Astaroth stared intently at the two women. One seemed to be an elf - possibly a royal, and the other a shorter human. He'd been trying to find Allanon for days now, but had not yet despite his best attempts. The closest that he'd come had been these two, who had the faint sense of the druid.

They really seemed to have no sense of where they were going, and he was sure that one of them was injured as he could smell the distinctive copper scent across the air. He studied them analytically, before deciding that his best chance of finding the druid lay with these two, and he'd have to confront them somehow to get the information.

Which would be particularly difficult in his present situation, he was currently confined to his lower animal form - a powerful golden eagle. He supposed that it was likely due to physical, or psychological exhaustion, but that didn't change the fact that his main forms of communication - speech and sign language - were useless in his current state.

He focused in on them and decided that they likely didn't have any ranged weapons, so he could at least get within a sword's length of them. That might make things easier.

He prodded the perch that he was resting on with his lithe claws, before deciding to take off with a heavy, sudden flap of his wings to set off into the air. He glided on a fair way above them for a few moments before deciding to try something that could catch their attention. He made a small calling sound in the back of his throat and dropped down so that he was gliding alongside them at around their head height.

The shorter one, the human, noticed him first and pulled on the other's shoulder to pull her back away from him. "Wait, princess." She warned, a slight hint of poison in her words.

Astaroth flapped his wings rapidly in an attempt to stay in the same position in front of them, but gave up an instant later in favor of landing onto the ground to conserve his strength. He made another, deeper, call and shuffled from foot to foot. He felt extremely vulnerable in this position, on the floor with them towering above him, but he knew that he needed to try and get them to notice him.

"I think that it's trying to tell us something," the elf, the princess, looked at him quizzically, eyes full of wonder.

"It's just an eagle. It probably just wants some food," the human looked back from him to the elf, "Which we don't have."

He shook his head from side to side slowly, hoping that at least the elf - who seemed to want him to be intelligent - would understand that he did indeed want to communicate with them.

"I think it understands us, it's shaking its head," the elf woman pointed at him, and smiled somewhat

"We don't have time for this, Amberle we have to find Wil." She stood in front of him

"Eretria. It'll only take a minute, I think that it can understand us, " she reached out an arm and pushed the human out of the way to come in front of him, "Do you understand what I'm saying?"

He nodded to the best of his ability.

"Look it can!" she smiled widely and turned to her friend

"It can nod a little, that might just be a coincidence. Why don't you ask it something else?" Eretria said, seemingly more interested in the eagle and it's intelligence than before. He was getting through to them.

"Alright," she shuffled a little and looked around, "Can you point with your beak to something that's the color brown?"

"That's what you're asking it?" the human scoffed slightly, but put her hands up as a mock-defense when she saw how serious the elf looked, "Whatever, princess."

Astaroth turned his head to look around, trying to find something within a relatively short distance that he could point to that was of that color, before it finally dawned on him that he was brown. He stretched out his left wing and gently poked at it wit his beak, pausing every few seconds to look at the two women.

"That's just a coincidence... right?" Eretria questioned, not quite believing her eyes, "What... are you?"

He pulled his wing back in and let out a faint call, trying to convey that he couldn't answer as he couldn't speak.

"Maybe we should find Wil first and then deal with it, the elf-hunters are still out there." Eretria reasoned

The elf, Amberle, looked across the forest before turning back to him, "Yeah, you're right," she stood up and looked around again, weary that someone could come, it seemed, "Could you help us find out friend, Wil?"

He tilted his head to the side and let out a small cry. He had no idea who that Wil character was, and he needed to find Allanon. Going out of his way to do this probably wouldn't help that goal. He slowly shook his head from side to side.

"Please. We just need to find out friend, and then we'll help you." The elf begged.

He blew out a long sigh through his nose and nodded a little, he didn't see how else he could get the information if he didn't cooperate with them. He couldn't exactly articulate what he needed in this form, and they didn't seem willing to help him without their friend present.

