"Where did those weapons go?" Ralph demanded. "What's going on here?"
"We'll explain later," Ludendi said.
"Should we do our usual thing?" Barry asked.
Ellen hated their usual thing, having weapons twice her size or larger pass within inches of her body was something she doubted she'd ever get used to, but it was effective. "Okay," she agreed.
Her friends readied their weapons then fanned out around the area.
The dirt soon settled, and the monster approached her directly. It was a monstrously ugly thing, and powerful as well, plus it stunk like manure, but she had her friends and they were much braver now. Even Ralph might prove useful.
"What's your usual thing?" Ralph slid out of his backpack and unstrapped his mace and shield.
"I hold its attention," Ellen said. The monster raised its sword to her. She dodged sideways to avoid the attack, which ripped open a hole in the ground where she'd been standing. "And the others attack."
"How do you expect to defend yourself if you don't even have a real shield?" Ralph scoffed. "Whoever taught you to fight must've been real dumb."
For a second Ellen forgot all about the monster. He could say whatever he wanted about her, but now he was attacking her guardian, and that was something she wouldn't put up with.
But the monster didn't forget about her. It pulled its sword back for another swing. It looked to be a horizontal slash, so Ellen dropped to the ground. Ralph did the same, and the blade passed over them both.
As the monster recovered from its swing, a magic poleaxe crashed into its head and broke one of its horns off near the base. A stream of red blood spurt into the air.
It instantly forgot about Ellen and bolted after Trevor. Its back was impaled all over by knives and swords, none of which seemed to bother it as much as having its horn broken.
Ralph chased after it. "Are you supposed to be holding its attention? You're not doing a very good job!"
Ellen frowned and followed. Monsters were dumb, but not so dumb that they'd ignore someone breaking off big chunks of their body.
She caught up to the monster when it slowed down to cast a sword at Trevor. She was in no position to shield him, so she turned her knife on the monster's right leg. Ralph went for the left. While his attacks bounced off the tough muscles, her knife cut straight to the bone. Dark red blood trickled out of the wounds she opened and dripped onto the ground.
She pulled her knife back and stabbed the monster again. And again and again and again. Ralph kept swinging as well, but try as he might, and he did look to be trying very hard, he couldn't make half as many attacks as her.
After a dozen more stabs, the monster forgot about Trevor and started turning her way.
"That's what I'm going to do to you if you kick me in the chest again," Ellen told Ralph. She didn't mean it, but the startled look that appeared on his face told her that he believed her.
She took off running. Ralph ran after her, but he was already panting hard and only made it a few steps before he collapsed to his knees. The monster turned its gaze on him and readied itself to cast another weapon.
Ellen frowned and turned around. She didn't like Ralph, but she didn't hate him enough to let him be butchered.
She darted to his side and summoned her shield. The monster cast two swords at her. Both hit her shield and bounced off into the forest.
"I'm not sure who I should be more afraid of," Ralph said, panting. "That monster, or you."
He should be afraid of both of them, especially if he tried to kick her or take her knife again.
Two more swords bounced off her shield. One sailed out into the forest while the other flew right at Ludendi, but she had more than enough time to duck out of the way.
"Can't you control that thing," Ralph complained, "or is she on your hit list as well?"
Ellen dropped her shield. "She's my best friend in this dimension. I'd never hurt her on purpose, unlike you. And I can't control where-"
The monster let out a defeated roar then collapsed onto its chest. A poleaxe was wedged deep inside the back of its head. Blood gushed out all around the wound.
"Is that one of Trevor's poleaxes?" Ralph asked, surprised. "He has great aim!"
Ludendi, Barry and Trevor regrouped beside the dead monster. Ralph ran over to meet them. Ellen put her knife away and followed.
Ralph smothered Trevor with so much praise that Trevor started turning red. Barry and Ludendi joined in as well, but they couldn't summon half of Ralph's energy.
"I bet your team leader never says anything nice to you," Ralph said afterwards.
Her friends became quiet. Ellen watched each of them make eye contact with her then quickly look away. It was true that she never gave them any kind of praise, but it wasn't out of malice as Ralph had implied. It was simply something that had not ever cross her mind.
"She doesn't," Ludendi agreed cautiously, "but it's not really her job, is it? Her job is to make sure we follow our orders and survive our mission."
"Of course it's her job. My old team leader always gave us compliments whenever we did something well. It gave everyone a massive confidence boost."
Ellen wanted to ask him were his confidence was when he left his old team behind to perish, but it was too evil of a remark even for her. "We need to get back to our search," she said instead.
Ralph dropped the issue, and the search went on.
"I wonder if that was the monster the group we met yesterday warned us about," Trevor said.
"It had to be," Ralph said. "You heard it stomping around, and it's not like there's anything else out here."
"That's true... but this is a massive forest. I can't see where it ends even with my binoculars."
"But you can see pretty far, and do you see anything stomping around out there? That means we got it!"
He flashed Trevor a grin, but Trevor remained cautious.
"Even if that was the monster," Ellen said, "we're still not safe out here. Something worse could take its place at any time."
