Beth woke up just before sun rise and hurried to pack away the hammock she had been lent. It hadn’t been given to her outright but she wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth and not take it with her. She headed back to the clearing of the party the night prior. A party that was clearly still going on in some capacity. Towards the back of the clearing the large table where the food had been previously had been cleared and replaced with 3 large bags. Nate and Pauline were already stood there leaning against the table and eating breakfast. Beth saw that sure enough there was a third bowl on the table clearly meant for her and she headed over and began to eat it herself. It was a filling meal and reminded her of a cold but sweet porridge. The three ate in silence. Both Beth and Pauline were way too awkward to break the ice and despite Nate knowing the other two the best had no real desire to make things less awkward as he still partially resented the whole affair.

Eventually a slightly larger crowd has gathered with Donna at the head and having made sure the three all had their bags property attached to their backs with their straps correctly adjusted the three were waved off with much cheering and slight tears from the relevant parents.

They began heading towards the closest mountain, Platilda, they were only on the ground until the village was out a sight before they climbed up to get themselves above the treeline and out of the general dangers that the ground travel presents. Dangers Beth still had yet to witness but she wasn’t about to doubt their validity when her life would be the chip she was gambling with. They had been above the tree line for no more than 10 minutes before Pauline requested they stop.

Nate rolled his eyes “What’s up? Tired already? At least Beth had some stamina”

Pauline gave him a look “No Nate, I figured we should take a minute to plan. We’ve got a long journey ahead and heading off half cocked isn’t going to help anybody. Plus do you even know what items they provided or how we are going to climb these mountains. It’s not like we can just casually stroll up these things. Now if only we had a table I could spread this stuff out on.” Pauline removed her bag and tipped it on it’s head allowing all it’s contents to spill out onto the surrounding leaves.

This made quiet a racket and a couple of items rolled straight off the leaves and down to the ground below. Nate let out an extremely loud sigh at the result and Beth noticing neither of the others going to rescue the items and wanting to do her best to stop the situation being exasperated took it upon herself to descend the tree and rescue the lost items. Hoping that leaving the pair together would be a slightly less bad idea than having Nate have to clean up after Pauline. Noticeable Pauline herself had made no indication she was going to descend to gather the lost resources herself. She slipped off her bag and leaving it more securely placed on the tree slipped down the trunk her half staff bouncing on her leg from it’s belt loop as she descended.

Reaching the base of the tree sure enough there was a scattering of supplies forming a small circumference around where Beth descended. Having done a quick scan and identifying what she thought was everything that dropped she went towards the nearest fallen time, a water canteen. As she moved towards the next item she heard some further rustling of leaves. She turned expecting Nate or even Pauline to drop through the foliage but instead saw nothing other than the slight sway of leaves that she wasn’t confident enough to say wasn’t just the natural settling of the forest she turned back to the next item on her mental list some jerky and it was gone. So was the next item and the item after that. In fact everything that had fallen that was either meat based or had been cooked seemed to have vanished.

The rustling continued and the rest of the forest seemed to grow quieter as Beth focused on the sound. She wasn’t alone and the creature, or creatures, were too fast for her to see. She bemoaned herself not paying more attention to Nate he had mentioned the creature in question and possibly even suggested some methods of attack or survival but she had no idea and didn’t know if staying still or moving at that point would be the safest choice for her.

She took stock of her surroundings, she was only around two steps away from the nearest tree and it did look like one she would be able to climb with only relative difficulty. The question was could she get that far.

Currently she had both feet firmly planted on the ground and was remaining unmoving she very slowly reached down and unhooked her half staff. It would make climbing much harder. But she felt safer holding it and plus in theory once she was on the tree she hoped to think she would be safe. She dreaded the idea these things, things she had still yet to actually witness, could jump. She assumed they couldn’t actually climb because of how casual Nate had been once they reached the top of the trees but that didn’t mean she would be safe the second her feet left the ground.

Hesitantly she took a step towards the tree, moving slowly but trying to maximise the distance she covered. She carefully put her foot down as close to silently as she could manage, attempting to use all the light footed tricks she had picked up. The rustling didn’t grow louder but it didn’t lessen either. Only one step away now Beth’s nerves were starting to fray and she didn’t trust herself to attempt two more silent steps. She took a leap from her standstill towards the tree her foot barely landing before it lifted off the ground again as she impacted the tree, wrapping both arms and legs around the trunk and quickly hurrying to shimmy up the tree and hopefully out of the range of the creatures chasing her.

Unfortunately for Beth her big leap had caused the creature to make an attack of it’s own and a small orange creature leap at her and lodged itself in the back of her calf, it’s teeth deeply implanted into her leg. Beth was having none of it and weapon still in hand swung connecting fully with the body of the creature. It flew off leaving all its teeth behind and colliding with a bush from which it didn’t re-emerge. Beth continued her climb still grimacing at the pain in her leg where the teeth remained lodged in her flesh. Reaching the top of the trees Nate hurried over while Pauline remained distracted by her maps. Seeing the damage to Beth’s leg he quickly ran to the scattered items from Pauline’s bag and grabbed a small parcel. Unwrapping it he lay out a collection of medical equipment, bandages and other such tools as well as a couple of packaged and dried plants.

Taking out a pair of tweezers and a large leaf he passed the leaf to Beth.

“To numb the pain.”

Beth took the leaf and started chewing rapidly, as she did so she felt it start to take place rather quickly. The pain was still there but felt a step away from herself. It also seemed to affect her concentration as everything seemed just the tiniest bit harder to focus on, as though mildly tipsy.

Nate examined her leg. Two lines of bite marks no wider than a fist formed deep grooves into her leg. Around seventy percent of these marks still had the teeth lodged in them curved in such a way that they dug into the flesh at an angle. Nate started at the top and gripping the first tooth he began to attempt to remove it.

Twisting the tweezers slightly so the tooth was removed in roughly the same path it had taken to enter her leg. He was mostly successful and by focusing on the leaf in her mouth that seemed to have expanded with the moisture she could avoid focusing on the pain as Nate tried his best. He was far from trained in what he was doing and impatient enough that when faced with some resistance he gave a tug as though hoping the tooth would be the thing to give way while obviously it wasn’t.

Eventually all the teeth Nate could remove had been removed, leaving only one or two that were too small for him to get a proper grip on with the tweezers. Having removed them he quickly washed the wound and adding water to a small pouch filled with a fine power poured it onto her leg before wrapping it tightly with a bandage. Seeing it was properly secured he turned away from Beth and started stalking back towards Pauline who had taken notice of the incident but hadn’t moved from her spot. She looked at Nate with a mixture of guilt and something akin to fear in her eyes.

“You stupid thoughtless pathetic waste of space! Look what has happened to Beth and it’s all your fault.” Nate started to shout at the girl, small amounts of spittle flying from his mouth as he shouted. “She could have been seriously injured or even died because of your lack of forethought.”

The fact she was being shouted at was enough to cause Pauline to begin to cry but Nate was angry and either didn’t notice or didn’t care about the affect he was having on her.

“I knew it was a bad idea for you to come on this trip you stupid selfish brat.”

He might have kept going but that was enough for Pauline and she took off running back along the leaves towards the village they had left behind.

Seeing this movement Beth looked up from staring at her leg and refocusing on the situation not wanting to let to group already fall a part or to let down Pauline’s father who she promised that she would look after his daughter. As such she chased after Pauline determined to fix the situation, somehow.