Chapter 1 - Long Gone Shadows
Sunlight streamed down through the leaves, casting a warm glow throughout the woods. Amelia chased her friend, Kiara, across the leaf covered ground, happily playing with each other. A gentle breeze drifting through the trees, causing the leaves to softly rustle in the canopy above them. Various species of birds and bugs sang their individual songs, filling the forest with a quiet hum.
The kids, both around the age of eleven, ran through the forest. They were protected against the sun's harsh light by the leaves above and cooled by the breeze. Neither had a single care in the world, except for chasing after one another.
Amelia followed closely behind Kiara, trying her best to catch her faster friend. It wasn't that Amelia was slow, but instead that Kiara was abnormally fast, even for a young kid. So as Amelia tried to reach Kiara, she would inevitably find her friend another step in front of her. This gap continued to grow between them until Kiara was able to get behind a large tree without Amelia able to immediately follow.
Kiara disappeared behind the tree, so Amelia, being the bright kid she was, knew that her friend had to be waiting behind the tree to surprise her. Realizing this, Amelia decided to attempt to flip the script and try to surprise Kiara instead. Slowly, she crept closer, making sure to keep the tree between her and Kiara as to not spoil what she was planning.
Right as she could just touch the tree with her small hands, Amelia leapt around the tree with a playful scream to scare Kiara.
But her friend was nowhere in sight.
Amelia made a full circle around the large trunk of the tree. Even with a few quick stops and reversals, Kiara continued to elude her sight. Her smile slowly dropped from her face, a slightly worried frown in its place.
With how much more athletic Kiara was relative to Amelia, it wasn't impossible that she was simply being outmaneuvered. However, in that case Amelia would be able to sense Kiara in some other way, most likely by hearing footsteps or giggling.
Not only did Amelia not hear any sound that she could attribute to Kiara hiding from her, she didn't hear any sounds at all.
The once busy forest was now completely silent, save for her breathing, which was growing faster as the panic began to set in.
Darkness encroached from every angle, causing the once warm and inviting atmosphere of the forest to twist into a cold and oppressive one. Amelia felt the hair on the back of her neck stand up, as goosebumps rose across her skin from the sudden drop in temperature. The feeling of suddenly being alone crawled its way up her spine.
"K-Kiara…?" she called out, her voice trembling as she spoke. Her words were quickly swallowed by the silence of the dark forest. No reply came in response to her weak attempt at locating her friend.
Time dragged along, slowed by the dark aura of the forest. Every one of Amelia's senses strained for any sign of her friend, but not one was able to pick up on anything. Every living creature within the woods had seemingly decided to go silent all at once.
Except for Amelia, who had called out into the silent forest for her friend.
Realizing her mistake, Amelia covered her mouth with both hands, feeling tears beginning to stream down her cheeks onto them. A deep, visceral trembling took hold of her body, causing her to begin shaking uncontrollably. Her legs eventually gave out from under her, forcing her into a crouched position.
Despite her best efforts, Amelia couldn't stop tiny whimpers from escaping her lips. Each tiny noise floated out into the darkness of the forest surrounding her.
But this time, something heard her. Another noise joined Amelia's quiet sobbing in the silent woods.
Leaves began to rustle nearby. It almost sounded like the wind, but that hadn't returned. Amelia tried to look through her tears to see what was causing the rustling, but the darkness was too deep for her to obtain any information.
The rustling continued, growing louder and closer. Sounds of branches being pushed aside and snapping joined the chorus of invisible noises approaching her. No matter how close the sounds got, Amelia was still unable to see the source producing them.
The sounds suddenly split when they were only a few feet away from her. They circled around her, surrounding her from every side.
Amelia caught sight of leaves and twigs being pushed around on the forest floor. Something was slithering across the ground, getting ready to grab her and pull her under. She squeezed her eyes closed, tears pouring out of her eyes as she cried in pure terror.
Each noise slowed to a stop, forming a circle around her. A new noise emerged, this time from above her. It sounded like creaking of an old wooden door that hadn't moved in centuries. Amelia opened her eyes and quickly looked upwards.
Dozens of vines descended with the sole purpose of wrapping around her. What stood behind her was no longer a tree, either, but instead an impossibly tall figure. Its massive form loomed over her with eyes that burned through the darkness to reach her.
