Chapter 3

I make it back to the tree Alain was hiding in when he drops down and points to my hands.

“What in the thousand hells is that?”

“I got attacked by a goblin while I was washing up at the stream.”

“Alright. Okay. Why’d you bring its arm back?”

“Well, I mean, it’s my first ever monster kill right? I just wanted to keep something from it, you know, for the memories. I chopped off its head too but I thought the head would be too much.”

“Gods you’ve lost your damn mind. I guess I don’t blame you, a lot happened today. You’re not going to bring it with you right?”

“I mean, if it starts to smell I guess I can toss it. I don’t know, I kind of just like holding it.”

“Holy shit you’ve actually lost your mind. Whatever. What do you want to do now? Wait until morning and see if anyone else comes or do you want to start making our way to Misanth now. But if you’re seeing goblins this close to the roads, we might see other things too if we go now. What do you think?”

“If you think its safe enough here for the night, I am pretty fucking tired. Might be best to head out after a night of sleep. Also, are rabbits with wings monsters? I saw a whole herd of them near the stream and almost shit myself.”

“I have no idea whether it’s safe here, I just haven’t seen anything come close to here for hours now. Winged rabbits aren’t dangerous. I think my dad said they are kind of monsters but not really since they’re always harmless even during blood moons. I think some of the villagers called them wabbits cause of the wings but I thought it sounded fucking stupid. I mean, if you could kill a goblin we should be pretty safe here for the night.”

“Blood moons. So there’s more than one? How often do they happen? What even are they?”

“I don’t know what you mean by more than one. There’s only one moon but sometimes it gets corrupted I think. During the nights when it gets corrupted, dead things come back if they’re not burned. If that happens, you need to destroy the brain somehow or remove the head from the body.” Alain pointed at his head and then made a swiping motion at his neck. “I don’t think anyone knows for sure why they happen. The neighbor’s kid told me someone made one of the gods angry a long time ago and as punishment, the god made the moon bleed. But my dad never told me this so the kid is probably full of shit. Blood moons are pretty rare and they might happen maybe once or twice a year which makes what happened today extremely unlucky for us. Whenever they happened back in the village, everyone would stay in their houses the whole night and board up any open windows or doors and start praying. But we can’t really do that here.” Alain said while shrugging.

“Alright, I guess we should stay here for the night then and wait until daylight. By the way, do you still have that woodcutter’s axe you brought from home?”

“Nah, had to leave it behind when I was running away, too heavy.”

“Alright, take this club then, it’s better than nothing. Took it off the goblin I killed.” I said as I handed over the wooden club. Walking over to Alain’s tree, I put down the shield, the ax, and the goblin arm before I sat down with my back against the tree trunk. “This was a long fucking day. I don’t think it’s going to get any better before we get to your village either. Do you know how the fuck Ribierian soldiers even got here?”

“No fucking idea. I know they declared war a few months ago and the fighting on the Nasaaran/Ribierian border’s pretty fucking bad but we should be completely separated from the warfront. We don’t even know how many of them are here.”

“You think they attacked Vilnau too? If there’s soldiers where we were, they could have attacked where we came from too, right?”

“Fuck. I hope not. Vilnau’s on the way to Misanth though, so we should be able to check it out before moving on. There’s no way they attack Misanth though, it has 200 villagers at most. All of them are woodcutters too. There’s no reason to go there.”

“Alright, if no one else gets here by the time we wake up tomorrow, we’ll start heading to Vilnau and then to Misanth. You think we’ll find enough food on the way there though? That’s the only thing I’m really worried about.”

“I mean, we’ll have enough food. The question is whether you’ll like it or not. The Salpa berries I gave you earlier are nice once in a while but eat enough of them in a short period and you’ll never want to eat them again. But we’ll try to mix it up with nuts, roots, and plants. Look at the tree you’re leaning against, it’s called a Salaczia tree. Nothing really noteworthy about it and most people use it as firewood. Lend me that axe.” Taking the axe in hand, Alain kneeled next to the tree’s roots coming out of the ground and started chopping the thickest part of the roots. Before long, he tore a small section of the tree root from the rest of the tree and held it in his hands before splitting it in half. Once the tree root was split in two pieces, he hands me one half and keeps the other for himself. Looking at the inside of the root, I see an orange sap filling a semicircular groove at the center of the root. “This tree in particular keeps its sap in its roots rather than in the trunk. Have a taste, it’s a little sweet and good enough for a late night snack.”

He was right, it was sweet. It wasn’t enough to fill my stomach or anything but at least my tongue was sated for a bit. Leaning the back of my head against the tree, I quickly drift off to sleep. It’s been a long day and this one moment of peace was just what I needed.