"He's a half-elf, blond hair, really blue eyes. Please try to find him." Amberle asked

He nodded and started turning away from the two women. He suddenly flapped his wings and shot off from the ground to soar through the sky, just underneath the canopy. He didn't have a clear idea of what this half-elf, Wil, looked like, so this may be rather more difficult than the women had made out, but then again there didn't seem like too many people in this forest.

Astaroth picked up sight of two men down a few hundred meters from where he was currently. He decided that it was probably the best thing to get a closer look. He glided down to land on a branch a few feet from the pair.

The one on the left was a relatively small man, from behind he couldn't see much, except the scraggy brown hair, and... he smelt blood again. He focused more and noticed that the man's right ear was distinctly pointed so he was an elf. Although peculiarly his other ear seemed to be missing, there was only a faint lump, and dried, red and slightly brown blood. This one certainty didn't match the description that the woman gave.

The other, however, did seem to fit the vague description that the elf-woman gave. He had shoulder-length blond hair, but he couldn't see his eyes or ears to check about the other details. However considering that he was one of the only people that he'd seen in this forest, it was likely a safe bet that this was the Wil character that he's looking for. He studied them calculatingly and noticed that they was watching a small camp that was deserted except for a bulky, large human.

The blond haired man patted the shoulder of the other and turned around, crawling whilst crouched down, likely trying to stay hidden. Astaroth noticed that he did indeed have blue eyes and small, pointed ears indicative of a half-elf. This must be the Wil person that the women was searching for. He briefly considered confronting this Wil, and attempting to get the man to the women, but realized that first he'd have to try and convey that he was an intelligent creature, and men were rarely that open to using their imaginations.

He carefully turned around on his perch and batted his wings to take off into the air once again. He glided along trying to retrace his steps back to around where they were. He spotted a small group of people off to the left which he didn't recognize from when he'd been in this particular area last.

He watched them curiously. They seemed to be hunting something, but he wasn't really sure, and didn't particularly care either. But then he remembered what the human, Eretria had said - something about elf-hunters hunting them, or being in the area. Which could prove problematic, seeing as one of them was an elf. So, they probably ran away in an attempt to save themselves. But he need to find them in order to find Allanon. Great, his day was getting so much worse by the second, it turned from a simple mission of Allanon to doing all of these tasks for some strangers.

He couldn't feel the girls' presence anymore either, which was entirely strange considering that he had done only a few minutes prior. And whilst he was an excellent hunter in this form, he wasn't an expert at tracking people. He perked up slightly as he continued to watch the elf-hunters, realizing that they were experts in hunting people, and that all he had to do to find the girls was to follow these elf-hunters.

Astaroth listened in carefully to their conversations, hearing something about a 'royal girl', which he hoped to be the elf, Amberle. The human had been referring to her as a princess, after all. He jumped from his perch and glided towards the group, they seemed to be rallying around some kind of huge hole in the ground that the hunters believed someone had fallen into. They all had stabbed grapple hooks into the grass and tied their ropes off around their waists. They carefully lowered themselves down one-by-one into the pit until none of them were on the surface.

The eagle landed down onto the grass to try and ease himself into his humanoid form. He tried to spread his wings to try and make himself bigger until he became large enough to change back into his humanoid form. But, as things had been recently, it didn't go as planned, and he found himself still confined to his lower animal form. He huffed slightly and decided to just try and continue regardless of being stuck as he was.

He ran towards the huge hole in the ground and peered his head into it, curious as to what was going on. The two women he'd seen earlier appeared to be bound together and fastened to one of the ropes that were strung up to the surface, whilst another woman watched them with a long knife in hand.

The woman suddenly reached forwards and grabbed the human, before pressing a knife to her throat.

"There's only room for two." The red-haired woman sneered, pressing the knife harder into her throat.

Astaroth let out a load cry to try and shock her and it seemed to work; the woman lowered the knife far enough for Eretria to knock her back. The other human stumbled slightly and fell to the ground, a hard thud as she fell onto her back. The eagle swooped down and started rapidly flapping his wings to hover close to her head. He dropped onto her and bit at her neck repeatedly, trying to sever one of the main arteries to make her bleed out quickly, and die.

"Stop!" One of the women screamed.