Several vines latched onto her and violently yanked her small body into the air. Amelia let out a terrified scream, as the figure pulled her up into the leaves of the forest.
Amelia Watson's eyes shot open, as she awoke from her nightmare. A layer of sweat coated her body and her breathing was rapid. It took her a few seconds to properly calm down and regain control of her senses.
As the adrenaline from her nightmare wore off, Amelia was left staring up at the ceiling of her hotel room thinking about what she had just experienced. After a couple minutes, she had collected enough of herself to roll over and check what time it was.
The small digital clock on the table next to her bed told her that it was just over an hour before she had meant to wake up. Groaning in frustration, she peeled the covers off of her and tossed them to the side. She then pulled her legs to the edge of the bed and let them hang off, as she pushed the rest of her body up into a sitting position.
While she certainly would like to get some more sleep, the risk posed by sleeping through her alarm was enough to dissuade her from trying to fall back asleep. It was only a single hour anyways, so she could survive without it.
Her thoughts pivoted back to her nightmare. It was odd for a number of reasons, but Amelia was fairly sure she could explain any and all oddities with ease. She was a private investigator, after all. She has solved tougher cases before.
This wasn't the first time she had experience this type of nightmare before. Many of her nightmares involved the sudden disappearance of her childhood friend, Kiara.
After all, Kiara really did vanish while they were playing in the woods as kids. The defining difference between her nightmares and reality, though, was that in reality Kiara was found two hours after going missing. In her nightmares, on the other hand, Kiara would always go missing and never turn up, no matter how long the nightmare went on for.
What was odd about this most recent nightmare was the events that followed Kiara's disappearance. Normally, Amelia would call out and search endlessly in a futile attempt to find her friend. Never had the forest shifted in atmosphere like it just had. However, Amelia knew exactly why the nightmare was so radically different compared to others.
Right now, she was on her way back to that exact forest to investigate the mysterious disappearance of four campers. The various possibilities of what happened to them and what had occurred with Kiara all those years ago were almost certainly compounding on top of one another and that nightmare was the result.
It didn't help that the circumstances surrounding Kiara's disappearance were still peculiar, even after all this time had passed.
Kiara was found nearly ten miles away from the spot she went missing. An eleven year old kid simply should not be capable of covering that much distance through the forest in the amount of time she did. Kiara would have needed to avoid getting turned around or going in circles, she wasn't seen nor did she leave any traces across that vast distance, and she was unable to recall any memory of how she got to where she was found.
It was like she had vanished from reality for two hours before suddenly reappearing ten miles away from where vanished.
In fact, this mystery of Kiara's strange disappearance and reemergence was one of the primary driving forces behind Amelia's decision to pursue the career path she was on now. She couldn't stand the lack of clear reasons behind everything that happened, leading to her getting involved in solving mysteries and later becoming a PI.
As she understood it now, Kiara had simply gotten lost and wandered away from Amelia. After realizing that she was lost, Kiara panicked and quickly began to walk in the direction she thought she had come from. However, this only took her further away. She had somehow managed to continue moving straight and, out of pure instinct, kept her presence to a minimum while she moved. Finally, due to the extreme stress she was under, Kiara's mind blocked out the memory of her wandering through the woods alone as some kind of trauma response.
Amelia still kept in contact with Kiara, so she knew that Kiara is still unable to recall anything from those two hours when she went missing. There were still some holes in this explanation, but it was the most complete and reasonable answer to the mystery.
However, the campers have been missing for three full days now. Amelia was not being called there to help find and rescue them. She was going to help find and recover what was left of them.
Placing her head in her hands, Amelia sighed deeply at the reality that was before her. Despite having nearly a decade's worth of experience under her belt as a PI, there are simply things a person should never have to deal with. Recovering bodies from deep in the forest was one of them.
The wilderness is an unforgiving place for humans. The reason for their apparent triumph over nature is because humans are smart and long lasting, not because they are nature's ultimate creation.
From the search and rescue operations Amelia has been a part of, she knew that the likelihood of someone surviving beyond two days in the wilderness was extremely low. The information that she had received so far about this particular case decreased those odds even further.
