The following day, they said their goodbyes and set off into the Deepwood. And, for once, it was an easy journey. Even as they pressed deeper and deeper into the heart of the Deepwood, the magic in the air proved to be little hinderance to the group. They still had to make some detours to avoid deadly monsters, but that was only to be expected.
Perhaps they could have taken them on in combat, but none of the group were eager to try their luck. They had all heard tales of people dying to these sorts of monsters, and recklessness had been bred out of the population of their village long ago. Curiosity killed the cat, and that was a lesson that was taught the hard way near the Deepwood.
But, on the third day of their journey, they came across something that gave them pause. As they crested a hill, old and dilapidated structures came into view. Much like with the shrine, the trees stopped abruptly near the buildings, as if an invisible wall was holding them at bay.
Unlike the shrine the buildings were in disrepair and covered in vines and moss, but it was clear that there was once a large settlement here. Most striking of all, however, was the large stone wall in the distance, looming over the other buildings like a silent guardian. A small river was positioned between it and the settlement, and a path clear of trees led over a bridge to connect the settlement and the wall.
“I don’t…understand.” Elise said. “What is this? Shouldn’t we be the first people to make it this far into the Deepwood and live to tell the tale?”
Maia surveyed the buildings, an uneasy knot growing in her stomach. “As far as I’m aware, yes.” She said. “But…what if this wasn’t a human settlement? What if this is where the original monster girls lived?”
“Were they this advanced?” Steph asked. “History says they were tribal things, little better than beasts. This is…there’s clear artisanry in some of these buildings.”
“History is wrong, remember?” Violet reminded her. “We’re not suddenly any more tribal than we were before.”
“I was wondering what sort of history we would find inside the Deepwood…this must be it.” Maia said. “I would normally advise keeping a wide berth around anything remotely suspicious, but…”
“I think we have to.” Emily said. “Or, at least, we do if we want answers. And if this is an old monster girl settlement, there’s a chance there’s something that would be useful to us within.”
“My thoughts exactly.” Maia agreed. “Everyone, stick close to me while we explore; there’s bound to be threats here, and we can’t afford to be separated.”
“How are we going about this?” Violet asked. “Just hit every building we see, or…?”
“I think we should only go into the bigger ones for now.” Maia said. “I’m guessing the smaller ones were homes, and the longer we stay, the more risk we run. Besides, I feel that anything really important is going to be behind that wall.”
“So, head towards the gate and peek into the bigger buildings that are on the way?” Violet suggested.
“Yeah.” Maia agreed. “Let’s move.”
The group crept into the ruins, a feel of ominous stillness growing as they entered the city proper. It was the kind of feeling that would normally mark this place as somewhere to be avoided at all costs, but…the goddesses had said that the Deepwood would hold answers for them, and they wouldn’t lead them into something they had no way of surviving…right?
And, sure enough, they weren’t met with any resistance as they entered the ruins. As they poked around their first couple of buildings, they didn’t find any writing or images that might explain who had lived here, but that didn’t mean that they learned nothing.
“Look at the doorways.” Steph had pointed out. “They’re huge, even the ones to unimportant rooms. That’s not normal nowadays, even in fancy buildings. I’m betting these were made so as to allow people with inhuman body shapes to easily move between rooms without having to revert to human form.”
That was all they really had time to notice, though; there might have been more information to be gained from those buildings, but out of fear of attracting unwanted attention they did only cursory overviews of the buildings, checking the rooms for anything obvious before moving on.
The next pair of buildings on the main street, however, didn’t go as smoothly. Upon entering the first, Elise let out a shriek and stepped backwards, hand clapped over her mouth. “S-sorry!” She said urgently. “There are moving skeletons in there, and I hate undead. Um…what now?”
“Fortunately, your scream didn’t alert any of the skeletons, if they’re normal skeletons.” Steph said. “Common theory holds that they perceive their surroundings by sensing the Mana that’s in everything. They probably would have come out of the building as we passed by anyway.”
“Everyone, step back and let me and Steph deal with this.” Maia instructed. “My spear and her light magic should make quick work of any undead. While we’re working, watch our backs and make sure nothing sneaks up on us.”
Emily hefted an axe and lava began to flow through grooves set into it. “We’ll make sure nothing gets past us.” Apparently, the axe was the weapon that had come with her transformation, one that was able to use the power of a lava elemental to superheat its attacks without losing much in the way of durability or strength. Emily had gone on about some unique alloy and construction method and was enthusiastically working to recreate it, but Maia hadn’t really understood any of the technical stuff. It worked, and that was all that mattered.
