"Your name means shadow, you can't talk," I pointed out to Senka as I held her close. I wasn't a huge fan of dogs, and so meeting one which was about my height was a fact which I absolutely detested. Even thinking that Onyx existed made me feel uneasy. I had been attacked by a fair few in my life, for no apparent reason. But I've just always seemed to have an innate fear. Maybe Onyx was the cause of that, as we apparently knew each other when I was a child.

I tried to stay as close to Prin as I could, figuring that it would make it less likely that Sarphi would set her new pet on me. In fear of accidentally hurting Prin.

"I'm made of shadows, not crystals," Senak argued feebly, crossing her arms over her chest, wiggling them between her body and my coat. Which felt really odd.

"I hate to break this up, but I need us to regroup," Aknon said with a sigh, gesturing around us. "We have a new dog called Onyx, which is the size of a market stall, and we're still in a very dangerous forest."

Onyx growled, as though feeling that Aknon was underestimating him. He backed away from Sarphi, nudging her leg to tell her to get up.

"Oh, yes, sorry." Sarphi coughed awkwardly and glanced around. "We need to get out of here. We don't want any more carnivorous fluffballs."

Onyx growled once again, as though he thought that Sarphi was talking about him. He then began sniffing the ground and walking forward, his nose pressed against the dirt as he charged forward quickly.

"I suppose we should follow," I said reluctantly. I didn't want to follow the dog, I really didn't. But I wasn't stupid enough to ignore the fact that dogs had an excellent sense of smell. I hoped that he wouldn't take us back to the village, despite what I had said earlier.

"Suppose so." Sarphi shrugged with a grin as she followed Onyx, repeating 'good boy' over and over again.

I rubbed my shoulder, wincing from where I had been bitten by the creatures earlier. The bite marks were rather deep, but they weren't bleeding too badly. I hoped that the creatures weren't venomous. We would all be dead if that was the case.

We were silent for quite a while as we simply followed Onyx's footsteps and sniffles. I was on edge, but I tried to make it seem as though I wasn't as affected as I was. I looked over at Aknon and Sarphi occasionally, finding this all strange. I wasn't used to having three other beings on our adventures, we were usually just alone. I wasn't used to having a dog, or a sentient ragdoll, or even another person, tagging along with us.

I backed away slightly and walked beside Prin, giving her a small smile as we walked in silence. I figured that she would enjoy being closer to Senka, her walking translator. "You did good for your first battle," I complimented quietly.

Prin blushed a bit and shook her head, her eyes moving to Sarphi's bag. She knew what I meant. But she also didn't think that she did well at all.

"Do you know what those creatures were?" I asked instead, figuring that the creatures had a pretty terrible reputation considering how the patrollers reacted to them. "Are they some kind of local menace?"

"You'd know all about menaces," Senka grumbled under her breath, but it wasn't necessarily mean sounding.

Prin pointed to Senka and shook her head, showing that she wasn't the one who thought that, and rather it was Senka's own personal opinions of me.

"She says the furballs are like bugs. But they prefer to live in the forest rather than with people, because they're rather shy." Senka translated the words, but she didn't really seem to believe them from the look she was giving Prin. "But then why were the patrollers so scared of coming in here? They looked terrified."

"Don't tell me that there are worse creatures in here, please." I glanced ahead at Aknon and Sarphi, who turned around for a moment to listen to the conversation.

Prin gave a sheepish smile and nodded her head, telling us that there were worse creatures than the furballs in here.

"She doesn't really know what they are," Senka declared, almost with frustration which was certainly directed towards Prin. "She went into that prison when she was five, so she really doesn't remember a lot about what creatures there are."

"Lovely," I commented sarcastically, not intending for it to sound mean at all but it probably didn't come off as nice. "So, we're in a forest with unknown hostile creatures which an entire fleet of patrollers are scared of." I nodded my head, as though taking in all the information.

"But now we have Onyx," Sarphi said with a grin as she patted the dog's back. The dog really seemed to like that as it let out a loud purring. "He'll protect us. The guards didn't have such a good boy."

Senka and I were not impressed.

"No offence to Onyx," Aknon began. "But it doesn't fill me with confidence going into a forest which is full of potential monsters who are out for blood. We need to figure out what's going on and where Onyx is going."

"Right, he's sniffing the ground, but does he know where we're going?" I asked. "He's leading us somewhere, but he's a dog. Could he understand that we need to be careful and avoid all the living creatures in here?"

Onyx stopped what he was doing and slowly turned his head in Aknon's direction, before slowly turning to me with an ominous aura. It was like he was trying to get me to run away from him or something as he gave another spine-chilling growl.

"You offended him," Sarphi pointed out. "Again." She continued to stroke his back as his attention remained on us. "Say you're sorry."

"I'm not going to say I'm sorry."

"I'm sorry," Aknon spoke at the same time as me, sending a glare my way. "Acer, we need to respect the shadow dog which saved our lives. He could be the only answer we have."

"Fine, Onyx, I'm sorry." I didn't really mean the words which left my mouth, and I didn't really like lying, as I preferred to simply twist the truth. I wondered if I did actually feel sorry for thinking so little of the dog, but after a while of consideration I summarised that I didn't really feel too bad. I had a good reason to be suspicious.

Onyx didn't seem to believe me, but he continued leading us somewhere. The trees had begun to get thicker, which made me believe we were going in the opposite direction of where we were meant to go. Surely, we would be safe when the trees began to thin out, because that would mean we were closer to civilization or maybe a road.

"Is this not on our map?" I asked after a long while of walking. "Surely that place will be on it, and how big this forest is. They were stupid enough not to take our bags off us, it seems like a waste not to use what we have."

"You just want to insult their intelligence," Sarphi pointed out with a scoff as she reached into Aknon's bag and pulled out the map, much to his frustration. "You weren't given the map, I was."

"Does it matter who carries the map?" Aknon asked with a huff and shook his head, leaning over to see the map as well. "We're all going to the same place."

That was when a candle lit in my head. "Prin? Do you have anywhere you want to go?" I turned to her curiously, as we had never actually spoken much about where we were going after we found our answers.

Prin shook her head after a few moments and gestured towards us with a shy smile. I didn't need Senka to translate that she'd be going where we were going. I tried not to think too much about that. I wanted to keep thinking positively, and I thought Prin was a pretty nice girl. She might be a little inexperienced with the world and fighting but she was nice. Sarphi also seemed to adore her, so I was expecting something similar. But I tried not to think about the extra money we'd need to earn in order to support this person who we just met.

"There are a lot of trees in this area," Sarphi informed.

"We're not there," Aknon informed with a huff as he pointed elsewhere on the map. "We're in a circle of forest basically. The only way out is the way we came."

"Unless we go through it." I knew that it was stupid, even Onyx turned to me.

"We don't know what's in the forest." I Aknon turned around and gave me a hard stare. "It deterred an entire group of experienced and armed soldiers."

"Then we'll attract less attention." I nodded and bravely moved to walk beside Onyx, petting his back the slightest amount. "Come on boy, keep going."