The trees had been stripped bare. The carpet of needles and dried leaves crunched under foot as I passed beneath clawing branches. The brittle bark on each misshapen tree trunk had been flayed clean on one side. Some ancient trees had toppled, and the fallen giants all faced the same way, like a graveyard of timber. Others had snapped in two. Something catastrophic had blasted through here. I couldn’t sense any residual use of elemental magic. Whatever it was, it had taken place days, if not weeks, before. Battlegrounds like this were not uncommon. Lesser demons weren’t the only ones that squabbled over the scraps of their prey. When the big boys got involved, the landscape often bore the scars. After leaving Yukki Onna, I followed the edge of the lake, stopping only once to take a drink and wash off the dried blood from my scratches. My mind stilled, my desires sated. For now. I felt eyes on me, even if I couldn’t see the lesser demons hunched in the dark.
