Mystic Heart Odyssey

Part 6: In the Shadows of Kryckwood

Chapter 2

...and the creeping terror builds...

-Llox

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The next morning, Lykou and Kuna woke up to a chilly, misty morning. Once Kuna opened the shelter, they were met with a dense fog that covered the entire forest floor. The poor visibility didn’t help their nerves. Lykou tried starting a fire, but the thick, moist air made it impossible, so they ended up eating breakfast in the dim shelter together as they waited for the fog to lift.

“So did you sleep alright?” Lykou asked quietly, trying to ease the mood with some casual small talk.

“W-well enough,” Kuna nervously replied, after taking a sip of water. “S-surprisingly no nightmares.”

“That’s good. Definitely feels like the kind of place that would inspire ‘em,” the konuul said, then took a bite of dried, salted pig meat.

“...yeah. Yeah it does.” Kuna just stared out into the fog warily, keeping his mystical senses keen for any new, moving sources of life energy since it was the only way they’d be able to detect anything approaching in the thick fog.

An hour passed, then two. Finally, the fog started to lift, though patches of it remained in various spots of the forest. When they again left their shelter, the noticed faint marks in the clearing that suggested something had visited in the night, much to their extreme discomfort. They came up to the fire, then made a path around towards the shelter, then circled it a few times before wandering off into an area that was still covered by fog. They couldn’t make out what specific kinds of prints they were, but the idea they’d had any kind of company at all without knowing it definitely unsettled them. They both looked around the surrounding area with some level of paranoia, expecting some kind of monster to suddenly leap out from around one of the trees at any minute. But nothing came, and Kuna still couldn’t sense anything out there.

Finally, they carefully and quietly packed up, taking turns keeping watch while the other gathered their things. Kuna used his magic to return their shelter back to something resembling a cluster of mundane plant life, though it still stood out slightly given it was a much bigger cluster than anywhere else nearby. Once they were ready, they quickly started making their way through the woods, hoping that nothing was following them.

After an hour of hiking, Kuna started to notice something odd further out in the forest. At first, he couldn’t tell what it was, but something seemed off. He started to slow down a little as he peered into the distance to their right. Lykou took note of his friend’s distracted state. “Everything alright, Ku?”

Kuna slowed to a stop and squinted. “I’m… not sure…”

“What are you looking at?” the konuul asked as he stood next to him and peered out in the same direction.

“...some of the shadows out there s-seem… off. Like… they’re m-moving, but I can’t figure out what they’re being cast by,” Kuna said, shivering slightly. “They’re… n-not lined up with any branches that I can tell.”

“...hey yeah, I see it now,” Lykou said, eyeing the dark patches warily.

Suddenly, one of the shadows overtly slid away across the ground between the trees and made its way close to them. They both gasped and took a step back, staring at it with wide eyes. That’s when a pair of dim, glowing eyes appeared within the shadow, staring back at them curiously.

Kuna arched a brow after a moment and clung to the canid. “Th… that k-kind of looks like...”

“One of those things Ink always has around?” Lykou finished for him. “Y-yeah, it does…”

The shadow continued watching them for a moment, then slipped back off, seemingly losing interest in them.

“...you think she sent it to watch us?” Lykou asked quietly as he followed it with his eyes, not wanting to give it a chance to sneak up on them.

“I… d-don’t know. Pretty sure shadow s-spirits are a n-normal thing technically, but I don’t know a-anything about them,” Kuna said, glancing back over to where he saw a few more shadows in the distance whose movements didn’t line up with anything. “I… don’t think they’re d-dangerous, generally…”

“Are you sure?”

“...n-no.”

“We… should probably keep our distance then. At least it doesn’t look interested in following us,” the canid commented, watching the one that’d investigated wander back off into the distance. “What were those two Ink had with her called again? Ch…. Chaiko and something?”

“Chaiko and Baniv, yeah,” Kuna confirmed, nodding slightly. “Creepy things d-definitely fit in around here, at least.”

