Aetheria

Jenna pressed two fingers into the larger track and came away with dark soil beneath her nails. The print cut deeper than the Ironmaw's despite crossing firmer ground, and whatever had left it had moved north with enough weight to crush roots beneath the surface.

Aaron crouched beside her while the rest of the patrol finished dealing with the dead Ursid behind them. Ranger's Eye sharpened the disturbed earth, revealing a broad trail that crossed the basin before disappearing between dense stands of cedar.

"Four toes," Jenna said as she measured one impression against her hand. "Heavy front end, probably wider than the Ursid, and it dragged something through here."

Aaron followed the shallow groove running beside the tracks. Broken grass, torn bark and patches of dried blood continued with it, although none of the blood belonged to the Ironmaw lying behind them.

One of Highcrest's guild scouts joined them with a rolled map tucked beneath his belt. He studied the trail for less than a minute before calling for the patrol leader, and several Grey Banner members moved over once they heard what had been found.

Damon arrived last with fresh bandaging beneath his armour and the expression of somebody who had already lost an argument about whether he should continue. The healer remained nearby, which Aaron suspected was the only reason Damon had been allowed away from the basin at all.

The guild scout unrolled his map across a flat stone. "Two caravans disappeared along this section during the last six days, and both were assumed to be bandit attacks until today's wagon turned up."

Jenna traced the road north with one finger. "The tracks cross here, but they don't follow the road."

"They keep to the forest." The scout indicated several marked stretches where old logging trails intersected the trade route. "We've had livestock disappear from three farms farther north as well, although nobody reported seeing what took them."

Miles lowered his shield from his shoulder. "How far do you want to follow it?"

The patrol leader glanced toward the sun before answering. "Far enough to find out whether we've got one creature or a nest. If the tracks keep going after another hour, we mark the route and come back tomorrow with supplies."

Grey Banner reorganised quickly. Their wounded fighters remained with the carcass and surviving wagons, while Aaron's group joined six others following the trail north under the two guild scouts.

The forest changed within the first half hour.

Highcrest's roads had encouraged Aaron to think of the surrounding land as settled territory, but the maintained trails thinned rapidly once they moved away from the main route. Old logging cuts vanished beneath younger trees, thorned vines crossed the remaining paths and the canopy thickened until afternoon light came through in scattered columns.

Jenna took the lead beside one of the guild scouts. Aaron worked several metres behind them, watching the edges of the trail while Priya and Miles stayed closer to the centre of the group.

Damon walked near the rear.

His replacement sword remained sheathed.

Aaron had expected the highest-level person in the patrol to take charge of everything, but Damon rarely interfered with the scouts unless they asked him something directly. When the trail split around a rocky rise, he waited with everyone else while Jenna and the guild scout worked out which disturbance was newer.

Priya noticed the same thing. She moved closer to Aaron while the scouts examined the ridge and quietly asked whether Grey Banner always operated this way.

One of their fighters heard her. "Damon's terrible at tracking."

Damon looked up from where he was drinking water. "I'm standing right here."

"You once followed deer tracks for forty minutes."

"They were going somewhere."

"Back to the same river."

Damon capped the waterskin and left the argument there while Jenna called them forward.

Aaron smiled as he followed.

The larger tracks continued beneath the ridge.

Several hundred metres farther on, they found the first carcass.

A draft horse lay between two trees with most of its rear half missing. Leather harness still hung around its chest, and one broken section of wagon shaft remained attached beside it.

Priya stopped several paces away.

The smell reached them shortly afterward.

Aaron covered his mouth with one sleeve while Jenna forced herself closer to the remains. Deep cuts marked the horse's shoulders, but the wounds looked different from teeth or claws.

"Something sharp opened it first," she said.

The guild scout crouched beside the broken harness. "Then something else fed."

Aaron circled carefully until Ranger's Eye caught several smaller prints mixed through the bloodstained ground.

