The Chained Watcher

A Fanatical Follower

No real excuses to be had, unfortunately. Pretty sure I added at least a handful of words to all of my documents but the one with the next piece of story progression, and sketched out at least two different story concepts in the process.

Well, it's here now! Bon appetite!

~~~

Grian hums to himself as he walks, enjoying the crisp forest air. With the first hints of nightfall touching the horizon, he and the others are looking for a nice spot to set up camp, but he's not too fussed since they can just fell some trees wherever and build a cozy cabin.

Scar's voice serves as an enthusiastic but soothing background noise, Tango having made the mistake of asking a question about Star Wars half an hour ago. Poor guy's still paying the price for that, actually. Once Scar gets going on the topic of Star Wars, he quite literally does not stop unless incapable of continuing, even if his only audience is his camera. He's honestly rather impressed how long he can go without once repeating a point, and that's from someone who could go off about the intricacies of magic for hours on end.

A decently sized clearing with an abundance of wildflowers comes up on the side, and he nods to himself, crouching down to examine the flowers. Something gives him pause though. He holds up a hand, one finger raised.

"Grian? Is something wrong?"

"Not sure, but something about the vibes here feels off." Poking the flowers with a stick doesn't do anything, nor does tossing the stick into the clearing provoke a reaction, but something still strikes him as wrong.

Hmm... The flowers look ordinary, the trees look ordinary, the grass looks ordinary... "Ah." Well that explains it. "There's no bugs."

"Sorry?"

He gestures smugly towards the field of flowers, announcing, "There's no bugs. This many flowers should have a ton of bugs hidden around here and a bunch visible in the air, but there are none that I can see. That means there's something eating them all, the flowers are toxic, or there's something keeping them all away."

Scar crouches down next to him and goes to poke one of the flowers, but he slaps his hand away, scolding, "No touching potentially toxic foliage. If the bugs won't touch it, that's usually a pretty good sign that you shouldn't touch it either. Same goes for if an area is completely devoid of wildlife. In fact..."

He flicks out a tendril of magic to snatch a squirrel off a tree behind them, bringing it to float above his hand. "Might be a teensy bit unethical, but you can catch a small animal and observe its reaction to the suspicious area to figure out if it's dangerous or not. Animals tend to be way more in touch with their instincts than sapients are, so they can pick up on some things that you wouldn't notice yourself."

Scar looks a bit sad watching the squirrel. "Are you going to throw it into the clearing?"

"Well that's the quickest way to find out what's up with it."

"What if it dies?"

He goes to dismiss that as irrelevant, but stops. Scar has the puppy eyes. Of course he has the puppy eyes. He groans, "Fine, I won't just chuck it in." Scar beams at him, but he's quick to interrupt before assumptions can be made. "Let me make this clear. I'm not going to give it VIP treatment. It's just a squirrel. I'm not treating it like the king of the forest. However, I'll give it a hamster ball shield so that anything that attacks it won't hurt it."

"Alright!"

Pushing down a helpless sigh, Grian twists the magic holding the squirrel into a bubble, solidifying it into a nice tough shield. It's still basically transparent, so everyone can see the squirrel scrabbling about angrily, trying to escape. "Anyone want to take bets on what's up with the clearing? Mine's on toxic flowers, but you never really know until you see it for yourself."