Tom sat bolt upright as a woman burst through the flimsy curtain separating them from the cold of night. She carried a child in her arms, unnaturally pale and listless. The child was male, about eight years old, and there was a horrific gash on his head. The scalp was peeling open to reveal the faintest hint of bone buried under the gruesome red flesh.

“What happened!?” Nema asked, leaping out of bed to attend to the child in less than a second while Tom was still clambering to his feet, sheepishly holding the covers around his groin.

A lifetime of modern American modesty was hard to ignore.

“He and his brothers were playing soldier when Brith’s well ran dry! The woman said, searching Nema’s eyes for reassurance.

“What kind of weapons were they using?” Nema asked.

“Jes’shut claws.” She said.

“Bones,” Nema muttered to herself, heading to the corner of the hut and opening the large ceramic jug in the corner. Tom had opened it once to catch a whiff of something alchoholic and pungeantly foul. Now he realized it was a primitive disinfectant.

“Jes’shut claws are filthy!” Nema said, “There’s a good chance this will get infected. Hold him still.” She said as she grabbed a rag from the shelf and dipped it into the jug before thoroughly scrubbing the child’s head.

As soon as she started scrubbing, the boy began to thrash and wail at full volume, a sound not unlike Ellie’s cries. Nope, nope, gotta fix, gotta fix. The screams jump-started his body into action. Tom dropped the blanket and headed for his shirt on the nearby chair.

“Kloe, I want you to be prepared for the chance that Brith doesn’t survive this.”

“No, he’ll be fine once he has his well back! A full-blooded Vith warrior can’t be killed by an infection!” The mother said, her voice trembling.

“Kloe, Brith is eight, his control over his well is poor, it is shallow, and he is not a Vith warrior.”

Before Kloe’s face could crumple up into crying, Tom snatched the healing Crypt out of his shirt, covered the distance back to the two women in two strides and placed the crypt against the boy’s chest.

“What are you –“

Thump. Tom built up soul pulses around his heart and channeled it down into the crypt. The healing crypt sizzled with invisible energy for a faint moment before it discharged into the child.

The screaming stopped, allowing Tom’s hackles to relax and comprehend what he’d just done.

Ah, shit, I just gave away the crypts. And word would reach Vol in a matter of hours. Shoot. Tom had been unable to sit there and listen to women discus child mortality rates over a child’s wails. Not after the last year of taking care of his own.

Kloe gasped as Nema withdrew the bloody rag, revealing a thin white scar on the boy’s scalp.

Tom wrapped the blanket around his waist again as Kloe offered Tom the most heartfelt thanks he had ever personally been the recipient of, carrying her confused child in a death-grip all the while.

“A thousand blessings to you, Tom, May your bones rest in the Lover’s embrace!” She said, clutching his hand for a moment before she turned and carried her child out of their hut. All the while, the boy was trying to squirm out of his mother’s grasp, but she was having none of it.

“What was that last part?” Tom asked.

“Bones.” Nema pointed to a bone on the shelf. “Rest,” She pantomimed sleeping. “Dinamore.”

“The dinamore stretch is called the Lover’s Embrace? Did she just wish I get buried on a land bridge?”

“Very important place. Cradle of Vith.”

“Third to last word?”

“Bed for small children,” She said, motioning with her hands how small.

“Cradle? For babies?”

“Cradle, babies?” She repeated. What followed was a short language lesson filled with pantimime. As Tom learned more Vith, Nema learned more English, as a natural result of trying to teach him the language.

“About that…yellow hand size thing,” She said, pointing to the crypt.

“This? The crypt?” Tom had been keeping them a secret mainly out of operational security. He didn’t know how the Vith would react to magic, but they were fine with his ratchet wand, so hopefully the Crypts would fly under the radar.

“Alia with Crypt kill father,” She said, tapping her chest. Then she motioned to the rest of the village, a wide, expansive gesture.

“Kill many father.”

Tom’s heart sank as he put those statements together.

“Fuuuu-

***Next day***

“I couldn’t eat another bite, I’m sorry,” Tom said, waving off another batch of flatbread as politely as he could. Tom sat in the center of the gazebo, navigating being popular for the first time in his life as best his limited social experience allowed.

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Surrounding him was a veritable mob of women ranging from young to old, with various hand-made deserts and snacks, along with the occasional bone jewelry and leather handiwork.

Neither of them had expected this kind of response, so Nema hadn’t briefed him on the unwritten rules of accepting gifts from women in Vith society. So he used his best guess.

From what he knew, in Vith culture, taking care of a man was…to a certain extent, transactional. This wasn’t to say love didn’t exist. There were tons of Vith who were obviously in love, and had been for decades. This was just how they ordered their society.

A woman gave a man food, clothing and attention, and he gave her the raw ingredients she needed to create material wealth and more food.

AKA: dead animals.

Now, Tom couldn’t produce dead animals, so he had to assume his value was coming from something else. In this case, most likely his ability to heal wounds, since this was the only change in the grapevine since the night before.

Now, he had to categorize why each of the women was giving him food based on what he knew about them personally.

Older women between thirty and sixty, Tom readily accepted gifts from. He figured those women were for the most part already married and were giving simple gifts as something of an advanced payment on healing their loved ones.

Simple. Transactional. Uncomplicated.

It was the younger girls that Tom got into some murky territory. Some of them did have husbands, while some did not, and Tom had a hard time knowing who was who, and even then, they were young enough that they could potentially jump ship over to Tom, so unless he was absolutely sure it was a simple goodwill gift and not an invitation, he refused.

