[sblock=Erin, Alistia, Cleyra]Alistia grabs her cudgel and grips it tightly, her knuckles white, and Cleyra dashes back into camp. Even as she starts asking questions, Quoth swoops into the treetops to spy out the approaching visitor. [sblock=Erin]After a few moments, you feel amusement wash over you from your empathic link to your familiar. Whatever he found, he's laughing raucously about it.[/sblock]After maybe a minute, the crashing sounds stop, only to be replaced shortly thereafter by a whining noise, much like that of a distressed animal.[/sblock]
[sblock=Enko and Ryon]You are easily able to follow Artemisia's tracks through the muddy, mulchy forest floor. Intent as you both are on following the trail, you fail to notice that the underbrush on the sides of the trail have become gradually thicker and thornier the further you travel. It isn't until Enko nearly walks into a wall of briars with long, needle-like thorns that you realize it would be nearly impossible to do anything but follow the trail at this point.[sblock=Enko]These briar plants are unlike anything you've ever seen. They are incredibly densely packed tangles of thorn-tipped branches reaching up to nearly a short man's height. The tips of the needle-like thorns are colored a brilliant, glistening red, and a very careful test shows that the red coloration is actually some sort of liquid - presumably a poison of one sort or another. Most thorny plants have very mild venom, but most venomous thorny plants are much smaller than these.[/sblock][sblock=Ryon]The realization that you're forced to follow Artemisia's trail gives your mind enough of a jolt that you re-examine the tracks again. As you do, you realize that they're a little too clear. While there is some mud still from the rain a few days back, the ground is mostly covered with fallen, rotting leaves. Leaf cover like this doesn't usually hold tracks as well as you're seeing; the leaves tend to spring back up after being pressed down by the foot. Artemisia's tracks - if that is, indeed, whose tracks these are - are clear indentations in the leafy mulch covering the ground. You can easily make out at least three out of every steps, but the distance between steps indicates that Artemisia was walking at a relatively normal pace - she shouldn't have been exerting enough pressure to deform the ground this much.[/sblock][/sblock]
