One thing bothers me.
Predators usually scatter people. But this thing? It's driven them inward. Looking at the abandoned residential areas, it's clear the villagers are being herded. That takes intent. I try to tell myself I'm overthinking it.
I've been wrong before. Still, I remember the conversation we had with the village elders while we were being hired to kill the beast. The beast had even killed their Crown Prince, they said.
The meeting hall had once been a pavilion. The curve of its roof was wrong for defense, graceful instead of practical, built to echo music rather than withstand a siege. I've seen villages born poor; this was not one of them. The structure was too decorative, the proportions too deliberate. This place had been loved once, enough to make it beautiful before it ever needed to be strong.
Inside, the hall was crowded but quiet. Villagers lined the walls instead of filling the benches, leaving the center space open. Elders sat stiff-backed, hands folded over canes. Hunters smelled of damp fur and iron. Farmers wore soil into their skin. And beneath every breath, beneath every shuffle of boots, was the same unspoken fear:
The forest feeds us. The forest kills us.
"Did you find a lair?" I asked.
The elder hesitated. "No."
"Nothing?" I pressed. "No bones? No nesting?"
"No," he repeated. "The signs… they just stop."
"Stop?" Vargen, my empty-headed team leader, echoed. "You mean they disappear?"
"Yes," the elder confirmed.
Vargen laughed. "That's just called bad tracking."
The elders didn't join him.
"We tried traps," another added quickly. "We dug pits, planted spikes, fires. They were destroyed."
"Triggered?" Vargen asked.
"No," the elder whispered. "Avoided."
***
Now, here at the forest edge, camping with the Whispering Guild's worst, I felt my the last remains of my pride on gwtting this mission pride slowly unraveling. And the wet, rhythmic thuds coming from Vargen's tent didn't help.
"Yes. Yes! YES!!!" Kiera kept yelping. Vargens grunting joined in the harmony. A brief break and shuffling signaled that they had switched positions. Again.
He was a man blinded by his own loins, and Kiera, with her practiced sighs and sharpened tongue, was content to let his mediocrity continue as long as she had the commander's ear and his bed.
Jerrik and Filk, our other mercenaries, keep winking, trying to catch my eye, hoping for a taste of whatever Vargen is having. I huff, pushing a stray braid behind my ear. Not a chance. I'm not prudish; I just have a mission. It was given to me by the Guildmaster, who also happened to be my father. Jerrik and Filk couldn't handle me anyway. My tastes would break most men.
"God, she's loud," I muttered, rolling my eyes. In the meantime, I have to prove myself and make something of the most incompetent team in the Whispering Guild and then I could pick a team of my own. Either that or give up this career and get a scribe position in the guild. My 5'9" curvy frame was built for combat, honed by years and years of training. No way.
Jerrik finally caught my eye and winked at me. I gave him a toothed smile.
"Not a chance, Jer." I said. Filk shoved him, laughing at him and he turned towards the flames annoyed.
The fire was low, embers glowing like distant stars, smoke drifting up to settle in the low-hanging branches above. Vargen exited his tent, sweaty, with Kiera by his side, whispering in each other's ear and laughing. The forest was finally quiet aside from the occasional crack of a twig and the whisper of leaves in the wind.
I sat a little apart, back straight, hands resting on my pack, not bothering to remove the look of judgement from my face when I met his eyes. The others had claimed the logs closest to the fire. We'd been tracking this thing for days and were still speculating on what kind of animal it was.
"So, what do you think men?" Vargen settling, half sitting on a log beside the men at the fire. "What manner of beast is it?"
"They said it's a dragon, Vargen." Jerrik said, smiling amused, a largely built red-haired man whose stature doesn't affect either his stealth or swiftness with his blades. He was seated next to Filk, bald, lanky, good with knives and always smiling like he wanted to sell something.
"A dragon. We"ll be fighting mermaids next. Country folk do love their stories. Remember the Hellhound of Hades that turned out to be a wolf?"
The men laughed.
I'd read about that while training to join a team of my own. It was one of Vargen's easy wins. Of course, I didn't know then this would be the first team I would be given.
I didn't know what manner of beast it was. However I knew it would be idiotic to dismiss an entire village.
I spoke up, "I followed the tracks north. It doesn't move randomly. It seems to observe for days before attacking. That doesn't feel like instinct. It seems methodical."
