The first thing Emily felt was the sickening feeling of fear, as she felt her feet leaving the ground, and the skin-crawling sensation of dozens of tiny monkey paws sweeping her and Blue into their grasp. Her arms flailed with the long-honed instincts of a mammal trying to hold themselves up in midair, before they brushed up against the familiar feathers of Blue and wrapped her arms around him tightly.

  The next thing Emily felt was her stomach dropping, as the monkeys accelerated her and Blue through the canopy, their numbers spread out throughout the canopy in order to coordinate the launch and their red eyes glaring hatefully at the two flesh-covered projectiles that they’re accelerating like slugs through a railgun.

  Emily starts to scream, as her and Blue are whisked through the darkness, the wind whistling past them and whipping her hair into her eyes.

  Alastair continues to run, his breath coming out heavy as he keeps his eyes on the canopy, following the trail of red eyes. He hears Emily’s screams rapidly getting further and further away from him, and horrible thoughts of finding a broken body lying on the floor, tossed aside, invades his mind. He shakes them off, refusing to imagine the little blonde girl he grew up with like that, and refusing to give up hope just yet. Unsure about what, exactly, the monkeys are doing, he chooses to believe they’re just carrying them back to their lair, and that he’ll be able to find it and rescue them.

  Knowing exactly what the monkeys are doing and feeling helpless with this knowledge, Nora lies abandoned on the forest floor, watching the rapidly retreating eyes of the Red Moon Lemurs. In her heart, she knows that Emily and her ostrich are doomed, but until Alastair comes back, she refuses to fully believe it.

  Having grown up hunting and living within the forest’s edge, having to dodge dangers and identify threats on a daily basis, she was both taught and given the opportunity to observe the nature of monsters common to the edges while being watched over and guided by the knowledgeable hand of her dad.

  And she can’t get the memory of the time she saw a pack of Red Moon Lemurs lifting up a predator into the canopy, before flinging it into the cold, unyielding ground, out of her head. And the sound of the predator’s bones snapping like twigs, as it lay there, unmoving.

  Emily feels herself continuing to accelerate, and knows she needs to do something. She racks her head, trying to figure out a way out of this. She sweeps her hand out and slices through the next group of monkeys just waiting to continue the chain, blood and viscera falling down to the forest floor with a sickening thunk, but another group just seamlessly takes their place and continues the chain with only a slight slow down to their speed. She frantically sweeps her hand out once again, aiming wide to try and cut down more of them and create a gap. It goes wide, crashing into the trees instead and causing a cascade of twigs and leaves to fall down on the angrily screaming mob.

  Out of ideas, Emily tries to rack her mind for anything that could help. Dozens of lessons with her uncle meld together, spells that she hadn’t touched since learning them, naively believing that she’ll never have need for them. Words meld together, magical forms mixing and matching and becoming incomprehensible blobs of mana and circuits in her panic.

  Unhelpfully, one memory continues to pop up, crystal clear while the other, more useful ones are blurry around the edges and hard to grasp.

  “Come on, Emily. We worked on this last week.”

  It was of her uncle, standing next to a ten-year-old Emily, his corded arms crossed across his chest in clear dissatisfaction. Across from them stood three straw targets, all of them untouched.

  “I know…” She had replied sulkily. “But I don’t want to learn how to fight! I’m gonna be a healer!”

  Her uncle let out a sigh, pinching the bridge of his nose.

  “Listen up, squirt”, he replied, as he placed a hand on her head. “One day, even if you become a healer, you might have to hurt someone or something in order to save someone. Like if there’s a monster outbreak. Or a band of bandits attacking a caravan. And when that time comes, you’ll thank me for teaching you all of this.”

  Emily stayed quiet, seeing the logic but not wanting to admit that her uncle was right. Healers heal, after all. They don’t fight. That’s what fighters are for. Like that rough marauder boy who showed up on their farm with all of those horrible scars.

  And if her uncle could see her right now, he’d know that he was more right than anything. Dismissing the memory for what felt like the hundredth time, Emily swears on her Uncle’s memory to take the path of the battle mage seriously if she could only find a way out of this.

  As if summoned by her declaration, a memory comes to her, and Emily wastes no time in flooding her mana through the right channels.

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  Like water poured on limestone, her cells drink in the mana with no signs of saturating, turning this into one of the most expensive spells she’s cast in years. With panic, Emily realizes that she might not have enough mana circulating inside her for this spell.

