The silence of the deep forest didn't last.
A scream shattered the quiet. Not a monster. Human.
Then it came again. Closer this time.
Etzel ran faster.
His ribs objected immediately.
He ignored them.
Branches struck his shoulders as he followed DK through the trees. The knight moved with an ease Etzel found personally offensive, silver armor slipping between trunks without losing speed.
Another impact shook the forest ahead.
Then a woman's voice.
“Left!”
Metal rang.
Something shrieked.
Etzel tightened his grip on the hatchet.
They were close.
A body appeared between the trees.
Etzel nearly attacked it.
Then realized it was already dead.
A creature lay twisted against a root, its throat opened by a clean diagonal cut.
Five steps later, another corpse.
Then another.
The third had been impaled through the chest.
Etzel slowed for half a second.
These weren't desperate kills.
They were precise.
“They're good.”
DK didn't stop.
“Yes.”
Another scream.
Human.
Etzel accelerated again.
The trees opened.
And the forest became a battlefield.
Three young women were trapped inside a broken clearing.
Etzel noticed the first because she was moving.
Fast.
A creature lunged at her.
She twisted aside, let its claws pass inches from her chest, then drove a long weapon across its neck.
Blood sprayed.
The creature collapsed.
She didn't even watch it fall.
“Maerin!”
“I see it.”
The second woman stood near the center of the clearing.
Calmer.
Almost unnaturally so.
One hand was pressed toward the ground.
A faint boundary ran through the dirt around her, visible only when something crossed it.
A charging creature entered that boundary.
Its stride changed.
Not stopped.
Changed.
As if the earth itself had decided it disliked the creature's momentum.
“Two steps back, Tessa.”
The third woman obeyed.
Barely.
She was bleeding.
Etzel saw blood running down one arm.
Another stain covered her side.
Yet she was still standing.
Still watching the others.
The first woman shouted.
“I'm going left!”
“You are already on the left,” Maerin replied.
“Then I'm going more left!”
“That is not how directions work.”
Even now?
Etzel almost laughed.
Then something dropped from a tree.
His amusement died.
It landed upright.
On two legs.
Tall.
Too tall.
At least two and a half meters, perhaps more when fully straightened.
Its body was narrow and elongated, wrapped in dark hide broken by pale ridges of bone. Powerful legs bent beneath it in a posture that looked almost avian, but there was nothing birdlike about the rest of it.
Its arms hung nearly to its knees.
Below each elbow, flesh gave way to curved bone.
Not hands.
Blades.
Scythes.
Its face was worse.
A narrow plate of pale bone covered it like a mask.
No obvious nose.
No ears.
Two dark eyes faced forward.
Predator's eyes.
Then Etzel saw its back.
Three segmented appendages rose from between its shoulders.
Long.
Thin.
Flexible.
Bone whips.
Etzel stopped.
Three.
The Ridgeback's wounds flashed through his memory.
Three lines.
Same spacing.
Same depth.
The creature's head snapped toward him.
The System appeared.
SURVEY RECORD
SPECIMEN IDENTIFIED
Target
Briar Shepherd
Classification
Elite