Vargen tilts his head, studying me as if my words were an interesting decoration. "Methodical, huh? Noted, Miss."
I watched the shadow of his hand flick against the hilt, his attention already moving on to something else. Fine. I let it go.
Jerrik, the largest of the men, cracked a grin at me. "You spent the day in the woods with the mud and trees, I take it? Got your hands dirty, Pretty Hagar? You need to have more fun like Miss Kiera here. Let us men, take care of you."
I said nothing, focusing on my map. He smirked, satisfied, and turned back to Vargen.
"We need a plan," Vargen said finally. "Tomorrow, we take the northern ridge. Cover the approaches. Wait for it. Kill it."
I leaned forward slightly. "If you camp the ridge and wait, you'll be vulnerable. It's not just size and teeth. It uses the terrain. I counted—"
"God, she needs to get laid," Kiera purred flicking her auburn hair behind her and relaxing against the tree in a practiced suggestive pose. I had no idea what Kiera's contribution to the team was apart from fondling Vargen's balls. It was bad enough I had to deal with men who saw me as a pretty distraction at best and at worst, a liability. Dealing with that alongside a woman ready to enforce that narrative was a cruel punishment I didn't deserve in the slightest.
Vargen said, voice smooth, careful, with a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes: "And what do you suggest we do, little strategist? Sit here while you point out where we might go wrong? This is what we do. Sit back and learn, okay?" Then Vargen went ahead muttering under his breath, complaining about why my father insisted I join them.
I said nothing, keeping my posture neutral. I didn't need him to take me seriously. I just needed to succeed so I could pick my own damn team next time.
Jerrik laughed softly. "Stop it, Vargen. Miss Hagar is good for the team, pretty to look at."
I let the comment slide past me. I had seen this all before, a hundred times in different forms. They had no idea the training I underwent since I learned how to walk. They believed this was my first mission with no idea that I had been my father's secret weapon, undertaking missions since I was sixteen. This wasn't my first mission, this was my first mission with a team.
I was willing to play along. Whatever it takes to get this team to work so I can prove myself and be given my own agency.
"I've mapped likely paths," I said finally, voice calm, measured. "If it circles back toward the village, it will follow the ridge, not the valley. It uses cover when it needs to, retreats when threatened. If you force it along a single path, it will exploit any gap."
They exchanged glances. Vargen nodded, thoughtful, then he said, "We'll see. Ridge first. Cover the paths. Easy enough."
I have to stop this man from getting us killed, I thought.
I pulled out a small notebook from my pack, sketching the terrain as I had seen it from my walk. Ridge, valley, creek bends, broken branches. Subtle landmarks the monster seemed to favor. I made a note of each. If they ignored it, fine. I would adjust on the fly.
Vargen glanced at the sketches, just long enough to raise an eyebrow. "Interesting," he said in a passing acknowledgment.
"Interesting," I echoed in my head. It was, after all.
The night crept in, cold and close, the fire had burned down to embers, and the forest darkened. The others leaned back, joking quietly, tossing flirtatious glances my way now and then. I announced–
"I'm going back to track it", and left the camp.
I moved through the gloom, my boots clicking softly against damp stone, the silence of the woods weighing heavier than my sword.
I paused before a massive oak that caught my attention, its bark scorched black in a spiral pattern that defied the natural path of a forest fire. I stripped the leather from my right hand, exposing a palm marked by thin, dark scars darker than the rest of my chocolate skin the price of a lifetime of touching things that should have stayed forgotten. It wasn't unusual for a mercenary to have magical abilities. In fact, most magic wielders chose combat related careers. Mine wasn't exactly useful on the battlefield – the ability to touch objects and see into their past – but it was useful for investigation.
I pressed my hand to the charcoal.
The world tilted. The smell of pine and damp earth vanished, replaced by the suffocating stench of sulfur and ozone. The forest around me disappeared and gave way to a nightmare.
In the vision, the sky didn't was blotted out. A shadow passed over the oak a shape so vast it didn't seem like an animal, but a piece of the night sky fallen to earth. My knees buckled as the psychic feedback hit me. The thing moved with the terrifying grace of a god. I felt the heat radiating from its scales, a shimmering black and gold hide and breath that turned the very air into a kiln.
The vision shifted. I saw the beast's eye as it banked low a vertical slit of infinite, reptilian awareness. It wasn't just hunting; it was scouting. It was waiting for something.
