In the Margins

     This sunrise, however, was anything but peaceful.

     BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, BOOM-

     Footsteps- heavy ones, belonging to something moving fast and with purpose, shook the ground and sent crokabeks screaming from the trees. A small Neopet, previously plodding through the brush with steps grown weary from an all-night watch, immediately tensed. Their slender-muzzled head whipped towards the sound, distant but growing swiftly nearer. They leapt upwards, a pair of small leathery wings catching the air and giving them just enough lift to reach the lowest branches of one of the Wood's many trees.

     As they let their weight settle, testing how sturdy the branch was, they reached over their shoulder to pull a wooden recurve bow from a quiver at their back. A string they withdrew from its pouch at their hip, and wrapping a long, nimble tail around the branch to keep their balance, they strung the bow and stepped on the stringer to pull it taught.

     And not a moment too soon, as whatever was making the sounds had drawn close enough that the tree the archer was perched in was trembling with each heavy footfall. They still couldn't see what it was through the dense morning fog, but it was clearly enormous to be making such a racket. The ends of their wings fluttered anxiously, and when they pulled an arrow from their quiver, they had to resist the impulse to nibble their nerves out on the fletching.

     Then the massive form of a Skeletal Grarrl exploded through the brush and the mist, and the archer leapt from their branch into action. White and pink wings caught the air in a glide as they nocked their arrow. The skeleton looked upwards in surprise just in time to catch a glimpse of their adversary- a Valentine Draik, dressed in rough, practical outdoor attire and a feathered bycocket hat, both in desaturated shades of purple.

     It also looked up just in time to catch the arrow in its empty eye socket.

     There was no damage, obviously, considering it had nothing to hit. Unfortunately, the undead thing still reacted with understandable instinct to something fast and sharp nipping into its face; it recoiled, throwing back its head with a bellow of surprise and panic. The Draik had to pump her wings hard to back away from the thrashes. She closed one eye in a squint at the skeleton's roaring, landing on another tree branch and putting a second arrow to her string.

     The massive white figure of the animated Grarrl skeleton far below blended in, wraithlike, with the fog. It finally managed to snap the arrow with a claw so that the arrowhead fell with a harmless clatter through its bottom jaw. Furious, but unharmed, it looked over its shoulder into the trees with a hiss. The archer hissed back, tail curling around the tree branch she was standing on to steady herself. She loosed the arrow, letting in whiz past the skeleton's head, missing by the merest of inches.

     The first shot had been to get its attention- this second was a warning. If this shot didn't get the message through, the archer thought grimly, then her next would be hitting something the skeleton would very much regret.

     The skeleton flinched away from the arrow, looking at it with its head cocked consideringly. The Grarrl flexed its clawed fingers as it glanced between the arrow and the one who'd let it fly, seeming for a moment to seriously be considering trying to climb up the tree after the archer. Then, with a frustrated snort, it turned around and loped back into the depths of the forest.

     The Draik watched the skeleton vanish into the darkness, anxiously flicking her fingers along her thumb in a rhythmic gesture, index to pinky and back again. Usually, if one put up enough of a fight, a skeleton would give up and find somewhere else to shamble- thankfully, they were usually smarter than zombies in that way, as long as the necromancer that had animated them hadn't given them a direct order otherwise. But she had to be certain.

     After nearly ten minutes of silence, the archer sighed with relief. Unstringing her bow, she replaced it in her quiver and stowed the string in its pouch. Then, giving both arms a rough, thorough shake that sent a pleasant tingle up her shoulders and back, she turned and resumed her aborted path along the border of the Wood. Weariness made her limbs tremble- that was her fourth fight tonight alone.

     But tired or not, she had a job to do. The fact that more monsters than ever were sniffing around was just proof that she couldn't afford to let her guard down.

     *

     The proprietor of the Spooky Foods cart glanced up curiously at the sound of footsteps coming his way. When he caught sight of the owner of those footsteps, the Vampiric Bruce smiled broadly.

     "Tavasz! We haven't seen you around here in months," he rasped, his voice carrying a good bit less malice and a good bit more warmth than he normally afforded his customers. "Finally got bored with your adventures in the south Wood?"

     The Candy Lutari chuckled, planting her hands on her hips. In spite of her bright colour, she was dressed in a dark purple witch's cloak, clasped at the throat with a silver crescent moon. She walked the Deserted Fairgrounds with far more casual confidence than the tourists usually had.

