Respite and Regroup

Several days pass after the group arrives at the campground. After such a tumultuous entry to Nix, the uneventful calm of these days recuperating at Verdan’s camp, (after easing the spirits of a scorned Verdan), is highly appreciated.

Orpheus is no longer with them. Without the adrenalin of immediately threatening situations keeping him conscious, and the determination to fulfil his duty for Lacren keeping him in charge of the group, he quickly flagged and submitted to injuries that demanded him stuck on a gurney. Obviously, he would not be going any deeper into Nix.

His debilitated state worries Renard, but one shard of strength did return to the man when he joined the row of concerned soldiers at his bedside. His hand shot out from under the covers to limply grasp Renard’s wrist, and with eyes burning like furious jaspers, he said: “I will manage Lacren." Then he fainted.

You’re hardly in a state to manage anything, Renard thought then, and thinks now, seated upon a crate at the lakeside as he gazes across the water. But if anyone will make good on such an impassioned promise, it would probably be Orpheus. To return to the surface, and shoulder in on his role, indeed now feels presumptuous. Here, in Nix, is where Renard will stay, until he has done everything to help that he conceivably can from this vantage.

Within the hour, Orpheus was whisked away for medical treatment by an emergency team bound for the surface. If all has gone well, and the runners have been quick, he should be back in Verdanheim now — with Anelle’s gemstone, preparing his departure for his relief effort in Lacren.

Renard’s gaze lowers to sweep across the bowed grass of the meadow, hands interlocked at the knuckles. No longer broken by the screen of the barrier, the full breadth of the lake is pooled as smooth and as vast as the full moon, settled in a serene kiss to the horizon. A river winds far down the opposite bank, barely visible, then not at all visible, curving behind the spearlike feet of sheer mountains, into places untouched and unknown.

Truthfully, it’s frightening.

With verity, all Renard’s guts and even the squelching curves of his brain scream there will be no good end to this. If the land shifted poorly, if there rose a sea of those shadows, if the air turned vile and bitter, if the humidity drove him mad — there are countless possibilities for failure, even from only the tracks he has personally seen.

Killing the snake? Pah, it’s a lark’s dream. It’s so distant that rage cannot run the wheel, but only hope, that one could wish on a star to get near enough, because attaining even the opportunity to try would already be a miracle. And if such a miracle could happen, that is wholly by the auspices of God.

But the iron coldness of certainty is already locked hard in his chest. No matter what he thinks or feels, no matter what is wise or foolish, no matter whether he has done well or poorly, no matter what fate rests forward, because there is nothing but death and betrayal in turning back, this is something that he must do.

The dewy grass of the lakefront crunches softly from approaching footsteps. Looking over, it is Verdan, in an elegant but dirty black coat.

“Sir Renard, so lonesome out here. What a fiend I feel breaking such a nice picture."

Renard stifles an exasperated grunt with a shrug. “Hail, Verdan," he manages.

“The last battalion is all done packing up. Goodbye. Go back home…" he hums. “Even a pretty lake like this, nobody ever-ever-ever loves. Those hard pointy hearts will never have roots here. Nnnneee-ver!"

Perhaps speaking in obtuse riddles is the first sign of corruption by Nix.

Still, Renard understands. If Renard is to return to the surface, with the departing soldiers, this would be the last window to do so. They are not returning.

Which means that preparations should now commence for himself — and Verdan, who insisted to join — to proceed into the next stretch of Nix. Though it is shameful not to leap and propound, ‘yes, yes, yes! I am ready!’, truly weak and reluctant of heart, Renard kneads his interlocked thumbs together and replies with only a nod.

Seeming to understand, and to sympathise, Verdan smiles thinly and joins Renard’s side, staring over the water in silence.

The commiseration is nice, but as the seconds tick, also embarrassing. Renard grunts in his throat and starts to heave himself up, saying, “The—"

“—I’m happy I came here," Verdan’s own voice interrupts. “Yes, I’m really quite ready, oh, to go where nobody goes. You feel, we peek our faces in to see, and something big is getting the honour? Ooh, little Verdan. You came all this way just to see me? Well, sir Renard, that’s not what my grandpawpaw did. He skittered around for the reins; now that’s how I got so ugly. Well, I’m satisfied with what I’ve seen, yes, I’ve got all my answers. Oh, hallelu! Good job, young Verdan. But, Sir Renard, maybe you’ve not heard the big thing? It’s better you haven’t heard it. I’m happy to tell you now."

That thin smile splits into a precarious, toothy grin.

“What if it was said as truth that Camille is still alive?"

“What madness leaps from this tongue?" says Renard. “His murder brought us under the rot."

“Oh—yes, yes, you’re not confused there." Verdan blinks owlishly, like a child. “But how could even we come back, us wee little things tickling his cockles, and the best of us not. Have you seen in Nix that things like to change their form?"

A screen of frigid dread creeps over Renard at the insinuation. Nix could affect Anelle. Could it even affect God?

And moreover, he is here?

