Chapter 26 #3
Kern was the first to notice something wrong.
He stopped on a rise ahead of the group, crouched, and examined the ground for a long moment. By the time Arleria and Alsen reached him, he had already stood and was scanning the treeline to the east.
“Tracks,” he said. One word. His eyebrows did the rest.
Arleria knelt to look. “What kind?”
“Four legs, heavy footprint, deeper than they should be for the stride length.” He pointed east with his chin. “Paralleling us.”
Derell’s hand went to his sword. “Since when?”
“Since before the waystone. It hasn’t come closer, but it hasn’t fallen back either.”
Arleria stood. She closed her eyes, and a faint shimmer of power spread from her, a detection sweep cast in a wide arc. Alsen felt it pass through him, the familiar tingle of another mage’s magic brushing against his own reserves. The sweep continued outward, thinning as it expanded.
She opened her eyes. “There’s something. The signature is diffuse. Whatever it is, it’s masking, or it’s naturally dispersed.”
“Is it dangerous?” Malick asked, already holding his hammer in both hands.
“Can’t tell, but most likely, yes.”
“Brilliant.”
They continued, but the mood shifted. Derell drove the cart faster. Malick stopped eating. Kern disappeared into the terrain ahead, reappearing periodically on ridgelines before vanishing again.
Alsen stretched his own senses. The scan returned a faint, smeared signature to the southeast, exactly where Kern had indicated.
A medium-sized life-form, faintly magical.
It matched their pace. “I’m picking up a single creature,” he told Arleria.
“Moderate magical signature. It’s keeping distance. ”
“A mountain beast,” Arleria said. “They’re common in the foothills. They follow groups until one member separates, then they probe.”
“Should we handle it?”
“If it closes, yes. If not, it’ll lose interest once we cross into the higher passes. They’re territorial, not migratory.”
They walked faster. The creature didn’t close. It paced them, a smeared presence at the edge of perception, patient and tireless.
Luna had known about it since before Kern found the tracks.
She’d caught the signs an hour earlier. She smelled it when the wind changed, a cat-like magical beast. It kept a considerable distance, only leaving behind disturbed leaf litter in patterns that didn’t match the wind, or a broken spider web here and there.
At first, the beast ran ahead, waited, then followed, then ran ahead again. Now, it only stalked them.
She adjusted her path. Nothing obvious. She drifted slightly wider from the cart, kept her sightlines open on the eastern flank, and positioned herself where she could react to an approach from that direction without having to cross the road first.
Kern noticed.
She caught him looking at her on the third positional adjustment. With just a quick, evaluating glance, he checked her position from time to time. His eyes flicked from her feet to the direction she’d drifted, to the eastern treeline, and then back ahead.
She said nothing. He knew. He also knew that she knew. It didn’t matter in the slightest.
His eyebrow said he didn’t trust her. But he didn’t say anything else.
The creature probed closer as the afternoon wore on. Alsen detected it within scanning range and refined his read. Not enormous, maybe the size of a small cow, but its magical signature suggested a very unnatural origin.
“It’s getting curious,” he told Arleria.
She nodded. “Magical beasts tend to be sensitive to mana. You are attracting it.”
He smirked. Even indirect flattery did him good. “Should I chase it away?”
“It’s just a beast. No need to overreact.”
He wasn’t sure he had a spell that wouldn’t count as an overreaction.
The beast’s presence vanished an hour later. They left their territory.
The weather turned by late afternoon.
Not gradually, the way polite weather changed.
The sky went from gray to black in under half an hour, clouds piling against the hills as if the mountains ahead had decided to barricade themselves.
The wind picked up first, cold and sharp, carrying the smell of rain that had yet to arrive, but meant to do so with bad intentions.
The rain came all at once. Clouds unleashed a wall-like downpour. Cold, wind-driven, intense enough to find every gap in clothing, turning roads into rivers within minutes.
“We need shelter,” Arleria shouted over the wind.
Kern appeared from wherever he’d been. He pointed northwest, up a slope. Something about a rock formation.
They followed. The cart struggled through mud that was getting deeper by the minute, the horse protesting with every step. Derell swore at the horse. The horse appeared to swear back. Malick pushed from behind.
The shelter turned out to be a rocky overhang where two massive slabs had leaned against each other at some point in geological history, creating a space roughly the size of a large room. The cave’s opening had a good angle to the rain, so only the first few feet got wet.
Good enough.