Shadow burst out of the woods onto a disaster scene, gasping for breath. The screeching and sounds of destruction she’d been assaulted by had driven her to run as fast as she possibly could. As she exited the tree-line, she finally laid eyes upon the scene, although she’d had a sense of it a bit sooner, given her ear sight. This was clearly the road, but the ground was completely torn up. There was loose dirt everywhere, and large pits were strewn about the area. There was no screeching right now, but she could still feel the ground rumbling.

Shadow desperately looked around for her family.

“Shadow! Get up a tree!” Jonas yelled.

Her head jerked toward the noise, seeing Jonas crouched on a branch a good 40 feet up a tree of his own. She noticed the branches seemed to be all torn up in the nearby area.

Before she could react, the rumbling peaked, and a… giant… snake(?) erupted from the ground. It clearly wasn’t a true snake, but that was the best category she could fit it in. She saw it in all its (25? 30?) foot limbless glory as it flew out of the ground, leaving the earth completely and sailing through the air at Jonas, screeching with its oddly small mouth. She could see its brown armored back and what seemed to be a softer, red underside as it forced itself into a forward spin, and brought its tail end down on Jonas like a whip.

Not that Jonas stood there to take it.

He dove off the branch, right before the body of the snake-thing smashed through the limb he’d been standing only a moment previously. He skillfully caught himself on the branch of an adjacent tree in an impressive display of athletics. Shadow watched with a mix of horror and fascination as the monster plunged back into the ground like it was water, sending a spray of dirt in all directions.

“Climb Shadow! Get off the ground!” Jonas roared again, startling her into action.

She launched herself up a tree as far as she could, and sunk in her claws. She started climbing as fast as she was able. Her limbs were already burning from the run, but the sight of the creature had given her another burst of energy.

Where’s Annie?

Shadow couldn’t sense her in the immediate area.

“Stay hidden and try to stay quiet! It hunts with sound while it’s underground!” Jonas roared at her again.

‘Why are you yelling then!’ she wrote with big floating letters as she kept climbing the tree, while maneuvering herself to keep hidden behind the trunk as she climbed.

“I’m keeping it on me, so it doesn’t go after Annie! And no words when it’s airborne!”

Shadow blinked. That was… very brave of him. Not really that surprising though. Jonas was like that. She smiled despite herself. But… she checked the area again with her better vantage while climbing. Annie was still nowhere in sight.

‘Where's Annie?’ Shadow wrote, but had to get rid of the floating text before the man had a chance to read it as the… dirt-snake (Look, she didn’t have much time to think, ok?) exploded from the ground again. Jonas threw himself around the trunk of the tree this time, as the large creature destructively stripped the branches on the side he’d just vacated.

Shadow finally made it up to about the same height as Jonas. She considered climbing even higher, given that the dirt-snake clearly could still reach them despite their significant height.

She decided to stop, though. She didn’t want to leave Jonas to deal with this thing alone, especially since he was less ‘dealing with it’ and more ‘dodging around trying not to be killed’. He didn’t even have his sword or shield drawn. She assumed that was to keep his hands free for tree-based maneuvers. She couldn’t help but wonder what the plan was here.

She also needed a chance to take a breather. She edged herself around the trunk again for a better view of the situation. Moving carefully, she wrapped herself around a branch as she took deep breaths and tried to cool down.

Unfortunately, she caught a view of the ground oh-so-far under herself in the process of latching herself onto the branch. Her claws dug in deeper.

She was awfully high up.

Shadow shut her eyes for a moment before forcing herself to ignore it for the moment. She couldn’t afford to let it get to her right now.

What was I doing?

She took a moment to remind herself.

Right. Where’s Annie?

She formed another message to try asking Jonas again. Thankfully, they weren’t interrupted this time.

“She ran deeper in the woods! Her arm’s broke. She should be able to heal it up, but it’ll take her a bit, and she can’t climb till she fixes it. I’m trying to keep it busy 'til I see her signal she’s ok!” he explained, making a motion in what she assumed was the direction Annie went.

Shadow felt a trill of fear move down her spine. Annie’s arm was broken!?

She took a breath and calmed herself. She didn’t have time to worry about that right now. She had to trust that Annie could handle it with her healing magic.

“Keep an eye out for me!” He ordered, before being forced to make another dodge. He was doing a good job, but was also exerting himself pretty heavily. Shadow didn’t know how much longer he could keep this up.

“And where’s Kirrik!?” he asked at volume.

Shadow looked back in the direction she came from. She supposed she’d left him behind running over here. Looks like she had him beat on speed too. He couldn’t be far behind, though; she’d only been sprinting for a few minutes.

