For a few days after the accident with foreign mana, Mari would not let Arien near the cows unless someone went with him. He thought it was excessive, but the pain in his mana channels made arguing difficult.
It had dulled since the first day, but every attempt to move mana still felt like dragging thread through a wound. Even Mana Sense, usually effortless, left a faint ache behind his eyes if he pushed too hard.
He did as he was told, more or less. He ate what Mari put in front of him, slept when she ordered him to sleep, and let Alia follow him to the pasture with all the solemn authority of someone a couple years older and therefore practically ancient. Being unable to experiment was the worst part.
By the fourth evening, he was sitting by the hearth with a blanket around his shoulders, listening to rain tap softly against the shutters and considering whether dying of boredom would count as a natural death.
Sari sat nearby, mending one of Wod’s shirts with quick, irritated movements. “You look like someone buried your favorite cow,” she said.
Arien gave her a wounded look. Sari smiled faintly and returned to the shirt, though the smile did not last long.
Across the room, Terry sat with his pipe unlit between his fingers. Arien caught him looking over more than once, though each time his father quickly returned his attention to the pipe.
“You were lucky,” Terry said at last.
Arien looked up. “With the cows?”
“With whatever foolishness put you on your back for two days.” Terry took the pipe from his mouth and tapped the ash into the hearth. “Your mother says you were curious. That’s exactly what worries me. Curiosity is good when it makes you ask which mushrooms are safe. Less so when you decide tasting one is the quickest way to find out.”So that was Terry’s theory. Arien saw no reason to correct him.
Sari snorted. “That sounds like half the stories you tell us.”
Terry gave her a dry look. “Most of the stories were about people who were already strong enough to survive being stupid.”
Wod laughed from the table.
Sari set the shirt in her lap. “Those are just stories. It’s easy to scare children with tales about people who left home, ignored every warning, and ended up dead.”
Terry was quiet for a moment. Then he sighed and set his pipe aside. “Alright. Then I’ll tell you one I know really happened.” He leaned back in his chair. “It’s about one of my grandfather’s adventures.”
Wod straightened at the table, while Alia edged closer to Mari. Terry rarely spoke about his own family. He told stories of kings, gods, cursed swords, and cities with walls higher than hills, but almost never about the people who had come before him.
“My grandfather told me this when I was about Wod’s age and still dreamed of becoming an Explorer someday.”
Terry finally lit his pipe. A thin curl of smoke rose toward the rafters.
“My grandfather wasn’t anyone important. He was a farmer’s son, seventeen years old and convinced he was ready to see more of the world. When soldiers came through his village asking for men who knew the old forest paths, he volunteered. The promise of silver helped too.
“They were headed toward the Widow Swamps. Fortunately, they didn’t have to go deep inside, only near the border, where a Portal had opened. It was a small one, too small to require an army, but large enough to cause trouble.
“At first, my grandfather thought the soldiers were fools. They moved slowly, stopping to inspect patches of mud, broken branches, and stretches of road where the birds had gone quiet.
“They found the first body before noon. A charcoal burner lying beside the road, already dead for at least two days. One of the soldiers went over to check him. Before he got close, the body suddenly moved, pushed itself onto its hands and knees, and lunged at him.”
Arien’s attention sharpened despite the ache behind his eyes. Undead. Actual undead, not something from a tavern story or a game with predictable weaknesses and loot tables.
“The soldiers put it down quickly. Afterward, the captain ordered them to drag the body away from the road and burn it. The fingers were still twitching when they threw it into the fire.”
Stolen story; please report.
Mari traced the sign of Sul over her chest. Sari did not.
“That would have been a good time to turn back,” Terry said. “The soldiers had orders, though, so they kept following the old road. By evening, they found the Portal site.”
“What did it look like?” Arien asked before he could stop himself.
Terry studied him for a moment. “Wrong. The trees leaned away from it. The ground was black and soft, though there had been no rain for days. Flies covered everything. There were bodies there too. Men. Horses. Things that had once been wolves. All of them dead.
“The first Zombie rose while one of the soldiers was checking the bodies. It was slow and clumsy, and the soldier laughed when it tried to grab him. Then three more rose behind him.
