Lucetta smelled of death.

Old rot carried on the wind, faint but alarming enough that Alastor bristled when he arrived on the outskirts. It was gone as quickly as it had come, but it put him on edge.

For a moment, he stood still on the faded dirt path, more worn and less used than he remembered. Lucetta had fallen into decline, and whatever magic was stitching back the cities of Alastor had yet to reach the little village. It wasn’t too far from the Hall of the Ancients; if he’d been on horseback, maybe an hour of easy riding. Two hours of walking, but then you’d have to walk uphill for a bit longer.

Alastor hadn’t walked. Sometimes, when he traveled from Earth, he had a destination in mind. Sometimes, he let his world choose.

He hadn’t recognized the location immediately when he’d arrived. The trees were tall and overshadowed the view of the land below him. The signs along the road were faded and unreadable, and it had taken him a good few minutes of walking to realize where he was. In the distance, across the river, he could make out the silhouette of the Hall of the Ancients. When he walked a bit more, he could see the closer city of Arista.

At its best, Lucetta had been a pretty little mountain town that overlooked the river. Alastor had hoped that at this height they might have been spared the flooding, or the stretch of shadows and Chaos, but at this height they’d been more at risk for rocky debris carried by the atmosphere and storms.

Water and wind had beaten against the mountain. He could see where the mud had come loose a long time ago and spilled over parts of the town. It brought a distant, uncomfortable sensation to the forefront of his emotions.

He remembered how a mudslide had swallowed his hometown and everyone within it.

The damage here didn’t look catastrophic; the mud had destroyed some houses, but it almost seemed as though at some point, they’d decided to carve windows and doors into the mud. Some buildings had crumbled under the weight. Most just looked rotted out. Glass was dirty and broken.

He’d hoped, for a brief moment, that the town was lived in. Even if he thought he might have noticed smoke or something from all his time cleaning at the Hall, or Arista, or traveling along the river. He’d been as far north as Villefort and still seemed nothing.

He’d have been disappointed even if there wasn’t the smell of old rot on the wind. It was stronger, briefly, but the wind carried it away. Alastor thought he might have just been losing sensitivity to the smell.

Wildflowers grew amidst the gravel and mud, resilient and beautiful amidst the dilapidation. The town must have been lived in for a while. They’d adapted to the storms.

Lucetta was still. Grass sashayed in the wind, on the outskirts of the town. There was no birdsong here. No butterflies. No goats, judging by the state of the flora.

Animals had a keener sense than even him, so he supposed there must be some reason they hadn’t returned to this mountain.

So, it was up to him to find out what was going on here.

When Lucetta was in its prime, it had somewhere around fifty houses, and maybe twenty or so other buildings. Alastor counted less than half with any sense of structure left to them. Of them, only eighteen looked livable. The others were missing roofs, or walls, or had crumbled in on themselves. When he’d been younger, he’d come here a fair amount of times. He’d climbed to the top of the mountain on more than one occasion, but more often than not this was just a stopping point in his travels. He liked being up this high, where he could see so much of his world.

When he stopped to do the math, he hadn’t been back in over two hundred years.

Three lifetimes. Nine lifetimes, if he went by the senshi’s average longevity.

He didn’t like to think about time. It hadn’t made sense for so long. Every day had been an eternity, and it was one agonizing cycle of repetition. They all blended together. How was he supposed to pick out one day amidst a thousand? A hundred thousand? Three times that, and more? He wondered if he could count the days he’d had with Percy. He remembered those days. It had to be, what–seven thousand? Less? He felt a sharp stabbing pain. He hadn’t come here to do math.

There were days worth remembering, droplets in a sea of painful, empty repetition.

If he thought hard enough, he could sift through the weight of the other memories. He could find the days he buried.

He’d last been to Lucetta to deliver seeds. It wasn't anything glorious. There were bandits on the road and no one else would make the trip. The storms were getting worse, and they desperately needed something that could grow–

Oh, the caves.

He looked at the side of the mountain again and wondered if their efforts to hollow out a safe place to grow their seeds had led to such destruction of their town. Maybe it was inevitable. They’d have starved if they hadn’t; the soil was devoid of the nutrients needed for their natural agriculture and they’d been desperate for something hearty and resilient.

They were going to send an envoy with an update if they needed more help. One hadn’t come. He’d assumed they were doing fine.

The scent of death, again. It wasn’t safe to dwell in the past for too long when the present seemed unfavorable as well. When he tried to smell it out, the scent was gone. He wondered if the source was anything more than a guilty conscience.

Though he was surrounded by stillness, Alastor still called out, “Hello?”

If he listened closely, he could hear the wound of the wind crawling over the mountainside, passing through the grass and trees.