I yanked my hand back, gasping as the present rushed back in a cold wave.
"Idiots," I whispered to the empty woods, my voice trembling. "They think they're hunting a beast. They don't realize the beast is already watching the camp."
I looked back toward the path I'd taken. I should return. I should drag Vargen out of his bed by his hair and force him to look at the scorched earth. But I knew the look in his eyes the arrogance of a man who had many small wars and convinced himself he was invincible.
I stood, sheathing my hand back into its leather casing.
The canopy above groaned as a sudden wind whipped through the skeletal branches, but I didn't look up. My eyes were fixed on a patch of ferns that hadn't moved with the wind.
I didn't hesitate. I lived by the mantra that if you saw it first, you struck it first.
I lunged. I was a blur of steel and leather, my short-sword clearing the ferns and slicing at my target. I expected a panicked villager or a starving wolf; instead, my blade met a staff of weirwood with a bone-jarring crack.
Standing in the dapple-gray light was a man. A woodsman by his dressing, who looked less like a woodsman and more like a fever dream of the old gods. His hair was a spill of molten gold against the dark green of the thicket, and his eyes a startling, luminous amber held the terrifying clarity of a hawk's. He was beautiful in a way that felt dangerous, like a polished blade glinting in the sun.
"A bit jumpy for a scout, aren't you?" the stranger remarked. His voice was a low, melodic rumble that sent an involuntary shiver down my spine one that had nothing to do with fear and everything to do with the raw, magnetic pull of his presence.
"I don't like being followed," I spat, masking my strange, sudden attraction with a feral snarl.
I stepped into his guard, feinting a high strike before sweeping my leg low. He was fast, stepping back with a fluid elegance that made my movements feel leaden. He didn't use a sword; he used the momentum of his body, parrying my thrusts with the weirwood staff as if he were performing a dance.
Hagar felt the heat rising in my chest. He was mocking me with his grace. I changed my rhythm, dropping my center of gravity and using a mercenary's dirty tricks. I threw a handful of dry needles at his face, and as he blinked, I slammed the pommel of my sword into his solar plexus and hooked his ankle.
He hit the forest floor with a heavy thud, the wind whistling out of him. In a heartbeat, I was over him, the tip of my steel pressed firmly against the hollow of his throat.
"Yield," I growled, my breath coming in ragged gasps. Up close, his beauty was even more staggering; his skin seemed to radiate a faint, unnatural warmth, and those golden eyes weren't filled with the terror of a man faced with death. They were filled with amusement.
"You're quite efficient," he choked out, a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth.
"Who the hell are you and what you doing in the forest?,'" I snapped, my eyes scanning his attire. He wore a cotton shirt large for his frame, ripped in several places, and worn-out leathers trousers of such fine quality they looked like a second skin.
"I live here, mercenary," he said, his voice regaining its steady, resonant hum. He gestured vaguely to the ancient trees around them. "This forest is my home. You, on the other hand, are a trespasser."
My brow furrowed. I slowly withdrew the blade but didn't sheathe it. "You live here? Alone? Then you're either a madman or the luckiest soul in the kingdom. There is a dragon in these woods."
The stranger stood, brushing the dirt from his clothes with a nonchalance that infuriated me. He looked at my heavy crossbow and the specialized harpoon on my back, and a dry, hollow laugh escaped his lips.
"A dragon?" he echoed, his golden eyes flashing with a sudden, piercing intensity. "And you intend to kill it with that? A bit of sharpened iron and some hempen rope?"
"I am Hagar. A Mercenary of the Whispering Guild," I said, my voice hardening. "I've brought down men and monsters that would turn your hair white. If anyone can bring it down, it's us. You should head to the village. It isn't safe for civilians."
The man took a step toward my, closing the distance until I could smell the scent of him not the musk of a dirty woodsman, but something like ozone and sun-baked stone. He leaned down, his face inches from mine, his gaze tracing the lines of my face with a terrifying intimacy.
"Go home, Mercenary," he whispered, his voice no longer mocking, but heavy with a warning that felt like a physical weight. "You are playing with matches in a cathedral made of dry parchment."
Excuse me? The arrogance!
He turned his back on me, walking toward a wall of impenetrable briars. "Leave now, while the woods still find you beneath its notice. This is a foolish mission, and the dead make for very poor heroes."
Before I could shout a retort, he stepped into the shadows of the brush and simply... vanished. The ferns didn't even rustle.