Keana was still sitting in the tavern, talking easily with the Lansend guard about various battles and missions the man had been on. The man had yet to give his name and Keana had tried to gauge if the man was merely distracting him, or just sharing war stories through most of the night. There was an odd companionship in their conversation, though Keana didn't easily trust anyone, let alone a commoner who had signed his life away in service to someone merely because they were born to different parents.

Both of them glanced toward the clock on the wall above the fireplace steadily, watching the hours of darkness tic by helplessly.

Pragmatically, Keana knew that if they had seen no one on the road, they could not track them easily at night with no hint as to where they were going. Still, as the regular customers disappeared upstairs to bed or out the front door to stumble home, he fought the urge to get his team to move out.

It was late into the night when the tavern doors slammed open and the stable boy rushed in, half carrying one of the twin boys who had gone missing that day. It was Sam, who Vix had supposedly gone after into the woods.
"Help! Someone! He came out of the woods!" The stable hand, a young man named Tom, stuttered, holding the nearly comatose boy in his arms.

The twin was half frozen and shaking, smelling of piss and splattered with blood, though not appearing to be injured himself. Keana moved forward even as his lieutenants moved in and stripped Sam of his wet clothes and trying to rouse him out of whatever stupor he was in. The boy woke up with a start, then started bawling in relief and raving about some sort of a shadow monster as he gasped and sobbed in breaths. Keana saw one of his healers checking the boy over and turned instead to look at Tom, who was backing away toward the door.

"Hey, Tom. Come here." Keana said easily.

He looked back to the group and raised a brow, noting that the Lansend Guard had left at some point, though Keana had only been distracted for a minute or two. It was more surprising that the man had managed to leave without Keana knowing than left at all. There was blood and two missing people out there in the dark.

Keana was itching to leave as well.

"Sir." The boy whispered, looking up to Keana before glancing towards the door again, his expression upset.

Keana followed his gaze, his frown deepening as he motioned toward the table he had been sitting at with the Guard. "Where'd our friend go?"

The stable boy shrugged and rubbed the back of his neck. "I just told him the little one arrived on the back of Lina's horse, Cocoa... and that Cocoa nearly dumped him on the ground if I hadn't caught him off his back, then ran back into the woods like demons was on him."

"I see. Good man. Thank you. Can you get my horse ready?" Keana slipped a coin into the boy's hand and strode back towards his group by the fire, bristling with a deeper impatience. Keana knew that he was being harsh, but the world did not coddle him and his company.

"Now's not the time for coddling. What happened, where's your brother?" He said sharply to the boy, who jerked straight and looked at Keana for a moment, blinking in confusion.

"Sir. Sir he's dead. It jumped us, killed my horse, grabbed Ray, and tore him apart... Next I know I'm on a horse and someone's telling me to ride and get help." Sam said, shaking his head and still looking stunned, "It was drinking his blood, sir."

Keana nodded, before snapping his fingers at the rest of his assembled company. "Let's go."

Without waiting for an acknowledgement, he strode out the door to where his horse was being led out of the stable by Tom. Keana mounted and took off down the road, forcing his men to scramble into their own saddles and chase after him.

***

Nerini knew she couldn't stop moving, knew that she was too cold, and she was trailing too much blood at this point. She stumbled on her feet, knowing that if she let the snow or her injuries stop her, she would be dead in minutes. She couldn't form much else in the way of thoughts, but she knew that she had to keep going but had to stay hidden. She was trying to get away from something.

She was so damned cold that her body was hurting from shivering so hard, though her upbringing in the north reminded her that it was good that she was still shivering. Nerini found the road, then melted back into the woods, not trusting the openness of the path. So she stumbled along through the trees, fighting the draining cold and exhaustion that called her with lies of reprieve. She stumbled along for hours before she paused to catch her breath and listen to the quiet of the wood as she struggled to stay upright. There were several long minutes where she didn't think she could force herself to continue moving. Tears of frustration froze in her eyelashes until Nerini managed to push herself off of the tree to continue trudging through the snow in the direction she could only hope was the right one.

The sky was lightening when she heard something tromping through the snow behind her, breathing heavily. She gritted her teeth and drew her biggest knife, knowing she couldn't hold her sword up anymore with either arm. Summoning every ounce of courage and energy she had left in her, Nerini turned to face whatever was coming after her. She held her breath, bracing for a moment until she saw the dark head of Cocoa break through the gloom.

