Es, Ch. 15: Ever so Bleak

    As she expected, the flight was as short as it always was. Ember came upon the large wooden house that appeared in a small clearing from its surrounding forest. From a dive with fast and powerful wing beats, Ember descended and landed. Walking up and knocking on the door, Ember waited... after some time the door opened and out came Grenwell, the potter.
    Grenwell is a short, grey, and old Aardvark. He was good at his profession, but it took a good amount of time for him to complete his tasks.
    He led Ember inside his house and pointed to the vases, he wasn't much of a talker. As Ember figured, there were a lot. After paying the potter, Ember headed out, with multiple vases in her arms.
    The path back to the flower shop went like this: first she follows a trail through the forest, which leads up over a small set of mountains, to fall down into a marshland, opening into a prairie, and leading back into town. Each trip would take a few hours by walking, and only about 20 minutes by flying.
    She started through the forest, whistling a tune to pass the time. The overhead covering was heavy and made the forest dark, but by now she was used to it. About three fourths into the forest she heard a rustling sound. It surprised her simply because it was a big forest, Ember figured there wouldn't be anything large in it and she hasn't seen anything before. She stopped and looked into the shaded trees to try and find the animal. Up in a small tree she saw the silhouette of a monkey. It wasn't doing much of anything, just laying around. It turned and looked at her as she looked at it, then it ran off. Ember sighed. "There goes the most interesting thing on this trip," Ember said to herself, then continued.
    Nothing was interesting even as she approached the mountains and started up them. Nothing was different when she reached the top. Nothing was different as she... but there was something different as she looked down. She saw a trail of blood down a path on the mountain. 'Maybe there are large animals in this place,' Ember thought, but then another thought came to her. 'What if someone is injured and stranded out here.' She couldn't risk that possibility, so she ran down the mountainside, vases in hand, as she constantly though the worst or what she thought was the worst. It was nothing compared to what she saw as she came down to the trial. Drag marks and two tiny footprints were shown in the ground around the blood, which led into a cave in the mountain wall. In that cave stood a dozen set of eyes whose bodies ran at her, and screeched a blood curling sound, that matched the apes' demonic bodies ever so perfectly.