With Vex in the lead, the party finally reached the end of the rockroot tree patch and started on the winding path east. They trekked for hours through the dense valley, occasionally cutting through segments of dense overgrowth that were left unmaintained by Scouts – who could often just fly over them. The smell of leaves and flowers tickled their senses, but then slowly became spiced with an unwelcome bite. Midaan pulled up, nose in the air, detecting something new.
Midaan and Ciel exchanged glances as the rest of the party started worriedly muttering behind them.
Vex reappeared ahead of them, waving to the party to approach. As they gathered around him he dropped off the rocks to the ground.
“Hey, Vex, what’s up? You smelled that?”
“Yeah, I did. Saw the smoke, too. Didn’t get close enough to check it out, though. I want to hide behind you for that.”
Midaan nodded, face grim. If that place had been overrun…
They marched through the last leg of the forest, the smell of burnt wood growing stronger as they approached. The last few curtains of forest slowly peeled back, revealing twisted and blackened frames that jutted into the air, all that was left of the few buildings in the outpost. The smells mixed with the more foul stench of charred meat and dried blood as the forest gave way to the aftermath of a raid and a slaughter.
Ciel raised a sleeve to her nose as they walked into the camp, each carrying a weapon, or holding a lit rune at the ready. Deya’s new wand pointed away from the party, her jaw clenched with the stress of walking into a possible fight. The enemies that did this could still be wandering around the site, or still attending to the bodies of the fallen.
They saw great hoofed tracks stamped into the ground by the front gate of the walled outpost, and the doors were bowed inwards, cracked across the middle from a massive impact, and left hanging open. Oren’s gaze lingered on the thick broken wood as they walked by, trying to think up which of the creatures he knew about could have done this level of physical destruction.
No building was left intact or uncharred. No wreckage sheltered hidden survivors. Carved bodies were loosely piled by a back corner of the encampment, surrounded by makeshift campfires set with empty, bloody spits. Bones littered the ground amongst the ashes.
Geon had to turn from the sight, retching into an ashen pit beside a torched remnant of house. Gasping and heaving once his stomach was empty, his eyes raised to look over the remains of a workshop. Tools piled in the middle of a collapsed desk; plates stained with soot sitting on a table in the middle of the room; a bony hand reaches out from under a fallen bookshelf, one golden ring on its finger. Geon’s stomach dry heaved again, and he turned away from the sight, moving back towards the rest of the party.
Ciel held out a cup to Geon, half full of water that reflected slightly green. He took it, looking from Ciel, to Piera, who stood back, solemn and cycling.
“Gargle first, then drink the rest. Should ease your throat and muscles.” Ciel told him, then she turned and handed another cup to Deya, who was coming out from behind a different ruin. Then Ciel moved off to spread water over the last few embers that still smouldered among the torched buildings.
Midaan stood in the center of the outpost. It was a small enough area that you could see every wall from the center. It was only supposed to have a few buildings; a place to sleep, a place to cook, and a place to call the Office and report on the area. He made his way to the third wreckage in the yard. Enough of the structure was standing that he had to walk into the door to see what was left, careful not touch any of the posts that still held the buildings weight.
This place had been an communications office. There was a telecomm station in the corner, smashed apart and charred from the fire. Midaan grabbed the stone inside, flipping it over to reveal the logo of the Scout’s Wing of the Office. He dropped it back onto the pile of soot and ash, shaking his head.
How big of an assault must have gathered to take this place apart this way? Even the last time the spectres had been rumored, nothing on the level of this destruction had been reported. There were a few lost teams and Scout patrols, but not shelters. Not homes. This was something new.
He turned to leave, but was caught mid-step.
The wall by the door was still somewhat intact, thought the wallpapaer had burned off to reveal the darkened, bare wood. Splattered across the wall in blood was a hastily scrawled message.
Feed your armies, it read.
Midaan stood in the twilight wreckage and studied the words there, and a seeping chill sank into his bones. At the sound of a boot scuffing dirt, his head spun. Oren walked into the building to his side, glancing at each of the walls with a frown on his face. He locked eyes with Midaan and noticed the worry in the man’s eyes, the pale of his face, and Oren's expression asked a question. Midaan just nodded to the bloody wall and let Oren walk around to read the message for himself. His eyes scanned the words once, then again more slowly.
“Spectre,” he said in his gruff tone. “Though even last time, they didn’t taunt like this.”
Midaan nodded. “I think we need to move. To the next Scoutpost. The Office needs to hear about this if they haven’t already for some reason. The Telecomm had the Scout Wing stone inside it, but there’s no telling when the last report was.”
