CHAPTER 32

After Cici came back to reality, the two made their way upstream at a much faster rate. According to the big guy, the hartshorn would keep them protected for about twenty-four hours or however long it took Metem to spin around one time. Cici hadn’t whistled any tunes, but the mood was light as they journeyed up the Tessel. It was about an hour after they had stopped to eat lunch that they spotted some irregularities along the shores of the river.

The two cautiously made their way towards it until they were close enough to see the blemishes. Three skulls, in varying states of decay, rested on the ground. Bones were scattered all over, many gnawed while others were half-buried in the soil.

“Where’s the loot?” Kopius asked as they approached the skulls. Though he would have liked to have found new (used) equipment, the absence of anything just seemed odd to him.

“Is that all you think about?” Cici replied. He knelt down to handle one of the skulls.

“Look, there’s… nothing.” Kopius swept his arms about. “No shreds of old clothing or a mangled boot or even, I don’t know, broken armor.”

“You come across skeletal remains often?”

“In video games I did. They would have come to life by now and attacked us, though… so there’s that.”

“Hmm, well, I have seen enough walking bones to know you got that much right.”

“Am I wrong, though? It’s odd, right?”

“No, you are correct. There should be some remnants.”

“Maybe they were part of a party?”

“And what, the party stripped them?”

“Maybe. If they were dead. Hopefully they were dead.”

“Possibly. Possibly. They could have been bait for all we know. I will have to reason with this for a while.”

“Okay. Do your thing.” Kopius replied.

After a moment and because there were too many parallels between the world of Metem and every fantasy RPG Cory had ever played, he added, ”Just so you know, video game logic says we should find more of these soon. Maybe even a campsite.”

Cici glanced up at the sun.

“That would be fortuitous. Let's hope that the camp is defensible. We no longer have the luxury of an elevated position.”

“What’s so dangerous about being on the ground?” Kopius asked before thinking back to the times he had camped as a child with only the sheer fabric of a department store tent separating him and his family from rummaging bears. For fuck’s sake we weren’t even safe in the car.

“It’s a gamble. Skinwalkers are more active. Moonshots are stronger. Any fire we light becomes a beacon. If we nix the flame, we have to brave the chill of night. Good luck fighting in the dark if we are noticed.”

“I can see in the dark. Hell, I can even turn it off and on now,” Kopius stated with a bit of pride. He hadn’t much else to do every night while he lay there awaiting sleep. At some point he started to guess at commands and gestures and twitches until he toggled the skill on and off.

“You have mentioned that,” Cici replied with his thinking, scratching of his beard pose. “Let’s go find this camp of yours. We can figure this out later.”

Every now and then the Tessel would run directly up to a pillar, leaving no ground to walk on. The two would be left with the option of going around the hoodoo through the grass or going around the hoodoo through the river. Given the state of the Tessel and its inherent health concerns, the grass route was the only choice.

With Kopius bearing slightly sharper swords, he took the lead, making short work of any grass or foliage in their path. Cici, with his hammer at the ready, kept close to Kopius in case something sprang through the brush.

The two kept close to the base of the pillar as they circled it. Having one less side to defend was an advantage that they gladly accepted. Kopius, using his short sword like a machete, cut and sliced a way through. He switched between both hands so that the unused one could take a breather. Though his new and improved body was stronger and faster, his stamina rivaled that of a koala. At some point a blank window popped in his view. He closed it with a mental piss off, shaking his head all the while.

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Roughly halfway around the tall pillar, Kopius cleaved through another section of grass and then paused.

“See something?” Cici asked quietly.

“There’s a clearing,” Kopius answered, even quieter.

“Danger?”

“Let’s find out.”

Kopius stepped past the tall wall of shrubbery and into a small glen no bigger than Cici’s garden. He kept close to the hoodoo and had both swords ready to swing. Cici followed, his giant hammer looming in the air like the thumb of a god ready to start smiting fools.

The area looked like it had been tilled at some point in time. There were noticeable, parallel grooves dug into the ground, though time had tamped them down and smoothed them out. The small open area continued around the curve of the pillar, and the two companions made their way at a crawls pace.

