Following his movements as much as I’m able through the utter darkness, Vayne’s silhouette can barely be made out. He pitches wood onto the remnants of the goblin’s campfire, signaled by the occasional chunking noises as wood hits other pieces and the stone floor. With it continuing for a while, it becomes apparent that he means to build a far larger fire than the goblins enjoyed. Using up all the surplus firewood in the cavern, his efforts make the cavern sound like a bowling alley.

With a tired shrug, I slump against the wall nearest the exit, a position chosen out of caution and anxiety. Even now, my eyes have yet to adjust to the near lack of any light, if they ever could.

It feels oppressing, all the rock pressing down around me like a slow-motion avalanche. Claustrophobic even. My mind shies away from the fact that human bodies were butchered here, some of it done right in front of me. Sitting in the darkness, waiting for some light to dispel the darkness, I grow more and more unsettled.

Tearing my mind from my anxiety and fears, I listen to the strange music that Vayne’s working creates and idly wonder why Vayne is able to move with such certainty without stumbling even once. Had he, he’d have loudly cursed, given his abrasive nature. He’s just that kind of a guy. After a moment of thinking, I recall the vision I had that demonstrated to me his fighting style. He used what he called a ‘cantrip.’ 

So, I guess that it’s basically thermal imaging through the use of magick. But chunks of wood don't give off a heat signature when it’s cut up and long since dead, assuming trees give off much heat while alive. I marvel at how he’s somehow navigating around the room with his cantrip totally useless. He can’t see any better than me, can he? Or does he have another trick up his sleeve that I can’t see or sense?

After a while, sparks flare up across the way, blinding me for a moment. For a long period of time, sparks continue to fly, accompanied by scraping and clicking noises. When the sparks finally manage to ignite a flame, it’s weak at first. Vayne peers around in the weak light the fire gives off, drags his gauntleted hand across his eyes, most likely to undo his cantrip. I can’t feel anything happening when he does it across the way, even with that visible sign that he’s doing it. He quickly scans around the cavern, rooting through things and finally locates something that he might have had a hard time finding in the darkness, scooping up a bunch of it in his arms. My lips purse as I watch as he packs it around the burning wood and the room starts to brighten. Kindling.

Painstakingly, he waves his hand, encouraging the fire to eat its way deeper into the pile of wood until the cave is cheerilly illuminated and the darkness banished. It feels that way at first, since the void was nothing short of depressing, not to mention crushing. That’s exactly how I feel right now with the fire returned, but then all the blood that coats much of the floor comes into sight with human bones littering the floor. Gardenine’s head stares at me again along with a couple of men’s that I don’t recognize. The stench of slaughter, sweet and acrid, not to mention the unmistakable scent of decay that already pervaded, like a stain that could never be removed, becoming worse with sweet smoke added to it. The faint metallic odor of blood mixed with the stench of goblin’s ichor. My stomach roils. I’m grateful that it suppresses the hunger that started gnawing at me just as soon as I perceived my safety.

Gardenine’s head continues to stare blankly at me, off into the distance at secrets beyond my understanding. I get the feeling that no matter where I chose to sit, she’d still manage to look directly at me, accusing. Clutching my arms around me to shield myself from her pain-filled, fear-immersed, and deeply angry eyes, I find that I can’t break the stare.

“Right nasty,” Vayne mutters under his breath as he grabs Gardenine’s head and chucks it onto the burning pile. Turning his head to look at me with a dry expression, he offers a small smile. “My apologies for the sight and charnel smell. I gather you knew this one and didn’t much like her, eh?” He barks a laugh. “The smells are going to get worse going forward. It might get a mite overpowering for a delicate flower like you. Might want to back out. Ya should’ve headed outside the cave. I’m almost sure nothing would stumble on you waiting just outside.”

He goes on about his work after a meaningful look at me and leans down to rip open a sack that contains an uneaten corpse. As he rummages in the bag, I watch the fire raptly as Gardenine’s head melts and chars while the hot flames consume her with loud crackling noises and her eyes melt and char. Vayne sniffs and returns to the pile of bones that had been scattered to chuck them all, one by one onto the bonfire. The stench in the air heightens to the point where I’d empty my stomach again if I had anything left to heave up.

This is a truly awful gods-forsaken place. I hope I never see this place again.

Swallowing some saliva buildup, I turn my head away and limp to my feet, practically dragging my feet as I cross to where I was tied, finding that the spot I chose to sit wasn’t too far from it. Falling to my knees, perhaps because of a perverse impulse, I tear open another sack. Hearing Vayne tramp heavily over to me to peer over my shoulder, I look at him with a shrug and turn back to my examination of this body. The eyes of an elderly man with dried blood leaking from his lips and wispy hair greets me with his milky eyes. The man’s hair faintly seems familiar to me, but I can’t put a name to him.

“You know this poor old sot?” Vayne asks me. “Not your family, I hope.”

