Erwin’s team of heavily armed guys that just happened to be hanging out in the forest and who totally weren't bandits were uncomfortably well organized. For all my bravado - I didn’t think I could kill all of them. I could probably run away from them but watching them range ahead of us, throwing hand signals back and forth like navy seals I got the distinct impression that it might be the last thing I ever did. Thing Two had reigned in his agitation and was now merely plugging along behind Nadeen, no less than an arms length away from Erwin. Or rather, exactly one arm’s length away from the man, who was still completely at ease while he made small talk at Nadeen.

I say at Nadeen because the poor girl pointedly refused to answer his persistent advances with anything more than a tight lipped smile and occasional grunting noises. I think they were trying to decide whether or not we were hostages, given Erwin constantly seemed to come back around to the topic of Nadeens background.

“Pray tell Lady Binder, why does it keep doing that?” Erwin asked, suddenly departing from his previous topic. His tone was polite but strained - though I couldn't tell why.

Nadeen’s gaze flicked up to me, then returned to jumping between Erwin’s soldiers whenever they made a hand sign. Her attention was half way between panic and the kind of dangerous focus a predator gets before it pounces. I couldn’t decide which, and I don’t think she could either.

“Your standing too close to me.” Nadeen answered absently, carefully maneuvering her arm away from where Erwin was trying to reach out and ostensibly help her walk. I had to give it to her, because she looked like she might need the help.

“You think I’m standing too close to you, or that creature does?” Erwin asked, making no effort to distance himself, and letting a note of annoyance creep into his voice. Nadeen turned to regard him for a moment before resuming her observation of the nearby men.

“Yes.” was her only reply, and I took that as my que. Turning my head fractionally to the side so I could catch Thing Two’s attention, I clacked my teeth together once and gestured at Nadeen. Now that I understood Thing Two was some kind of highly specialized grunt labour, his ability to interpret my commands and willingness to comply with them made a lot more sense. Ofcourse, pretending to be docile is an excellent way to attract prey…

Immediately taking my meaning, Thing Two stretched out one obscenely large arm and curled it like a champion weightlifter, directly under Nadeen. Predictably, she lost her balance and fell smoothly into the lumbering oafs grasp. Cradling her like a child, Thing Two made a hooting noise at Erwin and then loped over to me.

“Sir!?” shrieked the man who’s belt I had been holding on to. My head rotated back around and I glared at him, reasoning that as long as everyone thought I could kill them they’d keep their hands to themselves. The middle aged man who stared back at me had pure terror in his eyes, and I could see myself reflected in their depths.

Inwardly I snorted. These people seemed disproportionately afraid of me. Yeah I could kill a couple before they got me maybe. But if Bastok was right then I was literally one of the shittiest monsters in this hellhole.

“Calm yourself. If it was going to attack, it would.” Erwin called out, though I noticed his voice cracked slightly as he tried to maintain his calm. We weren’t really being cooperative, but we weren’t being particularly argumentative either. Just… annoying.

Taking pity on the poor shmuck I’d been using as my seeing eye dog while I glared behind me at Erwin, I let go of his belt and dropped back to be next to Thing Two. Nadeen was struggling weakly in his grasp, but at this point I doubted she had the strength to crack an egg let alone out do Thing Two. I eyed her then darted my gaze towards Erwin, and she seemed to get the message quickly enough.

She stilled glared at me though. That special kind of glare only a teenager can give when they believe you wronged them greatly.

The rest of the trip was much more relaxing for me. Not because I was less tense about all the armed men around me, but because Erwin seemed to orbit around us like an unwanted stepchild. On multiple occasions he attempted to fall into step with Thing Two, but had the words wrenched from him as Thing Two, Nadeen and I all turned our heads to glare at him at the same time.

Slowly the atmosphere about is began to change. The men traveling ahead of us began to loosen up, growing more and more relaxed until they weren’t so much scouting ahead as they were walking in a loose group and chatting with each other. I assumed we were close to their camp, but for the life of me I couldn’t tell the difference between this part of the forest any other.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Becoming a Thing definitely hadn’t given me some innate forestcraft.

Then we broke into a clearing that had clearly been man made, and I had to work to keep my jaw from dropping. This wasn't a fucking a camp. It was a whole god damn village in the middle of the murder forest. Dozens of small log cabins stood in the center of the clearing, surrounded by an armies worth of tents, their sizes ranging from normal camping tents all the way up to building sized things that seemed like they might as well be permanent fixtures. There was no rhyme or reason to the placement of the tents, and nothing even vaguely resembling a road leading into the town. A small river flowed around the encampment in a a U-Shape, blocking access to the village from any side except the direction we had come from.

And the smell. The smell was overwhelming. Like every person on your street having a barbeque at once. Like a whole farms worth of pigs baking in the oven. I felt like I had just walked into the kitchen at a mcdonalds, and was only jarred from my hunger when a cool droplet fell on me and I realized I was drooling so hard it was literally overflowing.

