Chapter 403: CHPT 403: The Mystery they Left Behind.... (Vol3 Prologue Continued....)
The forest. The biome full of mystery and endless dark. Maris, Isaac and Warren traversed through it's muddled wooden and grassy mess with a direct route. Like they were pulled by a string. They'd run the route countless times-- in countless ways. Just in hopes that any Detectives or nearby Heroes didn't catch onto their operation. Not that they would anyway.....
The Detectives were gone. Ronin came in for all of a few weeks after his kids disappearance..... and then the very one that he thought had a part in their disappearance, Claude Grey, disappeared. Now joined by another child of The Nine. His infamy had grown past simply being the possibly murderous wolfboy since his disappearance. And as a result, Ronin searched for him, taking all the Detectives he could within in a radius of who knew how many miles and Districts.
All they knew was, the experts were gone. Essentially turned into bounty hunters.
And what was left? What remained to search for their friends and guard the tree that encased a shredded and broken HellBreeder carcass.....
"Found the Enforcers....." Warren mumbled as he stood behind Isaac and in front of Maris.
The lush greenery of the forest had begun to fade in the wake of a beaten in path, made by the continuous travel of human feet and heavy wheels. The path led north, a few dozen feet where an encampment resided.
Simple, functional. Barriers made of stone at north, west, east and south facing directions. Set up on the barriers, wheeled Cannons with protective runes scribed along the black metal barrels resided, barbed wire fencing bordered it all a few feet beyond the light Artillery stations. And set up around it all was a unit of Enforcers. Unawakened men and women wearing metal and leather armors with blades, shortswords, and auto-bows...supposedly a design derived from Old-World Automatic Rifles. A weapon often traded in bulk in the criminal underworld according to Isaac.
Maris remembered her first meeting with the Enforcers. Back when she was saved from her Village by the NightRunner, AllBlack. They didn't like AllBlack-- as a matter of fact, they didn't like any Heroes. She learned quickly just from spending the night around them that day, they were overworked and understaffed. Exhaustion had gripped the average Enforcers Unit decades before she'd ever encountered them.
Here was no different.
It was still early morning. The sun had been up for no more than half an hour. Based on the Enforcers shifts, at all hours of the day and night, at least a fourth of the Unit was awake and had one person manning a Cannon to every corner while the others slept. After over a month of doing this, they'd begun to falter in the face of lacking action. Naturally-- fortunately. Also fortunately was the fact that SkyHaven wasn't known for having fiercely intelligent Monsters lurking so close to the city. Everything they searched for and guarded against would wake them with a mindless frontal assault. Maris, Isaac and Warren did the opposite.
Even so, when it had all begun, they had to fire of flaming arrows and shake the rivers to take their attention and allow them to sneak in. Now they just had to be quiet. And they were.
Warren sent a gust of wind through the forest floor ahead of them, clearing the grounds of sticks, leaves and any dead things that would crunch beneath their feet. Once the job was done, they dropped to a low crouch and moved through the forest, passed the initial encampment.
Throughout the forest leading to their destination, more encampments remained, some housing Enforcers engaged in Morning workouts, light ground patrols, or entire Units flat out asleep at their stations. It seems the idea of Demons making a resurgence didn't bother them....
Either way it didn't matter to Maris. She wasn't in dire need of help. She had her wits and her swords....
If only her wits were as sharp...
***
After around twenty more minutes of travel. The first Enforcer encampment they'd encountered was a mile off at least. The rest close behind or further depending on directional facing.
The air felt colder. It made her skin tingle and the adrenaline rise from the deepest portions of her lungs. Forest was all that surrounded her still, but now the smells of old blood, coldness and rot hung in the distance. Sure, it was a forest, but it was much more, hidden and grown over. Littered with mysteries and inconsistencies... and centered by a HellBreeder.
It sat in the clearing no more than forty feet out. A massive tree that looked both parts oak and something else entirely. It's branching a hybrid mess of intertwined spikes, curling limbs and barbed vines. The base was thick-- disconnected, a spiraling mess of wooden slithering spikes frozen in time. The bark died and burned by Demonic blood-- marred by claws long enough to be talons based on the depths of the cuts. The forest that surrounded it had become a prison of spikes where the eaten remains of bodies resided, punctured and broken..... frozen over by the Ice that lined the place as if a blizzard ran through the area. It was..... horrific. It was a nightmare painted over reality and left to settle..... even though it seemed like every aspect of the world wanted anything but that.
There were no animals. No sounds but the morning winds. Even the sun seemed further away.
