The next day brought David back to the Hungerwoods. He had once again trekked his way north and without having to stop and track corpses, had soon made it all the way back to where he had begun planting sticks.

  Strangely, most of the sticks had been knocked aside overnight. Investigating them, he found that many had been broken, or rather shattered, and there were visible claw marks in the immediate vicinity, as if something had investigated the sticks' location.

  With no other hints or clue as to what had happened, he resolved to continue following the trail of skeletons north, foregoing collecting them in favour of proceeding faster.

  As he went forward he became certain that the citizens had been reaching for a specific location, as their skeletons populated an ever narrowing northward path. Wherever he was going, he seemed to be getting closer.

  However, something felt... off.

  As a far-reaching and successful, and thus living, Free Courier, David had long ago learned to listen to his instincts. Right now, they were telling him that he was in a precarious situation, like a shiver at the back of your neck when you're certain someone is observing you.

  He made quiet, and craned his neck around, observing, listening...

  The forest was calm, but not silent. Vegetation was not overly heavy, but he was in the wilds with not even a game trail to follow, his vision was limited to maybe 20 or 30 meters.

  He strained his hearing, tried filtering out the far away background noises. He closed his eyes and held his breath.

  ...

  crack

  He jerked his head in the direction of the noise.

  ...

  ...

  crack

  Twigs snapping, from the south.

  ...

  crunch

  It was getting closer.

  He opened his eyes and quickly scanned around for a vantage point.

  Somewhere he could escape from rapidly. A tree was good but if whatever was coming saw him and climbed the tree he'd be in trouble.

  What he needed was... nothing he could see from where he was.

  He darted northward, disregarding the corpses. If he was right he'd be able to find them no matter what, seeing as how they were strewn about in a line.

  Nearly as soon as he began running, he heard the sounds of something big and fast starting after him, no longer trying to hide its presence. Bushes were trampled, logs were crushed, saplings were plowed through.

  He ran faster, as fast as he felt safe to not trip and fall. Still the sounds of pursuit followed him. He had to find somewhere to hide so-

  There!

  A very large boulder with no apparent way to climb on top, except by climbing a nearby tree, over a branch and dropping on top, but not so high that he'd break his legs jumping down from it.

  Scrambling up the tree, he was soon on top of the boulder and flattened himself, angled to look at where he'd come from, aiming to spot his pursuer.

  He did not have to wait long, as the beast burst into the small clearing surrounding the boulder.

  It was a grumble bear. THE grumble bear, if what seemed to be acid burns on its body were the results of the bear's fight with the snug.

  Someone is playing a cruel joke at my expense. David internally cursed.

  The bear sniffed at the air, peering around, pawing at the ground and growling in apparent frustration.

  David was infinitely glad he had doused himself with scent maskers before this morning's expedition. A decision brought upon following the amount of deadly predators he'd seen and avoided the day prior. Now all he had to do was avoid being spotted.

  Still, it didn't make sense. It was late morning. The bear shouldn't have been overly active. It certainly shouldn't be this far from its territory.

  He stayed hidden, nearly motionless, barely breathing for a minute, five minutes, ten minutes, twenty...

  If it had been searching for food it would have eaten any of the few berry bushes David could see from his vantage point. This bear wasn't doing that. It was staying put in the last place David had been and was trying to find him.

  Either that bear is really spiteful about me ransacking its den, or something unnatural is going on.

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  He silently sighed and resolved to just wait it out. One bear wrestling match a month was his self-allocated quota.

  Finally, finally, after a full bell, the bear harrumphed and left, throwing one last half hearted and annoyed roar back at the clearing before disappearing into the forest.

  David waited another ten minutes. Only then, once he couldn't hear any signs of its presence did he quietly drop from the giant... menhir.

  That's not a boulder. It's a menhir.

  He hadn't noticed when he was running earlier, but the stone had been roughly carved into its current shape.

  He looked around, trying to see if the menhir marked anything but it didn't seem to... then something caught his eye.

  He made his way over, the grumble bear forgotten. Soon he was standing in front of another menhir, maybe 50 meters away from the first, itself also at the centre of a small clearing slowly being reclaimed by the forest.

  David approached the stone monument and made to gently brush his hand against it.

  A giant frenzied ball of fur burst through the vegetation to his side, roaring for bloody murder.

  How? Why?!

  David didn't have time to say anything. He threw himself on the other side of the Menhir, putting it between him and the grumble bear, and began running northward.

  He weaved around trees and jumped over rocks and fallen timber, doing his best to run around obstacles that might slow the bear down. Glancing over his shoulder to judge how effective he was being he... didn't see anything pursuing him.

