Amelia got up and they all followed, sudden worry covering everyone’s features. Not that the chair had been overturned, that was just another day in the life of Hurricane Raven, but that she had actually turned down food. They found her in Forsythe’s room looming over Aidan with clear anger coloring her face.
“...do you mean? Why didn’t you call me?” Raven demanded. She looked close to tears. “I’m the one on sentinel for Forsythe! What were you thinking?”
“You were busy,” Aidan said smoothly. He looked extremely out of place because his stance was incredibly meek. “Don’t give me that face. We’re out. He’s fine, I’m sure. I just have a bad feeling.”
His voice made Amelia’s stomach flip-flip because Aidan only ever used this tone when he was acknowledging fault.
“Grit, Aidan!” Raven walked over and leaned down, slapping him hard across the face. The sound made everything seem to slow down and Hunter, Amelia, and Elisha stood awkwardly watching as Aidan didn’t bother to avoid the hand or look up after receiving the smack. It was one of those moments in time where no one understood what was happening and wished they could be somewhere else. Even Amelia’s normal curiosity wasn’t strong enough for the moment.
“We’re out, Raven.” He said softly. “I had a bad feeling. That’s all.” Aidan did not look up.
“You and your bad feelings! If you have a bad feeling you have to tell me. It should be a rule. Some people die when you have bad feelings. Rule 12-20 is you don’t get to do things like this and go ‘my bad’ later.” Raven was practically shouting, only pausing in vocal range once to mimic his voice. She hurried over to Forsythe. The large man was still clad in an easy fitting cloth pajama set. It all matched. His sheets were loosely pulled up over him. Pink with hearts. Amelia remembered him saying very seriously that Raven had picked them out so he had to use them for a while. Then of course, he had told her just as seriously, they would be misplaced.
“How long has he been in there?!” She leaned down and almost looked like she was going to raise one of his eyelids.
“A couple of hours. He is probably just doing some food quest.” Aidan said. Amelia was surprised that he wasn’t checking his cheek for damage. She could tell from the sound that it must have been stinging.
“Well, I’m here. Get out.” Raven turned toward him, her eyes wild.
Amelia decided that was enough. They were worrying her and she didn’t like it. “Raven, stop. We don’t raise our voice.”
“But he--!” She started, the rage started to turn like it was a cone attack toward Amelia.
“Enough.” Amelia said quietly, eyes narrowing. She hadn’t meant to sound dangerous or angry but she practically choked it at Raven, startling the one-armed girl into wide-eyed silence. Raven peered at Aidan, suddenly realizing that they were all staring at her.
“I have to watch him when he is asleep and there is danger.” Raven explained softly, her hand fidgeting with the cloth of her shirt. It almost sounded like she was pleading for them to understand. “It’s my job. I watch Forsythe. Forsythe watches Aidan. Aidan watches me.”
Amelia turned her steely gaze on Aidan. He started to sputter some crap at her but her eyes narrowed. She loved the man and had been with him long enough to know when he was spinning straw into gold. He stopped immediately and shrugged.
“I either shouldn’t have said sentinel, or I should have gotten Raven,” he admitted, though she noted he didn’t specify which one would have been more correct. Aidan sighed and got up from his sitting position near the bed. “I’m sure we’re all over-reacting.”
“Aidan…” Raven started to say dangerously. “I’m so mad right now. Get out and we can talk later when I don’t want to hurt you.”
“No,” Amelia said quietly. “Both of you get out. I’ll watch him.”
Raven and Aidan turned toward her, fight in both of their eyes.
“I’m part of this stupid gang now, so both of you get out and cool your jets and I’ll be the one to save the day.” Amelia said. She didn’t know what had gotten into them but she felt the direness of the situation, and it hurt her the way they were acting.
“Why, precisely, are we watching him?” Elisha asked hesitantly, her desire to be no part of this warred and lost against the part where they were all obviously fighting over Forsythe’s still form.
“Forsythe doesn’t worry people.” Hunter finally posited, talking it out slowly. “So this is out of character. I’m guessing when you were all in Last Sojourn you had rules for sleeping since you couldn’t log out?”
Raven nodded. “That’s right. When you were in the field someone had to stay awake. There were days when we took turns being awake at night but there were days when we needed to look around too. So if it was someone’s turn to sleep it was someone else’s turn to watch them. Then the other person could go do stuff or wander around. Two people watching someone sleep is enough to make you crazy.”
