[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/h5xf31C.png[/img][/center][hr][i][b]//Day 1 | Location:[/b] Nameless Forest - Clearing[/i]
[sub][@OwO][@AThousandCurses][@baraquiel][@Cu Chulainn][@Nakushita][/sub]
Exhaustion dogged them all, doubly so as food had been a rarity. The stampede had not just destroyed their home, after all. It had destroyed their source of fire as well, crushed the firepit into the dirt and left not even the tiniest embers to stoke into flame. They couldn’t eat what remained of the wolfbears from yesterday, and the efforts of the night before had left all of them entirely drained.

It was as if the Awakened had become human once more, the core in their stomachs receding into a cold, hard lump. Without fuel for the flames, what hope was there for power? Asahi slumped, unconscious, and Akito was on his last legs too as he supported the pink-haired boy. He cast a glance towards Kogen, mouth twisting into the beginning of a sneer or insult, but it had been a long night. He didn’t care about that now.

But despite the exhaustion, despite the fact that all the superhuman efforts they’ve made just the night before appeared like a fantastical dream, they had to go on. Ayana, inexhaustive even when exhaustive, gave the command, and Shun, holding onto a farewell that was forever too soon, resolved herself and lead the way. She remembered the way to the trickling stream. If they followed that, they could reach something bigger, perhaps. A river. A pond. A lake.

One step at a time, they left the clearing behind.

…

Even though she knew the way, it was still slow going. Stomachs gurgled and breath came short as the small group pushed on through the woods. The sun beat down harder today, and the difference between the shade and the sunshafts within the canopy was palpably searing. Akito, turned out to have the most energy out of all of them in the end, clutching onto the fang dagger that Asahi had dropped. Kogen, the only other male student present, was tasked with carrying Tsubaki on his back. Though she could put on a tough act, though Asahi had brought her back from the brink, she was still exhausted and just as starved as everyone else. The rest formed a vanguard best they could, Shun taking the lead as they followed the half-remembered path that the water-seeking team had done the day before.

Overhead, they could see glimpses of black silhouettes shoot beyond the reach of trees, but whether those were monsters or just animals, there was nothing that could be done with them. Occasionally, they could hear something shift beneath the brush, but the sound lead to no emergence of beasts. And over time, the sound of a trickling stream sounded. There. There! The stream, and from there?

Down they went, following its flow. The stream grew larger, wider. It became a river, gurgling over rounded pebbles, and the more steps the group of students took, the more the vegetation around them opened up. Opened up, to a glistening lake, one that spanned perhaps a kilometer in diameter. The water was a beautiful thing, clear enough to see the bottom, to reveal the strange, unrecognizable fish that swam in its depths. Willow trees framed the natural wonder, their roots drinking deep from the lake. Green grass, long and soft, made each step so much more comfortable than the jumbled terrain of the forest they had just made it out of. It was not a sanctuary, but it was beautiful.

And, further beyond, they could all see it.

A singular, craggy mountain, breaking out in the distance like the horn of a beast.

[hr][i][b]//Day 1 | Location:[/b] Nameless Forest - Depths[/i]
[sub][@Yankee][@Vertigo][/sub]
[b]"Don't be stupid."[/b]

Of all those who could have protested Duncan's desire to go off on his own, Hiroshi was the one that acted first. As he picked a twig out of his now dirty-blonde hair, the shark-toothed boy pointed out an obvious fact. [b]"You have no idea where the stream is, Duncan. You can go first, but the rest of us are following from behind anyways."[/b]

It was a waste to halve their combat potential just like that. And regardless of how much of that decision laid only in cold calculation and self-preservation, Daisuke was quick to add the other obvious thing. [b]"And it's daytime. Not like we're stumbling around blind now, yeah?"[/b]

Ayane's eyes were narrowed too. Even if they couldn't have done anything about it before, she had still left her half-sister behind. And if nothing else, Ayana was stupidly lucky at the worst possible times. Maybe she made it out. She had to have made it out.

But the rest were hesitant. Maki caught Duncan's gaze for a moment and, as if disappointed that she couldn't meet his expectations, motioned with her broken arm. Yukiko was dozing off against Masami, who had a dark expression on her face as she kept her gaze upon Sasuke and Yuki. Both of the boys were still unconscious, but the bruising that had appeared over their body, signs of internal bleeding, was bad news.

They knew that too though. Would Masato leave them to die too?

Not in daylight, at least.

They would return to the clearing. Duncan took the lead, Masato brought up the rear.

...

A deep, dark stain laid in the brush within the forest. Masato knew it was Tsubaki, but Akito was gone too. No trail of blood, but more disturbance within the grass than to be expected from two stationary individuals. Had he remained where he was, with Tsubaki, only for the two of them to be attacked? Dragged off or eaten whole?

[b]"Well shit."[/b] Mayumi pinched the bridge of her nose. The lack of any trail of blood leading out in any direction was bad news. But no one wanted to say it yet. It would be real if they said it.

So they kept going.

...

Cresting into the brush surrounding the clearing, what greeted Duncan was nothing more than a sight of devastation.

He could see it, see everything that Kunio described last night. The craters left by the frenzied stomping that would have ended Asahi. The indent in the ground where Ayana had been suffocated to death. The bus itself, that bastion that had served as a reminder of the place they had once come from, was utterly destroyed now, nothing more than a heap of scraps. Further along in the distance, strange, four-winged birds descended, picking at two gory stains splattered upon the earth. Behind him, Duncan could hear Ayano retching as Fujita tried to come up with something to comfort her.

It had been total annihilation after all. The lack of corpses indicated only that they had all be eaten entirely. Considering the size of those hulk-phants, that was fairly likely. And...

Hana clapped her hands together. [b]"We've still one of the spider-wolves from last night. Looks like they don't eat their own, so we could eat that today. Go pick through what remains of the bus too. Could be something useful there."[/b]

Action was better than inaction, but it was clear that some of the students were wholly unnerved by how detached Hana was. Some. Not Juro, who patted Duncan on the back, before busying himself with maneuvering the bent and blackened frame of the bus, searching for anything to salvage. 

[b]"Masato. Do we start a fire here, or proceed to the stream first?"[/b]