“Easy now,” Marron murmured as he sighted down his Plasma Caster. The bear Grunder mauled a tree nearly a hundred paces away, trying to get at the hollow inside. There were probably bees and honey there but Yuriko couldn’t see them.

It was getting close to twilight and the five of them had travelled just a couple of leagues into the forest. They needed to pick up the pace and should try to make five or more leagues a day, at least while they were in the flatter part of the forest. Once they reached the actual foothills, she expected them to slow.

This time, they weren’t on the arboreal highway, since only she could safely walk up there. They followed a game trail that generally headed west, and cut through the bushes when the trail shifted towards north or south, or worse, doubled back. Thankfully, it was relatively easy to get their bearings even if the canopy blotted out the sun. All she had to do was scale up a tree and check. The Zarek was unmistakable. Unfortunately, they got turned around twice when the trail bent so gently around that they didn’t notice.

A pulse of Marron’s purple Animus shot from his Caster and drilled through the Grunder’s head, leaving a fist-sized hole through its skull. The creature convulsed, and she could see thick, white, ropy things wriggle out of the wound. Marron’s second blast burned the larvae and cauterized the opening, hopefully trapping the remaining things within the body until the five of them could sneak past.

With the setting sun, the Grunders had thinned down from what she had initially expected. The bear was the only one they’d found ever since reaching the two-league mark, but she kept a wary eye out anyway.

The forest’s humidity was rather cloying, and there was a thin mist clinging to the underbrush. It didn’t affect her visibility much though.

Niamh’s face was dripping with sweat and her cheeks were red from exertion. She had been breathing somewhat heavily and Yuriko worried that she would have trouble especially once they started climbing the mountain. Well, she could probably carry the older woman on her back, supported by her kinesis.

Gwendith wasn’t sweating, in fact, she looked quite comfortable. There was a slight mist around her face, and from how her Animus clung to her skin, she was using one of her Facets. Desire looked as though she was waltzing through a ballroom, unperturbed from either the humidity, the heat, or the bugs.

Well, at least none of that bothered Yuriko with her flared aura.

“No fair you’ve got that,” Niamh complained as they trudged across the small clearing and down the game trail. They gave the Grunder’s host corpse a wide berth and made cautious haste towards the west. The Dark Moon had just been a couple of nights ago, and with only the light from the Chaos streams, travelling through the forest would be slow and dangerous. Thankfully, they spotted a weeping willow half a longstride away, next to a small brook.

The sound of the water splashing down the streambed composed of smoothed pebbles was quite soothing. The sounds of the singing insects and birds had somewhat calmed, but there was a strange buzzing noise that rose in intensity as the night grew deeper.

They didn’t build a campfire or use a brazier. Even if they were hidden from the outside by the willows curtain leaves, the light would still show through. That and it was muggy and warm already. Besides, Yuriko’s slight aura gave them enough light to see.

“You girls sleep,” Marron said after they ate dinner. “I’ll take the first watch. Yuri, you take the second, Gwendith, third, and Desire the last watch.”

“Hey, what about me?” Niamh asked.

“You’re a non-combatant. You can join me on the first watch if you want, or one of the others if you feel like it.”

“Alright!” The two of them went out of the boughs and left Yuriko with the other two.

They each exchanged glances, and Gwendith muttered, “You think they’re going to ‘watch’ each other instead?”

“Maru isn’t like that,” Yuriko shook her head.

“But Niamh is,” Gwendith pointed out, chuckling. “Anyway, good night!”

“Yeah.”

“Master, feed me!” Desire chirped.

They didn’t share blankets this time but when Yuriko woke up for her watch, she found herself pressed between the two women, who must have snuggled up to her in their sleep. There was even a silly grin on Gwendith’s face, and a line of drool leaking down her chin.

Her watch was uneventful, and nothing happened throughout the rest of the night either. However, when they continued their journey the next day, it was to find that the Grunders had returned, and there were even more of them now.

Yuriko’s sunblade cleft then cauterised a Grunder-infected wolf’s head, bypassing the thin layer of granite growths, and killed the creature immediately. She sent her sunshards into the corpse and burnt it from within to kill whatever else was inside.

