Following the gnolls was easy.

Their trail was obvious, stinking of stress, anger, and rotten eggs. Parsing scents as emotions was coming to me, similar to learning new languages impossibly fast. Magical.

I scoffed at the thought. Inexplicable phenomena did not magic make. Regardless, assuming I could count on the effects to continue, relying on this ‘magic’ would not be too foolish. Besides, what other choice did I have?

The night turned to morning. The overcast never broke, but the clouds began shining with a foreboding red, as I assumed the sun rose. If this world even had a sun. How long would these clouds persist?

While following the gnolls, I kept to the lower paths, and always maintained enough distance to break the sight-lines between me and them. In this broken land, not much distance was required to lose sight of someone. An advantage for me. Especially as I was following by scent, not sight. Though I recognized the possibility that they would stop, or leave a lone member behind. If they were quiet, they could ambush me.

That was, if they knew I was following them.

I assumed they did not. But caution led me to carefully examine each new horizon and to keep my ears open. Not that I could close them. But it was possible to ignore the sensory feedback, and there always was sound, from the wind to rocks sliding in the distance, there was always something to hear.

And while I was tracking them by scent, without eyes on them, it was possible they would reach wherever they were going and conclude their business.

As they were heading to presumably battle against the ‘humans,’ I did not wish to dally.

Humans. Civilization! I could not help but grin, at least a little. But the way the lips pulled across my teeth felt unnatural, and quickly killed my spirits. I hoped there was a quick way to change back to human.

Body: 33 (+1)

It was near midday when I came into sight of them.

The gnolls lurked in the shadow of a cragged and split mountainside. I counted them. At least two were missing, or hiding further. Were they scouting ahead, or were they circling behind? Unknown. I would just have to take care to limit my own exposure.

I found a fresh vantage point, at a higher elevation compared to the gnolls, and I settled in to spy upon them. Behind the boulder’s shadow of my spot, I set my jacket down and sat down, leaning against my knapsack, nursing the flagon. Stakeouts needed to be comfortable, but not too much so. I doubted I had to worry about the second concern.

While waiting, I tried figuring out why the gnolls had settled in. It had been daylight for a while, and I knew the gnolls were nocturnal, and they had been going hard for a while, but why had they chosen now to stop?

Were they taking a break? They had been pushing hard for hours, all the while without stopping. That is one possibility. But there was another reason as well, and one that refused to budge itself from the forefront of my mind, and that was that the gnolls had arrived, and were waiting for nightfall to make their move, whatever that move was.

I needed to know. Just sitting and watching the gnolls would do me no favors. So after several hours, I decided to do my own reconnaissance. Sure, it was still daylight, but I had done plenty of daylight slinking around. Although that has been an urban environment, where the trick was to not stand out. A bit different in this situation.

I revisited that thought a bit more. I could wait for nightfall and use the cover of darkness. That would be the safe way to go about it. But then I would be stuck waiting longer and the gnolls might not even have had a good reason to stop here. While I thought, I drained the last of the flagon. It soothed my lips and throat, and almost tricked my stomach into thinking it was full. I still had yet to decide exactly what it was that I had been drinking, but my money was on some sort of fermented juice.

It was just a pity the gnolls only had one flagon hanging in their pantry. Though I suppose there had been a barrel. Should I head back to the gnoll den and raid it further? Was the ooze still there? I would hate to get cornered by that thing. If this gambit failed to pay off for me, then I would consider circling back.

Afterall, if all the gnolls were here, who was guarding their stuff?

Concerns for later.

I got up, checked the gnolls one last time, then put my jacket back on and slunked off around the mountain, keeping low and covered, while looking for any sign of objects of interest. I hoped there was something, that I had not just wasted a night and a day for nothing. Especially when I could have been raiding the gnolls’ pantry further.

Why had I not done that in the first place? Foolish!

But then I smelled it. My stomach grumbled and churned and felt like a gaping hole with teeth. Roasting meat. On the wind.

Perhaps not so foolish afterall. The gamble might have just paid off.

I was not able to see the source yet, but I was able to follow it upwind. I crouched along a nearby rise, and as I approached the ridgeline, I fell to all fours and crawled forward, nearby where a rock obstructed the cleanest line of sight.

In the next valley over, there were people.

People!