With a decent push, Amelia shoved herself off the edge of the bed and began getting ready for the day ahead of her. Thinking about these kinds of things was literally in her job description, but that didn't mean she wanted to do it first thing in the morning.
Over the course of the next hour and a half, she made her appearance far more presentable than it had been when she first woke up. The highlight of her morning was being able to take an extended shower on the hotel's dime. Maybe it wasn't so bad waking up earlier than expected.
Just as Amelia was beginning to appreciate her early morning rise, her body decided to remind her why she didn't usually do this. Her head began to throb and the joints in her arms and legs began to ache.
Similar to her physical shape as a kid, Amelia was not particularly athletic nor was she out of shape. After crossing into her thirties a couple years ago, she had begun to accept that she was stuck the way she was now. At least she had not yet started to regress in her abilities thanks to working out semi-regularly.
After a fair bit of stretching, eating food, and drinking water, she felt much better. Glancing at the pocket watch she always carried with her, Amelia decided that despite it still being a bit early she could start heading over to the park now. The drive there would take at least another couple hours, so if she could avoid most of the morning traffic by leaving early it might be more bearable.
Nothing would be more embarrassing than ending up late because traffic was worse than usual. She collected her belongings and brought them down to her car. It's engine grumbled to life, stubbornly refusing to give into the many years of abuse Amelia had put it through.
The forethought the investigator had put in at the hotel paid off, as she smoothly sailed down mostly empty roads on her way to the park. As the minutes turned to hours, cars did inevitably begin filling the lanes around her. However, she only dealt with small amounts of traffic. Eventually, she was beyond the usual roads traveled by people and was cruising along a two lane road with trees flanking either side.
Only a bit under an hour later, Amelia pulled her car into the gravel parking lot in front of the park's front office. There were a few other cars in the lot with her, all equally as old as her's was. If she wasn't here for the reason she was, then this might have been an inviting atmosphere.
Although she was nearly two hours early, Amelia decided to introduce herself to the staff inside. She pulled open the door and saw a woman poke her head out of a nearby doorway.
"One moment!" they yelled, quickly ducking back into the room for a moment before reemerging.
The person Amelia had initially thought was a woman was actually more similar to a girl. She was at least five years younger and five inches shorter than Amelia. She was also fairly skinny relative to Amelia's more imposing build. The thought of opposites drifted around the investigator's mind. As if to drive the point further home, the girl had long, dark hair with green highlights pulled back into a ponytail, while Amelia's hair by contrast was a short, blonde bob.
"Hello, my name is Amelia Watson," Amelia introduced herself as the girl approached. She was about to get out her ID to prove her occupation as a private investigator, but there was no need.
"It's good to see our PI showing up so early to start solving mysteries!" the girl said a bit too loud for the shorter distance now between them. Amelia blinked a few times, slowly putting her wallet back in her pocket. It completely baffled her how this girl could seemingly be so happy given the circumstances they were meeting under.
"And you are?" Amelia probed, as the girl still had not introduced herself yet. This question appeared to jolt the girl awake, as her eyes widened significantly when she heard it.
"Oh right, sorry, I'm Fauna Ceres, one of the rangers here and you can just call me Fauna. It's a pleasure to meet and work with you, ," the girl, Fauna, said, extending her hand out in front of her. Amelia slowly reciprocated the gesture, shaking Fauna's relatively small hand.
"I appreciate the formality, but you can call me Amelia and I'm not married anyways," Amelia said, pushing a smile across her face in an attempt to match the energy Fauna was emanating.
"Really? I thought I was odd for not being married at my age," Fauna said with a small laugh. Amelia tried her best to stop the frown that was attempting to supplant the smile from her face, her eyelid twitching slightly despite her effort.
"Yeah, guess we are both quite odd then, huh?" Amelia responded, silently cursing Fauna in her head.
Usually, Amelia's single status didn't bother her much. The combination of her tall physical build and constant moving around for her job meant that she had yet to find anyone willing to go out with her for more than a couple months. She wasn't trying to seek one out, but the fact that Fauna just brought it up so quickly even though they had only just met really struck a nerve with her.