  He warily slowed down, eyes wide, trying to spot or hear any signs of the bear.

  All he heard was a far-off roar.

  Then another.

  Frowning, David slowly, carefully made his way back towards the menhir, on the lookout for any bear sign and ready to bolt.

  Nothing came of it. He had walked all the way back in sight of the menhir and looked on in puzzlement as the bear was there, past the menhir and roaming left and right, as if there was an invisible barrier stopping it from going forward.

  A shiver went down David's spine. Was it an actual barrier, or did the bear just know better than to cross the invisible line the menhir seemed to mar-

  The bear tried to paw at the invisible barrier and a bright grey spark of energy puttered. The bear slightly recoiled and roared its indignation.

  I guess it's an anti-bear force-field after all. Which would be an oddly specific force-field. It has to be something else I'm not seeing...

  Whatever it was, it seemed he was safe from the bear for as long as he was inside the menhir's line, which he was now guessing would form a ring around something.

  And in the middle, probably the citizen's destination.

  Was the bear really intercepting the citizen's trek up north? Was that why all of the skeletons he'd found in the bear's territory were more recent, and most of those he'd found further north were older? Had the bear moved into the area only in the past three or four decades?

  Was the bear coincidental? Was it just profiteering from a stream of people? That didn't hold up. The meal deliveries were too far apart with at least several months, if not years, between each. Not enough to attract a normal animal's attention.

  That, and how the bear had quite evidently went out of its way to track him down, all the way to the barrier.

  No, the bear was trying to stop something from happening. The question was, was it something good or something bad.

  With little choice if he wanted to solve this mystery, David started moving north again, closer than ever to his goal.

  It didn't take long. A quarter bell later he came upon a large clearing. In the middle stood a weathered open structure made of rough stone pillars and arches, open to the sky, with a few steps leading up to a sort of dais with what looked like a small altar in the middle.

  And, if his eyes didn't fail him from this distance, a lot of bleached skeletons strewn all over the structure's floor and immediate surrounding, forming a gravely carpet for all visitors to walk upon.

  He waited and observed the scene.

  Some wildlife could be seen; squirrels, birds and even a deer passed through, so the area wasn't instantly lethal, at least to lower life forms.

  Not spotting anything else of interest, he carefully approached the structure. Getting closer he could see that the pillars had carvings of tribal masks and various bestial visages, with several depictions of phases of the moon decorating most of the empty spaces, the most preeminent being a full moon, or so he guessed. A simple full circle could be a lot of things...

  He did his best not to step on the bones but it was impossible to avoid them all, especially as he got closer and they became more densely packed.

  The cracks and pops of the old brittle bones echoed on the stone surfaces, making him wince each time. If anyone was home, they'd heard him coming.

  Strangely, he didn't feel in any sort of danger. Were his instincts failing him? Or was something suborning them, making him feel at ease when he should be anything but?

  A bead of sweat rolling down his brow, he walked up the few steps. The skeletons were packed tight on the dais and around the simple altar.

  Shuffling the skeletons with his foot to form a small passage, he crept ever closer until he finally stood in front of the altar.

  Upon it was a plate-sized white jade disc inlaid into the stone, surrounded by what was clearly words but in a script he did not recognize.

  Looking up he saw that the pillars and arches seemed to form windows angled toward the sky. If he had to guess, these would align with the moon and its various phases.

  Again, he felt very at ease, as if a strong presence was shielding him. He squinted, washing the feeling away and forcing himself to be wary.

  He retrieved large pieces of paper and some charcoal from his cargo-cloths and quickly took rubbings of the texts on the altar and of some of the carvings on the pillars.

  Packing everything up, he looked around one last time, and finally looked down at the floor. There, he noticed small holes along the base of the altar and the stone floor having rust-red rivulets carved into it, leading to, or from, those small holes.

  Out of curiosity he poured some water from his flask onto the floor and watched with chilly realization as the water took on a reddish teint and flowed towards the holes. The red rust was probably dried blood.

  A hidden sacrificial altar in the middle of the forest, probably dedicated to something related to the moon, to which hundreds of people walked seemingly willingly in the middle of the night.

  He was definitely getting his extra two princes.

  A haze at the corner of his eye.

  He swivelled in place, heart pumping and alert, toward whatever he thought he'd seen.

  Nothing.

  Nothing but a carpet of old bleached bones, several of their skulls staring at him with grinning empty eyes. He felt chilly. Hadn't the forest been rather warm?

  He secured his pack and resolutely marched out of here. Perhaps a bit faster than what could be considered a brisk walk, but not quite a jog.

  Let's hope I don't have to come back here.

  ...

  Who am I kidding. Of course I'm going to have to come back here.

  interesting places over and over again!