The full, lilac moon shone its lavender light through the canopy of leaves above me, as the drumming started again. It was nearer now. Nearer than it had ever been. The sound seemed to walk across the cobblestone road, and through the underbrush, as the night progressed it inched closer and closer. The smell of rotting meat choked me, as I laid perfectly still. Like some child, scared of the dark, I pulled the covers over my head in hopes that whatever was out there didn’t see me, as my hand slid across the sleeping pad and into the dust to grope around blindly for my pistol. The footsteps moved closer and closer until it was at the edge of the treeline near the jeep a dozen or so yards away. Its feet scraped against the rotting duff, and felt the cold grip of my pistol, and pulled it underneath the layers of polyester and cotton.

When the first rays of sunlight peeked over the eastern horizon, the sound, and the stench faded, and I was left alone: my heart thumping, and my body trembling. I pushed myself off the ground and examined the area where the stink still stood. Where the noise had stopped, were scrape marks on the ground. The image of the one-legged woman limping her way toward me flashed through my mind and a shiver ran up my spine.

I think you might be cursed.

“Cursed, what do you mean?”

I can see it faintly beginning to form. A black spot on your soul.

“What did I even do to get cursed? How do curses work?”

You must have done something.

“Nothing out of the ordinary. What does the black spot look like?”

It is faint, and I can’t make it out, but it is forming.

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“Well, how do I get rid of it?”

Seek out a holy man. Rectify the curse, or kill the one who put the curse on you.

“Who would put a curse on me? Liam?”

No, he does not strike me as the kind of person to do such an underhanded thing.

So was someone else after my life? Who? One of the assault platoons? No...they seemed like good people. Then who?

I waited for a moment to stop my legs to stop shaking, and for my heart to stop beating so wildly before packing up, eating one of the MREs that I had packed with me, and headed out. Before doing so, I filled up a water bottle with some of the saltpeter and wrapped it in something to keep the sunlight out.

Patches of lavender and Cassandra’s Thorn grew on the sides of the road, as well as some [Ring Briar] – a type of parasitic thorn weed that grows on trunks, that, if fed blood, would wrap around and constrict you. According to the Foraging Manual, it was a plant I should avoid at all costs because the thorns were as sharp as a razor, and once blood was fed to them, would grow rapidly.

The briar grew thick around a specific tree. A Spider Squirrel had a length of briar wrapped around its throat. Its body was shriveled as the thorns sucked the blood from its body. A goblin arm: shrunken and gray, hung from this cluster. I examined it, and, at a touch, the appendage turned to dust, and the briar that had grasped it by the elbow, fell away to coil around the tree like some great serpent.

These coils of briar grew out into the road: reaching out like hungry tendrils laying out in wait to nick a person. I stepped over one of these pulled out a shirt from my bag, and cut off a length of the Ring Briar that was crawling on the ground. As the blade of my knife sliced into it, I heard a slight hiss, as the briar around it recoiled as if in pain. A foul-smelling, oily liquid spewed from the open wounds as the serration of my blade bit through it like teeth. Once it had been disconnected, I wrapped it up so that it wouldn’t bite at me, and slid it into my bag: I could find some use for it in the upcoming battle. I cut up similar lengths, and wrap them in some of the clothes I found in the boxes in the back of the jeep, and continue on my way.

As I neared the outpost, the noise of a dozen conversations fluttered down the road. I cut into the surrounding wilds and checked the map. About a mile away, and two miles from the outpost, there was a small clearing. I headed in that direction. The wilds sloped upwards, and soon I found myself on top of a hill that overlooked the surrounding woods. The top of the hill was wide and broad as if it had been built up like this on purpose.

Beneath thick grass, behind a cover of rotting sandbags hidden from sight on the ground to act as a kind of cover. Weather-aged arrows and short spears stuck in a few of them, and the faint outlines of taller, greener grass of what would have been the bodies of men and goblins engaged in combat lay scattered across the almost bald landscape.

“This will be a good place to set up,” I muttered as I looked around.

It was barely scratching at noon by then. I set my bag down, took out the small, folded-up shovel and the other tools I brought along, and began getting to work in setting up the traps. I used everything in my repertoire: all of the traps that I had learned, and a few others. It took me all of the day, and through half the night until everything was ready. By the time I was done, I had used all of the items I had brought along. I set up on top of the hill for the night: hidden from view from the direction of the outpost by the thick grass in the cover of those aged sandbags.