Daniyah let him work in silence, letting the forest swallow his grunts and curses. She sank against the rough bark, and the forest swallowed her shadow. She leaned back and watched him with narrowed eyes, letting him grunt and strain under the task of digging and burying. She let him be busy without interruption. Letting the sharp scrape of spade on earth, the sickly scent of vomit buried in the soil, fill the silence.

Let him dig. Let him sweat. Let him earn the mess he’d made.

Her fingers traced idle patterns over the coins and charms dangling from her wrists. Every little piece was a promise of control in a world mad with shadows and whispers. She’d heard all the voices. The whispers of the hungriest, deceitful things lurking just beyond the veil. Finally, she let a long, slow exhale drift past her lips and tilted her head toward him. “So,” she said. “Edelweiss?”

"What is it? Something I ought to know?” For a moment the world felt suspended, just him, her, and the night pressing in around them.
 
Crunch, scrape, ditch. Crunch, scrape, ditch. Crunch, scrape-

"So... Edelweiss... Something I ought to know?"

Felt his breath run cold as it left him. Felt his hair bunch up again. Be pulled again. Tight and firm as fingers made sure no strand spilled over his eyes. Touched soft the way up his neck. Whispered over ear as he gathered all the strands and twined them into braids.

"It doesn't look so bad, long, you know,"

Black haired, and smirking. "Well, I'm glad you think so,"

"Would you rather I not remind you?" he teased.

"I didn't say that," he smiled, all teeth as he turned over his shoulder.

A smack on the back. "Eyes forward, Garrod, if you want it all neat the way you like it,"

Turned forward. Settled unto the grass. Knelt as he was. Closed his eyes. "The way I like it, huh, Edelweiss?" felt the braids hang down the small of his back.


Didn't stop the knife from running.

Ditch.

Crunch. Scrape. Ditch.

"Nothing to know," pat the mound of dirt over the sick. Smoothed it down with the spade head, like it mattered at all.
 
Daniyah didn’t look up. She was rolling one of her silver coins between thumb and forefinger, watching the way it caught the moonlight.

“If you say so,” she murmured, not unkindly. No edge to it. Just letting it lie where it fell.

Whatever Edelweiss was, it wasn’t her business unless it made itself her business. Ghosts were like drunks in a tavern, half the time they spat nonsense, and the other half... don’t waste their energy. Not on nothing. Not on names without weight. Not unless, they smell blood under the skin... some weakness, some raw old thing you’d rather keep dead and buried.

Daniyah heard enough of their whisper-games to know the difference between noise and bait.

“Let me know if any more nothings shows up.” she added dryly, eyes half-lidded. She leaned back again, elbows on the thick moss, and gave the coin one last flick before slipping it back into her pouch.
 
He was glad she let it alone. Gave a sound that was close enough to acknowledgment. "First to know," he said. Empty.

He stood. Wavered a moment. Fatigue, mixed with the burnout. Choked up on the spade. Turned toward his space in the camp, but lingered a moment.

There was another name there. Amidst all the twist and haze of nothings. A name he was sure he had heard well before drinking the poison. Tavern tales and campfire mutterings. Never right doubted them. But they had been said. One after the other. An Old Hunger.

Went to his pack without a word. Set spade down. Unfurled the bedroll.

Smelled the oils, still lingering in the air. Steps away. The feint sour of bile about his lip. Snarled. Turned in.

Didn't much sleep.

Started a fire come dawn. Set salted pork to fry. Just long enough to render fat and get some color. Old bread sopped up the grease after. Kept plenty in the old iron pan. Poured in water and stirred it as it hissed with a good stick he had whittled down. Pinched some salt he had stashed. Tossed in some wild onion flowers he had found, growing about. Boiled up some beans. Watched them as they slowly turned to stew.

All pop and hiss of slowly thickening water, and burning pine.
 
Daniyah staggered out from the shrubs like a small apocalypse, boots squelching in the damp forest floor. The mules lifted their heads, ears flicking, Oscar's nostrils flaring as if to say, here we go again. She stopped just long enough to let a burp roll out, loud. "Hrrrk!" The bottle in her hand swung with each step, dark liquid sloshing against the frosted green glass.