“Crazier.” Aidan scowled at Raven.
“Uhm, doesn’t he have that net stream app now? Don’t you all?” Elisha interjected hesitantly. “Maybe we should check his drive before we all fight?” Her voice was timid.
“It’s blinking.” Hunter pointed to the drive near the bed which was giving the flickering orange lights of activity. “He turned on his stream and is saving the video.”
“Compression being what it is we can watch the first hour of whatever he was doing.” Aidan said slowly. Raven was already over at the box, looking it over and trying to figure out how it worked. For all her skill and extraordinariness she didn’t have much of a clue when it came to current technology.
“Let me.” Amelia turned to the wall where the light curtain was and turned it on. She selected nearby devices and selected Forsythes, named, “...BestChef1.” She almost snickered, but the mood in the room was wrong. “I’ll just start from when he started streaming to the hard drive today.” She moved down the list of clips until she found the current date and a time after they had all logged off.
“I got on a bit ago,” Elisha confessed. “I was going to ask him if he would help me with my math later. I kept getting a busy sign over party chat and no answer over private message. I just thought he was really busy…”
The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
“He’s never too busy for you.” Hunter admonished, looking concerned for the first time. “Do you really need help with math?”
Elisha colored and quickly admitted. “No.”
Hunter blinked and then smirked knowingly.
“Here we go.” Amelia found the clip and set it to play. The device separated clips into hour long clips, a setting Forsythe seemed to have selected for his personal archiving.
On the light curtain they found that Forsythe was looking at a small stream that pooled into an unremarkable wooded area. They weren’t sure where he was other than it had to be somewhere deep in the forest where Skrilla, her wolves, and the Grendel lived. He was sitting at a cooking fire and had apparently turned on his stream to record his results. He had, in fact, found a Grendel and killed it at some point considering the stuff in front of him. The ingredients were pulled from his bag one by one and he also assembled a variety of pans and skillets next to the fire.
“Are those... Grendel parts?” Hunter asked, sounding the slightest bit nauseated. “You know I will eat most things he cooks right? Seeing the raw unfinished product beforehand is a bit…”
“Let’s skip that.” Amelia agreed. She started fast forwarding through the video and smirked back at her friends as they all looked casually away as he began filleting and chopping in the increased time fast forward. Finally, he stopped after what seemed like an eternity but was only really 25 minutes if the timestamp could be believed. He was now watching a large turtle waddle closer to shore, a strange stillness coming over him. Large was somewhat of an understatement as the turtle really was about the size of a large dog.
“I bet he eats it,” Raven said, and then a moment later she started sighing. “I’m feeling better. I’m sorry I hit you, Aidan.”
Aidan didn’t say anything but gave her an irritated quick look and nod.
Amelia didn’t think he was mad at her anymore, just still worried.
At some point Forsythe started following the turtle who, after a short journey along the shore, had begun to dig a hole. It was apparently too slow for Forsythe, who bent down and produced a knife. He dug out a larger channel of dirt and connected it to the hole the turtle was digging. Reluctantly, and casting a slow glance at Forsythe, the turtle entered the hole it and he had produced and turned around slowly.
“It’s laying eggs!” Elisha said. “Do you think he knew?”
“Probably.” Aidan muttered. “I’m not sure what his memory limit is but we haven’t reached it yet. I think he probably reads all the scientific ethernet journals available when we’re not looking. Do you think he’s a robot?”
Forsythe looked up, the camera jerked, indicating he was surprised. A few snakes and rats were coming from the woods and bee-lining for the hole. He drew his sword and dispatched them easily. Next came several dark shapes in the trees. Large carrion birds of some variety all watched the turtle lay eggs without moving in the branches. The turtle crawled from the hole, too exhausted to move, and simply lay there next to it. A bird popped down from the tree near Forsythe, who didn’t move and approached the hole. It peered over the hole and started to move over when the camera rushed forward. Seconds later it was being cleaned and unfeathered by Forsythe. A short moment later Forsythe returned to the corpses of the snakes and began cleaning those as well. He stuck all the meat and parts in his side-pouch, though he did simply throw the rats in the river.
“Thank god.” Hunter murmured, gratified that rat wasn’t going to make the menu.
