Dashki just looks sullen. Zaihi and Onyebuchi both volunteer to hold torches. The torches are lit, and the trouble-hunters set out.

It is the rugged hills at night. The party tries to negotiate the rocky terrain and its many painful cacti, relying on the torches. As the hunters proceed into the wilderness, the torches cast creepy, uneven shadows. Phantom creatures haunt the underbrush—or at least seem to until closer inspection reveals nocturnal birds or rodents.

Dashki says quietly, "From stories I've been told, we're looking for a little humanoid creature that’s much smaller than a halfling, with light fur, dirty claws, and a tiny jackal head."

During the search, the party completely misses something, but Dashki's training helps him to notice. There appear to be dozens of small footprints leading to and from the camp at Sultan's Claw, finally retreating into the darkness of the hill country. Dashki also notes the hesitant tread of what must surely be the camel driver's missing goat, which appears to have been pulled away against its will to the northwest.

Since you have a job to do, there's no question about having Dashki follow those tracks. After following the trail for several hundred feet, Khair feels an inexplicable rise in the natural tension of the environment, as if he expects something terrible to happen even though nothing about the terrain has changed. Soon thereafter, a sound not unlike the brief cry of a human child comes out of the darkness ahead. The slave girl Zaihi, with Trevorn's help, determines that the sound must be coming from the lost goat, though the timbre of the cry makes it sound as if the creature is in pain.

What do you do?