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The Borderland Forest
Two hours later
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"Duck-billed wuller." Stasen let the broken twig hang limp again. "That or the shadow man, but judging by the fur caught on the sap, it's a wuller."

"Despite what you might think, I'm not fourteen." Reide tsked as he waded past Stasen in the foliage. "The scariest thing for people my age is losing their jobs, not running into the shadow man."

The two of them ducked under a low-hanging branch and followed the trail of their prey. Stasen slipped in front again, being the one who actually knew how to track.

"And speaking of shadows"—Reide lowered his voice as they neared where they guessed the wuller to be—"if you want to be home for your wife's special dinner, we've got to catch it before dark."

"Good thing I told her to blame you if I'm late."

Stasen wasn't looking to see Reide's glare. "It's no wonder she hates me, then—"

Stasen flicked up his hand and Reide cut off. The crickets had started up, a chorus of other bugs soon to follow as the semi-light of dusk dipped further into night. Once it got dark, their job would be just about impossible and they risked demotion. If, on the other hand, they caught the wuller before dark, they wouldn't have to camp out to catch it at first light, and they wouldn't have to explain to the captain why they took longer than every other hunting team in the branch to meet their quota.

Reide unslung his bow the instant a rustle sounded to their right and the men exchanged a series of hand signals before they crept away from one another. Stasen would spook it, Reide would shoot. The hardest part now would be to hit in this lighting, with everything in its monochrome state just after sunset. Good thing Reide was an excellent shot.

He'd lost sight of Stasen somewhere to his left and crouched behind the cover of a waist-high bush. From what he could tell, the wuller was somewhere to the right of where Stasen would be in a few seconds, and when Stasen jumped out, it would dart where Reide could get it, and both he and Stasen would sleep in warm beds tonight.

Stasen jumped from the underbrush with a shout and Reide nocked an arrow as a wuller almost the size of either man came bulling out of the woods.

In entirely the wrong direction.

Reide released a frantic shot with wildly wrong trajectory before swinging his bow over his shoulder and leaping from his position as Stasen did the same, sprinting after it. "We were too far off—catch it by the river!"

It was a desperate move, but Stasen broke left from ahead of him to set a trap and Reide mustered the speed to gain on their prey. Stasen was a beast for fifty, but chasing a wuller was a lot to ask.

Reide swung around trees and jumped bushes, catching on branches and scratching his heavy jacket as he did. Luckily, wullers were three hundred pounds and couldn't run quietly, but all things considered, they could run fast. Reide shifted right to herd it before it reached the water and took out his bow again, slowing as the gurgle of the river grew nearer.

The beast let out a puff of steam and reared when it came to the river. Reide shot his best arrow over the hopeless distance and succeeded in scaring it toward Stasen's trap, but as soon as he started forward to continue his pursuit, he tripped on a jutting root and crashed to the ground.

Reide swiveled immediately to free his foot, hissing when his ankle protested, and pulled himself back up into a limping run. "Stasen, you better have that trap—Nak Jagrida!"

He stumbled back from the person laying on the ground at his feet, wrapped in a white blanket and curled up from the biting cold, unmoving. Gaze flicking several times between the wuller's path and the girl, he attempted to calm his nerves and knelt beside her. Then he noticed the blood. Blood staining the blanket. Had she been attacked? How long had she been in this weather?

"Hello? Are you... alive?" Reide touched a hand to her shoulder and leapt away when she moved. Several feet's distance separated them by the time she sat up, her matted hair covering most of her face and shoulders. She brushed it away with pale, shaking fingers and Reide spotted what looked like more crusted blood on her throat. He stiffened.

It was dark now, in the forest, but it did not take a great effort to see the woman was haunted and half-frozen when she said, "Who are you?"

Reide inched closer, daring to extend a tense greeting. "Reide Hafiless... a hunter.... And you?"

The woman looked like she'd hardly heard what he said and returned her gaze to her hands, flexing them in and out of weak fists. "I'm still alive, aren't I?"

