"It seems the tracking spell was not completely useless. She was indeed here..." The cloaked carriage driver muttered to himself, as he drove his cart through the streets of Gracia, sniffing at the air every few moments as he did so.

The people that walked past his cart were able to see underneath his cloak, revealing a face that had once been handsome, but was now twisted and disfigured. His skin folded and wrinkled around five lines, claw marks that drew themselves across the entirety of his face.

One of his eyes seemed to have its eyelid removed, and the scar drawn across the crimson iris splitting the colouration into two, and his lips on one side were gone, giving the man a constant snarl and an endless, unblinking stare. 𝑓𝘳𝘦𝑒𝑤𝑒𝘣𝘯ℴ𝘷𝘦𝓁.𝑐𝑜𝑚

He didn’t seem to notice, or perhaps just not care, when the crates on his cart thrashed around wildly. Something that happened the most whenever they passed through crowds, or whenever any children passed nearby.

Chains were wrapped completely around the crates, keeping the contents contained and making sure they did not fall from the cart in their excitement. But the rattling links of the chains only added to the terror that people felt whenever the crates moved.

Sniffing like a bloodhound, the man followed an invisible trail. It led him through the market district, where it lingered around a few alley ways or dingy corners that seemed ideal for some homeless people to loiter.

That made the man grin, as much as he could with his ruined face, as he imagined what dasterdly things his target had gotten up to. She must have had her fill, even if it was of a dirt flavoured variety.

Sometimes filling was more important than taste, but he would much prefer one of these fancy nobles or a nice, pretty little thing.

Just thinking about that though brought bad memories of the last time he had been in this city, and the failure that had come of that visit. His scars throbbed with pain, blood trickling from one of them as he was forced to remember his failure.

Wiping his face, the driver grumbled under his breath before moving on.

The scent trail continued on, becoming strongest around the Tower of Mystic, which he did not dare even try to enter, as well as an Inn. But while the scents were strong, none of them were recent enough.

They were, at best, hours old. Not to mention, they constantly crossed over each other, marking every single one of her coming and goings, as they were further mixed in with the hundreds and thousands of scents of everyone and everything else living in his city.

But he was a professional, and well trained in tracking like this. Pausing for a moment, the driver closed his eye and inhaled deeply, sucking the air in through his nose, before exhaling slowly. His eye opened, and both eyes slowly turned towards the city gate. The gate on the other side of the city than the one he arrived through and where the latest scent trail headed out of the city and into the wilderness.

"Oh, off for a little adventure are we? Don’t mind if I do." The driver cackled to himself, spurring his horse and slowly driving his cart out of the city and down the road, following the scent trail the entire way.

***

"You smell fine. As soon as the blood was removed, it was fine. It has been fine for the last four hours." Midas said with a sigh, as Belladonna lifted her arm and sniffed at her pits.

Ever since she had been covered in blood, and Midas had mentioned her smell, she had been a little self conscious of her body odour. It wasn’t something she usually worried about, as she had no one in her life that could really smell her to worry about it.

But now such things were becoming incredibly common. Plus, she was still worried she smelled of blood. If that was to happen, then she would just get hungry even faster!

Even still, after checking herself for the hundreth time, something in the back of Belladonna’s mind was constantly whispering about her smell.

Regardless of how good or bad she smelled, the last four hours of their trip had been less eventful than the first two. There were no more ambushes and no more bandits to slaughter and terrorise.

There were a few beasts, every now and then. But they were nothing impressive. A wandering predator searching for food that could easily be chased away or killed by whoever won the kill draw.

Since all of the bodyguards were also doing what Belladonna was, selling their kills and ill-gotten gains onto the merchants they were riding with, that inspired competition between the guards for who got to kill what, and therefore sell it on for profit.

But after so many decades of doing this sort of thing, they already had their methods sorted out. They drew stones.

One of the guards carried a pouch full of white stones, with one of them being black. Each person who wanted a chance to kill took a stone from the bag, and revealed it. White was a loss, whilst black was a victory.

They even rotated it and disallowed previous winners from certain lots, so that they did not have a winning streak that could be grounds for cheating.

It was all very well organised and practised, but Belladonna did not partake. Their cart was already full enough and already about to collapse. Adding something else to the pile might rid them of their transportation to satisfy her greed.

It was a peaceful ride, to say the least, and it gave her plenty of time to study her magic. Slowly increasing her Esoterica score bit by bit. A score that was increased even by her studies outside of Dawd, and was seemingly increasing every time she looked at it.

However, as peaceful as it was it was only the first day. When the sun started to hide itself behind the horizon and the moon started to glow bright in the sky, casting its watchful gaze over them all, the convoy pulled over and found somewhere secluded to set up camp.

But camp was precisely where the best part of the adventure came, because it was time to roast the boars!