Maia moved into the doorway of the building, keeping a careful eye out for the skeletons. And, after a moment, they came into view, and she let her innate magic fly. It impacted the first skeleton in the group in a burst of light, and the skeleton instantly crumbled, white fire licking away at its corpse. A secondary explosion hit another, Steph’s light magic causing the skeleton to hesitate before collapsing to the ground.
“These aren’t the same kind of undead that attacked me at the shrine.” Maia said, breathing a sigh of relief as she readied her magic to attack another of the two remaining targets. “They don’t feel…evil. I think these are just normal Deepwood undead.”
She and Steph launched their magic at the same time and hit the same skeleton, utterly obliterating it. By this point the last skeleton had come into range of Maia’s spear, so Maia dispatched it with a couple of quick stabs then waited in case any others came.
“These four were all human, or…humanoid, though.” Steph said. “That’s a little strange, if we’re assuming this was a monster girl settlement.”
“I think they were just normal humans who died semi-recently.” Maia said. “Undead tend to stay closer to the center of the Deepwood, where the magic in the air is more abundant, and it’s pretty thick here.”
“Come to think of it, we haven’t seen any bodies here at all.” Violet said. “Surely we should have seen…something, right?”
“Not necessarily.” Maia replied. “Monsters probably scavenged any corpses that were left here in the…however long it’s been since this place was abandoned.”
“Hold that thought.” Emily said. “We’ve got company, and there’s a leader-looking skeleton in front. It’s all kitted out with armor and a fancy sword.”
“Violet, Elise, switch places with me and Steph and keep watch in case there are more undead inside.” Maia instructed. “Steph, you aim for the ones near the back, I’ll aim for the leader and the ones closest to the front after it goes down. We don’t want to waste fire on the same target again.”
“We only need one lookout, right?” Elise said. “I can help, my axe will be better for smashing the bones than Violet’s sword.”
“If they reach us, I’ll call for you, but Emily is a lot more resistant to physical damage due to being an elemental and more experienced in battle, so on the off-chance they have ranged weapons I want her in front.” Maia replied.
Elise moved to Maia’s side, and Maia took her place in the front lines while Violet swapped with Steph. Sure enough, as Emily had said, there was a large armored skeleton leading a pack of six others marching towards them from a building across the street, just about entering range of Maia’s spell.
Maia wasted no time in opening fire on the leader, and, unlike the lesser skeletons, it actually managed to survive a hit. It was horribly burnt and slowed drastically, and a second shot did indeed take it out, but that was more than could be said for any of the other skeletons. And, thanks to that increased resilience and the greater number of skeletons, two were able to make it into melee range this time.
It would have been three, but Emily had learned how to throw out splashes of her lava as a sort of impromptu ranged attack or magic, and was able to use it to finish off the skeletons that Steph’s magic had left on death’s door. Regardless, one of the two was easily dispatched by Maia’s spear, and Emily kept the other at bay long enough for Steph to take care of it, so in the end no major harm was done.
They waited about a minute more, to make sure no more were on the way, then began to look over the dead. “Armor on this one’s good stuff.” Emily grunted, crouching down next to the leader and brushing some of the grime off of it. “Looks like it’s got Miral’s emblem on it, so, yeah, probably a remnant of an expedition some idiot noble ordered. Poor fools probably didn’t have much of a choice as to their fate, and look where it got them…”
“How are the weapons?” Steph asked. “I’ve heard powerful undead have some weird way of keeping their weapons in good shape.”
“You know, I was wondering why the stuff looked so nice.” Emily said. “Yeah, this person has a really nice sword, and I think it’s enchanted? I’ve heard tell of some swords that are made to make wounds bleed way more than they should, maybe it’s one of those? Violet, do you think you could handle it?”
Violet picked up the sword and gave it an experimental swing. “Yeah, I can work with this now. If it was my old body this would be too heavy, but that’s not an issue now.”
“Perfect. Let’s be on our way, then.” Maia said. “We’ve made a bit more noise than I would have liked.”
“Do we want to investigate these buildings at all?” Steph asked.
“No, let’s get some distance before we start checking them again.” Maia replied. “These ones are much more likely to have skeletons inside them, I think. If we’re lucky, we can get out of here before more come. Once we’re out of their detection range, they’ll probably leave us alone.”
“Alright, let’s bounce, then.” Elise said. “No point sticking around here.”