The only voice he heard was his own fading echo. He waited until there was silence and called again.

Still, nothing.

Alastor was, by no means, and expert tracker. He had some skills he had honed over the years, but it didn’t take anyone of much skill to tell that this town was unlived in for quite some time. Everything had been bleached by the sun, and weeds and rocks were strewn in such a way that it was obvious no one had tried to improve travel paths here. Even the well-worn path was slowly being swallowed up by nature.

The houses were dark. The trees bore fruit, unpicked but nearly ripe. No small vermin or birds had wrestled so much as a single fruit.

The foulness in the air pricked at his nose. He thought he could taste something bitter and metallic in the air.

‘Poison’, whispered a voice in the back of his head. Maybe he’d known already. He felt it in his heart.

Invisible, in the land and in the symptoms. Carried in the water, left in the land. Dug up from deep in the mountain. He didn’t want to think that he could have been responsible. Lifetimes ago, how could this be his fault? It’s not like they would have given him poison seeds.

…

No, they wouldn’t have. The world was already on its own back then, what purpose would it have served? Had there even been wars back then? Resources were slimming but they still had means to survive. Lucetta had nothing worth taking, anyway. What would poison do, drive them off the mountain? There was ore in the mountain, sure, but the conditions up here were dangerous. Especially when the weather had been as unforgiving as he’d known it to be when last he made this trip.

It was sunny now, but if they hadn’t destroyed the Chaos seed polluting his world? He doubted even he would have made it up here.

Which begged the question, again–why would anyone want this land?

He stalked through the gutted remains of the town slowly. Hardened mud and rock debris sealed up the entrance to the cave they’d once carved into the mountainside, but there was now an even smaller path chiseled out of that. Enough to fit one person at a time, probably.

It was dark inside. Alastor doubted there was any merit to exploring, but he couldn’t help himself.

Like much of his world, this was an unknown. The only way to find answers was to look for them, and there must have been a reason for him to arrive here.

He hated caves. He hated dark hollows. He hated mud, he hated poison. He hated all of it.

Alastor had more tools now than he’d ever had before; Michael had sent him off with a lantern so bright you might think it was daytime, so he wrestled that from his subspace pocket as he peered down the narrow passageway.

This wasn’t like before. If he got trapped, he could just use the phone to go back to Earth.

…Oh, but poor Michael. If he was paying attention to this necklace in any capacity, he was worrying. He should be focusing on school, though.

Devyn often visited his homeworld when Atticus and Michael were busy at school. He left after they did, and usually made it home in time to get dinner started and clean the house before they got home. Such was their routine.

Every now and then, usually before an invigorating project or something Devyn knew would be taxing, he messaged Michael. Just to make sure he didn’t worry.

He’d been keeping himself in check for all of today, but something was still odd. Better to be safe than sorry. He knew the message would take some time to reach Earth, anyway. ‘Working hard, probably moving some rocks. Busy day, I’m okay. Love you.’

Somehow, it didn’t quite feel like the truth. Even if it wasn’t a lie.

Alastor didn’t like the energy in the area. He didn’t like the denseness of toxins in the air. He could taste it.

Ah, or maybe it was just the past and present mixing together again. There were too many days, too many memories. He needed to stay focused.

He had a natural aversion to caves after being lost in too many, but he doubted the risk of water was something to worry about. Not up here. There was a waterfall and river that joined with the one he was most familiar with–or, at least, there had been. He’d see later. For now, he was being called into the darkness.

No matter how many times he told himself the Chaos was gone from his world, he always bristled at the shadows. His world was too healthy now to have any deep rooted Chaos, but he hadn’t lived this long to be taken down by one lingering seed.

He held the lantern at arm’s length as he maneuvered through the narrow passageway. Someone had carved this out of necessity, it was not intended for lasting function.

There was little reason to be optimistic about what he’d find, but his curiosity had been a curse, and his duty to his world might have been as well.

It was maybe twenty feet before the room opened up. He’d been poked and prodded by rocks and mud but none were so sharp as to maim him. The cave was almost as he remembered. Instead of fresh, plowed land, treated and ready to grow, there were withered weeds. He nudged the nearest one with the toe of his boot and it snapped in two. Brittle, stonelike.

Preserved in poison. He shouldn’t breathe the air. It was rank here, and the rot worsened in the airless caverns.

Corpses lined the wall. The light of the lantern flickered. He blinked, and there were bones.

The breath caught in his throat and he stepped back. They weren’t the first he’d seen–far from it–but he hadn’t been expecting it. For a moment, he stared in silence. His heart returned to its usual pace. Michael might have noticed otherwise. He should text him.

