Tilting his head from side to side, Stone stopped breaking and tugging on the limbs of the dead tree he’d found fallen and decaying in the forest. Straining his ears, he held himself perfectly still, listening to the whispering of the wind in the trees as Elissa was screaming her head off at her approaching doom. For several moments, his face twitched slightly and Stone turned to stare back towards the entrance of the cavern where he’d left Elissa.

Then, nodding to himself in satisfaction, Stone shrugged his massive shoulders slightly and turned his attention back to the task at hand – gathering firewood before the rains came.

Elissa cascaded through the dark for several moments, helplessly watching as the small patch of fire on the wall from where she’d thrown the latter got smaller and smaller, until all at once pain erupted throughout her body and the cold wet chill of total darkness splashed itself all around her. Stunned, hurting, and dazed, Elissa tried to make sense of the sudden burst of information that was assailing her brain.

Pain washed all over her, dazing her senses and making it hard to comprehend what had happened. The impact where she’d finally hit had driven the air from her lungs in one massive burst, and all sense of sight had been completely whisked out in a single terrifying moment. Uncertain if she’d ruptured her eyes and suddenly gone blind, or what had happened, Elissa’s body reflexively tried to take back in air to replace that which it’d just lost – only to find herself filling her lungs with icy cold water, instead of the precious air which she needed so much.

Shocked, struggling wildly to try and breath, Elissa kicked and tried to force her body to swim upwards, to try and head for the precious air which her lungs so desperately were screaming they needed, but in her panicked and battered state, she wasn’t even certain which direction up was!

For several long moments, Elissa struggled desperately to try and find her way back to the surface – back to the life sustaining air which she needed so badly – only to find the freezing chill of the water, and the disorientation of her sudden impact with it, too great to overcome. Eyes closing peacefully, blackness washed over her, and Elissa knew no more.

Stopping his labor to wipe the sweat from his brow, Stone raised and eyebrow to stare back towards the cavern for several moments as Elissa struggled and finally succumbed to the icy chill of the waters deep under the earth. Finally, nodding to himself once again, he shrugged his shoulders and began to fill up his arms with the wood which he’d been gathering, and slowly turned and started his slumberous trudge back to the cave.

Engulfed in total darkness, it was the feeling of rough, dry lips on her own, which brought Elissa coughing and hacking back to herself. “Rest, weakling,” a harsh, cracked voice whispered softly into her ear, jerking Elissa’s mind awake as a sudden fear of the unknown speaker pushed away her pain with a jolt of adrenalin.

“Who’s there,” Elissa demanded, pushing herself back to the right, away from the voice which had whispered into her left ear. Dry, cackling laughter echoed in the total darkness all around, in response, causing Elissa to tremble as her lungs still struggled with the burning ache of trying to inflate themselves back up with air instead of water.

“Little fly caught in the spider’s web, are you?” The dry, cackling voice sounded somewhat feminine as it taunted her, but carried a deep pitch and timbre which seemed impossible for any human throat to make. “Come to join me in my meal, have you little fly,” the voice asked Elissa, this time sounding as if it was coming from directly in front of her.

Swallowing back the urge to scream and scamper away, Elissa forced herself to draw her magics into her hand and then create a small globe of fire to illuminate the darkness.

“GREEWAAAAA!!” Inches from Elissa’s face, a misshapen head screeched at the sudden burst of light and fire nearby. Elissa had just a split moment to take in the view – a mouth opened wider than her own head, with long jagged brown fangs which dripped green ichor, with vine-line tendrils of mossy green hair cascaded wildly, framing the massive head and hiding the rest of the features from her view – and then there was the briefest flash of something incredibly large and massive smashing in her direction from above and to the side.

Then, there was just pain and darkness again.

Getting back into the cave, Stone dropped the bundle of wood which he was hauling down to the left of the entrance, then turned and walked back outside to get a second load. If he even noticed that Elissa was missing, he showed absolutely no sign of it.