It was curious, the monster, she remembered that despite the haze filling her brain. It was curious and only killed things to see how they worked on the inside. It had chased her before and had the chance to kill her but it hadn’t, maybe she was more interesting to it alive. She stood on a hill and it stood on the ground below but still it was tall enough to look down on her, so it did, with those small empty eyes. She looked up at it, fearing that any moment the other monster chasing her would catch up, but instead she looked up into the eyes of the Umberlago and smiled with her scarred black lips. Its eyes seemed to fix on those, on the scars, and as she stood there, trembling with fear and cold, the Umberlago’s huge claws lifted up from the ground and came slowly down to touch her scars. It was curious after all.

She heard movement behind her, the sound of the enraged medusae crashing down the hill after her. She spoke to the Umberlago, its great claws retracting as her mouth opened. She didn’t know why she spoke, even if it could understand her she’d be lying all the same. But she spoke anyway and the Umberlago listened.

“I am the prisoner of the medusae,” she lied. “I am their captive to bear their monstrous children and to never escape. I am truly lost.”

The monster lifted its gaze to look up at the huge medusae barrelling down the hill toward them. Rana was close to it now, she could make out the grey fur hidden behind the mist that gathered around it and see the great black claws dripping with dew from the forest floor. The great claws had felt cold on her face when the monster had touched her and it felt cold even through her clothes when they curled around her body and lifted her from the hillside. The Umberlago whisked her away into the mist.

Sessryn awoke to pain. She’d been growing old and trekking through the Wilderness for days had not been kind to her but it was nothing compared to the pain she felt now. They’d dragged her through the forest apparently, dragged her from that witch’s hut back to the cave of the medusae. The woman wasn’t a witch, she remembered. That had been a lie, she was a medusae disguised as a witch to capture them with the cookies. The cookies had been poisoned, the medusae, Nettie, had eaten them yet they’d been poisoned anyway. Another lie. There seemed to be no end to the lies in this godforsaken forest.

She rolled over and realised she was on a cold stone floor in a cold stone cell. Light came from off up the hallway and illuminated the walls of the cell that were etched with those same spiralling symbols, the medusae’s symbols.

She sat up slowly, wincing at the pain in her body, it was a struggle to keep from crying out. But she must have made some noise because someone she couldn’t see from another cell heard her moving and responded, with a voice she recognised.

“You’re awake,” Nettie said grimly and Sessryn winced in surprise and pain. She laid her back against the wall and tried to sit comfortably. She wanted to ignore this woman who’d tricked her. She didn’t want to have to deal with any more lies or magic or whatever other bullshit this forest had to offer. But she knew she had to talk to her, she had to find out as much as she could, even if it turned out to be false. So after sitting against the wall swallowing her pride for some time she responded.

“You’re locked up too?” she asked coldly.

Nettie chuckled with her homely voice. “Yes,” she replied sadly. “Yes I am. As it turns out bringing back just one woman, especially one so old, wasn’t enough to guarantee my freedom, so here I am with you.”

Sessryn felt hope, Nettie hadn’t brought back Rana. She remembered that Rana hadn’t eaten any of the cookies, perhaps she’d avoided the poison, perhaps she’d escaped.

“What happened to R-, to my companion?”

Nettie chuckled some more. “Oh don’t worry we know her name, her friend was forced to tell us everything. Well, I say us but I suppose I’m as much of an outsider now as you.” Nettie sighed. “I don’t know what happened to Rana. She was taken by the Umberlago before I could capture her.”

“By the...” Sessryn struggled to remember, “the monster from the mist?”

“Yes, the monster. I’ve seen it take things before, to study them I suppose, but I’ve never seen them return, so I wouldn’t hold out too much hope for Rana.”

Sessryn sat in the cell and tried to drown out the many pains of her body with her thoughts but her thoughts were no comfort either.

Rana was still dizzy from inhaling the poisonous fumes of the cookies and that, combined with the low air pressure from the height the Umberlago took her to caused her to pass out. When she awoke she was incredibly woozy and it took her a long time to realise what she was looking at.

