Pelos didn’t seem to fear anything, or if he did, he didn’t show it. 

 

Made him an easy lead to follow, partially because Peter and Mist didn’t wanna be left behind by the person who was likely by far the most competent member of their group, so they made sure to keep up. They stayed in relative silence besides Mist’s laboured breaths, and eventually,  Peter’s too. The evening turned to night as the sun was extinguished beyond, and the forest grew darker and darker still; echoes of light’s safety refracted against uneven ground, until finally, it was all snuffed out, and darkness governed their clumsy, tired steps.

 

Peter stumbled through tenebrous clutches, slipping on twigs and leaves, but each time he faltered, Pelos paused to wait for him, even aid him when he fell. He didn’t understand why it was that Mist didn’t fall; even with how exhausted she appeared, she managed to continue on without missteps. 

 

Peter was sure he knew what it was. Even with the difference in their circumstances, with how long she’d been locked away, he was weaker. Less agile. His attribute scores were positively pathetic. She could be knocking on death’s door, and she’d still be running laps around Peter no matter how well-rested he was.

 

He had to fight down his bitterness to focus; he was sure Seles could’ve destroyed that barricade like it was nothing, but here she had them trudging through the forest instead. Maybe she got a kick out of it.

 

His latest stumble sent pins and needles roaring through his left thigh. He tried to pick himself up again, biting his lip to avoid crying out from the sensation, feeling the stub of his left wrist brush against something rough, bushy, and matted—a texture like unbrushed hair.

 

“..!!” He tried to pull his wrist away, but found it to be stuck and unwilling to give. He felt a light, burning sensation beginning to run along his arm, like poison ivy but soon more intense, emanating from ten, twenty, fifty different spots.

 

Pelos turned before Mist even realised what was going on, grabbing onto Peter and yanking him with a level of strength so profound it rocked and discombobulated his entire being. Planted on the ground in a daze, Peter stared at his arm, finding it to be covered in a soft, black ichor that he couldn’t place or understand. He opened his mouth to let loose a scream—

 

“Fire! You have to burn it away!” Pelos shouted.

 

The words snapped through Peter’s rising terror, pulling him back to lucidity as he summoned up within him the magic he’d use to light candles or torches, bringing his right hand over to his arm without concern, implicitly trusting the instruction as he let forth the magic and felt the warmth begin to travel through the layer of blackness directly into his sticky, numbed appendage.

 

The fire’s contact broke the tar apart, and from it, small, scurrying black creatures began to dislodge, screaming with a terrible, sonorous sound as they ran from him, fleeing the flame’s touch, leaving Peter’s left arm lined with about twenty tiny bite marks.

 

“Wh-what the fuck were those?!” Peter rubbed at his arm furiously, more out of revulsion than lingering pain. “Are they poisonous? Am I gonna die?”

 

“Liquid scarabs,” Pelos replied, his voice a low whisper. “They exsanguinate their victims, and quickly. They also hate fire.”

 

“...so he’s not gonna die, then?” 

 

In the distance, there was a distinct snap. Pelos covered Mist’s mouth, earning a muffled ‘mmph!’.

 

“Something heard us. We need to move.”

 

Peter didn’t even get a moment to catch his breath, instantly moving and on the heels of Pelos as he all but guided Mist through the next section of the forest, holding onto her as he went. He eventually reached back and yanked Peter forwards to keep up with them, which Peter was all too grateful for considering they were picking up their own paces.

 

Peter had watched Pelos throw a shackle at a guard like he was pitching a baseball and crack the guy’s skull open with it. He’d watched him bound through an entire manor and courtyard holding the pair of them and barely take a breather after. If whatever was in this forest at night made him move quickly, it damn sure lit a fire under Peter’s ass.

 

In the distance, Peter could hear a faint clicking sound. Either someone was setting off a geiger counter, or Paragora had its own version of Predator skulking around, and Peter didn’t feel keen on sticking around to find out which. 

 

If Peter had to guess, it’d been anywhere between ten and twenty minutes since the three of them had walked off the main path, and in that time, he had no earthly clue if they were any way closer to finding their way around the blockade and back to normality. He could only hope. 

 

It was as he started to come to terms with how deep they’d travelled that Pelos finally halted, stopping the three of them along with him. When he opened his mouth, he uttered two words, the two that Peter had least wanted to hear in this scenario:

 

“We’re lost.”

 

Peter almost felt the urge to laugh, despite everything. This was ridiculous. 

 

“Wh—we can’t be. You were leading us!” Mist exclaimed, jittering. 

 

“This forest moves. The scents in the air change. The wind’s direction reverses every minute or so.” Pelos pointed towards a distant clearing where moonlight shone down, a solitary beacon. “We should make camp here. Wandering around in the dark will get us killed.”

 

“And sleeping here won’t?” Peter asked.

 

“We’re still not very far in. Most smaller creatures will not approach us if we build a fire.”