"I'm sure we'll both be able to find someone eventually. They just can't handle us pretty, independent women," said the conventionally attractive girl in her twenties to the tall, rough looking woman in her thirties.
"While I don't dislike small talk," Amelia said through gritted teeth, attempting to move the topic elsewhere, "I am here to do a very serious job. Can you point me in the direction to someone who can help me with that?" Fauna's smile only grew wider, causing Amelia's to shrink smaller.
"You're in luck because it is none other than I who you will be working with," Fauna announced with pride, "I always show up early and today I did so even earlier just in case you did the same. Glad that we're so similar, Amelia!"
Amelia rubbed her temples to quell the arriving headache. "Then let's just start…" she said with half the enthusiasm she had begun the day with, which was not much anyways.
At the very least, Fauna seemed to be good at her job. Amelia was able to gather a good amount of information just talking to Fauna about what has been found so far.
With that being said, however, they haven't found much. Only the campsite had yielded any meaningful clues as to what happened to the campers.
"Rangers do a check every morning and night on all of the campsites that are deeper than normal," Fauna explained, "When someone checked on that campsite, they found nobody around even though people were there just the night before. All their camping gear was still laying around, but the actual people were completely missing. It's like they just decided in the middle of the night to up and leave with nothing but the clothes they had on…"
To say Amelia was left with more questions than answers would be an understatement.
"So the last time they were seen was the welfare check up the night prior?" she asked. Fauna nodded.
"There also was no sign of a struggle at the campsite and they left very few tracks when leaving," Fauna elaborated, helping to answer some more of Amelia's questions preemptively.
"Where did the tracks lead?" Fauna sighed, almost appearing upset for the first time.
"Nowhere," Fauna answered, "What few tracks there were led a few dozen yards into a nearby treeline before disappearing entirely. After that, we have no idea where they went. There is no trail in that direction for miles and the tracks only lead into the trees, not back out." Amelia continued to scrawl notes into her laptop. The similarities to Kiara's disappearance continued to mount.
"How many campers were there?" Amelia asked after a few seconds. Fauna got up and pulled an envelope from a table. She placed it in front of Amelia and nodded for her to open it.
"That has all the records we could find on who they all were. Nothing out of the ordinary from what we could see, but maybe something will catch your more precise eye," Fauna said with a wink. Amelia took out four stacks of papers, each held together by paper clips.
The first camper was Krono Ouro, a tall but slender male who worked as an engineer in a nearby city. He had very little interest in the outdoors, preferring to stay within the confines of civilization until his girlfriend had dragged him out camping with her.
The second and third campers were the Abyssgard twins, Fuwawa and Mococo, with the former being the aforementioned girlfriend. They were much more active in the outdoors and were very close with one another.
The final camper was Bijou Koseki, a good friend of the twins. She worked as the front desk woman for a large company in the same city as Krono. Similarly, Bijou also didn't appear to enjoy the outdoors much.
All of them were in their early twenties, with Krono being the oldest at 24. None of them had shown suicidal or homicidal tendencies, so foul play from within the group was unlikely. The location of the campsite made external foul play equally unlikely.
The camp was one of the deepest sites that the park had to offer, requiring a five hour hike to reach. There were deeper camps, but they asked for multi-day hikes in order to reach and didn't receive welfare checks like all the other camps did.
The story leading up to the group's arrival was a simple one. Fuwawa saw that her boyfriend, Krono, didn't get out much, so she decided to take him on a weekend camping trip. The twins, being as inseparable as they were, went together. Mococo invited Bijou to tag along likely to avoid third wheeling her sister and boyfriend.
The group arrived at the campsite and had set up everything before a ranger checked on them that night. None of them seemed to be concerned or on edge for any reason. They were all calm and generally having a good time.
When a ranger went to check on them the next day, though, none of them were there. At some point in the night, completely unprompted, they had all wandered into the woods without any supplies and never returned back to camp.
So far the search for them covered a distance of two miles surrounding the camp. Nothing other than the tracks leading into the trees was found. The area in the direction of where the tracks were going was searched extensively with still nothing turning up.
Not a single trace of any of the campers, which included two novices.
Once again, Amelia thought of Kiara's disappearance and how these two situations were similar.