  But if she stops now, all the mana she just tried to use will go to waste. And she doesn’t have the time to replenish it before her and Blue end up wherever the monkeys want to take them.

  With nothing to lose, she doubles down, feeling the mana slowly leech towards her skin. The pressure builds within her, her body heating up as the wild, untamed energy bucks and begs to be unleashed. It feels like her body is on fire, her every cell dipped in acid and the wounds poured with salt. She grits her teeth until it feels like they’re about to crack, forcing the mana further and further through her.

  Finally, it tentatively reaches her skin, and Emily grasps as tightly to Blue as she can, willing the mana to see him as a part of her.

  And a sphere of violent wind blasts out from her, smacking violently into the monkeys surrounding her and Blue and tearing their grabby little hands off of the pair.

  For a moment, Blue and Emily hang in the air, gravity not yet having realized that it has a job to do.

  Before it catches them in its unyielding grasp, and they begin falling at speed.

  Emily renews her screaming, as she clings to Blue’s neck desperately, hoping that something could break their fall and not having thought about what came after getting the monkeys off of them. Luckily for her, Blue’s keen eyes have already spotted their salvation, and with his mighty undeveloped wings spread as far as they could go and running off of instincts that he has never used before, he begins their tiny glide towards it.

  Emily screws her eyes shut, as a rushing sound slowly cuts through the wind whistling past her ear. As much as she wished to face the end with her eyes open, the fear of breaking against the ground seems to have turned her eyelids to lead.

  Which is why she is caught by pure surprise when she crashes hard into the cold, wet rapids of a river and almost sucks down an entire lungful of water.

  She breaks the surface and coughs for air, the waters already sweeping her and Blue away. She lets out a relieved chuckle, squeezing Blue’s neck tighter.

  “We did it, Blue.” She says, as she nuzzles his now-damp feathers. “We survived.”

  She turns around as the water takes her and the ostrich away, seeing the red eyes of the monkeys disappear into the distance.

  “Better luck next time you… You bastards!” She shouts in glee, deciding that her mom would forgive her the language, just this once.

  Alastair keeps sprinting, sweat dripping down his forehead and his lungs heaving for air. His chest is burning, begging him to take a break, but he pushes ever onward. He’s no stranger to pushing his body beyond the limit, even if it’s been many years since he’s had the need. And right now, with his oldest friend’s life in jeopardy? It’s certainly needed.

  He glances up to double check his pathing, and finds the red eyes of the monkeys, still stretching out and swinging through the trees in a line. They’ve been slowly swinging their way towards the main action, hooting and hollering and guiding him as sure as an arrow.

  He hears a loud blast in the distance, and the monkeys suddenly stop their swinging, staring into the distance in silence.

  “Oh, fuck…”

  Fearing the worst, he begs his body for a little more speed, and it reluctantly obliges, watching the treetops for any further changes to the monkeys.

  The line of them grows thicker and thicker, until eventually, he finds the main mass. He stumbles to a stop and finds the first body, spread on the ground and broken in multiple places, its limbs splayed out in unnatural angles.

  “Shit…”

  He looks around and screams Emily’s name, hoping against hope that he’ll hear a reply. Refusing to give up hope until he finds signs of her, good or bad, he starts to sweep out from the bodies and look around.

  He searches and searches, screaming her name until his voice is hoarse. Occasionally, he hears a rustling, most likely a creature coming to check on what in the hell is making that racket. But whether it’s luck that keeps him from getting attacked, or the fact that the local populace can sense his murderous panic and fury, he is left unmolested during his search.

  Eventually, he stumbles upon a river. He searches up and down its banks, hoping to spot something, but finding nothing but the rapid waters and the unyielding trees. He sinks to his knees, letting out a shaky breath, collecting himself for a moment.

  “No… She must be alive. There wasn’t a body.”

  He takes a deep breath, then another. He feels his heart slowly rise up from his stomach, as he clenches his fist.

  “She’s still alive. She’s got to be. Her and that ostrich.”

  He looks up, a look of conviction on his face.

  “I swear, we’ll find you. This place can’t take you down that easily. You’re tough as nails, no matter how ditzy you might seem…”

  His eyes suddenly go wide in realization, and he jumps up to his feet once again, looking around.

  “Shit… Nora!”

  Running back to find his other missing teammate, Alastair feels the weight of the task before him, as well as determination to do whatever it takes to see his friend again.