A low moan sounded in the forest, with nobody around to hear. What was it that made those horrifying sounds, was it a tortured ghost, was it a tortured soul? Or was it a young woman, slowly struggling back to wakefulness, after a night, spent in blessed unconsciousness?

Obviously, it was Scarlet, waking up in the late morning, after her experience with the earthen mound. Her body felt as if it her body had been used as a piñata beaten with sticks, but what made her glad was that her head was no longer feeling as if someone had used it as a percussion-instrument. Before clambering down the tree she had slept in, she let Cyca’s crystal drop, making sure that her domination was still going strong. Cyca easily landed on her paws, looking around and making sure that nothing would attack her master.

Climbing down was a challenge, many hours of sleeping in the tree had caused her sore muscles to stiffen, causing her to fall the last meter or so, landing awkwardly, stumbling a little and falling onto her behind. With a lot of moaning and groaning, she struggled to her feet and forced herself to start stretching, slowly working out the kinks in her muscles. As she moved, her mind went back to the day before and, again, she started laughing. She had been careless, lulled into a sense of security, forgetting that while the forests of Verdun were not dangerous in the same way human society was, they had their own dangers. Until she had the power to reign supreme, controlling monsters that could defeat all comers, she would have to keep her wits about her. And likely even then, being careless here would kill her as fast as it would have in the slums.

She ate some of her foraged food and started on her way. The day was cloudy, preventing her from using the sun to navigate and her panicked flight the day before had left her without any idea where to go. After a moment of contemplation, she decided that Crysna had shown an uncanny ability to find water, so she changed monsters, letting Crysna wrap around her arm and explaining what she wanted.

“Now, Crysna, you found water for me before, right. Do you remember the two rivers we walked along? Can you find them?” she asked, adding some mental imagery to help convey her meaning. Her snake started hissing, his tongue darting out, as if tasting the air, and their mental connection gave her an impression of direction.

Shrugging, she decided that following that impression was certainly no worse than picking a direction at random, likely walking circles, and started walking. Having learned her lesson, she looked at her scanner much more often, about every ten to fifteen minutes, hoping that a rise in radiation would warn her of dangerous areas before encountering another walking hill. Even while thinking that, she realised how lucky she had been that the monster she had encountered had been some kind of ambush predator, almost like a carnivorous plant. Any other type of monster, with that kind of power, would have hunted her down and either killed her outright or drained her crystals of their power, an idea she found disturbing.

Curious, she examined her feelings in that regard, her attachment to the two monsters she was connected to. The idea to lose them, or, even worse, to use them as distractions to get away, something she had considered using Keera for, on more than one occasion, caused her mind to shudder. She became conscious of the fact that she was subconsciously considering them part of her, like her limbs, and sacrificing them was as palatable as cutting off an arm to use as a distraction for a carnivore. She continued pondering that curious tidbit, coming to the conclusion that it was due to the continued mental connection and control she had over them, as if they actually were part of her mind. She wondered if she would be able to let go of that contact, without deliberate and concentrated effort. Controlling them had become a habit, like that moment after waking up in which she made sure that her surroundings were safe.

As she walked, she kept doing what she had been doing the last few days, looking for wild crystal monsters, so her controlled monsters could become stronger. Whenever she found a tracce, she checked her scanner to prevent running into dangerous areas, before following it, hunting down the monster with a smile on her face.

She continued that pattern for another two days, following Crysna’s nose or the sun, whenever she could see it, sleeping in trees and foraging for as much food as possible. Sadly, her two favourite activities, sleeping und hunting had been mediocre those two days. There had simply been few traces to follow, only five of them, bringing her total to twenty-four crystals, something she blamed on the fact that most of the time, she had been in green-territory. Three of the crystals had been on the first day after her meeting with the earthen mound, two the day after, and, in the early afternoon, three days after meeting the mound, she had still not found a crystal that day. Sleeping, on the other hand, had been restless, dreams of tentacles and vines, wrapping around her, ripping her apart, had haunted her. Intellectually, she knew that it was because of her experience with the earthen mound, but sadly, that knowledge didn’t stop the nightmares.

Finally, after those two days of wandering, she came upon a sight she thought to have seen before, a stream of slow-moving water, filled with fat carps, one of which was soon on the bank, flopping on land, to be her lunch. She was quite sure that the area was a stretch of the Alb, maybe five kilometers north of Albertina. Smiling, she noticed that she had to have overshot, at some point passing the town by, without knowing. Not that it really mattered, her plans had worked out quite well.

After a cursory search for danger, she stripped off and slipped into the water, enjoying to wash off six days of sweat and grime. As soon as she felt clean, she made lunch, letting the fire and what little sun shone through the clouds, dry her body. Once her body was dry and lunch was eaten, she decided that she would head back to Albertina.

Her mind surprised her, when she started wondering how Keera had done. She shrugged, decided that her interest was due to the fact that she wanted to recruit Keera into following her and the fact that she was the only human on Verdun with whom she had spent any real time. Maybe, there was a part of her that needed some human interaction, or at least enjoyed it. Shaking her head, she packed her things into her backpack before heading back into the Alb, laughing that she had just dried off and was now going back into the water, to cross the river. It was a little deeper, the Alb was not as wide here as at the spot where she had crossed before, but she managed to get to the other side without dumping her pack into the river.

On the other side, she dried herself off and started her track back to Albertina, considering how much she should show the Doctor. Scanning her two crystals had shown that both of them had gained quite a lot of energy, but neither of them had undergone a macro-change, as the Doctor had explained might happen. To her, that simply meant that she would have to hunt more. Her vigilance told her to buy something cheap from the Doctor, maybe some storage containers, and head back out in a day or two, this time with Keera. Maybe hinting at the fact that she needed to collect more crystals to pay her quota, even if she could already pay her share. There was simply nothing that interested her in Albertina, nothing that would allow her to strengthen herself, only humans to be wary off, preventing her from relaxing.

She reached the clearing without incident and maybe a kilometer before reaching town, she started to actively search for presences, using her psionic powers. It was something she had avoided before, not because it was strenuous but because it gave her position away.

But now, she wanted those in town to know about her, that someone was coming back to town. Not only that, out in the wilderness, she was relatively confident to avoid humans, thanks to her passive perception and concealment, unless they were actively going after her. If that was the case, it would be a contest of ability and while she had good training, those who might hunt her, had been on Verdun for longer, learning in the school of hard knocks. It wasn’t a contest she wanted to take part in, despite her self-confidence.

On the clearing north of town, she pushed Crysna back into his crystal and putting it into her pouch. Once she was near the gate, she called out a greeting, stating her name and asking for entry. An unknown head appeared, taking a look at her and vanishing again. A minute or so later, the head appeared again, shouting a greeting and telling her that he would open the gate. Part of her wondered about the actions, but she quickly decided that asking about them might entangle her into the local politics, which she didn’t want. It would likely happen, at some point, but the longer she could postpone it and the more power she could gather before, the better.