Shaking my head negatively, I crawl over to the next larger sack and pry at that knot. Waiting a while, Vayne snorts and thrusts his now clean sword’s blade into the sack to cut the twine open for me. “Little miss, we can’t be too long at this. You know what’ll happen if we wait for you to reminisce with ‘em all, don’t ya? You can take in all their faces in a moment and record them in your memories before I throw them onto the bonfire. I’ll strip em of what you need.”

“I don’t know why I’m looking at their faces,” I say with a flat expression and a sinking heart. “It’s not like I have connections with any of them.“

“That look in your eyes belies what you’re tryin’ to sell,” Vayne says as he sets to cutting free the rest of the bodies from their sacks. One by one, the unlucky victims are revealed and the last of the group causes me to swallow a sudden buildup of saliva as I fight the urge to vomit or scream again. Jeraldine!

This sack containing her was somewhat larger than the rest to cover her bulk, but I hadn’t put two and two together. Not until her bloody face was revealed. For some reason, my eyes fill with tears and I cry. This woman was cruel to Halima, wasn’t she? She beat her now and again and… but when it comes right down to it, Jeraldine was the only family she had. She has a sad look in her eyes. Not full of fear like the rest, just utterly sad as though there’s something she always regretted.

“Ah.” Vayne says knowingly, patting me with a heavy gauntleted hand and a gruff tone. “Looks like she took a nasty hit on her head from the look of it, so her clothes should be alright, but they won’t be form-fitting.” 

Jeraldine wore dresses like the ones she made for me. They weren’t lovely dresses, all very simple, but her embroidery always made them extra special, more n’ most anyone else’s clothes. 

Thinking back at the dress that Halima had been wearing on that riverbank, I realize that she’d embroidered an otherwise plain and ugly dress for her to make it more than it otherwise would be. Not that there were too many other girls in the village, but Halima had pride in her dresses, that and Jeraldyne’s embroidery. What girls lived there other than Gardenia were married off to either local men to suitors in other communities. Oddly enough, despite how the pilgrim way of life insisted on it, Jeraldine never promised Halima’s hand to anyone, not that there were any suitable suitors with all three eligible boys of the generation fawning over Gardenine.

With tears still leaking from my eyes, a sorrow that I only feel out of empathy, in truth, I reach out to touch Jeraldine’s chubby face and reach to close her eyes out of respect. My fingers rest on her lids and as I do, it happens again.

Colors shift in Jeraldine’s eyes and whiteness surrounds me as I’m sucked into her eyes.

It’s a stormy night, the wind and rain drumming on the roof of my cozy hut. The sound of the thatch repelling the bouncing water to let it run down to the ground outside in rivulets that gather in puddles, churning up mud and nourishing my garden. These noises fill my ears like music through the walls. A cheery fire burns in my hearth. 

My crewel needles click against each other as I draw thread through the hem of one of my dresses as I hum softly to the beat. A happy little rose takes form among a hopefully complex tapestry of daisies and greenery. It’s looking so elegant that I’m already considering this to be one of my better pieces, given how well it stands out among my current theme of leaves and nature, an homage and offering to the Goddess Alvera and in remembrance of my recently departed father. 

Looking at the fire snapping and popping as pockets of sap ignite, I think about the dear past. A long time ago, these mountains were covered in such flowers, but ever since Morga summoned the Demon Baron, they got infested by bands of goblins from the west, the purity of the place waning as the days passed under the curse. The myriad flowers were the first victims.

My needles continue to clink against each other in a staccato of a rhythm that runs counterpoint to the rain falling as my thoughts become somewhat sadder, the melody I hum becomes tinged with melancholy. All the noise around me is the world playing its music just to accompany my humming. The sound of my work is just another instrument in the great orchestra playing a song about the beauty and mystery of those sounds of nature, tinged by my emotions.

Breaking my reverie and concentration, a heavy knocking rattles my front door. In startlement, I drop the dress I’ve been embroidering with the central rose on it yet unfinished. Hesitating, I lick suddenly dry lips and dart to my door, pulling free father’s rusty old sword with a rose emblazoned on its hilt. 

My father kept it, and ever since his passing away, it’s been sitting in the bin by the door. Pilgrims don’t seek to do violence to others except in their own defense, except for punishment for trespasses. Because of their beliefs, now mine, the villagers who’ve visited many times criticized its presence, despite knowing its proud history of protecting them. Some still insinuate and even insist that I melt it down to make a new hoe for someone’s gardening to contribute to the prosperity of Pinesdale as a whole, but for some reason, I always rejected their notions. After all, father was right about one thing: these mountains are dangerous. 

Unlike many of the others living in this village, people who believe that we can live here in peace, ignoring the threats of monsters wandering down from the north and those who turn, my father didn’t believe that faith, calling it nonsense, stemming not from stupidity but naivety and faith. The pilgrims' way and belief would see these mountains restored to their former glory. Admiring their fortitude and conviction, he came along with them to protect them from the dangers they would face, fighting off the things that hoes and shovels can’t scare off. He always told me that someone has to be willing to raise up a sword when need be, because they won’t ever. Peace is fleeting.

