Had the creature just ignored him? She assaults him, injures him, and sucks his blood without even taking him to a nice dinner first, and then runs? If he was going to lose the amount of blood he did, he wanted to have his curiosity quenched at least. He asked again, just in case her hearing was failing her.

She had either understood and hid, or didn't and hid thinking he was hostile. He started to walk away, only to stop after taking a single step, wincing in pain. Looks like he still wasn't going anywhere. He sat down at the base of tree, searching through his pockets to see if he had something that could be used as bandages to cover his increasingly bleeding leg.

A leaf, long enough to be used as a bandage, fell on his head, presumably from the girl. Before wrapping it around himself, he took a smaller leaf from nearby and wiped the blood off, and put the bloody leaf next to him. He carefully wrapped the leaf around, covering most of the wound she had caused. After caring for his leg, he held the bloody leaf up, as if inviting the Finder downed. His curiosity overcame his fear, and more importantly, his common sense.

Erebos walked to a log and took a seat. "So... what's happening?"

Unbeknownst to Koutetsu, the girl climbed down from the tree to examine the weapon, and eventually made off with it. When she had gone a fair distance, she crawled into a nearby cave and set the thing down to have a good look at it. She gingerly took it in her hands, and her old memories came surging back. She deftly spun it around in her hands and snapped off a few precise slices through the air. It felt good to handle a sword again after all those years.

The girl stepped out of the cave and proceeded to practice with it on a few young tree stalks. The katana seemed to move on its own; it sliced, diced, and chopped up the wood with expert skill, and the even the thickest sections were no match for her practiced strikes.

It then occurred to her that someone might be watching her...

Koutetsu heard a call to him from a distance. It sounded like a knight, but for all he knew it could be the vampire again. He decided to take a risk, and stay. He hoped whatever had just seen him wasn't interested in stealing what little he had left of gear or blood.

((That'll do pig, that'll do.))

((Now I'm confused. Currently, my character is laying down by a pond. Thinslayer is apparently also at a pond somewhere. Colray, mind pointing out who specifically you are seeing? Should you have seen Thin instead, I'll redact my post.))

((I'll agree to Colray's compromise.))

The girl fled, but in the wrong direction. She had barely gone a tenth of a mile before stumbling into a camp of some sort, surrounded by a small batch of knights. She instinctively scrambled back toward the forest, but it was too late; she had been spotted.

"I dunno, I might've seen someone else, whoever it was threw something into the pond."

He turned back and waved at Lann, his rune staff might help with this knight's wounds.

"I don't have much experience with medical training. What happened?"

Leo started shuffling through his pack, he pulled out some bandages and a health capsule.

"Here, I'm going to check out what's in the pond."

"What? That sounds painful."

Leo looked away from the pond and at the knight, "Oh sure, here I have this."

He unsheathed his short sword and lay it on the ground within Koutetsu's reach. He unhooked his crossbow and returned to the pond, trying to see through the sand that the object had kicked up. Leo tried to judge where the object had landed, and tried to see what it was.

Eventually, the sand settled down and lodged in the sand was a gleaming katana, barely visible in the water.

"You didn't happen to drop it in the pond did you? There's a katana here that you could use."

Koutetsu looked at his katana with a baffled expression on his face. "This is in fact my weapon, put I didn't drop it in the pond, so someone else must have..." Oh dear. It dawned on him that the girl might be near him again. "If... if you see something that looks like a demon that wants to suck your blood, it probably will. Sorry, I don't think I catched your name?"

Koutetsu managed to stand after a bit of fumbling. "Thanks. Be careful, I have my suspicions on what it might be."

"You really don't want to go after that thing. Sure it's peaceful now, but nobody knows how long that ever lasts for," Armori suddenly spoke up. Due to the fact that he never really concentrated on the path straight ahead, he had seen the flashes of movement by the pond, and given what the injured knight had described, he was pretty sure he had an idea of what it was.

Without a second glance at the injured knight, it wasn't like anything was going to harm him now anyways, he told Lann:

((@Thinslayer- are you the only Finder in existence? Probably should've asked before..))