“No kidding…” Lykou said, tightening his grip on his spear for a moment. “Well… let’s keep going. Looks like they’re mostly sticking to that one area right now.”

Kuna nodded. “G-gladly.”

They continued hiking for several more hours without incident. Despite approaching noon, things never brightened up much. The skies remained consistently covered with grey clouds, limiting the daylight to a very muted level. If it wasn’t for the sparse foliage in the trees, they might have needed to use their crystals to see their way through some areas. As it was, it just ended up making everything look drab and eerie.

And it also made a light stand out more when they saw it flickering up ahead. As they got closer, they realized that it was some kind of ethereal, white-blue flame dancing around inside a hollowed-out gourd lantern hanging from one of the many barren trees. They both approached with considerable wariness, noting no other signs of people around.

The flame bewildered them. It was clearly no ordinary fire. It had no notable source and didn’t put off any heat. Not to mention its appearance definitely reeked of some kind of magic. In fact, Kuna couldn’t help but stare in wide-eyed fascination at it as they got closer, while Lykou kept glancing around, expecting for whoever put it there to show up any moment. And he had a strange feeling they wouldn’t be friendly. “Wonder who put that thing here? Haven’t seen any sign of anyone living around here,” he commented, then turned his attention back to the odd lantern. “Never heard of fire like that before, either. Some kind of magic, I assume...”

Kuna just stood there, staring at it in silence.

Lykou noticed his odd fixation and nudged him gently. “You with me, Ku? What’s wrong?”

The sereva slowly lifted his hand and pointed to it. “That… that’s… I thought that w-wasn’t supposed to… be possible...”

“...what’s not?” Lykou asked, slightly concerned about the sereva’s reaction.

“Kou, that’s… I’m sensing pure s-soul energy there….”

“...what.” The konuul stared at the ethereal flame for a minute, then arched a brow at his friend. “You’re telling me this weird flame is… some kind of weird soul-fire or something? I thought that was the one kind that didn’t enter the mortal world?”

“S-so we’ve been told,” Kuna said, stepping slightly closer to the lantern. After a moment, he conjured up a certain pale silver-blue glow around his hand. “I wonder…”

“Careful, Ku…”

“Believe me, I will be.” Kuna closed his eyes and concentrated for a moment, just feeling it out. Then he reopened them and carefully tried to manipulate the soul-energy fire dancing around within the gourd. He found it oddly difficult to grasp, though. And the moment he did, he was suddenly snapped back by something and yelped as he dismissed the magic. Lykou immediately grabbed him and held him protectively.

But almost immediately afterward, before the konuul could ask if he was alright, a strange, whispery voice echoed from around the flame, as previously-hidden lines and runes started to glow on the gourd’s surface. “What traveler passes through this dark and cursed land?”

Lykou and Kuna shared a look, then Kuna nervously cleared his throat. “Uh… m-my name’s Kuna, and this is my friend Lykou. Wh… who, and what, are you??”

There was a brief pause, then the voice continued, seemingly ignoring the question in favor of asking another of its own, “What is your purpose in the Kryck? What is it you seek?”

“We’re just passing through, actually,” Lykou chimed in. “We’re trying to make our way home, and it so happens that our path involves an old Sylthean gateway that’s somewhere out this way.”

Again, there was another pause- longer this time. When the voice didn’t seem inclined to respond, Kuna spoke up again. “Um. Y-you didn’t mention your name. Are-”

“Find another way.”

“...s-sorry, what?”

“Turn back… for the sake of your souls.”

Before they could respond, the flame mysterious snuffed itself out. The glowing lines and symbols on the preserved gourd itself similarly vanished.

“...hello? Are you still there?” Lykou asked, just on the off-chance they could still communicate with whoever, or whatever they’d been speaking to. A few moments of silence answered him. “...guess not…”

“...w-what a shame,” Kuna commented, staring at the empty gourd with a flat expression. “We definitely need m-more ambiguously ominous advice f-from mysterious talking ghost-fires in our lives.”

