Holding my cheek, I snapped awake from the floor of Corith to find Silva staring down at me vindictively. Just like everyone else, Silva didn’t hold back with her slaps.
“Morning.” I groggily said. “Did you really have to hit me?”
“It’s not like it’s going to injure you, since you heal fast.” She flippantly responded before walking away.
You could have just shook me.
Judging from the position of the sun and the fact that Silva was more unhappy at me than usual, I’d been allowed to sleep in. I checked on my arm to find the majority of the injuries gone. The webbing between my thumb and index finger had returned, but the claw marks on my shoulder were still visible, albeit shrunken. Whether I liked or disliked the woman, she was right about my absurd ability to heal.
“North, how are you feeling?” Wanderer’s rather sultry voice shifted my attention to the crew. He was sitting on a large tree root, one hand holding onto the sheath of his blade which he had planted into the dirt.
“Better than I have any right to. Anything happen last night?”
Mell’s question about sleep had brought us back to our regular night shift system we had used back on the roads. First shift was Mell, Ruby, Wanderer and myself, while second shift was Silva, Alex and Sera. After the chaos Silva had caused, it was decided that our two shifts should remain separate so we didn’t have to interact as much. Since I was injured and had to take time to heal, I was given a full night to get back to a state where I wasn’t as much of a liability.
“Nothing apparently. Sera postulated the theory that the fire, as well as our numbers, may have deterred any large attacks.”
I rubbed my head, messing up my messy hair even more. “Yeah, sure. Is everyone ready to get moving?”
“Everyone except for you, sir!” gleefully informed Mell.
Ruby’s head peeked out from behind Mell’s massive body. “I’ve got our map and compass set up. Hopefully we don’t have another chase which throws us off track.”
“Then let’s get moving.”
***
The worst part of moving through Corith wasn’t the silence. It was the lack of it. As we stepped over branches and around the plants that covered the forest floor, we heard constant sounds surroundings us. Cries of birds, rustling of leaves and the shaking of tree branches in what could either be animals or just the wind.
The trees of Corith were notable for a few things, and one of them was their size. Their dark bark and thick branches loomed overhead, cutting off most of the light from the sky. They were tall and densely packed, sometimes creating such narrow spaces that we had to take detours around entire sections just to keep moving forward. How the cassobans and other creatures managed to navigate through the branches so easily was completely beyond me. The roots and branches around us were so imposing that it felt like they could start moving at any moment to try and trap us. The trees still held their dark green leaves, unaffected by the winter air.
There were smaller plants, but none of them were ever as imposing as the trees. We made large steps around them, never knowing what dangers they might hold. The entire forest was out to kill us, and that certainly included the plantlife. Sera had remembered a few edible plants which we had very carefully picked from.
One of those was the white thorn, a plant with a very unsubtle name. It was a small stock that was found near the bottom of the trees, entangling its own roots with that of the tree. On it grew the fruit that was covered in white tipped thorns, as the name of the plant suggested. Once removed, the fruit inside was extremely tasty. Sera emphasized that for any fruit that we take, we need to make sure to not kill the plant it was attached to and to plant some of the seeds from the red pulp inside in the dirt afterwards. While the removal of the thorns would take a while for a normal person, ruby’s attunement made it really easy to just blow off all of the thorns at once.
I was carrying a dozen of them with me in a bag as we made our way around and over the trees, heading south. Ruby was in the lead of the group with a compass tightly grasped in her left hand and an exploratory smile in the other. Her instincts as a cartographer seemed to overtake any fear that she had, and she was taking a lot of focus on our surroundings hoping to remember them so she could put them down on paper when we had paper.
Next to me was Wanderer, one hand carrying the bag over his shoulder and the other on his sheathed blade. He had committed to his role as my guard and seemed more reluctant to leave my side than ever. Behind me was Mell and Sera who were side by side, and Silva and Alex were holding our rear.
Conversation was hard now that we were on the movement, as talking too loudly could potentially alert predators lurking in the brush nearby. It was a completely different feeling than the relaxed and conversational experience that we had on the roads.
It was only after the sun had reached the middle of the sky that Mell asked whether or not we should sit down to have lunch and finish up the leftover Cassoban we’d been carrying. After locating a comfortable location with enough seat-like roots, we sat down and encountered a very immediate problem.
“We don’t have enough.” I said as I eyed the pile of bones that we’d created. The cassobans were extremely large birds, but there were seven of us.
“So… we need to go hunting?” said Alex.
Wanderer, being ever the stoic, nodded and tapped his blade. “It appears so. I don’t think the white thorns are enough to satiate us for long. Sera, do you perhaps know of any creatures that are safe enough to hunt?”
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
Sera sat down and crossed her legs, losing herself in thought as she reviewed as much of the information she’d retained as possible. After a minute, she raised up three fingers on one of her hands.
“There’s three of them I know of. Ketroch, fiavus, and maybe cocerna. Ketroch might be the easiest to hunt if we use the white thorns as bait, but they’re pretty small; we'd need to kill a few to feed all of us. Luckily, they tend to stick in groups. Fiavus are about the size of strigs, but I don’t think we can just bait them. Cocerna… I don’t know if anyone here is up for eating frogs, and from what I tried from when I visited the lake, they’re not really the best tasting.”