She was looking at the world. She was atop a mountain, a huge flat mountaintop and before her was the Wilderness stretching off ahead. She could see the end of the Wilderness and the Greenlands beyond, the farms and kingdoms and countries little more than specks from where she lay. She feared to go too close to the edge of the cliff and instead she rolled over slowly to look back. Beyond her more mountains towered ever higher and higher, stretching off into the distance as the mist took them. She was at the top of the world and she wasn’t even close to being at the top of the Wilderness.

It was difficult to breathe and she felt incredibly dizzy and strange but she crawled to the side of the mountain anyway and began to search for a way down. Looking at the drop almost made her feel sick it was so far but it wasn’t a sheer drop. Had she been in a better state and not been trembling with fear of falling she decided that she’d be able to climb down. Even so after looking for only a second she crawled back to the middle and lay there terrified. She did not want to climb down that mountain.

After a few hours of lying atop the mountain and trying to breathe the Umberlago returned. Its claw appeared over the side and then the rest of it, led by those empty eyes. It carried with it a boar that seemed small and helpless in its huge claw. Rana scrambled to her feet as it set the boar down on the mountaintop with her and then settled back against the grey sky to watch.

The boar, freed from the claws entrapping it immediately ran to the edge of the cliff looking for a way down. It was grunting and huffing in fear and Rana could tell it was in a state of panic. She backed away while still trying to stay as far from the edge as she could and put her hand on the hilt of her sword. The Umberlago had blessedly left her with all of her possessions.

The boar quickly decided there was no way down the mountain and instead spun to face Rana and the Umberlago behind her. It was terrified and panicked and it must have seen her as a threat as it ran right at her, heedless of the terrifying drop awaiting them on all sides.

Rana drew her sword and let her instincts wash away all her fear and dizziness. She was being attacked, she knew what to do when she was being attacked. She crouched on the ground and as the boar reached her thrust all her weight into the sword, driving it cleanly through its brain. The boar died and they both slid and then panic returned as she desperately tried to extract herself from it before they both tumbled over the edge.

She flailed and scrabbled and beneath her the ground scraped past, loose stones and gravel easing their inevitable passage toward the edge. The boar was so heavy and if it had been difficult to breathe before it was impossible now. Her brain clouded with terror and panic as she flailed helplessly and inneffectively. She was so terrified as she gasped for breath that she barely noticed as they came to a stop less than a metre from the edge.

Eventually she extricated herself and desperately scrambled back to the middle of the mountaintop, leaving the boar with her sword stuck in it. There she sat and looked up at the Umberlago which was looking down at them both with its curious empty eyes.

She wondered if it wanted her to talk again. She couldn’t think of anything to say and was still trying to breathe properly so she said nothing at all. Then it turned away and disappeared on its long legs down the mountain. Rana sat and trembled and began to notice the many gashes the boar had given her. She went through her pack, which she’d miraculously kept with her this whole time, and took out needle and thread. Slowly, painstakingly, she began to stitch herself back together.

The Monster of the Ways stalked through the Wilderness up and up toward the Cave of the Medusae. The world had been ruled by humans for so long that it had forgotten their distinctive scent but this forest was thick with it, this forest was their home. It salivated at the thought of devouring them all.

It was on the trail of one now, a young medusae, sent out to scout the surroundings in a hidden, camouflaged form. The medusae were the masters of lies and deception and they could hide themselves from almost anything. Almost anything.

The monster had been hunting medusae since there had been medusae to hunt. It knew all their old tricks. They could hide their shapes by changing them in time with the swaying of the trees. They could hide their bodies by adopting shifting patterns of colours and camouflage. They could move silently through their forest and even mask their scent by overlaying it with the scents of others, but the monster could still smell them. The monster could still find them.

The young scout was crouched atop a tall rock disguising their frail form in the colours and shapes of the rock. The monster moved toward and in days gone by it would have fallen upon them silently and devoured them before they knew they were hunted at all. But these days the monster was no longer silent, these days it had the chain. The magical chain it had originally acquired to kill a sorceress with now wrapped and wove itself hopelessly entangled among the monster’s many legs. The chain dragged on the ground and bumped into things letting the medusae hear the monster long before it was in lunging distance.

