The New Light of Hope: Books I to VI.

Chapter XX: On High Alert.

Aurora:

The next morning when we came to the forest, the first we did was inform the leader's and the co-leader's about what happened that night and to be on the lookout for Nathaniel and his threat that he had made to the forest. "All right, we will let everyone know about this right away." GorseHunter said. Everything was beginning to get intense in the forest, but we still kept moving forward no matter what happened. We made sure fighting patrols were set up as a safety precaution, I knew that Jemma, General BriarPatch, were fully in charge of doing so. I had been informed that on the same day in which was upon the same night we came into contact with Nathaniel, MapleDrop had decided to retire for the sake of her health. While there were no signs of anything that very first day, there would be soon enough.
The first day as I have said, there was nothing; it was obvious that Nathan was hiding and waiting to strike, along with TIO while we were not watching, but unlucky for them, we were on high alert ever since we learned about them. But it could not have been just them out there, it could also be other threats as well. And surely enough, there were other threats out there as well. We always had to be careful, especially for younger members such as offspring or apprentices who had little to no experience in fighting and were somewhat defenseless. The lives of every animal counts, big or small, remember that part, always.
…
As we were going back home for the day, we had a few theories as to what was going on in the forest and if this threat could be bigger than we thought. "It's probably a bunch of animals working for Nathan and whoever it is he's working for." Milly said. "Well, part of me thinks that it could be maybe previous threats that we don't know about merged into one working to all of us down but they're just being all sneaky about it." Jemma said.
"Mm, probably, but again, we don't really know for sure, only bits and pieces. But, it's good to have educated guesses every now and then." Summer said. And she was not wrong about that, for it is always good to have an educated guess every so often.
As we were talking, we saw a strange jet black figure with no legs. We did not move at that moment, as the figure could hold a potential threat.
Then, it suddenly began to run away and I stupidity led to me and my friends chasing the thing where it then disappeared. "Where did that thing go?!" Jemma asked furiously. "I don't know." I responded. "But this be some sort of trick TIO's pulling on us!" Suddenly, we felt the ground shaking and cracking underneath our feet, but we were too stupid enough not to move away from it and just stood right where we were. I am quite damned myself that I can still recall this part and to this day, we all look back at this as probably one of the most morosis things we have ever done before. As we just stood there frozen— eventually, the ground crumbled apart and we all fell into the darkness.