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The rest of the evening travel is slow and painful. While using grenades helped to clear the group of fog cats and get them moving faster, it also inevitably draws in more beasts. Emily and the mages with ranged attacks quickly dispatch anything that approaches them, pushing through groups of five or more attacking beasts at least every ten minutes for the first hour.

They reach the next clearing to set up camp three hours after fighting the fog cats. A few group members sit in the centre of the clearing, clasping deep gashes and waiting for the healers to regain enough mana to help. Everybody else rushes to set up their tents so they can sleep.

Emily hunkers down at the edge of the clearing, watching the forest in the direction they came from. Oscar comes over as the clearing starts to settle, carrying food for Emily.

“Hey, you sure you’re still okay to take first watch?” he asks while casting nervous glances out into the foggy surroundings. “You’re probably the most exhausted one here.”

“I’ll be fine.” She waves him off. “My spells are mana-efficient. I still have enough left in the tank to keep watch for three more hours. I may have to wake people up to help me fight if too many beasts attack though.”

Oscar nods and stands up with a yawn, too tired to question her any longer.

“As long as you’re certain. Get help the second you need it, okay? I don’t want any stupid deaths due to exhaustion.”

Emily waves over her shoulder as he leaves, not taking her eyes off the treeline. Her glowing orange eyes remain fixed on the darkness, with only brief pauses for regular earthen detection scans. An hour later, Emily’s concerns are confirmed as she feels a familiar dead spot in one of her returned scans.

Damn!

She watches for the next two hours as no beasts attack, but the dead zone slowly circles their camp. It never moves closer than fifty metres, and no matter how hard Emily tries, she fails to extract any helpful data. At the end of her watch, Emily wakes a still exhausted Ivor and informs him of the dead zone’s return before heading into her tent to rest.

She falls into meditation, quickly refilling her drained resources and returning to near-peak condition. Emily remains in a trance until the end of Ivor’s shift when she drops her focus as her second core wakes up. Before she can re-enter meditation, she lets off a quick earthen detection just in case, and a chill runs down her spine. The dead zone that once traced the edge of the camp, now covers it.

Emily stands up, cautiously opening her tent and stepping out. She glances around, the murky gloom of the night drawing in like a noose around her neck. Activating infra-sight, Emily walks through the tents to the edge of the camp, looking for Ivor or Enzo on watch. Finding no one sitting where she left Ivor earlier, she walks the perimeter.

Halfway round, she spots him. Lying in a pool of his own blood, slowly bleeding the last heat of his life onto the forest floor, is Ivor. The colour drains from her face as she sees him, and Emily rushes over. She deactivates infra-sight as she turns him onto his back, grimacing at the state of his body. His arms are both bent at unnatural angles, and his throat is ripped clean out.

Emily grits her teeth before taking a deep breath and slowly releasing it, crushing her emotions as her logic reassures her.

It’s fine, I will reset in a minute. First, I should find out what our stalker is so I can find it next time.

She closes Ivor’s eyes as she stands up.

“See you later, big guy,” she signs to his corpse as she walks into the gathered tents.

Emily approaches the closest tent first, pushing open the flap and cautiously gazing in. The tent’s occupant is Nora, one of the group’s healers. Unlike Ivor’s violent demise, Nora’s was peaceful, with just a single two-fanged bite mark on her neck and black veins spreading from it across her body. Her body seems shrivelled as if all the moisture has been drained from her.

Inspecting the bite closely, a picture of their enemy quickly forms in Emily’s mind.

Two fangs, spreads venom, hidden from thermal detection - it’s a snake. Is it earth attuned? It would make sense that it could mess with our scans and drain moisture, but it would have to be third circle to distort our scans like that with just earth spells. If that were the case, it could have attacked us head-on.

