Over the next two days, Scarlet followed the small stream she had decided to call Sparkle, after realising that Crystal might cause misunderstandings, considering the monsters were called Crystal Monsters. She quickly noticed that her path was slowly ascending, despite the huge distance to the mountains. It shouldn’t have surprised her, after all, she was following a waterflow and water was flowing downhill.

Walking along the Sparkle, she had taken her time, not hurrying, not even deliberately pressing onwards. She knew that there was nothing waiting for her, her aim was simply to find more crystal monsters and have Cyca or Crysna defeat them. After she had rested at the Sparkle that first day, she had started to think about her tactics and realised that hurrying was pointless. It wasn’t as if she would be spotted in every monsters territory, especially not with her concealment ability active. And she wouldn’t spot every monster, not even close, especially if they had a concealment ability on their own. She might spot a monster without one at two-, maybe three-hundred meters and with one, it went down to hundred meters, maybe even less. During her first hike with Keera, they had covered twenty, maybe thirty kilometers and only found four monsters. That felt far too little, even in a predominately green area.

Once she had that worked out, she started to find ways to better search for crystal monsters, not just by simply scanning for them, but by working with Cyca and Crysna, hoping to find ways to better detect them. It was a little difficult, as she always had the mental connection to the two, but she pressed on, whenever she wasn’t walking or trying to relax into that state of expanded consciousness in which she was aware of everything. Just the act of doing so gave her a strange thrill she could hardly explain, which made her try again and again, despite the headache she was giving herself.

And Scarlet’s efforts paid off in a myriad of ways. The fact that she took her time and looked around closely paid off in food, she managed to spot far more edible plants than she had before, filling her pack with food, even if she never took more than half of any cluster. She made a mental note to ask the Doctor about seasons, she doubted that her foraging would be as easy in the winter. Unless it was winter, which she doubted, the region she was in gave her the feeling of being in a temperate climate. But she was on an alien world, so who knew if her feeling was correct.

But for now, she was able to forage and Cyca even managed to bring down a small doe using her lightning, bringing meat to the table. Cutting up the animal had been difficult and Scarlet had no doubt that she had wasted quite a bit of good meat but she had done her best. Once she was done, she had made a large fire and dried the meat out into something resembling jerky, or maybe shoe-leather, hopefully making it a little less likely to spoil.

Another way that her efforts paid off was that, during the afternoon, she stumbled into another crystal monster, this one looking more like a squirrel. During the fight, Scarlet wondered if one of the plants she had eaten had hallucinogenic properties nobody had told her about, for some reason, the squirrel had created and thrown nuts. And the nuts had exploded. Just trying to wrap her head around what she had been seeing had been a challenge, even as Cyca was able to dispatch the squirrel with a electric bolt and a couple scratches. Scarlet still posited that Reality should pay attention and tell Verdun that it was tired of the planet’s shit, but until that happened, she was stuck with how things worked.

In the night, she slept in another tree, after a dinner of roasted deer and vegetable-soup, just in case she was disturbed again. She wasn’t and on the second day of following the Sparkle, she managed to find two more crystal monsters, one a strangely huge caterpillar that Crysna dispatched easily, to her great relief, she didn’t even want to think about a caterpillar the size of her arm. The other was another bird-type, that one a little less plumb compared to the one she had already fought and it had spotted her before she had spotted it, but Crysna had managed to blast it while it had been in the air, before wrapping around it, sealing its attempts to fight back. The bird still tried to push back the inevitable, pecking with its beak, scrabbling with its talons, even trying to move its wings, but a combination of biting and constricting had soon destroyed its projected form, allowing Crysna to absorb its essence.

During that fight, she had noticed something, a strange peculiar sensation, a disturbance in her perception of reality, almost like a psionic smell. That was the best she could compare it to, it was a faint sensation but when she focused on it, she was able to trace it.

