The wind in the uncanny valley wasn't like the wind you might find in a regular forest: not a soft swish through leaves or even the rattle of dry branches. Instead, it came with the haunting echo of distant mournful singing, just barely at the edge of his hearing, fading in and out like the undulation of fog. More than once, Eli found his eyes glazing over, drawn away into the midst of his imagination where the owner of that voice danced before him in the forest.

He imagined her as a beautiful woman dressed in white, long dark hair rolling down her shoulders like the waves of an ebony sea. Her feet were bare and her skin was pale as alabaster flitting through the trees as ephemeral as a memory before vanishing into the mist.

"Usually, people leave daydreaming for the day and regular dreaming for the night."

Eli lurched upright, shaking the fog from his brain as he returned fully to his spot near the fire sitting half upright against a twisted tree root.

Wink sat beside him, his glistening amorphous body glowing red in the firelight.

Eli cleared his throat. The scratchiness from earlier was getting worse not better.

"Looking a little pale." Wink said, large single eye blinking slowly

Eli grunted, "We knew this would probably happen. That's why we brought supplies."

"Let's just hope you haven't caught something really nasty... like the plague."

"Funny." Eli muttered, reaching out a hand and unceremoniously tipping wink off the bag and onto the ground. Wink hit the grass with a wet squelch as Eli reached inside the bag and withdrew the book he had taken from the library, inspecting it from cover to cover with a critical eye. He was worried that their journey through the swamp and the city might have damaged the book, but, luckily he saw no evidence of such an event.

He turned through the index dragging his eyes down a page lit by flickering red firelight.

Agony

Crushing

Affliction

And then finally at the end of the list: Exclusion.

His fingers brushed over the black inked word feeling the subtle abrasiveness of the page against his fingertips..Turning to the desired heading his eyes scanned down the page casting a cursory inspection over double thick columns of tightly packed script.

But he couldn't do it.

He was too tired, and, at that moment, the text was as daunting as their escape from Veerus city, and he had to shut the book, setting it back in his bag and rubbing his eyes.

"Wow, you really aren't feeling well are you.... Must be plague."

"I am so glad that, in you, I have such an empathetic and supportive friend."

Wink wiggled his gelatinous mass, "I know, what would you do without me."

"Live my life in peace and tranquility I am sure." he said with a sigh sliding down onto the grass and leaning back against his log. He hadn't noticed until just then, but, if he looked close enough, he thought he could see shapes in the fire, wicked faces staring out at him from the dancing flames.

Under his legs, the grass felt as if it was subtly moving.

Elid did his best to ignore the strange disquiet of the forest, and turned his attention back to his satchel, the cool leather gone dull and gray in the misty evening. He had managed to stuff several volumes from the Veerus library into the satchel, but was still surprised when, upon looking into the bag, he saw the spine of a book he did not recognize: russet red and faded with time it shone in the dim evening light.

Reaching inside, his fingers closed around the cool, worn leather of the book jacket, and withdrew the strange volume into the light. Only then did he finally remember the book's source.

It was the book Peter had given him

With curiosity he weighed the book in his hand and turned it over. It wasn't a remarkable volume, not particularly thick or particularly thin. The cover was worn but not overly so, and there was no title or author that could be seen on the front or spine, just a vast blank expanse of red stitched with delicate golden thread around its borders.

He opened the book, and the spine creaked as he did so, cracking lightly with the sound of a book that hadn't seen many readers.

He flipped to the first two pages, both of which were blank devoid of dedication or author's note. He frowned, lying the book on its side and rifling through the pages. Words spilled past his eyes leaving no impression as they went, gone in an instant before he finally paused on the last page.

He opened the back cover, expecting a signature or some other clue to the book's origin, but he found no signature. Instead, what he found left him scrambling for his bag again, withdrawing his father's journal and opening it up to an interior page. He lay the two books side by side on his lap inspecting the small black stamp inside the back cover of the book, and the crude doodle in the upper right hand corner of the page in his father's journal.

A small black tree within a circle.

He knew that symbol.

It was the last thing his father had penned before.... Before he disappeared.

What would it be doing here in this book?

He turned back to the first few pages hoping to find answers

There was no signature here, and no other evidence of an original owner or Author.

He turned to the next couple pages, expecting a title page, table of contents or maybe even a dedication.

