Then she made gruel and mixed it with some fruit pulp and
goat's milk.
After this, she surveyed her surroundings, struck by the uncultivated
beauty and wild appearance of the land.
Somewhere in the dense nearby forest, she heard the scream of some
fierce monster. The ferocity and bestiality of the sound chilled her
blood and sent shivers up and down her spine even as a host of lesser
animals took up a warning cry, broadcasting an alarm of the unseen
predator's passage through their midst.
She could not identify the repeatedly screaming animal with anything
from her memory, for she had never in her life heard such a terrible
sound. Eventually, it began to move farther away from the camp, as it's
terrible cries gradually diminished into the distance. For a long time,
she could still occasionally hear it's banshee screams as it prowled
somewhere beneath the high canopy of deep forest. Many of the soldiers,
she noticed, seemed greatly discomfited by the savagery of the sound,
clutching their weapons tightly as they looked anxiously in its
direction.
Si'Wren could not help shivering again when she chanced to hear it one
last time, far in the distance, through some quirk of the gentle wind
across the uneven land. In spite of the undulations of the terrain, it
had continued -day after day- to slope progressively upwards ahead of
the expedition as the royal procession had made more or less steady
progress to the northwest, marching ever deeper into the wilds.
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