"Lighten up already," Ralph said. "How do you expect to get anything done when you spout nothing but doom and gloom all the time?"
"We killed another big, ugly monster and nobody died this time," Barry said. "Just let us enjoy the victory."
"You are pretty negative," Ludendi said, and Trevor nodded in agreement.
Ellen frowned at them. How could they lecture her about being negative after all the misery they had expulsed back at the mining site?
But she didn't say anything. Another team of five was heading towards them and she wanted to greet them with a positive demeanor.
Ellen approached them, told them the news then showed them Brendon's note. Even though her delivery went far smoother than the last, Ralph still found a way to butt in.
"We have plenty of extra supplies if you need them," he said warmly. "Don't be afraid to ask. We can also show you the way to the plains if you need us to."
"No, we're alright," the group leader said. "But thanks for the offer. We'll be off. Stay safe."
The rest of the group gave him their thanks then hurried off.
"That's how you need to do it," Ralph boasted afterwards. "You're so cold all the time it's no wonder nobody likes you."
Ellen winced. Ralph's passive aggressiveness was slowly turning into regular aggressiveness. If he kept it up, she might just follow through with one of her threats.
"That's a really mean thing to say," Ludendi said. "But..." She glanced at Ellen. "It wouldn't hurt if you were a little warmer."
And he was turning her friends against her. Ellen frowned and marched forward.
Three more teams were patrolling the area. Ellen confronted them first, then Ralph forced his way into the conversation and took over for her. Each of his intrusions annoyed her more than the last, but she swallowed her frustration.
Once nighttime started creeping in, she led the group to another old tree stump with a hideaway carved into its exposed roots.
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"Let's have a fire," Ralph suggested. "I have the tools to start one in my backpack, and some of these roots are probably dry enough to burn."
"It's not safe," Ellen said. "Something might see it and-"
"What might see it? We found one monster all day. There's nothing else out there."
Ellen looked to her friends for support. There was no way they could take Ralph's side after how their last mission had ended.
"Maybe just a small one," Barry said. "I want to warm up before I lay down in that freezing dirt."
"And we'll put it out before we go to sleep," Ludendi promised. "Besides, there's no buildings around here to catch on fire this time."
"Even if the forest is dangerous," Trevor said, "our immediate area looks safe."
They were going to listen to Ralph and nothing she could say would change their minds. Ellen lowered her head, grabbed a sleeping bag and retreated into the hideaway.
She watched wearily as they built their fire. It ended up not being small at all, and once it was going, they started laying their sleeping bags down around it, meaning they planned to sleep out in the open where any monster that saw the flames would see them as well.
But if they didn't want to listen to her then there was nothing she could do. She closed her eyes and drifted off.
She was the first to wake up the next morning. She climbed out of her sleeping bag and left the hideaway.
Her friends had all slept around the fire. It was burned out now, but a thin trail of smoke continued to rise high up into the air.
The smoke hadn't lured anything towards them, nothing she could see, at least. It might be that there was nothing to see, but the forest didn't strike her as a very kind place.
She woke everyone up, then they ate breakfast and continued searching the forest.
Ellen started off in the lead, but Ralph slowly crept closer and closer until he was just about walking on her heels.
"You're so cold you probably gave some of the people we met yesterday frostbite," he said quietly. "Why don't you let me take care of the talking?"
He shoved his hand into her pocket, to which Ellen responded by jamming her elbow into his chin. It was a purely instinctual move, but she didn't regret it at all.
Ralph cried out in pain and went stumbling backwards. "What did you do that for?" he complained.
Ellen opened her mouth to yell at him, but Ludendi got the first word in. "It's because you stuck your hand in her pocket," she snapped. "We all saw it. You're not that smooth."
"We have a good dynamic here and you're really starting to mess things up," Barry complained.
"You've been very aggressive ever since you joined us," Trevor said. "Is this your way of getting back at us for what happened outside the tavern a few weeks ago?"
"We made an agreement," Ralph argued. "She was going to let me take care of-"
"We didn't make anything!" Ellen said.
They all looked at her, surprised. She couldn't blame them. It was the first she had yelled at anyone in this dimension. But Ralph deserved it. He was trying to drive a wedge between them, and for what? Because he fell on her knife a few weeks ago? Because he took her knife and she protested?
She darted forward while Ralph was still shocked. Her elbow hadn't hit fast enough to stop him from stealing Brendon's note out of her pocket. Even if all her orders ended up ignored, having the note gave her some authority.
But Ralph stuffed it into one his pockets before she could reach it, and she backed off. She had no desire to sink to his level.
"I'm just trying to help," Ralph blurted out. "Leading a team is a really tough job. I figured I'd do some of the work myself and give Ellen a break! Is that such a bad thing?"
Ludendi, Barry and Trevor glared at him for a moment longer, then turned to Ellen, who already knew what was coming. They were going to take Ralph's side.
"He's not hurting anyone," Ludendi said. "Just let him have his fun. You can take a break while he does the busy work."
"You're still the team leader," Barry said. "We'll listen to your orders."
They hadn't listen to her at all last night, but Ellen didn't say anything. Ralph was already leading her friends away.