He pulled away and turned his head to look at them, they appeared to be fairly disgusted at the violent kill that he'd just made. He bent down to wipe his bloody beak on the woman's shirt. He chirped slightly and jumped off of the now dead, yet still warm, body to stand on the ground next to them

Eretria bent down and picked up the hunter's knife to cut Amberle free from the ropes. They both turned to look at him wearily.

"What are you?" Eretria snarled.

He lightly flapped his wings and tapped his claws against the floor. Honestly, Astaroth wasn't sure what he'd done wrong - the woman had been attacking them and he'd stopped her from doing so. He clicked his beak together and decided that it was perhaps just that they were squeamish and didn't like the sight of blood.

"Amberle! Eretria!" A male voice called. A rope was thrown suddenly into the hole, and the male half-elf from before was lowered down through the ceiling. He pulled his foot out of the loop in the rope and turned to hug the princess.

"Wil!" They both said, almost in relief. The half-elf and princess parted, and Wil turned to hug Eretria. They parted ways and Wil turned to look at the dead elf-hunter's body. He opened his mouth as if to say something before looking up.

"We need to go." He said

The two women looked up to where they'd came in to see how Wil planned to leave. There was some kind of large creature shrouding the entrance in darkness, holding up the rope.

"A wing rider..." Amberle said in surprise.

The three slotted their feet into the knotted loops on the rope, and they reached up to grab the section of the rope. Astaroth looked at them quizzically for a second, considering curring the rope and trapping them in here to get some answers on where Allanon is, but decided that they'd probably be very uncooperative if he did that to them.

He watched as they rose into the air quickly, presumably being pulled up by the roc. The eagle let out a small, discontented noise at the realization that he'd have to fly again to keep up with his only chance of finding Allanon. He was already physically, and quite frankly mentally, exhausted, and he just wanted to sleep. But he wasn't about to let himself be killed by a predator in a forest just because he decided to take a nap.

The eagle pushed himself off of the ground to fly up at out of the hole. He followed the in the direction that they began to go, screeching as he felt an arrow pass dangerously close to his tail feathers. He looked down and saw several other elf-hunters clustering with their weapons drawn, the archers in the group already firing at them.

Astaroth flapped his wings again to speed himself up, before settling to glide alongside the roc's upper half. It'd been a long while since he'd even seen one, and he'd never been this close to one. He found them to be magnificent creatures, much akin to the image that he had of the mystical griffins that he'd heard tales about as a child. It looked much like a massive gray-brown eagle, which of course he loved - it was his chosen form after all. It had icy blue eyes that glanced at him every so often to, presumably, check if he was a threat. Ordinarily, he'd be able to make himself be such a size that he could have some form of playful fun with the roc, but he was restricted to his normal eagle-sized form. They seemed to being to slow down as they came to a small clearing in the forest. The roc seemed to be lowering down.

Astaroth pulled his wings in and dived down towards the ground, loving the way that the high speed caused the hair to wrap around his body like a tight blanket. A few meters from the ground, he pulled his body back and spread his wings, in an attempt to slow himself down.

He landed softly on the ground, gripping his long claws into the dirt and grass. He watched as Eretria, Wil, and Amberle stepped out from the rope onto the ground as they were held a few inches from the surface. They brushed themselves down and stepped away from the creature, which promptly shot back up into the air.

"Are you two okay?" Wil asked them, reaching to place a comforting hand on Amberle's shoulder.

"I'm fine." The elf said, wincing slightly, "There's just... my shoulder got caught on a rock after we fell." She pushed his hand off of her injured shoulder, and turned her head, as if embarrassed.

"Are you okay, Eretria?" Wil turned to the human.

"Yeah, I-" she turned her head slightly and caught sight of Astaroth, "It's that hawk..." she seemed to take a step back, "It killed Zora."

Astaroth chirped and raised his head up high, as if trying to show himself off, not quite understanding the acidity and venom in her voice.

"It's an eagle, and it saved us, Eretria." Amberle said

"What happened?" Wil stepped in front of him, blocking the girls' sight of him

"That bird tore Zora's throat out - that's what happened." Eretria accused.

