Even if Shadow was able to fall to the ground without sustaining serious injury, she was pretty sure that same fact did not hold true for Kirrik. She heard a panicked roar emerge from the beastkin as he flew through the air, desperately flailing for some kind of purchase.

She was moving before she’d even realized she was going to save him. Not that she had any idea about how she was supposed to accomplish that.

The situation was both better than it might be, and worse than it should be. Despite the tree falling, the beastkin had actually been flung upwards and in their general direction, which was the only reason Shadow had any hope of reaching him. On the downside, he was going to be falling from an even greater height than where he’d started.

Time seemed to stretch as her mind worked on overdrive. A quick glance along his trajectory told her he wouldn’t be reaching any branches. He was unfortunately headed into an area the creature had already demolished, thinning the branch coverage significantly.

He would come pretty close though.

And suddenly she had a plan.

She almost didn’t follow through with it.

It was a close thing, as she considered the situation in the time she closed the last few feet before she’d need to fully commit herself. If it had been Annie or Jonas, or even any of the friends she made back in the village, she wouldn’t have had any doubt.

But she wasn’t even sure she liked Kirrik yet. He was... a little mean. He kept pointing weapons at them. And she was about to risk her life. For him.

It… it was still the right thing to do.

Annie would cry if she let him die.

She flew off the last branch, and her timing was good. She slammed directly into the large beastkin, latching on to him in terror to keep from bouncing off into freefall. She was wrenched to the side as she found herself abruptly matching Kirrik’s velocity.

He let out a surprised yelp with the impact, but before anything else happened they smashed into a branch. Her collision had been enough to divert him into it.

She shook her head, clearing the fuzz that had arrived with their sudden stop.

Elation and relief flowed through her body as they settled.

I did it!

And then they started sliding.

She let out a squeak and surveyed the situation in panic. Kirrik was unconscious. She hadn't realized that, but the man was slumped and sliding off the branch he’d been half wrapped around by the impact. She was currently latched onto his thigh, claws sunk into his outfit. And also him. She cringed a bit at that, but there was no time to worry about it right now.

She could get herself to the branch, but Kirrik was too unbalanced at this point, and would slip off the branch if she didn't do something. She decided that using her claws to save him would be a lot better than letting him fall. She quickly latched on the branch with her foreclaws, and felt a little ill as she dug her rear claws into his stomach and back for grip. It felt too much like attacking him.

Annie will be able to fix it.

Her healing magic was strong. None of this damage should be outside of what she could handle.

She squeezed Kirrik between her legs and wrapped her tail around him as tightly as she could, and started pulling.

She exerted herself with all her might, her limbs straining as hard as they could. Her body flexed, curling a bit as she tried her best to haul him up.

He stopped sliding, but Shadow quickly realized she couldn’t keep this up. He was way too heavy. It was everything she could do to keep him from sliding more, and there was no way she could manage this kind of effort for more than a few seconds. She bit the tree and strained with her neck as well.

It wasn't enough.

There had to be something else. She heard Jonas tromping from branch to branch as he rushed over, but he wouldn’t make it.

She let out a strangled screech as she felt herself slowly being forced to uncurl, her limbs starting to extend as her muscles gave out. Kirrik started slipping again.

She had to get him on top of the branch! She wasn’t anywhere close to strong enough. Her muscles screamed as they were forced apart, failing to do more than slow Kirrik’s slide. She needed… she needed some other way to move him.

She had a desperate idea.

Shadows billowed around her as she poured out mana, letting her instincts guide it into a familiar shape. She’d been able to shadow-port with her pouches, and more recently she had even moved an axe.

That had felt… correct, in a way that this didn’t. She... she had been carrying those things.

She had a hold of Kirrik. That… was like carrying him. It... it was just like carrying a bag or a backpack.

I’M CARRYING KIRRIK! she screamed in her own mind, imagining him like a large sack, willing the conceptual shift with all her might.

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She felt the drain on her mana redouble itself, and the billowing shadows pooling in a floating mass below her expanded outward. Kirrik fully slipped off the branch. She screeched as she was torn from the tree.

She pushed, willing herself to shift.

And then, suddenly, she was landing on top of the branch from which she had just fallen, sideways, with Kirrik still clutched between her legs.

It worked! She thought with elation, though also with a little confusion.

She felt out of sorts from the rapid mana expenditure. She’d almost emptied it performing the shadow-port.

Kirrik slumped on to the branch, this time in a much more stable position. She jolted, and hissed in pain as his full weight came down on her left rear leg. With her head being muddled, she hadn’t thought to pull her leg out from under him as they dropped. Her limb was thoroughly pinned between his body and the tree. She swallowed her hiss, silencing herself again, despite the growing agony. It was like his body was trying to conform her leg to the curve of the tree branch.

She started struggling to free it, digging her claws into the tree and pulling as hard as she could. She was afraid to push with her right leg, as the only thing she was in a position to brace it on was Kirrik. She was terrified she’d accidentally shove him off balance and set him sliding again. Just the thought of that made her sick after she’d done so much to save him.