Oren shook his head. “Honestly, I’m not even sure where the next Scoutpost is. And we certainly can’t make it before dark tonight anyway. What do you think: is it too dangerous to stay here for the night? This looks pretty recent, but there’s no reason to think they’ll come back. As far as they know, they destroyed everything here.”
“Not ‘as far as they know’. They did destroy it all,” Midaan said.
Oren nodded. “True enough. But they don’t expect us to be here. So do you think it’s safe?”
With a shake of his head, Midaan sighed. “No. No it’s not safe. But we also don’t have a choice. With as many creatures as we’ve seen on the way here, we have a worse shot at getting through the night if we’re on the road. Our best bet is to stay here. I think we should put it to the rest of the party, anyway, just in case one of them knows a better place to hole up.”
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Oren agreed, and they left the building to speak with the rest of the party.
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Deya sat on a boulder that sat in the middle of the camp and faced the broken entry gate. She visualized monster after monster that was large enough to get through wood that thick, and each one she thought up was a monster that would be more than capable of killing the whole party.
“This is Rank 3 damage,” she muttered to no one. “This wasn’t imps. This is the work of an entire nobility.”
Ciel leaned on the stone behind her, facing a different angle of the destruction, looking into the collapsed barracks cluttered with destroyed beds and the ashes of clothing and keepsakes.
“It does look that way,” Ciel agreed. “Though it could be a random loner.”
“I doubt it. Loners don’t come this far in from the Demon Lands unless they’re led here by imps, or a Royal.” Deya gazed up at the darkening sky, empty of clouds and sparsely dotted with the first few stars of the night. “Besides, you saw the piles of bones. That kind of…feasting…was done by a larger group. The cuts were too small for just one of the larger creatures.”
Ciel nodded in deference as Oren and Midaan came back to the rest of the party.
“We’re going to hide here for tonight,” Midaan said. “No fires. We’ll build the tents over in that corner, away from the bodies, and use the heating plates for warmth. Rations for dinner. Two people per watch tonight.”
The party was dejected at the news, but there wasn’t much he could have said that was both comforting and truthful. At least they would be together for the night.
“I’ll take first watch,” said Vex, rubbing his thighs as he looked up at the intact portions of the perimeter wall.
Deya stood up as well. “Same. I won’t be able to sleep for a while anyway. Too worried about what’s out there.”
They spent half an hour setting up the rough camp, erecting the tents and tossing their belongings inside. Those not on first watch made themselves as comfortable as it was possible to get when trying to sleep at the edge of a slaughter. Vex climbed up into one of the towers that was still standing by the ruined gate, careful not to move around too suddenly. There were some char marks on the legs of the tower, and he didn’t want to try his luck testing the structure more than he already was.
The rest of the camp got set up and the party tried to sit around and relax as the stars twinkled overhead, trying to start conversations that dwindled into uneasy silence, any attempt at levity smothered by the death hanging over the group. They packed in their food quickly, and skittered off to their tents and blankets, trying to coax themselves into fitful sleep.
Deya made circuits around the perimeter of the camp as Vex sat in the tower, his Sight the lone glowing rune in the restless night. Slowly, over the next hour, other runes started to breathe from the tents in the camp’s corner, and a gentle wind brushed Deya’s core; a comforting touch in a blacker night. She let the mana breeze calm her nervous heart, even as she redoubled her efforts to pay attention to the deep shadows farther in the surrounding forest.
Vex was similarly preoccupied with his own mood and waning attention. His Sight rune let him see through the shadows to the nothing beyond, and a quick scan every few minutes was enough to reassure him that nothing was nearby. That gave him plenty of time to ruminate over the camp’s torching, what it meant about the motivations of monsters in the area, how it contradicted everything they knew about monster attacks. They didn’t normally group up like this. Typically only when an imp camp grew out of control were monsters able to be corralled and directed in the way this attack seemed to require, but camps had to sit unbothered for weeks before they built up to that level.
Vex thought back to the stories that had spread over the last few weeks. Imps camps suddenly exploding in population, accompanied by spectres that seemed able to plan and coordinate between groups of demons. ‘Pacts’ made between stronger monsters on the frontier and the collected demons of the Demon Lands. Now Walkers out of their normal season, and a group of strong monsters attacking a Scout camp.
The world was going crazy, and quickly.
