Slave suffers 1 point(s) of poison damage.

"Wait, poison damage?" I ask. "What does that mean?"

"Poison is a status effect. It varies in strength, but basically it inflicts damage every second until it wears off." the rat answers.

"How long does it take to wear off?" I ask, feeling a growing sense of dread.

"An hour."

"And... how much HP does Slave have?" my ears droop, dreading the answer.

"Not enough." the rat shakes her head.

"There-there must be something that we can do! There has to be some kind of antidote, right? We can't just-" I say, stopping as I notice the slight smile on the face of the rat, along the rather embarrassed expression worn by Slave. That's when I remember. "Oh, uh, I guess I could just heal her every couple minutes, too, right?" I say, sheepishly. Slave nods in response. I can't help but grumble as I look to Vile, "That was a mean trick. You had me thinking that we were in serious trouble here!"

"Oh, we are in serious trouble. Very serious trouble." The rat says as she hops down to the ground, stepping forward to examine the ruined corpse. It seems that the combination of flames and divine strike were a bit of overkill. "Individually, these creatures are a big pain, but not insurmountable by any means. Unfortunately, there are a lot more than one, or two or even a hundred of them in these woods, and you accidentally rang the dinner bell."

I have no idea what she means until I remember the strange trap that I had stepped into. "I'm sorry." I say, ears and tail lowered.

"It isn't your fault." Slave replies. "Neither myself or Mistress had noticed it either. It was only a matter of time before one of us had tripped one of them."

"So... what do we do now?" I ask.

"We keep moving, and get out of these woods as quickly as possible." The rat sighs, returning to her 'steed'. "We can only hope that we don't encounter a large group of these things, and pray that we can escape their territory before nightfall."

"Yeah, sounds like a good idea. Just let me bury the body first." I say.

"Don't be ridiculous. We don't have time." Vile says, before giving the matter some more thought, "Wait, have you been burying every creature you've defeated in a random encounter so far?"

"Of course!"

"Mistress is correct. We have no time to waste." Slave says. I can't hide my disappointment. "Burial is a human custom, anyways. Monsters and beasts have no interest in such things, and you're doing them no service by digging the graves. If anything, doing so forces the scavengers to go hungry. We have to move. As for this creature, I had no doubt that something will come along to eat the remains before too long."

I'm a little skeptical, as it seems as though everything within these woods aside from the strange spiders is already dead, but her point still stands. I have no desire to linger here, either.

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We keep a quick yet cautious pace, being careful to not step into any of the many, many web traps. The light footed feline is entirely successful at this. I, on the other hand, am not. There are just too many, and some of them are far less visible than others. Each time we were met with those awful bone chimes, but Vile doesn't seem particularly worried by this. At least not much more so than she had been before.

"The death weavers already know where we are. Setting off more traps might help them hone in on our position just a little more effectively, but they won't matter much. The damage is already done." she says.

She didn't seem to be wrong. The set off traps didn't invite more of the spiders. They came regularly on their own. Now that I knew what to expect, it wasn't so bad. So long as you don't allow them to attack first, they go down pretty quickly, and both my Divine Strike and Vile's Fireball spell offer a nice area of effect. The rat had commented about how DeathWeavers are vulnerable to fire, which left me thinking that isn't pretty much everything vulnerable to fire? I didn't ask, however, confident that the magic using rodent knew what she was talking about.

Every little while, I would use Lay on Paws on Slave. She never asked for it, but I could tell when she started to look rather sickly. My Spirit recovery rate might not be enough to use my powerful abilities constantly in the heat of battle, but it has proved more than enough to quickly end the occasional fights and heal my ally as needed. One interesting trait to the ability I have noticed is how it heals the cat for much more than it does myself. I suppose that only makes sense, since she has so much HP. It would be pretty illogical for a physically tough creature to require more power to heal.

Things might have gotten a lot worse had we had run into a particularly large group, but the largest one that we faced was still only three, and since they could be struck simultaneously, it posed no greater threat than a single spider. Things weren't so bad at this point. They gave a pretty decent amount of experience points, too. Still, the warning that we needed to get out of here by nightfall echoed in my head. I wasn't sure exactly what would happen at nightfall, but had a feeling that I didn't want to find out. I had hoped that we were nearing the end of these woods. We had traveled quite a ways so far, after all. As it turns out, hoping isn't always enough.

Nightfall came, the already shaded environment turning pitch black. That wasn't so bad either, however. Vile had conjured a small ball of light which floated alongside us, illuminating our path. Just how many different spells does the rat have, anyways? I found myself feeling just a little jealous of her. Not that I don't appreciate my paladin abilities, of course, but it would be nice having a wide variety of cool attacks and abilities to use as the situation required them.

If the light attracted more of the death weavers, I certainly didn't notice. The numbers seemed pretty consistent, leaving me to wonder what the big deal about nightfall was. Of course it turned out that the issue wasn't the setting sun, but rather what it represented: Needing to rest.

We traveled long through the night, far longer than any of us would have liked, in hopes of finding our way out of the forest nest, or even so much as a sign that we were nearing the border of it, but the webbed corpses remained just as thick overhead, and the attacks came just as consistently.

"We need to rest." Slave says, "If necessary, we might be able to push on for a couple more hours, but by that point we'd run the risk of being too worn out to properly fight, and it seems very unlikely that that small amount of extra distance would bring us to safety."

"Yeah, you're right." Vile replied, although she didn't seem happy about it. "Here is as good as anywhere. There's no proper shelter to be found in this place."

"I guess I can take first watch." I say, trying to conceal my worries. I'm already very tired, and if more of the death weavers come, which is inevitable, can I defeat them on my own? For long enough that Slave or Vile would be properly rested? Could they defeat them on their own?

"No need for that." the rat says. "Come closer."

I do so, as she raises a furless paw, and the air around us shimmers. A strange, translucent yellow dome appears around us, which I reflexively poke a paw at, only for it to pass straight through.

"This is a 'sanctuary' spell. It will last for as long as I wish, and while it is up, lesser creatures are incapable of passing through or attacking us. Fortunately, these disgusting bugs very much qualify as 'lesser creatures'." the rat says. Slave nods, seemingly unsurprised, having apparently seen this spell before. By this point, the effects of her poisoning had long since faded.

"Wait, really? So we can all just sleep without needing to worry?" I say, unable to hide my excitement. I really could use a nice, long nap. "That's great!" I pause, "But why were you so concerned about us needing to rest for the night?"

Vile grins wickedly. "You'll see."

---

DeathWeaver: ...

Squire: "These guys are kind of boring. Not nearly as fun as the door or the wolves."

Slave: "The door?"

Squire: "They make for deceptively cunning foes!"