There were many.

He followed them toward a fallen log and found more beneath the leaves.

"Jenna."

She joined him.

The smaller tracks had three narrow toes and were barely larger than Aaron's palm. Several paths spread away from the carcass before converging farther north.

The patrol leader looked over both sets of tracks and changed the plan.

"We're heading back."

Nobody argued.

They had covered less than an hour of trail, but the horse established enough of the pattern to make continuing with a small patrol unnecessary. The scouts marked the location, recorded distances from the trade road and collected what they could before the group began retracing its route.

They had travelled perhaps ten minutes when something clicked inside the trees.

Aaron stopped.

The sound came again.

Hard and quick, like stones struck together.

Jenna turned toward the left side of the trail.

More clicking answered from farther ahead.

Miles raised his shield.

The undergrowth moved.

Creatures emerged without rushing.

The first stood slightly shorter than Aaron's waist, with long hind legs and narrow bodies covered in overlapping brown plates. Their forelimbs ended in hooked claws that clicked whenever they touched, while elongated jaws opened around rows of small teeth.

Splinter Raker

Level 9

Five appeared before Aaron stopped counting.

Then movement spread deeper through the forest.

Priya shifted her staff into both hands. "There are more behind those."

The patrol leader drew his sword while the group closed its formation. "Keep the trail behind us open."

Aaron nocked an arrow.

The Rakers spread instead of charging directly.

Two climbed tree trunks with their hooked limbs and disappeared into the branches. Another pair circled through low brush, testing the group's edges whenever somebody turned too far toward another threat.

Aaron tracked the one nearest Priya.

It moved in short bursts, stopping almost completely between them.

The first attack came from above.

A Raker dropped from a branch toward one of Grey Banner's fighters and caught his shoulder before a shield knocked it aside. Three more attacked almost simultaneously from ground level, forcing the patrol into a compressed exchange of shields, blades and darting bodies.

Aaron fired twice into openings between Miles and another shield user. One arrow struck a Raker through the ribs, while the second broke against a plate near its shoulder.

Priya's Ember Dart hit the brush beside a circling creature and sent it scrambling away from the sudden heat. She followed with another cast toward a low branch, forcing the Raker above them to move before it could choose its own moment to attack.

The creatures kept shifting.

They were more coordinated than the Hookjaws around Larkhaven, but the patrol carried enough experience to keep them from separating anyone. Grey Banner's shield users protected the centre while the scouts called movement through the trees, leaving Aaron and the other ranged fighters to punish anything that stayed exposed for too long.

A Raker eventually broke through beside Miles.

Its hooked forelimb caught the shield's upper edge and dragged downward with enough force to tear the iron rim partly free. Miles stepped into the pull rather than fighting it, drove his shoulder behind the shield and crushed the smaller creature between the wood and a tree.

The impact left the Raker stunned.

Aaron's arrow finished it.

Miles looked at the torn rim afterward and swore beneath his breath.

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The fight continued farther down the trail as the patrol withdrew.

Rakers followed through the branches and brush, occasionally disappearing long enough that Aaron wondered whether they had finally broken pursuit before another clicking call answered ahead.

They were being guided.

Jenna seemed to reach the same conclusion.

"They're pushing us."

The patrol leader turned toward the trail behind them.

The forest had become too quiet in that direction.

Damon drew his sword.

Something moved between the trees ahead.

Aaron saw the shape only briefly before several Rakers scattered away from it.

The creature that entered the trail stood on four thick legs beneath a shell of layered bark-coloured armour. Its head resembled a blunt wedge, with two curved structures growing from the jaw and extending backward beside the neck.

The larger tracks belonged to it.

Timbermaw Behemoth

Level 18

The Behemoth opened its mouth.

The clicking around the forest stopped.

Aaron understood the relationship immediately.

The Rakers had not been hunting beside the larger creature.

They were hunting for it.