Not being much interested in my father’s offers of lessons of swordplay, while understanding why he insisted that I should, I was instead much taken with the pilgrim’s philosophies and faith that my father admired but could not join in. To do what he couldn’t, I rejected my father’s attempts to teach me his prodigious fighting-skills. He left me this sword and a chest that supposedly contains another relic from his old adventuring days. I faintly remember him working on something he wouldn’t let me see in the workshop he maintained until he allowed the villagers to dismantle it and put its contents to better use. Before he passed away, he told me that if I ever changed my mind, the sword would show me the true way.

I’ve never accepted the idea of contributing to the village by sacrificing any of my memories of him. As charming as their beliefs are, beliefs that I’ve wholly taken for my own with this exception, something in me rejects the notion of parting with it.

Another heavy, but weaker knock comes at my door and holding the sword up, I ready myself for what I expect to find waiting on the other side. A goblin looking to bait me out into the night to kill and devour me. Since I’m so isolated in this storm, maybe thinks I’m easy pickings. 

In a moment of emergency, any villager will pick up their tools and turn them into momentary weapons to defend themselves. But even a rusty sword is probably better than a hoe any day. The door rattles as I unbar and throw it open to charge out with a cry. My shout dies on my lips when I see a drenched and robed slip of a figure on its knees in the mud on my doorstep, hunched over.

I gasp, readying my sword for a mighty swing even so, but I stop the swing when the figure’s head peers up at me with a pitiful and sorrowful expression, seeing that it’s just a girl with a heavily bruised face. She clutches a bundle to her chest and presses a hand to her torso.

“Pl… please… your mercy. I beg of you…”

My jaw drops and I drop the sword with a squishing clinking noise into the puddle beside us and throw my arms around this poor unfortunate woman, unwary for any hidden knife she may be holding in her tightly held bundle. I promptly pull the woman over my threshold into my warm home, not minding in the least all the mud and water dripping down all over my floor. Turning my eyes back to my father’s sword laying in the mud outside the door with rain pouring down onto it, I hesitate and dart back out to lift its muddy length to stare at it.

I was about to kill this poor stranger without even knowing what she was. Striding back into my home, disgusted with myself, I throw the sword into the bin, still dirty beside the door before rebarring my door to banish the coldness that seeped into my home.

The woman weakly falls to her knees on my floor by the hearth, getting warmed up. In a rush, I leap to her side and skid to a stop and pull at her cloak to remove it. If she isn’t already sick, she’ll catch a dreadful illness. Unresisting my tugging at her wet cloak and cowl, she allows me to divest her entirely of her drenched and icy-cold clothes. 

Her skin is blue and standing nearly nude before my hearth, she shivers violently. It’s not just the cold that has her so blue. Her skin has a pallor and she’s covered by numerous bruises. I know that she must be suffering from hypothermia and I have to get her bundled up in dry and warm clothes after I get her skin toweled off. 

I notice almost right away that she wears a bandage around her torso. She crouches by my fire as she unwraps what she’s carrying in her free arm and to my surprise, a loud crying noise comes from the bundle, breaking the rhythm of the storm outside.

“My goodness!” I exclaim, rushing over with a thick blanket that I’d knitted several months past to drape it over the poor girl’s body. She starts softly crying, still bent over. 

“Thank you so much for your kindness, but don’t worry overmuch for my health, my good woman. I’m not worth your kindness. I’m damned. Please… take this child.” She holds the baby up with a pained groan, now using both arms, stretching her torso. Suddenly my floor, already muddy and wet, turns reddish as blood runs out from her bandage. Taking the bundle from her arms, I inspect the baby’s condition, noticing that the child is blue just like its mother, but it has a more healthy color in its cheeks than she. 

Rushing the baby to my bed, I tuck it under the blankets and then rush back to its mother to ease her down onto the floor of my hut. Our eyes meet and her lips writhe, twitching with the pain she’s been enduring.

“What happened to you?” I ask, panicking as I twitch the blanket aside to see that it’s already soaked in her blood. She’s been hiding a poorly bandaged wound in her gut this whole time. Peeling the makeshift bandage from her torso that’s stuck something awful to her wound, I see with dismay that I can’t help her. The flesh around her wound is green and yellow, showing clear signs of a massive infection and dead skin. Pus leaks out with her blood, smelling foul.

“They pursued me… B-beasts… ahhh…” The girl gasps, desperately trying to get her words out around her chattering teeth and her body’s tremors. “Ah… h-he… t-told me… make… sure Halima… make sure… l-look…f—” She stammers between whimpers before succumbing to more violent convulsions. Her eyes roll up in her head and her fingers go rigid as she reaches for something out of sight. 

Moments after, she heaves her last breath in my lap.