I Stopped Simping and the Heroines Lost Their Minds

Mara crouched beside the exhausted trail beast, her hands moving expertly over its heaving flanks. She checked the torn straps, pressed around the bloody scratches, and wiped her fingers on a cloth.

”The beast isn’t dying,” she reported, looking back at Garr. ”The cuts are shallow. Most of the blood on this coat isn’t its own.”

Rhea ran her hand over the ruined saddle, her fingers stopping briefly at one of the deep gouges through the leather. ”It’s Torr’s.”

Garr looked from the blood on Torr’s saddle to the fading afternoon light. His jaw tightened.

”We’re not waiting until morning while one of our own might be bleeding out there. Small group leaves now. If the light goes before you find them, camp on the eastern trail and pick it up again at dawn.”

Rhea headed straight for the supply racks. Derren tightened his sword belt, caught Arthur’s eye, and jerked his head toward the eastern road. Arthur went with him.

They hadn’t finished gathering what they needed when footsteps pounded across the trading yard. A wolfkin woman jogged up to the lodge porch with a pair of curved hunting blades hanging at her hips.

”Heard Torr’s beast came back.”

”It did.” Rhea tossed a coil of rope toward Derren. ”We’re leaving now.”

The newcomer’s attention shifted to Arthur.

”This the human you brought back?”

Rhea groaned. ”Why is everyone saying it like that?”

Arthur’s gaze travelled over her once before returning to her face.

Kara had already caught him. The corner of her mouth lifted. ”Eyes up, human. Kara.”

”Arthur.”

”He dropped a good number of the Blacktusks on the road,” Derren added.

Kara’s eyebrows rose slightly. She gave Arthur another look, then tightened the straps holding her blades. ”Good. Let’s go find Torr.”

Arthur pulled Whisperwind from his inventory as they left the trading yard. Rhea took the lead beyond the settlement perimeter and set a brisk pace into the trees, following the trail beast’s panicked route back through the forest.

Arthur stayed a few steps behind her and watched. Rhea rarely stopped for more than a few seconds; a scuffed patch of dirt or bent stem would catch her attention, and then she would keep moving without explaining herself.

Twenty minutes into the forest, she left the obvious trail entirely and crouched beside a fern hanging by a strip of torn green pulp. After one look, she changed direction.

Arthur looked at the broken plant. ”I would’ve walked straight past that.”

”I know,” Rhea said without stopping.

Arthur grinned. ”You sounded very happy saying that.”

Kara fell into step beside Arthur as they climbed a steep, root-choked incline. She hopped over a rotting log and glanced sideways at him.

”So. You came in with a merchant caravan, killed a few boars, and immediately volunteered to walk into the deep woods at dusk. Why?”

Arthur ducked under a low branch. ”I was going home. Then things got interesting.”

”That’s exactly what I’m worried about,” Rhea called back from the front.

Kara laughed quietly.

Derren pushed his way through the brush behind them. ”My excuse is that I’m professionally stupid. You’re doing this recreationally.”

”I like keeping my options open,” Arthur replied.

Ahead of him, Kara casually reached into the pouch strapped behind Rhea’s hip and stole a strip of dried meat. Rhea never even turned around; the butt of her spear shot backward toward Kara’s ribs, forcing her to hop aside while chewing her prize.

Arthur laughed. Rhea’s ears twitched, but she kept walking.

They continued deeper into the eastern forest. On the easier stretches Kara kept talking, while thick brush and tangled roots regularly forced them into single file and quieted the conversation.

By the time the sunlight filtering through the canopy had turned golden, even Kara had gone quiet. Rhea finally called a short halt beside a shallow stream.

Arthur rested Whisperwind against a tree and pulled one of Seraphina’s absurdly overpacked food parcels from his inventory. Inside were cured meat, bread, and enough cheese for several people.

Kara stared at the sheer volume and quality of the food appearing from thin air. ”You pack well.”

”My friend’s mother thinks journeys last six months,” Arthur said. He tossed a wrapped portion to Derren and offered another to Kara.

She took it happily. Arthur held a piece of cured meat toward Rhea.

She looked at it, then at him.

”It’s not poisoned.”

”I wasn’t worried about poison.”

