The rest of the evening travel is sloainful. While using grenades helped to clear the group of fog cats ahem moving faster, it also iably draws in more beasts. Emily and the mages with ratacks quickly dispatything that approaches them, pushing through groups of five or more attag beasts at least every ten minutes for the first hour.

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

  Emily hunkers down at the edge of the clearing, watg the forest in the dire they came from. Oscar es 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 gnces 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-effit. I still have enough left iank to keep watch for three more hours. I may have to eople up to help me fight if too mas attack though.”

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

  “As long as you’re certai help the sed you , 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 e eyes remain fixed on the darkness, with only brief pauses fur eartheion ss. An hour ter, Emily’s s are firmed as she feels a familiar dead spot in one of her returned ss.

  Damn!

  She watches for the wo hours as s 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 extray 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 aurning to near-peak dition. Emily remains in a trail the end of Ivor’s shift when she drops her focus as her sed core wakes up. Before she re-enter meditation, she lets off a quick eartheion just in case, and a chill runs down her spihe dead zohat oraced the edge of the camp, now covers it.

  Emily stands up, cautiously openient and stepping out. She gnces 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 oting 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 st 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, grimag at the state of his body. His arms are both bent at unnatural angles, and his throat is ripped 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 find it ime.

  She closes Ivor’s eyes as she stands up.

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

  Emily approaches the closest tent first, pushing open the fp and cautiously gazing in. The tent’s oct is Nora, one of the group’s healers. Unlike Ivor’s violent demise, Nora’s eaceful, with just a siwo-fanged bite mark on her ned bck veins spreading from it across her body. Her body seems shrivelled as if all the moisture has been drained from her.

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

  Two fangs, spreads venom, hidden from thermal dete - it’s a snake. Is it earth attuned? It would make sehat it could mess with our ss and drain moisture, but it would have to be third circle to distort our ss 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 cheg 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-bck boa. Its skin shimmers in a strange way, seemingly vanishing at the edges as if f into wisps of shadow.

  Darkness element, of course!

  The gears finally clito p 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 Cw down into the creature's head before it even has time to react. The snake drops to the floor, dead, as Emily rises. Gng 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 m.

  “Please e transte for Ivor. He-“

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

  Repeating the same versation with Oscar and Ivor, she quickly gets their agreement as off into the forest after her prey. Knowing infra-sight won’t be of any help, she keeps eartheion running, heading towards the information dead zone. Upon reag 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 predatrin grows.

  Carefully, she moves through the dead zone, cheg the grouree roots and under bushes. After a few minutes of searg, she spots a flickering bck outline. With one quient, Emily steps forward, shing out with a d ly 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 shat dwells in the depths of shadows, striking its foes from the dark and killing them with its life draining venom.

  _____

  Iing, 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 gnces from her groupmates, no nising 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 effe the dete spell to distort it.”

  Ivor nods thoughtfully at her cim as Oscar crouches down to ihe beast.

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

  “I’m quite ied in researg 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 tribution from this expedition to take its corpse whe back?”

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

  “Teically, Ivor was the oo find it, and you were the only person to tribute 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, gng 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 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 hahe repeated enters better, no longer worried about the looming threat following them, and by the time they reach their camping pce, they don’t have any serious injuries.

  The night passes smoothly too, and the m, Emily leaves her tent to find everyoill 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 es over to talk to them with a pleased smile on his face.

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

  “We’re making goress.”

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

  “We pnned for that much resista 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 iers.”

  Emily narrows her eyes at his fidence.

  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,” Ivns, making Emily ugh.

  “Yes. Yes, he is.”

  I ’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 Gde under Oscar’s instrus. The m is much the same as the evening before, with gatherings of beasts attag in waves, slowly grinding down their mana reserves.

  Emily notices iving more dires the lohe 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 straal device.

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

  Oscar starts slightly, grasping the triight as his shoulders jump.

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

  “Only to our allies.”

  “What, do I not t?”

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

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

  They tinue 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 interrupt her groupmates’ meal. The afternoon travel quickly takes an uling 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 breag the opy 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 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.