As much as it amused him to see the sereva getting snarky again, the warning definitely unsettled Lykou. “For the sake of our souls… yeah, nothing ominous about that,” he said, then sighed. “We’ll definitely have to stay on our toes.”

“…let’s keep going. Sooner we get out of this place, the better,” Kuna said, looking around the woods anxiously.

“Definitely,” Lykou agreed as they continued to push onward. Again, they continued through the day, avoiding stopping as much as possible. Something about the eerie atmosphere muted their appetite anyway. Kuna considered if it might be more than just psychological, though- with the subdued life energy in all the trees and the general lack of animal life, he had to wonder if the place might be having some kind of mild effect on them that they didn’t yet understand.

Around mid-afternoon, they started down a long, mild slope. With the sparse foliage and the trees becoming slightly more spread out, they were able to see the terrain changing a bit up ahead. They were clearly approaching a bog, with stagnant, still pools of water everywhere and pockets of mist and fog lingering over some of them. And further away, in the bog, they could see hints of the ruins off in the distance.

But what was more concerning were the bones. They were scattered around and becoming more commonplace the further they went. None of them looked chewed on, oddly enough. Or, for the most part, broken. They were just… laying there, half-buried in the increasingly muddy soil. Some might’ve been animal bones, but most were clearly from people of various kinds- though it was hard to tell what their species might have been.

A bit of motion startled them as a crow- the first normal living animal they’d seen so far- flew down and perched on a low tree branch some distance ahead of them. Though initially surprised, they found it slightly reassuring to see an ordinary animal at last. At first, at least.

As they approached, the bird watched them intently. Finally, when they got close enough, it cawed a few times, catching their full attention. Then… it spoke. “Beware.”

Lykou and Kuna stopped to stare back at it for a moment. “...another talking bird?”

“L-looks like an ordinary crow to me,” Kuna said. “B-but I definitely heard it too…”

Lykou eyed the bird curiously. “...beware of what, exactly?”

The crow stared back silently, not moving save for where the breeze lightly ruffled its feathers. Finally, it spread its wings. “They do not sleep,” it said in its raspy voice, then took off again.

“Oh goody, more f-fucking vague warnings,” Kuna snapped after the bird. “How w-wonderfully helpful! The bones just w-weren’t enough, I’m s-so glad you came along!”

“Shh, Ku,” Lykou anxiously hushed him, though he couldn’t help but smirk a little bit at his friend’s sass. “We don’t know what might be out there. Don’t want to get any unwanted attention.”

Kuna sighed and let his ears droop a bit. “Right… s-sorry,” he said, then leaned over against the canid. “I’m just so tired of this shit… why couldn’t we just end up some place nice for a while?”

Lykou hugged him gently and rubbed his side a bit. “Hey, maybe the next place. As long as we stick together, we’ll be alright.”

The sereva shot him a brief smile, then looked back down into the bog warily. “...I just have a bad feeling we’re not going to be able to just walk right up to the next gate.”

Lykou nodded and frowned. “Yeah… at this rate, probably not. But whatever’s in the way, we’ll handle it. C’mon.”

They continued walking down to the ruins after collecting themselves. The air seemed slightly chillier the closer they got. Kuna was glad he’d switched over to his robe. The closer they got, the more they could tell that ruin was definitely the right word for the place- most of what they saw were chunks of broken walls, with no sign of any in-tact buildings with roofs. Of course, the exterior wall surrounding the place wasn’t exactly short, even though it had large cracks and missing chunks. The lowest crumbling fragment they could see still would have been hazardous to climb, especially given that its base was partly submerged in murky water. There was no telling how deep it was, and in any case the stone near the bottom of the wall was covered in slick algae.

There wasn’t much of a well-defined treeline to speak of- patches of trees, sickly-looking brush, and water all brushed up against chunks of the wall in various places. Navigating around the watery areas was tricky, but fortunately they found a solid, if wet and muddy section of land that meandered around the ruins. They ended up wandering for a short while in search of a way in.

