Chapter Twenty-Five: Ashes to Ashes
The grove was an island of fire in a sea of grass. Hollis' indicator told him nothing he didn't already know. The grand canopy in the distance was composed of red maple and red oak. Its body was filled out with sugar maple and beech trees with black leaves. A small but notable bunch of papery birch stood near an outcropping of rocks that stuck out of the forest like a turtle peeking its head out of its shell.
"I see a bright spot," Royle said as he stared into the inferno. He paused, inhaling. "We're downwind. It smells like a campfire, but the smoke isn't thick enough."
"There is no smoke," Hollis said as he scanned the flames in the distance. "No heat haze either…"
"I don't feel any heat at all in the wind," Royle said. "Jaq isn't even afraid. He's afraid of most fires. What does it look like?"
He took his time to answer. A forest fire was the obvious description, but it wasn't the obvious details that mattered. He analyzed it closely as the inspector narrated his thoughts.
[Investigation lvl. 5] As you inspect the fire, you realize that while the trees appear to be engulfed in a healthy blaze, you don't hear the roar of the fire or the crackle of wood. You see too many leaves. None of the clumps of colorful foliage are on fire. The branches and trunks alone burn, their flames reaching upward.That was exactly it. That was the detail that mattered. At a glance, the forest fire looked as dangerous as any. Flames rose into the sky, wrapping around branches and dancing as they burned. The leaves, though, never expired. Those that were engulfed in the fires of branches below blew in the breeze no different than the leaves of normal trees.
"The birds are sitting on burning limbs," Hollis muttered to himself.
"Someone should warn them," Royle said dryly.
"They don't seem to mind," Hollis said. "The leaves aren't burning. The branches aren't falling down."
For a moment, he and Royle continued to skim through every entry their inspectors would give them. Fire was as likely a tool as any for the creatures of Periapt to wield, but nothing they could find matched this.
"Firewood," Royle said. "Not firewood, firewood, but the species. My Bushcraft skill talks about it. You got anything?"
"It says firewood trees have curly leaves that burst into flame at any spark. These aren't firewood trees," Hollis said. He continued reading Naturalism, which told him fire was the method these trees used to spread their seeds, which grew inside them. He continued searching through other skills. "Folklore says they can see the future and they dry out and light themselves aflame when something bad is about to happen. Not as useful, but neat."
He watched as a murder of crows took flight from one of the burning branches and set off into the air directly over his head, squawking the whole way as if laughing.
"Those didn't sound like they were on fire," Royle said.
A raccoon scurried along one of the fiery branches in the distance. More birds came and went. The sound of bugs and beasts filled the air.
"The rabbit trails run off into the fire," Hollis said slowly. "We need to check it out."
"So they’ll already be cooked… What do you think we’re dealing with here?"
"Let’s find out."
Had they found fire that didn't burn? Or had some eidolon created an enclave of life that couldn't be burned? No matter what evidence he gathered, he couldn't escape the fear that came with walking toward a forest fire.
Luckily, Willo feared nothing. He flew from Hollis' shirt collar out toward the fire, zigging and zagging as he saw new and more interesting flames to inspect. The glowbug was clearly entranced. Hollis could feel the excitement, as he had before when Willo had been obsessed with the skipagans.
"Stay with me," Hollis said after mental commands failed to halt the lightning bug in its tracks. He walked cautiously across the glade, extra vigilant about where he stepped. This sorcery could be part of some natural trap. Perhaps the fire distracted the foolish adventurer from some kind of trap hidden in the grass.
No, that made little sense. Fire kept prey away, at least it usually did. He couldn't imagine a creature using fire to attract prey. Though this forest did boast a high population of small animals.
Still, he needed to be cautious because if animals suddenly existed in this area, that meant snakes like the one he saw frozen to the ground might be here too.
"Are we going?" Royle said, beckoning Jaq to follow Hollis. "First outing and you're already leading me into the pits of hell."
Hollis could hardly take his attention away from the fire in order to answer his companion. He still heard nothing of the flames, nor did he feel heat. The campfire smell was still there, but it wasn't carried within visible smoke. It simply permeated the air, along with a musky, earthy smell that Hollis recognized as rotting wood.
"It’s super humid," Royle said.
"Bizarre," was all Hollis could say. His mind was at full alert. This was what his Vigilance skill was designed for, warning him at the onset of danger. If this was some sort of magical trap, he might only have seconds to react.
He stopped a dozen yards or so from the blazing forest. If his Vigilance skill told him to run at the last second, could he relay that to Royle in time? Then again, Royle was on a horse. He would probably be out of danger long before Hollis.
"Do you want to stay out here or come inside?" he asked.
"Jaq says it's safe," Royle repeated. "Do what you're going to do."
Hollis nodded, more to himself than to the horseman.
