Vil and I trudged through the muck of the forest path. The cliff followed beside us, climbing up in height, and the ocean waves crashed against the rocks below. The trees here were common evergreens, nothing special or strange, but I could see with the curve of the peninsula that the islet grew near, and with it, the haunted Mannequin Forest. Or whatever it was called.

I looked back at the ship. From this far, its sheer size domineered over the small port town, and I felt a sense of pride over it. That big-ass thing was mine, and with it, I would save Jenna and topple Marianna's bullshit empire.

But first, I needed to deal with the pretender. I couldn't very well live in a world with two Iskandar Redrims, could I? It was a name that had grown on me, or rather, something that I had grown into, and while I was interested to see this legend for herself, I was more interested in removing her from my plate.

I checked the brownish-black potion again. That sketchy masked dude gave it to me, and he called it a Memory Potion. Was that even a thing? I had lived for a very long time, and I had seen so many countless disciplines of magic and types of classes and so forth, but a memory-mancer?

I popped off the cork and took a sniff. I smelled like ash and caramel and something else.

I took a swig.

It tasted like ash and caramel and something else. A spark of something hit me. What was it? Nausea? Fatigue? It felt like my knees wanted to give out, and I blinked a little too long for comfort.

Inwardly, I told Cassandra, "Analyze it."

"Analysis complete," she said. "This is a level 100 sleep spell."

"What? Just a sleep potion? Nothing about memory magic?"

"There is no data of memory magic in my database," she said.

I wanted to just recycle the whole thing to learn what it was and take the recipe, but if even Cassandra couldn't fully analyze it, then there was a small chance that it was legit and that by recycling it, the potion would be wasted.

Once I defeated Redrim, I thought, I'd make her drink it to see if anything happened. For now, I stowed it as we continued on.

After some uneventful time had passed, we reached the edge of the shore and found that with the current tide, the water was only a foot deep across the walk. It took some trudging through the soft, wet sand and the push of the current, but we soon made it across and onto Dick Island, which, surprisingly, wasn't really dick-shaped at all.

Not that we could see.

After a few dick-related puns, we ventured within the forest--which was still just normal evergreens.

Vil and I were both dressed in full Cyberleather gear. The pants, the shirts, the long hooded cloaks, and even the boots had Cyberleather straps. Needless to say, we looked like a couple of hooded rogues up to no good, headed to the deep forest to do no-good things, and we'd probably return with no-good scars that, when asked about, we'd turn our heads and close our eyes and say some real edgy shit like, "Don't worry about it," or, "You wouldn't understand, mom."

Something like that, yeah.

Once we were about a hundred meters in, the forest thickened, and it was hard to walk without having wet pine branches slap me in the face or drag its scratchy wood fingers across my body. It was also about that time that Vil decided to finally talk.

"I was a soldier then," he said. "Just a fresh officer charged with the least glorious duty he could be given. I had to govern a slice of newly conquered territory--I forget the name of the country, but it doesn't matter. I had expected it to be a stupid and boring police job. But I was wrong."

The rain drizzled and dripped off the evergreen trees above. The true Black Forest and its pitch black trunks came into view.

Vil continued. "Iskandar Redrim was a gang leader, and she was my rival."

I snorted. "You thought that was me?"

"We were rivals, but amicably so. We had good fights, my men against hers, and we even crossed blades a few times. Yet still, I could never best her in combat." He chuckled at the memory. "To be honest, due to her shape and size, I thought she was a man for the longest time, and when I mentioned it, her entire gang made fun of me for it. Then, every time we met, she'd bring it up again." He shook his head. "So embarrassing."

"Why did you think I was her?" I asked.

"I was transferred out," he said. "I ended up back in the capital to work on some technomancer project, the recycler thing. I just assumed it was you, with the pun and all."

We paused at the threshold, not because we had more things to talk about, but because this place was fuckin' spooky. No wonder no one wanted to come here. The Black Forest seemed to drink in the light, to consume it, and there was a well of darkness that felt as though it were pulling us in.

The trees looked like overgrown mandrakes painted black. They were vaguely human-shaped tree trunks, with the starting roots resembling suspiciously human limbs, but twisted and contorted in such horrific ways that I knew it was a plant. Had to be.

The trees were black, of course, but the bark of these things looked more like strange leather that had been mixed with wood fibers. I played with the idea that maybe, those hundreds of years ago, some demented demon of a man killed a bunch of people, mounted them here in strange positions, and let trees take root beneath to consume their mummified bodies. Gross.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Just before these spooky fuckin' trees began, the evergreen trees seemed to die out, almost as if these black mandrake trees were sucking the life out of everything nearby.

"Vil," I said. "I'm getting bad vibes. Wanna head back?"

He squinted his eyes deeper into the black forest, then looked up through the canopy to see a thin trail of smoke. "No," he said. "I'm invested now."

Cautiously, we continued. The rain drizzled, calmed, sprinkled again, and the leafy canopy above seemed unnaturally silent beneath the light rainfall. It was almost as if the water evaporated before it even hit the leaves.

We passed by these trees, and I couldn't help but stare into those mandrake faces. Eyes wired shut with black leather bark, face twisted mid-scream, arms wound up as if an art piece on display.

The deeper we ventured into the forest, noise turned to silence, and the darker it became. I looked back and could no longer see the entrance to the forest. It was too dark and hazy.

I crafted a torch, lit it, and stuck it in the grass. Vil didn't argue. With only a glance, he knew what I was trying to do, and he walked back toward the exit, looked around, moved a few steps, and waited.

