They went on, quickened their pace. This time Latludious led the column. The boots were sinking in the quagmire. Intoxicating smell, fog, pestilence, peat bogs, and other things they did not see passed through their lungs. The magician turned off the path and went to the left, away from impassable swamps, and in a couple of minutes he found himself at the foot of a hill with languishing cobblestones overgrown with moss and slippery as ice. Now the players’ legs were crooked like the branches of half-dead, barren trees. They stepped with caution.
“Latludious, you can break a leg here.”
“Then go through the swamps. But if you drown, don’t call me for help.”
“And if I break my neck here?”
“Then I’ll have one less headache.”
Faolandan spat and looked at Tina. The wolfhound jumped from rock to rock, easily and naturally. For it, it seemed, this was not an obstacle, but a morning warm-up. Ronnie, overloaded with a heavy rifle, cartridges and recovery elixirs, kept slipping into narrow cracks. Once he fell and miraculously did not hurt his head, he thought he would stay there, but Sitting Bull helped him get out. Things got worse and worse.
When they got off on what could be called a road, everyone breathed a sigh of relief. Huge hummocks, branches, and spiked vines no longer seemed to be something to worry about. Twenty minutes later, they met a ruined tower hiding among the trees and drowning in a quagmire. Dense vegetation hid the minor details of the facade. The only thing that caught the eye was a round window covered with a lattice.
“It’s hard to imagine what Lamo faced...” said Maenad.
Latludious stopped and examined the tower once more and said:
“It’s not a fact that it’s connected to him.”
They decided not to linger and went on. Everyone was tense and on edge. They stopped again, but not for a halt, but for a second scan of the area. They did not wait for the completion. Latludious, gritting his teeth, left the scanner behind. New black areas appeared on the terrain, blacker than black. The magician noticed they were going straight to one of these and ordered to turn and go around it.
Raegdantawar was left behind. The formless darkness receded, and the first rays of the sun broke through the crowns of the trees. It was around noon. The forest canopy had become less dense, so there was no need for the white sphere. Since the last stop, Ronnie had drunk two stamina recovery elixirs. There were three more left. Latludious stopped and sat down. Everyone came closer to him and asked with a nod of their heads what had happened. He stretched out his hand and pointed his index finger at two o’clock.
“This road is clearly being used. I bet we’ll meet someone soon. Keep your eyes open.”
“Maybe this ‘someone’ is from the forest brotherhood,” said Faolandan.
“The Forest Brotherhood doesn’t need roads,” Ronnie replied.
Maenad took out the binoculars and surveyed the surroundings. The trees cast blurry shadows. Morning haze floated through the few gaps. The yellow grass looked like the fur of a red-haired giant. It surrounded the well-hidden stone statues between the hills half a mile from the group, which, according to the AI, were called Tirith (Additional information: according to Lamo’s assistant Crob, in the middle of each month, you can find a spring under them, the water of which cleanses from any ailment). Maenad checked the calendar—the beginning of September. She bit her lip until it bled and offered to check what was there despite everything. Latludious gave the go-ahead.
“We need to take every opportunity,” he added.
They stopped at the first Tirith. It was dry. Then they checked a few more pieces of magic stones, but all to no avail. They came back.
Faolandan tried to calm the tension, to start thinking critically, but his head seemed to empty overnight. He bent down to Barahu and put his arm around its neck and whispered to the dog not to make a sound, although it was silent for several hours in a row. The lack of excitement among the group did not escape from Latludious’ eyes. He watched everyone and understood that if a miracle did not happen to them soon, morale would drop to zero, and the lack of faith in victory was like an instant suicide. Sitting Bull took the initiative and asked his comrades to wait for him and not go anywhere. He went out on the road and looked for traces. The ground was soft—it could play into their hands.
“I found it,” he said a minute later. “Come here. See? The tracks lead out of the thicket and down the road.”
“A large print. Who could have left such a thing behind?” Maenad asked.
“Very similar to the trail of the armored sabatons worn by Vvy,” Faolandan replied.
