Loch could see the signs of a fight. One he thought was very lopsided, as there were more cuts and slashes through the trees and the ground then anything else. Marks made by animals but the patterns were strange. He remembered how the claws had looked on the Coyote that had turned into a Wendigo. They’d been longer, but twisted and bent at odd angles. That’s what he was looking at, crouched down in the middle of a small clearing.

Blood had been splashed everywhere, now dried, covering the trees and the grass. He wasn’t sure if they were lucky or not. It hadn’t rained overnight, which was rare since the Connection, so the blood had not been washed off. Glancing at Piper, who hung back at the edge of the clearing, hugging Harper tight, he wished the blood had been washed away.

Piper had seen a lot since the Connection but what had been sprayed around the clearing was horrible. There were remnants of guts and shards of bone scattered everywhere. Which was a surprise. Scavengers typically would have removed all that, but there was no indication any scavenger had entered the clearing. They had been afraid to.

There was an odd feeling to it. Something dark pushed at Loch, a strange feeling. It felt like it wanted more, craved and needed more. Something was missing and whatever pervaded the clearing couldn’t rest until it got more. It was like an aura, more feeling than physical. The lingering smell didn’t help. Rot, so much rot.

It made everyone uneasy.

The lower Leveled members stayed under the trees, not wanting to enter. Loch wondered how Jerry had managed the day before.

He stood up, looking around. Branches had been broken looking like holes cut through the canopy. The grass had been pushed up, leaving paths of torn up dirt, indications of things thrown and skidding across the ground. Everywhere in the clearing was signs of fighting, a fierce battle. It was the lack of bodies that confused Loch.

Scavengers hadn’t gotten them, so why had there only been the two corpses that Jerry had found? There were what looked like drag marks at one end, but they ended only feet into the treeline, nothing looking like it’d been eating or dragged further away. Had someone else gotten there before Jerry and taken the other corpses? Had they been interrupted before grabbing the last two and that was what Jerry had found?

“Lord Lochlan,” Kyle called out from the west side, deeper into the trees. “Over here.”

Everyone turned, Loch heading over. He passed Josh, who was on sentry along the clearing edge. The man scowled, most likely at Kyle called Loch a Lord. Loch hoped he’d get over it sooner rather than later.

He found Kyle about twenty feet away, having to twist and turn around the thickly growing trees. They were wide, thick roots running along the ground, hidden under fallen leaves. Like other parts of the forest, it looked like the trees had originally not been this close together, or as big. The Connection and Worldcore had made them larger, taller and wider, but hadn’t adjusted the spacing making it hard to walk through them. Through the gaps, he could just barely see Elora walking parallel. Her eyes were constantly moving, studying everything.

There was recognition in her eyes. Of what, Loch didn’t know.

“It looks like there was more fighting here,” Kyle said, pointing at the trees around him.

Branches were broken, bark ripped off the trees along with claw marks and what Loch thought were slashes made by swords. The ground was broken, ripped up. And the blood. The ground was covered in it. There was a similar feel as in the clearing but not as strong. Loch thought he might be the only one picking up on the aura.

The fighting had to have happened a day or so before Jerry had found the body. Maybe the aura slowly seeped into the world around it, getting stronger.

“There were elves here,” Elora said, stepping out of the trees.

Kyle didn’t yell out but he jumped in surprise. Loch had known she was approaching. Ever since she’d sworn an oath as a Bannerman, he could generally feel her Presence when she was close.

“Almost gave me a heart attack,” Kyle muttered.

“Elves?” Loch asked. “The Silver Bark?” He didn’t bother asking how she knew. Elora was a Deep Ranger and an Elf. If she said there had been elves, there had been elves.

“Yes,” she replied.

She walked over to a tree, running fingers across the marks in the bark where it had been slashed or cut. Stepping back, she studied the ground, looking around the tree and the clearing before settling her gaze north.

“They entered the trees there,” she said, pointing at a group of bushes between two oaks.

To Loch it looked like nothing had disturbed the bushes in years. He walked closer, trying to see any sign of anything passing. There were no broken branches that he could see. No footprints. He turned back to Elora.

“Can you tell how many?”

She shook her head.

“They took the bodies,” she replied. “Their dead and the Wendigos.” She looked to the side where Piper, Cerie and the others were gathering. Her glance focused on Cerie. “The fairy did not mention that it is best to burn the corpse of a wendigo so that the hunger does not fester.” She pointed to the larger clearing behind them. “It becomes like that, a warped place where things do not go.”

“So why were the bodies Jerry found left,” Loch asked.

“I do not know. They could have heard him approaching and could not grab the last couple bodies.”

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“I was pretty damn quiet,” Jerry said, a little indignant.

Elora ignored him. Loch looked back at the branches and the ground around them, not seeing much of anything that indicated the elves had been there. Jerry probably had been quiet, but the elves were something else.

“Or they left them on purpose to let Clan Brady know there was a wendigo in the area.”

“Why would they do that,” Harper asked. “Aren’t we kind of enemies?”

“A Wendigo is feared by all. It must be stopped.”

The Silver Bark might have left the bodies as a warning but Loch didn’t think it was meant to make the two Clans allies. Loch didn’t want the Silver Bark around but he knew Clan Brady didn’t have the strength to defeat the Elves if it came to conflict. He’d avoid that if possible.

But they were invaders, come to Earth to plunder it of its Resources. They cared nothing about the planet or the humans living on it. They just wanted what it offered. If the Wendigo wasn’t such a large threat, Loch figured the Silver Bark would happily eradicate Clan Brady. They probably still would.