"Expand the search," Amelia told Fauna, placing down the documents and looking up at the ranger. Fauna tilted her head slightly, seemingly not understanding what Amelia was telling her.
"How far do you think a group of four could get without leaving any tracks?" she asked. Amelia gestured at the papers in front of her.
"If the search area was going to be limited to where tracks were found, then it would only be a quarter mile radius around the camp," Amelia explained, "I've seen similar things happen before. People disappearing without a trace and turning up in seemingly impossible places they had no reason to be in…" Amelia trailed off near the end of her sentence, not enjoying the memories of past cases resurfacing in her mind.
"Well you're the investigator and we didn't call you here to not listen to you," Fauna said, leaning back in her chair and looking up at the ceiling. The ranger's eyes focused on one particular part of the ceiling before suddenly growing wide and darting around wildly. Fauna's expression became one of terror for a split second before reverting back to a neutral one right after.
"I would recommend a radius between five and ten miles, depending on how much manpower you have to spare," Amelia said, standing up from the table her and Fauna were seated at.
"Where are you going?" Fauna asked. Her tone wasn't aggressive or suspicious, so she was likely genuinely curious about where Amelia was headed to. However, Amelia couldn't help but feel like Fauna was accusing her of leaving without helping.
"I am going to inspect the campsite and see what my more precise eye can find," Amelia explained, closing her laptop and shoving it as well as the files on the campers into her bag. Fauna stood now, as well, her eyes lighting up with curiosity.
"I'll join you!" she said with a small cheer. Amelia threw her bag over her shoulder and tried to hide her displeasure from Fauna.
"I don't need your help if you have other business to attend to." Fauna's mood did not shift from Amelia's statement.
"The business that I have to attend to is helping you in anyway that I can," Fauna said with a wide smile, "Unless you want to spend ten hours hiking to and from the campsite alone." Amelia knew exactly what Fauna was talking about. Every time she had a case in a remote part of the wilderness, someone drove her to where she needed to be. In this case, it would be a ride on an ATV down the trail towards the camp.
"Well then let's get going," Amelia said, continuing to suppress her resentment towards Fauna. The other girl nodded excitedly and darted out of the room. Amelia took her time to make sure she had everything she would need before following where Fauna had gone.
A trip on an ATV was significantly more convenient than hiking on foot. What would have been at least a five hour hike, more likely six or seven with Amelia's physical shape, was instead only a little over one hour.
But maybe seven or so hours of silence was better than one hour of trying to make conversation with Fauna. Conversation was a bit of a stretch, though, as it was more like Fauna talking at Amelia with the investigator providing little response in return.
"I've hiked every single one of these trails multiple times," Fauna said, the words carrying on the wind back to Amelia. They were almost there, but Fauna was clearly not done talking about everything and anything that she could think of.
"As a ranger should," Amelia replied shortly. Fauna giggled at Amelia's response.
"Oh no, I'm not talking about as a ranger. Although I have absolutely done that, too," Fauna retorted with a smile so wide that Amelia could practically see it from behind her, "I am talking about before I even began working here. I've always loved the outdoors, so of course I would hike every single one of the amazing trails that this park has to offer!"
"I'm not really interested in being sold the trails here," Amelia said. Fauna laughed at the incredibly dry response from the investigator.
"Is it because of the 'things you've seen in the field'?" Fauna asked, putting on a deeper voice in an attempt at mimicking Amelia.
"You could say that," the unimpressed investigator answered. Fauna's shoulders fell, indicating that she was sighing.
"Honestly, I get it. I've also seen some stuff that no human should ever be forced to see," Fauna said with a quieter, more sincere tone compared to the previous hour, "The woods might be full of unknowns, but they are also full of unmatched beauty. Without someone like me to help regular people navigate this place, they would never get to see all the wonderful things. So I have to help you find out what happened to these people and stop it from ever happening again."
For the first time since meeting, Amelia actually related to what Fauna was telling her. If one thinks about the jobs of a park ranger and a private investigator, they might start to see some similarities between them. Keeping people safe was the biggest.
If Fauna was really as passionate as she sounded, then maybe Amelia could tolerate her long enough to solve this case.
"I'll try my best," Amelia said, providing the first positive feedback to one of Fauna's ramblings since they started driving towards the campsite. As if a trigger had been pull, Fauna's mood immediately shifted back in response to this.