 

“Alright…” Peter wanted to argue, to search for an alternative, but there wasn’t one that really made sense. If they were already lost, turning around now wasn’t going to get them anywhere. If anything, they could become even more displaced. The fact they’d managed to find a place that might make suitable camp amidst the twisting trees and malevolent surroundings was a godsend, and they should take that opportunity to rest if they could.

 

Peter dared to even feel a ray of hope as the three of them strode closer towards the clearing. Trees were sparse in the area, and as it came into view, Peter could already picture himself sitting down, taking the pressure off of his tremulous body, relaxing as much as the terrifying environment might allow…

 

Only for his hopes of an easy few moments to be dashed entirely. 

 

He froze. They all froze.

 

Sat in the middle of the clearing were creatures that resembled some unholy cross between a giant cave bat and a horse. Not like a horse with bat wings, either. More like a horse’s body that had a giant bat’s head, with the bat’s body trailing all across the horse’s back to the point that the two creatures looked to be horribly morphed together. 

 

They lazed in the moonlight, at least four of them, similar in size to a real horse, intermittently clicking in a manner that Peter realised he’d already heard several times by now. These were the culprits, and while they hadn’t noticed him, hadn’t moved, this by all means put a sizeable wrench in things.

 

“So… what do we do?” Mist asked. “Wanna see if they mind sharing? You guys can go first.”

 

She sounded as non-chalant as anything, but Peter was sure she was shaking. He was sure he was too.

 

“I don’t know… Don’t bats hate light? Why would they sleep there?” 

 

“Those aren’t normal bats. Those are upside-down magical crazy bats and we shouldn’t try to apply logic to them.” Mist shrugged. “I dunno… I don’t go into the fucked up monster forest very often! No idea why things do what they do here. How about you, big guy?”

 

“I am not familiar with these creatures either.”

 

“Well fuck. Are we cutting our losses and moving on, or are we trying to fight them? Let me know now, so I can say a prayer or something.”

 

Peter blocked the pair of them out, ignoring whatever they were saying and opening his grimoire. Seles wanted him to figure shit out himself, well here he was trying. Maybe the book would tell him something.

 

Nada. No new entries, no matter how he searched. He still had entries for [Phase] and [Teleport] written down, as well as [Glamour] somewhere further into the book, but failed to see anything new whatsoever. 

 

It didn’t feel fair to him. Wasn’t the grimoire meant to give him options when he didn’t have any? He supposed it did. He could choose to pay five of his nascent souls to use [Phase] again, or he could spend 10 lesser souls on a use of [Glamour].

 

He read through [Glamour] again, but the spell made it clear that while you could alter aspects of your body, or a willing participant’s body, you couldn’t change your entire body shape or scent. There was no chance he could change himself, nor anyone else here into a horsebat using [Glamour].

 

Peter racked his brain, searching harder for anything resembling an option as Pelos and Mist continued to go back and forth in hushed tones as if he wasn’t there. That was fine by him, he needed to concentrate, but the more he considered it, the more he had to come to terms with the absolute impotency of his own magic, outside of his few Soulbound spells.

 

He had learned only novice level spells in the last two years. He could make a small magical noise. He could produce a small amount of fire or lightning. He could reduce the pounding of a headache, or make a small, low-levelled animal be calm. Nothing that’d ever work on one of these things. 

 

Useless spells like these made up his repertoire. When he compared them to the kind that Seles weilded so effortlessly, it made him feel ridiculous. Even earlier, the spell she’d used to help them escape the town could work wonders here. If he was able to combine that silence and blurring spell with a [Glamour]... 

 

But how did that spell work? He flicked through his grimoire again, almost as if becoming aware of the spell might magically grant it to him. One of the horsebats before him stirred, chirping loudly. He redoubled his efforts in searching, but nothing new had appeared, and he was hardly shocked by that. There’s gotta be a way to discover that spell though…

 

Shit. If the only option left to him was trying his luck with [Phase] and his fists against a whole group of those things or trying to figure out a new spell to use, the new spell sounded a lot more promising. 

 

Peter remembered his previous consideration that if he offered things to the book, he might get a result. Maybe, if he offered the right amount of souls while picturing what he wanted clearly, it’d appear before him? It was a long-shot, but either way, Peter imagined a spell just like the one Seles had used earlier as he attempted to make an offering with one of his nascent soul credits. 

 

“Uh, I offer a soul…”

 

“What are you doing?” came a deep voice from beside him.

 

“Soulbound shit, I guess,” Mist answered for him.

 

Peter continued to ignore them both. He felt the thin plasma of soul energy leave him as the grimoire glowed in recognition of his offering, but still it remained inert. Maybe it needed something else?..

 

Peter knew the two next to him couldn’t see any of this happening, so it made sense that they reacted when Peter pulled a small knife from his belt and made a small cut in his own hand, allowing the blood to trickle out and drip down onto the pages of the grimoire.

