Ch 2.18: Tracking


    <span style="font-weight:400">ina ducked, following Carline and the others. Carline was looking off in the direction they were heading, presumably wherever the people she’d heard were. <i><span style="font-weight:400">No, not heard. She can sense them with [Health].</i>


    <span style="font-weight:400">ina wasn’t quite sure the range Carline could sense them at, but it was only a few secondster that she stood up and motioned for the other three to follow.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“They’re far enough away that they shouldn’t hear or see us through the thicket,” the girl whispered as she crept forward. “Voices down though, just in case.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Roger,” Tira added, sneaking off behind as ina did her best to keep up. “How many though?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Three.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">They walked in silence for the better part of an hour, right up until Carline put her hand up and stopped. They waited for a few minutes before Carline finally waved them to go back, leading them away for another few minutes before stopping behind arge oak tree, onerge enough to cover all four of them from anyone who might walk up from the direction they were just heading.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Should be far enough away now,” Carline said as she took out the map and started looking it over. “Temmie, we’re close to the cave, right?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Correct. We are but a short distance from the crystal deposit.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Thought so. It was a little tough keeping track without the map, but I thought they stopped near it.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Perfect,” Tira said. “We can have ina capture them with [Restraint], have them verify they were poaching from the cave, and be back on our way.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Maybe we should wait till the morning,” Flora said. “Or just before sunrise. We’ll be rested enough to make it back to town even if we sleep in shifts, and they won’t be able to fight back easily if they’re caught off guard.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Well, there’s a problem with that…” Carline said. “We were following three before, but they just met up with others. Now it’s more like forty.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“<i><span style="font-weight:400">Forty?</i><span style="font-weight:400">” ina asked. Three would’ve been easy for her to take care of for sure, but forty was another matter entirely. She had never been able to make that many restraints at once, even with all of her skills active.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Fuck, that does change things.” Tira crossed her arms and started pacing around in front of the tree they had stopped at. “We can stillplete the mission, but…” She looked over to Flora, frowning. “I haven’t yet. Have you?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">Flora frowned back, but she nodded her head. “Yeah, once.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Done what?” ina asked.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Killed someone,” Tira said.


    <span style="font-weight:400">The trees were as still as ina and Carline, immovable lengths of wood and leaf in the vast expanse of the forest.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Oh.” ina hadn’t really considered the possibility. She’d known that was sort of the end goal of attending Endrin, that she would be expected to be a soldier on the king’s behalf. The idea of actually killing someone wasn’t one she’d spent much time thinking about though, always having been this thing that she could put off considering, something that was years away, and only if she were to actually be on the front lines. There hadn’t been a proper war for near two centuries at this point, so she thought most Aspected didn’t even end up fighting.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Do we have to?” Carline said. Her eyes were zed over, almost like she wasn’t even paying attention to her own words, much less the rest of the conversation. “I mean, we’re just scouting, right? We don’t have to— we don’t have to kill them, right?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“usible deniability,” Tira muttered. “We could almost certainly take them, the four of us. We wouldn’t be risking much either if we kept Carline in the back to heal any wounds we get, but the school doesn’t know our full capabilities.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“No other group of four students would be expected to fight them,” Flora said, almost with glee in her voice. “Especially not with two first-years, two <i><span style="font-weight:400">first-months</i><span style="font-weight:400"> at that!”


    <span style="font-weight:400">ina sighed, feeling lighter in an instant. “So do we just head back?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“If you do not mind my speaking, there is a matter I think may be worth investigating,” Temmie said from ina’s hand. “Carline, is it safe to presume that therge group of people you referred to were in the direction we were headed before?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Uhm, yeah. Just ahead or so from where we turned back, through the trees. I stopped us once I could sense them again.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Wait,” Tira said, “I thought that’s how we were following them the whole time.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">Carline shook her head. “No, I was just tracking them the normal way.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Hmmm, interesting,” Temmie said. “The crystal is indeed close by, but not in the same direction as the group you speak of. It is a short distance north of where we are currently, if my understanding of our current location rtive to where my subcore was stored is correct.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“That’s…” Carline furrowed her brow as she looked at the map. “That’s the <i><span style="font-weight:400">opposite</i><span style="font-weight:400"> direction that the group we were following went.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Then there could be more by the cave.” Tira stepped away from the tree and looked off in the direction the deposit would be. “If there’s more than forty we definitely won’t be expected to fight them all, but we should get urate numbers. Carline, lead us there, and stop us when you sense anyone.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Yes ma’am!” Carline folded the map and put it in her bag before heading off again. Tira followed right after, but ina noticed Flora staying still.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Flora, youing?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Hmm? Oh, right.” She tried to hide the look that had been on her face, bringing back that cheery Flora-smile, but it wasn’t fast enough that ina didn’t notice the sorrow that was in her eyes.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Flora, are you—”


    <span style="font-weight:400">Flora turned and shushed ina, winking as she skipped ahead. “Don’t know where more of them might be, so best to keep quiet.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">ina obeyed, mostly because she didn’t know what to say. Flora had killed a person before, apparently. Likely on a mission just like this, and it wasmonce enough that her and Tira hadn’t even needed to say what they meant to talk about it.


    <span style="font-weight:400">Suddenly, her body didn’t feel as light as it did before.