     "Miss me that much?" Tavasz replied glibly. "I keep telling you that if you want me to stay around, you should nudge Lyanka into buying me dinner."

     The shopkeeper snorted, smirking. "As if even her pretty face could stop your feet wandering. Speaking of food, though, I don't suppose you've come to give a poor old Bruce your custom?"

     "Many things you are, but 'poor old' are not adjectives any Neopian would reasonably apply," she said cheerfully. "But I could use some grub. One eyeball and worm sandwich?"

     "Coming right up," the shopkeeper agreed, bending over to get the ingredients out from under his counter.

     Tavasz turned around, plopping down onto one of the rickety wooden chairs at a mismatched collection of ramshackle tables in front of the Spooky Food cart. She hummed softly under her breath, drumming her claws on the table and bobbing her head to whatever song was presently doing rounds in her skull.

     "Mind if I sit here?"

     Tavasz blinked in surprise, looking up. A Striped Scorchio was standing over her, trying to brush some sort of cream off his Wock 'Till You Drop t-shirt. Tavasz chuckled, gesturing invitingly towards one of the vacant chairs at her table.

     "Got caught in the crosshairs of park security and the robotic Clown Chias, did you?"

     "Unfortunately," he replied grimly, sitting with sigh. "I'd be more forgiving, I know the clowns are Dr. Sloth's doing, but these Fyora-forsaken carnies have been giving me the runaround all day."

     The Lutari's smile chilled a bit, and she raised a brow. "Surely you knew to expect that. This is the Deserted Fairgrounds in the Haunted Woods. It's an open secret that all the games here are… more challenging than normal carnival fare."

     The Scorchio rolled his eyes, scowling. "Oh, I've heard the stories, everyone has. But I figured maybe it was some folks being sore losers, you know? I mean, what kind of idiots run an amusement park that takes advantage of people to steal their money?" he snorted. "I guess it's true what they say, eh? That nothing comes out of these Woods but monsters, supervillains and con-artists."

     The Bruce behind the Spooky Foods counter had gone tense, his eyes narrowed angrily, though with his back turned to the cart, the Scorchio didn't notice. Tavasz slid her hands into the pockets of her cloak, hooding her eyelids. "Hm. Where are you from, if you don't mind me asking?"

     "Ah!" He laughed ruefully. "Didn't introduce myself, did I? Sorry, that was rude of me!"

     He held out a hand to her, grinning. "I'm Pharisk- I'm on a vacation trip, but my usual stomping ground is Kiko Lake. You?"

     The Lutari smiled in reply, withdrawing her right hand from her pocket and clasping the Scorchio's. He started, giving a sharp cry of surprise and disgust as he immediately wrenched his hand back. Tavasz had to bite back a smirk- her paw was covered in sticky, transparent red slime.

     "Whoops," she said lightly. "Sorry about that. It's my petpet, you see- she's ever so exuberant with her affections."

     Tavasz lightly tickled her pocket with a claw, and a small red head popped out a head which was taken up almost entirely by a single, slit-pupilled yellow eye. Two pointed ears flicked atop the slimy, round head, and the creature gave voice to a meow that was more than half gurgle.

     "A… a… a Slorgclops?" Pharisk sputtered shrilly.

     "Her name is Hellebore," Tavasz explained eagerly, quite as if she hadn't noticed the Scorchio's profound disgust. "You know, like the flower? Because she's my sweet little blossom, aren't you, baby?"

     Tavasz scratched the Slorgclops under her chin, eliciting a purr that made her ooze even more thickly. The Scorchio retched, and Tavasz laughed.

     "Oh, didn't you know?" she asked, feigning surprise. "Treats are as much a staple of the spooky season as tricks, after all. There are candy colonies all throughout the Haunted Woods."

     The Spooky Foods vendor cackled, coming around to slap the plate with Tavasz's sandwich down on the table. She picked it up with the hand that wasn't petting Hellebore, and smirked.

     "So, to answer your question- I'm a Woodlander. Or ah- how'd you put it again?" Her eyes narrowed, and she leaned forward on the table, letting an eyeball drop from her sandwich and roll towards him. "One of the monsters, supervillains and con-artists."

     He jumped away, wings fanned out in fear. "B-but you're pink!"

     "What? Noooo!" Tavasz retorted sarcastically. She took a hearty bite of her sandwich, and Pharisk shuddered, backing away. Swallowing her mouthful, she added, "If you're from Kiko Lake, you should know how not to act like the most obnoxious kind of tourist."

