Christoph looked down into the sack he carried, the dwindling number of gemstones weighing heavily on his mind. If he didn’t make it to the forest sometime soon he would almost certainly starve to death. Even inside the forest he’d have to somehow procure a weapon and learn how to hunt the beasts that lived there. Lucius had told him that the main cause of mana hyper-saturation was people accidentally consuming parts of a magical beast, which were therefore considered poisonous. As such, he doubted there was anyone he could ask for advice, and it would be suspicious for a non-adventurer to be hunting the beasts in the first place.

He rose from the fireplace as Coin began to tear down his tent, Lily wandering off somewhere with a yawn. The noises that emitted from their shelter at night had kept Christoph awake, and he glared at the couple for a moment before sighing. Like Ruth, he slept under the stars, although not by choice. Quester and Regal took refuge in a small rock shelter Regal conjured up each time, but as an outsider he didn’t dare to invite himself in, and they didn’t seem wont to ask him to join them either.

Christoph sighed again as he turned away from the fireplace and towards the giant lizard. He had been hoping to refill his gems through the night by draining mana from the corpse, but Regal’s barrier had prevented that from happening.

“Okay,” Ruth said. “If you hurry you can make it to the forest by noon. We’ll be waiting here for your return.” Although the lizard was sealed under Regal’s spell, that was mainly just a method to alert the guild and delay decomposition until they can harvest the remains. The plan was that Regal and Ruth would remain behind to protect the dragon until the merchants arrived. Hopefully Coin, Quester and Lily would be able to see Christoph to the forest and safely return by nightfall.

Christoph gathered up his sack and slung it over his shoulder. Ahead of him, Quester did the same. Even Coin carried a small bag at his hip, and the four crystals they had taken from Christoph as payment rattled within. Regal and Lily had unsurprisingly chosen not to carry the mana-draining gemstones, and Coin had happily volunteered. Perhaps Coin was just a nickname the others had given him? He certainly seemed greedy enough to earn the moniker. Setting out, the four of them left the camp behind and made their way back to the highway once more.

The walk that day was, compared to the past week, a tiring journey. Ruth wasn’t there to guide the group, and despite the fact that they shared a bed roll at night Coin and Lily seemed to argue more aggressively with each step. Quester did nothing to stop them either, and many times Christoph found himself looking around for Regal’s friendly face.

Around midday they stepped off the highway once more, the green plains giving way to brown bush-land, long grass catching at their feet as they walked onward.

“What do you know of the forest?”

Christoph started at the voice, looking around to see Quester walking alongside him. “Not much,” he said, hiding his surprise. “As I said, I’m a not from around here. I just have something to do there.”

“The forest isn’t somewhere an unarmed man should be walking into blind,” Quester said, shaking his head before continuing. “The part you can see from here is called the Paw, because of the way it sticks out from the main forest. The beasts in the paw gather at the center, so if you stick to the edges and sleep in the trees you should be safe. If you’re trying to cross the border, you’re better off skirting the edge of the forest and traveling through the arm.”

“I’m guessing that the arm connects the paw to the main forest?” Christoph asked.

“Exactly. I wouldn’t recommend crossing the border though, the beast clans don’t take kindly to human trespassers,” Quester said. Ahead, Coin and Lily had fallen strangely silent. “You should prepare yourself. I don’t know what you’re planning, but many better men than you have died in here before.”

Coin halted the party, reaching into his boot and drawing out a small dagger. “Take this,” he said with a grin. “If nothing else, it’ll give us a reason to come find your body when you die.”

Lily glared at Christoph when he took the blade, but remained silent for the moment.

“Okay, we’re about a half hour from the Paw,” Coin said, holding a hand up to shield his eyes as he looked into the distance. “From here on out be ready to fight if you have to.”

…

The group advanced slowly through the grass, the edge of the forest clearly visible from their position. Coin had said they were half an hour away from the forest, but it would take them closer to a full hour to reach it at this pace. Even so, they didn’t dare travel any faster. The reason for this was simple – beasts.

The first encounter they had with the creatures was a small group of dog-sized lizards. Coin skewered one on his spear and the rest had scattered. Quester had produced an unnervingly large knife from somewhere and removed the beast’s teeth and tail, throwing them into his sack and carrying on again.

Each time after that, Coin would fight off the small animals, sometimes with the help of Lily’s spirit companions. Quester would harvest some part of the remains and Christoph would stare hungrily at the carcasses they left behind. Lizards, mammals, birds, strange mixtures of all three. Most of them had some sort of crystal growing on their bodies, and that was usually the part that Quester would remove. The beasts themselves didn’t seem particularly dangerous, but they attacked without provocation and didn’t avoid the adventurers like normal animals would have done. As far as Christoph was concerned, they might as well have been food on legs at that point.

