CHAPTER 31

“This is as far as I got,” Kopius said, pointing to a pile of rocks he had constructed the evening before. He had noticed that the farther he ranged away from the fallen hoodoo, the taller the overall vegetation had grown. What had started as shin-high greenery gradually made its way to being a bit taller than Kopius.

The trek had been easy enough. The ground between the river and the tall shrubbery, roughly twenty feet apart, looked as though someone had salted the earth; it was nothing but dirt, rock, and mud. Kopius assumed the contaminated water had something to do with it, but he wasn’t sure. Regardless of the ‘how,’ he had appreciated the even terrain.

“I can see why,” Cici answered as he got on tippy-toes to see above the wall of plants.

Kopius had the slightest inkling of validation run through his mind. The night before, he had gotten all spidey-sensey when he could no longer see off into the grassy distance. There had been an internal debate as to why he had stopped. After a few minutes of doubts and self-aggrandizing, followed by several more minutes of unnecessary insults and what-ifisms, he had headed back.

“Yeah, I really didn’t feel like getting ambushed by something.”

“Nor should you.”

“Thanks?”

“Happy to help, lad.” Cici gave a hard shoulder pat to Kopius. “Let’s keep moving.”

The two men walked in silence for the better part of an hour, pausing when they heard a rustling and sighing in relief when nothing appeared. Kopius felt they were walking uncomfortably close to the tall foliage, but Cici had insisted that the noise of the Tessel would mask anything coming out of the grass.

The uneventful journey was nerve racking. It felt like trying to sneak out of your house as a teenager, where every soft footfall sounded like thunder and every slight creak of a floor board was enough to wake the dead.

They both walked with their weapons out. Cici, looking relaxed as always, rested his hammer across his shoulders. The astralsilicate shone like snow in the sunlight with iridescent colors; dancing rainbows across the stone's surface. As nonchalant as Cici would appear, the two hands gripping the hilt of his hammer spoke a different truth. Kopius followed the big man's lead, trying his best to maintain his composure.

Thanks to a whetstone that Cici had packed, Kopius now carried two slightly sharper swords. He felt moderately safer than before, though the increased comfort did little to settle his nerves.

Their pace eventually turned into a slow, tense walk, each step feeling a bit heavier than the one before it. The rustling sounds of nature turned into the mindless droning of the Tessel. It was hypnotic in its lack of rhythm, and Kopius had to shake off several drowsy hundred-yard stares.

Cici, a few paces ahead of Kopius, had his head on a proverbial swivel. He swept the landscape on a continuous loop: back and forth, back and forth. Whenever the big man stepped into a patch of sunlight, his bald black head glistened with sweat. His water intake had increased, and he pulled from his waterskin at a considerably faster rate than at any other part of their trek. The big guy had also stopped one too many times to listen for a sound that Kopius had not heard. The two would look like a pair of guys playing red light, green light, if anyone were to have seen them.

Finally, after almost an hour of slogging and paranoia, Cici put up a hand gesture to stop. He turned around as he was groping through his crotch bag. It was this world's version of a fanny pack as best as Kopius could guess. Yet, every time Cici dove in there, it just looked—wrong.

He pulled out a few edible-looking items, picked one and popped it in his mouth. After a moment he looked like someone had thrown a bucket of ice water in his face. He shook his head in obvious disappointment, secured his hammer on his back, and then handed Kopius the same dry food he had just eaten.

A moment passed for Kopius before the sounds of Escher Pass came crashing back into his mind. An empty window popped in his field of vision and was closed. He stopped to gather himself and shake off whatever needed to be shaken out.

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“What the hell was that?” Kopius complained.

“Which? The root-ball or the psionic?”

“Psi-whaty?”

“Mind magic, you know, thoughts and dreams and fears and all that. In our case, we stepped into a Dreary trap.” Kopius looked around for a string or a lever or anything that would have activated this trap.

“We didn’t step in it, lad,” Cici said with a laugh. “We’ve been walking through it for a while now.”

Kopius stopped his investigation and considered what the big man was saying. “So, we are in the AOE?”

“AOE?” Cici replied with a stumped expression.

“Area of effect,” Kopus answered slowly. “I can use a bunch of words you don’t understand too.”

“Okay, okay,” Cici laughed.

“Is this part of the quest?” Kopius wondered aloud.

“It is part of something, that much I can assure.”

“Okay, well, what kind of travesty did we just avoid?”

“Hard to tell. Drearys are meant to slow us down if not put us to sleep altogether. The closer to its source, the more potent.”

“What kind of sources are we talking about here?”

“Most likely some kind of energy stone imbued with Psionic power. It will have a radius where we are vulnerable.”

“I get all that. Can, you know, humans have Psionic magic?”

“Of course, all people’s can! Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Astrals—all sentient beings, really.”

“Wizards, witches, warlocks? Like, do we have company? Is there somebody casting out there?”

The two men took a brief second to scan their surroundings. Now without their previous afflictions, Kopius and Cici were as keen of mind as ever.

“We would have heard something following us by now. Is your mind clear?”

“Yeah, that shit you gave me worked great.”

“Shit?!”

“Shit, as in stuff.” Kopius clarified. “That stuff you gave me; that shit you gave me. It’s all synonymous.”

“It’s all synonymous,” Cici repeated with an air of disdain.

“Your food is great, man. It’s my favorite place to eat in all of Metem,” Kopius asserted. He even cracked a smile when Cici looked his way. The big man’s facial expressions implied an internal debate was occurring until a conclusion surfaced.

“Oh alright,” Cici said with a radiant smile. “My food is good, isn’t it? Never mind that though. That… shit I gave you was hartshorn. It counters most sleep spells.”

“What were the others for, the ones you didn’t eat?”

“One is for poison and the other for, ah, irritated skin.”

“Irritated skin? Like itchiness?”

“Well, yes, I suppose that too. More for blemishes.”

“You mean rashes?”

Cici, with a modicum of shame on his face, shrugged in a way that said ‘’at some point in my life I was old enough to know better but young enough not to care.’’ Kopius returned his own hands-up gesture to say ‘’who am I to judge—let’s never share towels.’’ The unspoken words resonated with both men, and they were left with a comfortable silence.

“You know at some point I’ll want to hear the stories behind all of that.”

“Actually, it's all the same story. A night of depravity like none other, my friend.” There was an exhaustion in Cici’s voice as though he had just experienced the brief memory all over again.

“You ok?” Kopius asked, worried that the hartshorn was wearing off.

“I’m good, lad,” Cici said dreamily. “I just took a walk with a memory is all.” A grin sat plastered to Cici’s face. “That was… wild.”