[The worst part is he's going to have to tell this story over and over again, isn't he? It's not like the stories from home of the butchery his brother imposed on innocent islanders, or the pirates he's killed in the line of duty. Nothing like the chaos and horror of his childhood, for all those stories can be left behind and never spoken of again. The forest spirits are something the new folks need to know about. First he clears his throat, though. Bends down to light a cigarette off the light of his lantern, then takes a deep breath of the smoke and regards this Soldat fellow with a frown.]

We had to get the Keeper back on the network. The signal doesn't reach all the way out to the lighthouse, so Winters took me and a few others out there with cables to connect her building up. We had several lookout groups tailing us, too, keeping an eye out through the whole forest in case things turned violent, but we'd hoped the spirits would let us be since we didn't mean them any harm.

It worked until the foghorn went off. Robin said she was trying to tell the spirits to let us go safely. For whatever reason, they took it as a sign to do the opposite. Winters had the back as we were retreating, so they got to him first. Five was the closest to him and he tried to fight them off. They tore Winters apart, and we dragged Five out of there but his injuries were too severe for him to recover from. The rest of us fought them off on the way back to town. We lost a lot of people from the lookout and defense teams. Lotta people dead, a lot more we never even found.