Standing up, she leaves the tent and starts checking on others. The number of dead keeps growing. From two to four to nine. As Emily opens the ninth tent, Oscar’s, she finds almost exactly what she expected. Curled around Oscar’s sleeping form is a long, thin, pitch-black boa. Its skin shimmers in a strange way, seemingly vanishing at the edges as if forming into wisps of shadow.

Darkness element, of course!

The gears finally click into place in Emily’s mind as the snake releases Oscar’s neck from its jaws and turns to hiss at Emily. Swiftly, she steps forward, driving a Claw down into the creature's head before it even has time to react. The snake drops to the floor, dead, as Emily rises. Glancing at Oscar, who has been violently thrashing from the moment the snake released him, Emily sighs as she pulls out The Clock.

“You really did drag us on a suicide mission, didn’t you?”

***

“We need your help.”

Emily turns to face Oscar at the words she has been waiting for all morning.

“Please come translate for Ivor. He-“

“Sure!” Emily interrupts, cutting him off before he can finish.

Repeating the same conversation with Oscar and Ivor, she quickly gets their agreement and sets off into the forest after her prey. Knowing infra-sight won’t be of any help, she keeps earthen detection running, heading towards the information dead zone. Upon reaching it, she lifts a hand before her and casts light, raising the glowing ball of white to float above her head.

The light shimmers in the fog, banishing the shadows around her.

“Let’s see you hide now,” she mutters quietly as her predatory grin grows.

Carefully, she moves through the dead zone, checking the ground near tree roots and under bushes. After a few minutes of searching, she spots a flickering black outline. With one quick movement, Emily steps forward, lashing out with a Claw and cleanly severing the snake's head.

She pulls up the system window the moment the corpse drops, not having bothered before, knowing the system doesn’t work on living creatures.

ˉˉˉˉˉ

[Shadow Boa]

[Rank:] E

[Description:] A snake that dwells in the depths of shadows, striking its foes from the dark and killing them with its life draining venom.

_____

Interesting, I’ve never heard of you before.

She takes the long corpse and slings it over her shoulders, carrying the head in her hand as she returns to the group triumphant.

Her odd quarry receives a few strange glances from her groupmates, no one recognising the beast. Oscar and Ivor approach her immediately.

“Is that it?” Oscar asks dubiously.

“Yep,” Emily says, dropping the snake on the ground before him. “It’s some kind of darkness element snake. I think it was using a magical draining effect on the detection spell to distort it.”

Ivor nods thoughtfully at her claim as Oscar crouches down to inspect the beast.

“That’s an interesting find. I haven’t heard of a snake like this before. We may be the first to discover it.”

“I’m quite interested in researching it more myself,” Emily says while staring at the mysterious flickering flesh of the shadow boa, still trying to hide itself from the world even after its death. “Would I be able to pay some of my contribution from this expedition to take its corpse when we get back?”

Oscar looks up at her with a frown, but it quickly switches to a look of helplessness as he rises and speaks.

“Technically, Ivor was the one to find it, and you were the only person to contribute to killing it. So, I think it’s only fair that you two receive ownership of the corpse.”

Emily is slightly surprised by his response, glancing at Ivor who signs a quick question.

“Research it together?”

She smiles and nods at him, before returning her focus to Oscar.

“Thanks. When we finish our research, we’ll send you a copy as payment for helping us transport the corpse.”

I can always leave out some details if I find anything useful.

“Thank you. I’d appreciate that.” Oscar smiles at her offer while signalling for a carrier to collect the corpse as he returns to his position.

Emily returns to the head of the group, satisfied. The rest of the day goes much as expected, running into dozens of beasts and slowly battling towards their resting point. They handle the repeated encounters better, no longer worried about the looming threat following them, and by the time they reach their camping place, they don’t have any serious injuries.

The night passes smoothly too, and the next morning, Emily leaves her tent to find everyone still alive and Ivor waiting for her with food. They settle down at the edge of the clearing to eat while keeping watch. After a few minutes alone, Oscar comes over to talk to them with a pleased smile on his face.

