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"Voices."

It is easy for Ayle to assume an air of command: he's had a long time to perfect that Tone, with a capital T, around the apprentices in the forge. It's a voice that gets listened to, and one he hopes will cut through both the Swords' discussion and the voices just off to his side. His confidence is betrayed by the fact he runs a hand through his pale hair, and his other remains firmly on the hilt of his sword, ready to draw. He is trying desperately not to let his eyes dart around. Everything will look like lost hunter, every shadow will suddenly grow fangs and teeth and threaten.

"I heard them off to the left," he says, and tosses his head, so that his long horsetail of hair goes shivering down his back. "--did you?"

Wiggy heard it, too, and she drew closer to the line, her back to them, eyes staring into the tangle of trees behind them. Spirits take her if that didn't sound like a lost group of hunters! But so soon? So close to the border of the forest?
And how had her group managed to walk past them?

F-frost and flame, did you see --

Wait a minute, had Ayle said on they were on the left? Keeping one eye on the trees, she turned to ask the weaponsmith if he was sure when Aoife said she heard them coming from the right.

"I hear 'em behind us." Wiggy replied, her voice much calmer than it had any business being, since her heart had quickened a good bit. "Steady on, and stay together. This could be Spirits just as easy it could be a trick of the trees and snow. You hear em ahead, Saxen? What's yer map say? Sounds like a group. Where's the nearest open spot? When yer lost in the Woods, you want an open spot so you can see anythin' comin' at you."

Speaker knew, she wouldn't have minded an open spot herself right now. She did the next best thing, backing up so nothing could come at her back without her companions seeing, and keeping a sharp eye on the trees, looking for movement.

At least they had a map. This somehow comforted Ayle, who tipped Saxen a careless-seeming salute with one hand. The other still rested comfortably on the rounded pommel of his sword. "The map isn't going to lie," he said, and then added, a second later, "Let's keep moving. I don't like this at all." And moving targets are harder to kill, he thought, but he wouldn't voice that aloud. Not at all. Wiggy might just break and run hell for leather through the Blackwood.

"One foot in front of the other, then."

Would they be walking towards the voices or away from them? Saxen couldn’t tell, but with a curt nod to the others, he began moving forward. They had a job to do and he wouldn’t let the madness of the forest distract them from it. He kept his steps steady and evenly paced, focusing ahead. Honestly, he simply needed something to do and a powerful need to move away from the whispering. Even if he was leaving a potential clue behind, he couldn’t care less. “Keep up,” he called back, “and keep your eyes peeled.”

Sola was, to put it lightly, unnerved. Through a series of completely irrelevant at this point events she had gotten separated from her group, and had only one option left - to wander through the woods alone, ironically searching for the search party. The soft whispers set shivers up her spine, and her imagination and all her fantasies could not have prepared her for the dark, magnificent and haunting presence that was the forest.

If I don't meet another human being in an hour I just might go insane, The searcher thought grimly to herself. As it turned out, an hour passed and she, amazingly enough, did not lose her mind. Yet her senses and natural instincts were beginning to kick in, and soon her eyes began scanning the underbrush for human signs, her ears started straining to hear a snatch of a human conversation, something, anything differing from the never ending, ever-following whispers.

In under a half an hour her fears were proved wrong (The fears about not meeting anybody, to be specific. She was still pretty sure all the other fears were real.) when she finally saw a set of footprints leading further into the forest. Finally, Sighed the young woman and relaxed, approaching the trail. Well, relaxed for all of five seconds. Until she heard the voices.

...East.

No, it was west...

...have to argue...

...what was that?

F-frost and flame, did you see --

From Sola's viewpoint, the voices were coming from the direction the footsteps were leading toward. Even in her fear Sola retained her honor. She would rather die than leave a fellow man in danger. So, she drew her dagger, the only weapon she could use aside from her fists, took a shaking, deep breath and stalked as silently as she could forward.

((Note for blue: Sola may have found the tracks of the Hunter(s) (Or what's left of them...) but it's just as likely she's about to spring on her own group! Please let me know what is a more likely scenario so I can act it out accordingly!))

The branches first reached for Sola, the whispering voices seeming to brush directly against her hear as the smallest twigs caught and brushed her cheeks and traced bare wooden fingers through the soft furs she wore. They pushed her…tugged her like hands till she stumbled back into the midst of the very group she had left.

“Frost and flame, whispers in the dark…it cuts …it BURNS.” The voices raised to a fevered pitch, a pained keening sound that rose to an agonized scream as the branches reached for the rest of the party.

The screams rose to an unearthly howl, growing closer and far less phantom. The knotholes in the trees contorted, twisting like mouths till the screams echoed out of the wood itself. Screaming in pain, in terror, in a wordless unsettling.

The branches waved at you, clawed, snagged, pushed and pulled it seemed your ears might start to bleed if the screams rose higher in pitch, It left all of you clutching your ears and perhaps screaming yourselves in desperation for the screams and the fear that they elicited to cease. At last, with a final tremulous wail that shook the very branches of the trees, knocking free the snow that clung to them the sounds stopped, the world had, it seemed, returned to normal, though it would take only moments to realize that it was not the same place they had stood when the screaming had begun.

Saxen’s sword slid from its sheath in one fluid motion. Under other circumstances he might have been proud of how smoothly the action came under the crisis. However he did not have time to be proud of anything as he nearly cut Sola down as she stumbled back into the group. He let out few choice expletives as he lowered his sword, his words drowned out as the forest began to scream.

Terror filled him and held him rigid as branches reached out to push and tug at his body. His sword fell from numb fingers and he slowly sunk into a crouch. Hands pressed desperately against his ears, and though he did not scream, he began to mutter please stop, please stop over and over again, long after it had ended.

He felt as if his insides had been rearranged and left raw, bleeding. His muttering stopped but he did not rise, simply stared at the ground and wondered how he could have been so foolish. The part of him that had died with his daughter, the emptiness left behind, had sent him on this path. Now there was no turning back.

Saxen was vaguely aware of Aoife’s words as he reached for his sword, hooking the hilt lightly in his nimble fingers.

Wiggy's sword didn't come so easily from her sheathe. But she wrenched the all too inadequate blade from the leather, just the same, and crouched defensively, looking for the source of the whisper.

And then the screaming began, and Wiggy couldn't tell whether it was the trees screaming, or her, but she yelled just the same, and hacked at the branches with the sword, trying to keep their flailing limbs at bay.

Finally. Finally, the sound stopped. Wiggy continued to scan the surrounding trees, jerking at every breeze tossed branch, until the sounds of her companions talking made her realize that ... whatever that had been was over.

At Aoife's observation, Wiggy looked at the trees with new eyes, and realized that, yes, they weren't in the same location. How...?

No, she'd rather not think about that. Ayle had the best idea, really. Keep moving. Wiggy cleaned the bits of twig and sap from her sword, and sheathed it.