An older man's recollections cannot count for nothing. The hours before the expedition trickle slowly away, each wiped out as the next begins. Grant Odys is slow to mark a route out through the map, slower still to share it with you, and lingers over his supply pack. Planning something, perhaps, or is it trepidation? Or merely his age, catching up to him at last, though strength remains yet in his shoulders and concealed within the weight of experience in his voice? A man of layers, it seems – layers that you are determined to unravel.

Your own pack is lighter, or seems so. Maybe you have less baggage, or maybe you're just a natural talent at hiking. But looks can be deceptive – you've got warm clothes and your week's rations in case things should go awry. And, of course, your gun goes at your belt, tucked away under trousers. As you join him at the border gate, Odys gives you a once-over – you resist the urge to let your hand creep toward it, whether for protection from or against.

You set off, alongside Odys and a second stranger, a woman called Annette with frown lines that seem permanent on her young forehead. The chill of the morning melts around you with the hours that pass and sweat beads on your back as you climb the shallow but insistent upward route Odys planned. Three times, no fewer, the three of you happen upon something ruined – a small sheltered cove, with a dead firepit stamped hastily out; a rocky patch with a determined little soily patch, aged and overgrown but but bearing, amongst weeds, the tiny multicoloured beads of a new crop of chillies; a stone structure with walls blown in from wind or hail, maybe a shepherd's hut, once upon a time – and you're beginning to doubt that Odys has the right lay of the land when at last you come to something worthwhile.

An abandoned encampment, sweat-yellow and camo-green tent flaps torn and billowing in the mountain wind, the telltale holes torn with cutters straight through the fence at multiple points. It looks old, but the tents are the same Taline military grade as some of yours. Annette stiffens with recognition out of the corner of your eyes. Odys remains calm. He walks off in one direction, with Annette, and you go in the other, your gaze on him waning as you turn to focus on your search. This fourth place, completing the trifecta, is where you strike gold. Stuck deep in a patch of discoloured grass in a dried-up puddle of something you don't look too closely at is a sword. You draw the sword from its stone with some difficulty and examine the blade – a curvature, with a tapering end. Some help from the weaponsmith Juno, and you should have a fine new handheld weapon. This hunt wasn't for nothing, after all.

You tear your eyes from the dried blood in the soil and return to your crew. Odys is walking back, too, tucking a dull metallic something into his pack. Annette, however, is nowhere to be seen. You look for her, for a while – at least, you do, but your eye on Odys shows that he seems lost in thoughts of his own – but do not venture further into the woods. They are empty up ahead, where you have yet to explore – no birdsong, no woodland animals, just the whistle of the wind through starving trees and a single set of footprints from a woman's boots walking away from whence you three came. {[]}