I arrived where I had hidden the battery.
There were no signs that anyone-or anything else had come that way. Just a few broken twigs and a torn fern leaf on the ground from my own hurried movements the night before. I pulled aside the leaves I had used to cover the bag; and there it was.
I opened the bag and lifted up the lid of the clay jar. A powerful reek of ammonia and decaying flesh wafted up; I turned my head and made a face. Inside, floating belly up in what was now a discolored solution, was the purple battery parasite.
There was no telling whether it had died from its separation from its host, or whether I had placed it in a solution with too much or too little sugar, or whether the cold of night killed it. It could have been any of these, most likely all of them.
I poked at the body with a stick. In the leaf litter a few feet away there was a rustling; a bottom-feeder had been drawn already by the smell.
Why had it began decaying so quickly? That did not seem natural to me. Was that because it was a highly engineered creature, or was this a design feature so that these would not fall into the wrong hands?
I fished out the corpse and put it on the ground. I chased away whatever was drawing closer in the leaf litter, then reached into my pack for some papyrus and my ink well. It took me about 20 minutes to draw a half decent sketch. Then, I cut the creature open and did several more sketches off its innards. There was nothing inside it that I understood but I hoped perhaps someone else can make sense of these drawings.
If I had had some salt, or at least some hot, dry sand, I could've tried to preserve the creature, but of course I had no such luck. Even as I sketched, the corpse continued liquefying. The rustling returned in the leaf litter, and there were the tall droning of winged insects. I did not fear the scavengers, though in a large group of armored worms and flying beetles could be dangerous. I packed up my materials and left them to their feast.
But I was not done: I had one more place to visit. One I could not have told Fogrim about, especially in his disturbed state. I made my way back to the bandit campsite. I would learn whatever I could of these Mi-Go invaders. Perhaps, I would even learn something of value.
***
I arrived at the campsite. First I spied along its edges, checking for any evidence of a prepared ambush, or other unpleasantness. I found nothing, at least nothing that I could recognize or understand. A sudden wave of fear came upon me: what was I doing here? Millions of years in the past, probing at some monstrosity that just the distant memory of had otherwise fearless Fogrim terrified. I stopped for a moment: what should I do?
After what felt like days, self-loathing made my feet step one in front of the other, and take me into the camp clearing.
The campsite had been wrecked: the tents had been ripped opened and their frames tossed about the area like twigs. The cages we had found the captives in had also been crushed, as if flattened by something very heavy.
What I had not been prepared for was the bodies.
The bandits had been dissected. Their bodies had been cut into pieces and then stapled to several trees. I couldn’t make out any order to it; one head had been arranged sideways with both eyes removed and its tongue torn, and hanging between gray lips. Further up the tree, a leg had been stapled, some sort of black ooze dripping from the punctures. Below it were what seemed to be several sets of lungs tied around each other like deflated children's balloons. I was not as disturbed as you may think; one gets used to human butchery and carnage in Hyperborea, be it rotting pickpockets hanging from gibbets, or the shrunken heads of favored but culled slaves used as book ends. Yet, the meaninglessness of what I saw got to me. The more I stared at the trees, the more the pointlessness it seemed, and I became still more disturbed.
Suddenly, I heard a lizard and a centipede locked in a death battle, barely five feet from me. I regarded them, snapping out of my trance. The dog-sized lizard was losing; I drew my sword and killed them both.
Above, the sun had shifted clear across the sky. what had seemed like a few moments staring had actually been hours.
I looked away from the trees, shielding my eye with my hand.
I studied the rest of the site but found no artifacts to recover, no precious garbage, or used items. I did notice that there were strange, flattened marks in the ground. Something weighing several hundred pounds at least had made them. There were strange grooves in the dirt, they seemed to be footprints but were none that I recognized. Were they Mi-Go?
I squatted and ran my finger through a groove; whatever made it had crossed the galaxy.
I had seen crude inscriptions of the Mi-Go, but never anything more accurate than that. Whatever their true form was I had yet to be certain of. Something in me said I’d rather find out later than sooner, and I agreed with it. I quickly made a few sketches of the groove prints.
I of course did not draw what I saw in the trees.
***
When I returned to our camp, I found Fogrim waiting for me. Yura stood beside him. Her hands were cuffed behind her back and he held a chain that went to her collar.
"You took a long time! I was worried the Mi-Go may have taken you."
"No, though they send their regards. What's this?"
He held up the end of Yura’s chain. She carefully took it between her teeth, stepped up to me, and knelt.
"Please, take her as a gift," said Fogrim looking away. "I am sorry for striking you earlier, brother."
"Don't be silly Fogrim, it's alright. And I'm definitely not taking your from you. You two were made for each other – well, she certainly is."
"Take her," he frowned across his arms. "An apology without cost are words without weight."
"But a promise given by a warrior yet has weight? No Fogrim, you do not need to do this. No apology ever requires anything more than the weight of its own words. And I'm sorry, too."
Yura looked up at Fogrim.
"Are you sure, Brother?"
"Yes. Keep your girl. She will look amazing, walking through your vineyards with a basket against one hip and your brand on the other."
Fogrim smiled and nodded. He snapped his fingers at Yura who quickly stood and scurried away. We both watched her behind and her long legs, as she moved.
"Did you find your ‘bat tree’?" He asked.
"I did, but it was already dead. There was nothing worth bringing back, so I just took notes."
"It is a shame you return without anything of worth."
"Not at all! I have the next best thing to the actual artifact. And more. There must be books I can find on the Mi-Go. Will there be any at Ebugal?"
"At Ebugal?" He raised an eyebrow.
"So no? Isn't it a whole town?"
"There will be books, Gerard. I cannot say there will be any on those damned creatures. To write of such things is to invite-”
“Fine, fine,” I’d had enough superstition for the day. “I'll hope for a bit of luck then."
"We have no more luck to be had,” he shook his head. “We must now seek the fortune of the Gods."
I held up my hands.
"Let’s not get into that again. Are we ready to leave?"
"Yes, let us leave these cursed forests behind and sleep this night under a timber roof!
And so we departed.