Her mount watched her dispassionately for a few moments before snorting and crossing the distance between them. His saddle smelled of piss and blood, but his body was a welcome warmth that called to her.

"Don't judge me. You got to run away." Nerini stumbled forwards and clung onto the saddle.

She leaned into his warm, feeling it fight back the painful cold of her body for several minutes before she felt him nip and nudge her. Cocoa was clearly not happy to be out in the cold and was making sure she knew that it was time to get back to the village to warm up. She grinned, becuase she couldn't have agreed more with him on those sentiments, though she supposed they were hers anyways. Nerini's thoughts were becoming jumbled and almost impaired as she tried to figure out if she was understanding her horse's thoughts or merely attributing her own to him.

With a sigh, she nodded and lead him to a rock, using it to climb up into his saddle. It took her a couple tries, her body complaining at the effort to haul herself onto his back, but she finally sprawled out over his neck, feeling Cocoa turn and start walking at a smooth, yet quick, pace.

She was drifting in and out of consciousness, soothed by the feel of Cocoa's warmth and steady movement, when she heard Cocoa neigh, and felt someone draw up beside her, murmuring. "Good boy... "

Recognizing the voice, Nerini struggled to sit up, bracing her less injured hand on Cocoa's whisthers to lift her body into a sitting position. She glanced wearily to Thaner, her brother's master at arms, as he took the reins she was barely holding onto.

The Guard was silent for a while as he lead Cocoa through the woods from the back of his own horse, his expression forbidding, angry, in a way she had not seen it since she was a child who had done something exceptionally stupid. "You've definitely outdone yourself this time, M'lady... What's that on your belt?"

Nerini blinked and looked down at her bundled-up cloak curiously, then made a face when she remembered what was in there. "You don't want to know."

She was suddenly thankful that the cold must have frozen it enough that it did not ooze through the fabric and over her clothing.

"Can you make it another hour? I think you need to be warm as much as you need to stop bleeding." Thaner nodded at her words, his expression becoming a little more empathetic to her plight.

"Worry about the blood when we're back. It'll stop eventually." Nerini mumbled, "I'm freezing."

Thaner laughed and shook his head. "Oh come now, Lady. We don't want your blood to stop flowing, that's generally a bad sign."

***

Keana and his men could follow the twin's trail easily enough and were plowing through the woods after the footprints of the two horses for hours. It was well after dawn when they found the dead horse and the destroyed body of Ray, the second twin. The two bodies were frozen in puddles of blood in a clearing that was filled with so many tracks that it was hard to discern what had happened at first.

It was a messy scene and some of his scouts faltered and lost their lunch as they saw the massacred remains of someone they had once known. Even what had happened to the horse was enough to chill the blood and cause Keana's stomach to roil, though he kept his expression neutral under the hood of his cloak.

There were tracks from another horse and then a third person, along with a fair splattering of blood in several locations that didn't coincide with the injuries to the dead horse and scout. There had been a fight here, and once they had figured that out, the story of the battle played out in those foodprints. They searched the area, and found a lone sword in a snowbank and one set of tracks trailing blood deeper into the woods.

Keana drew his blades and followed the large, inhuman foot prints a short distance to where he found the remnants of more blood, and a charred pit where a fire had recently burned itself out, still smelling of fouled meat. All the flesh of whatever it had been was gone, and most of the bones were crumbled to ash. That combined with the ice surrounding the pit instead of snow, told him that the flames had been more than a mere campfire.

"Human tracks this way, sir..." One of his scouts pointed out the blood trail, which meandered drunkenly back towards the road and in the general direction of the village. Keana frowned as he contemplated those footprints, guessing whose weary steps and blood they were. He bit back the rising urge to panic over the realization that Vix was injured and had been stumbling and bleeding for hours now. His company watched him for directions, needed him to remain calm.

Keana nodded in the direction of the tracks, not trusting his voice as he tried not to tally the amount of blood in the trail. He made a few hand signals, drawing silence to the already somber group and setting them out to trail Vix through the woods.

They mounted again and followed those tracks back towards the village as the sun rose steadily into a new day. The only pause they made was when Keana sent half his men back to the clearing to bring the boy's body home and continue searching for anything of use in that clearing. Setting his jaw, Keana then set out after the woman whom he was cursing under his breath, expecting to find the body of an unknown female somewhere along the route.

If the magic faded when she died, he had no idea if he'd recognize her at all.

Other than the fact that she'd be dead, and missing a sword.