Movement alerted Vex on the next half-conscious scan of the woods around them. He refocused on the shadows nearby, checking for any movement that couldn’t have been made by a passing breeze. His eyes caught flickers of some presence, but didn’t make out their source. He whistled, a sharp piercing tone that cut through the night. The movement stopped. Vex waited, sweat beading on his forehead as seconds passed, and then the whistle returned.
Deya peeked around the wall to his side, waving to Vex in the tower so that he knew she was there. Vex waved back, but then stopped and shook his head. She didn’t have a Sight rune herself; she probably couldn’t see him at all.
Then a light began to glow in the woods, approaching from the distance. Deya raised her wand, and Vex wrapped his hand around the grip of his knife.
“Calm!” a voice called from the trees, and a man walked around them into view, his hands in the air and a Light rune glowing from one of them. “We’re Scouts, come to investigate!”
Vex sighed in relief, though he remained alert. Deya walked up to Vex, prepared to back him up if these people turned out to be something other than what they claimed, but willing to let Vex make the first move.
Vex waved back. “Mercenaries on patrol!”
The figure in the distance nodded, then turned to a spot to his side, waving to someone else nearby. Another two figures walked out of the shadows, lightly armored with piercing eyes, and the three of them approached the ruined camp.
Their eyes lit up in horror as they got near enough to see the ruins of the Scoutpost, and the charred remains of the buildings inside. The man standing in the lead peeled his eyes away from the destruction, and they darted to Vex with constrained blame.
“What happened?” he growled at the mercs on watch.
“We don’t know,” Vex replied. “We only arrived here a few hours ago; the whole place was already torn apart and burned out. No idea about what did it, except that at least one of them must have been huge.” He pointed at the split in the battered gate, and the large hoof prints in the dirt. The Scouts walked up in shock, inspecting the damage, and their leader walked through to start looking over the state of the ruined site, his hand glowing as he led a floating orb of light into the camp.
The light washed over the horrors spread throughout the camp, the leader turned paler and paler in his own light. As he walked through, the shadows moved from the nooks ahead of him to the walls and tents behind. One of the flaps lifted up, and Piera poked her head out of her tent, eyes groggy as she took in the newcomers. The tent closed back up and something rustled inside.
A few minutes later, Piera came out, loosely wrapped in a robe, as the Scout in charge finished his investigation of the premises. He was chatting frantically with Vex, whispering loudly enough that sound travelled clearly over to the tents in the corner. His partners were rummaging around in their packs, retrieving odd items that they assembled in a far corner of the outpost.
“…and once we didn’t get word back from the Scouts in this camp, we were dispatched to figure out what the failure in communication was. We have our own telecomm that we can use to alert the Scout’s Wing, let them know that this sort of thing is going on.”
“Have you heard of any other incidents like this happening recently?”
The Scout in charge shook his head. “This’ll be the first I’ve heard. Maybe the Office knows more but it hasn’t been passed down to me if they have.”
They exchanged a few more words, and then the leader went to his partners to finish setting up the telecomm, and Vex turned around to see Piera standing a few yards behind him. He waved to her with an apologetic frown.
“Sorry, didn’t expect them to show up. Scouts, from the Office.”
Piera nodded. “Yeah, I gathered that much. Should we wake Midaan up?”
“Only if they need anything more from us, I think. It’ll be time for him to take watch in an hour or so anyway, right?”
“Yeah. May as well let him sleep, since nothing’s trying to burn us out.” She glanced over at the scouts. “How did they take it?”
Vex shrugged. “They were surprised, for sure. I don’t think they knew any of the Scouts that stayed here, but any of these camps getting destroyed must be a shock. We just haven’t seen that kind of aggression from demons in a long time.”
Piera shook her head. “We haven’t even reached the first camp in the patrol yet. This is going to be a slog if things keep on like this.”
Vex agreed. “If the patrol gets too bad, we could just turn around. Glory wouldn’t hold it against us if it got too crazy out here. Even letting the Rank 1s team up for these contracts was a compromise for her safety standards.”
“Maybe,” Piera muttered. “I don’t want to leave this half-done though. I think we could power through with this team, but only if they’re willing. I’m just not looking forward to the fighting, or to constantly being on guard like this.”
Midaan woke for the change over a while later, and Piera stayed awake to explain the team of Scouts that had arrived and keep watch with him the rest of the night. She was already awake, and didn’t think she’d be able to sleep after the excitement, so she let Geon sleep through the night and took his shift instead.
The Scouts remained. They would stay there in the ruined outpost, keeping watch and starting the clean-up and rebuilding process. The Office was going to send out a team to join them in the effort, to keep them safe. Both teams hoped it would be enough.