I dreamt tonight. I don’t dream every night, but my dreams are always the same no matter what. I’m always by myself in a city I’ve never visited before. I’ve lived in Abermock ever since I could remember and Vilnau, where Lord Aldore was recruiting for his levies, was the first town I’ve ever visited. I’ve never been to a city before. Then why did this city appear in my dreams? Even though I’m sure I’ve never been to this city, why did it feel so familiar? As I walk down the street, I marvel at each and every iron spire that rises to the sky. When I see these spires, I don’t feel any sense of strangeness but rather I feel as though this is how buildings are supposed to look, grandiose and elegant. All the buildings I’ve actually seen thus far, whether they’re in Abermock or Vilnau, they’re the ones that are odd. The wood and thatch hovels people like to call houses are nothing but trash heaps compared to these magnificent spires. Not only are these spires beautiful to behold, but they serve such a wonderful, efficient purpose. The reason they reach towards the sky is to conserve as much land as possible while housing as many of the city’s citizens as each spire can. Such a splendid purpose, such a regal sight, if beauty and intelligence were to meet, they would birth these spires. As I continue down the street, entranced by the sights and my thoughts, I look towards the center of the city and I wake up.

The sky is becoming bright now but I still can’t see the sun, it has to be dawn or close to it. I’m dazed for a few minutes trying to get my thoughts back in order. Whenever I dream of the city, a flood of foreign thoughts and feelings penetrate my mind and it takes me some time to sort through them when I wake up. The fuck does grandiose mean? I know those iron spires are amazing in some way but I don’t really remember why. Yawning, I stretch my back feeling satisfied.

I don’t feel as tired anymore but my nose feels a little stuffed up. Even if I didn’t think it was that cold last night, my body obviously disagreed. My entire back aches from sleeping on the ground but all the bedrolls were kept in Lord Aldore’s wagon and even those couldn’t compare to a nice lump of straw. Looking up, I can see Alain still asleep on the tree branch above me. That’s genuinely amazing. I’m the type of sleeper that thrashes around uncontrollably when I sleep and if I tried sleeping like that, I’d inevitably fall. I’m not gonna wake him up though, he’ll need his energy if we’re traveling today.

Washing my face in the stream, the cold water leaves me feeling fresh and alert. I keep my eyes on the surroundings in case I get ambushed again but I don’t see anything nearby aside from the goblin I killed last night. It seems the water I drank last night wants to leave now. Finding a nearby bush, I finish relieving myself on it when I hear something coming toward me. Turning my head, I see Alain still blurry eyed nodding at me while moving toward the stream. As I wait for him to finish up, I inspect a clump of mushrooms growing beside a boulder near the stream. The mushroom cap is a dark red and it's covered with green dots while its stalk is pure white. There are about six identical stalks growing in this clump alone.

“Poisonous. It’ll make you keep shitting until you finally shit out your innards. Pretty bad way to die.” Alain had come up behind me to see what I was looking at. I grunt in reply.

“What can we use around here to wipe if we do shit?”

“Most of the trees around here are fine. Just grab some leaves before going. Also, choose where you shit carefully. You don’t want a snake biting your ass while going. We don’t really need to bury our shits right now since we’ll be leaving today but when we stop for the night, try to pick a spot away from where we sleep and dig a hole to bury it after. We don’t want a bear coming over when we’re sleeping to check out the smell.”

“Alright. Are you ready to leave now or do you want to wait a while to see if anyone else shows up?”

“Nah, if no one else showed up while we were sleeping then they’re either dead or they ran in another direction. No point in waiting anymore.”

Alain and I started heading east toward Vilnau after gathering some food. None of our clothes had any pockets but Alain had a little linen bag he used to hide food he stole from the cooks. Unfortunately, he already ate whatever he had inside last night before I arrived. We still managed to scrounge up enough Salpa berries to fill the bag though. With only the two of us, we could walk at a comfortable pace and took breaks whenever we needed it. I’m glad to be out of the army now. On the first day we learned to march, I nearly collapsed out of exhaustion. On the second day, my feet started blistering and bleeding. On the third day, I had to stop and vomit. I had severely underestimated what it meant to become a soldier.

By the afternoon, Alain and I nearly reached Vilnau when we spotted smoke rising into the air from where the town should be. Looking at each other, we got off the dirt road and slowed our pace, looking around for any signs of soldiers. Unable to see anything out of the ordinary before it turned dark, we retreated about a mile away from the town and slept for the night. Alain mentioned that morning he wanted to try making a campfire tonight but we held off on it. We didn’t get close enough to the town to actually see it, but the smell was enough. An overwhelming smoke covered the whole area, making it hard to breathe for too long. When we were there a few days prior with the rest of the levies, there was nothing like this. Both Alain and I stayed silent for the rest of the night and went to sleep early.