>>6321745As you scan the slopes for anything out of place, a patch of grass too dark and a telltale sign of a grasscarpet crawler, a prowling stalker trying to use boulders as cover for its advance, or even a sign of a Flying Mirror using its deceptive underside plumage to trick you into not noticing it, you keep your eyes peeled for anything unusual that only someone trained for patrols would be able to spot from your keen awareness training. You've been caught unawares too many times before and you think you might be developing something of a healthy paranoia, if that's actually a thing. 'Can't be too careful' and all that.
>95Its on your second sweep that you spy something that usually wouldn't make you so much as blink but you connected to the totem network very recently, and on a hunch you take a quick peek at the spectre, and yes. It's pointing at where you suspect a problem lies ready to strike at you.
You snap two of your bony fingers a couple times to get the attention of your teacher and Heyra, both looking at you and then to the direction you're staring towards. Then they see your hand tight around the handle of the Fear blade and you subtly point forward at one of the slightly taller totem posts that would be around your height.
Heyra's hand goes for one of her odd pouches and reaches inside to slowly pull out a vicious looking spiked pole with a horned skull at its end. Whatever it does you think you'll soon find out as your teacher readies her bead string and a low whispering note from the wind emits from her string.
The map definitely needs to be calibrated again after this.
Thankfully you were aware enough to catch the extra detail among the slopes as you stare hard at a strangely tall totem pole that absolutely wasn't set up in that spot since you would have sensed it there when you were linked with the nodes.
Oranya is first to move and whips her beaded arm up to point at the pole and fires a solid nail of screeching wind that blows the top of it clean off, resulting in the splatter of disgustingly oily green blood that paints the slope in a wide area behind it.
Immediately, the screaming begins as the pole uproots itself from the ground and now stands on three narrow, false wood legs and a barbed tentacle comes out from the opening the extended legs exposed that coils and swishes around in the air.
>??? (Mimic-type creature): critical injury sustained. Element of surprise lost. Exposed and furious.(Apologies anons I forget to change my handle back at times)
