thought out of her mind - an effort which was aided by the balls of her right foot slipping on a patch of loose gravel, sending her toppling painfully to her back.

Emma arose again carefully after a moment, her lower left back throbbing where it had collided with the unfriendly edge of a sharp stone. She guessed that her heavy cloak blunted the blow somewhat, and possibly had even saved her from another cutting or stabbing. She owed Bartok and Barb quite a lot, she reflected, up to and including her life, whatever that happened to mean according to the metaphysics of Hell.

Two more near-stumbles and a great number of foot-cuts later, Emma emerged jogging from the side of the mountain.

The sun had passed a little further overhead in the time it took her to climb down and she wondered whether she would reach Telegrad before nightfall the following day at the rate she was going. She made her way towards the dirt path - which, from this distance, she judged to have been carved by many footfalls rather than by any deliberate intent - as her stomach began to grumble. Wishing she had been more grateful for Barb’s cooking, Emma began to keep an eye out for kindling, flint, small animals, and berries.

Kneeling down somewhat to inspect the loose rocks as she walked - what did flint look like again? - Emma walked for several minutes towards the path. She had just noticed a large-ish piece of blackish rock, which she scooped up and deposited into her inventory, when she heard voices along the breeze.

“Flint,” began Wilkes.

“Shut up,” Emma hissed, looking around for the source of the voices.

“Entering silent mode,” said Wilkes, loudly.

Emma spotted a carriage making its way around the bend leading into the mountains from the plains. Shadowed and distant though it was, she thought she saw two enormous beasts - bigger even than horses - pulling a huge, black carriage rung on all sides by red flames despite the ample afternoon sunlight. Panicked, with a nervous feeling in her stomach, Emma looked around for something behind which to hide, hoping they hadn’t noticed her. But the voices echoing along the mountain walls, riding the breeze, still seemed casual, and Emma thought she heard a shrill male laugh.

Lacking any better options, Emma walked as slowly as she dared towards a small outcropping of rocks a few meters away. She judged it to be large enough to conceal her body, though just barely. Huddled behind them, arms wrapped around herself to calm herself down, Emma held the dagger Bartok had given her to her chest and waited.

The voices, which approached slowly, gave no indication that they’d spotted her in hiding. After a few moments, a second, smooth female voice replied to what had evidently been a question from the man with the shrill voice.

“Three souls,” said the female voice flatly. “I don’t have the space for any more at this time.”

The slow, heavy footfalls of the beasts were now close enough to rattle the ground.

“Nothing in the contract says we can’t have a little fun,” protested the shrill voice. Something in the voice repulsed her. She guessed him to be on the younger side; his voice, careless and malignant, brought to mind the thoughtless boys who had enjoyed bullying her when she was younger.

“You can do whatever you want,” said the woman coolly, “but if I catch you wasting time and resources, I’ll turn you into a worm. Then I’ll turn your mother into a venomous spider, put her in a jar until she’s on the brink of starvation, and feed you to her.”

“Jesus,” the voice replied solemnly. There was a pensive quiet for a few moments as the beasts rattled the nearby rocks. “Not if you catch me and then I kill you first. Or if I just kill you first. Not too many witnesses out here.”

“There are witnesses everywhere,” the woman replied flatly, as though her partner had made a comment about the local geography.

“More witch bullshit. ‘Oooh, the rocks have feelings.’ Why ain’t they ever tattled on me, then?”

“They have.”

The man laughed and the woman said nothing more.

When Emma judged that the sounds of the beasts and the carriage were far enough away, she peaked around the rocks at the travellers, who were now past her and heading towards the deep mountains. The carriage, enormous and painted black, was pulled by two gray beasts the size of small elephants. Their mouths were hooked to thick-looking steel reigns. Sharp horns twice as thick as Emma’s forearm curled out from their enormous bodies in seemingly random places along their torsos and legs.

A woman clad in thick, all-black cloaks and wearing what for all the world appeared to be a generic, pointed witch’s hat was holding tightly to the reigns. Next to her sat a man Emma guessed to be around her age, maybe a bit younger, with spotty, unshaven blond facial hair and wearing well-fitting chainmail and at least a dozen throwing knives hanging from his belt.

They had mentioned they were on a contracted mission but gave the appearance of being quite wealthy. They were probably, then, under the employment of someone of power and influence, and it didn’t sound like wholesome work of the sort Bartok and Barb had been employed in.

