The girl is surprisingly strong, and I nearly fall more than once as she pulls me towards new Eden.
I don't have the heart to tell her that we won't be staying there. At least not for long.
She stops as soon as we are out of the cave system, and looks around with childlike curiosity at the abundance of lush greenery around us.
I take a moment to appreciate the vegetation as well.
I've never seen New Eden in person- only heard about it from old man Striker.. And even then, I dismissed it as a fairy tale that wasn't to be taken with any seriousness. But now I see what he meant when he said that this place was a paradise for living creatures.
There's nothing but rolling fields and pristine lakes for as far as the eye can see, and there are only a few houses here and there, nothing like the crowded slums of the Tarnish.
The sky is clear, and free of the factory smoke that permeates the air back in the slums, and I can see dark figures tending to their fields high above in the mountain fields.
My heart sinks, and I try to slip back into the safety of the Tumbles, but the girl is having none of it. She drags me towards the nearest cottage with an innocent smile on her face.
I dig my heels into the soft dirt of the field, and try to resist being dragged into the cozy-looking little cabin. It looks harmless enough, but I have a dark feeling that something is going to go horribly wrong.
The girl knocks on the door with the hand she isn't using to keep a grip on my wrist, and the resulting sound is hollow and seems to echo within my bones.
A plump, elderly lady answers the door, peering up at us from behind her round-lensed glasses. She seems to light up when she sees us, and immediately invites us in.
The cabin is as cozy inside as it is inside, and the smell of cooking meat saturates my nose.
I sigh happily and breath even deeper, eager to smell more of that rare smell. It reminds me of the city that we've just left behind... of the street vendors of so-called " poor man's bacon", which everyone knew was actually collected from the burial bags that surrounded the town.

the smell freezes in my nose when I realize what is cooking in the pot.
The old woman looks up at us with that sickly-sweet grin on her face, and I stifle a gag when I see the evil glint in her eyes- visible even from behind her glasses.
She's looking for more victims, and she obviously thinks that she found a few. When she speaks, her voice is surprisingly high-pitched, like the rusty hinge on the door back home.
I feel a pang of homesickness before snapping back to the situation at hand.
" would you two dears like some supper?" she asks, her tone gentle, but there's a thread of malice laced in her words.
I shake my head politely and start backing towards the door. We need to get out of here ASAP if we don't want to end up as two slabs of poor man's bacon.
Unfortunately, my companion has probably never seen, smelled, or even HEARD of poor man's bacon, so she nods eagerly and bounces on her feet ever so slightly, obviously hungry.
I can think of someone else who's obviously hungry, and they are looking at my companion like a set of fresh poor man's bacon kebabs.
I need to get her out of here.
The old woman waddles towards my companion and squints up at her, and that's when I've had enough.
Grabbing my companion's wrist, I drag her towards the door, but she digs her heels in and wails mournfully, obviously not wanting to pass up a free meal. I know how she feels, but we need to get out of here.

The old lady smiles, reaches up, and pinches my companion's cheek, all the sour greed practically evaporating. She lets go and shuffles over to the cauldron bubbling away on the fire.
" you two remind me of my grandson. God bless that boy, he's always taking care of me, and bringing me food. I can't get out and about these days, so I have to rely on him to get food." she turns back to us, and I wonder if the malice I saw earlier was just a trick of the light, because she doesn't look as if she could hurt a fly, much less the travelers who often contribute to making poor man's bacon.
The woman sprinkles a whitish powder on the meal, and all the red alert signals I have are telling me that I need to run away.
The girl wrinkles her nose, then sniffs a bit before panicking and overturning the pot onto the old woman. Then- for the second time today, I realize where I've seen something.
The white powder is called Cavernine, and it is more lethal than a Sentinel, and more painful than walking across a field of metal shards. Its mainly used to dispatch an enemy quickly, but I know that there have been cases of vendors using it to procure new materials for poor man's bacon. Seeing the poison in action wasn't pretty, but I have no doubt that actually ingesting the stuff would be at LEAST ten times worse
The girl darts around the fallen crone, then runs towards the door, but it's locked, and we watch in horror as a deadbolt slams into place. Locking us inside.
Now it makes sense.
She lured us in so that she can use us for poor man's bacon, and we fell for it hook line and sinker.
The old woman staggers to her feet, and I turn back to her, wondering how she can stand- let alone be alive, after having the cauldron of boiling water dumped over her. What I see is even more sickening than the poor man's bacon lying on the floor.
Her skin has curled back over her flesh, and her bloodshot eyes have nearly popped out of their sockets. Boils have risen everywhere that the water has touched, meaning that her entire face and most of her neck have taken on the appearance of half-popped bubble wrap.
Her wispy hair is flattened against her scalp, and slides behind her fragile ears like strands of greased thread. And her ears themselves have nearly lost structure because the heat has caused the outer cartilage flaps to stick to the inner ear.
She cackles at our expressions, and stumbles towards us, her withered hands extended.
" that line works every time!" she coos, a manic smile spreading across her distorted features.
Her spectacles have nearly been absorbed into the flesh around her eyes as a consequence of the immense heat she's endured.
I hear retching behind me, no doubt the result of the girl having had enough of this freakish display.
The girl runs to me and hugs me tightly, her body quaking like a miniature earthquake, and I feel a surge of protectiveness.
I look around for a potential weapon, and then I see it. A long copper pipe resting against the door frame. I pick it up with both hands and test the weight. Its perfectly balanced.
The old woman has shed her true form, and I feel sick when I realize that she's one of the Other People.
Her voice has deepened so much that I can hear a demonic tinge in her lisped sentences.
" fifffty yearsss in that hideous form... FIFFFTY YEARS!!!!" she howls, and I may or may not pee a little when I see the long, ebony-black wings that unfurl from her shoulders like banners of hellfire.
Well, this explains why her little dunk in the cauldron didn't kill her. The Other People have the nasty habit of being fireproof. Which is why I'm worried. Because they can also apparently  breathe fire. At least according to Old Man Striker, and I'm starting to think that he made up most of his stories in order to entertain the overactive imagination of a little girl seeking shelter from a biting wind storm.
This is going to be a long night if I don't manage to find a way out of here, but I have a stupid idea that might either save us both, or end up with us being two more slabs of Poor Man's Bacon in the old lady's pot.
If I irritate her enough then she might lose her composure, let her guard down, and allow me to take care of her.
For the sake of both myself and the girl, I hope that my plan works, because if it doesn't... nevermind, I don't want to think about that possibility.