//------------------------------//
// Chapter 4:0 - A Stirring in the Undergrowth 
// Story: Camaraderie is Sorcery 
// by FireOfTheNorth 
//------------------------------//


Chapter 4:0 – A Stirring in the Undergrowth


The manticore roared as it flew over the Hunters, out of reach of their swords, and winged its way up into the sky.  
“Oh, I don’t think so,” Swiftwel, a pegasus from the Order of the Eagle, said as she triggered the crossbow on her saddle.  Her weapon shot out a cable that soon tangled itself around the manticore’s hindleg.  
Swiftwel glided down to the ground and tied the other end of the cable to a lone tree before it could grow taut.  Her companion, another pegasus from her Order, descended to the ballista they’d set up nearby and pointed it to the sky.  When the manticore reached the end of the cable and floundered while roaring in defiance, they fired a bolt that struck the manticore’s center mass. The beast tumbled from the sky and crashed down a short distance away.  
The Hunters had no time to take a customary trophy from the corpse in order to collect a bounty on the beast, however, as a pack of scalehounds emerged from the nearby tree line.  The two pegasi drew their swords again and took off toward the beasts.  The creatures had bodies resembling dogs in shape, but they were covered in scales like a dragon and had dragon’s tails. Fortunately, the scales weren’t nearly as hardy as a real dragon’s scales, and the Hunters’ specially forged blades made swift work of them.  
“Rool!” Swiftwel called out to her companion as he impaled a dying scalehound’s head with his sword.  “D’you think they just forgot to tell us what we were getting into, or did they just not know?”  
The nearby village had hired the Hunters to go out to the edge of the Everfree to take care of a “black beast;” it’d turned out to be a bearzerker that had wandered out of the forest, but it hadn’t been the only monster here when they arrived.  The field was now littered with the corpses of monsters—both those who had already been in the area and those who had run out of the Everfree Forest since the fighting started, as if drawn to the Hunters in some way.  
“My money’s on they knew what was out here and figured they don’t have to pay Hunters if they’re dead,” Rool replied cynically.  
As soon as the Hunter finished speaking, something caused the trees of the Everfree Forest to shake and birds flew away in alarm.  Both Hunters turned instinctively toward the sound and trotted in the direction of the trees with swords ready.  
“What d’you reckon it is this time?” Swiftwel asked around her sword as they approached the Everfree Forest.  
“Maybe whatever chased all the other beasties out,” Rool replied.  
“Chased?” Swiftwel asked.  
“Sure,” Rool said.  “Did y’ notice, they were all runnin’ from somethin’, not t’ward us?”  
With that thought hanging in the air, they approached the trees—but there was nothing to see.  Though the forest creaked and groaned, and all looked still, just dark with the unnatural malevolence that the Everfree seemed to project.  
“Maybe we should go for backu—” Swiftwel started to say, but she was cut off as something grabbed her hindleg.  It pulled her to the ground and then up into the air before slamming her into a branch.  
“Swift!” Rool cried, looking up at his compatriot in shock.  Despite the efforts of her wings, she was being dragged around by thorny black vines.  
Rool jumped into the air, slicing at another vine snaking around behind him before severing the one that had grabbed Swiftwel.  Two blades flashed through the darkness between the trees as the vines closed in around them.  Their escape in every direction, including upward, was cut off, but they were Hunters; surely nothing could hold them for long.  They slashed and sliced at the vines, cutting themselves a path, until a magical jolt traveled along the vines and the Hunters vanished.  The vines withdrew from the now-empty prison and spread out along the edge of the Everfree Forest, preparing to expand again soon and complete their purpose.