She wiped her mouth with the back of her sleeve and grinned, sharp and feral. “Found her.” she said, voice cutting through the morning mist like a whetstone across steel. “Urp! Pack your shit. We’re leaving." The mules shuffled nervously, and from Garrod’s fire a small smoke spiraled lazily upward. Daniyah’s eyes swept over it, assessing, calculating.

The wraithbinder stomped forward again, morning dew spraying from each step. The bottle thumped against her hip as she moved toward the pale mule.
 
Ladled hot bean slurry into a bowl. Scoop after scoop. Steam curled off it. "Kidney beans, mild and earthy with their soft sweetness. Bits of cut up pork for body and flavor." He laid a slice of the slightly toasted bread over top. Would let the steam soften it.

Wasn't hard cutting off her path. Thumped the bowl there at her center.

Green eye full on her. "Eat before we go," he said flat. Looked down to make sure she had the thing in her hands before he let it go. "I'll pack up," a hint of wild onion on the steam curls wafting up from the bowl between them. "Still flesh and bone,"gave the bowl one last shove. "Still need food," Stepped back to the campfire. Started filling a second bowl.
 
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"Still flesh and bone"

Eyeing Garrod like he’d suggested she eat spiders. “Mmph.” Not quite a word. Not quite a grunt. More a guttural noise of reluctant truce.

Daniyah blinked at the bowl like it had personally offended her. She squinted at the bean mush. Hot enough to sting through her gloves. It smelled like hard work, but her stomach still lurched at it. She dropped onto a crooked log with a sigh that rattled through her chest like loose bones. The bowl thumped against her palm, steam curling up and stinging her eyes. She poked at the beans with a trembling spoon.

She forced one bite in. Chewed it slowly, painfully, like she was grinding out some penance. Swallowed with a low groan, stomach lurching as if to reject the effort. Another bite, and she had to set the bowl down for a moment, hands shaking. Her muscles in her abdomen pitched violently, threatening to revolt. She couldn’t even remember the last time she’d had something warm, something real, that wasn’t tainted or foul. This stew was probably the best she’d ever tasted.

Her body barely remembered what it was to digest properly. Muscles tensed around her stomach, used to emptiness and poison, and each swallow felt like convincing an old, uncooperative engine to turn over. It wasn’t the food that was bad. It was her.

The bean slurry sat heavy in her gut, the pork fat and onion crawling under her ribs like it wanted to fight its way back up. She swallowed, gagged once, fought down the bile that still clawed at her throat, and breathed through the ache in her chest. Warmth, food, poison, grog. It all swirled together, a miserable stew. She had no choice but to endure.

"By all the damned…” she said finally, voice raw. “Even food hates me..." Her hand shook as she lifted the spoon, another dry gag threatening to undo her progress. One bite. Chewed like she was gnawing through iron. Swallowed with a grunt that might’ve been “thanks,” might’ve been “fuck it all.”


Daniyah pushed the last bite down with a grimace, fighting the churn in her belly. She set the bowl on the ground, fingers lingering for a moment on the warm ceramic, then looked up at him with a flat, tired nod. “Thank you,” she muttered with a rough voice. She didn’t wait for a reply, just shoved the bowl toward him and straightened, strode off toward the mules.
 
Fire ash used to clean out the pan. Nonessential left in a drop bag. Had it ready to pull up into a tree. Tied the line down around a trunk. Got into his kit. Struggled a bit with a few of the arming harnesses. Stiffness in the muscles. Threats to sprain.

Fucking poison.

Got it on anyway. Greatsword hefted onto his back. Belted. Side-sword and dagger. Grabbed up the gauntlet. Strapped it onto the side of his hunting pack. Got back to Dani and the bowl.

Picked up his bowl, and had his brows pinch, and his mouth quirk as he watched her eat. Try to eat. If you could call it eating. It looked more like, struggling. A fight. Submitting sustenance, like a wrestler might an opponent.

