Both Emma and Lily looked up, confused and very careful. “Lucas? What’s wrong?” Asked Emma as she grabbed her bow, putting on an arrow, keeping it relaxed for now. “Why did you ran to us with a dagger?”

Lucas quickly looked at the bow before looking back at where he came from. He didn’t see the man so he walked to the river instead. Emma followed him with her bow, not aiming at him but still ready to use it on him if Lucas decided to attack for some reason.

Lucas knelt down at the river, his eyes scanning the other side of the river before scanning to his immediate right and left. As he thought that there wasn’t anyone, he saw the figure again. He was on the other side of the river, watching the group. He seemed to hide very well in the dark, having dark clothes and an abnormally dark face. His eyes were even hidden by what looked like deep shadows. Lucas didn’t take his eyes off him, taking a step back. “Get dressed.”

Lilly and Emma looked confused at each other as Lucas wasn’t looking at them but somewhere on the other side of the river. Lilly listened though, grabbing her still wet clothes. “But they’re still wet.”

This rather surprised him, causing him to look back at her before focusing back on the man. “I honestly don’t care princess…”

His voice grew quiet as he couldn’t find the man anymore. He had disappeared once more. This was more than your regular enemy.

Lilly started to mumble some curse words as she put the wet clothes back on while Lucas turned to face them again. “Say… are there people that can teleport in this world?”

As Lilly was busy, Emma gave him the answer. “Yeah in matter of fact there’s a race of people able to teleport short distances. Why do you ask?”

“Because I think we got one teleporting around the place.” After saying that, he started to scan the area again but to not avail.

This information didn’t go well with Emma, getting even more concerned. “Trifa?”

Having never heard that word before, he looked at Emma. But before he could asked about it, a long loud howl would pierce the silence that had fallen. The hair raising howl sounded rather close, causing both Emma and Lilly to jump up, both of them holding their bows ready to shoot if needed.

Lilly hadn’t gotten enough time so her torn pants still weren’t on but that was the least of her worries. Furthest away from them on the other side of the camp they had set up slowly came a wolf. His head was low, looking at them as he started to growl. His teeth bared as he was quickly followed by two more.

They could hear more wolves running around the camp with only a layer of leaves keeping them out from a fresh meal.

Emma wasn’t going to allow their friends to join them so she pulled the string back of her bow, going to shoot down the first one.

Lucas who was still slightly concerned about the man saw this almost too late, grabbing the string of the bow right when she let go, able to barely stop the arrow from flying out of her bow and killing the wolf.

“Don’t kill them!”

Lilly was on the other side of Emma, out of his reach. She too had lifted up her bow and was ready to shoot, stopping right before also firing her arrow. “Why!?”

Not wanting to die by a stupid peasant, Emma kicked Lucas his leg, pulling on the bow hoping that he’d let go. “Let go! They’re wolves!”

While they were fighting among themselves, two more wolves had shown up, causing Lilly to get closer to her sister.

Lucas still was holding the string as he now also instinctively bow down, grabbing his leg where she kicked him. “Ah! You fu… Don’t kill them!”

“Yeah… I rather not have you humans kill my friends.”

The voice was closer than any of them could’ve expected, nor did they even expect a voice. Except Lucas off course who let out a sigh of relieve as he let go of the string slowly, looking around for the owner of said voice.

Out of the bushes right behind them came a woman, having a big smile as she looked at the group of people, her eyes going down to the naked legs of Lilly. “My my Zoi. I thought you didn’t do woman? Gotten yourself a threesome have you?”

In the light of the fire could be seen a still rather young woman, though with some extra features. Staying in theme of the situation, she had grey wolf ears and a tail, looking rather weird to both Lilly and Emma, even in this world where they had satyrs and centaurs.

Her eyes wandered back to Lucas who was still bend over holding his leg. “Something wrong dear? Why make me come to you? You’ve never done that before.”

He slowly stood up, letting go of his leg as he nodded slowly. “We had gotten some… problems so to say and my map got destroyed. I wasn’t sure anymore where to go from here. Anyway, seeing as you easily saw the fire from far away, you have to realize that others can as well. We need to get out of here fast.”

“Oh? Did you make the father of these girls mad?” She chuckled as her tail started to wag, not even bothered about the fact that the people she was making fun off were holding a bow and were obviously still suspicious about her. “Who are these girls anyway?”

She talked down to them as if she didn’t value them much. Both of them were looking confused at the wolf woman. They had never seen anything like this before. Half humans and half animals weren’t too uncommon but there were only very specific animals and also very few.

Wanting to speed up the introductions so they could get out of here, he would gesture to Emma first and then to Lilly. “These are Emma and Lilly… or other way around, don’t really care right now. They’re the princesses from the Human Gruge or whatever it is called. Can we do this later? We’re kinda being hunted?”

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Right as he finished talking, someone else suddenly burst through the bush, surprising them. Lucas didn’t recognize him and instantly grabbed him by his throat and shoulder, pulling him closer and tackling him. As he fell down, Lucas quickly went down as well, putting his knee on his back as he grabbed his dagger, holding it against the back of his neck with the cold steel touching.

“Who the hell are you!?”

“No Zoi no!” Wolf girl grabbed him by his shoulders and pulled him off.

Lucas let go, falling on his ass on the ground as he held up his hands to show that he wasn’t trying to threaten the man anymore.

The new man laid there for a bit, couching before rolling over, looking up at the woman. “We’re not alone. More people are coming.”

Her tail slowly swayed as she was thinking, looking from Lucas to the girls who were rather confused about almost everything. “Hmm… okay… Lucas, meet Keanu.” She said as she helped him up, dusting him off.