Kuna froze when he spotted something in a still, clear section of water that chilled him to the bone. When Lykou noticed he’d stopped, he stepped back to see what his friend was looking at. His eyes widened as they fell on the face of a strangely well-preserved corpse staring back at him from under the perfectly still water, with vacant, dead eyes. He didn’t recognize the species, of course. They were caniform, but not like konuul. Their snout was shorter and their ears more rounded. Their fur was all brown or black, though that might’ve just been mud and silt from the surrounding earth that the rest of the body was half-buried in.

“...definitely not drinking the water here,” Lykou half-whispered, trying to bring some levity to the situation to cover up for how disturbed he really was.

“N-nope,” Kuna agreed.

“I wonder how long ago they died…”

“...or w-w-what killed them.”

Lykou eyed the corpse for another moment, then gently pulled Kuna away from the sight. “Let’s… hope we don’t have to find out.”

Much to their dismay, they found one or two more bodies laying in or around some of the waterlogged areas. They even spotted what may have been a sereva among them, with two broken protrusions on their head. But the water around it was murky enough that they couldn’t get a good look at the rest of them.

“W-where the fuck is the entrance to this place?” Kuna finally wondered aloud. “I’m t-t-tired of seeing f-fucking bodies everywhere.”

“That’s a good que- hey, wait, what’s that?” Lykou replied, pointing to something in the mud.

Kuna squinted, then cautiously took a closer look. “...footprints?”

“Shit, someone’s been here recently? Maybe they’re still here!”

“And possibly dangerous,” Kuna pointed out with a warning tone.

“Maybe. But they might also be the only friendly thing out here for all we know. Or at the very least they might know this area better than us. They might be able to show us the way in,” Lykou pointed out. “Don’t get me wrong, I know we should be careful, but let’s try and have a little optimism, yeah?”

“...if you s-say so.”

“And if not, we have our bracers.”

“Right…”

They began following the tracks carefully through the mud, with plenty of reluctance in Kuna’s case. The way the prints wandered around made it seem like their owner had also been looking for an entrance to the ruins. And occasionally they ended up backtracking and pausing in various places from time to time.

Finally, when they rounded the corner of a particularly stout tree, Lykou stopped, temporarily blocking Kuna. “Oh, hey there we-” he started to say, but then paused and tilted his head as he examined the individual reclining against the other side of the tree. The stranger hadn’t moved since Lykou announced himself, but he didn’t see any signs of injuries. “Uh… hello? You alright?”

Kuna cautiously squeezed his way around Lykou to see who he was talking to, skirting around another corpse-occupied little pond in the process. He grimaced when he saw the stranger the canid had been talking to and nudged his friend lightly. “...n-no life energy, Kou. Just a-another body.”

Lykou frowned and sized the corpse up. Even though it was completely exposed to the elements, the body looked fresh, with no obvious signs of injury. He nervously reached out with the blunt end of his spear and carefully lifted the figure’s chin, to get a look at their face. Their eyes were closed, and they almost looked peaceful. Whatever they died from was a mystery. “Eesh… he almost looks like he might wake up any moment. Wonder what got him?”

Kuna shivered. “It’s… a-almost scarier not seeing a-any obvious injuries. I… d-don’t think I want to look any further for them, though.”

“Yeah no, me either,” Lykou said, then pulled his spear back again, gently letting the head slip back down to its previous position.

“F-f-fucking shit this place is the creepiest,” Kuna muttered, rubbing his arms and looking around anxiously.

“Yeah… and I hate to scare you more, but with how fresh this one is, whatever got him probably isn’t far.”

Kuna gulped. “Y-you don’t have to r-r-remind me” he said, sticking close to the konuul. “I’m on g-guard for a-a-any moving s-signs of life energy… s-so far n-nothing nearby.”