Sitting Bull nodded and went first. The others followed him. Suddenly, he got up as if paralyzed and fell and grabbed his arm. Latludious ran up first. He rolled up the sleeve of his shirt and saw how the veins on his friend’s forearm turned purple and swelled. Maenad, without delay, stuck an A rank resuscitating syringe, followed by an anesthetic, and motioned to the leader of the group with a glance that there were very few reserves left.
“Can you walk?” Latludious asked.
Sitting Bull got up, his hands were shaking. He nodded in agreement and walked on. Ten minutes later, they disappeared into the tall grass and behind bushes when they saw a creature wheezing and breathing like an exhausted boar.
“What the fuck is this?” Maenad swore.
“Quiet!”
Ronnie took out his rifle. Latludious gestured that it was too early to shoot. Their patience bore fruit when the creature in plate armor released the black-purple magic from its hands and left a cursed symbol on the tree trunk and went on, muttering something incomprehensible to itself. The magician nodded to the sniper, and a second later, a cloud of moisture and fog formed on the monster’s back. Maenad turned to Sitting Bull and asked:
“Has the curse gone away?”
There was no need for an answer when the Indian turned to face her. His eye was still glowing with purple fire, and his eyelids were blackened.
They came closer to the monster, turned it over on its back and saw the gray dirty skin of its face. Instead of lips, it had another row of fangs. It stank of rot. Thick purple blood flowed out of the through wound. Silver armor that had long lost its former color hid the rest of the body. In its hands was a blade made of black steel, seemingly ordinary. They found nothing of value from the orc. Sitting Bull stuck a chip in its neck.
“Is it an orc?”
“It looks like it.”
“I don’t think he wandered here alone.”
“Very unlikely.”
“There must be others somewhere.”
“We need to find them as soon as possible or Sitting Bull will become a dead cow,” Maenad said and followed the reaction of the others to her joke. But no one even grinned.
Latludious put his palm to the ground and a grave three yards deep formed. They threw the dead body into the burial pit, and with the next spell, the magician buried the enemy’s body so that no trace of its existence remained.
Faolandan looked at the Sitting Bull, the curse hitting his body with terrifying speed. His friend seemed to turn into an orc. The skin turned gray; legs gave way; veins swelled one after another. The thought was flying in the air that, at this rate, their friend and comrade would hold out for at most another couple of hours. Morale was falling.
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Sitting Bull took a pipe out of his pocket, put tobacco in it and lit it up and looked at the endless forest, at the gigantic trees, at the lonely gap that broke through the closed crowns and illuminated a small hill. He felt he appreciated it much more than before. His spirit was about to connect with the nature of these dark places. Let it be a game, but the feelings and experiences came from the real him, and that meant one thing - they were authentic. He saw how everyone looked at him with the eyes of fading hope, but did not say in words what they felt. If I’ll give up, Sitting Bull reasoned, none of them will leave this forest.
They took the road to the east. No one was in sight. Latludious released a tracking eye in different directions every five minutes, looking for the enemy with all his might. Yet everywhere he looked were only twisted and dry branches, mighty trunks of nameless, dark, coniferous trees and lifeless emptiness. Dark magic soaked everything in those places: it oozed from the bark, from the ground. Even a passing bug seemed to turn into something huge and dangerous.
After a while, Latludious stopped and pointed to an oak tree—clearly standing out among the other trees - thirteen feet tall with green foliage and said:
“This is ent.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
They came closer to the magical creature. The tree came to life and turned and looked at them with round eyes. Its mouth opened and made a hum, long and rough. Maenad brought Sitting Bull forward and pointed at him. The ent froze, its pupils darted. One of its thick branches turned into a kind of human hand. It pointed to the north and mumbled something.
“What do you think this log wants to tell us?” Maenad asked.
“I don’t know. Let’s go.”
All five of them made a bow and left in the showed direction and turned off the path, moving straight through the wilds. Latludious examined the condition of the group: Sitting Bull is struggling with all his might—good, he sets an example, Faolandan is afraid, Maenad is at a loss, Ronnie does not trust the ent, but I do not want to start another argument.
