A loud inhuman shriek drew me away from my path and sent me running in the other direction. I didn’t know if it was a trap or not, but one of my friends could be in trouble and I didn’t know if they were in the position to fight off any danger. I used my crow-shifting and flew close to the ground. It was hard to maneuver around but I made sure I didn’t hit anything. If a tree appeared, I split the flock and went around.

I continued like that before I could make out a few people in the distance. The dark forest didn’t show me much more than their shadows, but from my position, I could tell there were too many. I proceeded under the presumption that they were enemies, so I planned out my attack. The branch wasn’t an effective weapon for a head-on fight and I only had Blood Arrow as my strongest skill.

I flew until my transformation gave out and then fell into a sprint while keeping the momentum from the flight. As I closed on my first enemy, I raised my hand and fired off a Blood Arrow. I could feel something emerge from my palm before it shot out like a bullet, hitting the unknown enemy. It let out a screech as it fell out, Blood Arrow was already a poisonous projectile, but the effects of Cursed Blood were triggered with a single thought.

Its friends, whatever they were, slowed down while others pressed ahead.

“Damn it!” I hurried to my first victim and used all of my weight to impale it on the black branch. I could feel the stick sink into its flesh while it screamed. I kept it pinned and pressed my foot against its neck. Its form was revealed to me fully and I was horrified to see that it was a mix between a human and a spider. Its eight ruby-like eyes remained to stare at me, at least it seemed it was. Its mouth revealed strange fangs that chattered as it spat out a pale liquid.

As three more insect-like humanoids approached, I twisted the branch and stomped down as hard as I could. As my first enemy died, I converted it into a skeleton soldier with a single thought before rolling out of the way as a pair of long legs were swung toward me. I hated to admit it, but without a staff or polearm in my hands, all I could do was dodge with the boost from Soul Siphon powering my steps. I weaved in and out the radius of quick, violent, attacks while the arachnids began to shriek. I took it as a call for help and knew I had to hurry so I rolled away and headed toward the rising skeleton soldier.

I violently ripped off its arms and swung it down as hard as I could before it turned into the familiar shape of a war scythe. Strangely enough, the shape had been slightly altered as there were sharp spines on the backside of the blade.

I assumed it to be due to the source it came from but I didn’t have time to contemplate it thoroughly. With a quick rotation of the war scythe, I was ready to deal with the monsters surrounding me. A pair of insect arms stabbed toward me, but I swatted them away with the butt of my war scythe before thrusting it forward.

I felt the weight on the front of my war scythe and knew I had struck one. I exerted all of my strength and lifted it into the air before flinging it to one of its companions. I could see them slam into each other so I focused on the next enemy.

“Come on!” I shouted as rushed forward and brandished my war scythe violently. I aimed for its arms first and once I sliced a few of them, the creature recoiled in pain, leaving a strong opening. I planted my foot in the pit of its stomach and used it to push myself toward the other two, cutting away their limbs in the same manner.

Without their “weapons” they became easier targets. I swung the war scythe with one hand, opening the abdomen of one while my other hand fired off a Blood Arrow. Accuracy didn’t matter at such a close range and once the curse activated, the creature’s began clawing at its melting face.

As one died, Soul Siphon gave me another boost in strength and I kicked the last creature away from me, sending it falling backward. I retrieved my war scythe and finished it before it could get up before moving to the final one who writhed in the ground in pain. After cutting its suffering short, I sprinted forward to catch up with the rest of the monsters. I bolted through the forest, jumping over any obstruction while chasing the strange creatures.

I caught up to one just as the effects of Soul Siphon were fading. I lunged forward and caught the arachnid creature on the tip of war scythe. The sharpness of the blade easily ripped its back open and caused the thing to fall to the ground mid-sprint. I quickly finished and resumed the chase.

…

“Come on!” Jameson shouted at Sophia.

Before she could respond, a creature leaped into the air and tried to grab them but he held it off with a swing of his sword. The brief attack slowed his momentum and only helped the creatures to close the distance.

“I see something up ahead!” Sophia called out as she continued. “A cave!”

“Go for it!” Jameson shoved away one of the creatures and headed for the cavern.

Sophia reached for the emergency kit attached to her belt and produced a glow stick before twisting it and tossing it down the tunnel. The decomposed remains of past victims were present, but the tunnel soon became a dead end.

“Fuck!” Jameson cursed when they were forced to stop. “I…-”

“Jameson,” Sophia spoke urgently.