They'd made it.
The crash site.
Maris stood up, stretching-- feeling her leather armor tug and shift against her toned muscles. With a roll of her shoulders she removed her dark blue overcoat, revealing the armor beneath. Light, form fitting. Damaged.
The shortsword at her hip and the longsword at her back felt like an extension of her limbs-- an extension that she knew would shorten the moment she drew them.
"Well. Let's go." She said before pulling up her faceguard and entering the clearing.
Like most weekends, they did the same once they reached the site. They searched.
Maris roamed the grounds, studying the grass, touching the trees, feeling the old violence in the air as she read over the reports for the millionth time. They were public reports-- things people could access, and the paper used. Obviously, information would be withheld.... like the fact that it was in fact a HellBreeder. Even so, some of it made no sense to her.....
"Evidence of Human involvement fades over time and distance. Possibility of survival is next to none, but the lacking sight of Human corpses leads all parties to labeling the two beings in question as missing. Along with the involvement of a mystery set of tracks possibly mixing and intertwining with evidence of human struggle. Case inconclusive in many areas of study."
"Mystery set of tracks...." Maris repeated as she stopped in the middle of the clearing. The massive monstrous tree-cage loomed in front of her. It still made her pulse quicken. With a forceful hand, she reached out, placing her hands against the bark. Eyeing the corpse within, nothing but a busted spine and half shredded limbs. Her eyes moved from the sight and focused on her hand. Seeing how her outstretched fingers matched the traveling pattern of the claw marks in the bark.
Not paws like a wolf or any quadrapedal creature. But hands.... studded by talons.
As she ran her hands over them, a vision of Claude in his Beast Trait form filled her mind. As it always did. A sight to behold to say the least. A transformation more feral and grotesque than when Stacy did the same with her feline companion. It was plausible.
Until she traveled down to the floor where roots erupted from the earth like lightning headed for the sky. Nearby, paw prints indented the grounds, filled with the water from the previous night's snowing that had melted under the rising sun.
The paws were huge. Not as robust and wide as the PitWolf tracks nearby. More slim-- lighter denting's as if the body was lighter. And the tracks only came in two's... but out in the forest, on the trees and against their bark, they came in fours. But one pair was hands.
"You know... I was talking to Conroy yesterday before we left the University..." Isaac said without looking at her as he too studied the ground elsewhere.
"Mhm." Maris replied, half listening.
"He said, according to freelance Tangent Biologist studies, Predatory Wild-Life population numbers in SkyHaven and the surrounding area have dropped significantly."
Maris turned from the tree to face him, it made the back of her neck itch. She ignored it.
"A theory..... since Prey numbers have skyrocketed even though it's winter. And the specific type of Prey leads them to believe a bulk of the missing predators is Canine creatures...."
Isaac suddenly looked at her.
"It's so weird...."
"What?" Maris questioned.
"All of this. I mean.... Demons, Maris. Actual Demons. Why was one stalking Claude-- I mean how did that start?"
"The Snake... remember?" Maris replied.
"Yea but-- where missing a huge chunk of information. From then to now-- how the hell did a Beast Tamer get strong enough to go from killing a low level HellBred Plated Snake, to completely overpowering a HellBreeder?"
"Claude is a strong fighter. And he had Ursula with him..." Maris explained, pointing off to the icey portion of forest around them.
"Ursula would have died here..... she should have.." Isaac explained, suddenly deep in his own thoughts.
"Why would you say that?" Maris asked, anger twisting her usually expressionless face.
Isaac stood up and ran a hand over his braided head, "I didn't mean it like that... I'm sorry. This place is just... it's trying to tell us something, you get what I'm saying? There's a picture here-- a painting. It's just missing so many brush strokes and key features that I can't see the full image. God damn this is frustrating."
"Is that why you've been painting...? Is it not to be happy?"
"I don't know why I'm painting.... I don't even know what I'm painting half the time. Just trying to fill the holes."
"We'll figure it out. It just takes t--"
KBOOM!
The sudden crash of something in the distance had them on their feet and calling out to the only person missing from the clearing.
Warren.
CREATORS' THOUGHTS 
_Avatar0FFury_
_Avatar0FFury_ YO! I'm currently rushing to write these chapters, house is going wild, dog is vibrating from the lack of exercise SO I GOTTA GO FAST ILL PROOFREAD AGAIN WHEN I RETURN BUT UNTIL THEN PLZ ENJOY AND FORGIVE MY LACK OF PROFESSIONALISM!
Weekly Power Status
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-- Power
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