There had to be a way to eliminate the threat of the Silver Bark.

And all the invaders.

Earth belonged to its people.

***

Elora found a path east, away from the clearing and the direction the elves went in. They knew the Silver Bark were somewhere on the southwestern shores of Bow Lake, which was north of where they were. Loch was hesitant about moving west. It put them further from the school and closer to what was probably the Silver Bark territory. The more west they went, the further they went from the Silver Bark camp.

He hoped.

But they had to find the Wendigo and end that threat.

The trail wasn’t that difficult to follow. It was a couple days old and it had rained, washing away the actual tracks, but the Wendigo had not been careful about their rush through the woods. They broke branches, snapped twigs, slashed trees as they ran, even left bits of desiccated flesh and fur on trees they ran into. Some of the thinner trees had even been knocked down.

Parts of the trail looked like a mini-tornado had torn through it.

With the increased strength of the wind and the constant nature, Loch was surprised there hadn’t been any tornados, quickly dismissing the thought before it brought bad luck. New Hampshire had had a couple of smaller ones, nothing like the midwest got. He couldn’t imagine what storms were like in the midwest now.

They moved slowly. The forest was thick, but there were still areas where the trees were spread out, a couple feet between them, making it easy for the monsters to avoid. It made the number of signs for Elora to follow few and far between. She had to range out in front of the group, sometimes moving in a circle until she found the next sign of a Wendigo’s passage.

It was a chaotic path. Not a straight line, in a couple spots even curving around itself, which had confused even Elora. Loch watched the passage of the sun across the sky, worried they would have to spend the night. Their group wasn’t silent either. Josh and his team were the loudest, having no stealth Abilities or even any natural training. Sarah Brigham was the quietest, loud compared to Elora and Harper. She kept shooting sharp glances at her teammates with every little noise they made.

Loch’s team wasn’t much better but they had more experience in the woods. Even the large Brian had some experience with moving quietly. Loch thought the Clan’s hunters were pretty silent, but they were nothing like Elora or even Harper, both of whom kept glaring at everyone, even Loch, when they made a noise.

There were no sounds around them, the forest eerily silent. Loch wasn’t sure if their noise had driven the animals away or it had been the passage of the Wendigo. He found it odd that they hadn’t encountered any mutated animals or other monsters.

Every other time he’d been in the forest, it hadn’t been constant attacks but often enough. Along with seemingly empty forest, the lack of attacks raised Loch’s anxiety. He didn’t like that he was already thinking that not being attacked was a bad thing. The Earth hadn’t been Connected that long, barely a couple of months, but Loch had never imagined he’d get to the point where he was used to being attacked just walking in the woods. At least not to the point where he found it odd to not be attacked. It wasn’t that he wanted it to happen but in a short time he’d gotten used to expecting it.

From their facial expressions and body language, Loch could tell that the hunters were tense and worried. They were also finding the lack of attacks to be unnatural. Kyle had once told Loch that they actually counted on being attacked, not in large numbers, but that the additional meat was needed. There were plenty of non-monster, non-aggressive, game in the woods. Non-mutated deer, nothing like the herd that Loch had seen in the field off Bow Lake Road. Normal pre-Connected System, deer. Foxes, raccoons, even rabbits, all grown larger, but still just animals. But there were the mutated coyotes and chipmunks. Even mutated foxes, raccoons and rabbits. The killer rabbits were the worst, Kyle had said. He shuddered as he said it. Loch didn’t want to encounter any. Just hearing about them was enough.

Elora stopped, raising her hand to call a halt. Loch passed the signal on, moving his hand to send out more instructions. Josh muttered quietly to himself but did as ordered, motioning for his team to spread out and face behind, looking back the way they had come. Brian and Jenny took the sides, leaving the hunters in the middle with Piper and Julia. Harper followed her father forward to join Elora.

Loch could see more light between the trees, indication of a clearing. The shape of a rocky hill appeared in the gaps. Not a hill, Loch realized, crouching down next to Elora, but a giant boulder. New Hampshire had been called the Granite State and it was accurate. The entire state seemed to rest on giant slabs of rock, with thousands of formations resting on the ground or growing out of it. Not just the mountains, but boulders found randomly in the woods.

Their backyard had been a buried mass of rock. The grass for most of it had only been inches deep, smaller rocks poking up throughout the yard. Loch had always had to be careful with the lawn mower, the blade sparking many times as it slid across the rocks. The yard had been uneven, parts of it overgrown and near unusable. He’d been asked why he didn’t level it out and the truth was that he couldn’t. There had just been that much rock. A giant boulder had been the centerpiece of the yard, six or so feet high, steeply sloped that the girls loved to run up when younger, about twelve feet long. One end had been sheer, straight up and down and he’d built a firepit in front of it, the boulder being the backside.

Walking through the woods, there had been so many giant rock formations. Seeing one now wasn’t a surprise. Not even the size was shocking. He had seen bigger. The cave at its base was a welcome sight.

He looked up at the sky, seeing the sun further down. They had maybe two more hours of sun.

The cave wouldn’t be big enough for all of them, he doubted more than two or three would fit and then only laying down, but the boulder would provide them some shelter and they had enough time to build a rudimentary lean-to. It didn’t look like it would rain, but it would be a cold night.

They couldn’t chance a fire.

But first they had to make sure the cave was empty.