The Behemoth charged into the trail.

Nobody tried holding the centre.

The patrol split toward both sides as the creature tore through the space they had occupied, crushing brush and young trees beneath its weight. One Grey Banner fighter failed to clear the path completely and disappeared beneath the edge of an armoured shoulder before being thrown hard enough to roll several metres.

Priya moved toward him.

Aaron fired at the Behemoth's eye.

The arrow struck one of the curved jaw plates instead and vanished into the undergrowth.

Damon reached the creature before it completed its turn.

His replacement sword hit the side of its neck and produced a sharp metallic crack without cutting deeply. The Behemoth swung its head, catching Damon across the chest with enough force to send him skidding through leaves and loose soil.

The Rakers attacked again.

Their timing changed once the Behemoth entered the fight, darting at anyone forced away from the group while the larger creature occupied the centre. Aaron found himself moving constantly between targets, firing into the smaller creatures whenever they threatened Priya or the injured fighter and abandoning shots at the Behemoth when its armour offered nothing useful.

Jenna appeared beside him long enough to point toward the creature's rear legs.

"The plates overlap upward."

Aaron followed the line.

She was right.

Each armoured section protected the one beneath it from attacks coming forward, but the joints opened slightly whenever the Behemoth stepped.

Aaron changed position.

Another Ranger farther along the trail noticed and moved with him.

Their next arrows entered nearly together.

One struck too high.

Aaron's went between the plates.

The Behemoth's rear leg buckled.

It recovered almost immediately, but the reaction gave Damon enough time to return.

His sword came down against the same joint with a heavier strike.

The plate split.

The Behemoth turned violently toward him, but Damon had already abandoned the position and moved around the damaged leg.

Aaron barely saw what happened next because two Rakers rushed from the brush near Priya.

She handled the first herself.

Ember Dart formed at close range and struck the creature beneath the jaw, filling the air with the smell of scorched hide. Miles met the second with his damaged shield and kept it occupied long enough for Aaron to put an arrow through its side.

Priya reached the wounded Grey Banner fighter afterward.

Blood covered his thigh where the Behemoth's armour had opened it.

She knelt beside him and began the healing spell she had learned in Highcrest's archive several days earlier.

Aaron had watched her practise it on cuts and bruises.

The wound before her was larger than anything she had treated.

Her first attempt slowed the bleeding without closing it completely.

The patrol's healer reached them seconds later and took over while Priya sat back, breathing hard but still conscious.

The Behemoth roared from the trail.

Damon and three Grey Banner fighters had drawn most of its attention away from the wounded. They did not try matching its strength directly, instead attacking the already damaged rear leg and withdrawing whenever its armoured head came around.

The smaller Rakers became the greater immediate problem.

Aaron counted nine moving around the group.

Then eleven.

He stopped counting again.

The guild scout called for everyone who could still move to continue retreating south. Grey Banner formed a moving barrier around the injured while Aaron, Jenna and the remaining ranged fighters kept the Rakers from settling into another coordinated rush.

Damon remained farther north.

Miles realised it first.

"He's not coming."

The patrol leader was already looking back.

Damon had stopped retreating near a narrow section of trail where two large trees left only enough room for the Behemoth to pass between them.

He waited there with the sword lowered.

The Behemoth charged.

Damon moved aside at the final moment.

The creature's damaged rear leg slipped when it tried to turn between the trees, and its enormous shoulder struck one trunk hard enough to shake branches across the canopy.

Damon attacked the injured joint.

The other Grey Banner fighters returned with him.

Aaron saw what they were doing.

The Behemoth had plenty of strength in open ground.

The trees took most of that away.

"Jenna."

She was already climbing the slope beside the trail.

Aaron followed.

From higher ground, the overlapping rear plates became easier to see whenever the Behemoth twisted between the trunks. Aaron planted his feet, waited for one step to open the damaged joint and released.

Three arrows struck during the same movement.