With some more experimentation on Crysna and Cyca, she managed to pin down what she was perceiving. Crystal Monsters, or rather, their manifested forms, left something behind as they moved, a faint disturbance that she wouldn’t have noticed without directly looking for it after a brutal fight.

When Crysna carried the defeated monster’s crystal to her, something happened that surprised her to her core. Not only did Crysna drop the crystal before her, he retreated into his crystal without prodding. She carefully examined his crystal, using her psionic senses and realised that he was weakened, with less than half his strength remaining. Curious, she used her scanner and it confirmed her thoughts, Crysna was at maybe thirty percent of his strength.

That behaviour allowed her to form a hypothesis why the monsters had been becoming easier to control. They might have realised that it was to their advantage. From what she had seen of their behaviour, Crystal Monsters were seeking strength, to devour other Crystal Monsters and their essence. But doing that was always a risk of getting devoured themselves, even the strange caterpillar had tried to attack Crysna using sticky threads it shot from its mouth.

However, if they were with Scarlet, they could simply retreat into their crystal and let her, or rather, another monster, deal with trouble for a time.

As she thought about it, it seemed strange, an alien behaviour, but at the same time, it accounted for their actions and behaviour. At the end of the day, who was she to say that the behaviour of rocks had to make sense to her organic mind?

At any way, she picked up Crysna’s crystal and placed it into her pouch, letting Cyca out for the rest of the day and continued on her way, looking for those traces she had found. Shortly before she would have started looking for a space to rest for the night, she found one and started following it, with Cyca on her heels. Following the trace was not too hard, the monster seemed to have been running along a game-path for most of it and after maybe twenty minutes, Scarlet found what she had been looking for. Her senses had picked up the monster and it seemed as if it had spotted her as well.

She moved Cyca in front of her and the two of them stepped into an open area with rocks strewn around. In the middle of that area, Scarlet saw the monster they had been following and she blinked a little in surprise. It looked like a small wolf or medium-sized dog, quite a bit bigger than Cyca. But that was not what confused her, it was that the dog was slate-grey and had protrusions on its back that looked like rock. Not just a carapace or maybe some strange bone-protrusions, but normal rocks sticking out of its grey fur.

The dog growled a challenge, at least that was what it sounded like to Scarlet, and Cyca answered with an angry hiss. Maybe, even on an alien planet, with both merely projections around crystals, dogs would be dogs and cats would be cats. It certainly caused Scarlet to smirk as she thought about it.

Both monsters started clashing and quickly, Scarlet’s smirk vanished. Cyca’s electric bolts caused sparks to fly from the dog’s rocky fur and her claw-strikes seemed to do little more than that. On the other hand, the dog was able to shoot out rocky projectiles, that Cyca had difficulty dodging, but when one hit her, Scarlet felt the hit, even through their connection. It had been worse than any of the hits she had taken, worse than the damage from a complete battle.

Cyca fought, and fought bravely, but Scarlet quickly made the determination that she would lose if it continued like that. She played with the thought to try going after the dog herself, trying to dominate it, but doubted that she would be able to keep it down.

So, she did the next best thing, she ordered Cyca to dodge into her direction and just as she did, she forced her back into her crystal. The dog gave a triumphant growl, only to suddenly be snout to maw with Crysna, whose crystal Scarlet had thrown out shortly before moving to catch Cyca’s.

And Crysna had been warned, opposed to the dog, and ready to fight. He instantly struck, using his water attack to blast the dog, hitting it full-on. The previous attacks from Cyca and now the powerful blast from Crysna caused its form to start flickering, which Crysna instantly abused, ignoring a weak counter-attack from the dog and sinking his fangs into its projected form. The bite managed to finish the job, causing the dogs form to vanish and Crysna to instantly pounce on the crystal, devouring the essence as fast as possible. Scarlet felt it was a little unfair that Cyca got nothing, but at least, she had been able to get away. That had to count for something.

Nonetheless, Scarlet decided not to look for more trouble, simply climbing a suitable tree and munching on some vegetables after collecting Crysna and the dog’s crystal.