Shadow pounded across the branches, a flickering shade, a pool of darkness shifting from tree to tree.

She was profoundly focused as she leaped from branch to branch. She still felt an almost painful knot of fear in her chest from performing maneuvers at this height, but now it was helping her focus, rather than turning her into a debilitated mess.

She hadn't managed to close the distance before the dirt-snake made another pass. She’d been stiff with panic as she was forced to watch it happen.

Thankfully, the man didn’t seem to have sustained any serious injuries when he’d been clipped previously, and he pulled off another clean dodge.

She managed to close the distance after that. She got around 15 feet away from Jonas before he finally took notice of the strange shifting shadows approaching him. He tensed as she approached, moving into a defensive stance, before narrowing his eyes.

“That you, Shadow?” he asked.

‘Yes! I’m here to help!’ She wrote.

The man scowled.

“Damnit! I told you to stay put!” he yelled at her.

Shadow scowled back at him, although he couldn’t see it.

‘You almost died! I have magic! I’m helping!’ she text-yelled back at him, as she closed the remaining distance, and took a stance beside him on the branch.

Time for further arguing was cut short as the creature burst from the ground again, sailing toward the two of them.

Shadow steadied herself, and put special effort into shaping her mana as smoothly as possible. She strained to increase her range as much as she could. Her fear of heights and fear of the giant creature both fed into her focus. The world slowed as the beast approached, its deep screech feeling almost like an assault on her body.

She sensed the moment it came into range, and plunged its world into darkness.

Only its world.

She made a sphere of shadow covering its face, a little over 10 feet before it reached them, and before it started its attack spin. She kept her eyes on it and prepared to leap out of the way when it attacked

The attack never came. The dirt-snake was not expecting to be suddenly blinded.

What had been a fairly methodical assault immediately became confused. Confused enough that the creature stopped screeching, and started shaking its head, like it was trying to dislodge the darkness.

Shadow had to focus hard to keep the sphere in place. It wasn’t like it was actually sticking to the dirt-snake. She had to consciously maintain its location on the face of the creature. She increased the sphere’s size by a few feet after it had managed to get its head outside the sphere a couple of times with its thrashing. She was right up on the edge of what she could sustain indefinitely, mana-usage wise, but the fact that she wasn’t even losing mana yet was a good sign in her books. This was actually way more efficient than covering the entire range of her spell in darkness, although it did take a lot more focus.

She and Jonas didn’t end up even needing to move as the creature spent the rest of its airtime trying to rid itself of the darkness. It only succeeded after it fell out of range and she could no longer maintain the blind. It screeched again for a few moments before boring back into the ground.

‘See!?’ She wrote, giving Jonas a challenging stare that he could actually see this time. She’d dropped her shadow cloak as she focused fully on blinding the creature.

Jonas gave her a pained look and then sighed, giving her a nod.

“Right, keep that up. Please don’t get hurt. Annie’ll murder me. And… I also don’t want to see you hurt.” He added, sounding a little uncomfortable.

“You make sure to dodge wide if that thing gets anywhere close, you hear me?” he said, giving her a stern gaze this time.

She grinned at him and nodded. It was touching. He hadn't been nearly so concerned when she'd helped him fight the red-eyes. She supposed his newfound worry stemmed from how much closer they had gotten over the course of the journey.

The creature seemed to have recovered by its next leap. She blinded it again, but it ignored the impairment after only a brief hesitation this time, still going through with its attack roll.

It was, however, far less accurate. It was obvious the creature was much less sure how to adjust itself as it executed its attack. It still had some idea about where they were going, but whatever it was using to sense them seemed much less effective than its sight had been. She was still forced to leap out of the way, her body slapping somewhat painfully into the branch she’d jumped toward. She had put a little bit too much power into the movement. She supposed the fear of being crushed by the massive creature motivated excessive effort.

Shadow did note that her fear of maneuvering so high above had diminished somewhat with the introduction of a fresh new fear of being crushed to death, so that was nice.

Sort of.

The horrible explosive smashing sounds as it demolished the area she had previously been inhabiting certainly wasn't helping.

She prepared herself for the next pass when she caught a glimpse of something out of the corner of her eye. She whipped her head around to look.

Kirrik!

‘I see Kirrik! Tell him to get off the ground!’ she informed Jonas with some projected words.

She pointed in the direction of Kirrik. She wasn’t sure if Jonas had actually managed to spot him as well, but he yelled out regardless.

