WITH EVERYONE IN CHARGE gone, I had a lot of work on my hands, and I still needed to keep an eye on Seth. Usually, only Jill and Ricci would leave for a week or two at a time because of their jobs, leaving Vinsor and Bralazin here with me.

“Do you mind trailing along with me while I check up on everyone? I don’t want to make you feel like a prisoner, but the elves are a little hard to deal with when they encounter something brand new.”

“Yeah, about that, wanna tell me about the brainwashing?”

I looked around for a good place to have a more private conversation. If we got up on one of the watch posts, I could do a quick check of the perimeter, and we would be far enough from everyone not to be overheard.

“This way.” I headed to the tallest tree we had set up as a watchtower. “Wait here. When that dwarf comes down, you can come up after me.”

I grabbed the rope ladder and climbed up onto the platform about fifty feet off the ground. The branches higher up were too thin to hold much weight.

“Would you like to take a break?” I asked as I stepped on the perch. “I need to do a perimeter check, so you can have about thirty minutes to yourself.”

“Thank you. It would be wonderful,” he answered, before asking, “Wasn’t Bralazin supposed to stay with us?”

“We had to change plans. Sorry. You only have me now.”

The dwarf smiled warmly and nodded. “It is always a pleasure to have you here.”

Without another word, he climbed down. This was why I liked this community so much better than being in Lord Dralik’s army. We weren’t just tied together by a common enemy. We had saved each other’s lives.

Seth got up a couple of minutes later and looked over the forest. I offered him the binoculars we kept at every post. The sniper rifle remained hanging behind us, ready for an attack.

“Pretty good setup. That castle down there would’ve been even nicer.” He pointed at the one place I never wanted to return to.

“That’s Lord Dralik’s castle. I used to serve under him.” Too many bitter memories floated to the surface. I could only blame myself for them. Running away had been difficult the first couple of weeks, but after Jill, Vinsor, and Ricci came, it started looking like the beginning of a new, happier time for me.

Something in my face must’ve given away my feelings because Seth asked, “You aren’t a fan of his?”

Not a fan was putting it mildly. “He is ruthless and sadistic. If he sees a person who has any kind of power, he tries to either control them or kill them. Until Jill came into this world, the wounded soldiers had little chance of surviving because of infection. Still, every time the battle would end with the enemy retreating, Lord Dralik would kill all of the enemy wounded. He didn’t want to take the chance of even one of them surviving and fighting again.”

And then there were more personal reasons for me to hate the man.

Seth whistled. “I see why you do this. I used to serve in the military until three years ago. Things like that are considered barbaric in my world, but there are still more than enough people who’d do it.”

His arms crossed, he leaned against the thick trunk of the tree. He did look like he had been in the military. I hadn’t seen a lot of men like him in their world. Most were a lot less muscular because they didn’t need to be anything else when they lived in the sheltered cities.

“That’s why you’re a beefcake?”

Seth smirked at me, then looked me up and down. Did I say something wrong? Jill used that word all the time to describe Vinsor, and she told me it was a good thing.

“I’m sorry,” I said, in case I offended him. My neck heated up.

“Not at all,” he drawled. “Go ahead and keep calling me that.”

And my face turned into a beet.

“You wanted to know about the elves. They are annoying and mean. We were worried about the safety of the camp if we started treating elf warriors, but we didn’t want to let them die, so we decided to make them nicer by starting a cult.”

Seth propped his elbow against the tree and turned all of his attention to me. It didn’t help get my blushing under control. Did he have to do that?

“Jill and Ricci thought the elves might overhear them when they talk about the cult, but a lot of your words aren’t known in this world, so they told the elves that bullshit means the true path of turning the most impure into greatness. Brainwashing means cleansing your mind of impurities. Please, don’t tell them what it really means. They’ll go crazy.”

Seth’s smile spread wide. “You people are nuts.”

“I’m not nuts. The elves are unbearable until they get brainwashed.” I turned away from him. Another minute of his scrutiny would be too much to handle. “I have to check the forest.”

I reached out to all the animals. In the past, I would’ve had to check for each specific type one by one, but now I understood nature better, so I looked for a type of cells: eukaryotes. It gave me every creature, from the worms crawling in the earth to the birds in the sky. To check them each more thoroughly, I concentrated on the size and the shape of the legs. Odd. There were fewer animals walking around.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable,” Seth said.

I lifted my hand to silence him. “Not right now.” I checked the birds. Fewer birds too. The bugs underground crawled as they always had, but above ground their numbers dropped.

Nothing on two legs walking around. The animals couldn’t have been spooked by armies or spies. I checked the mammalian predators. An increase in their numbers could’ve scared the rest, but they were few and far between. In the middle of the summer. Why? Any reason for migration due to a lack of food was out of the question. The rivers and streams overflowed from recent rains.

I picked up the binoculars and looked around. No sign of smoke to indicate a forest fire. What else could’ve made the animals drop down to half the usual amount?

The tiny bell on the post rang to let us know the dwarf had came back.

“Let’s go.” I got to the ladder and started climbing down. The weight of Seth’s body pulled and twisted the rope as he followed.

“Is everything alright?” the guard asked as I reached the ground.

I shook my head. “Half the animals are gone. I can’t tell why. We'd better be careful with our water supply.”

Someone could have poisoned the stream, in which case the animals who drank from it would die. What other explanation could there be?

I felt for the unique respiratory system of fish. A slight decrease but not as badly as the rest. Still, I would have to check the water for poisons.

“They want you dead so bad they’d poison the water?” Seth asked, all of his smirking gone now as he followed me back into the cave.

I mumbled an affirmative. I hadn’t seen any signs of poisoning amongst our people yet. The wounded would probably be the first to suffer since their bodies were weakened.

I ducked my head into one of the tunnels where an elf was changing the dressings on one of the four humans who occupied that room.

“How are the patients?” I asked. “Anything unusual happening with them? Stomach pains, perhaps?”

“No, esteemed Nasilain, all is well. Jill’s medicine is working wonders,” the elf answered.

Good. At least if someone had tried to poison us, we hadn’t suffered from it yet. I crawled into the damp tunnel that led to the stream. The water looked clear, and I felt nothing unusual in it. I would have to check it again every few hours. Or perhaps I should prepare for the worst.

I came back out and found one of the elf leaders. “Could you get a few people and fill as many containers with water as possible? There is something strange happening with the animals in the forest. I fear someone might have poisoned the water. So far, our stream is clean, but I don’t know how long it will last.”