Chương 62: Borrowed Tears

The forest clearing told a story written in violence. Caleb stepped into the expanse and stopped, his senses cataloging the devastation in fragments. The canopy overhead was open, letting sunlight spill through the light mist in glowing shafts. Small trees along the outskirts lay splintered at their bases with their trunks snapped like kindling. The ground was churned into a soup of mud and broken ferns, gouged by enormous claws and carved with deep furrows where something immense had been dragged.

A mosshide bear dominated the center of the clearing like a vast hillock of dark fur smothered under a suffocating layer of dense moss. The parasitic covering was uniform and added false bulk to the creature's frame. The beast's barrel-sized head remained frozen in a final snarl, revealing yellowed canines as long as Caleb's forearm. And there, running down the creature's left flank, was a jagged white scar that snaked through the moss like a lightning strike. Kamari raised a fist, halting the group. No one spoke.

The silence was only broken by the distant drip of moisture from the high boughs and the faint creak of settling timber. Caleb's [Spiritual Perception] swept the area for signs of life. The bear's aura was already fading, its spiritual signature dispersing into formless ambient essence. But there was another presence, weak and barely registering above the ambient energy of the forest. Amina pointed with two fingers toward the bear's side. Caleb followed her gesture.

A man was slumped against the beast's immense ribcage, half-hidden in shadow. His head was bowed, his arms limp at his sides; he looked like a puppet with its strings cut. The party moved forward as a unit while Caleb remained back. Kamari reached the body first and knelt, pressing fingers against the man's neck.

"He's still alive, if barely." Caleb circled around the bear's head and approached, stopping three paces away. Rufan was a corpse that had forgotten to die. Gray as old ash, the man's skin stretched taut across his frame, pulled drum-tight over protruding bone where muscle and fat had been devoured from within. The surface resembled leather left too long in the sun, weathered and cracked, splitting at the joints to reveal hollow cheeks and sunken, shadowed eye sockets.

Even his hair, once greasy and dark, had gone brittle and white, clinging to his scalp in wispy strands. He looked ancient.

"Holy mackerel," Caleb breathed. Kamari glanced up at him.

"This is what it looks like when a Vitality gambit is taken to the extreme. He traded his life force for the strength to bring the bear down. He's not the man he once was…" Caleb forced himself to step closer, burying the emotion under a layer of cold observation as he cataloged the details. Rufan's armor was shredded. Deep claw marks had torn through the thick leather, exposing ribs that jutted against papery skin. His right arm was bent at an unnatural angle, the bone clearly fractured.

Blood seeped from a dozen lacerations, but the flow was sluggish, Rufan too depleted to sustain proper circulation.

"Can we help him?" The question came out on reflex. Kamari shook his head.

"No. His candle is burnt down to the wax. Moving him would surely kill him, and he's beyond the point where any healer or consumable in Deadfall could save him now." He met Caleb's eyes.

"He's dead, lad. His body just hasn't realized it yet." The adventurer straightened, turning to the others.

"Form a perimeter. Let's… give Thalorin a moment." His team obeyed without question, spreading out to form a loose circle around the clearing. They faced outward, backs turned, granting Caleb a measure of privacy as he stood alone beside the dying man. Caleb took to a knee in the mud, the wet seeping through his pants. He looked past Rufan's ruined face to the bear's flank. The white scar stood out against the moss and fur, a jagged line that bore witness to a previous encounter.

Whoever had inflicted that wound had done it in a frenzy. Near the bear's enormous paw, pressed into the upturned earth, were the broken stems of fragile white flowers. Most had been pulverized into the mud, their petals reduced to faint smears. But one or two survived, their bell-shaped blooms tilting sideways. Moon-slipper orchids. But how do I… The combination hit him like a punch to the gut. The flower. The scar. [Perfect Memory] activated.

The present shattered, and Caleb fell through the cracks into Thal's past. Bright sunlight filtered through the canopy. Thal was twelve years old. Smaller hands clutched a handful of delicate white flowers, their stems still wet from where he'd carefully picked them. His heart raced with bubbling excitement. I found them! Mom'll love them for her birthday. He'd searched for over an hour, wandering farther from home than he was supposed to. But it would be worth it.

Moon-slipper orchids were her favorite, and they only grew in clearings a ways out from the village. She'd be so surprised. A twig snapped behind him and Thal turned. Meriel burst through the ferns, face pale and breath hitching in quick gasps. When she spotted him, her expression twisted between relief and terror.

"Thal!" She reached him in three strides and grabbed his hand, fingers digging into his skin.

"Look Mom, I found—""We need to leave! Now!" She dragged him back the way she had come, pulling hard enough to make him stumble. He'd never seen his mother like this. She was always calm and gentle; now she looked like she was about to cry. A roar split the air. The sound was so loud he felt its vibration in his chest, and birds shot up from the trees in a panicked cloud. Meriel stilled. Thal saw her go white. She turned, searching the forest, her hand moving to the small knife at her belt.