Ten minutes later, they came to a small river about twenty yards wide. Black branches and rotten leaves floated along its weak current. Down the slope, a strange dark blue color reflected in the waters. In the northern part, the entire group saw an unusual creature with black and purple skin, white moss on the chest and tail, a head shaped like a Greyhound dog and deer horns, long and ornate, overgrown with bone tissue.
“The color of its skin… It’s infected,” Maenad muttered in a plaintive voice.
“Leave it alone. We can’t help ourselves yet,” Latludious said, and built a bridge. “We don’t need anyone else to get cursed.”
Again, silence, stillness, windlessness. No one ran past, no one sat on the branches and no longer stared at the mortal travelers with their eyes. That’s always a bad sign, Ronnie thought. The light of the sun remained behind. Now there were dark brown bushes, bare ground and dead trunks of Hessataule on the way. They crossed a ravine with trees piled at the very bottom, walked about a mile and heard a noise, and stopped and hid behind the nearest shelter.
Latludious released the eye forward. There he saw about twenty orcs, they circled around either a stone pillar or a totem - in the center of which a dark red heart with translucent veins pulsed, and vines enveloped its surface from top to bottom - and let black, magical rays into it. Everything within fifty yards was rotting and decomposing.
The magician looked at the others and told them what he saw.
“We should try to protect the totem,” Faolandan said. “Maybe the black magic of the orcs is the reason for infecting the forest.”
Ronnie looked at him with a tired look and said:
“Then why wasn’t the forest guardian rescued? Killing twenty orcs is hardly a problem for the forest brotherhood.”
“We didn’t give you the word.”
“Something is wrong here, Latludious. We’d better get out of here, and quickly.”
The magician sat in thought. His prospects did not fit into a single picture in his head. Everything was confusing again.
“We’ll deal with them. It’s not for nothing that ent showed us this way.”
Ronnie spat and moved closer to the giant roots of Hessataule and put the Barrett’s titanium bipods on them. The terrain was barely visible: on the left, a crooked tree bending like a guilty treasurer before the king, driftwood, rocks and undulating hills. Branches also intertwined with each other, creating a protective grid. Orcs need to be lured closer. The group did so. Latludious used a flash of light and attracted the enemy’s attention. They burst at the sound like a pack of uncouth barbarians, axes and swords in their hands, drool flying from their mouths. The monsters howled and hooted. As soon as Faolandan saw them, he pushed the branches of the bush in front of him and pulled the trigger and fired a barrage of 7.62 x 51 mm bullets from a DP with a silencer. A dozen orcs died in a moment. Maenad smiled. She was on the sidelines and watched, whispering encouragement to her friends. Sitting Bull put a blade of grass in his mouth and pointed the muzzle of the same machine gun and killed a couple of monsters before the magicians created a protective field. Ronnie waited, did not shoot. .50 BMG cartridges were unlikely to be found in the nearest or at any other checkpoint. Bullets were better to save. He was cold and calculating, not a single crease on his face trembled.
The Orc mages standing behind differed in appearance from the swordsmen. The torso was open, a long black beard to the chest and loose long hair. Their hands lit up with a dark flame and then brought down a dozen spears on the opponents. But injured none of the players, yet Sitting Bull’s DP shattered into small parts. He spat, pursed his lips and pulled out a bow from behind his back and fired two arrows in response. They did not penetrate the protective field. Latludious was afraid that powerful spells would attract unnecessary attention, whether it was more orcs or cursed forest dwellers. Actions required secrecy. He transformed a blade of grass into a snake and shoved the penultimate lighter into its mouth and let it go forward.
One of the Orc magicians took out a small block flute from its pocket and played a melody. Its brethren who had fallen in battle, wounded and bloody, rose. Their pupils were rolled back, and the breath was cold. Maenad picked up her flamethrower. If I’ll have to choose between the forest and my comrades, then forgive me, trees. The others winced in surprise. The dead orcs swayed from side to side and went forward. Faolandan fired at them, but now the bullets did no damage. They cut into the dead flesh and stayed there. Latludious grinned and his eyes lit up, he shouted:
“Die!”
