I folded, grabbing my side. “Ah! What the heck, man?”
Warcry grunted thoughtfully. “That is stronger.”
He pulled back for a kick, but I put my hands up.
“Let’s assume the first experiment was good enough,” I said.
Rali squinted at me like he could see the layer of scythe on my rib cage.
“In the old sword legends, weapons from defeated immortals usually come with some kind of bonus,” he said. “Maybe the extra-strength bones are the scythe’s fringe benefit. Weapon sometimes, armor the rest of the time.”
“The downside is it’s crazy heavy,” I said. “That’s going to take some getting used to.” Out of curiosity, I pulled up my profile on my HUD to see whether the scythe’s weight showed up in my stats. The purple fish swam up and looked down at the cracked screen like it was trying to read, too. “Holy cow, with this thing, I’m twenty-nine pounds heavier.”
“Needed it,” Warcry said. “Maybe now you can get some momentum behind your shots, yeah?”
But Kest wasn’t interested in the benefits of the scythe. She frowned at me. “You look the exact same size. That doesn’t make any sense. Mass doesn’t just disappear.”
“Maybe it’s just spread really thin,” Rali suggested.
Before she could argue further, though, the alarm on my Winchester buzzed.
I shut it off. “Clock’s still running, guys. We’re down to thirty-six hours to get to the Heartchamber.”
“Best get moving, then,” Warcry said, turning to follow the location arrow on his HUD map. “We got a long walk ahead of us since our Metal head can’t even fix a boat.”
Campfire Scene
AFTER RALI HEALED THE rest of my and Warcry’s wounds with some extra-concentrated Healing Restoration, we started slogging through the swamp again. The little white-and-purple fish followed us the rest of the day, skipping across the water beside me, eating bugs off the surface of the water, and disappearing when bog ferals attacked. I didn’t have a lot of time to pay attention to her, though. Fighting those bog ferals took a ton more Miasma than it had earlier. With the added weight on my skeleton, I had to keep the Ki-speed and strength running constantly just to go the same speed I had without the scythe. If it hadn’t been for the Miasma covering the bog and the boosts from the ferals’ life points, there was no way I could’ve kept up with everybody else.
Thankfully, around night sun high, we found a patch of mostly dry land to camp out for the darkest part of the night. We made a fire and ate AlgaeFrize. I know the topic of staying awake in shifts came up, but by then I couldn’t focus on the conversation or the food. My chin kept dipping down to my chest, and my eyes wouldn’t stay open, even after I forced myself to stand up.
“Guys, Hake’s literally falling asleep on his feet,” Rali said, grinning.
Warcry snorted. “Baby needs a nap, does he?”
“I’m fine.” I shook my head and scrubbed my face hard, trying to wake up. I looked at Kest. “What were you saying?”
“That there’s no way you’re taking first watch.” She pointed her AlgaeFrize bag at the mossy ground. “Lay down before you fall down. One of us will wake you up when it’s your turn.”
I knew I should probably argue out of basic politeness, but I didn’t have the energy right then. I stretched out where I’d been standing, that little fish swimming around my head like it was trying to figure out what I was doing. The second I shut my eyes, I was gone.
I dreamed about Gramps again. The old man was smoothing his hand over the inner lining of a casket, staring at the gray satin with a blank, lost expression on his face.
Even through the layer of sleep, I felt my throat hurting and this sickness in my chest. I remembered that feeling; it was losing something you could never get back. That wasn’t weird; I should’ve been used to that kind of finality. After a few times, it goes from debilitating to more of an annoyance that you try to ignore, which is easy when you’re awake. Less easy when you’re asleep. But I almost never had dreams about my mom anymore, so I figured the ones about Gramps would go away eventually, too.
No one woke me up like promised, I just sort of drifted awake on my own to find the night sun directly overhead, no sign of the blue sun on the cloudy horizon yet. Rali was in the lotus position, staring into the glowing embers, and Kest and Warcry had stretched out on opposite sides of the fire.
I sat up and stretched.
“Getting close to my watch yet?” I asked Rali in a low voice.
“You haven’t been burning off the soul contamination,” he said instead of an answer. “That’s part of why you’re so tired.”
“Oh right.” I got Corpse Fire going, then went and splashed some water on my face. “That scythe is taking a ton of Ki-strength to keep moving, too, so that’s probably not helping much.”
Rali nodded. “That’ll be good for your body conditioning in the long run, though. Help you build up extra muscle.”
I came back to the fire and stood looking down into the embers for a while. Kest was asleep, so I couldn’t chug a Coffee Drank from the storage ring, but I was awake enough that I didn’t need the caffeine a whole lot.
“You could get some sleep if you wanted,” I told Rali. “I’ll take my watch now.”
He shrugged. “I’ve already meditated most of the night away. I’m not tired.”
Since we’d been talking about body conditioning, I got in a relaxed taiji stance and started the slow push and pull motions and measured breathing. The air was chilly and wet, but with the scythe weighing me down, I was sweating in no time. While I practiced, the fish swam up to me through the air, nipping at my hands