He couldn’t move. He stared into the empty sockets of their skulls and for a moment they shined like they still had eyes. When he moved the lantern to the side, the light followed. He didn’t take his eyes off of them even as he pulled out his phone. He knew it would take a few moments to get to Michael, Soleiyu had worked enough of a miracle already just to get it to send messages from this far away. The message was brief, like it might send faster if there was less of it to carry. ‘All good.’

He put the phone away but didn’t move. There were six here. Four, together. One to the far right. Another, half buried under mud and rocks. Maybe they’d been trying to dig deeper. Two of them were too small to have been adults.

They were in good condition, so far as bones could be. Dark with age, black with rot. Coated in a thin layer of glittery crystal.

Preserved, because that’s what the poison did. Maybe they hid here while their bodies turned to stone. Maybe they were paralyzed here, while the others rotted around them. Maybe they were dead before it got so bad.

He didn’t know who they were. The scraps of clothing left behind hardly told him anything.

They were probably people from the village. He glanced at the two furthest away, at the one half-buried. If they weren’t from the village, it didn’t matter. He doubted there was much to find to differentiate one from the other. A family trying to survive? Bandits come to exploit their resources?

They were all dead now. It didn’t matter.

He didn’t want it to matter.

There were many ways to explain it. Maybe the seeds hadn’t been laced with poison. Maybe there was an underground spring that had polluted the area after they’d started cultivating. Maybe they’d mined too deep and found pockets of toxic gas.

He couldn’t tell the difference by sight alone.

Maybe he hadn’t delivered poisoned seeds. Maybe they hadn’t died because of his negligence.

It didn’t matter. They were dead.

If there was anything he could have done, it was too late.

He took the blame.

How else could they be grieved? How else could they be avenged? How else could they be respected? There was no one here but him, so it fell on his shoulders.

He couldn’t leave them here.

He didn’t want to do this again. He stood in the entrance to the cave with the lantern held up until his arm started to tingle. By then, the dread had grown ten fold and it felt like he’d swallowed rocks. Michael would worry, he knew he’d panic and expect the worst.

He texted again, ‘Long story. I’m fine, love you.’

He put the phone away. He trusted Michael would understand. He couldn’t stand there and text while their empty eyes followed him.

There was something incredibly unceremonious about gathering up bones in a bag, but there was no honorable way to do it. He was careful. He moved each piece with a whispered apology, and he laid them softly. He scoured the ground to pick up every scrap of fabric, every piece of jewelry, every little part of them and the life they’d left behind. One at a time. He didn’t carry the bag like a sack full of goods, but like the fragile treasure it was, instead. He laid it across his arms and moved through the narrow passageway with the lantern dangling from one finger.

The fresh air should have been rejuvenating, but it wasn’t. He was willing himself to feel numbness. There was nothing to celebrate here. He wanted to fill his mind with static while he worked. He thought of the sound of rushing water, next to a misty waterfall. How it echoed in caves as the water rose around you.

He thought of the sound of bees, buzzing around as they bobbed and floated around the garden. The endless sting as you fought for control of your body.

The rolling thunder of a distant storm. The electric hum of electricity as it coursed through your body.

He was there, but not.

There was a cemetery on the outskirts of town, nestled in an alcove on the mountainside where it was preserved from wind and rain. If there had been mudslides here, they’d carried on down the mountain without doing much damage here. Wooden markers seemed to have petrified, and most of the stone slabs were fairly undamaged. Dirty, but resilient.

He laid the bag down gently, first, and then uprooted a dead bush with almost no effort. The roots stretched away from the cemetery so he wasn’t worried about disturbing it. The first inch of dirt moved easily. The next foot gave him some trouble. The foot after that was half rock. He hadn’t brought a shovel. He had a spade, and that worked for a while. He blunted it somewhere between the third and fourth body, but he’d been alternating between that and his hands before then.

His bloodied fingers were little penance. He wiped them clean each time before laying the bones to rest, in the fresh air and under the sunlight. Flowers didn’t grow here. There were weeds, petrified. They didn’t count.

When he’d finished with the first body, he’d repeated the ritual with the second, and then the third, and fourth. He’d buried them together, in one large space. He thought, after all this time, it would have been cruel to separate them. He didn’t know who they were to each other, he just knew that they’d been together.

The fifth, he buried nearby, but in their own plot. The sixth, he’d had to dig out from under the rubble. He found the seventh, then, and the eighth. He couldn’t tell their bones apart. He tried to separate them, but he couldn’t. He didn’t give up, it was just impossible. Some of the bones had been crushed to dust. He gathered that, too. Maybe it was disrespectful to unbury them, and then rebury them with the rocks that had killed them.

He tried to separate them. He tried.