“Good idea,” Lykou said, then furrowed his brow as a worrying thought occurred to him. “Uh… ghosts can’t… kill directly, can they?”

The sereva shot him a nervous look. “...n-not directly, no. Not that I’m a-aware of anyway. H-hungry ghosts might possess dead bodies though, w-which is a different s-story…”

Lykou’s eyes widened as he looked back at the body and took a few big steps away from it. “...l-let’s just… try not to get closer to any more then. Just… just to be on the safe side.”

“W-works for me,” Kuna agreed, watching the body anxiously as they walked away.

They continued searching the wall at the edge of the ruins, until finally they found a path inside. It was like a crumbling hallway without a roof, and it led into a circular chamber. On one side was a gate made out of some kind of metal blocking the way further in. It reminded them of whatever material that’d been used for Lykou’s cell and Kuna’s cage during that dire point in their previous adventure- a fact that made them both very uneasy, especially because they’d forgotten to ask around about it after all the demon-shit had been dealt with. And again, there was an indent in the middle of the ornate framework- circular this time.

Lykou sighed and looked around while Kuna examined the designs and symbols around the indent. “Well… there must be some kind of magic stone around here if it works like those others did,” the konuul muttered. “We need to remember to ask Zyn about that stuff next time we see him.”

“Y-yeah. N-not that I even l-like thinking about it, but it’d probably be good to know m-more about it, and these s-symbols and the magic involved.”

Lykou wandered around the circular section they found themselves in, looking for any clues or loose stones. When he got back to the path they’d entered through, he nearly leapt back in surprise when he saw someone standing just a yard or two back, looking straight at him. “Oh, fuck!” he blurted out in surprise, then quickly put on a friendly smile as he quickly re-composed himself. “Shit, you startled me. I thought we were the only people alive around here, heh.”

Kuna looked over with alarm and nervously came to see who he the hell he was talking to. When he got there, his blood ran cold.

“You wouldn’t happen to be familiar with this place would you? My name’s Lykou by the way, my friend Kuna and I are-” Lykou continued, then paused when Kuna practically crushed his arm with a death-grip trying to pull him away and get his attention. “Huh? What is it?”

“N-n-no… l-life e-e-energy…” Kuna stammered out in a terrified whisper, staring in horror at the figure standing between them and the exit.

Lykou slowly turned back to the stranger and looked at her for a moment. It was surreal- she looked in decent shape, at least at a first glance. Again, he didn’t recognize her species. He didn’t notice any big wounds anywhere. But after a moment, he realized he couldn’t see her breathing, either. And though her eyes were open, there was a decidedly dead, absent look in them. Her clothes looked extremely worn and deteriorated, like they could fall apart any minute- and she was soaking wet. The more he looked, the more little things seemed off.

Slowly, he backed up with Kuna by his side, his heart racing. The stranger took a few steps forward to match their retreat, albeit slowly. That was when the wound was revealed- as she moved, a large slash across her belly occasionally showed itself ever so slightly. Somehow, there were no signs of blood.

“F-f-fuck,” the konuul swore, his shivering now matching Kuna’s. Living things he could deal with. They’d even beaten a demon at that point. But what could he hope to do to something that was already technically dead? “H-hungry g-g-ghost?”

“I… I d-don’t know,” Kuna responded, clinging to him fearfully. “N-normally I’d s-s-say it’d have t-to be, b-but she’s n-not acting like one.”

“...hey, y-yeah… isn’t she s-supposed to be overwhelmed w-with insatiable hunger if th-that’s the case?”

“D-don’t jinx it,” Kuna retorted. “B-but yeah…”

They both stood there for a moment, watching the undead entity with a mixture of horror and confusion. But she didn’t come any closer. Every time they moved, she moved to match them, but otherwise made no further approach.

“W-why is she just…. S-standing there?”

“Gee, l-let’s just ask her,” Kuna snarked, again retreating into his old defense mechanisms.