"Oh really? Am I finally getting through to the big, tough detective?" Fauna teased, even turning her head enough to cast a quick glance back at Amelia. A shit eating grin was drawn across her face and her eyes were narrowed to slits.
"Absolutely not," Amelia fired back, avoiding any eye contact the the ranger in front of her. Fauna chuckled and shrugged her shoulders.
"I'll just have to keep trying my best then!" Fauna said, revving the ATV a little and causing them to tear down the trail even faster. In only a couple more minutes, they arrived at the campsite.
It was clear that they were not the first to arrive on the scene. Several other ATVs were parked to the side and there were at least ten people roaming around the camp. Amelia and Fauna parked next to where the other ATVs were and walked over.
Fauna stopped to speak with someone, but Amelia didn't stop with her. Instead, she continued walking into the camp, ducking underneath the caution tape surrounding it.
Just like how Fauna had described it, the camp was seemingly in a perfectly normal condition. It just looked like the occupants had temporarily left to collect water or go hunting. The only obvious sign that something was amiss was the open tent doors on all three tents.
It was always in everyone's best interest to keep their tents sealed shut unless they were actively moving in or out. This kept bugs and other forest critters from getting in, as well as keeping any possible weather out, too.
The other, less obvious sign that something was wrong was the marked tracks leading from each tent towards a nearby treeline on the edge of the campsite. The tracks from each tent converged near the middle before moving away from the camp in a large group. They all appeared to have boots on and none of the tents had clothes laying around. This meant that they had time to get at least a little bit ready, ruling out a perceived threat that suddenly chased them out of the camp.
The spacing of the individual footprints also told Amelia that they weren't running, at least at first. As Amelia followed the tracks towards the treeline, the footprints became more spaced out.
What had started out as a calm walk quickly turned into a rapid sprint, as the group got closer to the trees.
Amelia's first thought was that maybe they had heard something in the night and gathered in the center of the camp to discuss it. Then, after having time to put on their boots and clothes, they were chased out of the camp into the woods by something.
However, the problem with this theory was the lack of any pursuers tracks. This meant that there wasn't anything actually chasing them unless it could fly. So it could be that they were frightened by something and ran from something they thought was chasing them, but in reality there was nothing.
But even that theory broke down once Amelia thought on it for a little longer. The Abyssgard twins had hiked this trail and camped at this very campsite multiple times before. They had plenty of experience outdoors, so it made little sense for them to be suddenly startled into running from nothing. This left Amelia with one remaining possibility…
The group wasn't running away from something…
They were running towards something.
Amelia continued following the tracks past the treeline into the forest. She noticed markings on the trees from where people had ran into them while running. There were even some odd tracks starting to appear on the ground.
At least one of them had started to run with both their feet and hands.
Judging by the size of the markings, it was one of the girls, as they were younger and physically much smaller than Krono. If they were indeed running towards something, then this meant they really, really wanted to reach whatever it was.
"Figure anything out?" Fauna's voice suddenly pierced through Amelia's thoughts. The investigator almost jumped out of her skin, as she had not heard Fauna approach her.
"I-I'm piecing together what I can," Amelia responded quickly. Fauna pointed a finger back towards the camp.
"I already told them to expand the search to as wide as we could afford and to look for traces of the campers in places that might seem odd," Fauna explained, "And I just heard over the radio that someone found something, but they can't get close enough to identify it." This piqued Amelia's curiosity.
"Where did they find it?" she asked. Fauna began to walk back out of the trees.
"Not too far from here, so let's get moving," the ranger said. Amelia followed suit, noticing how quietly Fauna moved through the woods. That explained how she had snuck up on Amelia so easily before.
Fauna was not lying when she said it was nearby. After only about fifteen minutes on the ATV, they arrived in a decent sized clearing. Located on the edge of the clearing were a group of several trees that were significantly taller than the rest. A small group of people had gathered at the base of one of these taller trees.
"What did you find?" Fauna asked once she and Amelia walked over to the group.
"Something metallic caught my eye, but I'm not sure what it is since it is so high up," one of the people said, pointing a good distance up the tree. Both Amelia and Fauna squinted to try to see what was being pointed at.