She glanced towards the ground as she was thinking; when she looked back up, the younger man was looking at her out of the corner of his eyes. Emma gasped and gripped her dagger as her stomach lurched, but a moment later the man was staring forward again. Had she imagined it? No - the feeling of meeting the gaze of another person, especially one with such an expression - naked maliciousness and intent - was impossible to mistake.

When the heavy, slow stamps of the beasts’ footfalls fell out of her perception, Emma cautiously rose to her feet, ready to have to fight (and likely die to) an ambush. But the valley was clear, aside from some small shadowed bugs moving through the shadows of rocks around her.

She kept looking behind her as she made her way towards the gates of the mountains, pleased to nearly be out of the maddening labyrinth. When at last she stepped outside of the mountains, she stopped and her jaw fell.

The worn path continued onward, but what Emma had taken to be vegetation and grass from a distance was squirming unnaturally for miles ahead. She bent down slowly, holding her breath, to examine one of the tentacle-like things: the sea of green seemed to be comprise of the tiny things, which were a mixture between a solid and green flame, whipping back and forth, an occasional piece flying off the tip and dispersing into the air.

Curiosity awakened, and feeling strangely ill, Emma leaned in closer, peering into the strange, twisting things. Whatever the frantic things were, the roots went deep….

Something white and red was visible, briefly, as the thrashings of the tentacles pulled apart for a moment. Emma felt like something had been looking at her, but not an eye. No, she thought, her stomach lurching and threatening to deposit whatever remained of Barb’s soup onto the path, it was the lack of an eye.

Not wanting to think further about whatever that meant, Emma got up and continued along the path, careful to stay far away from the uneasy “grass.”

Farther along the path, red, juicy-looking petals bloomed in tiny bundles through cracks and holes in the dirt path. She picked them as she walked. When she had about a dozen, she called forth Wilkes.

“Lip roses,” Wilkes said as she added them by the handful to her inventory. “Useful as sustenance and in certain brews.”

Curious, Emma popped one into her mouth - and nearly gagged. It was as though she had bitten into mushy ice that dissolved immediately upon touching her tongue, bringing with it the taste of metal. Emma held another one in her hands, staring at the odd petals, trying to interpret her stomach’s lurching as more hunger or as protest against the strange flower. Eventually, she sighed, held her nose, and popped another of the roses into her mouth, careful to swallow quickly. Then she added the rest to her inventory. They took up only one spot, with a small number “10” in the top right corner of the box in which they sat.

The path soon widened as the sun began its fall towards the horizon. Various sticks, twigs, and stumps began to appear, and Emma began adding the kindling to her inventory in earnest.

“At least I won’t be freezing tonight,” she told Wilkes. “Even if I’m sick from the disgusting petals. And, you know, everything else.”

“Category too broad,” said Wilkes. “Unable to offer advice.”

“I’m making conversation,” Emma said, turning over a piece of what looked like termite-eaten wood and finding a dozen-legged spider there, with what looked like twenty small eyes along its back that blinked up at her. She gagged and put the wood back over it. “Not everything requires analysis.”

“Bear in mind my behavior is modeled after yours.”

Emma dismissed Wilkes.

After a while the sun began to set and Emma settled beneath a sad-looking tree, where she arranged her kindling into an even sadder-looking pile. She withdrew her dagger and the flint. Happy that nobody could witness her imminent embarrassment, Emma leaned over the kindling and tried to remember the rules and motions for starting a fire that she’d learned over ten years ago.

She began banging, scraping, and aggressively slipping the flint along the sharp edge of the knife, careful not to knick her finger. Nearly a half an hour later, she produced enough sparks to cultivate a small fire. She blew on it daintily, nursing the tiny flames and edging them towards bigger, dryer sticks.

When the fire became more or less self-sustaining, Emma leaned against the tree and opened her inventory. She reached for her Necrotas, which seemed eager (how could a book seem eager?) to follow her fingers as she lifted it from her inventory and it grew to normal size. Then, with a grimace, she withdrew the lip-roses and opened the Necrotas to a page at random.

She popped one of the roses into her mouth and was surprised to find that it didn’t taste as bad as before. In fact, if she gave it long enough to coat her tongue, it even provided a sweet aftertaste….

The markings on the page of the Necrotas were, as she’d expected, as indecipherable as they had been when she’d been with Bartok and Barb. But, as she looked, she became aware of the strange whispering once more. It was so subtle, at first, that Emma glanced at the fire, wondering whether it had grown to a frightening sizzle that accounted for the odd sibilant noises she heard, but it appeared the same as she’d left it.