She whispered something under her breath. A prayer or a curse, Thal couldn't tell. Then her eyes widened. A mosshide bear hurtled through the undergrowth like a landslide. It was massive. A living mountain of fur and moss and savage power. Its eyes were black pits, locked on them with voracious hunger. Then it charged, the ground shaking with each stride. Meriel shoved Thal hard.

"Get in the log! Stay inside and don't look out! Don't even make a sound!" If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. Thal fell backward into the hollow trunk of a fallen tree. He scrambled deeper into the rotten wood, his small body fitting easily into the space, then turned and peered back through a knothole in the bark. Meriel stood in the middle of the glade. She was so small. The bear towered over her, a titan of teeth and claws.

She held the knife in both hands, the blade trembling. She shouted,"RUFAN! RUFAN!" Her voice was rough and desperate, a call for help that tore at Thal's heart. The memory accelerated, a blur of motion too fast to parse. E-tier opponents moving beyond the perception of a twelve-year-old child. Caleb seized control of the playback, slowing it down until the images became clear. The bear lunged. Meriel dodged left. The creature's paw slammed into the ground where she stood, raking ruts in the earth.

She slashed with the knife and the blade scored a shallow slice across the beast's forearm. Roaring, the bear lashed out again, and this time it… connected. The impact sent Meriel flying. She went down hard, rolling, her knife spinning away into the ferns. She tried to rise, but the bear was on her before she could stand. Thal watched through the knothole, paralyzed. His breath came in tiny, stuttering gasps. He wanted to run. Wanted to help! But he couldn't move.

A moment later Rufan exploded from the trees, a huge war-axe in his hands and his face twisted into a mask of rage. He charged straight at the beast, thundering his defiance. The bear turned to meet him, rearing up on its hind legs. The warrior swung, his war-axe arcing toward the mosshide's head. A giant paw shot up, claws extended, meeting the blade mid-strike with a metallic screech that set Thal's teeth on edge.

The impact should have stopped the attack cold, but Rufan's strength and technique drove through the deflection. He staggered the creature backward, its footing breaking as it stumbled over its own mass. For one critical heartbeat, the creature's flank was exposed. Rufan moved instantly. He pivoted hard, channeling all his momentum into a second, devastating swing. The axe blade carved deep into the bear's side, tearing through moss and hide in a savage stroke.

A gaping wound opened across its flank, dark blood fountaining across the surrounding flora. The bear bellowed in agony. It twisted away from the strike, its bulk crashing through the underbrush as it fled. Blood and torn vegetation marked its retreat, the creature's roar fading into the depths of the Virethane. Thal's father let it flee. He dropped the axe and fell to his knees beside Meriel's broken body where she lay still. Rufan gathered her into his arms, cradling her against his chest.

His hands were unsteady. Her blood soaked his shirt. He pressed his forehead to hers, his breath coming in ragged sobs.

"No. No, no, no! Meriel, please. Please don't leave me!" Her eyes fluttered open. She looked up at him, unfocused, her lips forming words Thal couldn't hear. Rufan wailed. The sound was horrible, a noise that came from somewhere deep and broken. He rocked her then, his tears falling onto her face, clutching her like he could hold her soul in place through sheer desperation. Thal crawled out of the log. He was trembling, his slight frame quaking so hard he could barely stand.

He clutched the crushed moon-slipper orchids in his tiny fist, the petals smeared with dirt.

"Daddy?" Rufan jerked his head up and looked at Thal. His face was streaked with tears, his eyes red and swollen. Then he saw the flower in Thal's grip. The grief in the man's expression darkened. Caleb snapped back to the present, gasping as the memory released him. His vision blurred. Chest heaving and hands shaking, he struggled to ground himself against the recoil as tears streamed down his face. The reaction was visceral, beyond his control. Thal's grief poured through him and didn't stop.

The boy's love for his mother, his terror, his guilt; all of it surged to the surface, overwhelming Caleb's stoicism. She died because of me! Because I wanted to pick flowers! The thought belonged to Thal, but the emotion behind it was shared and it tore at Caleb's heart. Even then, his mind remained his own. No, she died because a spirit beast attacked and killed her. That's not a child's fault. It's just the world being cruel. The tears kept falling. The duality was maddening: his body wept while his mind judged.

Two sets of memories somehow occupying the same space, reacting to the same stimulus in fundamentally different ways. Caleb curled his hands into fists. He wanted to scream in rage and pummel Rufan for what he'd done to Thal. Wanted to hug the dying man and comfort him. The conflict was paralyzing. Then Rufan stirred. His eyes dragged open, milky and unfocused. They wandered for a moment, lost, before settling on Caleb as recognition flitted across his wasted face.