“Not a bad food quest.” Amelia finally hazarded. “Protect the eggs and then kill all the tasty predators that come by.”
“...and eggs,” Aidan added, prompting Amelia to look back at the light curtain. Forsythe had bent down and retrieved one of the turtle eggs, placing it in his side-pouch. The turtle looked momentarily alarmed but seemed to quickly forget the loss of one egg. It had lain almost a hundred of them after all. It finally moved and began covering the hole. Forsythe watched the entirety of this process, scanning the trees idly as he waited. When the turtle was finished it slowly waddled to the stream, submerging itself as far as it could in the shallow water until it reached the middle, which was apparently deep enough for it to disappear completely.
“Oh wow, he didn’t kill it to eat it!” Raven exclaimed, shock in her voice.
“Forsythe doesn’t kill moms, is what he told me,” Elisha said, pride in her voice. “If he can help it.”
“This isn’t really explaining why he’s so late,” Hunter said, tapping her finger with her chin. She still looked amused though, as if watching this were entertainment enough to forgive him for missing breakfast.
“How does he tell if it’s…” Aidan started to question, a baffled look in his eyes. He was really trying to figure out how Forsythe would just know whether a creature was a mom or not. He never got a chance to finish that question as a dark shape flashed on the light curtain pulling their attention back to the video.
Amelia straightened, feeling the hackles on the back of her neck raise. Forsythe had noticed the movement, or rather, the movement of shadow in the corner of the screen as well. He whirled around, surprising Amelia with the speed of the camera movement. It almost made her sick how fast he moved. The fact he had surmised the location of the shadow’s owner based on the sun through the trees and where the movement had been produced was incredible. His accuracy proved exceptional moments later when he ran through the trees for a brief moment and came skidding to a halt. With the trees removed everyone could see what it was that had made that shadow.
“Holy crap!” Elisha shouted stepping further from the screen, instinctively trying to distance herself from the light curtain.
“Run away!” Raven made shooing motions at the screen as if she could make Forsythe move. No matter that this was already old footage.
“What is that?” Hunter sounded horrified. “It’s bigger than Skrilla, and it’s a Grendel?”
“Grendel Queen,” Amelia said softly. Eyes were on her and she straightened. “It’s in the lore you know!”
“Not all of us go to the library of new towns!” Raven exclaimed. “Spill!”
“The books say,” Amelia started, ignoring Raven magnificently before continuing, “...that among the Grendel there is a precursor to the race. An original, or mutant, or fearsome forerunner.”
“It’s a freaking boss Grendel!” Raven exclaimed again.
“Shhh!” Aidan and Elisha shushed harshly, shutting the excitable girl up.
“It selects prey from worthy wolves, but only wolves, and carries them off to battle them. It eats them when they fall and only shows up in the deepest part of the forest. The Halves never encounter it and the story goes that it leaves them alone for whatever reason. They think it’s some sort of intelligent Grendel, and that it knows if they ever encountered it they would mobilize and hunt it en masse.”
“How does it carry them off?” Aidan wanted to know. “Besides, I don’t know if you can look at that thing and call it a Grendel.” He pointed to the screen. The Grendel Queen was three times larger than a normal Grendel, and while it had the basic four-limbs, face, and tail. That was where the similarity ended. It moved like it had no real set pattern preference. It moved on all fours between the trees quietly watching Forsythe as it neared. Moments later, it stood upright on two legs like a bear, as if looking down on him and trying to intimidate him, its large tail appearing over a shoulder and twitching ecstatically.
Amelia never got to answer, which was just as well because she didn’t know the answer. Not until the Queen Grendel moved closer anyway. The large reptilian nightmare seemed to point down at Forsythe’s feet. Reluctantly, he looked while keeping a large portion of her in his vision, and everyone strained to figure out what it was the creature was pointing to if anything.
“Tree shadow!” Elisha whispered. Sure enough, a shadow of a tree was falling on Forsythe’s feet.
Moments later the light curtain simply went dark. Not off, but black, like all the gamma had left the screen in its entirety. Amelia actually started to move toward the curtain thinking that it had frozen. It didn’t happen often anymore but every once in a while you had to turn it off and back on. She paused, startled when Forsythe’s voice rang out at her.
“Thank you, Elisha.” Forsythe said, surprisingly picked up very well by the audio.