So, they did. They continued their trek towards the gate, passing by several buildings in the process. Fortunately, no undead exited the buildings with the intent to kill, so they were content to keep going until they felt they were once again in a relatively safe position. But, unfortunately for them, that just didn’t seem to be in the cards.
As they were just starting to consider going back into one of the buildings, a creature stepped out from within one. It was an odd thing, a lion with large leathery wings and a scorpion’s tail. Unfortunately, Maia had seen one of these things in action before, and while she didn’t know its name, she did know it wasn’t good news.
It was a firebreathing predator that had viciously destroyed its prey, another predator of the Deepwood, and dragged it away. Maia was confident that she had only escaped due to its attention being elsewhere at the time. Now…now it was laser-focused on her group.
“Everyone, get ready for a fight.” Maia ordered. “Emily, you’re in front. It breathes fire and you’re the best defense against that. Elise and Violet, keep your distance, Steph and I will pepper it with magic from the back while Emily holds its attention.”
“I really need to get some sort of throwing axe.” Elise grumbled. “If things look bad, I’m jumping in, though.”
The beast roared, then aimed a stream of fire at the group. Emily bravely rushed forward, taking the brunt of it and providing a safe space behind her for the rest of the group. The moment the coast was clear, Maia and Steph began to pepper it with light magic, while Emily kept it at bay with her axe.
They traded blows for a few moments more, but each side came out relatively unscathed, or at least appeared to. Light magic didn’t leave much in the way of visible wounds, and Emily was capable of handily weathering the fire breath. She got slashed by the claws once, but instead of being bisected, reddish orange liquid was flung from the wound and Emily’s body, clothes and all, reformed around the claws to the telltale hiss of burning flesh.
The beast roared in pain and withdrew its claw then began to pace around Emily, clearly looking for a way past her. Seeing as how the current plan wasn’t working, Maia took a moment to rummage in her pack, eventually withdrawing the basic dark tome Amy had given her. “Elise, Violet, go behind the building and see if you can sneak up behind it.” Maia ordered. “We might need you to break through the situation. I’m going to weaken it with dark magic, once you see that it’s slowed, attack.”
“On it.” Violet said, dashing off to the side with Elise in tow.
Maia wasn’t totally familiar with tome magic yet, but she had a sort of understanding of how to use it, and had done so a couple of times before just in case a situation like this arose. She waited for a good opportunity, then nailed the creature with a blast of concentrated darkness. It stumbled, then resumed its attempts to get past Emily, visibly slowed by the darkness that still clung to it.
Then, just a few moments later, Elise sprinted out from the far side of the building, bringing her axe down on the creature’s tail. Her muscles bulged as she fought to sink her axe in deeper, and, to Maia’s shock, actually succeeded in cutting all the way through the tail.
The beast roared in pained confusion and whirled, only to be met with Violet’s new blade. She left a huge gash on its face then quickly backed off with Elise. The beast made as if to chase them, but in its pain, it had forgotten its original foes, and Emily was able to land a devastating blow to its side, followed by blasts of magic from Maia and Steph.
The beast stopped, swayed for a moment, then collapsed. Maia made her spear as long as she could make it, almost twice as long as she was tall, then approached and stabbed its head, right where a normal animal’s brain would be. Its struggles stopped, and then, everything was still.
“Emily, are you alright?” Steph asked, rushing over to her.
“Fine.” Emily said. “It hurts a little, but not more than a regular cut.”
“Are you sure?” Steph asked, returning to human form and bending down so she could inspect Emily’s waist.
“I’m sort of a liquid now, remember?” Emily said. “I think I’ll be fine as long as I get some healing magic and have plenty to eat to replace the lost fluid.”
“Can you move without making it worse?” Maia asked.
“Easily.” Emily said. “The pain’s already fading, too.”
“Alright. Let me give you some healing, then we’ll head straight to the wall. I don’t want to risk any more of these encounters than we have to now that I know the sort of dangers we can expect.”
“That sounds great.” Emily replied. “Honestly, I can’t believe we were able to deal with that thing so easily. If that had attacked the village before…” She trailed off, but Maia knew what she was getting at. If, by some stroke of ill fortune, that thing had attacked the village before they had become monster girls, then the village would at best take significant losses, and at worse be wiped out entirely.
“Well, we can thank the goddesses for our increased strength.” Maia said, kneeling down and applying a burst of healing magic to the area where Emily had been hit.
“Good as new.” Emily said once Maia had finished, giving her a smile. “That’s some potent stuff you got there.”
“The goddesses gave it to me, I should hope it’s potent.” Maia said. “Now, let’s go.”