He took a few deep breaths and watched to see if his Breath meter faltered from bad air. It didn't.
Willo was done waiting; he flew over toward a nearby branch that stuck out of the forest. It appeared to have been burned, as if it had spent the afternoon in a fireplace. The bulk of its bark had a white ash patina with glowing red embers on top. Small, energetic flames danced in the center of some of these embers.
Hollis held his breath as the little glowbug landed on the branch. He waited to see if his connection to Willo would send shocks of pain through him, just as Mae's connection to her flower bird had caused them to tremble together.
Nothing came. There was no pain, no heat. It seemed that all was well.
Willo burst into flame.
Hollis cursed as the glowbug took to the air, flames trailing behind. It flew in circles, landing on his right shoulder.
"What's happening?" Royle asked.
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Hollis stared over at Willo, amazed at what he saw. The bug was fine. The fire billowed from his tail where light normally did. He then looked even more closely at the raging fire in front of him. He saw the exact same white-ash, glowing-ember combination on every burning surface. At first, he had thought it was simply burnt wood, but as he looked closer at both his flaming glowbug and the branches themselves…
He saw the rocks. A pile of them emerged from the earth in long slabs large enough for someone to use as a lean-to. They were a few yards into the forest. The rocks were on fire. They had that same white, black, and glowing orange coloring that the burning branches did.
"It's an illusion," he said. It was a convincing illusion to be certain, but an illusion nonetheless. He had figured as much, but there was something about a giant wall of fire that inspired caution.
"There's some substance, a lichen, maybe a moss that's growing on the trees. It's making the fire. Willo copied it," he said. Newly energized, he rushed toward the branch and did the hot-pan test on it, touching it quickly and then again more slowly when he didn't get burned. "It's not real."
Royle started to laugh. "What did I tell you? Jaq always knows." He reached forward and scratched his horse's muzzle right in the sweet spot.
A hum of excitement built up in Hollis. It was the thrill of discovery, and he would follow it into the flames.
~-~
The inside of the burning grove was like something from a dream, not a nightmare. The flames were gentle. No heat, no sound. It was like wandering through the domain of a damned god.
Animals ran underfoot, with little fear of humans. For some of them, such as the squirrels and rats, multiple generations could have grown up in these burning woods without ever even seeing a hunter.
The plant life adapted with little difficulty. While most forest floors in the area were barren save for the occasional fern, this one had large swaths of dense vegetation. Moss hung from many of the burning branches, the mysterious false fire sometimes growing throughout their green threads, setting them ablaze when the wind blew.
The men took the shortest trail through the area they could, only stopping when Hollis wanted to marvel at the fiery wilderness, the casually burning trees, or a log turtle whose tree-stump-like shell had been engulfed in the false fire just as the trees had been.
"It's peaceful," Royle said. "I can hardly ever ride through the woods without Jaq making me a nervous wreck. He likes it here."
"There is a suspicious lack of predators," Hollis said. "Suppose they would stay away. Could be an ability of this stuff."
"Stuff?" Royle asked. "We're explorers. We get to name things we find."
Hollis laughed. The indicator didn’t seem to know what it was, so it was either rare or undiscovered. He found a log unlike most of the others. It was dead and decaying. The false fire had seemingly burnt out of it long ago, but its ghost remained: flaky, dry, and spongelike.
"It looks like a dead campfire, and it feels like moss," he said.
"Campfire Moss it is," Royle said. “See how easy that was?”
Hollis collected some of the dried matter from the log. Its white, spongy exterior was always a surprise to his fingers because the surface mimicked a pile of ashes so well. What was more, this log didn't only look decayed, though it was; it also had evidence of being burned, actually burned.
Hollis held the dried flakes up to eye level. Willo landed on his hand and examined the flakes with him.
He quickly gave the moss Breath. The white fibers turned ember-orange and a small birthday candle flame rose up on the tip of his finger. It had no heat.
Willo imitated the illusion, his tail bursting into false fire. This sent waves of joy straight from the glowbug into Hollis' mind. "Even bugs need hobbies," he whispered.
After a few moments, the flakes lost their fire, and Hollis collected a handful more before returning to the trail. This was not a game trail. It was a human trail once long ago. The bushwhacking was still evident after years. [Tracking lvl. 5]
In front of them, two rabbitines leaped across their trail. One stopped and looked over at Hollis. It sniffed the air. Then, it casually jumped away into the overgrowth after its friend, but as it did, it left another rabbitine in its place, appearing from nowhere. That rabbit also sniffed at Hollis and Royle before hopping into the exact same spot and disappearing.
He almost expected to see a third rabbit there after it left, and then a fourth.
"You weren't lying," Royle said. "There were two rabbits, but now there are dozens in those bushes staring at us."
"You can hear that?" he asked.