Which was fucking gross.

Nadeen seemed as stunned as I was to see the impromptu bastion of humanity, and she practically shook in Thing Two’s arms, visibly fighting back tears. Mentally I reevaluated Erwin from child touching cretin to possibly Guard Captain child touching cretin.

“Welcome to the Wild Hunt Lady Binder. I’ll have my men erect a tent for you, unless you’d prefer the comfort of a bed?” Erwin said, making a proud sweeping gesture and allowing a wolfish smile to spread across his face. It wasn’t the least tactfully invitation I’d ever heard, but it was the most creepy.

“Tent.” whispered Nadeen hoarsely. Erwin leaned in to her, putting himself entirely too close to her face and smugly asked;

“I’m sorry? Couldn’t quite hear you.” It was clear he was going for a sort of sensual whisper in your ear thing, and I genuinely wondered how someone with such poor survival instincts managed to have a village in the murder forest. Thing Two seemed to be wondering the same thing because he actually growled at Erwin, his own slightly opened mouth only a few inches from the amorous idiot’s own ear. Erwin had clearly forgotten the danger we posed once we had arrived in his seat of power, and he rocketed backwards as though struck. Taking a moment to recompose himself Erwin took a deep breath, and the spun on one heel to walk away from us.

With my primary source of aggravation gone, I had time to take a second look a the town. There were people moving about the tents, moving equipment, carrying plates of food, talking amongst themselves. Almost all of them looked injured in some way, and not one of them was a woman. Curious, I scampered closer to the edge of the tent village, then, glancing back to make sure Thing Two was keeping pace with me, plunged into the maze of fabric.

People scrambled away from us like we were three times our actual size, diving into tents, dropping food where they stood and sprinting out of sight the minute we came into view. I felt like a horror movie monster. I would have felt worse about it but the whole damn place smelled so good. I should have been thinking more about getting Nadeen to safety, or getting us someplace where we weren’t surrounded by armed men, or finding a tent to lay down in. But the smell was mesmerizing. So I continued to shuffle forward, following my nose to the source of the scent.

A commotion had developed behind us, but I could hardly pay attention to it now I was so entranced. Dimly I could hear Erwin yelling for calm, and saying something about bound this or bound that. Then finally I came upon an empty circle of space in the exact center of the little village. It was ringed on all sides by sturdy log cabins, and an unlit fire pit full of blackened firewood and ash lay at its center. Strung out above the firepit between two poles that had been hammered into the ground was what had attracted me here.

Strung out like clothes left to dry in the sun, were Things. Unmoving corpses that sagged and bore the clear signs of battle. I’d have been unable to determine if they were my brothers and sisters or not, except that a few of them still had sticky wads of foliage pasted to old wounds. Their eyes were hollow, and their jaws hung open. Beneath them, men moved back and forth under the direction of a shirtless and soot stained man who paid no heed to the sudden arrival of myself and probably half the villages guards behind me. They painstakingly pulled the saw like teeth out of the Things mouths, while those Things who had already undergone that process were pulled down from the rack. Around the edges of the macabre display were men with the corpses of Things in their laps, using sharp hooked daggers to flay the hide from my kind, then used the hooked ends to pull bits of bone out of the way so they could continue digging about.

The entire thing was oddly surreal. Like I should be horrified, or want vengeance. I was, in part, quite distressed by the sight. I had an odd rapport with the other members of my cohort that had made me feel, if not safe, then at least comfortable. And now they were all…

Blinking I looked around and noticed that the Big Thing’s was nowhere to be found. Then I got annoyed as the last piece of the puzzle fit itself into place. This was the reason these people were so terrified of me. Big Thing must have lead the cohort here to feed, killing who knows how many people, and causing many of the injuries I’d seen while walking about the camp.

Then something else dawned on me. I didn’t find the smell of other things appetizing. And normal, uncooked human flesh - while tasty - didn’t trigger my hunger the way I’d been experiencing. So what the fuck -

“Thane!” called Erwin from a safe distance behind me, and I had to fight the urge to spin my head around and glare at him. He sounded worried, but not panicked, which should have immediately triggered my warning flags. The huge sun tanned man with no shirt on who had been directing everyone else turned to face us, seemingly only just now noticing the ruckus going on behind him. His face, framed by greasy black hair that looked like it hadn’t been combed, washed, or taken care of in years, scrunched up in annoyance. Then his piercing green eyes passed over Nadeen, Thing Two & I and his features fell into a mask of neutrality.

He strode towards us, his gait confident and his eyes never leaving Nadeen. A necklace of teeth hung about his neck, held together by a bit of rawhide, and little symbols had been carved into each and every tooth. Every single one looked unique, like they had all come from different animals. When he finally came to a stop in front of us I realized what I had been smelling, what I had found so fucking appetizing.

It wasn’t meat. It was magic.