Alice had intended to fight the monster in a battle of mana control, but realised that while she was able to use her own mana mostly normally, she needed to concentrate to have any chance of winning the battle. Which of course she couldn't, due to the fact that she was desperately running for her life. While she wasn't capable of wrenching mana away from the spider, she could still access the ambient mana, which was only half-claimed. She was using the mana to refill her partially depleted pools but was at a loss as to what to do with it; any spells she cast were either too distracting for her to use or didn't do enough damage. She had entertained the thought of strengthening herself magically but was worried that suddenly changing speed like that would just cause her to trip. On top of that Alice had long since reached the limits of her stamina, whether Endurance fortified or otherwise. Alice had had plenty of time to think about her potential courses of action but they all boiled down to one thing in the end: gain distance. Once she had that distance she could use it for any number of things, such as mana control, charging a spell, or a more practical escape. Unfortunately, if she could gain that distance she would have done so earlier. None of this was helped by the fact that the spider was catching up.

Alice had no idea what she was supposed to do in this situation. The only thing that had worked so far was running but she couldn’t keep it up for ever. Through ragged breaths and the dull pain in her abdomen, Alice realised she had an easy and simple way to deal damage to her pursuer, she just couldn’t quite bring herself to do it. Alice had fortunately— or maybe unfortunately— found something to do with her excess mana, as well as a more sustainable solution to her issue. She stopped and turned, facing down the spider that seemed to smile at what it deemed a futile last stand, and ran towards it.

The spider wasted no time in impaling her on a chitin appendage before chittering away at her foolishness, only stopped by the large hole appearing in its own body. Alice felt herself nearly black out from the pain. Her teeth grinding down at each other as if the noise would banish the spots clouding her vision. The spider fared marginally better in that it could handle the near debilitating pain far better than Alice. It swung the offending limb outwards, sending Alice whipping through the air and into a tree, all before letting out a scream of its own. Alice could feel her soul struggling and tugging at the bonds that kept it in this plane of existence, but drowned out the pain with a full force blast of healing mana, pouring in the river of mana she had managed to siphon from the air. A pained groan is all that Alice could manage. Thankfully the spider was similarly injured, though it seemed to have learnt that direct attacks were a mistake as it slowly stalked with staggering steps to the immobile girl in a crumpled heap on the floor. It painstakingly staggered towards her before swaddling her in a thin layer of white silk. If Alice had the strength to struggle against her bindings she would realise that they were surprisingly sturdy despite their thickness. Alice wanted to kick and scream and struggle, even if she knew it would do nothing, but she was just so tired. The last thing she felt was a pair of long thin fangs piercing through her thigh. Then darkness.

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Nadi had been wandering through the forbidden(patch of) forest for too long now, although it had only been under a few minutes, it felt as though Nadi had become old enough to be a village elder, twice. She had confirmed she was headed towards the fire by climbing a tree, but every ten to thirty seconds of walking she would feel an odd displacement washing over her, and when she climbed another tree to check she would be going the exact wrong direction. At the very least this eased her mind about the risk of the forest fire, in all likelyhood Alice had probably been in a similar situation and made the fire to attract attention. There was also very little risk of the signal fire spreading as while Alice was inept at many of the more practical aspects of bushcraft such as tracking and hunting, she was great at general survival skills like securing shelter. To add to the good news, Nadi was sure help would be here within the next five minutes, so if she was going to be waiting it wouldn't be for long. That was the end of the good news though.

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Now that she wasn't worried about the impending threat of an out of control fire or had the annoyance of constantly being displaced grating on her nerves, she had an uninterupted opportunity to take in the vaguely unsettling nature of her location. The trees were a bit denser than everywhere else and the forest seemed to be caught in an endless twighlight. The shadows were uncannily long and coated everything in a creepy mire of flat grey-tones. Every malformed shadow and crunch underfoot sent chills up her spine and nearly had her leaping off the ground. Nadi thought herself one of the braver people in the village and had little in the way of phobias, this place however, felt forbidden. She had no place here, and needed to leave as quickly as she could.

Nadi was spooked from her absent-minded wandering and found herself by the signal fire she had been looking for. So now that she had stopped looking it had shown up? She let out a dejected sigh as she began putting the fire out with the slightly moist dirt under her. When she felt the darkness around her... shake? for lack of a better term. The shadows trembled in anticipation before an ear splitting shriek washed over Nadi's senses. A wave of ice cold terror following after. The fear soaked into her pores and filled her mind in panic. One breath. Two breaths. Five breaths later Nadi no longer felt like running away till she collapsed from exhaustion. She then felt that strange sensation from back at the meeting spot. If she had to describe it it was like having your mind drowned in a pool of the most viscous liquid known to all sentient creatures combined, for just enough time to realise there was an issue but not what that problem was. This repeated twice more until the billowing blanket of fear and mist began wildly flapping as if caught to a petulant tempest. Her fists clenched as she felt herself shaking. She wanted nothing more than to run home before collapsing in a ball of tears, but she couldn't. Some part of her refused to run like a dog with her tail between her legs. But what could she do? No matter how much strength Alice had, be it her heritage or levels, she would die here; wasn't it better that at least one of them survived? Better Alice than her.

She started running. She felt so pathetic, maybe the elders would forgive her cowardice one day, but she would never dare. Was she the kind of person who would leave others to die? Because of her weakness? No! Never. The very thought disgusted her. Which is why she ran towards the clear danger that threatened Alice. She would rather die in vain than live knowing she had let herself fail. Nadi could tell she wasn't thinking straight, between the strange fear that permeated her soul and her already tense emotional state, it was no surprise to her. She hated Alice for the way she made her feel. She hated herself for feeling that way. Who was she to complain that life was unfair. Thats why she always tried to fight against that unfairness with dedication and hard work, and Alice was there as a reminder that it wasn't enough. Nadi felt the mysterious pull on her fade away as if an hallucination. So even her ‘resolve’ was an effect magicked into her by some unseen monster. She would have scoffed were she not so focused on keeping even breaths. Even if she had been coerced into her choice, she still wanted to believe she would have made the same decision either way, . She felt like a dissolving mud doll, the very fabric of her reality was unraveling. Nothing could be trusted, not her emotions, nor her perceptions. That thought scared Nadi more than anything else.

That was when she saw an injured and desperate looking Alice, running through the stormy mist towards a pulsating rainbow coloured bundle of eyes and tumors trying to pass off as a spider. Nadi could see that this would be a bad idea, Alice was bound to be outmatched in almost every category, even if she could handle herself better than Nadi could’ve. That thought was proved correct as in the next moment Alice was sent hurtling away at what was bound to be lethal speeds. Nadi could only stare dumbfounded.