Travel the next day contained far fewer jokes and quite a lot more caution. The nithetre and the many bramble fiends that traveled with it weren’t the only sighting from the night previous. Every watch had reports of demonic activity passing through the area, though none had seen as many as Jadis and Thea. While a wide variety of demons had been spotted, from bone thieves to possessed magic beasts, the one bit of consistency was that all of them had been heading in the same direction. West.
The expedition continued forward on high alert, everyone on watch for the horde of demons that had passed by in the night. There had been some discussion as to whether or not they should even head west considering the number of demons they’d seen heading in the same direction, but Jadis still wanted to pursue her leads. Returning to Far Felsen was beginning to look like the smarter option, but if there were allies in the west, somewhere in the same vicinity as the demons, then the chances of this truly being her only chance at finding them were high. At the very least, Jadis wanted to check out the mountain area that was their destination to see if the influx of demonic activity was related or just a coincidence.
Surprisingly, Willa agreed with Jadis, though she had her own reasoning. Even though her mission was to gather evidence of illegal eleria mining and bring it back to The Magistrate, the war against the demons took precedence. The mass movement of so many demons could be a prelude to another large-scale attack against the city, or possibly another target somewhere in Weigrun. Even though Willa wanted to get their prisoner and her report back to town as quickly as possible, she couldn’t overlook the danger of attack. Scouting out where the demons were heading was the prudent course of action, so long as they acted within reason.
They had all agreed that they needed to make sure that they weren’t accidentally walking into a horde of demons that might turn on and overwhelm them, so the plan had been made to scout carefully and move with caution. Willa sent four of her troops ahead on horseback, acting as forward scouts. They were far enough ahead to be out of sight: a risk, but a necessary one. They had been given one of Sabina’s boom-discs to set off in case they were attacked by a large demonic force. If the scouts alerted them with the boom, the rest of the expedition knew it was a danger too great for them to face and thus would turn and flee immediately.
“There are tracks everywhere,” Kerr informed them when she checked in from roaming around the caravan. “Too many tracks to count. All of them head west, though they aren’t moving together, I can tell you that much. There’s no cohesion, just a bunch of random shit rolling in the same direction.”
Kerr’s reports stayed much the same throughout the morning as she checked in every half hour or so. The forward scouts left signs on the road, letting them know that the way was clear as they went along, showing that there was no sign of any immediate danger. Things stayed so quiet that by the time noon had come and gone, Jadis was starting to wonder if they’d all suffered from some mass delusion. If it weren’t for the demon tracks, she would have thought the woods were empty.
Then the screaming started.
“Do you hear that?” Eir was the first to call out. She sat perched on the seat next to Aila, her hood pulled back to expose her long ears. “I think I can hear someone screaming in the distance.”
“I don’t hear anything,” Aila replied, though she kept her head on a swivel, looking in every direction. “What direction are you hearing it from?”
“That way,” Eir pointed towards the woods to the right of them. “It’s faint, but I think it’s coming from that way.”
Jadis slowed, bringing the wagon to a stop as she pulled her weapons out from their racks inside. She wasn’t going to take any chances. If Eir said she could hear screaming, she was going to be prepared to meet whatever the cause of the screaming was.
“What’s the hold up?” Willa asked as she rode up next to the wagon, her remaining troops either on horseback or riding on their own smaller wagon.
“Possible issues ahead,” Jay informed her, quickly filling her in on what little details she had.
In a flash Willa ordered her troops into fighting formation, all of them ready for imminent attack. Of course, they had no way of knowing if an attack was coming for sure, but Willa was even more on alert than Jadis.
Unfortunately, Gunnar was riding ahead with the forward scouts and Kerr was still roaming. Eir was the only member of the group with exceptional hearing, so they all waited for her word. On the bright side, the forward scouts hadn’t used the disc to warn them of an incoming attack. Though, after a second of thought, Jadis recognized that the lack of warning could just mean that the scouts hadn’t received any warning themselves and had already been overwhelmed.
“That way,” Eir suddenly spoke up, standing and pointing to the northeast.
Jadis still couldn’t hear anything wrong, but she trusted Eir’s ears. All three of her turned to face that direction, weapons at the ready. A moment later and Thea and Bridget were both next to her selves, one on the right and the other on the left. Aila, Eir, and Sabina stayed on the wagon, though even their smith had her oversized crossbow out and ready. The soldiers were all prepared as well, still mounted on their horses but lined up in formation, ready to either attack or to flee.
They all waited in tense silence, the seconds stretching out longer and longer. As the strain of not knowing what was coming continued to build, Jadis found herself falling into a calm state of awareness. The danger was real, she grew increasingly certain, feeling the threat like a burning in her gut. She was also certain that it was something she could fight. She was stronger now than she had ever been before, and her companions had grown powerful too. They could handle whatever was heading their way.
