Seek and ye shall find.

You curse and release her. “Stay here.” She gives you a blank look and you realize how stupid that sounded, seeing as she’s trussed like a hog. Turning away you skulk into the bushes, leaving the very confused young woman behind you.

“H-hey! Wait!”

You ignore her and creep through the undergrowth. Nothing out of the ordinary, at first, but something warned you. Some instinct, and you’ve lived this long trusting it. Something’s out here. And damned if you’re going to leave your ass flapping in the breeze. You make barely a sound but still hear nothing. The rush of grass in the cool night wind, the creak of branches.

And not a beast.

Now you realize what disturbed you so. Not an animal makes a sound, and their silence weighs heavy in the moonlight forest and all its shadows. Then, moving further forward, you stop, hearing a scraping, shuffling of something moving through the undergrowth. Your eyes are by now adjusted to the dark, and if your ears weren’t straining before, they certainly are now. It doesn’t seem to have heard you, or be coming towards you. A deer? A bear? You aren’t sure, but it’s making too much noise to be actually sneaking. You forge towards the sound. You stop when you hear it close and peer from about a tree.

…What the hell is that?

You stare, utterly gobsmacked at the…thing lurking through the forest. It shuffles, dragging long limbs with claws like a cat’s. Its body is emaciated, almost skeletal, but you can tell its all sinew, wrapped in a cover of bristling black fur. From its back two more arms extend giving it a total of six, moving aside foliage and touching things as it passes. It has the head of a dog, long red tongue hanging out, and it has the most disconcerting ambling walk you’ve ever seen.

But you see the way it moves, and you know only one thing walks that way. The creeping, low widespread stride, nose low, eyes sharp. A predator. A monster.

A hunter.

And as you watch, you hear it speak.

“Naughty things,” the monster says, its voice oddly melodic, soft and teasing, like its trying to coax something out from under a bed. “Naughty things. So many things. Naughty, running things. Naughty things, with naughty secrets. Things which shouldn’t have run. So many run. Naughty. Where is it? Where does it hide? So many things hide in woods. Ruining trail. Naughty things…”

You suck in a slow breath and watch its ambling walk. Its looking for something, and it doesn’t take much to figure out what. The human, without a doubt.

You creep back, heart in your throat, scarce daring to breathe, until you can’t see it anymore, its melodic, disturbingly enticing voice out of hearing. Pressing your back against a tree, you take several quick breaths. You have to get the human, grab her and…

It’s then you realize that at the rate the thing is moving, it’s bound to come across your troupe’s trail. And if not them, then the human herself. Something new creeps into you. Indecision. Your skill is movement, tracking, so you at once recognize the dilemma. You can’t run back to the human, get her moving, and reach your troop before the monster finds one of you. Likewise, you can’t recover your troop and get back to the human before the thing would have caught her scent. The only bet is getting to your troop or the human and getting them out of there, leaving the other to distract the monster. You can only save one of them.

Hmm. The fat titted human woman you have tied up and ripe for a good rutting, or the idiots who have bungled their way through the forest and plains leaving behind a trail of their own corpses.

…Huh. Oddly tough call.