There was an explosion under the feet of the magicians, but no one heard or saw the noises and smoke. The protective dome swallowed everything, which disappeared a second later. Zombie orcs fell to the ground. Ronnie switched the safety on the rifle and hung it on his back. They came closer and searched the enemy’s bodies. However, they found no items. They set up DNA-reading scanners and headed for the magic totem.
There, in a small clearing, the filth penetrated into the soil, into every fallen leaf, branch, grass. Penetrated everything it could get to. It was breathing about the same as in some forgotten mining town, where the air quality index exceeded 500 points. Gases and stench saturated the air. On the orcs’ corpses, Calsiltrins—forest creatures with the body of a cat, bat wings, black fur, and bright gold eyes and claws - came running. They tore pieces of meat from their prey, spewed flames from their mouths, roasting the flesh, and ate it.
Sitting Bull came last. The same as before, only the skin had become grayer, and the veins were purple.
“Fuck!” Maenad shouted. “The vile Ent was just using us to protect the forest totem.”
She pulled out the flamethrower and continued:
“I’m going to burn it to the ground. There will be a lesson for it.”
“Don’t,” Latludious said. “It’ll only add to our enemies.”
“Fucking Ents... only care about themselves! What’s the purpose of this living pillar? We saved it. Why hasn’t anything changed around us? Why isn’t it turning green?”
Everyone fell silent. From the direction of the battlefield came Barahu’s barking, who was fighting with the Calsiltrin for the Orcs.
“Tina, come here! The last thing we need is you catching something from those things.”
The wolfhound ran to Faolandan with a severed hand in its teeth, and then in two counts, chewed it and swallowed it.
“What are we going to do next?”
“Trying to save Sitting Bull before he goes belly up,” Maenad replied.
Ronnie and Faolandan sat down on the grass and looked at the pulsating heart in the center of the totem. Latludious opened the map and plunged into thought. Sitting Bull leaned against the trunk of a tree and closed his eyes.
“Hey! Nobody got the joke again?”
“Got it, we just don’t want to laugh,” Latludious replied.
“Sometimes jokes just defuse tension. They don’t make anyone feel worse.”
“Only the ears wither,” said the magician.
“If you’re mad at yourself for not being able to find out the truth, then take it out on yourself,” Faolandan said. “Don’t be witty with others.”
Latludious rubbed his forehead and buried his index finger and thumb in his temples and tensed until Maenad’s question brought him out of an angry trance.
“Why killing the orcs changed nothing?”
The “Bishop” thought about it, but this time only for ten seconds and said:
“I think because orcs are the henchmen. Their death helps the forest, but not us. We need to find the boss.”
Maenad and Faolandan smiled.
“Finally, a worthy opponent. I’ll give him hell.”
“Just don’t burn the forest,” Faolandan replied and grinned.
Latludious approached Ronnie and took him away from the others and asked in a low voice:
“Could the one you saw on the top of the mountain be the boss?”
‘I don’t know."
“If that’s the case, then we need to go back.”
“You’re the one that decides here.”
“And you apparently make them when it’s profitable for you.”
Ronnie rubbed his eyes, and then ran his palm over his nose and chin and grabbed his forehead and shook his head and said:
“I don’t think orcs are boss’s henchmen.”
“This thought also crept into my head.”
“Do you want my advice? If the orcs are an independent unit, then the chance that we’ll find the boss that left the trap in this vast forest is less than finding a needle in a haystack. Besides, there is no certainty that his death will save your comrade.” Ronnie paused a little and looked at the Top Secret guild team and then looked into the magician’s eyes and continued in a whisper. “Kill Sitting Bull and replace him at the checkpoint with someone else. While we are looking for the salvation of one, we can lose everyone.”
Latludious averted his eyes, turned to the rest of the group and said at the top of his voice:
“Come on. There will be no halts today. The hike to the checkpoint is postponed indefinitely.”