"Who's Zora?" Wil asked

"The elf-hunter who tried to kidnap me and kill her," Amberle said.

Astaroth leered at them and internally frowned, he didn't have time for their squabbling, and didn't really find a reason for why him killing the elf-hunter lady was bad. He was only being helpful by doing so, which is more than he can usually say about himself. He decided to jump from his spot on the ground to land on the very startled half-elf's shoulder. He gently pushed his left wing out to press into Wil's head, before pulling it back in. He seemed to be rather unable to talk directly into his mind, which was rather strange. Although considering that none of his other magic was working, not so much.

"Uh, Hello." Wil reached his hand up to pat the eagle's back, "Where'd he come from?"

"We just found him in the road in the forest - he just seemed to want something." Amberle replied.

Astaroth nodded enthusiastically.

"I wonder who sent him, he seems very well trained." Wil asked

The eagle turned his head to the side to pull a face at the half-elf. He hadn't been trained by anyone else - he was his own person. He didn't belong to anyone.

"He doesn't have a note attached to him." Eretria noted

"Maybe he's hungry?" Wil said, flexing his shoulder, likely due to the weight of Astaroth causing discomfort.

The eagle turned his head up slightly and nodded. It wasn't what he was with them for, but he was rather hungry - he'd easily admit that without it hurting his pride, he was after all, an animal. He'd flown an impossibly far distance today, so it's really no surprise that he wanted food.

"We don't uhh, have any food." Amberle said

Astaroth sighed and looked around. He reached and patted Wil on the head with the side of his beak. He looked off to the side and saw a large hare bouncing around. He jumped from his shoulder perch suddenly to dive towards the hare. He stretched out his claws and drove them into its back, before reaching forward to tear the throat out off the hare. The eagle shot back up into the air as the are went limp in his grasp, so he turned around to glide quickly towards the group of people.

He dropped the hare in the middle of the group before landing on the ground next to their feet. He began preening his feathers, rather pleased with his work in hunting down the hare.

Eretria reached down to pick up the hare, she pulled out the dagger that was strapped to her thigh, "Can you get some firewood, Wil?"

"Yeah. Are we going to camp here for the night?" He asked, looking up at the sky, which was slowly turning rather dark shades of purple and blue.

"I don't think that we'll find anywhere safer in the next few hours - this is probably the best place."

Wil nodded and walked towards the forest to go collect some firewood.

Eretria knelt down and placed the hare on the ground. "I don't think that this'll be enough for the three of us." She pinched a small section of its hide and made a small cut with her knife.

Astaroth chirped slightly, trying to remind her that he wanted some food too, after all, he'd caught it.

"Four of us... Can you catch another one?" she looked at the eagle, as if slightly annoyed at having to ask for his help. She also placed her fingers into the cut on the hare's back to pull the hide from the meat.

He nodded slightly and pushed off the ground to glide back towards the forest. It'd definitely be harder to catch one of the hares that would be around this time - they'd be spooked due to the death of one of their own, so he'd have to try his best to catch something.

The eagle saw something move out of the corner of his eye, so he quickly changed direction to see another large hare just ahead of where he was. He lowered himself slightly to dig his talons into its back. He heaved it up and took it back towards the clearing. Wil and Amberle seemed to be setting up a small campfire, and Eretria was still knelt down next to the hare that was now skinned and gutted. He glided forwards and dropped the hare next to her, looking curiously at the organs. Ordinarily, he'd prefer a nicer cut of the actual muscle of the animal, but right now he just wanted whatever packed the most energy.

"You can have the organs if you want. They'll be difficult to cook with what we have right now." She offered, reaching to grab the new hare.

Astaroth nodded his head and reached his beak down to grab the edible organs. He watched the human start to skin the newer hare interesting in how she was doing it. He didn't take long at all to polish off the meat, and soon found that the human was placing new organs in front of him. He quickly ate them too and looked at the human, pretty pleased.

He nodded at her, before turning and leaping into the air again. He landed on a branch peering out from a tree at the edge of the clearing and positioned himself so that he could see the people easily. He decided that he should get some sleep whilst he could, so he locked his feet tight around the branch and closed his eyes.