There were none.

Brows furrowing, he flipped the next few pages open to find a chapter heading, a column of text, and a single number at the bottom of the page.

1

Eli didn't really understand why, but somehow, the lack of preface to the book only inflamed his already burning curiosity. His head spun as he considered the pages before him and the strange symbol that stared at him from the interior of his father's old journal.

Was it coincidence, but Eli didn't believe in coincidence. Why would the last symbol his father ever penned be present in a random book from a random library handed to him by a random stranger. This book had to be connected to his father's disappearance, somehow.

And so he began to read.

It wasn't anything special at first, nothing scholarly or philosophical.

It was just a novel.

A novel without a title or an Author.

He might have put down the book, but there was something about it that kept him reading, perhaps it was the mystery of it all, a desire to try and find the unknown author hidden in the work, but most of all it was a strange sense of familiarity with the words; the way they were put together and stitched into sentences, like he was listening to someone familiar tell a story.

Even if the book hadn't had such allure to him, the simple desire to understand its connection to his father spurred him on.

All around him the light of fireflies winked on and off, though the way they blinked seemed more like the opening and closing of many watchful eyes than they did of simple luminescent bugs.

He turned the page.

Before he knew what he was doing, and in nearly no time at all, he had made it to chapter two, and a smile had broken across his face, as wide as the muscles were willing to allow. He was nearly startled from his seat as soft laughter broke through the clearing, only to realize it was his own.

Eli raised a hand to his throat.

Wink stared at him, "Are you alright? Didn't think crazy was contagious, but you my friend are losing it."

Eli shook himself, closed the book slowly before setting it back in his bag.

Perhaps wink was right, or maybe not right, but he at least had a point. Eli hadn't slept in days, it was about time he got some real rest. Whatever answers he was hoping to find would have to be delayed for a later time.

With the soft groan of his aching back and arms, he lowered himself to the ground resting his head on his satchel like a pillow and curling up before the fire. Across the little circle of orange light, Peter slept soundly. Wink eased onto Eli's previous spot on the log, and under the minor fear's careful watch, Eli sank into sleep, thinking all the while of the red bound book with its golden thread and the familiar tree symbol stamped inside the cover

***

Waking up wasn't nearly so pleasant as going to sleep as waking brought with it the unpleasant sensation of sandpaper in his throat and the sinuses in his face doing their very best attempt to squeeze the eyeballs from his head.

He groaned and rolled onto his side bursting into a sudden bout of wet coughing which he could feel rattling in his chest and lungs.

That had been quicker than he had thought.

His face felt flushed, as he sat up, hands brushing through the dew carpeted morning grass. Diffused light was glittering through the blue mist around them and filtering down through the barren branches of the trees above, which were now stretched down towards them at almost full capacity.

The effect was rather disconcerting, but hardly as bothersome as the throbbing behind his eyes.

"Good morning!"

Eli winced as the voice caused a loud echoing to erupt in his ears, and he looked up to find Peter beaming down at him from above. It took Eli a moment to take in the visual of the other young man as he raised a hand to block out the sun.

To his, almost, annoyance Peter was actually looking better than he had the night before. The sort of sour sunkenness of his skin had seemed to plump out overnight giving his cheeks a full, rounded appearance. His lips were hardly so chapped, and the bloodshot red about his eyes, that had been so central to his figure, had now faded to a dull pink.

His voice seemed to have cleared up in the intervening night as well lending his voice to a richer- fuller sort of sound.

As Eli stared at Peter and Peter stared back, the smile on the younger man's face suddenly faded, "Oh, you.... Don't look so good."

A distant moan rose up through the trees, deep and reverberating like the call of some great animal.

Peter turned his head.

Eli coughed into his sleeve, and slowly sat up on his knees as he turned to rummage through his travel bag before producing two packages of herbal tea and some tarnished silver cooking supplies. There was only one mug and one bowl, but you could drink as well out of a bowl as you could out of a mug.

"Could you put the water on?" He asked, forced to clear the rasp from his voice with a weak cough.

Peter took the kettle from his hands and, after a moment, returned with water from the river, which he set on the fire to let boil.

He came to sit next to Eli still curled up next to the fire and placed a hand on his forehead.

He looked almost surprised, "That was quick."