Sure enough, something that obviously wasn't part of the tree glinted in the sunlight nearly thirty feet above them.
"Well that's not right…" Fauna said to herself. Without further hesitation, the experienced ranger hoisted herself up onto a low hanging branch and began climbing up the tree to get a closer look.
Amelia was astonished by two separate things: how fast Fauna was able to climb the tree and how she didn't need any convincing to start climbing. Either Fauna was incredibly trusting of her coworkers or she thought evidence could turn up in impossible places.
After a surprisingly short amount of time for how high up she needed to go, Fauna reached the spot that had been pointed out before. It was high enough that nobody could really tell what Fauna was doing, but something was off.
The ranger had completely stopped once she reached the spot.
"What do you see?" Amelia called up to her, receiving no response. Instead, Fauna slowly took out her phone and took several pictures of whatever was up their before descending the tree just as quickly as she had ascended it.
Once back on the ground, she opened the pictures she took and passed her phone around.
Every single persons who saw the pictures had an expression of confusion and horror on their face. Finally, Amelia got to look at what Fauna had discovered over thirty feet above them in a tree.
It was an earring.
Specifically, Amelia had seen this earring before in a picture provided to her not more than a couple hours ago. Fuwawa Abyssgard had been wearing earrings that looked exactly like the one in the photo.
And to make matters worse, a tiny piece of what looked like flesh was nailed to the tree by the earring. Flakes of dried blood covered the earring, flesh, and the surrounding area on the tree.
While her phone was passed around, horrifying each person who saw the pictures on its screen, Fauna stood silently to the side. Amelia walked over to the suddenly quiet ranger and held the phone for both of them to see.
"What the hell is this?" Amelia asked her. From their previous interactions, Amelia expected a dumb response, but that wasn't what she got.
"I-I… I'm not sure…" Fauna answered in a quiet, meek tone that Amelia had not heard from her thus far. The park ranger was clearly also horrified by what had been discovered.
However, Amelia didn't understand why Fauna was suddenly so spooked by this. Sure, it was confusing and raised many questions while answering none, but it wasn't scary enough to completely silence the usually hyperactive Fauna.
Something was up with Fauna Ceres and these woods she worked in. And rest assured, Amelia Watson was going to figure out exactly what was going on here.
Author's Note: Happy Halloween everybody! I hope you are ready for a spooky adventure with your girls Amelia and Fauna! I'll try to upload a chapter of this story every day leading up to Halloween. I've been hard at work for the past couple months planning this story, so hopefully you all enjoy it!
Something I want to state in case I was a bit too vague in the actual story is that Amelia isn't fat or even close to that. Obviously, since this is a story where all the characters are humans, I changed their appearances slightly to better fit their characters in this particular story. Amelia is quite tall, nearly six foot, and is also big, but not fat. You could describe her as "man-ish" or "tomboy-ish" I guess, but at the very least her appearance isn't very feminine. Fauna, on the other hand, is very feminine. I hope all the comparisons really showed how totally opposite our two main characters are from one another.
Even though Amelia and Fauna are technically both the main characters of this story, it will be told largely from Amelia's perspective. There will be times that Fauna's perspective is used, but even then it'll be something like Fauna explaining something to Amelia and not the story directly using Fauna's perspective.
One last thing, in case it isn't obvious from the tags and opening nightmare scene, this is a keep-you-awake-at-night type of horror story. Or at least that's my intention. It might not seem that incredibly spooky and scary just yet, but I have some very terrifying things planned for later. If that kind of story isn't your cup of tea, then I totally understand not reading any further. However, don't say I didn't tell you so :)
An added note here (because FFN doesn't really have beginning notes): I, along with many, many others, will greatly miss Amelia as a member of Hololive EN. However, she is still a part of Hololive as a company and will likely be working in the background on future projects. I wish her the best and I hope to see her name pop up in the credits in the future. That being said, as a lot of my stories involve her as a main character, I will say that nothing will change with my stories. In a similar way to what happened with Sana, if I want/need to use her as a character I will. The concept of a detective character, especially one with time travel, is so just interesting to write about.
Next Chapter: Fractured Trust
Any feedback/criticism is appreciated!