His entered deepest.

The Behemoth dropped heavily onto one side.

Grey Banner surged forward.

The fight tightened around the trapped creature, with shields turning its head away from the wounded leg while swords and spears worked into the opening already created. Damon stayed closest to the joint, driving the replacement blade deeper whenever the Behemoth attempted to rise.

The Rakers began withdrawing.

Aaron nearly missed it.

One moment they were attacking around the edges of the fight, and the next their clicking calls had moved deeper into the forest.

The Behemoth heard them leaving.

It thrashed hard enough to crack one of the trees.

Damon's sword broke.

The upper third of the blade snapped against the damaged armour and spun into the brush.

He remained in front of the creature with half a weapon in his hands.

Aaron expected him to retreat.

Damon shifted his grip closer to the broken edge and drove what remained into the exposed joint.

The Behemoth collapsed fully.

A spear entered beneath its jaw.

Another found the throat.

The creature's movements slowed until the trees stopped shaking around it.

Nobody approached for several seconds.

The patrol healer remained with the wounded farther down the path.

Damon eventually pulled the broken sword free and looked at what remained.

Miles reached him first.

"That was a new sword."

Damon turned the ruined blade in one hand.

They gathered quickly afterward.

The Behemoth's body was too large to transport intact, so the guild scouts marked the location while Grey Banner removed several plates, both curved jaw structures and a dense core buried beneath the chest.

Aaron helped recover arrows.

Most of his misses were gone completely.

He found four usable ones.

One of the Rangers who had fought beside him held up another arrow with Aaron's fletching and tossed it over.

"You were hitting that rear joint from the ridge?"

Aaron caught it.

"Most of the time."

"Good shooting."

The Ranger returned to his own gear.

Aaron inspected the recovered shaft and found a hairline crack near the head.

He put it aside for repair.

Priya remained near the wounded fighter until the healer finished stabilising him. When she rejoined Aaron, dried blood marked both hands and her Essence had fallen low enough that she carried the staff more like a walking stick.

"He's going to be okay."

Aaron looked toward the man being helped onto an improvised stretcher.

"Your spell worked?"

"It helped."

Priya rubbed one thumb across the blood on her palm.

"The healer showed me where I was spreading too much Essence around the wound."

Aaron handed her his waterskin.

She drank while they began moving south.

The return took much longer.

Two people needed help walking.

Miles's shield had lost most of its upper rim.

Damon carried half a sword.

Aaron's bowstring had started fraying near one end, forcing him to loosen it for the journey back.

Nobody complained when Highcrest's outer farms finally appeared between the trees.

The patrol reached the northern gate near sunset.

News travelled faster than they did.

By the time Aaron's group reached the guild, several people already knew a Timbermaw Behemoth had been found north of the road. Workers moved directly toward the recovered plates while scribes crowded around the scouts for locations, numbers and descriptions of the smaller Rakers.

Aaron's group turned in their own contract report after the larger patrol finished.

The clerk recorded the damaged caravans, the Rakers and the Behemoth before adding extra payment for participation in the fight. Aaron received enough silver to repair his bow properly and still replace most of the arrows he had lost.

Miles counted his share once before heading straight toward the armourer.

Priya remained at the guild because the healer from the patrol wanted to introduce her to someone from Highcrest's restoration hall. Jenna disappeared upstairs with the scouts and their maps.

Aaron found himself alone for the first time that day.

He went outside.

Evening traffic crowded the street beyond the guild, carrying produce, tools and people toward different districts before the gates closed for the night. Aaron sat on the low wall beside the entrance and worked loose fibres from his damaged bowstring while waiting for the others.

Damon emerged from the guild several minutes later.

He carried the broken sword over one shoulder.

Damon sat farther along the wall and examined the broken edge.

Up close, Aaron could see that the metal had fractured around several small chips that had already weakened the blade before the fight.

"You buy these?"

"Usually."