Slow. Agonized. Like everything inside her rejected the meal.

Garrod's Face screwed up all the more. Spiraled more into its confusion. Shook his head. Ate. Quick scrapes saw the bowl emptied. Hardly any joy in it. But the full stomach felt good.

Thank you,

He looked the bowl over. "You're welcome," he said plainly. Got up, and stashed them into the drop bag. Untied its line and hoisted it up, hand over hand. Tied it down at the end of things once it was dangling, and carried on. Smaller pack set on his back, sword at the ready.

"How'd you find it?" he asked, nearer to the mules. Couldn't quite see her through the brush, and past the pair of beast's mass.
 
She moved around the animals with efficient, deliberate steps, checking harnesses and adjusting packs, every motion tight with urgency

"Simple enough," she said, voice sharp and dry. "Went to the farm down the valley. Asked about." Nothing fancy. No omens, no signs in the wind. She held the reins loosely, letting the mules nudge against her. Her eyes flicked over the trees, the shadows curling and stretching in the morning light.

Tugging the mules forward. "Just old eyes, scared eyes, pointing the way. If you’re looking for the dead, sometimes you just ask the living.” She shook her head softly. The mules snorted and shuffled behind her, Oscar's load; the big chest wrapped in chains rattling with every step.

Daniyah swung herself up onto the pale mule. Nudged the mules into a steady march.

East.
 
His eye watched her. As she tugged the mules unto the trail.

Saw the glitter of coins wrapped about them for a chime between their steps. Blinked.

And those blasted bells, Oh Bearer Mine, his fiend whispered, so near his left ear and unto his pack.

Kept it on his blind side. Didn't stop his green eye from looking. Or his right hand from twitching. Finger's curling.

"Tried and true," he sounded to the recounting.

Its what had put him onto the Widow's trail the first time out. Found out where they had found the bodies. Followed up the river between the spots where the corpses had snagged and washed up.

Cold metal rattling. The shift of lumber, heavy weight as the links knocked against it. His eye flung back its look. Saw the chest, there on one mule. Movement. Trained onto her up on the other. Set to march. So he bowed his head, marched on after.

East.

Rattle of the chains was something too much like those coins.

"What's in the box?"
 
"What's in the box?"

Like it was just a box.
Like it was something with a bottom.
Something that could end.

Maybe if she ignored the question, it might un-ask itself?




It did not.

Daniyah’s fingers tightened around the reins. Knuckles turned white and leather creaked. There were secrets that should not be revealed. Secrets that had been hidden since the dawn of time. Daniyah hadn't opened the chest since she put It inside, and her whole being screamed with reluctance; don't touch It again! She forced her gaze forward, past the mule, to the path ahead.

Her jaw clenched tight. She didn’t need to explain, didn’t want to. She could still feel the edges of that darkness pressing against her mind, against her skull. Her pulse thudded in her temples, each beat echoing of the presence she’d barely survived. The pale mule snorted, uneasy under her tension. Hooves crunching over dead pine needles and fallen pine cones.

"Forget the box,” she snapped. Trembling with something between fear and fury. A raw panic she could barely contain. Aware that no matter what she answered, he would remain curious. She turned her face away, but not fast enough to hide the flicker in her expression. That shadow of something crushed. It was not just fear, not just memory. Dread. The kind that worms under and inside the heart.

“Focus on the Widow."
 
It was like seeing a star fall unto itself. Weight that had held its burning heart up to the next cycle of ignition, too heavy to keep its skin together. Carried too much within its core to go on, as it had for so long.

Turned to wax.

Hollowed out and ran to puddle at its base. Its shape gave way, All that it had kept inside, for all the time it had burned. Run out.

She asks, and asks, Oh Bearer Mine, but she will no tel~ Belephus purred into a laugh.

"Forget the box," words their own bite.

His eye regarded her. Took her in. All shake and grind of teeth.

Odd.

All the things she was. Fingers in his hair. Knuckles betwixt his teeth. Too twisted up to eat pork and beans. A drunk soaking in her own juices. But she was no coward.

And there she was.