”Then we’re making progress.”

Rhea rolled her eyes, took the meat, and leaned against a nearby trunk to eat.

They had been moving again for a while when Kara looked up into the canopy.

”I haven’t heard a treebird in a long time.”

Arthur listened. There were still insects somewhere in the brush and leaves moving overhead, but the usual calls that had followed them earlier were gone.

Derren pointed toward a muddy depression near the roots of a massive oak. ”Deer tracks. Moving west again. Fast.”

They found a dead deer farther along the trail.

It lay half-hidden in the tall ferns just off the trail. Rhea stepped carefully off the path with her spear ready. She checked the surrounding brush before approaching the carcass, but nothing moved nearby.

Rhea crouched beside the carcass and caught one antler, turning the deer’s head enough to inspect its throat.

The movement exposed the skin around its muzzle and eyes.

Dark veins bulged beneath the skin, unmistakably similar to the ones they’d seen on the Blacktusks.

Derren swore under his breath. ”Same thing.”

Arthur noticed something else. Nothing had fed on the carcass. Aside from the ruined neck, the deer’s body was almost untouched.

Arthur crouched beside Rhea and looked closer. Whatever had bitten the deer had crushed straight through the neck in a single attack.

Derren looked over the untouched flanks. ”Killed it and left.”

Rhea said nothing. She simply let the deer’s head drop back into the ferns and stood up.

As they fell back into formation, Arthur stepped up quietly beside Rhea.

”Hati?” he asked.

Rhea kept her eyes on the trail for several steps before answering. ”Probably.”

”You don’t sound convinced.”

”He kills for food, territory, or if he’s threatened,” Rhea said quietly. ”Leaving prey lying untouched in the dirt isn’t normal for him either.”

They pushed on until Rhea stopped beside a thick pine and brushed her fingers across a shallow geometric mark carved into the bark.

”Torr’s mark,” she confirmed. ”He came this way.”

”Torr still owes me twenty credits,” Kara muttered. Her hand tightened around one of her blades. ”If that idiot got himself killed before paying me back, I’m dragging him home and killing him again.”

Nobody laughed.

Arthur adjusted his grip on Whisperwind and kept moving.

The light beneath the trees was getting noticeably worse when Rhea suddenly picked up her pace.

Flattened ferns appeared ahead, followed by churned earth around the exposed roots. Jagged gouges scarred several nearby trunks, and the smell of blood reached Arthur before they entered the clearing.

Kara peeled toward the edge of the clearing with both blades drawn while Derren dropped beside a dark spray of blood across the roots of a broken tree. Arthur remained near Rhea, Whisperwind ready as his attention moved through the surrounding brush.

Rhea walked into the center of the churned soil. She knelt and picked up a heavy, steel-tipped spear that had been snapped cleanly in half.

”Torr’s,” she said softly.

A heavy leather pack lay discarded in the dirt a few yards away, its straps torn.

Rhea moved past the broken spear, tracking the chaotic scuff marks in the soil. She stopped near the edge of the clearing, her boots sinking slightly into the mud.

Arthur walked over, keeping his eyes on the trees, and glanced down at what she had found.

Enormous paw prints were pressed among the hunters’ boot marks. Arthur recognized their size immediately; they matched the track Rhea had shown him on the road.

Several overlapped near the churned center of the clearing, deep enough that water was already gathering in them.

Arthur looked at the prints, then back at the broken spear in Rhea’s hand.

Rhea stared at the prints for a moment before tightening her grip on Torr’s broken spear.

Rhea followed the blood out of the clearing until it divided beneath the trees. She crouched there, looking first north and then east.

A set of boot prints and scattered droplets disappeared toward the north. The eastern trail carried far more blood, dark streaks marking roots and leaves where somebody had struggled onward.

Kara stopped behind her. ”Which one?”

Rhea was still studying the two trails when a faint metallic sound carried through the trees.

Arthur crouched beside the heavier trail. The blood on one exposed root was still wet enough to shine in the fading light. Whoever had gone east couldn’t be far ahead.

Clink.

Everyone froze.

A few seconds later, it came again.

Clink.

Rhea’s head snapped toward the eastern trail. ”Hunter signal.”