Order and Chaos

Cannibalism, lots of it.

The rumor was that the mutiny hadn't died down - it had simply gone silent. Rather than open warfare, the mutineers were quietly taking out loyalists and consuming their flesh, as provisions were becoming scarcer.

I knew this wasn't true, if only because the former mutineers were dying as fast as the others. If there was any secretive cannibalism, it was a two-way street. But I doubted it; I had carefully started accounting for the bodies once the rumors started, and they matched up. There might have been nibbling of corpses, but no outright consumption, unless people were sneaking back to feed on them - which, honestly, seemed like far more trouble than it was worth.

But the more I reflected on the matter, the more I realized there was another explanation.

you forgot how to count

It had become impossible to count any number higher than 1030. The moment I tried to conceive of adding one to that number, I found my mind overtaken in a wave of confusion.

This was either a delayed curse by the dead gods, or a change in the very nature of the world caused by many of the gods governing numbers dying out. It would be some time before I could determine which.

That meant we likely had more soldiers than I was able to account for, but there was no way I could be sure of how many. I tried asking the soldiers to stand aside after I counted them, but after I reached 1030 my mind was a haze and even starting over on the new group seemed impossible. I could tell we still had a considerable number with us over the limit, but as to how many, I had no idea.

The most important question was whether this was only affecting us. If it was a curse, it likely was; but if it were a broader change caused by a god's death, then we might be able to take advantage of the confusion. After all, the enemy forces would have no idea if their group of 1030 soldiers was actually larger than ours.

But there would be no way to know that until we were off the mountain. And that would still take some time. The worst was likely over as far as the terrain, but there was still the matter of curses.

And, of course, there was the more immediate, if less deadly, problem that stood in our way. It would have to be dealt with before we could go any further down.

The first step was to work out exactly what we were up against.