Twisting in her own skin.

His eye fell back unto the box. Almost was like he felt its boards rattle. Its chains quake. Something inside. Dying so hard it pulled at the world around it. Drew it all in and warped it. Strange. Dark. Cold.

You wonder too, don't you, Oh Bearer Mine? Hissed, gleeful, his fiend's whisper. What it tastes like.

"The widow," he said with a nod. Marched on to the tune of those cold metal links. Rattling against the box. Mules steady as they could, over waste of the forest, crushed there the same beside its promise.

"The wind will die as we grow close to her," he spoke into the air. Legs heavy after so many steps behind the pair of pack beasts. "The song, couldn't even hear it," he confessed, as they strode through the hillside terrain. Heard the leaves rustle, heard pine cones fall unto the soft earth.

The rush of a river, distant to the ear.

"Could be miles out still," he said. Eye on the horizon about them. All down slope, and bramble bushes. "Could be, she's just about that monolith, just there," he reached up and took a bunch of pine needles from a low hanging branch. Snapped it. Crushed them between his right hand. Rubbed the sap into his pads. Brought them to his nose. "Burn a candle, flame might suss her out?"

There at the edges of their sanity.

The chords of a most haunted voice plucked their strings. Sweet in the ears.

"Garrod you runt, get on over here," came the gravel old voice, too familiar.

"Shit," he hissed. Right hand clenched tight. Eye shot to the Wraithbinder. "Do you hear it?"

Weeping Widows. Born from tragedies. The cazadore remembered. Sought not, to cause more pain to its victims. Not truly.

Just wanted to bring them the joy that was denied to them. Let them find true peace, with the guidance of one they loved and missed.

The final embrace.
 
"Isn't it lonely to be Cazadore? Everyone's afraid of you, right? No one dares to trust you... except maybe your own people, and how much fun can they be to deal with?"

Her heart stumbled. Her mouth opened around a name she didn’t mean to say. The voice had curled just right, velvet smooth, a little rasp in the back of the throat, that lilting drag he always had when teasing her into arguments or out of her clothes. She hadn’t heard that voice in years. She’d buried it, burned it, broken it to pieces and locked the shards in her ribs.

And there it was again, like it had never left her.
Daniyah turned sharply in the saddle.

But it wasn’t him.
Of course it wasn’t.

Just Garrod.
Just the grump.

With his green eye that looked like it was trying to see straight through her.
With his serious face, like he’d been born mid-funeral.
That was what was waiting when she turned around.

Not the voice she’d heard. Not the man she'd mourned. Felt her lip curl in something that could’ve been laughter if it wasn’t so close to a sob.

Daniyah scowled so hard it made her headache worse. Her mouth snapped shut. She turned forward again, muttering under her breath: “Fucking fantastic." She spat to the side, half at the dirt, half at fate.

“The bitch is near.”
 
Daniyah's gaze caught him cold as an ice chilled drink. Were those tears clinging there at the corner of her eyes? Sadness, writ deep as a good knife would carve.

Was no real surprise to him. Was it?

"You live long enough, and you see it all, torn away," Old Sinns said, voice as warm as the courage he had in his bottles. "Ripped to pieces, and left to bloody trails for you to follow," a laugh. Sweet as the smell of that nasty old drink. "Turn any sod with a soul, heartless," He said. As if there were anything worse. Garrod could hear the glug push down the old Cazadore's throat. All loose skin and sagged. "Told you not to go, lad,"

How Garrod wanted to turn and see him.

Did not. Would not. Kept on his breathing. Ears too keen to the rattle of the chains. The soft sounds of the mules. Ears flicking. Tails snapping. A stuttered breath pushed out of Casper's snout. A quiet bray from Oscar. The seasoned pack mule smart enough to get angry. Hoof raked over the grit of the forest floor.

Anchors, all of them.
Through the beams of gold poured through the windows in the glowing green canopy, Garrod saw her coins gleaming. Those same ones she had trailed across herself like so many leylines on a map.

