Your bow readied, an arrow between your fingers. You crouch, walk toward the rustling on the balls of your feet.

You’ve hunted plenty of times before. Stalking always feels like it takes forever, but you know, logically, only a fraction of the time you feel actually goes by. Your eyes adjust to the shadows, the setting sun, making your slow steps avoid fallen branches and crunchy leaves with ease.

Pause. Wait for another hint, a misplaced step, to dictate your direction. You hear it: a leaf ripped form a stem, a hundred feet or so away from you.

One step. Another. Ready your arrow. A quick death. No chase.

Right before you release your fingers, an illuminated arrow sails from your left and the deer collapses on the ground. The sound of it writhing over dead leaves blends with two sets of footsteps from the arrow’s origin.

An adult and a child, maybe a human and halfling— hard to tell in the dark. Each figure wears a dark cloak. The taller figure holds a metallic bow. Portions of its pattern glow in the new light of a lantern held by the shorter one.

They start talking. The shorter one’s voice is high and nasally. “See? It harnesses the power of lightning within the shaft. When it makes contact, that bolt surges through the target. It’s genius, really.”

The taller one sounds tired, their voice a low drawl. “That mean the meat’s cooked then? I can just take a bite off the thigh there?” They lift one of the hind legs, bring it to their mouth.

“Sweet Sol, no! Stop that!” The shorter one knocks the leg out of the taller one’s hands. “There’s still disease in it! Obviously. Lightning shocks, it doesn’t cook.”

“There’s smoke coming out of the wound. The fur is singed. How is that not cooked?”

The short one sighs. “Selnk. I swear. You are smarter than this. That small portion may be ‘cooked,’ as you say, but the rest isn’t. You’ve stopped the heart; you didn’t roast it over a fire.”

“You’re no fun when you’re hungry.”

“Then pick up that carcass so we can cook it then! It took all day to put that enchantment together!”

Selnk bends over, flops the deer carcass over their shoulder. The arrow sticks out of the deer’s neck behind them. You could see the burnt fur, bulging eyes. The deer’s weight brings down their hood, revealing dark, wavy hair just above their shoulder. There are bags under their grey eyes, a scar creating a valley in their beard.

“Lead the way, Alri. You got the lantern.”

Alri holds the lantern up to inspect the carcass one last time. They throw their hood back to get a better look. The braid over their shoulder looks like a coil of copper. They poke the deer’s shoulder and nod. They lift the lantern and lead Selnk down the trail, debating what tea goes best with venison.

You bend down a little to fit your head under the arch of the hollowed-out log. You carry your pack in front of you in one hand, your bow in the other. Brittle wood brushes against your hunched shoulders; a chunk falls on the ground behind you.

Out on the other side, the clouds begin to part. Sun rays filter through the trees in angles you can read which tell you it’s early afternoon. You step into and out of its warmth as you walk down the trail.

An annoying thing about being in sunlight, even briefly, if that you start to feel like a person again. Images from the morning come back to you in waves: an old scroll, alchemical formulas, a beaker in the rotten center of a stump, a westerly gust, an explosion.

That voice in your head felt familiar, even though you’d never heard it before. A woman’s voice. Whatever it was is gone now. You feel the absence. You only hear it like an echo from around a bend.

The river becomes louder. The trail gives way to a pebbly bank. Rocks shuffle under your step. You look at where you step and see blood drop from your face. Right. The blood. You need to wash your face.

You squat at the edge of the river, stick your hands in. Cold. The black clouds trails from your hands in the water. You make a bowl with your hands, watch it fill up. Tossing the water onto your face feels nice, refreshing. You wipe your hands across your face, brush your hair out of your eyes. Combing your hair with your fingers, you see red droplets fall from your knuckles.

You get a glimpse of your face in the moving water. A cut above your right eye, connecting your temple to your hairline, about the length of your index finger. You dry your hands on your jacket, dig out a bandage from the bottom of your pack, and dress the wound.

The sun’s rays lose shape, diffuse in the late-afternoon mist. Your stomach growls. No food left in your pack.

Downstream, dots can be seen in the windows of buildings in town. You could probably get there by nightfall, in time for a meal at an inn.

Upstream, a similar rustling sound from earlier can be heard over the river. There’s a good chance a deer or something similar could be hunted there.

You hunt for food.

You reach under your pack to defend yourself with your longbow. It spins in your grip as you nock an arrow, draw it back, aim.