I almost jumped down to join them right then and there. But a fact I knew well, that had been ingrained every day of a life I could no longer recall, was that people were the greatest predators and warranted every method of caution.

Especially people of unknown origins and purposes.

Instead of watching the gnolls, I found a new vantage to watch the humans and their camp below. Because before I went down and spoke with them, I needed intelligence.

It seemed like they were living out of a ramshackle semi-permanent camp based around a mine entrance. There were several buildings made of stone and wood with loose and irregular planks forming roofs and walls. They would leak horrifically when it rained. A latrine had been set up outside of their settlement, and judging by the stench, it lacked plumbing.

In one of the buildings, with two open walls and smoke billowing up, there arose a tink-tink-tink of a hammer on metal, along with the occasional grinding or scraping screech to irritate my ears, even over the wind.

But most noticeable was an odd structure that almost appeared to be a weathervane, but instead of metal vanes, they were some kind of yellow immobile plastic looking material, with mist flowing around the edges, and what might have been droplets forming along the bottom.

Droplets. Water.

Whatever that device was, it was condensing water from the atmosphere for collection. For the second time in so many minutes, I almost ran down there, throwing caution into the wind. But I resisted and continued my observations.

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Particularly of note was the piping that stretched down from the plastic vanes to a steel barrel–a collection barrel.

Of water.

I bit my chapped lips, my canines pinching the pulp. At least I knew there were resources down there.

I settled into a healthy recession that both gave me a view of the valley and sheltered me from both wind and sight. I kept my ears and nose keen for any evidence that the gnolls were on the move, and I focused on the people down below.

As I waited, I practiced my Illusions. I had been inspired by [Chameleon] and [Clone], and I decided to create a more aggressive shadow. A shadow that could cover someone’s face, similar to what I had pulled on Nick when he attacked me with his own spell. To practice, I focused on forming a black inky blob and moving it back and forth, almost shadowboxing, but instead of boxing, I was chasing an imaginary enemy with a consuming shadow.

Even though I was imagining the enemy, predicting their movements reliably with the inky shadows was not easy. But as I practiced, I grew.

Mind: 45 (+1)

Spirit: 45 (+1)

Illusion: 5/9 (+1)

Movement down below.

From the mine entrance carved into the base of the hill, a shirtless man with tan pants and black boots came marching out carrying an empty steel drum over his shoulder. He looked human, so far as I could tell. He might have been six foot, he wore a healthy beard and had vibrant black hair. He marched up to the weather vane’s collection barrel and swapped it out with the drum. Given how his muscles rippled and how he strained as he moved the collection barrel, it looked plenty heavy.

The man grunted something, but whatever he said was lost in the distance and the wind. He left the full collection barrel to the side and headed over to the largest ramshackle building, where the hammering came from, and that I had taken to thinking of as the workshop. The hammering stopped for a moment, before the man left the workshop, heading back towards the tunnel carrying what might have been a bronze musket.

The humans were armed. Not that I blamed them, considering what I had seen of their neighbors. Though it was worth noting the differences between people and gnolls. The gnolls failed to exhibit any nature of techbase–they wore no clothes even–so I had set my expectations somewhat low. That people had technology, had clothes, had luxuries, that was a serious relief. A balm to the soul. I was not alone. There was a bath waiting for me someday.

But still, I continued watching down below. I could wait a bit longer, and something about the people seemed dangerous, besides the weapons that I had seen.

A little while later, the hammering stopped again, and two people walked out from the workshop.

One of them, in smudged plain clothing with rolled up sleeves and thick arms, wore a collar attached to a steel cable leash.

The leash was held by a thick and scarred woman wearing a knife on her belt along with a possible handgun. She brought him to the lavatory and held the leash while he went in and shut the door.

A minute later, the woman grew impatient and pounded on the door, shouting something. A minute after that, she pulled the door open and yanked on the leash, pulling the man out while he was still pulling up his trousers.

While I watched this, a chill ran down my spine, from my neck to the base of my tail. My fur bristled, and I hissed.

Slaves. These people kept slaves.

And that man was not the only one. Throughout the day and into the evening, several other people came up from the cavern to use the lavatory, and I saw two other slaves, one appeared to be a collared cat person, and another was a slim child in a stained white robe.