Eli pulled away from his hand, "It was to be expected." He coughed into his sleeve, and reached down to his supplies withdrawing one of the small packets of assorted crushed herbs and other medicinal substances.

However,before he could use it, it was snatched from his hands by Peter who glanced over the crushed green/grey powder with a critical eye, "You won't want to use this."

Against his protestations, Peter took the bag and began rummaging through with a frown of concentration.

Eli rubbed the side of his head, "Well why not."

"That works better for stomach ailments than for a cough, and also depends pretty heavily on whether it is viral or bacterial." He pulled something from the little pouch and inspected it, "It's not the best option, but it will have to do." behind him, the kettle began to squeal, and he took it off, pouring the water into the mug, mixing the tea and then dumping the powder in with it. He handed the mug over, "Drink, it should help with the fever."

Eli, hunching there in the strange and unnerving forest did as requested as light continued to filter in through the tops of the trees. Even the light here seemed to be acting rather more as smoke than it did as light. In that way illumination seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. It was disorienting, and didn't help his headache.

Peter sat next to him and poured a small amount of hot water into the bowl, which he sipped at on occasion as Eli nursed his mug.

"Hmm, so he isn't completely useless." Wink said from the depths of Eli's bag.

Eli would have smacked him, but he found he didn't really have the energy.

Some of the pressure built up behind his eyes abated, but his throat was still sore and raw, and he still felt hot all over.

Peter grinned, "Nope!"

Eli wondered for a moment if Peter understood that was supposed to be a jab, but he let it go. If Peter didn't know who was he to tell him, and if he did know, the other man was choosing, valiantly, to ignore it.

Eli had originally guessed he and Peter were around the same age, though there was something so innocent about the other man that he couldn't help but think of him as younger than he actually was.

If nothing he seemed to know far more about medicine than just a child would be likely to know.

With some curiosity Eli put his tea down and reached over to his bag to withdraw his journal, cracking it open to a new page, "Is all of this common knowledge in the city?" he wondered

Peter shrugged, "Oh yeah, there's no other way we would survive. I know what plants are best for what ailments,what to avoid when in certain conditions. When I got older, I could practically predict what I was coming down with the moment my throat started to itch."

The idea fascinated him, and he set his pen to page, "Out of.... Curiosity... did you have a choice in what ailment you got?"

Peter snorted, "That's not exactly how sickness works now is it, but I guess to some degree you can. If you live under the Affliction, you can't be healthy, it just isn't possible. The trick is to be only slightly sick. For instance, I always made sure to boil my water to avoid catching any of those stomach bugs. I'm not a big fan, there are other people though who hate the chills with such a passion, that they would rather have an upset stomach over a sore throat."

Eli made a face.

"Yeah I know. Light Viral infections were what I tended to stick to to avoid getting anything worse." he glanced down at the rippling black water of the little stream, "Though...there is something about that place that seems to distill apathy in people, the older they get the less they seem to care and the less they care the more they tend to ignore things like.... Like open sores, or gangrenous limbs..... Leprosy took my grandfather, though he was walking right until the end. Guess he just didn't care enough anymore to try as hard as I did."
Eli jotted a few quick notes and wiped a bead of sweat from his face as he took another sip of the strong, bitter tea, "I have, heard and, read in some cases, that there are certain things you can catch just by.... Looking at them."

Peter snorted, "Whoever told you that was wrong." He laughed again and shook his head like the thought was funny to him, "No, no affliction doesn't work that way. The only time I ever heard of that happening is if you look at affliction itself, and that's just a myth. Besides, No one ever wants to get close enough to one of the outbreak to actually ask them questions. I avoided them as well as I could, and the library was as good a place as any." His voice trailed off slightly, lost in thought.

Eli looked up from the notes he was taking, "Yes.... the library, I was curious to learn that you even had one. It seemed so strange and out of place."

Peter nervously rubbed the back of his head, "Well um.... About that.... We do produce and distribute medicines as there is nothing else we can really offer the rest of the world. I know affliction doesn't like it very much, but that is the fact of the matter, as for the library.... Well.... it ... it's sort of there to.... you know.... Lure people in..."

Eli paused in his writing and looked up at Peter, who looked away with an expression of guilt on his face, "I see."

