I woke up to an intense pain in my chest. It was dusk and panic began to set in as I could not move. “Stay still, it’s me, it’s Cass, relax Syl”.

I knew his voice and could recognize his cadence but it did little to relax my mind. “What happened?” I mumbled out while trying to get my bearings.

“You were hit by an arrow at pretty close range, your chest piece stopped it but you passed out and hit your head pretty hard” he tried to explain.

The events of the previous night began to crystallize in my mind, I remembered seeing the fighting and the archer turning and firing at me, everything after was a blur. “Where is everyone else?” I asked Cass. I could see now that he had bandages on both arms and winced with pain as he stood up.

“Amelia was hit by the same archer that got you, she is ok but Brutus took her to another clearing farther away and well hidden.” He sighed heavily and continued, “Lyse is with them keeping watch, we weren’t sure how long you would be out and did not want to try to move you.” “Can you walk? We should join them as soon as we can, safety in numbers.”

I looked around the clearing and saw three bodies grouped beneath a large tree. Cass followed my eyes and grunted, “they got the drop on us, we should have been more careful. They had us surrounded, if Amelia had not been able to yell out we would have been slaughtered.” I shuddered, acutely aware of how close we had been to dying. I did not bother to voice my thoughts that we should have been safe so far out of the way.

We hastily packed up what was left in the camp and followed the trail left by the others. Thankfully we did not lose any supplies in the attack, we followed the yellow fruits left along the trail. Brutus was doing his best to cover their tracks but there was blood and crushed foliage that was easy to spot. Paranoia was creeping into my thoughts as I wondered how many others were out here in these woods? Every shadow began to take an ominous shape, every windblown branch causing me to jump nearly out of my skin.

Cass noticed my reactions but did not comment. “I hope we find them before it gets too dark to see the trail and markers, I do not want to be lost in here” I stated as loudly as I dared.

Cass spoke over his shoulder, “the three from the campsite did not have supplies on them, they either have a camp near here or were ranging ahead of a larger group, we will have to be extremely careful from now on to try and avoid them.”

I grunted, trying not to show how absolutely terrified I was. All of our practice and training runs from the academy went out the window, I was just a terrified seventeen year old that wanted to go home.

After what felt like a mile we found a double marker, meaning the others were close. The light was almost completely gone and we did not have torches or any sources of light. I began to panic again as all I could think about was getting lost in this forest. I was about to suggest stopping for the night and trying in the morning, I did not want to get lost farther away, we heard voices up ahead.

I could recognize Amelia speaking rapidly, something she only did when she was scared. We crept up slowly trying not to make any noise to assess the situation. “Please don’t hurt us, we’re just kids, we’re just scouts, we were just supposed to scout out Grove and return”.

“I recognize your uniforms and packs, you're strykers, the Norx know never to underestimate your so called elite squads”. A gruff voice I did not know spoke through the clearing, a chill went down my spine.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

We crept up to a large tree that was blocking our site and saw ten shadows standing around the rest of our squad. A terrified Amelia was begging them to leave them alone while Brutus stared out with clenched teeth and fists, Lyse was standing behind him trying to look as small as possible. Cass started to draw his bow but I grabbed his arm and shook my head rapidly. There was no way we could take them all and risk our squad members getting hurt in the crossfire.

“They are just kids, I didn’t sign up for this” another voice spoke from the other side of the clearing.

I tried to survey our surroundings and look for any others, if they snuck up behind us we would have no choice but to fight.

“Tie them up, we wait for the others to return with the last two and we will decide what to do then.” I breathed out a sigh of relief that they were not going to kill them right away.

We needed time to plan and find a solution, we were heavily outnumbered against real soldiers. I got Cass’ attention and motioned back behind us, we began to creep back away from the clearing to find a place to wait. We knew we needed to circle around and get away from the trail we used to get here, we couldn’t risk being found by the other Norx soldiers. When we felt we were safely away we crouched down behind a couplet of trees that were growing out of the same stump, giving us a wall to lean against.

“We have to try to rescue them!” Cass immediately started, I could see the terror in his eyes, he was trying to be a leader but he was just as scared as I was.

“We are outnumbered, they didn’t kill them yet, maybe they will just take them hostage.” I said “We can try to save them on the trail back to their camp where they will be spread out.” He let out a loud sigh and plopped back against the tree. I had my pack full of traps and we had the advantage of surprise on our side. I could see the war between being brave and being cautious raging in Cass. I closed my eyes and leaned back up against the tree beside Cass.

We decided to wait until the light would give us visibility. We knew that if the scouts did not find us back in the clearing the group would be on alert but hoped that we had enough time to get an idea of which direction they would go in. I decided to climb the two trees we had rested near and was able to see smoke rising in the pre-dawn light in the direction our friends were being held.

Climbing as high as I could I saw two more smoke plumes in the distance. This was our best bet for the main camps of the Norx scouts, they were spread out over a few miles with dense forest between them, as good of an area for an ambush as we could hope for. We quickly began moving in a large circle to the opposite direction we had come from last night. Our guards were up, moving slowly and not speaking at all. I had readied two trippers before setting out, we had the beginnings of a rough plan. We would try to find the furthest out scouts from the group and eliminate them to try to even the numbers before confronting them in the densest part of the forest before they got close to the other two camps. We had to guess which direction they would go so we picked the largest looking fire and went for that one.

We saw clear evidence of crossings after a few minutes and decided to set our first trap. We strung a tripper between two trees an inch off the ground, we connected it to a popper so that when stepped on it would create a loud bang. During the distraction Cass and I would take the target down with our bows. Cass was a much better shot than I, second only to Amelia in our squad, one of the reasons he was made squad leader. We settled in on opposite sides of the trail and waited.

It did not take long for the first scout to appear, he was by himself and sweeping the forested area with his eyes. I was crouched down behind a small bush and next to a tree, the light under the canopy dim enough to help me hide. His boot crunched down on the trip wire and the popper fired immediately. He whipped his head around towards the sound and Cass arrow took him in the side. He yelled out and my arrow missed when he began moving towards the trees for cover. Cass was too fast for him, goring him with his spear before he could get far. “One down and at least nine to go, let’s hope his yell and the popper were not too loud, we should get some distance away before anyone comes to investigate.” Cass stated. We hid the body behind the brush and took off further down the trail.