“One Zombie isn’t much of a problem. Several are different, especially when you’re standing in mud and don’t know which corpse will get up next.
“The captain pulled the soldier clear. Lost two fingers doing it. After that, no one laughed.
“They tried to burn the bodies, but more undead began emerging from the forest and the roadside ditches. Then others started coming through the Portal itself.
“The soldiers formed a defensive ring around the wounded and the fires, but the dead kept pressing forward in greater numbers. Every time they cut one down, another seemed to take its place.”
Arien pictured the scene from Terry’s description: mud underfoot, smoke blowing between the trees, and men struggling not to fall while corpses kept pressing forward no matter how many they cut down. It was nothing like the clean battles he remembered from games.
“The soldiers kept holding the line, but barely. By then, my grandfather was convinced they were going to be overwhelmed.
“Near midnight, a group of Explorers finally arrived. Ten of them, a full Guild team.”
Terry drew on his pipe.
“My grandfather had never seen equipment like theirs. Around several of them, the air seemed to waver slightly, like heat rising from a road in summer. One carried a spear with blue light running along the blade. Another wore armor made of overlapping scales, while the woman in the feathered cloak seemed to stir the air around her whenever she moved.”
“They must have been incredible,” Sari said.
“They were, just not like the bards make it sound. They barely spoke, and none of them seemed excited to be there. They looked over the dead, the wounded, the soldiers holding the line, and the Portal beyond the trees before cutting straight toward it.
“The dead barely slowed them. They didn’t stop to clear the area or help with anything that wasn’t directly in their path. My grandfather had watched soldiers fight all day, but the Explorers were on another level entirely.
“The captain shouted after them, begging them to help the wounded first. The woman with the feather cloak looked back and said, ‘If the Portal stays open, there will be no wounded to help.’ Then she continued toward it.”
“So they just left them?” Sari asked.
“They went for the Portal,” Mari said. “If they hadn’t closed it, more people would have died.”
Sari frowned but said nothing.
“The Explorers cut their way through and, one by one, stepped inside,” Terry continued.
“What happened inside?” Arien asked.
Terry shook his head. “No one knows. Once the last of them crossed, they vanished from sight. The Portal stayed open, but nothing came back through it. No voices, no clash of steel, not even the sound of a spell.
“The soldiers kept fighting while the dead continued coming through the trees. Some tried to pull the wounded away from the Portal, while others simply held the line.
“My grandfather never knew how long it lasted. By the end, he had stopped wondering whether the Explorers were coming back and started wondering whether Sul would receive him in the heavens, and whether his mother would ever learn where he had died.
“Then the dead simply collapsed.
“Eight Explorers came back through the Portal. The woman with the feather cloak was bleeding from one ear and carrying a broken sword that hadn’t been hers when she entered. Another was laughing quietly to himself and wouldn’t stop.
“The tallest of them only said, ‘The anchor is dead. Burn the bodies before sunrise.’
“The Portal folded in on itself without thunder or any flash of light and disappeared.
“Then the soldiers counted the living. Sixty-eight had marched out. Twenty-six came back. My grandfather was one of them.
“He came home with silver, a scar from wrist to elbow, and no more interest in old roads. His parents thought he was lucky to be alive. He spent the next fifty years calling himself a fool.”
Sari’s gaze stayed fixed on the hearth. “But he got to see it.”
Terry frowned. “See what?”
“The world. Explorers. Places beyond these villages.”
“And he watched a great many people die.”
Sari picked up the shirt again but did not start sewing. “Maybe that was still better than never leaving.”
Mari set the bowl down harder than necessary.
“Sari.”
“No, really. Every story ends the same way. Stay home, keep your head down, and be grateful if nothing worse happens. Is that supposed to be wisdom?”
Terry rubbed a hand over his face. “For people like us, nothing worse happening is not a small thing.”
Sari looked down at the shirt and said nothing.
Arien looked at Terry a little differently after that. He had always known him as a farmer who smoked by the hearth and filled the evenings with stories, but now he understood that Terry’s caution had not come from ignorance of the wider world. He knew enough about it to choose the village anyway.
He could respect that, even if he could not make himself want the same life.