Inside the cave the artifact is buried in a halo of dirt. The sun is high outside and a perfect laser beam of light shows the trajectory of the impact. The thing punched right through the ceiling of the cave and landed here. Landed here and waited. Until some dumbass woodcutter found it. Drawn to it by the sudden growth in the wood, the coolness of the air—or even hearing voices.

Drawn to it and coveted it. Maybe he'd told his friends, maybe he knew to keep it to himself right away. The objects whispered to you, sometimes, depending on what God sent them.

That's what The Progress says, anyway, but Velici had never had much air in his lungs for their words.

The thing, a shard of metal, sticks up out of the ground like a knife. Velici knows he can't bury it, or burn it, or drown it, or throw it off a cliff. He knows all this because he's tried all this, so many times. The only to do was melt it and he has just the thing for that.

He pulls the little torch out of his belt and shakes it up and down a few times. It rattles, then something inside clicks and it starts to vibrate in his hand. The tool looks like the number 7. A grip made of some unknown material soft as leather but tougher than granite, with a metal mouth at the top. He holds the metal mouth to the shard and flips a switch with his thumb. The tool belches a short blast of white hot fire about the length of Velici's thumb. The shard starts to heat up and spark and sizzle.

Velici pulls his scarf up over his nose and mouth and holds a pair of goggles over his eyes. The shard melts down fast, gases dance and coil in the sunbeam and escape through the hole in the roof. In the light of the torch, he sees symbols on the metal that he used to be able to read. He ignores them. Soon, the shard is a puddle of tungsten grey on the cavefloor.

He hoses the puddle some more with the tool, then kicks dirt over it. It cools off fast. In the bright light of the sunbeam, he sees the imprint on the grass and moss of where the tall man had cradled the shard. Where it had warped his mind and mutated his body. Where his muscles stretched and his tendons popped and his skeleton rubberized and bloated. Where his mind reduced to mush and his memories gone cold.

Fuck these things.

Velici leaves the cave and walks past the tall man, whose body and blood even in death are still warping the land around him. Grass and moss have already started to grow in his blood. Mushrooms rise from his skin. Bumblebees make pilgrimages to the flowers that sprout from his eyes.

In the height of the sun, the forest is brighter and claustrophobic. The bright greens and auburn obscure and distort. Velici searches for his sword where the tall man threw it. He finds it lying on its side in a clearing. He also finds the kid.

The kid is standing right over the sword and both are skinny and hard and shine in the sun. Velic can see the kid is breathing shallow and quick. He's angry though that doesn't really cover it. What happened to him is the conclusion of a story that has already ruined what he thought his life was going to be.

Velici gets closer and realizes the kid isn't staring at the sword, he's staring at the blood on the sword.

Y'killed 'im.

I did.

He over there?

Better move quick if you want to see him. He'll be a meadow in about an hour.

Why'd you do it?

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

The kid balls his hands into fists. He hasn't looked up.

Your town paid me to kill your dad. Your dad was a problem. I removed the problem.

His friends…

Didn't stop me. They're getting day drunk because they know what I come out here to do. Probably their idea.

The kid's head drops even more. He's shaking a bit. Velici pulls his small axe out of his belt, blade chipped from the tall man's big ol' bones.

Go 'head. Pick it up. Come at me. I can make it all go away.

The kid tries to control his breathing. He finally looks up at Velici. He looks past him to the massive corpse claimed by creeping nature. He reaches for the sword—

You didn't kill him?!

What?

Did you kill the kid?

No!

It seems like you're going to!

I didn't.

Yeah right.

I didn't kill some random teen in the woods, Autumn.

It's weeks later. Velici and Autumn camped on a rocky ridge looking out over the Crenshaw Plains. To their east, the Endless Forest consumes the plains, growing a metre a day. You can see it growing if you're patient.

The corpse of the tall man is somewhere in the wood. Kilometres behind them. Along with a lot of blood and fire and bad memories.

Autumn munches on a skewer of rabbit meat.

This is a fucked up story.

You asked me!

I asked you what you were doing when you came to my town.

This is what I was doing. This is what I did immediately before I came…

Killing teens in the woods.

I didn't kill him!

Prove it.

Velici stammers, his hands wide.

How am I going to do that?

I dunno. Let's visit him.

The kid?

Sure.

We are not going back to that town.

Why not?

Because it's out of the way. We're going north.

To Ravenna.

Yes.

We've already stopped a few times. Why not stop again?

We've stopped at places on the way.

Autumn springs her trap:

Not when we stopped at that smelly fishing town. We went way out of the way for that.

That's different. I needed something there.

Maybe I need something too.

Velici's stops himself. He takes a break. He feels the danger of the moment.

What do you need?

I...need to know you're not a killer.

I am a killer kid, you know that. You've seen that.

Yeah. And you need to prove to me why that's okay.

The fire crackles. Grease runs down her small fingers. In the shifting, golden firelight, he forgets how young she is. With her tiny body hidden and her face hanging in shadow he can't say she's any less an adult than he is.

Okay. You got it. We'll go back.

Thank you. So what happened with the kid?

I can't tell you.

What?!

You'll find out when we get there.

That's gonna take like 8 million years to walk over there.

I know that. You don't even know where it is.

It's in the middle of that huge frickin' forest.

You got that right.

So I have to wait?

Uh-huh.

Really?

That's the rules.

The rules suck.

He lets her sulk and eat for a bit.

So what were you doing before I came to town?

He looks over her meat at him. The fire dances in her eyes.