“Ketrochs it is then.” I stated, hoping that my internal doubts would show through. After Silva’s stunt, indecision was probably the worst thing I could do right now.
Alex started to nod, but paused. It was clear he was about to ask a question, since he began to scratch at his rust.
“Would using the white thorns as bait count as wasting food?” He pondered aloud. It was a fair question all things considered.
The rules apply to living animals, so what is to say it doesn’t apply to plants?
“No.” Sera answered him flatly. “The rules I was taught never said anything about wasting food applying to plants. Even if we’re not eating it ourselves, we are giving it as food to another creature.”
“So we’re hoping we don’t get starved to death by the forest based on a technicality?” doubted Silva while crossing her arms.
“And you have any better ideas?” I responded, turning to glare at her.
It looked like she had something she wanted to say, but after taking a quick look at Alex, she resigned.
“Alright then. Let’s think of a plan.”
***
Sitting in the brush, staring directly at a pile of half opened white thorn fruit was way more tense than I had initially expected it to be. Corith was so dangerous that the prospect of standing still felt like we were just inviting another pack of Cassobans to take another swing at killing us, or some other creature that Sera had been listing off while we made our way forward.
However, anything that would look at us would merely see what looked like an oddly dark area of the brush with nothing inside of it. What was inside that dark spot was myself, Alex, Silva and Ruby all closely huddled together with all our eyes glued to the same spot.
Alex leaned in closer to whisper to me.
“Hey North, I-”
“No. We need to let Ruby focus.” I whispered back, cutting him off. Ruby’s ability to sense movement was needed if we were going to catch the Ketrochs, and talking would limit her focus.
Well, that’s not the only reason.
It was an understatement that I was reluctant to talk to Alex after what had happened. The fire had been a distraction, but being on the move made the disconnect more apparent. He wasn’t a bad person, and that made his betrayal all the worse. The trust between us had been burned and it wasn’t going to come back until he proved that he was committed to my cause, not Silva’s. His positive mentality and willingness to follow me felt distant and detached. If Elina was here, she probably would have advised me to kill him for insubordination or something like that.
Corith was forcing us to work together and act as a unit whether we liked it or not, but that wasn’t going to make me just forget about what they had done.
“Something’s coming.” Ruby opened her eyes, and her red tipped hair stopped swaying. We tensed in preparation just as a small rodent dropped out of a tree and onto the forest floor.
It looked like a slightly distorted version of one of the rats that we’d see crawling around the mining camps sometimes. Its beady eyes, tiny round ears, small paws were just like the rat, but the nose looked like it had been pushed farther back into the head. Its arms looked fatter than that of a rat, and it looked like it was chunkier as a whole. The legs looked dense, but way stronger than any rodent I’d seen in the past. The major part that stood out was the tail. Instead of a long, pink tail like that of the rat, it started out as bushy but ended off with something that looked hard. One could mistake it for a rock that had been attached to the tail.
It locked eyes with the white thorn and quickly dashed over to the white thorns, not noticing the shallow puddle that surrounded the fruit. Just as it began to put its head into the fruit which had already been cut open for it, the water in the puddle began to move. It surrounded the creature’s legs and tail before solidifying into ice. Understanding that it had just fallen into a trap, the ketroch began to give out a wailing scream that sounded like a baby wailing. I dispelled the shroud of darkness, and the four of us walked out.
Silva was the first to get close to it, and she crouched down to inspect it. The ketroch switched in between attempts at clawing at the ice and attempts to claw at her face, all while letting out a painful yell. If an animal could experience an emotion similar to contempt, it was definitely expressing that towards Silva.
“This feels like a stupid plan.” She remarked, standing up from her crouching position.
“Sera said that they would call for the others if they ever got trapped. Instead of having to hunt for them, they’re going to be coming for us.” I watched Ruby carefully as she once again scanned our surroundings until her eyes bolted open.
“North! On your right!” She yelled out.
I swiveled to see the ketroch launch itself through the air, spinning as it pointed its tail towards me. It was hoping to use the rock hard end of its tail as a mace and smash it against my head. I twisted my body to the side and narrowly slid past its attack. Landing on the ground, it hissed at me and prepared itself for another leap. Before it could jump, a lightning bolt came from a tree. Every single muscle inside its body tensed up at once and caused it to straighten before it fell on the dirt. I looked up into the tree to see Sera, her right hand making the shape of a burner while her other hand braced her wrist. She smiled proudly, and I gave her a thumbs up in response.
“Silva, one’s coming for you straight ahead!” Ruby yelled out. Another one made its way out of the brush, doing the same aerial move as before. Ice in front of Silva formed into a shield, and the creature’s tail collided with it. As it recovered, Alex ran up and stomped his foot against its head, crushing it.
Guess they do have the best synergy.
“Mell, cover me! It’s on my left!” Ruby yelled out again, and Mell darted out of his own brush next to her with his fists raised. As one of them made their way out of the brush with their tail aimed at Ruby’s head, it was snatched out of the air by Mell’s large fists. Although I couldn’t see it, I heard a disgusting crunching noise between his fingers.
“How many more?” I asked, wondering how long we were going to be forced to keep this up.
“We’ve got at least six in the immediate area.” She grimaced. “Hey, at least this means we get more food?”
I groaned. I didn’t expect that rodent catching would be this dangerous, but it appeared the world was intent on making everything hard for me.