Connor looked at his window one more time.
Option A: Chaos Bolt. Random. Unpredictable. Could be fire, ice, lightning. Could be useful. Could also miss entirely and do something nobody expected including him.
Option B: Shield. A reaction spell. Something that sat between him and whatever this forest decided to throw at him next. Plus 5 to armor class until his next turn.
He thought about standing in the dark staring at a creature that couldn't be touched while a battle happened ten feet behind him and he couldn't turn around.
He selected Option B.
SHIELD UNLOCKED.
The Codex closed itself with a soft pulse of blue light and dissolved back into the cold air of Valdenmoor.
Connor exhaled. Pushed his glasses up. Looked at the three of them standing in the grey forest, slightly banged up, slightly disheveled, Zhang's robe still torn at the shoulder, Andre's armor scuffed from where he'd hit the ground, Diego with holy light residue still faintly crackling along his sword hand.
All of them level two.
All of them still alive.
"Ok," Connor said quietly. "Good work."
"Obviously," Diego said.
"I literally just stood here—"
"You kept the shadow thing still," Andre said. "That was the whole reason we could fight. If it moved we were done."
Connor looked at him. Andre was already looking somewhere else, completely unbothered, like he hadn't just said something that actually mattered.
Zhang raised his bow slightly. "Can we keep moving. I have 2 HP and I would very much like to not have 2 HP."
"Second Wind," Connor said. "Use it. You can heal yourself."
Zhang looked at his Codex. Found it. Read it twice. Then said "oh" with the quiet reverence of someone discovering something they needed badly. He activated it and the light moved through him, soft and quick, and the HP bar climbed.
SOUTH KOREAN OR CHINESE HP: 2 + 7 = 9
Zhang rolled his shoulder. Tested it. Nodded once. "Ok. That's better. That's significantly better."
"Good," Connor said. "Because we need to keep moving."
He looked at the path ahead. Then looked back at the creature.
It was still there. Exactly where it had been. Hand over its eyes, head tilted, listing slightly to one side. Completely still because all four of them were looking at it.
"We have a problem," Connor said.
Everyone looked at him.
"We can't all walk forward and look at it at the same time. Someone has to walk backwards."
A pause.
"Not it," Zhang said immediately.
"Not it," Diego said.
Andre looked at all three of them. Then at the creature. Then back at them.
"Why is it always me," he said.
"You're the tallest," Zhang said. "You can see over our heads."
"That doesn't even make sense—"
"Andre please," Connor said.
Andre looked at the creature one more time. Looked at the path ahead. Sighed the sigh of a man who had accepted something deeply unreasonable about his life.
"Fine. But I'm not doing this the whole way."
"We'll rotate," Connor said.
"Will we though."
"...We'll try to rotate."
Andre turned himself around so he was facing backwards, walking in the direction of the path while keeping his eyes fixed on the creature behind them. The rest of them faced forward. Single file. Connor first, then Diego, then Zhang, then Andre at the rear walking backwards through the Dark Forest of Valdenmoor with his axe on his back and his eyes on something that would kill them all the moment he looked away.
"This is the dumbest thing I've ever done," Andre said, from the back.
"Lower than DnD?" Connor said from the front.
Andre thought about it. "...Equal to DnD."
They walked.
The path curved left around a root system so massive it had become its own geography, black and gnarled, rising from the soil like the knuckles of something buried for centuries. They moved around it single file, Connor navigating, calling out quietly when the path shifted.
"Step up, there's a root."
"How big," Andre said from the back, not looking.
"Medium."
Andre stepped over something he couldn't see. "I hate this forest."
"We know," Zhang said.
"I hate Connor for making this forest."
"I know," Connor said.
"Root," Diego said suddenly.
Andre's foot caught it anyway. He stumbled, arms out, axe swinging, eyes never leaving the creature.
"I'M FINE," he said before anyone could ask. "Don't look back. Keep going."
They kept going.
The path opened slightly on the other side of the roots, just enough to breathe, just enough to see further ahead between the trunks where the shadows sat deep and still and patient.
"Connor," Diego said quietly. "What do you actually remember about this forest from your notes."
"The layout. Mostly. The forest has sectors. The Ashfields is the outer ring, that's where we started. The deeper you go the worse it gets."
"Worse how," Andre said from the back.
"Just worse."
"That's not an answer."
"I know."
Zhang looked sideways at Connor. "So we're walking toward worse."
"We're walking toward the exit. Which happens to be in the direction of worse. Yes."
Zhang nodded slowly. "Cool. Great. Love that for us."
They walked in silence for a while. Just footsteps on dark soil. The pulse of the bark. The cold that had stopped being temperature and started being atmosphere.
Then Andre said "guys."
Everyone slowed.
"You hear that."
They stopped. Completely still. The forest settling around them, the bark pulsing its slow dim light, the canopy above so thick the grey sky had become a memory.
Then they heard it.
Low and rhythmic and wrong. Coming from somewhere ahead in the dark, between the trees where the path narrowed again and the shadows sat deepest. Not a growl. Not footsteps. Something more deliberate than either.
A clicking.
Wet and precise, like something working its mouth slowly in the dark, tasting the air, finding something in it worth paying attention to.
Finding them.
"Andre," Connor said very quietly, not turning around. "It still still back there?"
Andre's eyes hadn't moved from the creature the entire time. "Yeah," he said. "Still there."
"Good. Don't look away."
"I wasn't going to look away Connor—"
"I know just—"
"I KNOW."
The clicking continued. Slow. Patient. Getting no closer. Getting no further.
Just there. In the dark ahead of them.
Waiting.