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At her side, Pyetar wore his scowling mask and stared them down.

The whispers at least quieted as she and Pyetar moved past them; they likely knew their general wouldn’t tolerate it. The team ahead wasn’t so lucky. Pepha must have overheard something nasty; her whole body stiffened suddenly. Mezhimar stepped up to her side, whispering something in her ear that caused her to relax.

“I hope we get some answers,” Iryana said quietly to Pyetar.

He glanced at her; the mask slipping slightly. “I do, too. It feels like everything is about to change.”

A shudder ran up her spine.

By the time they were an hour into their trek away from the fort, the sun was already setting and Iryana had filled Pyetar in on everything.

Mezhimar followed behind them, ready to form his metal-forged bow at a moment’s notice. Vaneshta and Lidishta moved ahead of them, carefully watching the forest to either side while they whispered to each other. Pepha was somewhere farther out, sometimes signaling back to them with various bird calls.

She wasn’t sure what the others overheard, but Iryana kept her voice at the same volume as Pyetar, letting him take the lead on what to share with his soldiers.

“I searched the valley as best I could this morning for the creature. I didn’t see anything else strange.” She sighed, wishing she had more to report. “Thankfully, it hasn’t snowed since yesterday, so I could sort of follow the tracks. It seemed to have just wandered into the Yuresh Valley and then back out.”

Pyetar nodded, still scanning the surrounding forest. They were headed farther from her valley and into denser forests. The quarter moon only did so much to illuminate their surroundings.

The dakii seemed to prefer more open woodlands now as they moved in larger packs, but that didn’t mean there weren’t still scouts or lone dakya to run into. It made the forest seem less uniformly dangerous. Parts were worse than before, but others a bit safer. The brigade had been scrambling to keep its maps up to date.

At times their party had to keep their shields up, muffling as much sound and noise as they could, moving slowly and silently. But in denser crops of trees like the ones they currently moved through, it meant they could talk quietly.

Pyetar cleared his throat. “My scout tried to track the creature she’d seen, and while she couldn’t find it again, she said its tracks seemed to suggest it came from the west, moving from one poppy grove to another.” He glanced at her for just a moment. “She described the gait as being very odd, the prints spaced strangely.”

“That’s what I noticed too. I think we saw the same kind of creature. I don’t know if we have enough evidence of there being more than one, so perhaps the same one?”

“The timeline would work out,” he agreed, then sighed. “I also got a report from Nenad and Jesha just before we left. I only had time to skim it, but they think they’ve been seeing strange things in the rivers. It might be the same creature, but perhaps not. Something to look into next.”

“I don’t like it,” Iryana admitted, her stomach flipping.

The last time strange creatures had appeared in Istri, it was only a matter of months before everything fell apart completely. Was another reckoning coming for them? Her job as Third was hard enough without all these strange things happening that she didn’t know how to prepare for.

Pyetar grunted in agreement. “And you said your sister thought it looked like a fox?”

“I thought it looked more like a furry snake, but I didn’t get a good look at it either.”

Pyetar was quiet for a moment, seeming to mull that over while the snow crunched under their snowshoes, the wind howling up above them in the dark sky, mostly blocked by the thicker trees they moved through.

Without the hard lines of his muscles, Pyetar looked soft, covered in so much snow gear. Cuddly. The part of her that wanted to hide from the stress wanted to tackle him into the snow.

“What if…” Pyetar rubbed the exposed parts of his beard with his gloved hand. “Maybe eating the poppies makes the beasts? And foxes have started eating them now?”

“The theory still has the same problems of us not being able to associate animal activity with the poppy fields. I suppose it’s possible that the packs of beasts lure young wolves to them to be turned? But it’s a stretch.”

“I’ve never seen the dakii with any wolves of any age.”

“And it would mean they just leave the wolves there to turn, given the youngest dakii we’ve seen have all been all alone.”

“The whole thing is driving me crazy,” Pyetar admitted. “The other brigades I’ve talked to have noticed different dakii patterns, perhaps less pronounced than here, but everything else seems to be here. Starting here. It’s like whatever is happening, whatever is changing, is beginning here.”

Iryana had been worrying about the same thing. The other clans didn’t have nearly as many suspicions as she did. She didn’t like the pressure of it all. Like it was up to them to figure it out.

They knew so little. And what they did know was so fragmented.

The dakii seemed to be organizing, their numbers growing along with the number of poppy fields. Well magic possibly drained from a temple. There were new creatures…

She let her mind circle while they hiked.