After we finished our lunch at The Squirrel’s Nut, I led the research party to the North Forest Codexium first. I didn’t know they wanted to go there first until I saw every member of the party touch their portable to the main North Forest Node. According to Ruth, who explained what they were doing afterward, it was common practice for traveling Codexers to stop at the local Codexium in whatever town they were visiting to touch their portable to the Stationary Node and download information on the town. The information they downloaded included things like the form of government overseeing the area, typical weather and climate, wildlife and flora, and so on and so forth. This was the first time I had heard about such a feature in a portable Node, so I made a mental note to do that if I ever found myself traveling to another town with a Codexium and a Stationary Node.

  Isaac didn’t interact much with the researchers, other than to point out the Node and ask them a few questions about where they were from. I was grateful for that because it was clear to me that the researchers already thought very little of me and North Forest in general. If they learned that our local Codex Keeper was constantly drunk, that would just lower their opinion of the village even more.

  After that, we headed a few miles east from the North Forest Codexium to a part of the forest that was largely uninhabited. It was away from the town and the farms and closer to the Codex Ruins, though the Codex Ruins were still at least another 100 miles away. Still, even going just this far made me feel like we had truly cut ourselves off from civilization. This part of the forest was not explored very well except by those who traveled this way to find rare herbs to sell to merchants who came to visit us.

  So I honestly didn’t know the area that well myself.

  But the researchers didn’t know that. And they knew it even worse than I did, so I still felt qualified to be their guide.

  We set up a small base camp in a clearing, though we still had to clear away a bunch of fallen branches and rocks just to be able to set up our tents. Though the Harbingers intended to return to town every day, they wanted to set up a Research Center where they could bring their findings back to study them. According to Martha, half of the researchers would remain in the Research Center while the other half would go out into the forest and search for the herbs they were looking for.

  Specifically, they were looking for the incredibly rare herbs called Lumenleaf and Ashbell Vine. I hadn’t even heard of either of those herbs when Martha asked me about them at the tavern, but I pretended to have because I didn’t want them to realize I wasn’t as familiar with the area as they thought I was. Fortunately, Nimbus had heard about those specific herbs and even told me that he had encountered some of them in the wild before he synced with me, so he was able to confirm that the area the researchers were interested in searching was a good place to look for those herbs.

  It was very lucky for me that I had Nimbus to do a lot of the talking for me. Martha, in particular, appeared to appreciate talking to Nimbus a lot more than she appreciated talking to me. It helped that Nimbus enjoyed talking, though I made sure to speak up occasionally during lunch to avoid arousing the suspicions of Martha and the other researchers.

  Lumenleaf was used for soothing something called early-stage Codexblight inflammation, while Ashbell Vine was needed to sedate advanced-stage Codexblight patients whose mana pools were unstable and overflowing. Neither of those explanations made the slightest lick of sense to me, but Codexblight sounded bad, so I was more than happy to help find the herbs.

  Though I still didn’t know exactly what Codexblight even was. I meant to ask during lunch, but Martha had dominated most of the conversation with questions about the herbs, the North Forest area, and everything else relevant to their research trip. That made it incredibly difficult to ask her what it was, and by the time we finished lunch, we had to leave.

  After establishing their temporary research center—which was a collection of about three canvas tents protected by an enchanted circle one of the researchers created—the search for the herbs finally began. Martha and one of the other researchers, a middle-aged man whose name I didn’t catch, went off to one part of the woods while Ruth, Nimbus, and I went off to another part to search for Lumenleaf. Martha and her partner were looking for Ashbell Vine while Ruth, Nimbus, and I went searching for Lumenleaf. The rest of the researchers stayed behind at the research center, partly to finish setting things up, partly to start performing some ‘research rituals’ they didn’t go into detail about.

  You might wonder why we split the party the way that we did. It seemed unsafe on the face of it, but Martha had told us not to go more than a mile away from the research center and had given Ruth instructions to send out a ‘Codex flare’ to alert them if we ran into any danger. Given the lack of predators in this part of the forest—Nimbus confirmed there weren’t many and most of them were a danger more to rabbits than humans—it was thought that this way we could cover more ground. The main idea, honestly, was to scout out the general area more than anything, though if we found any of the herbs we were looking for at the same time, that would be a nice bonus.

  I suspected that Martha paired Nimbus and me with Ruth because she thought of me as more of a burden than anything. But I didn’t complain. Both Nimbus and I liked Ruth a lot more than Martha, so we didn’t mind going with her. She was much nicer than Martha and easier to talk to. We were supposed to return to the research center in about an hour to report our findings.

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  So while we were walking through the undergrowth of the forest, under the shade of the treetops overhead, I finally got to ask Ruth the question that had been on my mind ever since I accepted the job listing. “What is Codexblight?”

  Ruth, who had stopped to crouch at the base of a particularly old-looking tree to study some moss, looked up at me in surprise. “You mean you’ve never heard of it?”

  I shook my head. I clutched Inkwyrm in one hand, its tip glowing red, though I didn’t anticipate having to fight anyone or anything out here. It was just a precaution. “No. First time I heard about it was after looking at the job listing on the job board.”

  Ruth stood up, dusting off her robes, though they didn’t look that dirty to me. “I guess that’s not surprising.”

  “Because I’m from a remote village in the middle of nowhere?” I asked, doing my best not to sound too defensive about that fact.