Their colours shifting and twisting, still desperately trying to blend in with the surroundings, the medusae ran. Leaping from their perch and sprinting away into the forest. The monster gave chase. The forest flew past it as it bounded and slithered after its prey. The chain slowed it down but it was still much to fast for anything on human legs to outrun it. It drew closer, closer still, as the medusae frantically bounded through the forest.

The monster became aware of a new scent, a stronger scent. Something huge and dangerous, and everywhere. But it ignored it, it was so close to catching its prey. Then the two empty eyes appeared out of the sky and both medusae and monster screeched to a halt in surprise. There were many monsters of the Wilderness and the Umberlago was one that even the Monster of the Ways feared. An unknowable, ancient creature that tore apart creatures, strong or weak, for its own amusement. With the chain the monster was unsure it could outrun it.

But the Umberlago was uninterested in the monster, instead its great claw descended from the sky and gathered up the petrified medusae. Then it wandered off with its new prize, leaving the monster to lurk in the forest with nothing. The monster slithered away to find somewhere it could hide from such creatures. It had been a long time since it had had to worry about things more dangerous than it.

The Panther stalked through the forest just like their namesake, slowly picking out the trail of the Jackal, the young medusae who had not returned from scouting. The humans were gone and the presence of the Umberlago had been keeping most other monsters out of the area meaning there was, as far as they knew, no reason the Jackal would not have returned. Of course, the Umberlago could have taken them. It was an unpredictable creature, but in the past it had taken a medusae apart and since then seemed to have little interest in them.

So the Panther followed the trail searching for any hints as to new threats that had entered their territory. And they found one. They did not recognise the marks of the dragged chain in the mud but they recognised the footprints. The nameless monster that had decimated the medusae all those years ago in Meduramanth. Now it was here and now they no longer had the blades that so terrified it, lost to civil wars and humans long ago. The Panther abandoned the search for the Jackal, they would have to find their own way home if they were alive at all. The presence of the monster made that unlikely.

Rana sat atop the mountain and stretched her leg, testing her stitches. She had to be careful but they would hold, she could climb down the mountain. Taking a long deep breath and fighting against the panic of not getting much air when doing so she stood up and did up her pack for the last time before turning to face the side of the mountain she deemed easiest to climb down. It wasn’t too steep, she knew in the right frame of mind it wouldn’t be that hard to descend, but it would be difficult to enter that frame of mind up here.

She walked to the edge of the mountain and saw the Umberlago emerging from the treeline below, scaling the cliffside easily with its huge claws and eerily light body that always seemed to be floating among the clouds. She backed away from the edge and returned to the centre. She didn’t know if it would be angry at her trying to escape, she didn’t know if it would be angry that she’d killed the boar. She didn’t know anything about it and had decided that doing as little as possible was likely the best course of action. Then it crested the mountain and set down a medusae.

The two of them stared at each other while the Umberlago once again retreated to watch them both. Rana had spent time with Sal and knew that medusae did not act the same as humans, they were cold, alien, difficult to read, likely something to do with the shapeshifting. But she could tell that this one was afraid.

“You’re... you’re her...” the medusae spoke, unused to the common language. “The woman who escaped the Hornet.”

So Nettie’s real medusae name had been the Hornet, that fit with them all having animal names.

“I... I can help you,” the medusae continued. “If we work together and get back to the forest I can help you avoid my people.”

Rana stared at them. They were a shapeshifter, a master of lies and deceit whose mother was the very being that had given her her curse. But Rana could lie too. She looked up at the Umberlago whose small empty eyes were on her, waiting to see how she’d respond.

“I will help you get back to the forest,” she said, letting her curse guide her words. “If you are telling the truth then you can trust me.”

She looked back at the Umberlago whose head moved ever so slightly to the side, she took that as an approving nod. Then she pointed the medusae to the path she’d found and together they began to descend the mountain.