     Holding up her slime-covered paw, she kindled a ball of bright purple fire. "Now get out of here before I decide you'd do more good to the world as a morthog."

     The Scorchio turned and bolted, muttering something under his breath that Tavasz could shrewdly guess wasn't complimentary. She rolled her eyes, letting the magic fade from her paw and reaching for a napkin to wipe off Hellebore's slime.

     "Good riddance," the food vendor said, nodding decisively. Tavasz flipped him a coin from her now clean paw, and he caught it deftly. "Anybody who still bothers to show up here and treat it like an operational amusement park deserves whatever they get. Our predecessors got rid of the fools that built this place so we wouldn't have self-important vacationers trying to tame this Wood."

     "Oh, but you know how it always goes," Tavasz said bitterly, watching as Hellebore slithered up her arm. "The Woodlanders are one of two sorts- villains, looking to spread malice and cruelty, or victims, too stupid to leave and live somewhere safer."

     The Bruce sighed, shaking his head. "You take those fools far too personally, Tavasz, always have."

     She snorted, quirking an eyebrow. "I know he made you angry, too."

     "Oh, of course he did," the vendor agreed with a shrug. "But living in an abandoned amusement park, with every stupid teenager and adrenaline junky in Neopia trying to prove they aren't too scared to poke around after dark, you get used to it. Frankly, we've got bigger fish to fry right now."

     That startled Tavasz, and she tilted her head. "Oh? Like what? The Chia Clown 'bots didn't seem worse than the usual when I was coming through."

     "Oh, he wasn't talking about them," a new voice chimed in, and Tavasz turned to see the familiar grey-furred lupe, Harker, who ran the Bagatelle stand. To the vendor, Harker added, "Gimme a bag of almost gummy rats, Mate, I'm starving."

     As the Spooky Food vendor turned to comply, Tavasz tapped the claw of her index finger on the table meaningfully. "So what's going on?"

     "We aren't totally sure," Harker admitted, sitting down in the chair that the Scorchio had recently vacated. "But something has been stirring up the deep woods. We've had monsters that normally don't ever come near the Fairgrounds sniffing uncomfortably close."

     Tavasz's sugar frosted fur bristled. Cavalier though the residents of the forest may have acted about its dangers, they weren't stupid. When the monsters of the Haunted Woods started to hang around the populated areas, it was never a harbinger of good news.

     "What do they want?" the Lutari asked.

     "That's the odd thing," Harker replied, folding his arms with a deep frown. "We don't know. We've seen werelupes, giant Spyders, undead, you name it. But, so far at least, they aren't attacking us. They haven't been raiding to steal anything. Just… passing through. Like some sort of bananas migration."

     "But that doesn't make any sense," Tavasz objected. "The werelupes haven't agreed to work with anyone but their own since they got trashed for helping the Darkest Faerie, and most zombies aren't sapient enough to have advanced social behaviours like migration."

     "Don't let 'Brains' Mortigan hear you say that," the food vendor remarked, setting a paper bag full of almost gummy rats in front of Harker. Tavasz snorted.

     "Everybody knows that it takes an extremely talented necromancer to raise a zombie with as much self-awareness as him- it's not an insult, just a fact," she retorted. "Have the ones you've been seeing seemed that smart?"

     "Well… no," the Bruce admitted sheepishly. "Mostly they're just shuffling aimlessly and groaning about brains."

     She gestured with her sandwich as if to say, "See, there you go," before taking another bite thoughtfully. Harker shrugged, popping one of the rats into his mouth and swallowing it down.

     "Questions of undead self-determination aside, the point is that everyone is concerned. We dunno what's got all these monsters passing through, or where they might be headed. But it isn't likely the answer will do anybody any good."

     Tavasz pushed the last of her sandwich into her mouth, taking Hellebore in both hands as she chewed. The Slorgclops gave a gurgling purr, rubbing against Tavasz's chin. As she swallowed the last of her meal down, the Lutari asked, "Would any of you be willing to keep an eye on this girl for a while?"

     The food vendor frowned, his expression uneasy. "Why?

     "Why do you think?" Tavasz demanded. Wreathing one of her paws in violet flame again, she answered, "No responsible petpet owner would bring their baby into the lair of a werelupe or a giant Spyder. I'm going to go find out what's going on with your monsters."

To be continued…