after hours of walking, we settle in for the night, sleeping in sleeping bags on the side of the trail so as not to get stepped on. the horses are tied to a tree together, and they too begin to doze off. the night is dark and tranquil as firefly's begin their nightly flight, buzzing around like tiny little stars. onw by one, we each fall asleep, with me going last, trying to stay awake as long as possible to make sure we are safe before finally succumbing to fatigue.

It takes Asmodeus a good couple of hours to get to sleep, he's just so restless.

i fall asleep right before Adromeda does

in the morning when i wake up, the first thing i notice is the mess. our stuff is strewn all over the road, one of the bags is torn- nothing a few stitches won't fix- and some of our food items have been eaten. waking everyone up, we begin to clean up. i patch rue's bag for her with a bit of twine and a needle, letting her fill it with her stuff afterwards.

the horses leads got all tangled up in the night, so we spend a good five minutes untangling those before we can finally get going.

"what do you think did that?" i ask, patting vega's neck as she walks, trying her hardest to not step on orion. "looked like some sort of animal to me. went for our food."

"Nasty little bugger," Asmodeus says darkly. "Animals. Ugh."

"lets just hope we don't meet the thing face to face." i grimace, spurring vega into a trot. "lets get out of here as fast as we can"

as we walk, the animals get more and more nervous, orion cries a whimpers at my side, vega tries to turn back more than once. despite this we carry on. i hadn't noticed it at first, but it's completely silent. there are no more birds singing or animals scurrying around. i tense, hand resting on my shotgun just in case.


the others animals are nervous too, with the horses tossing their heads and stamping their feet. the ground here is different. darker, richer than the light tan, dusty stuff we have in the village. this is dark brown, almost black. and thick, extremely thick and damp. there are plants here i've never seen before. bright magenta flowers, vines growing odd, yellow berries. i recognize none of the plants here, not even the small things like bushes and shrubs.

Vitalus sighed and saw that Glacis was getting nervous. He got off his horse and saw the different plants then he knows.

Amaya is already uncomfortable with Asmodeus, so now she's going completely berserk. You can hear the altar boy cursing profusely from directly behind you as he tries to regain control.

Vitalus went to Amaya and tries to calm her down.