"Chose Discipline as my Temper," Royle said. "Wanted to make my eyes better by practice. Worked too, for a bit. Then when my eyes got real bad, I practiced my hearing all the time just trying to get around. I have a 9 in Vigilance just from hearing."
Still having a 9 even factoring in the debuff of his vision meant Royle's hearing must have been excellent.
"No wonder your bunk is so far away from the water closet," Hollis whispered.
Royle laughed.
They walked on, following the trail inward. Hollis found more and more signs people had been here. A rusted old-fashioned bicycle leaned against a tree. Its tires were covered in campfire moss.
The rabbitines crossed their paths several more times but always in a rush. Hollis was happy to have figured out where the rabbitines were. The others talked like it was some miracle for a stable population of anything to survive the fog night after night.
"This moss must be keeping the fog away," Hollis said. He gave Breath to the handful of dried moss he had collected, and his fist erupted in false fire.
"Are we close enough to the coast to worry about that?" Royle asked.
"Easily," he answered. "This whole area is a valley leading out into the channel. I could see where it's flooded in the past. The fog should roll right through here, but if it did, why did it leave all these tasty animals behind?"
Royle didn't answer for a bit. He seemed to be mulling it over.
"I struggle with that," he said. "The town was lit all night long to keep predators away, and even that didn't always work; we had bears, wolves, and peltwalkers every now and then. If it was just light, surely that would have worked."
"The fog started in the fields," Hollis said. "Ate livestock. It didn't show up in the town until the end, right?"
Royle took in a deep breath. "I just don't think it's that simple, alright."
He rode up ahead, leaving Hollis behind by a few hundred feet.
Hollis watched the false fire in his hand and pondered. The answer could always be that simple. Fate often turned on one mistake, one loose bolt, one typo. The people fled the fog that ate their livestock. When everyone who went into the fog never came out again, hysteria could grip a town until it tore itself apart.
Still, there was clearly a lot of emotion involved, and Hollis did not have all the facts. He had speculation. He could keep his theories to himself for now.
Moments later, Jaq and Royle came galloping back. "Death up ahead," he said. "Maybe a graveyard, maybe worse."
Hollis didn't have to ask questions. He knew what Royle was talking about. In the game, when the player was about to uncover a massacred settlement or ancient grave, an image would flash on the screen. After playing a while, you wouldn't only see it on the screen.
"Deadman's Dog," he said.
"Just up this way," Royle said.
"Can you hear it or…"
Royle almost laughed, but the chill in his spine must have stopped him. "Even I can see that."
They walked forward a step at a time. With each inch they moved, Hollis kept his eyes straight forward. The deadman's dog, if it was a dog, always appeared in the corner of your eye. He didn't want to see it. He wanted, more than anything, to keep his eyes closed as they passed, but that wouldn't work.
Small children were taught not to look away. If you turned your head, they would say, the dog would appear in your path. This was an ill omen. Hollis never tested the legend, especially after the dog appeared in his dad's computer room mid-play.
They walked forward until they broke the boundary of the place the canine guarded.
"Do you realize where we are?" he asked, but just as he did, out of the corner of his eye, he saw the dog. To be truthful, it wasn't clearly a dog, but it was a canine. Being unable to look directly at it made it more of a blur, a spirit. If he had reached out, he could have petted it. Such long legs it had… It was so tall even sitting on its hindquarters, it was almost at eye level. Sometimes black, sometimes pale depending on the breed, the beast let him pass.
This one was pale. It watched him as he walked. Then, it disappeared. In the future, if that dog ever howled, Hollis would be able to hear it if he was close enough. Their howls were hidden in the wind to those who had not passed them by.
"No, I don’t. Where are we?" Royle asked when they came out on the other side of the area the dog guarded.
"Do you remember the old explorer's camp you had to go to right before taking the oath?"
"No way," Royle said. "I don't believe it. I didn't even know it was real. I was hired onto a wagon train long before I would have found out."
But it was real. The camp was a circle of log cabins, each facing a large fire pit in the center. A fantasy treehouse spread up into the branches of a towering red maple near the cabins. A defensive perimeter was hastily constructed around the area, with barricades and sharpened spikes pointing outward in every direction. Someone had really tried to hold out here.
Every square inch of wood or stone was covered in campfire moss, including a large, rotten tree stump in the center of the old bonfire. The place was lit with an orange glow that went on for acres in every direction.
Practically inside the fire ring, a large mound of the flaming moss burned peacefully. Even after all the years that had passed here, Hollis could tell what that moss covered up.
Bodies. Three of them, to be exact. Perfectly preserved to his eye, in burial shrouds of white, black, and burning orange. He could almost make out their faces.
It was a scene of death encased in everlasting fire. A final stand whose story was lost to time. Something terrible had happened here. Hollis was prepared to find out what.