Chapter 168: Tracks in the Mud

Arthur woke because half his left arm was completely numb, and Emily’s knee was digging sharply into his thigh.

He gave up on freeing his arm and looked around the room. His wrinkled shirt was still in the corner where Emily had thrown it last night, and an empty food container lay overturned near the desk. His shoulder ached where she’d bitten him. The blanket had slipped low on Emily, leaving some of the red marks from last night visible.

He tapped her side. "Get up."

Emily buried her face in his chest. "No."

"We have class."

"That’s your problem."

"You have class too."

Emily cracked one eye open, reached blindly for her phone on the floor, and checked the time. She let out a long groan, rolled off him, and stood up.

Emily crossed the room naked, digging through the unpacked mess on her floor. Arthur stayed on the mattress and watched her.

She caught him looking.

"Find my shorts," she demanded, kicking a stray boot out of her way.

Arthur pointed at the edge of the desk. Emily grabbed the shorts, picked up his wrinkled shirt from the floor, and threw it directly at his face.

Arthur caught her by the waist as she walked back past the bed, pulling her down to kiss her. Emily let him for a second, her hands resting on his chest, before she pushed him back.

"We actually have class."

She bent over to pick up her uniform boots. Arthur gave her bare ass a casual slap.

Emily straightened up and gave him a flat look. "Keep that up and we’re missing breakfast."

Arthur grinned.

They got dressed and left together. Arthur’s shirt looked like it had spent the night on the floor—which it had—and Emily’s uniform didn’t quite cover the bite near her collarbone. Arthur had one at the base of his neck too.

Neither of them bothered with it.

Emily locked the door behind them, and they headed for breakfast.

Cedric and Felix were already sitting at a table near the windows. Leon and Alicia were eating quietly across from them.

Emily dropped into the chair right beside Arthur, reached over, and stole a piece of sausage directly off his plate. Arthur rested his arm casually on the back of her chair and started eating what she had left him.

Felix stopped chewing. He stared at the dark mark on Arthur’s neck, then looked at Emily.

"I hate both of you," Felix said.

Emily ate the sausage.

"He’s been saying that since breakfast started," Cedric noted, turning a page in his textbook.

Leon reached toward the edge of the table without looking. Alicia was already sliding his notebook across to him.

"Thanks."

He caught it and kept talking to Cedric.

Breakfast ended, and the group started splitting up. Emily grabbed her heavy training bag.

She leaned in and gave Arthur a quick kiss. "Try not to stand in another ditch today."

"Go run in armor," Arthur told her.

Emily flipped him off and walked away toward the conditioning rings.

Arthur headed for the designated classroom for Monster Ecology and Fieldcraft.

Elara was already sitting near the front. Around her, students had notebooks open across their desks.

Professor Garrick Fen walked in.

He was older than most of their instructors, wearing a faded, weathered field coat and heavy boots that looked like they had spent years dragging through mud and underbrush.

He walked up to the front desk, set a wooden box down on the surface, and looked at the room.

"Outside," Fen said.

He turned around and walked back out the door.

Fen led the class beyond the academy’s main training yards and into a dense, heavily wooded section of the grounds maintained for field exercises.

Fen stopped beside a wide patch of mud between two old trees.

"Start here," he said. "Follow it."

A student raised his hand. "Follow what?"

Fen looked at him.

"That’s what you’re here to figure out."

He stepped aside.

The class spread out around the mud. Arthur crouched near one edge while Elara ignored the obvious prints and walked farther along the tree line.

"Wolf," someone said behind him.

"That’s a boar print."

"Then what made those?"

Arthur looked over the mess of overlapping tracks. More than one animal had definitely passed through.

"There are broken stems ahead," Elara called.

Arthur stood and followed.

Fen came along behind the class without offering a single answer.

They moved farther into the woods.

Arthur caught up with Elara near a tangle of exposed roots. She was crouched over a shallow print in the moss while Arthur noticed a clump of coarse fur caught on the trunk beside her.

"Deer," Elara said, studying the print. "Or something similar."

"Something else came through after it," Arthur noted, pointing at the fur and a heavier track overlapping the first set.

He glanced at her. "You enjoy this way too much."

"You enjoyed shooting moving targets yesterday," Elara replied, standing back up.

"That’s different."

"Because you were worse at it?"

Arthur gave her a look and kept walking.

The trail only got messier. A deep rut cut through the mud beside a scratched oak, and several branches had been snapped off a bush farther ahead.

The students started talking over each other.

"Monster attack."

"Territorial predator."

"Something big chased the deer through here."

Arthur studied the scratched bark but couldn’t make the pieces fit.

Elara crouched beside the broken branches, brushed a few leaves aside, then stood again without saying anything.

They followed the signs farther until there was simply nothing left to follow.

Fen stopped. He pointed back the way they had come.

"A deer crossed first," Fen said. "A boar dug for roots near that oak a few hours later. One of the academy hounds ran through this morning, and a maintenance crew dragged heavy equipment past that bush yesterday."

He looked at the class. "Nothing monstrous happened."

The students quieted down.

"The ground tells you what happened," Fen said, his voice quiet but carrying easily through the trees. "It doesn’t tell you the story you want. Three animals crossed the same patch of mud, and half of you invented a hunt."

He started walking again. "Out there, guessing wrong gets expensive."

Fen broke them into small groups. He didn’t give them another fake mystery. Each group received a simple, marked route to follow through the dense training area.

Arthur ended up with Elara and two other students.

They spent the next hour dealing with deep mud, hidden roots, and wet leaves. Students slipped. People argued over faint marks in the dirt. One student confidently led his group deep into the wrong patch of trees before Fen called them back.

Arthur followed a set of shallow prints until they disappeared across harder ground.

He stopped and searched ahead instead.

Nothing in the dirt.

A low branch several steps to the left had been pushed aside. Beneath it, one side of a fern was flattened into the mud.

Arthur moved that way and found the tracks again where the ground softened.

That worked better.

After that, he stopped staring at every footprint like it contained the whole answer. He checked the brush, roots, broken stems, and open ground around it too.

Elara was still quicker.

More than once Arthur saw her change direction without saying anything, only to find the next print when the others caught up.

He walked past a patch of flattened leaves.

Elara tapped his arm and pointed down at a faint impression in the dirt.

Arthur looked at it. "I saw that."

"Of course," Elara said, continuing past him.

Back at the edge of the woods, Fen looked over their mud-covered clothes and shoes.

"Next class, bring boots you don’t mind ruining."

He walked away.

A student nearby looked down at his already mud-soaked shoes and sighed heavily.

Arthur and Elara headed back toward the main academy buildings. Both of them had thick mud caked on their boots and the lower half of their trousers.

"You nearly followed the false trail at first," Elara pointed out as they crossed the stone path.

"You did too."

"I corrected myself earlier."

"I highly doubt that."

Elara adjusted the strap of her bag. "I need to stop at the library. I promised to send some reference material home."

They split paths near the central courtyard.

Arthur pulled out his phone as he walked toward his next class. He had a new message from Emily.

Morwenna is actually trying to kill us.

Arthur smiled and typed a reply.

Skill issue.

Emily replied instantly.

Fuck you.

Arthur typed back.

You already did.

He hit send, shoved the phone into his pocket, and kept walking.