Discordant Note: Crescendo | TBATE

Chapter 234: Hunter

Thank you to my beta reader and editor, GlassThreads!

Toren Daen

I knelt down around a mound of ash, dipping my hand into the remnants of a campfire. I raised the dark substance to my eyes, inspecting it as I rubbed it between my fingers.

Still warm. Barely warm. But this fire had been extinguished barely an hour ago.

The Unseen World blanketed my vision as Aurora's shade scanned the earth, her eyes burning with sheer focus. Eddies of mist swirled around me as I projected my senses outward, pulling and twisting at the ambient mana to give me a sign.

I'd spent the past week and a half or so stalking through the Beast Glades, following specks of familiar mana, the most minute traces of human interaction in the environment, and more. Like a bird of prey, I gradually honed in on the objects of my ire.

It would have been difficult for anyone else to track the Bastards Victorious. They clearly knew the risks themselves, and so went to great pains to cover up their trail wherever they went, even laying many false paths along the way.

But with Aurora's millennia of experience hunting the most dangerous prey in Epheotus and a pinpoint eye on the sky, hints that most would have missed became glaring footprints that led directly to my foe. It was an irritating process considering my own inexperience, but I was learning fast.

And even if the Bastards Victorious were expert survivalists, they weren't practiced in covering their traces. Their methods were brutal and designed to instill terror and fear in their enemies, and that showed even in how they fled. A brutal murder of a mana beast left traces in the ambient mana in a way a simple execution would not. Jagged swipes of weapons across branches and leaves to clear a pathway created easy-to-follow trails if one searched for them. And the signs of half a dozen men moving together–most of them trained to be loud and obnoxious–made it a simpler task than I anticipated.

The Bastards were trying to tone down their vicious natures, but they slipped. I'd slain their leader, and now they struggled to find cohesion and to keep cool heads.

"You are closing in on your prey, Toren," Aurora said sharply as she inspected the pitch in my hands, "but this time, it is different."

The songbird puppet chittered on my shoulder as I looked past the wraith-like form of my bond. Indeed, this time it was different.

Before, the traces I'd needed to follow were often indistinct and hard to spot. Things like the cuts from an axe felling a tree for firewood, bootprints in the mud, signs of brief scuffles with mana beasts, and even the scent of sweat, blood, and piss were distinguishing factors that helped me hone in on my targets. The Bastards seemed to sense that I was getting closer, too. Their efforts at hiding their paths became more and more haphazard. Less carefully planned and more panicked.

The prey had caught the scent of their predator. They knew they were being hunted.

I frowned at the obvious paths in front of me. Seven paths stretched forward, each carved into the dense jungle-like foliage of the deeper recesses of the Beast Glades. It appeared my prey had split up.

Aurora strode over to me as I stared contemplatively at the branching pathways, each beckoning with darkness beyond. There wasn't much light this far below the canopy, and each trail loomed like the opening to a crypt.

Not a crypt for me, though. Only a crypt for those who dared to cross me. Who dared to cross Seris.

"This is their final gambit," the phoenix said knowingly as her glowing eyes scanned the pathways, her pupils banishing the darkness. "They can no longer run from you as a group, so they have decided to separate. To brave the jungle alone."