Maybe if he’d had Lucien there, he could have run tests on the bones they had left, but how much did that matter when there were handfuls of dust, too?

The fumes were too dense to explore deeper in the cave. He’d covered his mouth with his sash but it was still enough to give him a headache. He thought he heard running water but he didn’t know if it was the wind on the mountainside. Or a memory. The cave was dark and smelled wet. He stepped in mud. There were no bones that he could find, but he’d check again on another day.

He’d have to be back, anyway. Villefort’s mushrooms could purify the toxins in any realm, eventually. They’d worked miracles before, they could do the same here. He’d have to uproot the plants and burn them, but that wouldn’t be so hard. Comparatively. He wanted to air out the cave.

For a while, he dug at the entrance in a mechanical attempt to widen it. He wasn’t really thinking, he was just doing. It would take more work. He’d bring better tools next time.

He was stalling.

There were eighteen buildings left to go through, and the ruins of many others. He dragged himself through the wasted village. He saw no bones in the debris, but he didn’t dig to look.

Ten houses were empty.

Eight were still occupied.

He returned to the cemetery.

The sun was low in the sky when he smoothed the dirt over the last plot. He saw the blood on his hands but he didn’t feel it. He was active, but from all this labor, his muscles should burn. His bones should ache.

He felt none of it.

Not hunger, not relief, not accomplishment.

He felt empty. Guilt pulled at heart. Grief. Shame.

Despair.

His heart was heavy, but he willed it to feel nothing. He’d done this before. He could bury his emotions like he buried their bodies, like he’d done for years and years and years.

It was selfish to shut off the emotions, he just couldn’t handle them right now. And, it wasn’t fair to Michael if he tried. He didn’t deserve this weight. Maybe he’d ask him to take off the necklace, tonight. Only when they were in the vicinity of each other. Where Michael could see him, and know that he was there.

He hadn’t asked before. He didn’t want to ask now.

He didn’t want to burden Michael with the weight of his heart.

Devyn was covered in dirt. He could smell the poison, if he focused enough.

He didn’t think he smelled rot anymore, but maybe he’d just gotten so used to it that he didn’t notice. He sat with the graves. He didn’t always have the best memory, but he knew he wouldn’t forget who came from where. On another trip, maybe he’d try to find scraps of their identities so he could leave them with a name. It was dark, now. He could have stayed for longer. Maybe he should have.

He wasn’t just balancing Alastor, though. He had duties on Earth. He had people to take care of here–dead, alive. It didn’t matter. He took responsibility for all of them. And, on Earth. He had a family. He had people who relied on him. People he relied on.

He wanted to go home.

For the first time in a very long time, here didn’t feel like home.

Even if he could see the Hall of the Ancients on the horizon, just now being swallowed by the darkness of the setting sun, he didn’t want to be there.

He could see the Golden Oak, glowing even in the last bits of sunlight. What the sun missed was kissed by the wispy golden lights that rose from the ground around it. He wanted to be with Percy.

Briefly, he thought of a hole for himself. A plot in gentler land than Lucetta’s. The dirt on the hill beneath the tree was soft. His nails hadn’t bled when he’d dug Percy’s. The ground was probably cool. Maybe even comfortable.

…No.

No, he had too much work to do. He could feel the ache in his chest. It was late, he should have been home a while ago. He hadn’t made dinner. Michael already had so much to deal with, he didn’t want to add to that.

…And yet, he wanted to be home, with him.

He was probably worried. Probably waiting.

Devyn had lost track of time again. Maybe he would have texted if his fingers had worked. They were stiff and bruised and bloodied. He looked at them, as if for the first time today.

He wasn’t allowed to treat himself like this.

Maybe, when he was alone, he could have gotten away with such neglect.

He had a family. People who cared about him. He was supposed to do better than this.

Old habits died hard.

Devyn sat for a moment longer before he pushed himself up again.

He knew a thing about that, though.

He wasn’t going anywhere for a long time. Well, anywhere but home.

Where his family was waiting, no doubt. He wanted to see them. It was selfish, especially after today. He wanted to be alone. To hole himself up in his room, like he’d done a thousand times, or more, already.

But that was the past. He had the present to consider, too.

And a family that cared about him, and would worry about him if he took too long.

Devyn felt no joy in what he'd accomplished today. It was necessary. The first step of many to return his world to health and prosperity. He hadn't found life in Lucetta, but he had found unresolved wrongs and done what he could to make them right. His next trip, he'd start cleansing the land.

He didn't know if anyone would ever live here again, or if one day it would simply return to nature.

Maybe a mudslide would wash away the rest of the mountain and none of this would have mattered anyway.

Or, maybe, it mattered to someone, somewhere.

It mattered to him.

Maybe that was enough.