It wasn’t as if he couldn’t go. He was perfectly, completely capable of going to the Unknown Grove, getting in it, and getting out. He was second in command of the Jackals and was this close to becoming Adel’s successor if anything were to happen to him (or even if he just retired, which Halcy would much prefer than “anything happening to him”). He was completely and utterly able to go.
But there was something to be said about Halcy Valentine wanting to go, get in, and get out: He didn’t. He didn’t want to go, in any capacity.
The backups that Adel would send wouldn’t be there for awhile, he figured. It would take time to gather and mobilize them, and Halcy was expected to already be there at the Grove when they arrived. He had to scout and do reconnaissance. He had to get there just in case the Angeon was hiding in the Grove, having slipped past the guards inside the city.
After all, it had managed to give Alaric the slip pretty badly.
Halcy turned back towards the door of the Jackals’ HQ, hand tentatively reaching out towards the handle. He would wait for the others before going, because there was strength in numbers, wasn’t there? Right? It sounded like he was trying to give himself a pep talk of sorts, but it really was because he was worried about the others entering the forest themselves, long after he had done so.
Not that Halcy didn’t have faith in his men to find him, but... But...
“Augh, fine!” he yelled, and he turned on his heels, and he ran. His long legs let him sprint effectively, throughout the city. He was fit, so he could do this — that’s what he told himself. He was a leader, so he should do this — that’s what he told himself.
He really was pep talking himself into entering this damned forest.
He wasn’t scared, though. Definitely not.
All those stories about people entering and never coming out and the witches and wizards and waiting Angeons meant nothing to him. Nope, he wasn’t scared. He definitely wasn’t.
But it was like falling from a building as he ran: He had just enough time to think about his actions and what he was about to do before the inevitable.
And he was thinking that he should turn around right now immediately.
But his legs continued to carry him. They carried him past the borders of the actual city, to the fence that sectioned the city off from the walls that surrounded it. He licked his lips in anticipation, nodding to the guard in the lookout tower.
“I’m on official orders to investigate something beyond the gate, from Commander Sadik. Please allow me in.”
The guard glanced down and away, then opened the gate for him. Halcy quietly slipped through it.
He looked over his shoulder, watching the wooden gate close again behind him. Something caught his eye on the gate, and he moved closer to see.
Scratch marks ripped at the wooden gate near where the gate joined with the rest of the fence. Dried blood was caked inside such marks, and as Halcy hesitantly ran a hand over the marks, he realized that they were from a human — or human-like Angeon — who was desperate to get out.
But why on Earth would an Angeon claw at a gate if they made it this far? They could just slip through the gate themselves as they pretended to be a human.
“Do you know anything about this?” he asked the guard.
The guard peered over the edge of the tower, down to where Halcy was touching. She shook her head. “What exactly is it, sir?”
Rather than answering the question, he said: “How long have you been stationed here? In general, I guess, like... How long?”
It took the guard a moment to realize what he was asking in such a roundabout way. He looked apologetic as she answered: “Around a year. My shifts are usually at this time of day.”
Halcy withdrew his hand, standing back up all the way. “And you’d report someone trying to enter without authorization, right?”
“That’s protocol, sir. Of course. But in all my time here, no one’s tried.”
“What about when you’re not on watch? You still have to report to the next person, yes?”
She nodded. “That’s right, but... Nothing in our log books says anything like that. No one gets this far.”
Halcy nodded, tugging at the scarf around his neck. It wasn’t like it was tight or anything, but just that he was feeling awfully cold suddenly. “You’ve never seen these scratch marks, then?”
Her eyebrows immediately shot up, and she adjusted her glasses. “Scratch marks? Really? I’ve never been on that side, sir, so I’m not aware...”
Halcy sighed. “... Right. I guess you really don’t know anything about it.” He bowed. “Thank you.”
He turned, waving to the guard over his shoulder with a smile.
As he walked along the path towards where the next lookout tower should be, close to the Grove itself, he thought about how, if anything were to happen, it wouldn’t be easy to get out. The gate had to be opened, after authorization from the Jackal guarding it; more importantly, if Halcy or anyone else mentioned that there was an Angeon, the gate absolutely wouldn’t open at all.
Is that the cause of the scratch marks?
Someone desperately attempting to get out of the area around the Grove and back into the safety of Ariostead?
He sighed again, kicking dirt beneath his heels deliberately, almost pouting. His entire demeanor from before changed, as he watched his foot go in front of the other, then that one go in front of the first, and so on...
Soon enough, he arrived at the entrance to the Unknown Grove. By this time, the sun had completely set, swathing him in a sort of eerie darkness that pressed in from all sides. He ignored it.
He stopped beneath the lookout tower. There were no lanterns lit, even though Halcy could barely see anything, so one was definitely required. Were they asleep? He’d have to reprimand them.
“Hello?” he called up to the guard.
He was met with only silence.
Halcy frowned, eyebrows furrowing. He moved around the tower to the ladder, climbing it. As he did so, however, he was greeted with a very familiar scent the further he went up. He wrinkled his nose at the smell of iron, as it felt like iron settled in the pit of his stomach.
He took a deep breath, peeking over the floorboards once he reached high enough.
Two eyes, twisted in different directions, and a mouth frozen in pleading fear, stared back at him.
In the next moment, he was on his back on the ground, blinking. Dust had been kicked up around him at the impact — did he fall? His back surely hurt like he did, so he must’ve. He coughed, sitting up.
“... Damn.”
Halcy jumped to his feet, wincing from pain — at least it hadn’t been that high of a fall that he broke something — and climbed the ladder again. He braced himself this time, closing his eyes until he was all the way up the ladder and safely inside the lookout tower.
The corpse was twisted in all different directions, with blood pooling around it. He knelt down, inspecting him closer. The man’s innards were strung around him, as if the intention was to hold him in place as he died slowly of blood loss. But organs were easy to rip, weren’t they?
So that wasn’t it. He shuddered at the thought of someone just doing this for fun.
Peculiarly, the tips of his fingers were all red, and as Halcy grabbed the lantern in the corner to shed some more light on the scene, he noticed scratch marks on the baseboards, filled with blood — the same size and shape as the markings on the gate. They all went in the same direction, suggesting some sort of struggle — like the guard was trying to get away from whatever had him in its grasp.
He shuddered again.
Halcy clapped his hands in front of him, bowing his head, and said a quick prayer.
“I’ll come back for you, alright?”
Halcy strengthened the light of the lantern, thankful for the copious amounts of oil, and descended the ladder once more. With the new light, he realized, at that moment, that there was not a single, other guard out on duty, when there should be at least ten on the ground.
He said another quick prayer to a God that hadn’t answered in years for protection before meandering through some trees, officially entering the Unknown Grove.
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