The sun's barely up by the time I'm out of bed this morning, there's no hunt planned for today but I still want to go to the forest on my own and practice what I can as I learn the area.

 

Grabbing a sack and my sword I sneak my way through the tent as I try not to wake Hati, and as soon as I'm out I start running, dropping to my fours and sprinting the moment I'm out of the camps. The forest is about five miles away but with this body's speed and stamina, I make it there in about fifteen minutes.

 

From the tree line I find the path the hunters took me on yesterday and start from there, moving slowly north. I don't see a lot of animals along the path, and that'd be why there's no hunt today, they've got to wait for the new beasts move in and make their homes.

 

Eventually though I hit the end of the trail as it fades into the brush. I guess the hunters don't usually come out this far then, but I don't intend to stop any time soon so I just keep on walking north, keeping an eye out for anything to hunt.

 

 

It's about twenty minutes of walking later that I've finally found some tracks, little hoofprints just casually meandering through the trees, and I start to put to use what the hunters showed me, how to not just track but to hunt, keeping silent and down-wind as I trace their path.

 

The tracks lead me north east and after a following for a long while I finally spot something up ahead of me. It's a large boar just nibbling on some mushrooms, orange and black fur with some streaks of white on its sides, and many, many sharp tusks coming out of it's mouth, almost like overly-large teeth.

 

I try to move closer as I step through the trees, watching as it eats,  but just as I'm drawing my sword I step on something that crunches, Oh shit. I look straight up at the boar and it's looking right back at me. Well fuck. .

 

The boar immediately darts off into the bushes, but I'm not giving up so easy, breaking out of cover and charging through the bushes behind it. It gets away from me surprisingly quick though, and I'm left trying to track the damn thing again.

 

After another ten damn minutes of chasing the boar's tracks I'm lead right up to a stone house, old and decrepit. It's a bit weird to see it standing in the middle of the forest, the yard long since overgrown by the trees, but the boar's tracks lead straight through the front door, so I guess I'm following it inside.

 

I'm just walking up to the house when I hear something crashing around inside, It's still here!

I rush into the building as I draw my sword, wanting to catch the boar before it gets away again.

 

It's pretty empty inside, not much lying around other than old iron pots and loose stones.

There aren't any tracks in here but it couldn't have gotten far, and I'm just poking around as the boar lets out a loud panicked squealing from another room. Did something just attack it? is there another animal? A person?

I raise my guard as I search the building, moving carefully towards the room the sounds came from.

 

"Who's here?" I call out

Nobody responds, but I can hear something shuffling about in the next room, and I carefully peek around the corner.

 

I see the boar bleeding out on the floor with a sword in it's chest, and standing right above it holding the sword, a skeleton!? It's aged to hell with moss growing on it's yellow bones, and most of it's sword and armour has practically been eaten by rust, just how old was this guy?

 

It somehow notices me peeking around the corner and pulls it's sword from the boar, pointing it at me, which is weird since it clearly doesn't have eyes.

 

With the boar dead and the skeleton already having noticed me I drop all pretence of stealth and step into the room with my sword forward, beckoning the creature to attack, which it does, rather quickly stomping towards me with it's sword raised to attack.

 

It's a predictable swing at least, and when it reaches me I just raise my sword to try and block it, which turned out to be surprisingly easy. The skeleton's actually pretty feeble, which is about what you'd expect from a creature with no flesh on it's bones, but still, what's with that?

 

The skeleton swings again and I block it just as easily, but this time I follow up with a kick to it's chest.

 

It fell apart.

The skeleton just fell to bits with that one kick? what the hell is that??

 

It's bones lie scattered across the floor, and I'm glad to see they don't start magically recombining or anything as I step over them.

 

Well that was weird but at least it's dead, I hope. Was that it though, just one skeleton? Surely there has to be more, and where'd it come from? Is there an ancient cursed graveyard nearby or something?

 

I head out of the building to have a look around and there's actually quite a few of these old houses. I spend the next hour searching around them, eventually coming to an old town where the trees haven't been able to grow into.

 

Old cobbled streets and the ruined houses that line them, all leading up to a massive stone wall. What is that, a fort? Out in the middle of the woods, how long has this place been here?

 

Wanting to take a closer look I walk into the town, and as if having been stirred by my presence a few skeletons walk out of the buildings to meet me, weapons ready.

They're a lot stronger than the first one and it takes more than a few kicks to clear them out, knocking them down and stomping on their chests until they stop clawing at me.

 

When it's clear, I head over to the walls and try to climb the jagged stones, which takes some time, but I make it up eventually. I hop up and have a look at the other side, and the walls aren't crumbling at least, but there's still skeletons everywhere. I don't get a lot of time to look around though as a few of them head my way, looking a lot cleaner than the rest with their clean pale bones free of any moss.

 

They come at me fast though, and I barely have time to bring my sword up when one swings down on me, almost buckling my knees. These ones are so much stronger than the rest, stronger than me even! And with so many of them on the walls with me, there's no way I can fight this. I quickly break away from the fight and scramble back down the walls into the town, and luckily they don't try to follow beyond the wall, not caring now they've chased me away.

 

What the hell was that, why did they get so much stronger near the fort? There has to be something there , strengthening them, keeping them alive, but I can't really guess, and I don't intend to leave it at that. I'll have to come back another again to have a proper look, and maybe I can bring Huskar or the hunters with me to help clear them out.

 

I head over to the first building to collect the boar and haul it onto my shoulder, slowly walking it back to the clan as I think about it.