  Ruth blinked at me. “No, because outside of the Seventh Kingdom, Codexblight is pretty unknown. But if we don’t find a cure for it—and fast—then it will be a problem not just for Admah, but for all of the Nine Kingdoms.”

  Nimbus, who was chewing on a leaf while sitting in front of a bush nearby, perked his ears up. “Sounds serious … for humans, that is.”

  Ruth gave Nimbus a reproving look. “Codexblight doesn’t just affect human Codexers. There are reports of Codex Beasts, especially synced partners, getting the disease, usually from their human partner, though not always.”

  Nimbus immediately hopped a foot away from me, though still chewing on his leaf. He gave me a worried look. “Don’t get any closer to me, Aaron. I’m too young and fluffy to die.”

  Ruth laughed. “I wouldn’t worry about Aaron if I were you, Nimbus. He doesn’t have Codexblight. Like I said, it’s primarily an Admah problem. It would be surprising—and very concerning—if a Codexer like Aaron had it.”

  Nimbus gave her an accusing look. “If it’s only an issue in Admah, then how do we know you or your fellow dirty human researchers don’t have it?”

  Ruth shook her head. “Trust me, if any of us had Codexblight, you’d know. We all tested for it before coming out here, and if any of us had tested positive for it, we’d have to stay home and quarantine for six months in a Node chamber.”

  My eyes widened in surprise. “Quarantine for six months? Is it that contagious?”

  Ruth pursed her lips. She brushed her dark hair out of her face and glanced back toward the research center. “That’s not the point of the quarantine. The actual point is to make sure the patient doesn’t become a Blighted Husk.”

  “A what?” I asked.

  Ruth took a deep breath. “Let me start from the beginning. You asked me what Codexblight is. And that is the million-crown question because the truth is, no one—not even the High Healer of Health herself—knows what Codexblight is, other than it’s a deadly disease that afflicts primarily Codexers and Codex Beasts.”

  I bit my lower lip. “What does it do, exactly, to Codexers who get it?”

  Ruth shivered. “The exact effects it has on Codexers are still being researched, but the consensus among researchers so far is that it subtly alters and destabilizes the Codex resonance in the bodies of its victims. Over time, as the disease worsens, so do the symptoms, until it eventually reaches the point where the Arcane Codex itself no longer recognizes the individuals as Codexers.”

  I gulped. “Is that the worst part?”

  Ruth shook her head again. “Not even remotely, though that does make standard healing spells a lot less effective on patients. Symptoms are mild in the beginning, in what researchers call Phase I. Just headaches, aura instability, HUD glitches … annoyances, but nothing serious, which is why no one took it seriously at first. But by the time a patient reaches Phase IV?” She shivered again. “That’s when they become a Blighted Husk, essentially a soul-less killing machine that exists only to destroy and spread its disease.”

  I glanced around nervously, even though I knew there weren’t any Blighted Husks around here. “Sounds scary.”

  “It is, but most victims die before their case gets that bad,” said Ruth. She scratched the back of her head. “I think the main thing that kills most victims is the Soul Echo Shatter, which is when their soul essentially shatters into a million pieces. If they survive that, then they become Blighted Husks.”

  “Oh, joy,” said Nimbus, who was shaking quite a bit. “I was worried that if I got Codexblight, I would end up as a Blight Husk. Having my soul shatter into a million pieces is much more comforting.”

  Ruth sighed and added the bit of moss she’d scraped off the tree trunk to a small bag she pulled out of her robes, probably for research. “It’s no joke. At the moment, there’s no real cure for Codexblight. Standard healing spells work up until about Phase II, at which point they gradually lose effectiveness, but they never actually deal with the problem itself. They only improve the symptoms, but they don’t cure the individual in question.”

  Ruth’s tone was both sad and bitter, making me ask, “If Codexblight is as bad as you say it is, then there must be a lot of research funding devoted toward it, right?”

  Ruth sighed heavily. “There is, but … so much of it is wasted. None of it has been promising so far. If I’m honest, I don’t think this research trip will yield a lot of results, either. Back in school, I read everything I could on the subject, including some dense research papers, and it was extremely discouraging. I imagine that we’ll look around for a while, collect some rare herbs, run a couple of unnecessary experiments, pay you, and then head back home to Admah with nothing to show. But hey, at least we didn’t waste research funds, so there’s that.”

  I was surprised by Ruth’s bitter tone and words. She had seemed like a really sweet girl before this, but she had a cynical side to her that I hadn’t even noticed. It intrigued me. “If you think this is a waste of a trip, then why did you come along? Did Martha force you to?”

  Ruth hesitated. She looked down at her feet. “It doesn’t matter. You would probably just laugh at me if I told you what I was actually looking for. Everyone else has.”

  I folded my arms in front of my chest. “I won’t laugh. I promise.”

  Ruth looked up at me, still skeptical. “You won’t?”

  I shrugged. “Why would I? I know even less about Codex medicine than you.”

  “Yeah,” Nimbus said in agreement. “You wouldn’t believe the things Aaron doesn’t know. I’m honestly surprised he even remembers his name sometimes.”

  It was a good thing Ruth was here; otherwise, I was pretty sure I’d have kicked Nimbus for that comment.

  But Ruth, apparently heeding my earlier advice about ignoring Nimbus, took a deep breath as if steadying herself. “All right, then. I’m on a Codex Quest to find the one thing that could heal Codexblight: the Harmonic Genesis.”

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