Ripples

As I awoke, my senses were assaulted by a flurry of emotions, but guilt was the one shoving its way to the front.

Guilt over taking a life.

Guilt over worrying my party.

Guilt over the thought of my fiancée finding out she’s pregnant all alone.

Guilt washed over me like a crippling wave, and for a moment, I wanted to curl into myself. But something cut through and shook me back to some semblance of lucidity. I didn’t have the luxury of wallowing in my misery. What had been done was done. I couldn’t pretend I hadn’t killed a man, but I could do my best to ensure he didn’t die in vain.

To get revenge on the prince, and more importantly, to get home to my beloved and see our child born, I had to keep moving forward. No more regrets.

First things first; I needed to apologize to my party.

I collected my scattered thoughts as best I could and climbed out of my tent, squinting into the bright sunlight shining across the campsite. I noticed some of the tents had already been disassembled.

“Well it looks like someone slept well,” Pira quipped as she saw me emerge. She took a step toward my tent, but I held up a hand.

“I’m so sorry for the -” I started speaking in a rush. But before I could finish, I felt a hand on my shoulder. I jumped, startled, but then I felt a familiar warm feeling coming from the touch.

“It’s quite alright, son,” Estelar spoke softly. “We all understand that this is hard on you especially. The proxies who’ve gone through this all throughout history had issues much like yours this morning. Interdimensional travel is a terrifying magic, and being in a strange place with so much at stake...” he trailed off, then murmured, “It’s a lot to take.”

I felt my shoulders relax a bit. Although he’d missed the mark on what was really bothering me, not knowing what I had been up to while they slept, it was still comforting.

A slap on my back jolted me out of the warm and cozy feeling I had been enjoying.

“Great. Now that you’re up, we need to get moving if we want to get to our next planned campsite by nightfall,” Andra commanded. “We absolutely have to be settled by moonrise tonight.” Her words were as blunt as always but something about her tone seemed… kinder.

I didn’t ask what the rush was all about; I didn’t much care. But with Andra’s ticking clock, we hurried to finish packing up. I shoved my stuff into bags and my feet into boots, letting the urgency and tasks at hand subdue my negative thoughts. But anytime I stopped to rest and allowed my eyes to close, I could see the image of my first victim on the inside of my eyelids.

I’m not sure how I managed to keep my breathing regular. A few times, I half expected another episode to strike me as it had before. But I used all the focus I had to think about my party, about Estelar’s support in particular, and avoid giving them a reason to be concerned about me. That way lay questions I couldn’t answer.

With our gear finally packed and our party ready to go, we began the trek across the landscape. It was a genuinely pretty day, with the sun dappling the ground through the trees until we emerged into a more open space. As we walked, I felt myself slipping in and out of a haze. The consistent, slightly boring scenery and flat terrain were almost hypnotic as I put one foot in front of the other over and over again; there wasn’t enough here to keep me focused on my surroundings, and my mind wandered. I didn’t realize that I had fallen a bit behind the others.

I don’t know when I veered a bit sideways, but suddenly I found myself a few paces off the path, staring down at a body.

I started. A dead, mostly decomposed corpse lay at my feet, only partially covered by dirt.

My breath caught in my throat. I stumbled back, tripping and going down hard. My vision was swimming - who was this? Was it a grave? Had I desecrated something? 

As soon as I hit the ground, I felt a pull on my collar and I was unceremoniously yanked away from the unearthed corpse.

“What the hell are you doing?” Andra barked. “Are you trying to get yourself killed?!”

“A-a body…,” I trailed off, waving at the remains. In the back of my mind, alarms sounded; I knew I had made a grave mistake by losing focus. What had I done? Mutely, I gestured at the corpse.

“It’s not real,” Andra sighed, glancing around.

“It’s not…?” I began, blinking. What did that mean? It was a dead body, that much was painfully obvious. And I had nearly fallen on it.

Andra held up a hand to silence me as she looked at the ground. Finally she spotted a fist-sized rock. Without hesitation, she hefted the rock, stepped up and spiked it into the chest of the decaying figure.

I gaped, unconsciously jerking back. But before I could cry out, the body caved in, releasing a grotesque puff of gritty fumes. What had been bone and tissue dissipated, revealing what looked like a twisted, thorny plant wrapping itself around a hole in the ground. I couldn’t tell how big the hole was, but the plant seemed to sprawl a fair distance.

Andra stepped back, looking satisfied. I stared at her, then back at the hole. She saw my confusion and shrugged, dusting her hands.

“It’s a pitfall trap,” she explained. “The thorns are like tubes that suck the blood of whatever it pricks. Using that info, it copies the scent and shape of what it pricks to bait in others of its kind. If they approach carelessly, pitfall. Trapped and digested.” She glanced down at the thorns and cocked her head. “This is a big one though, probably a couple hundred feet in diameter.”

“What?” I asked, incredulous. It was a big hole and a big plant, but a couple hundred feet?

Andra scowled at me as she gave me a nudge to walk ahead of her, back on the well-traveled path. “You were woolgathering.” She sounded slightly accusatory. “If you’d’ve been in your right mind, you woulda noticed the obvious differences between that thing and a real body. The proportions were all wrong. Didn’t even have the same number of ribs on each side. But then, if you’d gotten any closer to check, you’d be a goner for sure.”

I glanced back at the hole and plant with a slight shudder. The smaller thorned tendrils waved slightly in the breeze, and I felt like the trap was saying goodbye to me, a near-victim who’d managed to avoid consumption.

“People like us are too smart to fall for such tricks.” She looked askance at me. “Well, usually we are.”

The insult stung, but I knew I deserved it. I needed to get my head back in the game if I wanted to survive. I nodded slightly and stared at the path.

Andra sighed again.

“Look,” she started softly, as if she wanted her words to remain between us. “I grew up in the wilds, knowing nothing but green. For one reason or another I was sent to the capital for the whole ‘Hero Auction’ event and… it wasn’t pretty at first. I just - ugh.”

She hesitated, struggling to come up with words.

“I know what it’s like to be in your, y’know… I can help if you need, so feel free to talk about it if ya want, I guess.”

I glanced up at her, surprised, but she didn’t speak again. I opened my mouth to respond, but she had already moved ahead of me on the path. Even from behind, I could see her face was a shade redder. I felt the ghost of a smile playing on my lips before I ran a hand down my face roughly, took a deep breath, and settled myself into focusing on the journey again.