“He had a lot of help. Friends he leaned on, followed around, depended on for direction. The captain made sure they came up together, ended up in the same units. But despite his disability, Bags wasn't stupid. Somehow, he figured out that the knowledge was there, in his head, floating around like a dinghy on troubled waters, masses of them just jostling about in that broken gourd of his.
“He needed an anchor, something real and tangible to connect this world to that one. Any time he had an experience he wanted to remember, he took something from the environment, familiarized himself with it, and added it to one of his bags. Dozens of bags, each one connected to a specific moment in time through an object with a unique scent, texture, or design. I catch him sometimes at night, a bit of something pressed to his chest, a small smile on his lips as he relived some distant memory.”
“Oh gods,” Biggan whispered, realization washing over him. “He took something, didn't he? From the altar. He took something, something he shouldn't.”
Watts cleared his throat, but failed to steady the emotion in his voice, though Nevin wasn't sure if it was excitement or apprehension he was hearing. “Later that night, after the squad settled back into base camp, Bags shuffled out of the trees, right out of the darkness, cradling his right arm against his stomach, this dazed, faraway look in his eyes. We hadn't even realized he was gone, not until he reappeared, that is.
“He only paused for a moment before crouching down before the fire and dumping a handful random items in the dirt. He started picking through them, one by one, muttering to himself, getting increasingly loud and agitated. Each of us, one at a time, slowly gathered behind him, the whole troop, watching over his shoulder as he threw bits of forest trash into the fire.
“And that's all they were! He'd dropped a handful of pine cones and acorns and sticks and rocks in front of himself, and he kept checking each one individually, sniffing it, rubbing it on his face, even tasting some of them. He quickly broke into tears and started throwing them into the fire more and more rapidly. Finally, the field commander shoved past us, jerking Bags to his feet and demanding to know what his problem was.”
Nevin had to lean forward to hear the end of Watts' story, he'd grown so quiet. “Our commander let him go almost immediately, stumbling back from Bags like the guy was made of spiders. I won't repeat the string of profanities that escaped his mouth as he tried to get a handle on what he was seeing...what we all were seeing.”
Biggan's words were all breath and wonder. “What...what did you see?”
“Bags was drenched in blood, from his stomach to his knees. How we hadn't see it when he walked out of the woods, I'll never know. He lifted his right arm, his hand, and just stared at it, only...there was no hand. Just a bloody stump, still wet and oozing. I don't know how he had the strength to stand, let alone speak, but he kept saying the same thing over and over and over, growing louder every time he said it until he was screaming at us, screaming so forcefully that strings of spittle dangled from his trembling lips.”
“And? What did he say, Watts?”
Nevin nodded unconsciously, enraptured in the story just the same.
Watts took a deep breath. “He said, 'If I burn them, will I forget? How many do I have to burn before I forget its face?'”
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
Nevin swallowed the lump in his throat and suppressed a shiver. Just a tall tale, Nevin. Still, while he'd never himself come upon the altar Watts had described, the man had hit upon Elbin's connection to the fallen god Ivvilger in a way that lent some weight to the tale, enough so that Nevin was likely to keep one eye over his shoulder in future trips through the Traagen.
In the silence that followed, he knew that even the smallest of movements would call attention to him. He wished he'd retracted his legs as soon as he realized he was hanging from a tree, before the two men had gotten close enough to sense his movement. Having both feet beneath him meant he could finally take the weight off of his aching, exhausted shoulder. If he was lucky, he'd only have to hold out for another minute or so, wait for Watts and Biggan to travel beyond eyesight of the fallen silver maple, and extract himself from the tangle of limbs and continue on to-
“Oh, that's some of that good hogshit, Watts.” Biggan barked a laugh. “You can't actually expect me to believe that. Just because some half-wit gets his hand chewed off in the woods after stealing some worthless bauble from a goat-shaped hunk of rock...”
“I'm serious, Biggan!”
Biggan ignored him, and Nevin cringed as the branches ahead of him began to shift. “Don't get me wrong. It's a good story, and you really had me going there for a minute, but you should save your campfire tales for some wet-eared cobble-dogs. Kid's'll eat that 'old god' and 'forest spirit' crap right up.
“But as for me? I'm getting' that canteen...hand-eating monsters be damned.”
Nevin realized he had about five seconds before the man parted the tree branches and revealed his hiding spot. In truth, he couldn't be sure what result such an encounter might engender, but he had reason to fear. With his memory as it was, and his current inability to make eyes on the position of the sun, he had no way of knowing just how long he'd been unconscious. News traveled fast in a small town, and years of lubricating the locals with barrels of apple wine had earned Dalen both support and latitude in the community. It was entirely possible that he hated Nevin enough to rally the town against him. What that meant, what intentions the search parties would have for him, he couldn't know, but he was certain he didn't want to find out.
But these weren't locals. These were soldiers, and in some ways, being discovered by them frightened him more. They were an unknown quantity, strangers to the area with an agenda all their own.
As Nevin counted the seconds and jerked his head around the confines of his leafy prison, he realized there was nowhere to go, nothing he could do to escape discovery.
“Eh?” The leaves parted, and a man's face – all nose and slack jaw – peered down at him in blatant surprise. Nevin's breath caught in his throat.
Watts sounded supremely annoyed at this point. “What is it now?”
The branches rustled faintly overhead, and a single leaf drifted down between Nevin and the intruding soldier.
Biggan stumbled on his words. “There's...well...a kid attached to this metal flask!”
“Now you're pulling my le-”
A low, rumbling growl cut him short, deep and menacing and from somewhere above Nevin's head. Biggan's eyes jerked up, widening instantly as fear replaced confusion.
Twigs and leaves rained down on his head, and the entirety of the fallen silver maple jerked as a streak of golden fur launched itself from somewhere above, colliding with the soldier's face with such speed and force that it disappeared just as suddenly as it appeared. Both Watts and Biggan screamed, first in surprise and then pain, and Nevin could only imagine the scene unfolding just a few feet in front of him by the furious cacophony that followed.
The rapid change in circumstance was all he needed to urge him into action.