“When this big hole opened, right on Verdanheim’s back yard, my grandpawpaw went down and saw. Oh, such a big thing he saw. A hundred miles, Verdan! The boughs could stretch over more than twenty kingdoms, the leaves are larger than houses and the bark is shimmering gold — and this is only a sapling!

“And on those branches I saw flowers, and I knew that they were power. One fell onto the river — as all rivers run back to the root — and I ran to snatch it up. But as it drifted nearer to my feet upon the riverbank, and I plunged my hand into the waters, it withered. The petals all fell away and drifted on through my fingers, until they sank and faded, and I saw nothing down the river.

“Its beauty and power, Verdan, any would have reached out as I did." Verdan pauses. “Silly grandpawpaw. He didn’t say it with his mouth, but my ears heard it all the same: oh wee Verdan! Go take one of these flowers and with it take over the West! Silly, silly, silly."

Renard’s heart quickens in further terror. That had been impetus for Verdanheim’s investigations into Nix? To hold a monopoly on… on God, or to become emperors of the world through a… flower?

“Ridiculous," Renard spits.

“Oh? What what?" chirps Verdan.

“A flower could not do such a thing," Renard asserts uncomfortably, trying to wipe the tale from his mind. He heaves himself onto his feet and hoists the crate he had been seated upon. “Enough sitting idle. We ought prepare."

Verdan’s expression falls quietly sober. “But did you hear the important thing?"

“Your nation has lusted over illusions bred of Nix," Renard barks over his shoulder as he marches for camp. “I do not care."

“Ow! Sir Renard, not that, it’s the rivers," Verdan insists, tottering after him. “The way is over the rivers. Do you hear now?"

Guilt rises inside Renard like a balloon rising out of a swamp. “Yes," he admits, now ashamed. The story was probably not meant to scare him so much as guide him, and Verdan’s corruption makes it hard for him to express himself clearly. “Thank you, Verdan."

Verdan nods happily behind him as they arrive at the camp. Indeed, Verdan’s soldiers have most completely taken down their tents and packed up their supplies, calling out ‘hup!’, and ‘huhup!’ as they load burdens onto donkeys and wagons. A soldier hails Verdan, who splits from Renard to help his men finish up.

The only person left apart from the bustle is Fidel. He sits upon a crate outside Verdan’s tent — the only one still standing — as he quietly watches the soldiers.

His gaze drifts down to his leg. It squelches, constricting, relaxing, yet an entangled mass of revolting black tubes, as though Fidel is testing his command of the limb, and frankly not uncomfortably.

Though confident that Anelle was not wrong or lying about Fidel’s leg being treatable with the witchbane the army already had, they have failed in these days to find how to rightly administer it as to keep the effect permanent. The compromise they have settled upon is a brace around his calf and thigh in which they have installed enough witchbane trinkets to keep his leg mostly normal.

Noticing Renard, Fidel hurriedly slots the infused nail he removed back into his leg brace. Healthy flesh smooths over his leg. But, even being caught, his demeanour is not really panicked. “Sire."

“Young Fidel, the men are set to march their exit," says Renard, joining his side. “Be you not transfixed as…" Renard snorts a harsh laugh at himself.

“Auh, sir?"

“I sound as Verdan. Cor! Mere seconds ago heard I such an earful from him. Do you part here, Fidel?"

“Sir Renard, that’s a strong word." Fidel smiles weakly, but shakes his head. “Had you asked such to me a mere week ago, I would leave with a heart full of lead, or stay as a sputtering coward." He leans back and cranes his head meditatively to the black sky. “But it’s strange, now I could not imagine anything good about leaving. There’s… little for me, up there, and I…" he tilts his head to and fro, searching for the right words. “…it’s very clement."

In a more literal sense than anyone else, Fidel has been bitten by Nix.

It’s only because the inset of corruption has been so obvious in Fidel that Renard even bothered asking the question. The shift of his attitude from a boy’s rightly terror to total comfort about being infected has been extremely quick, and his manner in tramping the fields around the camp, of admiring the water and soil and plants, and even of breathing the air, is that of a creature happily in its natural habitat; because without the intervention of witchbane halting his total corruption, that is what he’d already be, and inwardly he has already acclimatized partly to that condition.

The prospect of shouting or insisting he deny this influence, and force himself back to normalcy on the surface, feels oddly cruel and hypocritical.

“Then ought we prepare!" Renard theatrically claps his fist to his palm, marching into the tent. “Come, you’ve a good sense of useful things. You search through those crates for extras to pack; I will check over our rations."

“Yes sir!"

Fidel zips to scrounge through the boxes piled in the corner of the tent, full of items that soldiers discarded to lighten their loads on their journey back. Three satchels on the floor wait to be packed, as do three bedrolls for himself, Fidel, and Verdan. Several racks of armour are prepared along the tent’s long side, and before those, a small rowboat. Renard grabs his satchel and strides to the trunk on the opposite end of the room, full of packed grainstuffs and waterskins.

While charting in a logbook how much they can and will take, so turned away and immersed in work that the chipper Fidel won’t see it, Renard looses a sigh, pinches his brow, and allows the tears to fall silently.