The Whispering woods had held their silence. Maddison liked the walk back to Lovlos, it was peaceful and quiet, spare the undead that would sometimes stumble onto the trail. Folks in and out of the city knew to keep their heads down and not strike a conversation with travellers and risk exposing their business. Strangely however, Maddison had expected to pass at least one group in their journeys.

Sariel was making up for the solitude, pouring over a small book Cody was forcing her to read aloud.

"And he…" She hummed out a strange noise, "he… swished."

"Switched." Cody corrected, diving right into another short lesson on sounds while he itched the cut Maddison had left on his cheek. The irritated skin around the wound had been a souring plight on him all morning, and a source of silent amusement for Maddison. The mercenary had laced the dagger in enough thornwhip pulp to last several days before he threw it at him in their duel.

Maddison slowed his pace as Sariel and Cody's chatter quieted, feeling Horse's reins grow tight in his grip. He cocked his head over his shoulder at the beast. Sariel watched the mount curiously as it stood, ears up and frozen still.

Cody and Maddison tossed their gazes between the beast and the trail ahead, peering at an awkward angle to try and see around where it curved. The trees had been quiet for some time, not a skittering spider, nor a lumbering undead in sight. And nothing peculiar enough to spur a reaction from any of them.

Maddison tugged the rein again, met with equal resistance as Horse dug his hooves in and chuffed. He eyed the beast with exhaustion, flicking his gaze between Cody and Sariel. "Wait here."

Cody and Sariel exchanged a knowing look as Maddison walked away. Sariel popped off Horse while Cody tied the beast's lead to a tree. The two of them quickly caught up to the mercenary at the curve of the trail, all three of them grounded at the sight before them.

A small puddle of red ended just before Maddison's boot from the first body, their Heroguard sigil slashed in half from a deep cut that went straight through their chest. The next body was just off the trail, poised like they had tried to crawl away before something had gored them through the back.

Maddison followed the buzzing flies and scavenging birds, two more bodies mangled and broken on the trail. But then he eyed a small red puddle that didn't seem to have its own corpse.

Until he looked up.

Another Heroguard body sat in the canopy of a large oak, slumped over a tree branch that had stuck straight through their chest.

"Wonder how he got all the way up there." Sariel said, shading her eyes to make out the strange detail.

Maddison shushed her, quietly drawing one of his blades while he listened to the forest, and continued to investigate the carnage.

The cuts were not clean. Something blunter than a blade had ripped through flesh and armour with force. But there were no signs of feasting to show that a hungry beast had stumbled onto the trail and caused the carnage.

Cody rushed to scoop up Hord'anne when the beast slipped off his shoulder to go for the closest body. He kept behind Maddison, trying to scour the clearing for magical residue. He could see it coating the ground and bodies like a thick tar, spattered wide in a circle that stretched through the trees around them.

"Someone teleported." He muttered, stopping Maddison in his tracks as he turned to face the warlock.

"Same one that killed them?"

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

He scanned the expanse, trying to pick out a different trace. The powerful spell had blanketed everything with its imprint, clearly showing that the caster had escaped after the carnage around them had happened. But they both knew it was strange to use a spell to flee with no witnesses or survivors. Whoever cast the spell may have been the only survivor instead.

"I don't know."

"Seen a bear do a proper job like this on two sheep my village had." Sariel hummed, crouched over the first body and poking his pockets. "Decided against raisin sheep after that."

"Leave their things." Maddison sighed.

Sariel gave her boots an obvious look, squinting at Maddison.

"It's okay Sariel, looting corpses is cool." Cody cut in with a thumbs up, earning a light push from Maddison.

"I don't want this tracing back to us." He grumbled. With a sharp whistle, he called Crow from the trees, giving the bird some time to look around the trail before flapping off. Maddison followed the bird without question, eyeing Cody. "Get Horse. Detour."

"Into the Whispering Woods?" Cody replied, adding a little flare to the name as he wiggled his fingers.

"We didn't pass anyone on the trail. I don't want to chance meeting them up ahead. Do you?"

POV -> Cody

Cody eyed the massacre, not a sigil in sight to have assisted in the slaughter, nor the powerful escape spell. Not a web to give away that it was the Spinner's doing.

It was something equally as troubling and mysterious.

Cody weighed his chances. Part of him knew it was better to keep to the flimsy undead and small spider scouts the Spinner had sent, than an unknown foe that could fling a body twenty feet into a tree. The other part of him was dying of curiosity.

Cody came to Sariel while Maddison fought down a few bushes to make a trail for Horse, eyeing the small sack she had pulled from the body's pocket before Maddison's warning. Sariel looked at Maddison's back, then at Cody, cradling the little white sack in conflicted silence.

He crouched with her, offering his satchel for her to steal the treasure. "Our secret."

Her eyes lit with excitement as she nodded, quickly stashing the sack.

The duo quickly collected Horse, leading the reluctant beast through the shrubs Maddison had worked through. Maddison let the bird lead the way, their walk now slowed to a grueling halt whenever a bush reared its ugly, berried head.

But Maddison kept pace, cutting nature flat like a golem, and keeping his eyes on the squawking familiar.

Cody had first been surprised to see an adventurer of Maddison's age still running around collecting bounties. Humans had a cruelly short life - even moreso for an adventurer of his caliber. But he was starting to understand how he had survived so long.

Turning tail at any sign of trouble that he wasn't being paid to get rid of. Bushwhacking instead of chancing a trail that could herald an encounter with a powerful adversary. Tales of his life would earn yawns at tavern tables, and songs that would die before the ink of their sonnets dried.

It was a frustratingly mundane way to go about living to Cody. To spend your only life setting yourself up to be forgotten. For that, he was all the more eager to reach Lovlos.

Maddison kicked through his next leafy victim, his swinging momentum stalled when the toppled branches revealed a soft glow in the mossy dirt. Cody and Sariel caught up to his side, staring down at the sitting of plants that had grabbed the man's attention.

A thick cluster of mushrooms ran like a trail, disappearing off into the trees and shrubs beyond. Their caps were more elongated than the normal shrooms they had passed, and a strange shimmer of luminescent blue spores peppered the tops of every plant. Cody could not see any magic clinging to the plants, nor beyond into the threshold they lined off, making the plants all the more curious to him.

Maddison saw the awe in Sariel's eyes as Cody plucked one to stare at it.

"Death Caps." Maddison explained, spurring Cody to drop the plant and wipe his hands. "They sprout on blood patches. Maddison stared at the line of mushrooms, grabbing a small handful of the glowing white plants and stuffing them in a vial. Without a second thought towards the strange line, he crossed it, cutting away at the next bush.

Cody eyed the plants, cautiously stepping over the line with Sariel close to his side.

"Don't suppose those would be good on a fire?"

"Eating one is a good night's sleep, and two, an eternal sleep," Maddison replied, frowning when Sariel tilted her head. "They're poisonous. You shouldn't eat things with 'death' in their name."

"We ought to find who's poisoning all this food." Sariel muttered, tugging Horse's reins along.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.