Daniya's brow twisted. Angular and sharp. Rage painted warm hurt across her face. Like candle's light, come gleam off her. Harsh curses spat, and broke what feint hold the song had caressed across Garrod's ears.

"The bitch is near."

"Bitter as that poison," he said still dazed. No mock in how fond the words had ached from him. Craned his neck with a stretch. Felt the bend and pull across the chords that wound to his mind. "She is out there then," he looked across the stout trunks of bark laden sentinels. Saw where the earth dipped down steeper. "Whole world just falls off," he said, thoughtless.

Proud and idiot fool you are, Oh Bearer Mine, Belephus smiled, all teeth in the dark corner where he hid. Risk yourself to the song. Risk her to it too. laughter like shards of glass come crash against stone. That only I could save You from.

Garrod adjusted the straps of his pack. the gauntlet jostled. Almost seemed to stir, like the last kicks of a crab, too long out of the sea. The Cazadore stepped toward the forest. Cautious.

The wind still stirred. Feint against the boughs.

Could feel how it moved through needles and branches. Could smell the bright herb and bite of pine sap. Felt his mind bend. Balance shifted. Like he had moved too fast for his own blood. Like he had partook in one too many drinks. Stumbled a step. Jut his boot out with a stomp.

"Alright then," he hissed. Dropped the pack with a practiced sling off the shoulders. Grabbed up the slab of magicked steel he kept at his back. Ran fingers over the runes like a man who needed to touch something he knew was real. "Pull me in, you fucking ghost,"

An old drunkard's laugh. "Boy, you think you are ready to take on old Sinns?" the wind pushed a cold breath through the woods. "Too big for your britches, I say," voice all honey and burnt sugar.

"Fucking old man," Garrod growled. Eye snapped to see the old swordsman there but yards away. Cloak still as the cloudless sky come midnight.

Of course the old fuck smiled.
 
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“Bitter as poison? Shit, that’s rich.” A pale brow arched, voice raspy. "You’re damn right. Atter still swimming in me. But look at you...” Daniyah’s boots hit the ground with a dull thump as she dismounted, landing harder than she meant to. Her balance was off, like her bones didn’t quite know which way was up anymore. She looked at Garrod and the far-off glimmer in his eye made her want to slap the sense back into him.

“What’s this, a bloody performance piece?" She muttered while she stepped closer, her boot sinking in the loam. "‘Whole world just falls off’?" Her eyes flicked toward the treeline, the dip where the mist hung like wet sheets over a grave. “She’s out there, yeah. Weeping Widow. Eats souls, whispers sweet nothings in your dead grandmother’s voice, then rips your heart out your ass. So maybe...just maybe... Quit brooding like you're some cursed fuck out of a tragedy and get ready.”

Daniyah shoved her hair back with both hands, dragging it out of her face with a growl like she was about to start biting. Fingers raking through the tangled mess, breathing hard. Tried her best ignoring the faint tug of nausea in her gut. Turned on her heel. She stomped back toward the mules and tied them to a crooked birch. They gave her a look, long-suffering, half-lidded. Even the beasts had more patience than she did.

Then she yanked open one of the side packs, pulled the tuning fork free, a long needlelike prong of obsidian-dark metal etched with spirit script. She held up the fork and said, flat as slate:

“I only brought one.”

A lie, of course. She had two more tucked down the pack, but she wasn’t handing one over. Someone had to get up close. Someone had to be the bait. And she was the one with a crossbow.

“When I strike this,” she said as she rolled the tuning fork between her fingers, cold and humming faintly already. “I won’t hear a single word you say until the spell runs out. So make any last poetic declarations now, swordsman.” she slotted the fork under her bracer.

Her hand dropped to the crossbow slung across her back. She pulled it around front in one smooth motion. Checked the string, taut. Ran a finger over the slide. Then the bolt. Not some hunting dart for deer. This was ghost-killer steel. The broadhead was thick and jagged, barbed like a thorn vine, and blackened with iron soot. Its shaft was inlaid with a spiral of silver filament. The tip had been hammered hollow and filled with a cocktail of powdered ash bark, sulphur, and saltpeter.
 
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