Some of the girls were uncomfortably young and some were frankly so young he was pretty sure they were just going through the motions, mimicking their elders.

A small child, maybe six or eight, offered him a crappily made ceramic bowl with upturned eyes, and Tom glanced at the childs’ mother pointedly before accepting it and promising to look after her family, which made her beam and run back to her mom with a flailing gait.

What looked like a twelve year old girl offered him a leather cloak and a shy smile, and Tom refused as politely as he possibly could.

No thank you. Not touching that with a ten-foot pole. Maybe it was just a regular gift, but Tom took no chances.

Tom really hoped he didn’t get a reputation for being a MILF lover or a pedophile. He was simply trying to tease apart marriage proposals from goodwill gifts.

Nema wasn’t much help. After she sat there glaring at everyone for the first half hour of the work day, some of the older ladies had whisked her away on some matter of importance that Tom was fairly sure was made up to simply remove the sourpuss from the equation.

The desperation with which Nema wanted to stay was almost comical, and Tom imagined her fingernails digging grooves in the baked earth as they dragged her away.

While being mobbed, every once in a while, he would glance up and notice the one-armed elder staring at him. According to Nema, the old man had predicted his Crypts before he’d even seen them, and with this new confirmation, he was sure to try something.

Exactly what, Tom had no idea, but it probably wasn’t going to be good.

Vol disappeared sometime through the day, and Mr. Fluffy bottom reported that he’d departed to the south, while Nema was having a girl’s talk with the older ladies who were dropping truth bombs on the young woman, cleverly disguised as a stitchwork consultation.

Vol wouldn’t harass her, then.

Mr. Fluffybottom was being used as a beast of burden. While all Vith could carry an inordinate amount of cargo, that didn’t mean they could do it forever. The villagers used Mr. Fluffy bottom as an extra pair of hands, a water-hauler, a shovel, free labor, anything they could think of to make their lives easier.

The mummy-looking creature found his place pretty quickly doing mindless tasks, and he added to Tom’s personal value as a member of the tribe. It seemed as though crypts being used by the enemies of the Vith wasn’t common knowledge, so Tom was spared from the mob he’d been expecting.

Why though? The elder knew what they did, but he hadn’t shared the information wide.

What was the old man’s intention for Tom?

And when am I going to get the hell out of here? Tom wondered to himself. Another month? Six months? A year? What happens if I get Nema pregnant?

He was slowly getting tied down to these people. At what point would he no longer be able to wash his hands of them and continue his quest to get his daughter back?

From the stories the Vith told, it sounded like the people south of the dinamore stretch were the same heavily armored knights that had stolen Ellie, and they stole the fertile land bridge from the Vith roughly six years ago.

If Tom was to get up and leave now, he would have to travel across the land bridge which was a high conflict area, practically trench warfare. There was a good chance he’d get killed if he tried that.

A boat maybe? Tom didn’t see himself as a heroic conquerer. He had no stake in the conflict, and it sounded much smarter to simply sail around the dinamor stretch to reach the other continent.

“For you,” An older woman said, offering him a finely crafted leather belt with a bone buckle.

“Thank you, ma’am.” He said, nodding and promising to look after her family.

“Oh, I don’t have one,” She said, giving Tom a wink.

Aw, crap.

“B-best of health to you,” Tom said, lamely.

In the distance, Elder Gunn shook his head and rubbed his temples.

***Vol***

The ghee trembled and thrashed against it’s restraints, each one tied to a large tree that could withstand the creature’s struggles.

He’d been forced to tap into his well to run a hundred miles away from prying eyes, down into the forest near the southern shores, so that this time, no one would interrupt his rituals.

Does he think I’m stupid? Tom had placed that animal near his door every night as they went to sleep. It would seem like as good a place as any to put it, but Vol was sure the creature was less placid than it led people to believe. It would probably engage anyone who tried to hurt its master.

A bodyguard.

You’re like a parasite I can’t pull free without poisoning the blood.

This foreigner thinks they’re some paragon of virtue? Vol thought, mind dyed in anger as he slashed through the ghee’s stomach with his rare iron blade, allowing its entrails to spill into the loamy earth beneath it. For a brief, sublime moment, he pictured Nema’s face, paling as it was drained of blood, before returning his attention to the matter at hand.

Vol didn’t indulge in any of his usual games, but there was still a sensual shudder as he knelt, tapping into his well and placing his hands into the steaming pile of guts.

Ever since he’d seen the women butcher animals as a boy, something had always fascinated him about entrails, and it was only in his teen years that he’d discovered what it was: Vol was blessed with an ability that placed him above other Vith. Not only could he tap in to his well to make himself stronger and faster, like all Vith, he could also do…more.

He felt the slimy guts coil around his hands of their own accord as the water from his well permeated the animal’s intestines, giving it a semblance of life.

Tell me what I should do. Vol thought, casting his impression of the splinter that was Tom graves into the entrails.

Vol closed his eyes and allowed the disorienting synesthesia to take him to another place. The warm guts pulsed and throbbed against his sensitive hands, throwing images directly into his mind.

He saw himself follow the path he’d been on, attempting to kill the foreigner quietly and removing the problem.

Vol gasped as the guts coiling around his hands grew thorns, painfully digging into his skin, in a signal that unilaterally indicated ‘bad’.

“How, then? How do I be rid of them?”

The guts lost their thorns and the bumpy, slimy texture began pumping information directly into his mind.

“Yessss.”