“Kirrik! Get off the ground! It’ll come up from under you! And make sure to stay quiet until you’re high enough to dodge!”

Shadow was focusing on the ground again, trusting that Kirrik could handle himself.

She watched as the dirt seemed to throw itself away from a forming hole, which was quickly occupied by the dirt-snake as it exploded out of the ground again.

Then it did something strange. It started to flip itself before it had even left the ground, and started flying through the air in an unstable tumble. It was nothing like the tight spin it had used to attack before. This time it was spread out.

Shadow watched in wide-eyed horror as it demolished a huge swath of branches as it ascended toward them.

It didn’t quite make it. Its momentum was spent a few feet before it reached them. She'd done her best to dodge, but she'd not gotten close to exiting the path of destruction. She'd tried her best to keep it blinded, but it was next to impossible with it flailing around like that. Its body length was longer than her entire range. She released the breath she didn’t even know she was holding as it plunged back down into the ground after its failure to reach their height...

She would swear the screeching had started to sound annoyed.

Shadow shared a look with Jonas. Apparently, the creature had been content with its strategy before, but had changed up its tactics once Shadow started interfering. That worried her.

Still, it was quite good the huge dirt-snake hadn't made it to them. She looked at the horrifically mangled 30-foot swath of branches it'd made on its ascent. Shadow had no idea how she or Jonas would have survived that if they'd been stuck down there.

“Move!” Jonas yelled, “Get to somewhere the branches haven’t been cleared yet!”

Right.

Shadow nodded and started hopping along with him, but paused as she caught a flash of light through the trees.

Shadow felt a weight was lifted from her shoulders, and jumped to catch up with Jonas again.

‘It’s Annie! She’s okay!’ Shadow wrote as they moved.

Jonas nodded to her and put a finger over his mouth, slowing down. He kept moving, but made an effort to be quiet as he did so. Before, he had been purposefully noisy to give the creature a target. Now that Annie was presumably safe up in a tree somewhere, Jonas obviously figured they didn’t need to keep drawing the dirt-snake in.

Then she heard banging off to her left, and her eyes quickly found Kirrik standing on a branch at about their same height. He was slapping the trunk of the tree with one hand while he held his bow in the other. It didn’t take long for the dirt-snake to attack, this time back to its normal method.

Kirrik put an arrow in its eye before it was halfway out of the ground.

It fell to the ground, its attack aborted, screeching and writhing, rubbing its face on the ground.

Yes! Shadow thought, elated. He got it!

The creature stopped its flailing and looked back up at Kirrik, the arrow missing from its now-closed eye, and let out a furious screech a good deal louder than she’d heard before.

Despite the fact that this thing looked nothing like a person, there was no doubt in her mind that they’d pissed it off.

Kirrik launched another arrow at it, but it was prepared this time, and turned its face, the arrow clinking harmlessly off its armored back.

Shadow quivered a bit. She was worried.

Then it did something new. Again.

It started sliding in a circle on the ground, half sinking into it, as the earth rippled around it, seeming to propel it faster and faster.

This creature couldn't be normal.

‘It’s smart!’ she wrote, giving Jonas a frantic look.

Most of the animals she knew about fought in one way, and if it didn’t work, they gave up and left.

This thing appeared to have quite a few tricks.

And it was using them to try to kill her family.

She was not okay with that.

Shadow narrowed her eyes at the giant thing. Somehow the fact that the dirt-snake seemed smarter than average, but was still trying to kill them, made her angry. It reminded her of the stupid trapper.

Jonas acknowledged her warning with a nod, before starting to whisper.

“We need Annie’s help, now that she’s healed herself. Fighting that thing up close is impossible. I can’t trust my footing on the ground with it moving the earth like that and even in the trees, it’s everything I can do to keep it from crushing me.” He explained.

He gave Shadow a look that brooked no argument.

“Go and get Annie. Tell her we need her spells, or this thing is going to kill someone.”

Shadow nodded, and went to head off in the direction of the flash of light.

But before she managed to leave, she saw what the dirt-snake had planned.

With one final twist, and a thrust of earth, the creature removed the trunk of the tree Kirrik was standing on. One second it was there, and the next there was just wooden shrapnel. The tail end of the creature had been moving so fast when it hit, she could hardly see it.

The tree collapsed, whipping violently as its branches got tangled with those of other trees.

Her stomach dropped as she saw Kirrik flying through the air.