A whisper of leaves behind her caught Jadis’ attention, but she didn’t turn to look. She recognized the sound of her lover stalking up next to her.
“What in Tamar’s cavernous cunt is making that noise?” Kerr hissed as she slid up next to Jay, her bow peaking out from between the wall of armored Nephilim. “I thought it was you all screaming at first.”
“I don’t know,” Jay murmured, “but I think I can hear it now, too. What the fuck is that?”
She could in fact hear it. Screaming. Faintly on the wind at first, as moments passed the sound grew louder and what could have first been mistaken for the sound of trees creaking in a strong breeze turned into the undeniable sound of screaming. Not just one person, but many people shouting and shrieking, crying out in fear and pain. Men crying out for help, women pleading for mercy, a multitude of voices begging for someone, anyone, to come and save them from the horrors that had taken hold of them.
“Those… those are people, aren’t they?” Bridget whispered, a disbelieving tremor in her voice. “Those are fucking people, right?”
“They sound like they need our help,” Eir said with worry. “They sound like they’re under attack!”
“Should we go help them?” Sabina asked. “I mean, that sounds like a lot of people in trouble, so maybe we should help them or something?”
“Don’t move,” Jay snapped, her focus not turning her head away from the direction of the noise. “Stay on the wagon.”
“We’re in the middle of demon-infested woods,” Dys pointed out. “The only people for miles around are bandits and maybe corrupt soldiers. I don’t think that’s them screaming like that.”
“Besides,” Syd said, “those screams sound like they’re moving from east to west.”
Once she could hear the noise clearly, there was no denying it. The screams were moving from east to west, having started somewhere to the northeast of them and continuing in a direction that would take them on a path parallel to the road they were on. It was hard to tell how far away the origin of the sounds were with how the trees bounced echoes, but she could pinpoint that much at least. Kerr nodded her heard, agreeing with Jadis’ assessment and a moment later, Eir voiced her agreement as well. The source was heading west and Jadis knew that other than their caravan, there was one group for sure heading in that direction.
“We should still check it out,” Jay whispered, barely audible over the shrieking. “Whatever is making those sounds, we can better prepare against it if we know what it is.”
“I’ll go,” Kerr volunteered. “I can stealth north and see what the deal is.”
“No, I don’t like it,” Aila shook her head. “I don’t think any of us should split away from the main group right now. We don’t want to get caught out, especially if that’s a horde of demons over there. I say we let it pass for now.”
“I think you’re right,” Syd said after a moment. “It does sound like it's starting to get further away.”
“It is,” Kerr agreed a second later. “I don’t think it’s moving too fast, but it’s moving.”
The whole group waited, listening to the wretched screams as they slowly started to fade away into the distance. The awful echoes carried on the wind, but they grew further away to the point that Jadis could barely hear them. As the sounds waned, Willa moved her nervous horse closer to Jadis and the rest of Fortune’s Favored.
“I don’t know what that was, but I do not think it bodes well for our future plans in heading west. Perhaps we should reconsider?”
“Yeah, maybe,” Dys nodded slowly, her voice muffled slightly by her helmet. After a second, she spoke up louder. “You probably have a point, but it’s already well after noon. I don’t think we can make it back to the fort before nightfall.”
“Then we should—”
Willa’s next words were cut off as Kerr let out a sharp curse, her bow whipping around to the front of the expedition.
“Horses, riding hard, coming this way!”
All turned to look down the road, anticipation of danger high. A second later they all seemed to remember that the horses Kerr heard had to be the scouts riding back to meet them. Jadis’ first thoughts were that the forward scouts had heard the screaming and were riding back to check on them, which was a fair thing for them to do. Still, Jadis couldn’t ignore the sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach.
The road curved slightly, bending in long waves as it followed the contours of the land. Trees blocked their vision, but soon they heard the horses the same as Kerr, the sound of hooves beating on stone coming their way. In moments the riders emerged from around the bend, revealing all four scouts with Gunnar in the lead.
Jadis breathed a sigh of relief to see that they were all alive, though as they rushed closer, it became clear that they weren’t riding hard thinking they were coming to the expedition’s rescue. They didn’t slow in the least upon seeing they were all okay. If anything, they sped up.
“Demons!” Gunnar shouted as he drew near. “The nithetre!”
The elf didn’t need to say anymore. Jadis’ three selves were already moving to the fore, Bridget and Thea moving to her left and right flanks once more while her backline stayed with the wagon. Jadis couldn’t see what Willa and her soldiers were doing, but she could hear them shifting positions behind her. As Gunnar and the three other scouts passed by, Jadis saw that they all had vines bearing sharp thorns wrapped around their arms, shoulders, and torsos, the spikes cutting deep into their flesh.
Jadis trusted Eir to handle the wounded men. She had to focus on the demons chasing behind them.
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