“Wait…” Lykou looked her over, then straightened up a bit and suddenly took a few steps forward. Kuna reached to stop him, but they were both surprised when the stranger took a few steps back to match the canid.

“W-what the…”

“I… I d-don’t think it’s a h-hungry ghost,” Lykou commented hesitantly. “I d-don’t know what the fuck’s going on b-but… I think this is s-s-something else…”

“...m-maybe…”

“...let’s… get out of here,” the konuul suggested, then reached down and activated his bracers. “Carefully…”

Kuna nodded and activated his as well. “B-best idea you’ve e-ever had.”

Slowly, they advanced back the way they came, keeping their guard up. The walking corpse steadily kept backing away as they did so, never taking her glassy eyes off them. The way she moved was bizarre to see. It was jerky and unnatural, like she was being manipulated on strings. And she didn’t have to watch where she was going, she just naturally avoided any obstacles without looking.

They were in for a surprise when they came back out through the exit, freezing on the spot when they saw all the other bodies. There were at least a dozen of them clustered near the exit- mostly in surprisingly good shape. Kuna recognized a couple from the ponds. Further back, more decayed-looking bodies could be seen rising and slowly approaching from other corners of the bog. They even spotted some completely barren skeletons slowly and somewhat shakily walking towards them.

Kuna was on the verge of a mental breakdown, and only managed to avoid it thanks to the mutual death-grip he and Lykou had on each other, reassuring one another of their presence. Fortunately, despite all the bodies clustering around them, none of them came within three or four yards of them. After collecting themselves a bit, the two continued to press forward, eyeing the undead anxiously as they parted around them.

Suddenly, they froze again when a sound caught their attention. Some commotion in the trees caused a twig to snap and fall. They looked up to see a squirrel- something reassuringly normal for once- skittering along a lower branch on one of the trees that brushed up against the ruins. It looked very lean- probably had a hard time finding decent, filling food in those woods.

All of the sudden, Lykou and Kuna weren’t the only ones staring at the squirrel. When it got near the wall, all the corpses’ head suddenly snapped to the side to watch it with intense focus. With the boys no longer the closest living thing to the ruins, they began shuffling closer to the squirrel, which had paused on the branch as it noticed its grim audience approach. A few absently bumped Lykou and Kuna as they passed, nearly scaring the piss out of them in the process.

The squirrel, sensing growing danger, bolted to the wall and hopped onto it. The moment it crossed over to the other side, all hell broke loose. The undead suddenly became very lively and aggressive, enthusiastically bolting with intense speed towards the wall. It was a sight neither Lykou or Kuna would ever be able to scrub from their memories, and they stood there, frozen with terror as the bodies began piling up against the wall, some getting submerged into the water at its base, as they all scrabbled and clawed at each other in an attempt to scale it and get into the ruins. Gradually, a number of them managed to make it over.

The commotion continued for a few minutes, until they all suddenly became calm again. Several minutes later, one of the ones that’d made it over the wall came calmly walking back with a terrified and panicking squirrel thrashing around madly in the tight grip of its hand. With an eerie serenity, it calmly walked right over the edge of the wall and down the pile of bodies that were still jumbled up against it. It descended down into one of the watery pits, taking the increasingly alarmed squirrel with it. Its pathetic sounds soon turned to muted bubbling sounds as it was taken into the water. Eventually, the bubbles stopped.

Several tense minutes passed in unsettling silence and stillness. Then, the body- along with a fresh squirrel corpse- crawled back out and joined the rest, watching Lykou and Kuna in eerie silence. The heads of all the other corpses had turned back to face them as well. They both instinctively took several large, shaky steps back in response. Fortunately, there was plenty of open ground behind them, with no trees or water in the way.

At that point, the rest of the dead began slowly, calmly walking back to wherever they’d previously been ‘resting’, with a few shooting vacant looks at the two very scarred boys as they passed. Lykou and Kuna were totally at a loss for words, their jaws hanging open in horror at what they’d just witnessed- and the implications involved. One thing was abundantly clear- the barrier keeping them out of the ruins likely just saved them from an utterly nightmarish fate on par with even Kuna’s worst nightmares.