“Well, there you go,” Cici said with a bit of awe in his voice. ”Now, where’s the camp?”

Kopius couldn’t help but smile when he saw all the skeletons–some clothed, some armored–strewn against the base of the hoodoo. His smile faded when he started to focus on the state of things. We have our torn clothing, Kopius noted, plenty of broken armor, and… where is it? Kopius stepped closer and found what he was looking for: a gnawed boot. Though, this boot looked melted more than gnawed.

Some of the remains looked like they had been half-dipped in acid. Armor and bone alike appeared in various stages of being melted or dissolved. Swords were reduced to half-blades, their tops like a candle too long burned.

I need to get more specific when I am predicting loot, Kopius thought to himself as he scanned the scene. He counted five skulls, yet only two had the tell-tale signs of being human. One had a single eye socket, and it was the largest of the five. Another had either feline or canine features, reminiscent of the Khajiit from Skyrim. The third skull was small enough to be a child’s, and it wasn’t until Cici had assured him it was instead a halfling that Kopius had released a held breath.

“What do you make of all this?” Kopius asked as he used his sword to move bones around.

“Moonshots,” Cici whispered.

“I have been meaning to ask about those,” Kopius whispered back, unsure if the quiet was necessary or not.

“See these here,” Cici pointed at two sets of bones that looked like open bear traps on the ground. They reminded Kopius of the old chatter-teeth toys with the caveat that these had more of a shark jaws and teeth type vibe. “Both of those come from moonshots. Looks like they took a couple with them. Poor bastards.”

As Kopius listened he meandered around the group of bones looking for anything he could salvage. A few rusted knives, a belt buckle, and a couple of rings were the only notable items.

“Ow!” Kopius yelped as he felt his shin get poked. “What the hell?”

He kicked at the offending stick that was protruding from the ground, snapping it out of place. He then picked it up and broke it into several more pieces before throwing them into the brush.

“Asshole,” Kopius said under his breath. He rubbed at the wounded area and then sat on the ground to get a better view of it.

“You alright, lad?”

“It’s barely a scratch.” Kopius pouted, still mad at the stick for assaulting him. As he started to get up, he noticed several more sticks, the same as the one he had punted, also sticking out of the ground. Boobytraps?

“Watch your step, man. There’s a bunch more.” Kopius said moving his line of sight to be parallel with the ground.

Cici stopped strolling and knelt down for a better look too. After a moment of investigation, the big man pulled a stick from the ground. At its end looked to be a standard archer's arrowhead. It was made of metal, and its triangular shape was all the evidence they needed.

“Not traps—arrows,” Cici mumbled to himself. He looked around, but for what, Kopius had no idea.

“Do moonshots use arrows?”

“No, they throw balls of acid. See here, and here?” He pointed to several blemishes behind the skeletons that cratered the surface of the hoodoo. Kopius imagined that he could climb the pillar with enough of those holes that the acid made.

“That’s good to know. But, ah, aren’t all these arrows facing the wrong way?”

“Eh?”

“Look. If these five are making their last stand against the pillar...” Kopius ended by making bow and arrow shooting motions away from the hoodoo.

“You’re right. That is off, isn’t it?”

The two stood in quiet contemplation, observing the mess in front of them and trying to piece it all together. With the sun moving into dusk, their time was limited. They searched the barren patch of land, along the rest of the hoodoo, and all the way to the river. No instance of any other skeletal remains could be found. They returned to the original scene to look for loot one more time when something occurred to Kopius.

He checked the ground to verify that all the arrows stuck in the ground faced the same way. When that was confirmed, he checked the angles at which they entered the ground. The lines varied, but they were similar enough to keep Kopius going.

From where he stood and as best as he could, Kopius drew an imaginary line from the back of an arrow to where it might have been shot from. At first, he reasoned that the arrows would have been shot in a volley from a distance, but that didn't add up in his mind. He considered that the five warriors had stuck them in the ground in some kind of attempt at caltrops, but Cici said they floated. Kopius was in the process of trying to remember fifth grade math when Cici spoke up.

“There,” Cici said with a chuckle, pointing a short distance up the neighboring hoodoo.

“What?”

“Your campsite, you lucky bastard!”