When I saw the child, my blood boiled, and my hiss grew to a growl. But I could not just head down there. These people were armed and dangerous, while I was not.

An oddity however.

The boy was not just taken towards the lavatory, as were the others. The boy was instead taken to the workshop, where he spent half an hour doing something, before he was taken out towards the lavatory, and finally back into the tunnel.

Evening turned to dusk, and the hammering stopped for good. The slave, who was the presumed craftsperson in the workshop, was walked back to the cavern while carrying a wooden crate with several tools. The woman holding the leash was sure to keep behind him until they were out of sight.

Soon after, the thick doors to the mine were shut, presumably barred and locked. Night fell.

I wasted almost no time in scurrying down the hill and rushing into the settlement towards the collection barrel. During all the hours I had spent observing them, the barrel had taunted me, full of what I was sure was water.

And I was so very thirsty.

I leapt under the tubing and plunged my face down into the barrel, reaching in and cupping the warm fluid. Pulling it up, it smelled a bit off, and tasted heavy, but it was water.

I gulped and gulped until I thought I might puke, and then I filled my flagon as well. And then I washed my face. And hands.

When I finished I pulled myself together and crouched down by the barrel, suddenly cognizant that I had taken a huge risk.

I froze and kept my ears alert. There were no cries of alarm, at least not obvious ones. I doubted that there would be a silent alarm, but there could have been sentries. In fact, there should have been something along those lines, especially with several lootable items sitting out in the open.

I glanced around the camp. The workshop was to my right, the tunnel entrance was forward of that, and the lavatory was on the far side of the workshop by a decent margin. Where are the sentries? I began scanning the hillsides, both the cliffside that the tunnel entrance was carved into, and the hillside behind me that I had come down.

I found nothing. But I knew there had to be something. It just did not make sense to set up a presumably illegal weapons manufacturing operation without a protection mechanism. So despite my failure, I continued looking.

And then I heard a snippet of a conversation. A voice on the wind, and not a gnoll. There was a flash of light forward, from the cliff. It had been quick, a passing glint of yellow. I sought it out again.

There was a discoloration in the cliff several yards above the tunnel. The discoloration stretched out in an unnatural horizontal line, uniform, and about as thick as a hand. I thought I saw something moving there as well.

I ran through what I knew: These people had what appeared to be weapons; they had slaves; they lived in a dangerous area where I had observed monsters. These people had created a settlement out in these wastes, which might be due to several factors. It could be that there were only small settlements such as this one. Or, it could be that they were some kind of criminal stronghold apart from the local population centers. I hoped it was the second, but either way, it would not change my earlier observations.

I could see no probable manner that there would not be a weaponized deterrent.

As I considered, I continued watching the suspicious discoloration, until I was rewarded with observing another metallic glint further in. It was enough for me to determine that the discoloration was a window, and that there was someone on the other side. Were I to guess, I would assume that they were armed with some kind of rifle, which would make the opening a sharpshooter’s nest.

A chill ran down my back once again, as I realized the extent of my recklessness. From what I could tell, they had not seen me. But they could just have easily as I raided their water stock, or as I scampered down the hillside. The only reason they might have not, is if they were in the middle of a shift change, or if they behaved sloppily.

However, under the cover of darkness, and as I crouched alongside other immobile objects, I suspected that I was relatively safe. There were no obvious alarms, there were no mobilizing guards, and there were no potshots being taken.

Thus, I plotted. The humans had food. Likely bedrolls. Blankets. Clothes. Supplies. I wanted it all.

I knew their lavatories were outside. I could not know if they had facilities within their cave, where I assumed their dormitories resided, but there was a chance that someone would open the doorway guarding the tunnel.

And at that point, I could sneak in.

“Illusion.”

I crept to the cliffside beneath the lookout nest, getting into position. It was only a matter of time.

Blessings: Rank (1/9)

* Body: 33 (+1)

* Mind: 45 (+1)

* Spirit: 45 (+1)

Talents:

* Athleticism (2/9):

* Climbing (4/9)

* Stealth (1/9)

* Trackless Tracks (3/9)

* Closed (1/9)

Spells:

* Illusion (5/9) (+1)

* Closed (0/9)

* Closed (0/9)

Gifts:

* Obsession (2/9)

* Closed (0/9)

* Closed (0/9)