I tossed him a torch, and he made the mark. Somehow, disturbingly so, our sense of direction had been ruined. I thought the direction to the exit was that way, but it was actually about 30 degrees to the right.

It took effort just to walk in a straight line, and as we continued deeper in, we'd pause a second, notice how our path had turned, and we'd re-align and put down another torch. Soon, we had a dozen torches in a straight line, evenly spaced, and around us in this forest was the dark of night.

And the light of the torches lit the faces of these mannequin horrors, shining across their frozen tree-bark screams, and--

Something rustled nearby.

We braced for combat.

It was nothing. The wind, surely.

We continued. Another torch set. In the corner of my eye, a black blur.

> Hmm-click.

>

> +1 Shotgun

I yanked it over and aimed--

Nothing.

Something shuffled behind us.

I turned, aimed--

"Hold, Redrim," Vil said. "It was just rain shedding off the leaves."

He acted cool and uninterested, as he did with pretty much everything else, but his face was a few shades paler.

"How deep is this fuckin forest?" I asked.

Vil studied the torches trailing behind us. "The island is small. There's no reason we should have this many torches. We should've mapped a path all the way to the other side by now. It's almost like a labyrinth."

That's right; a dungeon. Last time I could find the dungeon core by using Cassandra's scanning abilities. Certainly, I could use her again to help us catch the false-Redrim.

"Cassandra," I said. "Wake up and scan around."

"Activating scanning modes. Confirmed."

"Well?" I asked her. "What do you see?"

"The trees are alive."

"What?"

"The trees have heartbeats. Not only that, but there is a familiar Cosmic Essence signature that will require more analysis."

I looked around at this spooky place. The trees stared back. "I don't care about the haunted trees, Cassandra, I just need our target. Do you see any living person nearby?"

"Confirmed. I will single out the heat signature and display it to you."

I blinked, and a light red blur manifested in my vision. I thought to wipe my eyes, but it was similar to seeing traces of Cosmic Essence--somehow artificial in appearance. Still, what I was staring at was either the woman's body heat or the campfire, and in the darkness of this forest, it was a shining red beacon.

We had been walking blindly straight, but now that her position was revealed to me, I saw that we were off-target. Once we got our bearings straight again, we headed over, leaving a trail of torches behind, and the darkness of the Black Forest thinned and faded to give way to the light of an overcast sky, and before we knew it, we had broken out of the forest and found the edge of a cliff.

There was a small camp here. It was empty. There was a small animal hide tent with fabrics bunched up inside, a little campfire burning steady, and above it, several fish cooking. They looked almost ready.

But no one was here.

Vil stepped around to check the tent, then to look over the cliff's edge.

I looked up in the branches above me, to the left, the right, and behind--

There, standing right behind me, was not a woman, but a beast. Long red hair. Strong, manly jaw. Muscles bulging beneath the brown tunic. And, of course, massive tits.

She was taller than me, and she looked over my head and at Vil. "Long time no see," she said. She had a deep smoker's voice.

Vil turned and hit her with a wide grin. "You haven't changed, Redrim."

----------------------------------------

"It's been a minute, hadn't it?" Redrim, the woman said.

"It has," said Vil.

They sat across from each other, warming up at the campfire. I sat off to the side in the grass like some reject stepchild. While the conversation seemed to be on the calm and respectful note, I had prepared myself to pounce on a moment's notice, ready to slice her to bits.

"Tell me," Vil said. "What exactly happened? How did you end up this far North of all places?"

The Warrior Queen Redrim chuckled silently and scratched the back of her meaty, powerful neck. "A great many things since you and I." She leaned her head back and closed her eyes to recall the memory. "Ah, yes. Once the occupation forces were withdrawn, and you left, I fell in love."

"No way," said Vil. "I don't believe it. You?"

Redrim, the manslayer, smiled with blushing cheeks. Almost like some dainty maiden. A warrior maiden. "That I did, old friend. He was a good man. Small and frail with a cute little mustache and big glasses, but I loved him just the same. He wanted terribly for me to quit my lifestyle, to stop robbing banks and destroying debts and freeing slaves, and to his credit, I wanted to quit as well. I had grown tired, and I wanted to settle."

It seemed she had her memory just fine. She wasn't just some clueless old person; she was just a woman on the run. I checked that potion again. The swirling marble black and brown stared back. Why did that guy even bother giving this to me? It was obvious he wanted me to put this warrior-lady to sleep, but... why? And why lie about it?

Weird.

Vil furrowed his brow. "What happened?"

Redrim, the world crusher, shook her head sadly. "It was my old gang. We were nearly a hundred heads strong at the time, and my captains rejected my retirement. Without me, they said, the gang was nothing. So we fled. I ran away with my lover, my soulmate, and we took a ship to Eurusia last year."

I leaned back in the grass in thought. The old gang was surely the MP Guild. That's what this was about. They didn't want us to rescue someone. They wanted us to capture her.

She breathed a deep, sad breath. "They followed us to Eurusia. They found us in the slums. And they killed him there, in the shadow of the city wall, and told me that without anything else, I should come back." Her eyes turned red and glossy. "I couldn't bring myself to hurt my old friends, even after this betrayal, so I ran again, this time alone so that I be one with my thoughts."

Vil lowered his eyes. "Sorry, Iskandria. I hadn't known."

"Don't be, old friend," she said. "I just wanted to be happy, and I failed. Given time, perhaps I'll try again."

"What happened to the gang?" Vil asked.

A voice spoke behind me. "We followed you."

I jumped to my feet and spun around. Somehow, in this spooky, silent forest, a dozen paper-masked hunters emerged from the darkness with one man leading them.

The Orca.