When they were finally able to move again, Lykou and Kuna shakily turned to face each other, trembling more than they ever had before. After a brief understanding non-verbally passed between them, they immediately turned and broke into a mad, terrified dash back the way they’d come. They didn’t give a flying fuck about being stealthy or avoiding anything’s notice. They just wanted to put as much distance between themselves and that waking nightmare as they could, as quickly as they could.

*****

Only when their lungs were burning and their legs were about to give out from under them did the boys finally slow to a stop and collapse against the far side of a thick tree trunk together, leaning against one another. They didn’t speak for a solid ten minutes at least, just panting and whimpering slightly as they tried to wrap their head around what they’d just witnessed. When they finally collected themselves enough to return to their senses somewhat, Kuna climbed into Lykou’s lap, and they just clung to each other and shivered uncontrollably, letting some tears of fright trickle away as they sought mutual comfort in the other’s embrace.

“W-w-what the fuck w-was that?” Lykou murmured finally.

Kuna just shook his head slightly and stared off into the distance. “I… I d-d-don’t have a f-fucking clue. All I know is I’m n-n-not s-sleeping tonight.”

“M-me either at this r-r-rate,” the konuul replied.

For a while, they just sat there, holding onto one another as the only thing anchoring them, each resting their chin on the other’s shoulder. Other than their own jittery breathing, sniffling, and trembling, the only sounds and movements came from the occasional gust of wind moving through the eerie forest. Every little creak and snap somewhere out in the woods made them jump slightly, until finally they were out of energy to do so.

“W-what are we gonna do, Kou?”

“...I have no idea,” Lykou replied after a moment. “We sure as fuck can’t fight our way through all that, though.”

“You were warned…” a whispery voice spoke from nearby, making them both nearly jump out of their skin and tumble over in a tangled mess of limbs. They looked up to see that they’d apparently collapsed back at the tree with the hanging gourd on one side. The ethereal flame had returned.

“Who the f-f-fuck are you? What are you??” Kuna demanded, managing to glare at the thing despite still trembling. “What is this damned place?!”

“Please, don’t just leave us without answers again!” Lykou interjected, starting to become a bit unraveled again. “Whoever you are, please just… we don’t know anything about this place, we’re just trying to get home!”

There was an uncomfortably long pause, but the flame remained. “...ssseeek the aberrant garden... to the south. She... may help you. But be wary…”

“G… garden?” Kuna nervously asked. Ordinarily, he’d feel more optimistic about that word- he did like the idea of finally seeing lush, vibrant plant life again. But somehow he doubted it’d be so welcoming, given what they’d seen so far. After all, it’d snuck that ‘aberrant’ qualifier in there…

“Who? Who might help us?” Lykou asked. “Can’t you be more specific?”

“...the rot of life in a land of death…”

Before they could ask anything else, the flame again went out. Without even asking, they knew the voice was gone yet again.

“...should we cut that thing down and carry it with us, I wonder?” the konuul wondered aloud. “In case it comes back?”

“No. Because then I’d be t-tempted to chuck it into the n-next pond we come across,” Kuna grumbled, then resumed shivering. This time it was genuinely at least partly because another chilly gust of wind briefly kicked up.

Lykou hugged him tightly again and sighed. “I… guess we better find this ‘aberrant garden’ and whoever ‘she’ is.”

“...assuming w-we can trust that s-stupid whispering-flame thing,” Kuna muttered.

“Well, we have nothing else to work off of,” Lykou pointed out. “And it’d be nice if we could find some place with more… life in it to camp near, at least.”

“I… guess. R-right now I… I just…” Suddenly Kuna collapsed into Lykou’s arms again and whimpered slightly.

Lykou blinked a bit, then smiled faintly and squeezed him some more. “Yeah. Me too, Ku. Me too.”