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Cajetan and Okora shared little more than a glance heading up to their rooms. The morning was no better. Tirah mustered the lot of them for a quick breakfast and got a move on.

Over breakfast, Okora was as stiff and cold as when they first met. That's fine, nothing wrong with something quick, dirty, and detached. But the knight couldn't help but ponder the jiggle of the wren's ass over breakfast.

Rodwald ate enough for three men, and Okora barely more than a few crumbs. Tirah and Cajetan bonded over a similar philosophy in breakfast. Something that sat in the belly well. Not too much porridge or grain, and a small spot of meat.

Today, their handler explained, would just be getting to the border. They didn't need a whole day to get there. Not at all. They'd be at the spring-off point by mid-afternoon. Plenty of light to work with.

However, pausing until the next dawn meant the difference between a night in Elsteron or not. None of them, least of which Tirah, enjoyed the trade of a few hours extra travel in exchange for a night in the plagued lands.

The Orcs at the border passing were more than happy to receive visitors. The men there looked haggard. Shiftily supplied and armed, a garrison of a few dozen men operated a fort at a pass. Stretching along Elsteron's borders was the Orcish land's segment of the great quarantine.

The bumps and divots of the land, as well as the forestry, made visibility along its entire line impossible. But the wall had its vigil anyway. Equal parts ramshackle and sturdy. It relied heavily on the natural defenses of the borders, and weak points were reinforced as much as needed.

Springy ferns, tall grasses, and stout trees formed the backwood of the fortifications. Cajetan ran his hand over a bit of the flora, wondering for a moment what Elsteron was like. Closer to the fortress itself many tree stumps resided. Hacked down for firewood and repair alike.

The reality is, they've been pushed back over the years. Little by little. The Forsworn would capture territory, and then be rebuffed. But sometimes the dead dug in too deep. It was a failing prospect, upholding these perimeters. The dead were patient.

The orcs welcomed them heartily, relishing a chance for new faces and new stories over drinks.

"We haven't had a skirmish in a few weeks. It's been quiet. No walking sets of bones, or worm bags crawling around."

"None of our mates walking around either."

The orcs shared a caustic laugh with their guests, it was chilling to the uninitiated. A shared tension lay over the three of them with sense enough for it. Cajetan looked over the empty-headed and unknowing Rodwald. He couldn't fathom the actual danger they were stepping into, for better or worse. He was reminded of an adage, blessed is the mind too small for doubt.

They lodged with the orcs but mostly kept to themselves. Cajetan had a hardy chuckle watching one of the orcs confuse Okora with a female and try to put the moves on him.

"How could any make such a mistake?" Tirah added mockingly.

Funnier than Okora's confusion was the orc's reply to Tirah. With his face wrinkled, and lips slightly parted, he gave her a look like he was smelling spoiled meat. With a whispered grumble he left, "Ugh, elf."

Tirah fumed in silence.

As they all turned in for sleep, Cajetan wondered if he'd get a visit from a certain avian in the night. The fantasy of waking suddenly being smothered with bird thighs made him toss and turn with a lewd smirk on his face. None came, aside from in his dreams. He decided not to reflect too hard on the bizarre trance of egg and Okora related dreams he had plundered through in the night.

Come morning, it was time to go. They would be traveling in armor, weapons close at hand. Cajetan readied himself without aid into half plate, protection for the vitals but mobility enough to still be adroit.

Tirah fitted herself with elven armor that lay against her form like a second skin. It was thin, flexible, and discreet. Wearing that, melding with darkness and forests alike was easy. But the protection it offered against anything but glancing strikes was questionable.

Even Okora wore something, though hidden. A vest of stiff, boiled leather under his silks, and a pair of gloveless vambraces for his wrists.

Rodwald's was the best of all. Its charm lay in its chaotic assembly. Cajetan counted pieces from at least four different suits of armor bent, tied, chained, or knotted together to form something useable. The bent and broken breastplate of brass was tried strap to strap with another of iron. They rested diagonally across his torso and protected his heart and organs mostly. Attached by a hinge joined to those, a backplate protected his left thigh but hung free, letting him move and walk with ease. Here and there, panels of bark had been precariously tied to give him some measure of deflection from slings and slashes.

"And what have we got for armament, big man?" Cajee asked, looking over the ogre with a bit of amused pride.

Rodwald produced a beat length of wood that was still mostly its original trunk. It was cracked and repaired, worn white with beatings in some places, while retaining its browned bark in others. The head was rounded, and some cloth and leather was wrapped around the hilt for a grip. And just so he'd never hope to lose it, a wrist strap connected him to his weapon. The ogre beamed, and beamed ever harder when Cajetan showed off his mace.