Behind her, Marron shot at another Grunder-wolf, though he didn’t bother to burn the corpse. Niamh stuck right behind him, her Plasma Lancet held in both hands shook as she trembled. Desire sang a soft hymn which filled the rest of them with energy, while Gwendith took up the rear. Her aura flared around her hands as she cooled the air around her and formed small shards of ice that she then flung at another wolf. When the shards struck, it adhered to the fur, then suddenly grew in volume and encased the hapless creature. At the same time, steam jetted out from the crystalline shards and added to the mist.

Yuriko turned and cut down another wolf, and another, until there were none of the Grunders left.

“Leave them,” Marron said when she moved to burn the bodies. “We’re better off hurrying.” However, it didn’t take fifty paces before they were attacked by another Grunder-infested creature, this time an elk with its body mostly encased in granite. “A mature Grunder.” Marron swore.

The beast’s lumbering gait belied its speed and before a blink of the eye passed, it was already in front of Yuriko.

With an indifferent sidestep, she dodged out of the way, and with a quick slash, her sunblade carved through the plating as though it were paper. However, what came out of its abdominal cavity was not ropy intestines but long, thick, white larvae. The squirming things lunged at her, and only her condensed aura prevented her from being defiled.

Gagging in disgust, she set the creature ablaze and pushed it away with her kinesis. More Grunders appeared, drawn by the sounds of battle and perhaps by the sizzling of burnt flesh. Perhaps they were also attracted by the expended Animus. Anyway, they fought for an hour before they got a reprieve. They must have wiped out the nearby pests.

“You think we’re better off travelling at night?” Gwendith asked.

“That would still slow us down,” Marron said.

“Yeah, well stopping to fight every fifty paces of trail isn’t going to be fast,” she shot back.

“Well, what do you think we should do?” Marron’s irritated voice boomed out.

“I…” Gwendith hesitated and glanced at Yuriko. At her shrug, Gwendith continued, “Either we hole up somewhere defensible, we rush through this place, or head south and avoid their territory.”

“The edge is more than five leagues away,” Marron said. “We’re better off heading towards the foothills.”

“Isn’t the nest there?” Yuriko asked. She was also sure that the Grunders nested in caves along the mountainside.

“All the better so we can wipe these rotters out,” he muttered.

“Maru!” Yuriko admonished, “Do we even have time for that?”

“No, you’re right. We should just run past.” Marron looked up at the canopy.

“You want to go up and use the arboreal highway?” Yuriko asked.

“No, while you can walk up there just fine, even if you carry Niamh and Gwendith, I’m not that surefooted.” Marron shook his head. “Actually, if you can carry one of them, I can carry the other and we can rush through the Grunders’ territory.”

“We run the risk of getting surrounded though.”

“Each one of them has a limited range, the infested beasts, anyway. It’s only when humanoids are infected that they gain the ability to coordinate with each other. That or if something threatens their nest.”

“Wouldn’t that mean we’ll be in even more danger when we reach their nest?” Gwendith interrupted.

“Only if we plan to attack it,” Marron answered easily.

Yuriko felt Gwendith’s gaze at the back of her head. “We aren’t, right Yuri?”

“Er, not if we don’t need to,” Yuriko said.

“Alright then, let’s get going.”

Yuriko examined Niamh. Her brother’s girlfriend was much shorter than she was, though taller than Desire by a couple of inches. She wasn’t as lean as the Davar siblings either. She turned her back on the woman and said, “Here, get on my back.”

“Eh, ah, alright,” Niamh stammered. She clung to Yuriko’s backpack but didn’t seem to know how to proceed.

Yuriko used her kinesis to lift and secure the other woman to her back. She used up about ten inches of her Anima flare to lift the woman up. She just needed a way for her to secure herself so she would be pulled along.

“Ah, rope.” She extracted the coil of rope from her backpack, secured it using the several loops on the bag, and tied it around the other woman’s waist. Then, thinking that she didn’t use much of her aura’s volume, she gestured to Gwendith.