‘He was behind me! He should be here soon!’ she announced. ‘How can I help?’

“You just stay still and keep an eye out! Let me know if you see him!” he yelled, before there was another eruption, and he had to leap out of the way of another strike.

Shadow narrowed her eyes. She could limit herself to that, but she wanted to help! She’d been a big help with the red-eyes, and she was bigger and faster now. She had her acid saliva ready to go; she’d activated it back when she started sprinting over. She refused to do nothing!

But... she also wasn’t going to jump in with no plan. That’d just make everything worse. So for now, she waited and watched, trying to think.

It didn’t take long before Shadow started to notice a pattern in how the creature performed its attack runs.

It would erupt from the ground, flying in Jonas’s general direction, but wouldn’t actually commit to a—for lack of a better name—tail smash until it’d locked onto his exact location with its eyes. It may be able to hear him, but it still needed sight to aim precisely. It was also getting better. Jonas was having to press himself harder to avoid the strikes, and the creature was getting better at reading his feints.

All it would take was a single misjudgment on his part and the thing could easily kill him. Anything that could crash right through branches thicker than her torso was not something you let hit you.

Her first thought was to get over there and coat the whole area in darkness. That would definitely work to mislead the dirt-snake, but Jonas would be blinded too. Considering they were around 40 feet off the ground, forcing the man to dodge from branch to branch blind seemed… unwise. It would also completely remove his ability to see an attack coming.

Basically, it would be worse for Jonas than the monster, so that idea was out.

But... perhaps she could still accomplish the same goal with a different method. She nodded to herself. This would work… although…

She looked again at the ground underneath her, before looking back over at Jonas making noise and vaulting from branch to branch. If she wanted to help, she would need to make it over there, and would likely need to perform the same kind of dodging he was doing. She needed to be close, and to stay close for her plan to work.

She knew she could do it. Shadow was not clumsy (unless she wanted to be. Toddling around was fun sometimes). She was quite good at knowing just how much force she needed to apply to make a jump or perform a maneuver. She had a very good sense of where her body was in relation to the things around her. That sense was even better with her ear sight activated. Jonas wasn’t doing anything she wouldn’t be able to handle herself. If it had been a bunch of branches lying on the ground, she was sure she’d be able to maneuver around on them, no problem.

But it wasn’t.

She found herself quivering as she forced herself to stand up on her branch, coated in shadows so the dirt-snake wouldn’t see. She took a few tentative steps in Jonas’s direction, feeling like she had to keep her claws dug into the wood despite the fact she didn't have any trouble balancing on a branch this size.

Why was she so afraid of heights!? It just seemed weird! She hadn’t had much chance to think about it, but her experience jumping out of the inn’s window showed her that the intense fear wasn’t really reasonable. A fall of that height hadn’t even stressed her. Of course, she was a lot higher up than that now, but she’d been seriously scared even at the lower height of the inn. It didn’t make sense!

She looked down again, and forced herself to focus.

If she were to fall right now… She tried to imagine it. She tried to envision her body reacting. Tried to run herself through the same types of background thoughts she had every time she hopped up on to something, or effortlessly maneuvered her body through the underbrush. She… would angle herself to land feet first, tilted so her back legs were lower. Her tail would hit first, followed shortly by her extended back legs. She’d decelerate, her legs slowing her as they absorbed the shock. Her front legs would hit right after, and slow her fall as well, and then her body would hit and…. she would stop. It would hurt, she might get bruises, but she should be fine. She knew it just as certainly as she knew how to breathe. It was instinctual, but this instinct was useful.

The fear is incorrect!

She took another couple steps, but was still shaking, her movements stubbornly tentative. Knowing she could live through the fall didn’t seem to be helping.

She wanted to screech in frustration.

She saw Jonas dodge again, barely avoiding the strike this time.

Move.

She managed another few steps, and now she was at a point where she would need to jump to the next tree. The branches were thick. The jump wasn't hard. She couldn’t make herself do it.

Move!

She quivered there, crouched, ready to leap, but…

The creature clipped Jonas, and he cried out in pain, missing the branch he’d been jumping toward.

Her world convulsed as the man started to fall.

He hit a different branch and managed to latch on, pulling himself back on top with a groan.

Shadow felt like her heart had left her body.

It was enough.

She made the leap like she was breaking free of a binding, and landed solidly on the other branch, taking off toward Jonas at as close to a run as she could achieve given the footing.

The fear was still there, screaming in the back of her mind, worse than anything she’d experienced, even when fighting the red-eyes, but it was being forced back.

He needed her help. She had to be there. If she fell and died, so be it.

She wasn’t going to let him face that monster alone.