[distant-winter]

[distant-winter]

[distant-winter]

[distant-winter]

Crackling, first subtle but building steadily. Steadily building until quickly until exponentially. Loud. Loudest. Can't hear a thing.

The Geiger counter beneath my skull. It must be unsafe. Radiation. Background. Foreground. Out of focus. Can't see a thing.

Microwave cooking the meat within bone. Flesh made red. Made purple. Spots. Dots. Lines that intersect with saturated hues. Fuzzy meat clung to dead frame. Can't feel a thing.

Gagging. Crying. Choking. Alive. A life. Just one. A short one. But still one.

[distant-winter]

I understand now the importance of the Artificer’s heating drums. Tonight we’d had a fire and it must’ve attracted some ne’er-do-well. A beacon in the darkness we were. Stole my helmet and some of Dog-head’s scrolls.

-B

[distant-winter]

I’ve seen some outsiders taking shelter in the fogwalker camps. I tried to scrounge last night when they had fallen asleep. Their shinies were hardly hidden. If it weren’t for that screaming drum I’d have had them.

-G

[distant-winter]

Again we ran upon the stranger in the woods. His artifacts proved useful after our first meeting. I’ve wondered how he lives so well out here in the unending darkness. Today he told me his past. Why he’s come here I’ll never understand.

-B

[distant-winter]

[distant-winter]

[distant-winter]

[distant-winter]

[distant-winter]

Last night we sat there around his strange camp stove for hours. The night crept by slowly, without even a rising sun to signal its departure.

I could make out little of his form. Between his wide-brimmed hat, cloak, and steel plate mask there were few identifiable features. I noticed his fingers were capped with metal contraptions. How odd.

I remember talking to that stranger, and taking in the stove's warmth. I appreciated how it helped chase off the relentless chill of wet foggy air.

He let me try some drags from his pipe. Another pipe like it I never have seen. It was shaped like a stick and made of some warm metal. When I held it in hand I felt the rod heat up, boiling a vial at the end I could inhale from. It was smooth. Unnaturally so. It made me worry less about the night.

After that the stranger was more chatty. Like he thought I could be trusted. While my comrades slept in their bags the stranger told me stories of his past. What was true or embellished I would never know.

Before we'd left the next morning the stranger had disappeared out under the black cloaked canopy of the Rotwilds; leaving behind his stove and a single full vial of what he'd called "Sorcerer's Elixir".

How strange he was, and yet he showed me kindness.

-B

[distant-winter]

[distant-winter]

[distant-winter]

[distant-winter]