The shadow watched Alma through spectral eyes that made her feel as if her life had already reached its end. A tenebrous awareness that was forcing her to give up hope, that any movement she could make would end fatally. With almost blinding speed, the shadow being let loose a phantasmic tendril that shot forth from its body passing mere inches from Alma’s face to one of the trees behind her. The appendage twisted and throbbed, sucking out unnamable juices from the monstrous trunk and reducing it to formless dust. A perversion of the natural order, the girl’s only instinct was to run from the malignant shade while it devoured any remaining life from a tree already stricken with foul death.

The small firearm still burning hot in her hand, the ex-soldier turned on her heel and fled as fast as she could from whatever formless being she had just encountered. It brought her no comfort that the spectral entity reminded her too much of the amorphous annoyances that once surrounded her in her daily life. Even though her power evolved just past the point for her to finally distinguish that they were actual living things residing in some alternate reality she could somehow perceive, this shadow was on another level completely. She turned to see if it had followed her, but the only thing that filled her vision was the same foreboding forest that surrounded her. The girl slowed her pace, gradually calming herself and taking another look around. The dark figure had vanished completely without a trace and Alma found herself completely alone once again. The only sign of life had been the gray prints she left behind as she ran. Everything she had rushed past had turned dark and brittle, dissolving in her wake.

There was no way a single creature had caused all this destruction. Sapping an entire forest of life would have to take far more power than she could even imagine any single being wielding. Her mind turned to the godlike beings she was familiar with in her daily life. Had Qu’l-Nia finally gone rogue and destroyed an entire area out of sheer spite? Had Derleth finally found out that they had been searching for him and is attempting to stop their quest with a stern warning? Or maybe Macha was finally coming down with her divine fury, punishing Alma for palling around with other gods. All seemed equally appalling. The situation had all been too much for her. It seemed like she ended up in these predicaments a lot more often than the average person—risking her life from one adventure to the next. In the end, what was in it for her?

Alma snapped out of her thoughts after hearing what sounded like a terrible shriek from the trees. The girl froze in place and searched desperately for the source before it could find her. But again, she could see nothing but what should have been the familiar old woodlands for miles. And with that, she was on the move again. Away from the witch’s house, away from where she had last seen her friends. Creating as much distance as possible between her and the alien creature that stalked her. There was something out there causing destruction on a massive scale capable enough to be able to kill a being like Qu’l-Nia. And she could do nothing. For all her bravado and arrogance, who was she to attempt to stand against gods?

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Below her feet, a leaden fog had rolled in at some point. Plumes of ash and smoke that had been there for who knows how long. Suddenly, an audible murmur from the edge of the forest, followed one by one with incessant screeches of varying intensity. The foul wailing of some inhuman darkness piercing her ears, calling out to her with its accursed omen of an enshrouded oblivion. The ex-soldier instinctively reached for her pistol, ready to draw at a moment’s notice, despite knowing the futility of such an action. Then, when all fell silent, the girl stood her ground and waited for the shadows of the forest to dance their unnatural, sunlit dance.

Alma focused her vision as best she could, straining her eyes for any sort of movement that felt out of place. Then, almost as far as her eyes could see, a spasmodic twitching of branches that shook the brittle leaves from their perch, and dissolving them into nothingness. And at a hauntingly fast pace, each tree ahead of the previous one began the same rhythmic convulsion. The girl glared at the chain reaction that would inevitably reach her, looking to see what exactly was causing it, until finally she could see the large, hazy mass of darkness that was skirting along the edges, racing towards her in a weird, horizontal motion.

When the looming shade had finally reached her, it arrested all movement and watched her with its lurking eyes of darkness. The girl continued glaring, ready to face the inescapable malevolence before her—unsure if this was to be her final moment. As her gaze lingered over the shadowy body, a new phenomenon occurred. A distinct, gaping hole formed within the spectral entity that seemed hazy at first glance, but as Alma’s brows furrowed in concentration, the void inside collapsed within itself and formed a bulging mass of red flesh that peeked out from deep inside the shadow’s core. The true monstrous organism that was casting its shadow from a higher plane.

But as the ex-soldier poised herself to shoot, the shadow struck and projected its inky appendage directly at Alma, puncturing her shoulder. The sudden impact and subsequent pain caused the girl to drop her pistol to the crumbling grass below. Alma howled in agony as the shadow slowly began to drain her body’s essence. In a few moments, she would suffer the same fate as the rest of the once-breathing forest around her.