"There are creatures which can only live by ingesting blood in the forests. It keeps them sane I think. Don't ask me for many more details except that they get extremely violent when bloodthirsty, I don't know and don't wish to know anymore about them. They're extremely hard to reason with nowadays, as people have hunted them to the point that they're extremely close to being extinct. Now it's to the point where there may be one in a random forest, and we had the bad odds of being in that forest."

Then he turned to the injured knight and said:

"You alright?"

((Yes, I am the only "Finder" in existence. While there are numerous individuals who have been infected with dark matter, the Finder is the only Fallen Valkyrie in such a state. Her body naturally destroys dark matter, but it will take time, on the order of decades, before she is fully cured of the infection and climbs out of her insanity.))

"If you classify sitting down with your back against a tree as an attack, then I'm a crazed serial killer. She snuck up behind me and tried to suffocate me. When I broke free, she threw some dirt at my face to distract me, and then lunged for my leg with some kind of extendable claws. I was too paralyzed from the pain to fight back against her sucking my blood. I saw it again shortly afterwards, where it seemed a lot more docile. Well, she screamed at me a little bit so she didn't seem to enjoy my company, but she didn't attack me again. It was all sorts of odd an terrifying."

*Suffocate? It has hands?* Armori wondered. The further Koutetsu got into his tale, the more worried Armori became. Using dirt as distraction? Cheap, yes, but much more clever than the average monster. Extendable claws? By the time the knight finished talking, Armori was just plain confused.

"The only things familiar there are the bloodsucking and the screaming. Kats used to suck blood you know, but they usually went for Owlite blood. But anything they bit and left would become infected with that kind of vampirism. But they weren't smart, or that stealthy for that matter. Bloodthirsty, yes, but that was it. The fact that there's something like that with some degree of sentience, i'm getting out of this forest soon." Armori said.

"Just for the record, where were you guys headed anyways?" he asked Leo and Lann. ((yayy alliterations))

"Well, it somewhat resembles a she at least. It also seemed to have some kind of bony wings on it's back, so it's not hard to miss her."

He heard twigs snapping behind them.

"Oh God, this is like how it attacked me. The only way I knew she was there was by a twig snapping!" Koutetsu drew his weapon, and anticipated an attack.

"Anyone hear that?" Armori asked.

The injured knight, Armori had forgotten his name already, was freaking out and drawing his weapon. Armori took out a bayonet with a poisonous tip, and he spoke.

"I advise you to step where we can see you, creature. Do not attempt a sneak attack, as I will kill you. I've been walking all day, i'm not feeling generous."

((You're scaring me Thin.))

Leo was ready to shoot, and his nerves were on edge even when it was revealed to be a chroma.

"I guess it made a mistake when trying to attack you."

"Lann said he was thinking about going to Moorcroft, so I followed him."

He looked at Lann briefly for his answer.

Armori watched the baby Chroma scamper away. Just as well, if he had killed it they might have tried to roast it. After almost retching at the thought, he replied to Leo.

"Hm. Moorcroft, the dark rituals Kat always has a room ready for me, so I might as well. Sometimes I feel like it tries to use me for its rituals though." Armori pulled another face.

Koutetsu had let out a sigh of relief. It was obvious that the thing, whatever it was, had rattled him. He also mentioned that the thing was humanoid.

"Well that cuts down the field significantly. But if it can use weapons, maybe a knight?" Armori mused out loud.

Archemiday didn't have much interest in joining the group, but didn't want someone else to be attacked, so he trailed a little behind Lann, just in case. He couldn't join the group because he was on his way to... Where? Why couldn't he remember? Did something take his memory? His small panic was broken by Lann cutting his arm, followed by a tree branch snapping. He was about to draw his blade, but decided against it so he would appear friendly. "I don't think this is a good idea, Lann. I tried talking to it but it just seemed to ignore me earlier."

"Yeah, we should move."

Once again, Leo unloaded his crossbow and hooked it on his back, then retrieved his short sword from where Koutetsu left it. As well as well as any extra bandages that the injured knight hadn't used.

"I'm all set, after you."

Koutetsu let out another sigh if relief. "Lann, please put a bandage on your wound. This is a terrible idea."

((Since the post train seems to have died, I'm going to get some sleep. G'knight.))

Erebos runs over to Leo's voice