"Grey Banner doesn't have a smith?"

"We have three people learning." Damon ran one thumb along the flat of the blade. "They're good enough for repairs. Building something that survives what I do to it is another problem."

Aaron thought about the Behemoth.

"You hit things that outweigh you by several tons."

"That's part of the problem."

A wagon passed in front of them, briefly filling the street with the smell of fresh-cut wood.

Aaron continued working on the bowstring.

"Why Vanguard?"

Damon glanced toward him.

"Class?"

Aaron nodded.

Damon rested the broken sword across his knees. "I started Warrior because I didn't know what else to pick. At Ten, Iron Vanguard gave me better physical growth, stronger defensive recovery and several ways to keep moving after taking damage."

"That sounds like exactly what you do."

"It is."

Aaron looked toward the bandages beneath Damon's armour.

"Maybe too exactly."

Damon laughed.

The sound brought the healer from the earlier patrol out of the guild doorway.

She saw him sitting there.

"You were supposed to go to the infirmary."

"I'm on the way."

"The infirmary is east."

Damon looked toward the street as though Highcrest might have rearranged itself.

Aaron returned his attention to the bowstring before the healer could involve him.

She eventually dragged Damon away with the broken sword still in his hands.

Miles arrived shortly afterward carrying a replacement shield.

The new one was rectangular rather than round, reinforced with two iron bands and slightly larger than what he had used before.

Aaron looked at it.

Miles lifted the shield once to test the weight.

"The armourer says this one won't peel open because a rodent gets angry at me."

"Needleback."

"I know what it was."

Aaron stood and slung his bow carefully over one shoulder.

Priya joined them outside several minutes later with a folded note from the restoration hall and an invitation to attend lessons twice each week. Jenna arrived after that carrying another borrowed map and enough excitement about the northern trails that Aaron suspected she had forgotten how close one of them had come to being crushed.

They walked back toward the hostel together.

The markets had begun closing.

Lanterns appeared over doors.

Highcrest's streets remained busy despite the approaching night, with returning parties moving through the crowds beside merchants packing stalls and guild workers carrying messages between districts.

Aaron's level notification appeared halfway back.

Level 9 reached.

He slowed beside a fountain while the others continued several steps before noticing.

Miles looked back.

Aaron opened his attributes while standing beneath the lantern light.

Three points waited.

His recent fights made the decision easier than the previous ones.

Two went into Agility.

One went into Perception.

The change settled through him gradually, sharpening the relationship between what his eyes caught and how quickly his body responded.

Aaron closed the interface and caught up.

Priya was explaining something about the restoration lesson.

"The healer said Essence shouldn't just be pushed into an injury. She said I need to understand where the body is already trying to repair itself and support that process."

Miles adjusted the new shield on his back. "Can you practise on somebody else?"

Priya looked toward him.

"You get injured constantly."

"That's exactly why I'm asking."

Jenna unfolded her map while walking and nearly collided with a fruit cart.

Aaron caught the back of her coat before she stepped into it.

She adjusted course without folding the map.

"The north road continues past the Behemoth territory and reaches another settlement here."

Aaron looked over her shoulder.

A small circle had been marked beside a river bend several days beyond Highcrest.

"Planning something?"

"Eventually."

They reached the hostel while she was still studying it.

Dinner had already started downstairs.

Aaron smelled roasted vegetables and meat before opening the door, and Miles accelerated enough that the rest of them lost any chance of choosing their table first.

They found him near the back.

Priya put her staff against the wall.

Jenna finally folded the map.

Aaron lowered himself into the nearest chair and felt every kilometre they had walked settle into his legs.

Conversation around the room drifted between contracts, rumours and the day's news.

Someone at a nearby table was already talking about the Timbermaw.

According to him, Damon Grey had killed it alone.

Aaron looked toward Miles.

Miles heard it too.

Neither corrected the story.

They ordered dinner.

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