 

This only made the grimoire begin to shake, violently trembling in Peter’s mental grip as he wiped away the remaining speck of blood and sheathed the blade. He watched it shake, and shake, and shake, and right as he thought the book was about to explode, it flicked to a new page of its own volition and began to fill out an entirely new entry itself, dark, glowing cursive scratching itself into the page before him in a language he couldn’t understand before being transcribed to English before his very eyes.

 

The passage, once the scribbling had finally stopped, was not a spell. It read:

 

“The presence of a chaos entity within direct proximity of an area may allow two creatures with otherwise incompatible genomes and mana signatures to become conjoined and find a state of strange coexistence. The fusion of equine and chiroptera signatures results in an omnivorous creature lacking in prey drive, preferring to herd with others of its kind in warm and dimly lit locations. 

 

Such fusions possess higher intelligence than their composite creatures, but are incredibly sensitive to loud noises due to the expansion in skull density necessary for a bat to properly congeal with the horse that makes up its lower half. Loud and unexpected noises, particularly, shrill ones, cause the creatures to enter a flight state and will often result in their departure.

 

These creatures produce a warm secretion that is able to melt organic matter for their ease of consumption, and their meat, when properly treated, is sweeter than horse meat, as well as gamier.”

 

A chaos entity? That doesn’t sound remotely good.

 

There was a lot more information on the page, including their life cycles, hunting and feeding habits, how often the creatures slept, rumours that had existed about them in various places they’d been sighted before, and more, but while Peter was fascinated by the sheer volumity of info that the grimoire had dredged up for him concerning these unknown creatures, he was more surprised to find that what they’d all been staring at until now and considering to be dangerous, fearsome creatures were nothing but prey animals that didn’t realise quite how big and scary they were.

 

“I’ve got a plan,” Peter finally said, looking up from his grimoire at the other two.

 

“What is it?” Mist asked.

 

“We’re gonna run at them and scream really loud.”

 

“...that sounds like a terrible plan. You hit your head or something?”

 

“I am indebted to you, but I still possess the ability to reason,” Pelos added. “Why must we scream at them very loudly?”

 

“These creatures spook easily. It’s the best chance we have of clearing them all out without a fight. I read it somewhere.”

 

Mist’s eyes widened as she stared at Peter. “You didn’t know shit about them two minutes ago!” 

 

“Just trust me, okay? It’ll probably work.”

 

Pelos gave a stolid nod. “I will trust you. Shall we count down from three?”

 

“Wow, I just don’t get a choice in this, do I?” 

 

“Three…”

 

“Two…”

 

“One…”

 

“AAAAAAHHHHH!” Shouted Peter as he ran towards the clearing with his arms flailing like a tube man.

 

“AAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!” Pelos followed, his scream twice as loud. Peter couldn’t blame any creature for deciding to run being faced with that—he launched himself at them like a speeding truck.

 

“AAAA–” Mist screamed for about a second, before bursting into a fit of coughs. Thankfully, she didn’t go first.

 

It really worked just like the book said. The grotesque, muscular creatures scattered like deer, and in no time, the clearing was entirely theirs, and the three of them stood triumphant in what was to be their new campsite, thankful to finally be somewhere they could get their bearings.

 

“O-okay…” Mist was still sputtering a little; all the travelling seemed to have been a bit much for her. “WHY exactly did that work just how you said it would?”

 

Peter was about to answer when he was cut off by the sounds of laughter from above. There, sitting on a branch waiting with her legs kicking, giggling at the view of them shouting and flailing onto the scene, was Seles.

 

“Nice of you to turn up,” Peter said, his voice hoarse.

 

“It was, wasn’t it?” She notioned to two piles on the ground below her, where there laid a big pile of sticks and a freshly dead bear. “I brought firewood, and I brought dinner. What did you three bring?”  

 

“Ourselves, just barely,” Peter replied.

 

“Well done. Have some bear as a reward! It’s pretty tasty, as bear goes.”

 

//

 

It wasn’t long until the fire was roaring and the bear was cooking, and that was mainly because Seles took care of all of it in moments. The potency of her magic really was no joke, and if Mist wasn’t already spooked by the Soulbound shapeshifter, seeing her in action was definitely enough to shift that balance.

 

Still, Seles seemed to lighten in mood somewhat once her belly was filled. They all did, none too particular to pass up strange meat in the face of what they’d been through, and it was cooked surprisingly well.

 

Seles was in the process of fashioning a sleeping area for each of them without being asked to—the most willing contribution Peter had ever seen from her—when something very strange started to happen.

 

Pelos’ chest began to glow, lighting up with a magical, runic symbol that seemed to pulsate in yellow and orange across his entire torso, leaving a strange, searing sound as he rose to his feet without pause. 

 

His eyes were wild, teeth bared in a snarl as he looked furiously between the three of them, eyes settling on Peter. 

 

“I need to leave.”