"Brothas!" He said with a phlegm-heavy laugh, tapping his truncheon to Cajetan's.

Allowing them past the gates into Elsteron was not an easy or fast process. First, several lookouts made certain there were no scouts, observers, or enemies within distance. They'd been on watch all night of course, but their commander demanded it all the same.

The gatehouse was perhaps the most defended structure Cajetan had ever seen. Port Algool, for all its wealth, didn't have one as ruggedly forbidding as this. However, everywhere there were signs of use. The stone of the walls and floor were chipped with swung blades, missiles, and scored black with past fires. It was unsettling to think that something had breached the doors.

They were massive, thick wooden doors reinforced with iron. Several patches had been made here and there, and Cajetan could see the strains and splinters left by battering ram and hatchet men alike. Flush behind that, a portcullis. Okora threw his head back at the same time as Cajetan, craning to realize they'd walked under one of them already to enter this gatehouse.

With the all-clear signaled, a heavy crank was pulled. The ominous barks and curses of orcs at work paced by the clink-clink-clack of the chain lifting the portcullis silenced the party of four. It was almost like the rattle of bones, come to reach out and snatch away their life.

The grail-knight found himself with his hand down his shirt, fiddling with his icon of Sommne. The doors parted, the eastward sun pouring in from Elsteron. The yellow of morning had been hazed with a fog that rolled into the gap and lay flat to the stones. Creeping tendrils seemed to form in the fog only to evaporate just as quickly.

The passage was only wide enough for Rodwald. The orcs didn't want to labor to pull it all the way open, after all.

Okora turned to Tirah, his beak clacking once. "We'll be allowed back in, right?"

They asked before, the previous night. A few times. Tirah gave the same answer.

"We have the full cooperation of the commander here," she nodded at the orc as she led them forward. This time though, as they passed him, she added, "And it wasn't cheap."

Rodwald brought up the rear of their single file line. And for the first time since he took the job he felt apprehension. Not that he could pronounce that word. He turned his head, and watched the oaken doors seal behind him with a low thud.

The air of Elsteron did not bear the plague, not as rumors say. But even so, dragging it into their lungs brought displeasure. The domain was off, spoiled, repudiating to all life not warped by death.

The ground was spongy with mycelium and crunchy with decayed grass. Instead of green, a sort of greyish, ashy color filled the grass blades and leaves of the trees. The dominant life, what seemed most vibrant, was fungus. Redcap toadstool thrived, pushing up from the soil in bundles hither and thither. They gathered at the lichen-gnawed roots of trees and fallen logs but in such bounty and size that it appeared unnatural.

Brownish shelf-like growths jutted from wherever they could, tree and stone alike. In fact, Okora pointed out how the stone seemed cracked and worn around the edges where these shelves grew. Likely just the erosion of ice expanding these, and the shelves growing in. But then again, didn't they need to sup from death to grow? Surely the rot here wasn't so strong even the earth couldn't refute it.

Twisting, man-sized cages of latticed stinkhorn rose up from their whitish eggs in the ground, swaying not an inch with the wind. The light cast through them from the sun seemed to dull, and the gaze of their hollow loops made Rodwald turn away in discomfort.

One specimen in particular confounded the group. It was palish pink covered in gooey red spots that looked like glistening blood blisters. If he didn't know any better he'd have thought it was a blob of real flesh, rather it was just an extraordinarily vivid specimen of bleeding tooth fungus.

The offensive, rotten colors of the fungus sprouting round them, and their peculiar shapes triggered a sort of ancestral blood memory in them. These things were dangerous, foreboding. Do not touch them.

The air was disturbed not by the call or bird or animal, only by the incessant whine of bugs. Filthy, crawling, multi-legged, and chittering corpse-feasters skittered and oozed from cracks and crevices in the dirt.

The rhizome of rot was so thoroughly embedded in the land that Cajetan thought himself stifled. Some vague unease at breathing in a spore or speck and being polluted kept crossing his mind, no matter how hard he tried to shake it. And with how tensely and forcefully everyone was breathing, he suspected the same from the others.

Tirah led them forward, on and on. She looked back little, trusting her party to keep up the back line. It was only a few hour's march to their destination, mostly north along the River Gend's western bank. She didn't lead them too close to the bank, just enough to hear it, see it, and follow it. She couldn't be certain what eyes lurked in the shadows, what manner of observation the Forsworn had in this area.