It wasn’t until they were almost at the edge of the forest that he had cause to draw his own dagger. A flock of scaled and feathered chickens burst from the long grass, the tiny t-rexes swarming over the four. Coin was more than enough for the group with his spear alone, but the other three were not so capable, and Christoph soon found himself fighting off a few of the beasts by himself. Gripping his knife tightly, he struck out at the little dinosaurs with his dagger, killing two and wounding three more. He sustained several bites in return, but they were shallow and he soon found his hunger distracting him from the pain.

The smell of mana-rich blood hung heavily in the air, and the empty sack at his side weighed painfully on his mind. Drool spilled from his mouth at the thought of sating his unnatural hunger, and the dagger trembled in his hand. Unable to stop himself, Christoph reached down and used the blade to slice at the tail of the beasts, cutting off the gemstone which sat at the tip. Staring down at it for a moment, he reached up and placed the small crystal into his mouth, dissolving it almost immediately. Looking back up from the beasts in front of him, he was surprised to see Lily’s summoned spirit hovering directly in front of his face. Swinging his arm out to shoo the sprite in reflex, he swatted it with his palm. A familiar pulse sounded as he made contact with it, and Lily’s sprite exploded into a burst of cold air.

“A demon?” Lily’s cry was half gasped from up ahead, the sorceress shaken by the rebound of her summon being banished.

Caught off guard by the spirit’s sudden destruction, Christoph caught a glimpse of Lily falling over into the grass. The beasts had long since been defeated, and Coin and Quester rushed to her side before turning to stare over in Christoph’s direction. Sitting up, she clutched at Quester’s legs, and Christoph could see her expression had warped into one of extreme hatred. Coin held his spear out in a stance, but didn’t seem like he wanted to leave Lily behind to approach him. Christoph opened his mouth to explain, but he had no excuses this time. Turning away from them, he ran through the grass towards the edge of the forest.

Out of the three, Christoph knew Coin was the most dangerous by far. Lily had been incapacitated by the death of her familiar, and Quester had only his large knife. He also had his fire magic, but he wouldn’t be able to use it this sea of dried grass unless he wanted to burn everyone to ashes. As long as Coin didn’t pursue him into the trees, Christoph would be able to get away safely. Behind him, Christoph heard Lily make a sudden sound of frustration. Glancing back, he saw her struggling to unsling her bow from around her shoulders.

Christoph swore inwardly. The bow, Lily’s bow! He’d seen her carrying it so often without ever using it, it had slipped his mind. Even so, Lily was in no state to shoot any arrows. As long as he kept running, he’d be able to make it to safety. Looking back again, Christoph saw something that chilled his spine.

Lily wasn’t holding the bow. It wasn’t even Lily’s bow to begin with. Drawing an arrow back, a sinister grin plastered over his face, was Quester. Christoph had assumed that since Regal had glanced towards him before mentioning it, that Quester was a fire-magic user. He had been mistaken. Quester wasn’t a magician at all, he simply played a similar role as a fire-mage would have. Christoph was right in that respect: Quester was the group’s ‘human killer’.

Christoph broke into a sprint. Of all the weapons that could be aimed at Christoph in that moment, an arrow would have been the last option he would have chosen. A sword would slash, a spear would pierce and an axe would cleave, but an arrow did something none of those could. An arrow would remain in his body until it was removed.

Even if he hadn’t been in danger of dying from the first strike, his situation was this: running from a trio of adventurers who were trying to kill him, headed into a dangerous forest armed with only a knife, not wearing so much as a pair of shoes. If he took an arrow to the torso, Christoph would die.

Quester’s first arrow flew through the air to Christoph’s right. The wind was blowing, and the missile had veered off course. His second arrow would not do the same. Some archers were even known to fire off their first arrow with the intention of using it to correct their others. Christoph doubted that Quester was one of those archers, but even so… The second arrow slammed into Christoph’s left shoulder with a ‘thunk’.

Shoved off balance, he fell into the long grass, rolling over and snapping off the shaft of the arrow. Forcing himself to stand, he felt the bladed arrowhead shifting inside his body.

Christoph had come from a world which was relatively safe. In his childhood, the most pain he had suffered was a broken bone from falling out of a tree, and as an adult he no longer even remembered what that had felt like. But this was real. The pain he felt in that moment was the first real experience of pain he had felt in his entire adult life, the arrow slicing into his flesh like a horrible oversized splinter of wood and metal.

The three adventurers blurred in the distance, but he was thankful at least that they weren’t chasing him into the forest. Turning back towards the trees, he managed a single step before another arrow slammed into his back. It hit him in the lower right side this time, and he fell to his knees in the grass.

Moving was pain, breathing was pain. Existing was pain. Even so, he felt the dull ache of hunger lurking under the agony of the arrow wounds. Standing once more, he willed himself to walk into the forest, to take a step and then another until he passed around a tree and out of sight of the adventurers. Christoph walked until he could stand no longer, collapsing face-down on the bare tree roots of the forest floor.