The storyteller had begun audibly struggling to speak near the end of his tale, even though he’d cut it down for length already. He coughed up a clump of bloody mucus and spit it into the fire, flushing the pain with a long sip of greenish vitality elixir. The bottle’s stabilization seals rustled in his grip. 

“Do you think there are kernels of truth in there?” asked the one-armed amazon between taking bites of fire-seared meat right off the iron skewer. The red glow of lightgems scattered around the camp combined with the fire did much to hide numerous fresh bruises.

Strolvath took his time to respond, slowly sipping herbal elixir from the seal-covered bottle in his hand in a vain attempt to suppress his pain. Everything hurt, from his muscles to his organs to his very bones, and it would remain so for days to come - this was the price of the moniker Victory Demon. The price of donning the Hellfire Mantle.

With a pained grin he answered, “Yeah. The Sage of Fog had these glyphic mirror telescopes that could be made to adjust for the brightness of what you were lookin’ at. I looked at the sun through one n’ saw them black rods with my own eyes, truly great towers beyond the scale of any human make. They had… Great gates, as if they were meant to be visited.”

Zelsys didn’t have a response, and she didn’t feel like Strolvath would’ve had the strength to keep talking anyway.

Indeed, this story had very much pulled her to the very edge of sleep, and she slipped under the waves of unconsciousness soon after. 

Nagging pain dragged her into consciousness. The pain of her stump arm, the pain of the bruises she’d sustained in her bout with Alcerys, the pain of mere hunger. 

She took a breath, opening her eyes to the cold air and grey sunlight of an overcast morning. The first thing she saw was Zefaris looking down at her, a warm smile briefly flashing across the blonde’s face before she turned her attention to the fire pit. 

The second thing she saw - when she sat up - was that Strolvath was still asleep, while Alcerys was very much awake and Fog-breathing between taking sips from a seal-bottle. Her gas mask hung around her neck by its straps and she hadn’t yet put on her armor, using her massive plated coat as something of a blanket. In her hand sat a skewer of mostly meat.

Her gaze was as hard and cold as ever, but she didn’t stare anymore. She regarded Zelsys with a brief glance before she refocused on her skewer. 

Zel thought that she should eat something, but before she could find the ration crate Zef had already pulled two skewers off the fire and handed her one. 

“Thanks,” she smiled. She was entirely prepared to just eat with her hand, but the next moment Zef handed her a mess kit alongside the seal-bottle that she hadn’t finished the day before. 

It was good, or at least as good basic rations could be. Fire-seared corn combined with salty pork was… More palatable than expected.

Well before the three were finished with their food, Strolvath woke up to a bloody coughing fit. The middle-aged man swore, he spat, he chugged half a bottle of Vitamax, and then promptly took to roasting his own food. Alcerys had apparently prepared a skewer similar to her own for him, but she had the foresight to just leave it off the fire. It would’ve likely burned or gone cold by now otherwise.

Strolvath didn’t say anything of note while he ate, but he certainly made plenty of noises. Plenty of muttered complaints and grunts of pain between incidences of elixir-drinking, coughing, and bloody spitting.

Zel wasn’t sure how long it took until they got around to preparing to head out in earnest - she’d somewhat checked out, content to just sit shoulder to shoulder with Zefaris and stare into the fire pit.

For the time being, the work was finished and she could afford to rest. As far as Zelsys was concerned, the rest of the trip back to Willowdale was just the victory lap. A days long victory lap, a substantial portion of which led through locust-desolated forest, but a victory lap nonetheless.

Soon enough, they were finished here. They placed the majority of their remaining rations into Fog Storage, each of them taking a small bag and filling it with a full seal-bottle and some wax paper wrapped food. Alcerys put her armor back on startlingly quickly, and soon any visible humanity was once again hidden under the impermeable mask of the Inquisitor.

Strolvath tried to continue playing navigator, but the horrible coughs that wracked him made that damn-near impossible. When Zefaris offered up to do the job, he relented without complaint, but he gestured for her to wait as he hacked up a glob of mucus, blood, and soot. He immediately followed it up with a swig from his seal-bottle, and only then said his piece.

“We- gheck… We gotta cut through this portion of forest to reach ‘nother hopefully untouched sto-” 

A few more heavy coughs and muttered complaints before he finished, “reach ‘nother hopefully untouched stopping point. Then we’ll just cut through the battlefield, faster than navigating the forest.”

“Just draw a line,” Zef said, leaning in so he could see the map. 

He did, and after a few more minutes of Zefaris finagling with the compass, they were off. 

Through the desolate forest they walked, and walked, and walked.

For hours and hours they walked, the field of dead trees stretched around them and the sky rumbled above. Strolvath kept on coughing as they went, though thankfully his coughing fits progressively grew more sporadic and less severe. Similarly, the forest progressively grew less and less desolate - the locusts had certainly done quite a bit of work since they’d passed through here.

By the third hour Strolvath had already tried to sing a few times, only for his voice to snap to comically high or low registers, soon followed by another coughing fit. He gave it up for the time being and settled for strumming a tune, and so they continued.