She managed to work the limb out a bit, but had to bite back another hiss as that only shifted it to an even more painful position. She was about to risk pushing him when she heard a thump, and looked over to see Jonas taking a step over her toward the beastkin. With one smooth motion and a grunt of effort, he hauled Kirrik up and over his shoulder. She slumped for a moment in relief, and then forced herself back to her feet. She winced, putting weight on her back leg again, but the pain wasn't too bad. She didn’t think she’d broken anything.

Shadow looked around a bit to orient herself and realized with annoyance that her ear-sight wasn’t active anymore. She must have accidentally dropped it during one of the rapid series of jarring events that had just occurred. She needed to get better about keeping it going through things like that. She reactivated it with a huff and started moving.

She and Jonas hopped away from the site of the impact. The dirt-snake had burrowed back underground again after it’d destroyed the tree, and might strike at any time. Things had been pretty noisy, she hadn't exactly been quiet, even if she had been trying to be.

Moving proved to be a good idea, as a couple of seconds later the dirt-snake surged out of the ground again, flying toward the location they’d just vacated, screeching. It seemed to have fallen back on its normal leaping attack.

Shadow must have been rattled more than she thought, because as she readied her darkness spell, she realized her range had fallen significantly. She just couldn’t keep the runes from being all wobbly. She was down a few feet. Thankfully, they had moved soon enough that the dirt-snake ended up being out of her range regardless.

But rather than falling back to the ground to try again, it did something different.

It stretched out, sprawling its mass across as many branches as it could touch right as it reached the apex of its jump.

The trees groaned, and she heard snapping sounds as some branches failed under the massive creature’s weight. And everything was still.

It was staring at them with its one good eye.

She and Jonas stared back.

“Move!” Jonas roared, surging away from the creature as quickly as he could, given his burden. Shadow heard a groan from Kirrik, and she took off after them.

The dirt-snake’s screeching redoubled in volume, and it started to follow.

Through the tree branches.

She had no desire to find out what it’d do if it reached them.

And reach them it would.

It started off tentatively, but quickly gained speed. Where she and Jonas had to jump and scramble, it could just... move forward. It was long enough to always have support. It was gaining ground on them fast.

“Kirrik!” Jonas yelled, as he did his best to clamber through the branches, effectively down an arm, keeping Kirrik slung over his shoulder. He was clearly struggling to keep the pace given the beastkin’s weight.

“Wake the hells up, Kirrik!”

The dirt-snake kept closing the distance, weaving its way toward them through the branches.

She looked over at Jonas and Kirrik. Jonas already looked exhausted, and while Kirrik was blinking, he clearly wasn’t all there yet.

Shadow took a deep breath, trembling.

Then she flipped herself around, stopping.

She screeched at the dirt-snake, filling the sound with all the turbulent anger and fear pulsing through her body. Then she charged at the gigantic beast, committed to her course of action.

It screeched back at her, its focus drawn by her tiny rushing form.

She blinded it as soon as she got in range and dodged off to the side. She could move a lot faster than Jonas, burdened like he was. She… she could dodge. She had to give them more time.

The branches were sundered around her as the creature whipped its head at her in anger, doing its best to destroy her without being able to see.

She tried to spit acid in its face as she dodged, but had no idea if it had even done anything. The dirt-snake certainly didn't seem bothered, as it continued trying to murder her. She cursed the fact she didn't have enough in the way of lips to spit like a human would. It would make her acid so much more useful! She'd tried to figure something out in the past, but the best she could manage was a pretty pathetic spray when she blew with her mouth shut.

She gave it up to focus on dodging.

And dodge she did, desperately jumping and twisting, leading it on a terrifying chase. Only the fact that she could blind it when it got close kept her alive, and even then, only barely. She taunted it whenever it seemed like it might break off, she wasn't going to let the thing go after her less mobile family.

A few minutes later, she was bleeding, gasping for air, cut up by wooden shrapnel. She was so tired. She'd been using everything she had to keep it from hitting her just a moment longer. She stared at the creature. It stared back at her, starting to move at her again after another miss. She was back to using her shadow-fluff to cloak herself. Just mana. She couldn’t focus enough to make the runes for the darkness spell anymore. It barely stretched a foot around her. She was running on fumes.

Then, there was a sudden flash of golden light. Shadow and the creature both looked over in surprise.

Annie...! she thought in somewhat of a haze.

Shadow saw her standing on a branch, eyes fierce, hands glowing gold, extended toward the dirt-snake.

It screeched, diving back for the ground, sensing something she didn't. When it hit, the ground lurched. She would have been scared of getting shaken off her branch, but she was too tired to do more than automatically grip it.

The dirt-snake hadn’t gone back into the ground. It had impacted it. It lay there in a tangled pile. It didn't seem to be moving.

Shadow wasn’t really sure what had just happened, but slumped herself on the branch, shooting an exhausted grin at Annie.

It was so good to see her mom was okay.

Shadow hoped she could be done now.