“Hold on…- Ah! I got it!” Jameson began collecting the corpses littering the cave and piled them up as high as he could. He then moved to stand in front of the blockade of corpses while keeping his sword ready.

“I-I don’t know how effective your ice spells will be, but we need to try something. Concentrate if you can, I’ll hold them back as long as I can.”

“Got it!” Sophia replied nervously. She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to ignore the sounds of their enemies approaching. The faint clicking of an inhuman maw that was eager to devour another being.

All of a sudden, the cries of the creatures outside began to grow louder, moving closer to the entrance of the cave. They grew more violent and hurried before they abruptly fell silent.

A few moments passed under a layer of stillness, but the tension increased for Jameson. His grip tightened until his hands ached. His forehead became so heavily drenched in sweat that his disheveled hair stuck to his face.

“...Get it over with,” He whispered as his heart palpitated wildly.

A figure entered the cave along with his thoughts so he rushed forward without a shred of hesitation.

…

As I entered the cave searching for someone, I was immediately met with a sword.

“Woah! Easy!” I called out as I twisted my body. I prepared to brandish my war scythe but I stopped as I saw a familiar face.

“Jameson?” I was surprised and relieved as I saw him.

“Casper?!” It seemed the sentiment was shared.

Before I could say anything else, a torrent of ice came flying toward me.

“Ah!” I burst into a flock of crows and evaded the attack before reforming. “Sophia?”

“Casper?!” She spoke with a mixture of weariness and joy.

“You guys- Wait, where’s Emma and Grant?” I asked.

At my mention of the names of the other two of the group, their expressions darkened. I knew that expression, the one that spoke of loss. I never really felt that when someone died, just, well, I guess it didn’t matter right now.

“...You didn’t see Grant outside?” Jameson asked.

“What?”

“He was a husk,” Sophia remarked as she collapsed to the ground.

“A what?”

Just as I started to get confused, Jameson gestured for me to follow him outside the cave.

“This is a ruin known as The Forest of Nightmares. There are three types of enemies here…- well, four. The Brood Mother, Dark Arachnids, Spiderlings, and Husks. The Brood Mother isn’t guaranteed to appear but if she does… let’s just hope that she doesn’t.”

“So the Dark Arachnids?” I asked, sensing that I already knew the answer.

“Basically, they’re big spiders but something out of our league, or…” Jameson took a pause to look at the dead monsters in front of the cave. “Maybe you’d have a chance.”

It might have seemed like that was the case from his perspective, but I needed to build power to even thinking of hurting a creature like that. That required an adequate amount of enemies to be around and the bigger ones to not get involved.

“Spiderlings are large, but they’re more manageable. The only problem is, we’ll have to deal with a lot of them. As for these things...” Jameson trailed off as he flipped over the body of one of the dead creatures.

“That’s…” I certainly recognized the face even if the body had been altered.

“Husks, once the Dark Arachnids drain the life out of people, they become these things.” Jameson fell backward with an exasperated expression. “Grant and I knew what could happen but it still doesn’t feel real, you know? We were friends for years and now… he’s just gone.”

I quietly nodded but knelt down to focus on the corpse. I needed to use his memories to find Emma.

A quick flash of events played back in my head, a sudden shift in darkness, Grant waking up, struggling to get free of the webs… dying. He was afraid, who wouldn’t be? Covered in webbing before being drained and filled with another creature. The worst part had to be the fact he wasn’t exactly dead. He was turned into an echo of himself without the faintest realization of what happened. Still, I felt no real sadness from his death. Maybe because his memories confirmed he had lived, or maybe because I couldn’t feel that ever since my mother passed.

I hadn’t been able to see a glimpse of Emma so maybe she was still alive? I hope that she managed to make it and was somewhere within this place.

I lifted the war scythe and began to remove the spider-arms protruding from Grant’s back.

“What are you doing?” Jameson asked.

“We have to bring the body out right? For the funeral,” I muttered as I finished removing the last of the arms. At least now, he’d look like a human and not whatever they turned him into.

“...Yeah, you’re right. We’ll leave his body somewhere safe and come back for it.” Jameson seemed to gain some sense of motivation.

We carried the body back into the cave and then we all just... rested. The aftereffects of Soul Siphon left me exhausted and Jameson and Sofia had been running almost as long as they had arrived. We needed a brief rest to collect ourselves before planning our next move.