Finding the moment taking too long, Lucas got up as well, grunting while putting the dagger back into his belt. “Ninke! Can we go now!” He sounded slightly mad and panicked, not understanding why she wasn’t taking this seriously. “I don’t care what family you found. We can talk about this later!”

Seeing Lucas this upset finally got her to move. She grabbed Lucas’s hand pulled him towards the bush, going through it with him.

Keanu looked at the other two who still were confused, looking from the wolves to him. He shook his head slowly, more to himself than them.” Come on, move it.”

Emma was the first to act, grabbing Lilly’s pants before going through the bushes as well. Lilly followed right after her with Keanu completely at the back. As they ran through the forest and high bushes, Lilly could be heard cursing at the bushes and the branches, stabbing and rubbing at the still bleeding wound.

As the group ran, Ninke and Lucas had to slow down for the others. Mostly for Lilly that was. Due to not being as used to running or being active in general, she was slowing them all down. At one point as they ran, Lilly heard Keanu who was right behind her talking under his breath, even hearing him calling her a snail.

At first she wanted to scold at him for being this disrespectful towards her, but as she was about to, a hunting horn could be heard coming from the camp they had left. Now wasn’t the time for a scolding and she knew it. Not only did the horn help her being motivated to run even faster, the screams coming from that place helped as well.

Back at the camp, a group of centaurs had arrived. They were wilding torches and found an opening in the bushes just big enough for him to burst through it. He was followed by around five more centaurs, all wielding torches as well as one of them even had an elf on his back. The one with the elf had an eye patch with what looked like some dried up blood on his face.

All of them were armed with bows and arrows, for now not having an arrow ready as they had the torches still in their hands. The elf jumped down from the centaurs, quickly started to walk around the camp, looking at the ground for any clues to where their prey had gone to.

Two of the centaurs turned back around, going out of the camp site to scout out the outside. There they split up, one going to the left as the other went to the right.

The elf knelt down at one bush where a group of people seemed to have just ran through. Before he could be certain, the centaur that left the camp and went to the right suddenly started to scream. A thud could be heard as the scream suddenly stopped. The other centaur that went to the left quickly ran towards him. Due to the bushes, the group couldn’t see what was happening, hearing him too scream before falling as well.

Hearing them both scream and fall terrified the group. Both were trained fighters and something just took them both down fast and not without pain. A third centaur ran through the opening to investigate. “Hey! What’s going on here.”

As he got out to look, growling started to be heard coming from all around. It didn’t take long before he yelled in pain. He had been prepared though so as he fought for his life, the screams ended up lasting longer.

The elf quickly moved back from the bushes, just in time as a wolf just snapped to where his face had been just a second ago. The centaurs looks at each other, nodding almost in unison before running away from the camp. Through the bushes as their hooves once in a while cause a wolf to yelp as the ran over some. The elf stayed behind, surprised that they left him there.

“Hey! Come back! You can’t leave me here!”

He went to the fire, grabbing a piece of burning wood and lifted it up, grabbing his dagger in his other hand. Just as he got back up, the wolves started to appear out of the bushes, one by one, all growling.

With the fire in his back to protect him, he would look for an exit as he also tried to keep an eye on the wolves. As one came closer, he would quickly move the burning stick towards the wolf, causing him to back off again. He could choose to either run into the forest, fighting off the wolves which would mean his death, or he could jump in the water.

That decision didn’t need too long of a consideration, slowly moving around the fire, pushing wolves back where it was needed using the fire. When he had managed to get around the fire, he looked at the water. It wasn’t that far away. He had to get past the wolves who were between him and the liquid. He had to be fast as it was at least a couple of tens of meters away.

Knowing that the fire wasn’t going to last forever, he would take a deep breath, closing his eyes. The growls of the wolves and the burning of the fire being the only sounds that he focused on.

As he opened his eyes once more, he looked at the eyes of the wolves who in this light looked red. Holding the fire in front of him, he started to run, scaring the wolves in front of him to the sides, giving him an opening. He didn’t make it far though.

After running for just a couple of meters, he would feel a sharp pain in his leg. Sharp teeth sinking into his flesh which caused him to fall on the ground.

He yelled out in pain, blindly stabbing at the wolf that had grabbed him. It didn’t take long before he could feel resistance on his dagger, hearing a yelp as well. He had made contact with the wolf. Just before the others attacked as well, he started to sway the fire from the left to the right, panting from the pain.

The wolf that he had hit started to limp away, quickly going into the bushes. Others took his place in just a second as the stayed away from the fire.

Having gotten the chances to breathe, he looked back at the water, blindly flailing with the fire as he tried to think of what to do now. He looked back at the fire, hoping to see the centaurs come back to help. Well, he did see someone.

Next to the fire was standing a man. His face seemed to badly burned as most if not all his clothes seemed to have either been burned off or have been melted into his skin. He was completely black as if he was cooked for too long. Out of some spots on his body came smoke as if he just recently got burned. His eyes or at least where eyes should’ve been was a red light. Weirdest of it all were the wolves who didn’t seem to even noticed him.

He wasn’t sure what this man was doing here or what his deal was but he was going to take any chance that was thrown at him. “Hey! Hey you! Help me please. I’ll do anything. I can heal your wounds!” He was still panting, desperate for any way that he could survive. His heart pounding in his chest.

As the wolves slowly came closer and closer, ready to kill him, the torch suddenly started to drop, hitting the ground. The elf was gone, leaving behind what looked like a slightly burned area. The wolves stopped their growling as the camp was empty outside from them. One came forwards, careful of the fire as he started to sniff the ground. The elf was gone.