Frowning, and popping another lip-rose into her mouth (how many did she have left now? She’d need to get more, much more…), Emma leaned in closer to the Necrotas. Feeling foolish, she whispered, “What do you want from me?”

The book seemed to move a little beneath her touch, like a squirming animal, but the whispers from before remained at the same volume. Nothing more happened.

She turned to another page - and blinked. The markings on the page - which appeared like a series of branches, pointing upwards to the top of the page like mathematical symbols - seemed to remind her of something, as clear as day. But the feeling was gone as soon as it had come.

Emma stared at the markings, feeling odd. The feeling was like deja-vu, but more abstract. It was as though she had been reminded of an abstract thought, or perhaps a useful dream, for a flicker of a moment, before it vanished.

Feeling compelled, suddenly, to look to her left (why did she feel compelled? It was too specific…), she noticed she had left her inventory open. The eyes of the scorpion-panther, ringed by black smoke, were regarding her closely from their spot in her inventory. Emma felt unsettled: it was as though the dead scorpion-panther - or was it dead? She really should have asked Bartok and Barb about the whole soul-collection thing - was watching her. Specifically, watching her neck.

The whispers interjected again, only this time with a feeling. It was as though the strange hissing noises in her mind had changed direction, coming from the vicinity of the scorpion-panther, and for a moment Emma felt visceral, unmistakable fear and rage. The frisson of passion made her limbs shake as though shocked by an electrical current and the book suddenly felt much heavier in her hands. She found, suddenly, that she couldn’t look away from the eyes of the scorpion-panther.

It was as though the thing’s feelings were infecting her. The sudden wave of empathy for it sickened Emma: hadn’t she suffered enough at the hands - not to mention the teeth and claws - of the beast? Now it had to somehow invade her emotions, too? A bubble of rage expanded inside of her, its force and speed seeming to push the intruding emotions of the scorpion-panther back outside of her, cleansing her. To Emma’s immense surprise, the soul of the scorpion-panther flinched and closed its eyes.

Her rage pushed into the scorpion-panther’s soul, enveloping and holding it. She thought she could feel its emotions, nuzzled somewhere beneath the force of her own feelings as though she were holding it in her hands.

The whispering suddenly grew louder and Emma looked at the page of the Necrotas she had opened to. The twisting branches of the markings seemed suddenly to make sense: they were each touching one another, of course, yet each one was on its own journey, connected to something more basic at the very bottom.

An idea blossomed, and Emma turned her attention towards the soul of the much less expressive leech, twirling and tumbling in its spot in her inventory like an odd, green cloud with too many teeth. She concentrated on holding its emotions as she had the scorpion-panther’s, and was surprised at the difference between the two. When she held the leech it offered no resistance. The poignancy of its feelings were superficially dull, but at the bottom of its essence was an odd, pointed fear, much less complex than that of the scorpion-panther. It was as though the leech had somehow dissociated itself from the inanimacy of the world around it and become, by sheer accident, a thing with senses and feelings, as though the surrounding earth had developed pins and needles in the form of vague animacy.

Setting the Necrotas aside (but careful to keep it open to its current page), Emma reached towards her inventory and withdrew the soul of the leech. It twirled in her fingertips and she settled it into her palm, where it snaked over her skin like heavy, immobile smoke in the rough shape of its living self. She felt oddly connected to it, and yet so much heavier by comparison. Its feelings seemed to melt into hers, and she accepted it willingly and without much fare, like a bucket of water dumped into an ocean. It seemed separate, yes, yet part of her.

Re-form, she thought, though not precisely in words; she thought the command in a similar way that she would silently bid her hand to move.

The soul of the leech wavered, like rippling water, and then the smoke of l its odd form withdrew into itself. It became heavier, as though it had become solid once again. Its mouth wide open, it began to squirm around freely as though it had never met the fateful gravitational force of her knee.

Emma felt a thrill of excitement. Did the leech, now intimately connected to her, seem to perk up in correspondence to her joy, or was Emma imagining things? Did this mean she could control the souls of the dead? Was this merely one power of the Eldritch book? The possibilities exploded and she couldn’t help but smile at the stupid, slimy thing.

“You know,” came a low, yet shrill voice from the dark, “you really ought to make your camp less noticeable at night. Never know when untoward men could be lurking about.”