Leshy. The Beginning of the Path

* * *

Vint stood up, nodded toward the trees — to step away.

Borland nodded in return, finished his tea.

Two minutes later he heard a shout.

Sharp. Not words — just a sound, the kind that comes when the body understands before the head does. Borland jumped up and rushed toward the sound, simultaneously glancing at the detector.

The detector was silent.

He ran out onto a small clearing beyond the outermost trees — and saw Vint.

He lay on the ground in a strange position — arms spread, body tense, like a person falling from great height and trying to grab something. Eyes open. The shout had already ended — the adrenaline had passed, leaving only this tense silence and white knuckles gripping the grass.

Visually — nothing. A man just lying in a clearing.

Borland stopped. The detector is silent. A psi-anomaly — sensors don't pick those up.

Then he looked closer.

The grass around Vint lay flat — like duckweed on water. And Vint himself was slightly below its level. By a centimeter. By two. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, like a clock hand — he was going down.

Quicksand. Apparently psionic. Kills with fear of falling — while in your head you're plummeting from enormous height, your body quietly sinks into the ground. Slowly. Terribly. Without a trace.

That was Borland's assessment, having sized up the anomaly.

Borland didn't deliberate long.

He took out the extraction tool — the same one he'd earlier used to pick up artifacts. Approached the anomaly's edge — the pellets showed it quickly, he scattered a few around and watched how they sank into the ground, marking the boundaries. Lay flat on the ground beyond the edge, stretched out, reached for Vint.

He hooked the collar with the tool — fabric pulled taut, it held, but the tool wasn't designed for that weight. Slowly, smoothly, he pulled.

Vint tipped sideways. His right arm sank into the earth up to the shoulder — the grass above it didn't even stir, just covered from above, as duckweed covers.

Borland dropped the tool, crawled forward along the anomaly's edge, reached for the arm — fingers found a wrist. He grabbed.

Began to crawl backward. Slowly. The earth under Vint released reluctantly — as if alive, as if it understood the prey was being taken.

Then let go.

* * *

They lay side by side on the grass, getting their breath.

"Not light, are you, brother," thought Borland.

"What was that," said Vint. Not a question — just words that needed to be spoken.

"Nauseous?"

"Sick. Like after the cat."

"Congratulations. Psi-anomaly. Let's call it psi-quicksand." Borland sat up, rubbed his palms on the grass. "Seems to induce fear of falling from great height. While you're flying in your head — it quietly sucks you in. Sensors are silent."

"Felt like I dropped forty floors, never saw the bottom," said Vint.

Then he looked at his right hand.

Something was in it.

A formless pale lump — if you looked carefully, resembling a root of parsley, only slightly lighter and more dense. He'd been holding it, not knowing — his hand had gripped it down there, inside the anomaly, and hadn't let go.

Vint carefully placed it before him on the grass.

The nausea came on harder — sharply, noticeably, Borland saw it in his face. Vint picked the artifact back up. It eased.

Borland looked at him. Then at the artifact. Then back at Vint.

"Hm." He smirked. "A real cowboy. Didn't soil your pants and grabbed an artifact too."

This joke he'd picked up from Prigorshnya, without noticing it. Like a few others.

Vint gave a crooked smile. Said nothing.

* * *

They returned to their things. Borland took out a container, Vint carefully placed the artifact inside. The container closed with a soft click.

"It's not hot," said Borland. "But nobody knows its properties. Keep your 'parsley' in the container for now — don't push your luck."

Vint nodded.

Borland looked at the forest — dark, dense, indifferent. Somewhere in its depths, anomalies of their own. Their own artifacts. Their own logic.

He shouldered his pack.

"Let's go."