“You want to carry me, too?” Gwendith said teasingly.

“Yeah.” Yuriko did the same and noted that even though she was shorted than Niamh, her friend was just a bit heavier, taking eleven inches of flare to lift. That still left Yuriko with more than enough capacity to protect herself. And for that matter, she could easily carry the other two.

“No,” Marron stated before she could even say anything.

“But…”

“Absolutely not.” Marron said, “I carried you when you were a baby, and I don’t intend to let you do the same.”

Yuriko rolled her eyes while the other three girls giggled.

“Desire?” Yuriko asked.

“I can run as quickly as you, Master,” Desire answered easily, “or as fast as your brother.”

“If you say so.”

With that, they ran for the rest of the day. Marron took the lead this time, his eyes shining with Enhanced Senses. He avoided the Grunders when he could, killed them when they had to take long detours otherwise. They crossed nearly half the distance between the forest’s edge and the foothills, nearly five leagues, by the time the sun set and they found a new campsite. This one was next to a rocky overhang with vines hanging down one side and a stunted oak tree on the top.

Marron took the first watch as usual, while Gwendith and Niamh stretched their sore muscles.

“That wasn’t pleasant at all,” Gwendith grumbled as she knuckled the small of her back. Then she gave Yuriko a side-eye and a smirk as she leaned over and whispered, “You pinched me, didn’t you?”

“Wha-? No, I didn’t!” Yuriko spluttered. Bad enough that her aura gave her a very detailed look at Gwendith’s body, but feeling up Niamh, too, was rather disconcerting.

“I didn’t realise how much you can actually perceive through your aura,” Gwendith murmured as her own aura flared out. It had grown by a fraction of an inch, and at the rate she was going, she could reach the 2nd Growth Stage in a few weeks. Or maybe by the turn of the year, Yuriko couldn’t guess. Her own growth had been fueled by immersing herself in an environment thick with ambient Chaos, and when she dipped into the Chaos Sea before she was ready. She was sure that without Fri’Avgi or a similar artefact, she wouldn’t have survived those.

Gwendith sidled up next to her and let her flared aura touch Yuriko’s golden Anima. The edges pushed against each other and Gwendith’s was pressed flat against her skin, eliciting a surprised gasp.

Over the past couple of days, the two of them had cleared up the initial awkwardness that Gwen’s confession had brought about. For Yuriko, she treated the other girl as she did before, but Gwendith grew a little bolder and teased her a bit more than before, but otherwise, their relationship had hardly changed.

The night was uneventful, and when they continued their travels, the Grunders had disappeared. They didn’t see one even when they crossed into the foothills the next day, and at this point, Marron determined that it was too dangerous to run blindly ahead. They resumed their trek, keeping to the gentler slopes and avoiding the ravines. With the inclement weather, thunderstorms and rain showers, he was worried that a flash flood would catch them by surprise in a valley and sweep them away.

Another couple of days followed before they saw Grunders again, and this time, the infected beasts practically covered a valley floor. Roars and howling, as well sparks of lightning as the granite plates that covered their bodies collided against each other, drowned out the sound of the breeze.

The next path they could use to get farther up the mountain would have them go back down for a couple of leagues and travel south for a day. Yuriko wondered what all of the creatures were doing here instead of out and about. They weren’t even facing the valley’s entrance, and were instead, focused on a cliffside where she suspected the nest to be.

“I think it’s safer to backtrack,” Marron grunted out.

“Yeah. I’d rather not fight their worms.” Gwendith sniffed.

“Agreed,” Yuriko said. But just as she was about to crawl away from her perch, the entire valley erupted with wails, horrific shouts, and thunderous roars. And when she looked over again, she saw the horde rushing towards the nest. No, it was beyond that. She saw flashes of light, a bronzed hue, coming from the opposite end, and what could only be described as a massacre. There were humanoid figures back there, but she couldn't make them out, but what was certain was that they were slaughtering the infested beasts.

“Hold tight,” Marron said. “Let’s see where this goes.”