A break in the density of forestry gave Tirah pause, but after examining it was clear they proceeded on through it. It was the remains of some battle, orcs and the undead most likely. With only a brief look and no deep forensics it was hard to tell just when it had occurred, but given the border was so far from here, and orcs did not often send raiding parties into Elsteron, it was years ago at least.

Equipment and damage to the environment remained, and so too a few skeletons smashed such that they were recognizable only as bone fragments. A chilling feeling consumed them as they observed the patterns stamped into the mud. There weren't many, and most were illegible for certain as footprints. Just, divots to the mud, many of them. As if all those present at the battle got up and walked away after it was done.

"Boot prints?" Okora asked, his head moving with a nervous twitch as he looked between his companions and the horizon lines.

"I'd say."

"Tracks like that don't last very long, perhaps something moved through here recently, in large numbers."

"Move through? There aren't any connecting tracks, Tirah. Whatever walked off here has our same heading."

She breathed a shuddered sigh of tension. "Perhaps they were raised recently then." She almost didn't want to say it, to breathe life into the notion. "Eyes and ears up, we press on."

And so they did. Following the spoors wasn't easy, degraded as they were. Having waded through the antithesis of salubrious ecology, it brought shock to part from the foggy mists of the decaying forest into a clearing once more.

There was a respite here, and stoneworks. Incredibly old, grey, and weather-battered bricks laid together to form a structure. Its purpose wasn't immediately clear as it just appeared to be an entryway. The keystone and arch of the entrance present were overgrown with hanging, dullish emerald moss. Past the alcove, bleak timber doors lay shut.

The yawning mouth of darkness between the phalanx of bricks offered no clues as to what lay within its dark reaches. Piles of shattered brick and collapsed, less resolute remnants. Sensing a break to the march, Rodwald found a suitable half-wall and sat his ogre behind on it.

Tirah examined the place with a bit of apprehension, and the other two of the party fanned out slightly. Both for their own curiosity and for tactical purposes. The forestry here was not so onerous as what they had just exited and a feeling of calm overcame them.

"What is this place, our objective?" Okora ventured, looking at their handler.

The elf spoke, her voice burdened with determination. "It is. This is the entrance to a waterway. In the past, Dwarves built this in collaboration with the humans of Elsteron and... " She cuts herself off. "There isn't a need for a history lesson."

"Are we going in?"

"Not yet. I will scout the area before and around us, I can do so quickly and stealthily if I go alone. Hold this position and keep watch, I'll return before dusk. If I'm not back by nightfall and there is no word or signal, you're relieved of duty."

"Reassuring," Cajetan whispered.

With a warble of the air Tirah disappeared. A hushed breath of elvish incantation tickled their ears as she invoked an old pact and vanished from sight. Melding with nature, even in such a desecrated place, was possible for elves.

It was impressive still, though, and Cajetan couldn't keep the surprise from his face seeing Tirah one moment, and a ripple of warped space the next.

"Where she go, Cajee?" Rodwald declared, though not with enough astonishment to rouse from his seat.

"No clue, somewhere elfy."

"How 'bout some food, pal?" The ogre asked with glee, demonstrating his joie de vivre. Infectious it was, Cajetan had to admit. He paced over to the ogre and considered it a bit, his boots scuffing the dirt.

"Not a bad idea. Wouldn't start a fire though, might attract some bad attention."

"Glad you've made a friend," Okora said with a snide tongue. "Someone about your capacity to converse with."

Rodwald didn't take any meaning from the wren's words, unhooking his rucksack from his shoulder and rummaging around in it for precious rations. Cajetan did though, but no deep offense. "Maybe one is feeling a little forgotten, is one finding themselves a third wheel between these pals?"

The thinnest part in his beak appeared as he produced a dubious expression, folding his arms over.

The human laughed, being sure to reign in the volume. "Uncross your arms, roll those shoulders back, and rest your talons."

Okora relented a bit and took the human's advice. The three relished the moment to rest but didn't let their guard down. A bit of chatting here and there in low tones occupied many hours. Rodwald wasn't one for insightful conversation, but his genial ways made up for it.

The movement appeared behind Rodwald in the middle of one of his delightful yarns about peeling potatoes. It must have been Tirah, approaching from behind someone to reappear with some flair. It wasn't.

A rounded bill of hardened, mushroom shelf-laden bark snapped out from the trees moving with speed. The rustle of green, curling, and rolling vines coiled around a vaguely humanoid shape that rivaled Rodwald in size.

It crawled forward on four stumps, the sound of it only arriving now that it had broken cover with the tree line. How had he not seen it? Cajetan had been scanning the surroundings consistently since the elf left. There was no time to fret about that, he jumped to his feet and drew his weapon.

