After dinner, the party settled into quiet pass times before bed. Titus was polishing his chest plate, Autumn was doing an inventory of herbs she had gathered on the journey to the lodge, and Iris was reading a book. Eli was watching curiously as Victoria held up the bottle of soil and inspected it closely with her auravision.

"What are you hoping to find?" he asked.

"I think I've already found it," she answered, not taking her grey mucus covered eyes off the bottle, "I'm hoping to prove myself wrong."

"What did you find then, exactly?"

Victoria's eyes returned to normal as she lowered the bottle, "do you know why dead bodies rot?"

Eli blinked in surprise at the question, "without a soul there's nothing to hold them together, so they begin to break down, right?"

Victoria shook her head, "that's what scholars believed for a long time, but we know better now. The real culprits are thousands, maybe millions, of tiny little life forms too small for the eyes to see. They move into the body and start breaking it down from the inside out, they leave behind waste that yet more life forms move in to eat, and even more life forms move in to hunt and eat the ones already living there. A whole ecosystem sprouts up, an explosion a life with the ultimate goal of consuming everything but bone. When a body rots, it's actually being eaten."

"That's disgusting," Eli remarked, "but what's it have to do with the dirt?"

"This soil is exploding with life forms. The same life forms that devour corpses."

Eli contemplated for a moment while he stared at the bottle in her hands, "what does that mean?"

"I don't know," she sighed, placing the bottle gently on the table beside her bed, "nothing good, I imagine."

Iris closed her book. It was one she had already read several times before and she found herself growing bored, but she wasn't ready to sleep yet. She considered playing with Littletooth until she felt tired, but he was already curled up at the foot of the bed, snuggling his now raggedy elk plushy and snoozing comfortably. Glancing around the room for something to do, she decided to start checking drawers for clues they might have missed. The first few had nothing of interest, but the fourth one she blipped to contained a small pocket journal, which she curiously cracked open.

It seemed to be a pretty regular journal, the handwriting and spelling weren't the best but it was at least legible. Some of the early pages described the daily tasks of working at the lodge, some of the later pages were dedicated to venting the writer's feelings about some of the other loggers in the camp, and a few pages detailed his longing to return to his family at the end of his six month stint at the camp. Some of the last entries mentioned other loggers going missing, and the foreman not taking the loggers' concerns seriously. The last entry stood out amongst the rest, having been hastily scrawled in large, messy letters. It read "THE SOIL ISN'T SAFE!"

Iris tensed, and immediately blipped to Victoria, "I found a logger's journal, this is the last entry."

Victoria took the journal and frowned at the page, then looked warily to the bottle on her bedside table. Eli took the journal from her and read the page for himself.

"That confirms it then," he announced, "whatever happened here, the dirt has something to do with it. Did you find anything else useful in this journal?"

"Just that," Iris shook her head, "there's some entries near the end that mention loggers going missing over the past few weeks, but no clues about what happened to them."

"Keep this in your bag," he picked up the bottle of soil and handed it to her, "if it's dangerous, it shouldn't be able to hurt anyone in there."

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Iris nodded, taking the bottle and blipping back to her bed to drop it into the bottomless bag beside Littletooth. The party soon settled down to sleep, with Victoria staying awake for first watch.

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After Victoria, it was Autumn's turn to watch. She had awakened with an annoyed groan, but didn't complain about taking over. Victoria was now sleeping in her bed, having drifted off quickly using a meditative technique, while Autumn sat bored on her own bed snacking on rabbit jerky. It was dark in the barracks, the only sources of light were faint glows of purple and orange moonlight through the numerous windows. A loud chorus of crickets, frogs, and other noisy night time critters rang constantly outside, sounding like the downpour of a discordant musical rainstorm.

After a while, Autumn needed a trip to the outhouse. She climbed out of bed as quietly as she could manage and gently crossed the creaky wooden floor to the backdoor of the barracks, which she opened slowly and quietly just enough to slip through to the outside. The songs of late night nature were louder and sharper without the walls of the barrack to stave them off, and she wondered how anyone could handle sleeping in these woods every night for months. The soft soil compressed under her feet, rebounding slightly as each footstep lifted up.

When she exited the outhouse sometime later, she at first took a few steps towards the barracks before freezing firmly in place. Her eyes were locked on the silhouette of a figure standing beyond the barracks, in the middle of camp near the abandoned cart. It was taking lumbering steps towards the barracks, dragging one foot along as it walked. Only the glow of moonlight on the ground behind it exposed its silhouette, leaving its features shrouded in darkness.

Autumn took a few slow, quiet steps towards the back door of the barracks, then bolted inside and quickly shut the door behind her. She grabbed the underside edge of Titus's bed and sharply pulled it in front of the door, toppling Titus onto the floor with a loud thump.

"What the hell?" he shouted as he fought to free himself from the entangling blanket.

Eli shot up in his bed and grabbed his staff where it leaned against his nightstand. He held it ready against his shoulder even as he used one hand to move aside his blanket so he could stand. Iris sat up groggily, rubbing sleep from her eyes as she tried to make sense of what was happening in the dark. From her bed near the front of the barracks, the range of her detection ability was too short to sense what was happening in the back of the barracks, but she could sense Victoria standing in front of the window beside the front door. The faint moonlight coming through the window revealed the ridges of bulging veins around her empty grey eyes.

"There's someone outside," Victoria said, having sensed the aura in her sleep and rushed to the window to inspect it.

Eli darted to the window and posted himself against the wall beside it, holding his staff low as he leaned and twisted to peer through the glass, "what can you tell me?"

Victoria was silent for a moment, then spoke with not-quite contained unease in her voice, "it has the aura of a corpse."

Eli watched Victoria hoping for a hint at what they should do, but she only stared at the figure outside as it slowly dragged itself closer. At the back of the barracks, Autumn was helping Titus don his armor as quickly as the two could manage, meanwhile Iris had stepped up behind Victoria and Eli to peer between them at the mysterious figure.

"It knows we're here," Eli said, "we need a plan."

"Actually, I don't think it does," Victoria said, "look at the trail of its dragging foot, its angled away from us. It’s moving closer, but not straight for us."

"Any suggestions, then?" he asked.

Victoria shook her head, "there's more to it than just the aura on the surface," she observed, the veins shifting slightly beneath her skin as she squinted her eyes, "underneath it, there's a regular aura. A person, human probably, no powers. He might still be alive."

"That could be one of our loggers," Eli added, "we should take him alive."

"Let me go out there," Iris said, earning immediate looks from both Victoria and Eli, "I can blip out away from the barracks so he doesn't know where I came from, I can get a better look, maybe try to talk to him. If anything happens I can blip right back."

Eli thought for a moment, and she expected him to veto the idea, but then he nodded, "alright, but not yet. I want everyone ready to back you up."

Titus approached behind them, fastening the final straps on his chest plate, "I'm ready."

"Iris," Autumn said, hurrying behind Titus to keep up with his long strides, "drop me some rocks before you go."

Iris nodded and blipped over to one of the unused beds, blipping her bottomless bag from her bed where Littletooth was using it as a pillow. He let out a croaking whine as his head suddenly dropped to the bed, waking him from his slumber. She turned the bag upside down over the bed, and three large chunks of stone fell out of the bag onto the lumpy mattress. Then, she blipped over to her own bed, and gentled urged Littletooth into the open mouth of the bag. He protested with a quiet screech, but in his grogginess he failed to escape before Iris pushed him into the void. She grabbed her wizard hat from the nightstand and donned it despite still wearing her pajamas, and blipped back in front of the window.

"Ready?" she asked.

Eli nodded, and she blipped out into the moonlight.