With a shake of her head, Eva went out to the edge of the camp, looking for anything in the forest floor that might lead to some hint as to where Shalise went.
There were a few sets of footprints going out of the camp. Most of them ended at fallen trees or berry bushes that had been picked mostly clean.
One path led away from the camp. Eva followed it for a minute before realizing that it wasn’t going to stop anywhere soon. Blinking her way back to camp, she stopped just in front of Zoe.
“There’s a path over here. I’m going to follow it.”
“You’re going to get lost.”
Eva shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. If I get lost, I’ll teleport away and have Wayne come tell you that I’m back at Brakket.”
At least, assuming that Lynn Cross hadn’t warded against banishment. But she probably hadn’t done so. The only reason to ward against banishment is if she wanted to fight demons. Physically fight them. Or to stop them from teleporting away.
“And what if you get into trouble?”
“I’ll have Arachne with me,” Eva said, placing a hand on Arachne’s arm.
“Because you’ve never found yourself in trouble with Arachne before.”
Eva shared a quick look with Arachne. “Well, things usually work out. Except that one time.”
“Not very reassuring.”
“Unless you have a better idea?” Eva asked with a half-grin. “Someone needs to stay behind in case they come back. Are you going to go pick up Wayne? Or Genoa and Juliana?”
Zoe shook her head, frowning. “We still haven’t ruled out the possibility of this being a trap. We definitely can’t bring Genoa into this.”
“She was all ready to fight earlier when that guild guy showed up. I’m sure she’s thought about ways to defend herself while in her wheelchair.”
“Oh, I’ve no doubt about that. If Genoa doesn’t have backup plans and plots about how to avoid falling into traps, I’ll suspect that she has been replaced with a doppelganger. Especially traps related to demons,” Zoe added with only a slight glance towards Arachne. “But that’s just another reason why she should be backup and not in the thick of things if something does go down.”
“So unless you want to come with me and leave the camp unattended, I’m going to wander off for a time.”
“Just,” she started, closing her eyes and rubbing her forehead. “Just be careful.”
“My middle name,” Eva said as she turned. “Come on Arachne. Let’s go on a walk.”
While the campsite was clear of most brush and forest debris, only having some trodden down grass and flowers as its foliage, the moment Eva walked away, she found her arms and legs being almost constantly scraped by bushes. It wasn’t walking through a completely untended path. Someone had walked this way before, but not often enough to make everything smooth and flat.
Luckily for Eva, her legs and part of her arms were covered in smooth chitin armor. It was enough to brush off the stray twigs without a second thought. Using her hands, Eva could knock away anything that was in the path of more vulnerable parts of her body. Her head, for example.
Ten minutes of following the pathway had Eva wondering just where it was headed. Maybe another grove of berry bushes or other fruit. Maybe a small garden. Somewhere Shalise or Lynn would have needed to visit regularly but not often.
At least, she thought that was the case until she reached the end of the path.
“There’s nothing here,” Arachne said.
A tree stood right in the center of the path that Eva had been following. Moving around it, Eva found herself stuck in thick brush. Not the kind of stuff that anyone would drudge through on a regular basis.
The path simply ended. No gardens. No extra paths. The tree had nothing special about it. Eva wasn’t a botanist, she couldn’t name the type of tree. It had bark, was tall, and had green needles higher up. Like almost every tree in the area.
“No, wait,” Eva said, just as she was beginning to think that she had mistaken a natural formation in the forest for a human-made pathway.
Lifting a hand, Eva brushed over a portion of the bark. There was a thin line in the wood that looked somewhat unnatural. Tracing a finger over it, she turned to Arachne. “Does this look like an arrow to you?”
Bending down, Arachne got up close. “Are you sure you’re not reading too much into an odd vein on the tree?”
“It looks scratched in. Like with a fingernail,” Eva said. Using her pointer finger, Eva traced an arrow into the tree just above the existing mark. Her scratching was much deeper, more prominent as it stood out against the rest of the tree. Frowning at her own hand, Eva shook her head. “A human fingernail,” she amended.
Stepping off to the side, Eva stared. Even with the arrow—or what she believed was an arrow—she couldn’t see anything in that direction. Just more forest, brush, and trees.
Arachne stepped forwards, reaching out to a stray branch.
A broken branch, bent in the direction the arrow was facing.
Arachne looked back to Eva without speaking a word. She gave a quick shrug of her shoulders before walking on.
Keeping an eye out for any other oddities, Eva followed after her.
Every few feet, Arachne would point out another broken branch or bit of brush that had been trampled down ever so slightly. A bit of grass that had been bent in almost a footprint or a bunch of leaves that had been knocked to the forest floor.
The trail of broken plants led straight to a wall of bushes almost as high as Eva was tall. Both she and Arachne paused in front of it.
“Over the top?” Eva asked.
Jumping halfway up a nearby tree, Arachne peered over the wall of shrubberies. “I don’t see anything that might be more trail,” she said after a moment.
Frowning, Eva glanced around. There was a bent tree branch just a few feet away, so someone running through the forest must have come at least this far.
A pale lavender leaf caught Eva’s attention. It stuck out with all the greenery surrounding it. At first she thought it was a flower of some sort, but getting closer, she noticed a floral pattern on it. Eva didn’t pay attention to flowers all that often, but she was reasonably confident that most flowers didn’t have pictures of flowers on them.
Plucking up the bit of cloth from where it had been draped over a twig, Eva held it up for Arachne to see as she scanned the area around where the cloth had been.
“Another broken branch,” Eva said. She took a few careful steps, watching for any other signs of someone having passed through.
Until she had found the scrap of torn cloth, she had been thinking that this path was her imagination. Perhaps an animal—a deer or something—had passed through. That would explain the broken branches without needing a human to be around. The arrow in the tree could have just been a natural mark. She could have been searching for nothing.
Now she was almost certain that either Shalise, Lynn Cross, or their agitator would be at the end of this path.
The path wasn’t such a straight line anymore. More than once, Arachne and Eva had to stop, gather their bearings, and look for anything that looked like a clue. Ten minutes of searching and Eva came across what they had been looking for.
Sitting on the forest floor, hunched over with her head to her knees and brown hair cloaking her face, Shalise stared off into the distance.
She didn’t stay sitting for long. A twig snapped underneath Arachne’s foot, sending a loud crack through the otherwise peaceful woods. Jumping to her feet, Shalise pointed her wand with one hand.
Two fingers on her other hand pressed together, sending a bolt of lightning straight towards Arachne.
Fear settling in as a chill in Eva’s stomach, she watched the bolt move through the air as if in slow motion. Not willing to lose Arachne so soon, Eva jumped. Unfortunately, she was moving in slow motion too. Her dive didn’t make it to Arachne in time.
Electricity crackled across Arachne’s carapace, focusing on her chest before darting down into the earth. A few loose leaves caught fire around her feet. Arachne had her mouth open, twisted into a frown as she glanced down at her chest.