This morning was even less eventful than the previous. The only sore in the eye was the impoverished forest, bereft of its gorgeous trees after the Hat Man slash. It pained her to see so much timber wasted. Those trees were almost impossible to cut down by normal means. And now there were dozens, or maybe hundreds, lying around. She took a mental note to tell Zywa about the trees after the exam.

  Tonight she took the second shift. Liz thought it was better if he fell asleep in the first half of the night, and she could watch the second, already rested. When she woke up, she was late to her shift, and as she predicted, her acquaintance was sound asleep. She fought her sleep, but dozed off a couple of times anyway.

  The unreliable duo packed their stuff and went to look after the river. They ran out of water reserves, and they had to find new food anyway.

  The river was vast and lay across the whole Forbidden Forest, but you still needed to find it. There were a lot of ways to find the river in the forest: first, they looked for dense, green vegetation or willow trees. When they assessed the direction, they looked for the downhill toward the lowest point in the terrain. Soon, they saw animal tracks heading the same way. Now they knew they were on the right track.

  On the way to the river, Liz enjoyed listening to the birds singing. The mist was mild, and the weather was beautiful that day. Now she could see what the coniferous forest was offering. The tallest ones were needle-leaved evergreen trees. She had read that the trees have waxy needles to retain moisture and a conical shape to shed snow. It didn’t snow as much as it did in Frey, but it was enough for her not to miss it.

  When they reached the river, it was unusually quiet. Birds didn’t sing anymore, no buzzing insects, even the wind didn’t make leaves rustle. Only the murmur of the river slowly made its way through the dense forest.

  What they found wasn’t a large river, more like a shallow stream, one foot deep, and about a hundred feet wide.

  A mile wide but an inch deep. Liz thought.

  The water was so lucid that they could see through it. A current of freshwater briefly separated the two sides of the forest, creating the rare opening without the trees.

  Liz could sense that her companion noticed something was wrong, but chose to ignore it. For the short period she knew him, she could already guess that he wouldn’t tell her what was happening even if she asked, and she was on her own.

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  She decided not to act suspiciously and do what they came for, just a lot more carefully. She was ready for a trap, so she was scanning the area across, looking for something that was off. She desperately wanted to notice the same thing he noticed. Her competitive nature kicked in, and she didn’t suppress it, even though she knew it would be better if it had been a survival instinct.

  She had two waterskins to fill. Zywa taught her to always carry double of everything, just in case something were to happen. Redundancy was a crucial thing for survival in the long journeys demon hunters had to take.

  Liz took her shoes off, rolled up her pants to her knees, then, with waterskins in both of her hands, she went into the water. She submerged both of them at the same time, watching bubbles coming out of the waterskin necks.

  A long, transparent wire came with the current and wrapped around her hands and legs. It was thin as a human hair but rigid as steel. It took less than a second for it to tie her up. When the barely visible tread touched Liz’s skin, it disintegrated almost immediately.

  Liz closed the lids on waterskins and searched around with her eyes. She noticed something in the bushes, someone made them shake, and she realized that her suspicions were right and someone was there.

  “IN THE BUSH!” She yelled to the Hat Man.

  She watched him slowly bend over, picking up a rock, and raising his hand in the air for the throw.

  “DON’T KILL THEM!”

  “Who do you think I am?” he murmured barely audibly.

  He threw a rock with such force that it left a trail in the air. Instead of hitting the bush, it hit the tree nearby and snapped it in half. One more tree with a forty-inch trunk was falling down. It was cracking so loud, Liz’s face cringed uncontrollably.

  Damn, he snapped one more tree. Liz's palm was pressed against her forehead, clearly fostered.

  The man in the bushes jumped away, avoiding an enormous tree falling over him. When it hit the ground, they felt the vibration shaking their poor, small bodies.

  At that moment, one of the ambushers jumped at the Hat Man from behind. He easily dodged the attack, grabbed the attacker by the wrist, and spun him in the air. When the ambusher landed on his knees. The Hat Man flicked with his finger on the back of his head, knocking his lights off. The ambusher was now lying down, unconscious.

  Two more people appeared near the man who jumped from the bush. Liz recognized them right away. It was her previous ally, TT. The other three were people with whom TT became friends in the first stage of the exam: Luke, Leia, and poor Han, vertical, asleep.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Sorry, kiddo. We need those coins.”

  Liz couldn’t believe the betrayal. Even though she knew it wasn’t personal, they looked like easy targets. They would be fools if they didn’t try. Regardless, it still hurt her feelings.

  “I don’t think we can beat this guy. Did you see what he did to this tree? We need to get Han somehow and retreat, immediately.” TT said to his party.

  “I’ve been in the army my whole life, and I’ve never seen anything like that. This guy is bad news,” said Luke.