It’s only a deer, you realize, foraging for acorns under an aging oak. As you relax your arrow, the deer lifts its head and looks in your direction. You see a vibrant purple gash in its face, right below its eye. It’s deep, bright, its edges spread out in tendrils wavy as a canyon river. It appears dry, the fur around it unstained. The deer startles itself, hops further into the forest.

You take a half-step after it, but stop. The amethyst from the crater, now behind you, draws you in its direction. The smoke from it is dissipating. You hear a voice coming from it, a little louder with every step you take.

“time— constant— it’s time—always now—an end— time— beginning—”

The crater is hardened, charred earth. Heat radiates through you. In its center is the amethyst, its pulsing glow, no bigger than a halved apple; it would fit in the palm of your hand. 

“time— it’s time—”

You reach for the amethyst. Surprisingly, it’s cold in your hand. You feel its jagged edges across your palm.

The gem’s light pulses. As it brightens, you feel something surge through your wrist. Your veins take on a violet hue under your skin for only a second. It doesn’t hurt. The wave fades as quickly as it came.

“the bow—” The voice is all around you now. “it’s time— the bow—” Maybe it’s inside your head.

You look back at your bow, untie the lather straps of the grip, exposing a small crevice in the wood. The gem is a close fit, but needs more space. You dig out the crevice slightly, carefully, with your pocket knife.

Once you’ve removed a few slivers, you replace the amethyst in the crevice. The wood glows in the purple light and you see small purple tributaries stretch from its center. You rewrap and retie the straps of the grip.

Always the scientist, you nock an arrow to see what happens. As soon as the shaft rests on the top of the grip, the arrowhead glows. You aim toward a log a few yards away.

The arrow sinks deep into its side, a bit deeper than usual. A polypore erupts from the point of impact. The bark around it becomes brittle. Lichen drapes hang from the edge of the shelf fungus. The quickened effect only lasts a few seconds, then the log and its decomposition seemingly return to the regular flow of time.

You become restless. The clearing’s stillness feels ominous. You gather your things and figure out where you can go.

The soft roar of a river can be heard to your right, probably half a mile away. A hollowed-out log connects to a trail in that direction.

On the end of the clearing in front of you is a cluster of deer ferns, a small gap in their leaves reveals a narrow trail beyond the tree line. It seems to go back toward town.

You go toward the river.

You wake up on the forest floor. You lie face down on a bed of moss. It takes a lot of effort to lift your head, to get onto your knees and hands.

The world seems to spin. To find which way is down, you squeeze your eyes, ball the moss bed in your fists. Equilibrium comes after a minute or so— time is hard to discern. When you open your eyes, the maple branches seem to move both faster and slower than you think they should.

There’s a layer of smoke between you and the trees. The clearing is filled with the smell of a campfire. Ash floats like snow.

Now that you’ve secured gravity, you look down. Your knuckles are pale as the falling ash. Relaxing your grip doesn’t last; your fingers slap back against your palm like a mousetrap. A drop of blood lands on your right thumbnail.

There’s nothing above you but clouds and ash. The diffused lights makes it impossible to tell what time of day it is. There’s a red circle in the moss where your head lay before. Your face is slick as you roll your hand over it. Your palm comes back red.

Your gaze sticks to the puddle of blood in your hand as you try to remember how you got here. So hazy. An explosion? But why? From whom? You? Was this your goal?

Sharp waves of pain don’t wash over you. Your limbs have the dull ache of overuse, a bad night’s sleep. You half-reposition, half-fall onto your backside, landing by your pack. Every breath is labored; your throat itches. Your eyes strain to take in light, focus through the blur of growing tears.

You take in your surroundings to see if it jogs your memory.

To your left, the moss climbs up a nurse log. Straightening your back to see over its crest, the moss yields to a grassy meadow. Black smoke emanates from a sunken patch of darkened soil a few yards aways. Something glows in the center of the crater, a slow pulsing amethyst. There are no other people in the clearing, no other bodies on the ground.

The urge to move is overwhelming. That pulsing light calls to you; it will answer your questions. It’s a slow process, getting to your feet, but you can eventually stand upright without leaning on the nurse log beside you.

A rustling emerges from the bushes behind you. A flood of adrenaline turns you around in an instant. You reach under your pack to defend yourself with your…

You choose a longbow.