Diara sighed, they’d stopped by the lumberyard after they had signaled a threat, only to find no damage or monster present. After signaling the all-clear on the bunker entrahe workers had exited, the leader bringing one of the workers over to talk to them.

  “The call was for a fox spotting towards the southern edge of the clearing, he south-western watchtower. We verified everyone made it into the bunker safely, and no illusioo have been used,” the worker expined. “Everyone was verified by touch before the bunker sealed, and there didn’t appear to be anyo outside.” He then poiowards the forest, “I believe it was around there that I saw it.”

  Sihey now khe sighting was at the southern end, and the approximate location, Diara led the others in search of some evidence of the fox that had been sighted. In the end, it was Harold, the farmer, who had found the fur tuft on a bush. Amilya, the mage, took the tuft and used her magic to get a rough idea of where the former owner was, finding it a fair distao the south-east.

  Due to having begun early in the day, they had plenty of time to follow the trail, heading into the forest towards the direilya poihem towards. Along the way, they eventually ran across a small stream, crossing it in a shallow se and tinuing onward.

  Eventually, Diara signaled for a stop, having spotted a fox in the distance, pulling her sling from her belt along with a lead bullet for it. As she swung it however, the fox gnced over and jumped away, causing her shot to miss when it jumped a sed time as soon as it nded.

  Immediately following the sed nding, the fox bolted into the underbrush away from them. Following the trail of noise and shaking brush, they quickly were led back towards the stream, though the trail had gone dead by then.

  With Diara uo follow the trail, Amilya took ain, her spell pointing bato the forest once again. Following her dires, they ran across a clearing that she immediately stopped them from entering.

  “Careful, there is an illusiohis clearing, it looks like we found a fox, not sure if it is the right ohough...” Amilya excimed, “I see a child’s skeleton and a pit I ’t see into from here, as well as a derance.”

  Marking out the illusion, Amilya sent balls of colored light into the clearing, one above what she cluded was a den, another over the humaon, and a third over a rge pit. That pleted, she told Harold to ehe clearing while they stayed back as support.

  Shortly after entering the clearing, there was a scream from the den, and Amilya spotted a fox leaving it, promptly attag the ball of light iween the fox’s eyes. With a warning shout towards Harold, he spun and brought his staff down with a siing ch where he saw the light. Immediately the illusion of ay clearing faded away, revealing the fox, now with a crushed skull, the humaon, and the pit, which itself ended up being full of bones as well.

  Before they could even ask, Amilya excimed, “No, that wasn’t the same one I am trag. It is good we caught it though.”

  They tinued following Amilya’s dires, leading them towards a clearing with a straree in the middle of a number e bones. Diara promptly noticed the oddity of it swaying out of time with the wind ahem from entering. Skirting the clearing, she found some fmebloom as well, carefully harvesting them and ing them up around a sling bullet. With a quick swing, she hurled the packet into the side of the tree, resulting in the underbrush near it catg fire.

  “Diara, I believe we may be following an awakened instead of the expected twisted creature,” Amilya began, “as it just broke my trag spell, and it certainly isn’t mutated enough given the glimpse we saw before.” She shook her head and tinued, “The only thing I think of is that it is intelligent rather than merely ing, and is learning to use magiow.”

  “If it is intelligent, we o be even more careful, then. We should also try to capture it if we , I’m sure you call on mages from the city to e take a look at it. But we should still tinue; after all, it could still ge, living in the forest,” Diara expined.

  Amilya hen grabbed the fur from her poud wove the trag spell again, turning and pointing the way deeper into the forest.

  As they traveled, they ran across numerous mutated pnts, ranging from simple glowing weeds to more fmebloom, some razorfern, and more obscure types such as a tree that leaked a glue-like substao feed on is and small mammals. They also began to see signs of mutated animals, including a deer—antlers sparkling in the dim light of the forest, catg their attention—that ran before they could stop it.

  After several more recasts of the trag spell, they finally reached the edge of a clearing and stopped in shobsp; Sitting a short distance away from a sleeping immense lizard-like mutated beast was the fox, one eye looking straight at them.

  “Oh hell no…” Harold muttered, shifting nervously as he backed up.

  “Don’t you do it!” Amilya whispered, looking at the fox as it took a deep breath.

  “Shit—” Diara excimed, in the same moment as the fox let out an ear-pierg scream.