Peter looked up, an expression of earnest pain on his face, "I should have warned you sooner... and I didn't know what was going for the longest time" he shuffled his feet, "At least not at first anyway...." His shoulders slumped as he sat back against the log, "I was so afraid at first, I.... I could never help the others. I was afraid of what might happen to me if I did and I....."

Tears glittered in the corner of his eyes.

Like a fly to a venus fly trap, Eli thought, the library the trap and Eli, the fly.

Eli remained quiet. For a moment before,"Then why help me?"

Peter shrugged and looked away rather pointedly, "I don't know, you were nice to me."

There was something Peter was holding back, but Eli didn't push it, feeling his own jab of shame at Peter's comment, "Not as much as I could have been admittedly."

Peter twirled his finger through a strad of the swirling grass, "Still nicer than anyone before..... I should have warned you earlier but...."

Eli held up a hand cutting Peter off, "It's ok, you saved my life and that is what matters now."

He grunted and slowly pulled himself to his feet. Peter stood quickly and took him by the arm, "Are you sure you should be getting up."

Eli coughed into his sleeve again, "Better to travel when I can still walk, we don't know how bad this is going to get."

"Where are we even going?" Peter asked, scrambling to help Eli as he packed away his things and doused the fire.

"We are returning to my property, give us both time to recover, and it will give me some time to look at this volume and cross reference it with the rest of my collection."

Peter nodded, insisting on carrying the bag despite Eli's protestations, but eventually they were on their way. With the heat of his skin cooled by the early morning mist, he could almost ignore how poor he was feeling and pretend it was simply the exertion of their hike.

Wink sat inside his bag again, glowering out at the sunlight from the warm, comforting darkness inside.

Peter walked along beside, almost skipping with wide eyed glee and wonder as they made their way through the strange little forest, the little white flower glittering from where it sat on the front of his buttoned shirt collar, or Eli's shirt considering at this moment in time Peter had no money or clothing to his name.

They would have to fix that.

For the first part of the morning, they kept towards the outer edge of the trees, a few times catching sight of the thick fog bank that hung over Veerus city and the surrounding bog. He planned on hooking up with the main road or within a day or two but feared that doing it too early might have them running into rogue bands of the outbreak as, unlike their city ridden counterparts, they were allowed free reign to travel at the behest of Affliction, who was more than pleased to send its disease spreading disciples out into the world.

Eli wasn't much interested in meeting them again especially not since they were likely wanted figures this close to the city.

So, they kept to the treeline.

It was because of this, that when the rain came, they were able to witness, from the leeward side of a heavily breathing tree, as the clouds overhead contorted into the hate filled faces unusually mobile as if they were screaming at each other. When the wind came, it came with the howl of angry voices screaming. Eli lowered his head against the wind trying to block out the sound, which broached all to familiar memories in the back of his mind.

Peter huddled close to him on one side as the contorting faces rose into thunderous black shapes overhead, lightning crackling from their eyes. When it rained, the water was tinged red like blood, and hung heavy on their clothing.

Wink wrapped himself around Eli's bag in an attempt to keep the blood tinged water out.

Eli broke into a fit of coughing as the voices rose to howling overhead. Peter wrapped an arm around him and pulled him closer to the bowl of the tree until they were pressed right up against the gently expanding and contracting bark. Blood ran in runnels around them thick and congealing in the mud.

The air tasted with a copper tang.

But soon the voices died, and the two of them were left soaking to stiffly stand up and begin their slogging march through the trees once more.

When Eli turned to look at Peter, he instinctively flinched back as the horror of two bright blue eyes staring out at him from dribbling layers of red, as if he had crawled from a pit of rotten corpses sinking into a blood filled puddle at the very bottom. Eli led them back into the forest to the black river and they spent some time washing the blood from their skin.

Breaking back through the trees a while later, the sun peered down from the clouds and warmed their clothing, which began to steam gently as they continued their trek north over rolling grassland. The trees faded behind them in the distance to a blue haze, and they were left with nothing but the soft pulsing of the wind, and the waving of grass, over rolling hills, the horizon stretching out to infinity on either side.

Peter stared open-mouthed, "What is this place?"

Eli rubbed his aching temples, "This is the Lost, it cuts between the Desolate and the outskirts of Veerus."

Peter shifted his feet nervously, "The Lost.... How are we supposed to get through it."

Eli smiled weakly, "Just do exactly as I tell you."