The three Thorn Scouts moved through the grasslands like water through sand — slow, patient, invisible.
They'd crossed into unclaimed territory sixteen hours ago, emerging from the root network at the border of Demeterra's domain and shifting to surface movement through the waist-high grasslands that separated the southern farmlands from whatever lay to the north. Two of them traveled underground, burrowing through soil with the quiet efficiency of worms made from living bark. The third — the lead scout, a seasoned tracker named Rothen — moved above ground in short bursts between cover: a boulder here, a gully there, a thicket of dead scrub where the grasslands thinned.