"T-Thal..." The word was barely a breath, loosely shaped into sound. Rufan's cracked lips pulled into something that might have been a smile. It looked grotesque on his gaunt, skeletal features; a death's-head grin.

"I got… the old sow. For her. I... I finally did it." He reached out with a withered hand. The fingers shook, the joints swollen and arthritic from the Vitality burn. He stretched toward Caleb, palm up, begging for contact. For validation. Caleb just stared at the hand. You could lie, Foster. Try to give him some peace here at the end. The thought was tempting. A simple word, a nod. Absolution for someone who had suffered more than any human should. But Caleb flashed to the memories. Thal's memories.

The beatings and neglect. The casual cruelty. Cold, hateful stares that greeted the boy every morning for years. His father had blamed a child for a tragedy. He'd destroyed Thal's life to deflect from his own broken heart. That wasn't so easy to forget. Caleb's tears continued to fall, but he didn't move. He couldn't bring himself to do it. He remained on his knee in the mud, silent and still, staring at the man who had made Thal's existence a living hell. The dying man wavered.

A furrow appeared between his brows, confusion shifting across his face as he blinked, straining to see why his son wouldn't answer.

"Thal? Did... did you see, lad? I killed it. The bear. I... I saved you." Caleb offered no reply, yet a touch of unease began creeping up his spine. Perhaps… perhaps forgiveness is the way. This feels… wrong. Suddenly Rufan's arm dropped, falling limply to his side. The haze deepened as the delirium pulled him back under. His eyes went distant again, sliding past Caleb to stare at something only he could see.

"Meriel..." he whispered.

"I-I did it. I kept him safe. I... I'm coming." His body shuddered. The adrenaline that had sustained him through the fight was gone, the Vitality gambit finally burning through the last reserves of his life force. Now the pain flooded back. Rufan hitched and his chest spasmed, a low, animal whimper escaping his throat to build into a strangled gasp. His fingers clawed at the dirt while his back arched, his frame seizing in its final moments. Caleb watched, feeling a pang of regret at his inaction.

The tears had slowed their fall down his face as the emotional storm inside him settled into resolve. I'm sorry I couldn't forgive you, Rufan Caldorn. He drew his harvesting knife. The edge gleamed in the wan light shining through the broken foliage. But I will give you rest. Caleb leaned forward. He placed his left hand gently over Rufan's heart, feeling the weak, erratic flutter beneath the desiccated flesh. He brought the knife up with his right hand, angling the point down. He drove it in.

The blade punched through skin and cartilage, finding the space between ribs. It sank to the hilt, the steel piercing the dying heart in one smooth motion. Rufan shuddered once. His eyes widened. His mouth opened, but no sound came out. He stared up at Caleb, his expression one of shock and... relief. Then he went still. Caleb pulled it free. Blood welled from the wound, dark and sluggish. He wiped it clean on a patch of Rufan's clothes and sheathed it, then stood, his legs unsteady.

Kamari stepped into his peripheral vision, saying nothing as he looked at the body.

"It's done," Caleb said quietly. Kamari nodded. He raised his voice, calling to the others.

"Bryon. Jorik. Bring the shovels. Senna, see if this beast has a stone. Amina, you're on watch." Excavating the pit took a while. The earth was soft, sodden with moisture from the perpetual damp. That only made it heavier. Still, it gave way easily under the spades, but the sheer scope required time and effort. Caleb and Kamari worked in silence, not finding it necessary to rotate with the others. The physical labor grounded Caleb.

The heat in his shoulders, the weight of the wet soil, the sweat cooling on his skin; it all anchored him in the present, burning off the emotional residue of the tears. By the time they were finished, a rectangular pit yawned in the clearing, deep enough to keep scavengers at bay. They lowered Rufan's body gently into the grave. Kamari climbed out first, then reached down to help Caleb. The veterans gathered around the edge of the pit, their heads bowed. No one spoke.

After a brief moment of silence, Caleb and Kamari gently filled the grave as Rufan's body disappeared beneath the earth to be swallowed by the forest. When it was done, a mound of dark soil sat amidst the green. Caleb stepped back, his hands filthy. He looked at the grave, then at the clearing, then toward the far side of the battlefield. There, standing tall amidst a patch of flattened ferns, was a single moon-slipper orchid. It had survived the mortal combat.

A pristine specimen, the delicate white bloom tilted sideways, catching the light. He crossed to it and knelt to pick the flower, carefully cradling it in his palm. He stared at the bloom for a long moment, remembering the boy in the log, the child who had wanted to make his mother smile. Returning to the burial site, he set the flower on the fresh dirt at the head of the mound and lingered there, looking down at the marker. The discord in his chest had quieted. Grown distant.

The unfinished business had been laid to rest. Only one thing remained.