The first morning sunlight to trickle through the canopies painted the dim forest floor with specks of light. Dew drops glinted where the light found them, and the earliest birds were singing.

"Time to move," Eli announced to the camp, nudging a sleeping Autumn with his foot.

Iris groaned and blipped a pillow at Eli, which he avoided with a quick lean. She lay her head down on the uneven ground beneath her thin bedroll and groaned again.

Eli stooped down beside the still snoring Autumn and grabbed the lower corner of her bedroll, pulling it with him as he stood upright. Autumn rolled beneath the bedding and shouted obscenities as she tumbled into the dirt.

"We've got four unfinished quests and four days to make it to base camp," he said loudly, "let's go."

The forest grew gradually brighter as they packed camp and searched for the blood trail. It was late-morning when they came across a trail of wide footprints marked with splotches of trickled blood. They followed the trail through the forest floor as it winded around trunks and roots until it brought them to a ravine which cut through the forest like a wound.

The ravine was 150 feet wide and 50 feet deep, redwood roots erupted from the cliff faces and crossed the gap and grew back into the ground, forming an entangled mess of natural bridges that gave the appearance of the trees stitching the forest back together. Hanging moss grew from the roots and draped down towards a small river that rushed between two narrow shores of mud and gravel.

"Wait," Victoria whispered quickly, "Shut up. No one move."

Everyone froze in place, including Victoria. Iris and Autumn tried not to turn their heads as they exchanged curious eye contact, then Autumn glanced at Titus, who gave a clueless shrug.

Victoria stared across the ravine with her auravision, then released the power and returned her eyes to normal. She slowly pointed between two trunks across the ravine, where the front half of an elk was barely visible behind brush. Victoria slowly and carefully pulled a small notebook and a straight piece of charcoal wrapped in linen from her pocket. She made crude marks on the page with the coal, noting the approximate height, number of antler points, and any unique identifying marks.

"Do we kill it?" Iris asked quietly.

"No!" Victoria hissed, "it's for a wildlife survey."

"Oh," Iris said, "that's nice. We do kind of a lot of killing."

"Yeeaahh," Autumn agreed.

Eli gave them a quiet shush while Victoria finished her notes. After a moment, the elk snapped his head as a sound from elsewhere in the forest alerted his attention, seconds later he dashed into the forest with loud, thumping hoof steps.

"That was good," Victoria said, her casual tone was a signal for the others to relax the tension in their bodies and breath, "I even got most of a sketch done. Iris, can you do me a favor?"

Iris blipped the short distance between them to arrive in front of Victoria, looking expectantly.

Victoria handed her the charcoal, "can you go mark that spot with a quick drawing of antlers?"

Iris nodded and blipped a short distance to the edge of the ravine. After a moment to plan her path she blipped to appear on a root-bridge. She ran for a few steps, then leapt off and blipped again onto another root. She continued this through a long chain of blips, moving upwards as she went until she arrived atop the cliff on the other side at the base of the root she was to mark.

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As Iris stepped up to draw, Victoria shouted from across the way, "A little to the left!"

Iris looked back at Victoria, then blipped a few feet to her left and waited.

"Perfect!" Victoria shouted.

Iris drew the basic outline of antlers, stepped back to observe it, then made a few additions. She stepped back to inspect it again, then stepped up to make adjustments.

"I think that's good enough," Eli shouted from across the gap.

"Just a minute!" She shouted over her shoulder, finishing the final shaping on a side-profile silhouette of the Elk's head and neck beneath the antlers. She gave her work a satisfied nod, then turned back towards her companions and stepped up to the edge of the ravine, and paused.

"Uh, guys," she said wearily, "you should see this."

The party unknowingly stood atop a shallow overhang supported by a pair of entwined roots several feet below the surface. At the bottom of the ravine, beside the river and beneath the overhang, was a battered and overturned carriage. All but one wheel was missing from the axles, the doors had been ripped off and the frame was crushed and shattered in multiple places. The only sign of the horses that had pulled it were loose harnesses still tied to the remnants of the carriage.

Iris blipped her way down to the bottom of the ravine, then blipped across the river to the carriage. Victoria used her mist form to meet Iris at the bottom while the others struggled to climb their way down. The pair of them looked up at their companions in amusement, then concern. They winced as Titus stepped on a thin root that broke free from the dirt, causing him to slip and almost fall before catching a lucky handhold. Eli told Glimmer to stay, then made his way down more elegantly, taking short leaps between root-bridges until he landed softly beside Victoria.

Autumn was the slowest to descend, still near the top as Eli landed at the bottom. "Fuck this," she grumbled, looking over her shoulder to shout, "incoming!"

"Don't--" Eli began, but gave up as Autumn released her grip and kicked off the wall of dirt.

She landed with a splat in the mud, sending mud splashing in all directions. Iris blipped away just in time to dodge a clump of mud that was now destined for Eli, splattering across his chest and the lower half of his face. Smaller clumps of mud splattered across Victoria, while Titus was just out of reach as he finished his climb down.

Iris appeared behind a very angry Eli turning to glare at her. She burst into laughter when she saw him. Titus's boots hit the ground as he finished the climb, and an instant later he was laughing with her. Autumn, who was covered in mud herself, was frozen in a fearful expression that was quickly cracking with amusement.

Eli wiped the mud from his chin as he spoke to Victoria in a transparent attempt to keep himself calm, "It's good. It's good that they're in high spirits. Morale is important."

"My supply of clean clothes is important," she said flatly.

"At least we're already next to a river," Autumn said confidently.

Victoria took a step towards Autumn, who looked aghast. Eli stopped Victoria with an outstretched arm.

"Pull it together," he said to the party, "we've got work to do."

Victoria relaxed, but gave a threatening glare to Autumn, who sneered in return. Titus was smiling to himself and lightly shaking his head as he turned away from the party and approached the destroyed carriage. Eli soon stepped up beside him, glancing back over his shoulder for a moment to make sure the girls weren't fighting.

"Look at this," Titus pointed at a section of the frame around the door that had been crushed into splinters, "does that look like a handprint?"

Eli nodded grimly, "from a very big hand. The wood hasn't started rotting yet, this hasn't been here long."

Titus stepped up on the rumble to peer down through the doorway into the carriage, "stripped clean. No blood."

"So either someone else found this and emptied it, or whatever did this was smart enough to want the valuables."

"The things we're after mostly target caravans and trade wagons," Titus said, "stolen goods are part of their pattern. We're a long way from the road, though, did they drag this thing all the way out here?"

"That wouldn't make sense," Eli pondered. He turned and looked up out of the ravine, then pointed, "there's a gap between the roots wide enough for this carriage, we should check for tracks up top."

“Blip!” Eli and Titus jumped slightly as Iris appeared between them and spoke, "I'll take a look!" Then she was gone.

Iris blipped across the river on the root-bridges just above it, then zig-zagged a series of blips between roots to climb out of the ravine before disappearing over the top edge of the cliff. She returned the way she'd gone shortly after, "one pair of cart tracks, and several pairs of big footprints."

"I think the road's about a half mile in that direction,” Eli said.

"Maybe they were being chased?" Titus asked, "could they make it that far through the forest?"

"If they were desperate and lucky enough, maybe," Eli said.

Titus grimaced, "If they survived the fall, this is a bad spot to be surrounded."

"Kind of weird that we ended up in the same spot," Iris wondered aloud.

Titus and Eli looked at Iris, then locked eyes.

"Vic," Eli's voice wavered, "perimeter check."