Okora croaked a warning to Rodwald, but it was a moment too late. With a cracking sound, a half dozen vines coiled around the ogre's arms and neck to strangle and bind him up, sweeping him from his sitting spot.

Cajetan took up the left, and Okora the right, following up after Rod as he was dragged back kicking and hollering. Cajetan's pernach dug into the shambling beast's thick, corded, mossy vines. The flanges of the metal got caught and nearly ripped the weapon from his grip.

He couldn't see what magic Okora deployed but he heard it. The whistles, crackles, and snaps of the air were shackled to the wren's will and plied against the moving detritus pile. Shots of dreck flying off the wicked hedge as it was trimmed by force.

To his credit, once he got his feet under him, Rodwald dug in. The hulk needed space, and Cajetan skittered back to give it to him. The ogre straightened his back out and tugged forward, bending over further, grasping back at what was digging into him.

He grasped and ripped off the vines on his left arm with his right, then from his neck. They snapped with a sort of wet, vibrating sound befitting the living rope. The vines on his right arm were a deeper sort of green, with shifting purple tubes under the surface. In retaliation, the beast rumbled deeply and painfully, and those few vines still wrapped into the ogre sprouted spikes with such lightning speed it was like a bolt sprung free from a crossbow.

Rodwald spun and faced the thing now, yanking those remaining cords, tugging them, and putting distance between himself and his assailant. Ripe for cutting, Cajetan swung forward and down at this final burden, severing his companion from his enemy.

The dirt and grass rippled, and a thin, wide span of air rippled with heat and flying specks. The kiss of sod flecks and silt splattered across Cajetan's armor and face, animated by Okora. He'd raised a wall wide enough to keep the mound of grass back, searing hot air rising continuously. It fluttered up with such fury Cajetan was sure it would maim his hand if he reached out to touch it.

The creature had no such understanding, and with a bellowing roar, reared back and charged for Rodwald. It met its doom against the wind wall. Its bill, or beak, was peeled back of green and brown, revealing the stripped bark beneath like bone. As it was wounded it fell forward without a sound of pain, its collapse muffled by the leafy life on the rest of its body.

Okora, straining to maintain his spell, ended it the moment it seemed the foe was dead.

With the drumbeat of adrenaline no longer pounding, Rodwald fell to his backside, clutching his wounded arm. The myriad prick marks on his flesh oozed a sickly purple fluid. Venom, no way about it. And the ogre already looked woozy.

Cajetan stowed his weapon and immediately sprung into triage. Without word or explanation, he began his work. Rodwald's arm got tied off high, by the bicep, to cut off the blood flow.

With a small knife, minimal incisions were made below a few of the worst-looking pricks. From there, Cajetan began squeezing and massaging the wounds. Rodwald did not like this, and at one point grabbed the knight's head with his other palm to make him stop. But, with a slow and careful look to his pal, he managed to convince the ogre not to crush his head.

"Hurts, Cajee," he pleaded, defending his sudden lashing out.

"I know, pal. Just hold a moment. It'll make you better."

The venom, at least the better part of it, was drained. What was left, Cajetan was confident the slab could handle. Bigger body, bigger natural defenses, surely. That just left them with the wounds. He wiped them down with a clean cloth, dabbed with a bit of alcohol. But he didn't wrap them in bandaging yet.

He hesitated, and Okora, who had been observing silently and catching his breath from his exhausting spellcasting, spoke up. "Something wrong, you're just staring at him?"

The grail-knight shook his head. He was deep in thought, wondering if he could. If he even should, do what he was planning. It had been a few years now. Was it still there? Faith enough to perform lay on hands, not just faith enough to carry Sommne's icon as a trinket.

He tried. He pulled the icon from under his shirt, fishing it out and holding it to his left palm. He performed the chirotony as he had dozens of times on the path, muttering the words, closing his eyes. It all felt distant, the warmth gone, the magic just wasn't there.

But he didn't let frustration creep in. His pal needed it. And that brought a tingle, something! He held onto that thought and continued his ritual. Rodwald and Okora hadn't a clue what he was doing, kneeling at the ogre's side, holding his forearm and bicep, muttering.

His hands heated up, burning with a solar warmth. It was fainter than he remembered, but there it was! The imbuing of divine warmth to the ogre helped his body fuse itself back together. The wounds from Cajee's knife and the mound both began to seal. The smaller ones disappeared as new flesh formed over them, leaving behind small red spots.

Then, it ended. Cajetan offered thanks and took what he was given. What wounds remained, he wrapped up in bandaging, until Rodwald was given a new sleeve of white.