“What’s got you so chipper?” Emily asks as he sits down next to them.

“We’re making good progress.”

“Really? It felt like we didn’t move that much with all the fighting yesterday,” Emily comments with doubt.

“We planned for that much resistance at this point. If we keep up the predicted pace today, we should reach The Crystal Waters’ entrance by nightfall! And without casualties as well! This trip will be a resounding success as long as we don’t run into too much trouble in The Waters.”

Emily narrows her eyes at his confidence.

Half the group would be dead right now if I wasn’t here, and we haven’t even reached The Waters yet. He’s letting his guard down too much.

“Let’s see. If we run into any more beasts today than we did yesterday, we may end up with casualties before we get there.”

Oscar seems to calm down slightly at her words, his excitement fading as he nods at her.

“You’re right. We should still be careful. But be a little proud of us,” he says, standing up and patting Emily on the shoulder. “And yourselves. This expedition wouldn’t have made it here this smoothly without both of you.”

Emily watches his back recede into the tents before turning back to Ivor.

“He’s a little odd,” Ivor signs, making Emily laugh.

“Yes. Yes, he is.”

I can’t tell whether he’s pretending to be kind to achieve something, or if he’s actually just nice. I guess that makes him a good noble.

After finishing their breakfast, and waiting for the camp to be disassembled, Emily takes up the lead again, guiding the group further into The Glade under Oscar’s instructions. The morning is much the same as the evening before, with gatherings of beasts attacking in waves, slowly grinding down their mana reserves.

Emily notices Oscar giving more directions the longer the day goes. At one point just before lunch, after returning to the group after ripping apart a gathering of pop toads, a froglike beast with a tendency to blow themselves up when they feel threatened, Emily notices him holding a strange metal device.

“What’s that?” she asks quietly as she appears from the fog beside him.

Oscar starts slightly, grasping the trinket tight as his shoulders jump.

“You’re back,” he whispers with an audible sigh of relief. “This is a Guide Pose; it always points to a specific attuned mana crystal. It’s how we’re finding The Waters’ entrance. The first time my family found it, they marked it with this crystal so we can return whenever we like.”

“I see. Does this crystal only link to one Pose? Or multiple?”

“Multiple. We have a spell for linking new Poses to the same crystal. Why?”

“Does your family sell them by any chance?”

“Only to our allies.”

“What, do I not count?”

“You’re still a Mandrago,” Oscar concludes, his tone making it clear the conversation is over.

Huh, I guess that’s a touchy subject for him. If I need to come back, I’ll have to hope he’s loosened up a little. Or I can just steal one.

They continue following the pose, stopping for lunch soon after. They are attacked once, as they eat, by a small group of rocky howlers, but Emily quickly dispatches them with flying lightning before they can interrupt her groupmates’ meal. The afternoon travel quickly takes an unsettling turn as, a few hours after setting off from lunch, the beast attacks fall off and an unnerving quiet settles over the forest.

The fog slowly grows denser and the group has to reach out and hold each other’s robes to maintain awareness in their formation. Late-afternoon, as the light breaching the canopy far above begins to dwindle, Emily turns her head and asks Oscar a whispered question over her shoulder.

“We haven’t run into anything for the past hour. Was this expected as well?”

“Yes. This is a good sign. Fewer beasts means we’re getting closer!”

She nods and turns back, which is when she sees it. The fog ahead of them is roiling, swirling violently in a wall of motion.

“Are we-?“ Before Emily can finish asking about the phenomenon, Oscar interrupts her with a cheer.

“Yes! We made it!”

A wave of relief passes through the group at his cry.

“Go ahead, Emily. As long as you see no enemies ahead, this area is safe,” Oscar reassures her eagerly, impatient to see the goal of his trip.

“Sure, there’s nothing ahead,” Emily says as she steps forward, excited to see The Waters’ entrance herself.

With her breath held in anticipation, Emily steps through the shifting wall of fog into the unknown beyond.