"Let's keep you that way, shall we? Let me help you; my partner and I are returning to town anyway—"

"No, don't—"

Reide drew his hand back when she tugged her thin blanket tighter around herself. But she was still freezing to death, and covered in blood, and barely conscious. She only got through about half a sentence of why he shouldn't want anything to do with her before she trailed off and eventually slumped, unconscious again.

"Nope. No dying here, miss, please and thank you." Reide swept her up from the ground and pulled his gloves over her frostbitten fingers before limping them both toward where Stasen would be waiting, with any luck, next to a downed duck-billed wuller.

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There was no wuller waiting to greet Reide and his unconscious friend, but there were the beginnings of a campfire and the skeleton of a branch shelter. With Reide's throbbing foot and aching arms, it was a welcome sight.

A crack of twigs nearby gave Stasen away as he returned to the camp and promptly froze solid upon seeing what Reide was carrying—or rather, whom he was carrying.

He dropped the large branch he'd been dragging. "Explain."

"I found her next to a tree when I was herding the wuller—"

"The wuller that didn't reach my trap?"

"Precisely the one. And I twisted my ankle earlier, so could you possibly clear somewhere next to the fire to set this girl down?"

Stasen spared an extra long moment to stare skeptically at the two before moving his pile of firewood and disappearing back into the forest without another word. He often needed several minutes to formulate his questions so he could ask them all at once, as he always did.

Reide laid the young woman on the ground next to the fire and spared a glance at his swollen ankle, which was now twice as unhappy with him as he was with it. He let out a breath and shed his bow and quiver before checking the woman's temperature with the back of his hand and unrolling her from her bloodied blanket. He held the cloth up to the fire and noted the many, many stains on it, and put it aside.

Next, he brushed her hair away from her neck to see how best to treat her injury. He blinked. Took his canteen and used the water to rub some of the blood away. Squinted in the firelight.

"What are you doing?"

Reide muted his yelp as Stasen once again dropped his branches atop the last one he'd brought.

"Why do you make it sound as if I'm doing something unseemly?" Reide sat back with his canteen on his lap and scowled. "This woman is covered in blood and I'm trying to find her wounds."

Stasen frowned but unhooked his canteen from his belt and tossed it to Reide anyway. "The blood could be from someone else."

"It doesn't look like it." Reide returned his attention to delicately cleaning the woman's neck. "It resembles more a scab, except it flakes right off as if there never actually was a wound."

The two shared for several moments only the sound of the crackling fire and Stasen accommodating for an extra person under the shelter. Reide decided there really wasn't any cut on the lady's neck and tried to discern any other bloodstains on her dark dress.

"She doesn't look Isantadi," Stasen noted, and Reide raised a brow at the designs on her corset and skirts.

"We don't have clothes like this in Isantad, either."

"If I had to guess, I'd say she's from Nasavte."

Reide set down his canteen for the sole purpose of giving Stasen a pointed look. "Well considering Nasavte is the only other country on the other side of this forest, I'd say that's a wonderful guess."

Stasen shrugged. "At least it's a start. Any more injuries you see or are you enjoying it now?"

Reide didn't spare him the glare this time as he screwed the lids back on the canteens. "You never cease to insult me, but no, not so much as a bruise or a temperature. It makes one wonder where all the stains came from."

Reide didn't look, but he knew Stasen was staring, and he could tell his arms were crossed by the way the silence carried on. He could imagine the expression on his face, too. Finally, Stasen said, "You know she could be a ghoul, right?"

"It's possible."

"It would explain the blood."

Reide tossed Stasen his canteen and each man held the other's mildly irritated gaze for a long while over their meager fire, which went untended in lieu of the more interesting focus of the camp, the one wearing foreign fabrics with foreign bloodstains and long, dark hair.

And then, whether ghoul or human or else something much worse, that focus awoke.

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Ciao, children! So this is a little different! A sharp contrast to the previous chapter, for sure. Any thoughts or suggestions? I'd love to hear 'em! ;D

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