She trailed behind them, a scowl on her face. They might prefer following Ralph right now, but they'd all be right back at her side when they needed someone to shield them from a storm of magic weapons, or when they got hurt and needed something to take the pain away.
Was that the only reason they followed her this far? Because of her shield and knife? The thought crossed her mind, but she quickly pushed it away. They'd been through too much together for their friendships to be that shallow.
"What's with that knife, anyway?" Ralph asked. "It's pretty obvious it's not a normal knife."
"It's a magic knife," Ellen agreed. "It drains the life from anything it stabs and heals the person holding it."
"So if I got hurt and stuck something with your knife, I'd feel better again?"
"Yeah, but you'd have to take it from me first."
That seemed to make her view of him clear, because Ralph didn't speak to her for hours. He was quite warm, almost charming around the three teams they found patrolling the forest, and he treated her friends well too, but he had nothing except bitter, silent glares for her.
She got a break from those stares during lunch, which they ate beside a young, adolescent tree, one that Ludendi claimed reminded her of the tree they had ate beside during their first mission, but it wasn't the same. The forest was too dim and too cold and the ground too hard and the atmosphere too tense.
Afterwards, because Ralph of course wouldn't do it himself despite taking the lead from her, Ellen asked, "Do you know how far we've gone?"
"I think this is as far west as we were supposed to go," Ludendi said, flipping through her book of maps. "We might've actually overshot our target, but I don't think anyone will notice. What should we do next? We could head home now, but Brendon told us to try and stay for four days."
"It hasn't been that dangerous so far," Trevor said. "I doubt it'll hurt us if we search a little bit longer."
"Let's keep going," Barry said. "Even if something does step on us during the night, we sent enough people back to cover for us."
"That's fine with me," Ludendi said, "but which way should we go?"
Her friends looked to her, at least briefly, Ellen saw, but they spent even more time looking to Ralph. "What do you think?" she asked him.
Ralph shrugged. "I'm not our leader. Don't look at me."
He definitely wasn't their leader. She hoped her friends remembered that. "Let's stay one more day," she said. She was reluctant, one more day in the forest meant one more day with Ralph, but it was worth it if it meant more teams would return to the fortress alive. "We'll go a little bit deeper, if it looks safe."
She marched deeper into the forest, to the point where the light shining in from the plains just about vanished, then headed east. The terrain was rougher. The ground rose and sank much more often, the unearthed roots were thicker and more unruly, and rocky outcroppings were much more common.
Ralph eventually slid passed her and took the lead again. She let him be for now.
"What's with that dark spot in the sky?" Ralph asked after a while. "Everyone's been talking about it, but I don't see what the big deal is."
"You mean you don't know?" Ludendi asked, surprised. "I guess you wouldn't. I think we're some of the few people who do know, and we haven't told anyone." She glanced at Trevor and Barry. "Right?"
"Of course not," Barry said with a chuckle.
Trevor averted his eyes as if he had something to hide.
"So what is that thing?" Ralph demanded.
"Ellen will explain it," Ludendi said. "She knows more about it than anyone."
"He can figure it out himself," Ellen said.
Ludendi gave her a look of concern, which did little to change her mind. "I know you two don't like each other, but can you at le
ast pretend to be friends until we get back to the fortress?"
"She started everything," Ralph grumbled.
"And you keep going out of your way to make everything worse," Ellen snapped.
Ludendi cut in with a loud sigh. "I'll tell you then," she grumbled, then she repeated everything Ellen had said in the past about the sky and the decay and the death of the dimension.
Ralph scoffed at her explanation. "Have you seen a bunch of extra monsters anywhere? I haven't. Look how calm this forest is. If it gets dark then we'll light some extra candles."
Did he really believe a few extra candles would help him survive the death of the dimension? It was such a ridiculous thought that Ellen couldn't help but snicker.
"I don't think candles will help us," Trevor said. "Monsters have been appearing outside the fortress more often than at any point in the past. It's only a matter of time before-"
"Maybe it's all a coincidence and that wildling girl is just trying to scare you into submission," Ralph said. "Did you ever think of that?"
Ellen ignored the cautious glances from her friends. They might believe Ralph instead of her, and she didn't care. They'd all find out who was right in a few weeks, if they had that long.
They soon found another team, and they hurried off as soon as Ralph showed them the note; Ellen's note, which she might've stolen back if he hadn't been watching her the whole time he had it out.
He let her choose their campsite that night, which at first she thought was a peace offering, but then he added, "You wildlings grew up sleeping in the dirt. You should be experts at finding the safe spots."
The site she picked was a hallowed out tree stump with a heavily nature encrusted net for a ceiling. She was the only one who actually went inside, her friends and Ralph stayed out in the open and started another fire.
It was their loss. If something found them during the night, she'd survive just fine.
Ellen crawled into her sleeping bag and lay down on the hard wooden floor. It was lumpy all over, but it was safe.
At least, she'd hoped it was safe. That hope vanished when she heard a footstep. It was little more than a soft thump in the distance, but her experience with things thumping around in the dark caused her to shoot straight up.
Forlorn Dimension (Ellen's Friends Book 1) Page 18