[center][h2]Nicolas Li[/h2][h3]??? — Forest Shrine[/h3][/center]

With his heart beating out of his chest, Nick could barely even pause to think as  whatever otherworldly monster continued gaining on them. The forest was quickly blurring together in his mind, and with every tree and bush looking near-identical it was difficult to even [i]try[/i] and thinking about anything but escape. This might have been a new world, but that didn't necessarily mean that he had suddenly come across the power to outrun something this fast.

Even if he did, this was [i]far[/i] from the best time to test anything crazy like that.

It was only the sound of something [i]crunching[/i] behind him that caused Nick to falter for but a second in order to glimpse at what had happened. Unfortunately, that also happened to coincide with a stray root catching him off guard and causing him to trip over himself and tumble to the ground. Where he had expected a gruesome and painful death, though, he instead found himself watching a small girl in a witch's outfit staring down the monster that had been intent on killing them.

"...Ah, yep, that's certainly magic," the young man uttered to himself as he watched the scene unfold in front of him. If anything, this whole ordeal felt more cinematic than anything else, and so he could only stare at the scene in shock.

Honestly, even if negotiations broke down, the situation was still probably screwed up enough to lead to his demise. But when things [i]didn't[/i] break down and the monster retreated, Nick let out a deep sigh and let all the tension in his body slip away.

Unfortunately, that moment of reprieve soon gave way to an interrogation—one that Nick wasn't all too keen on taking lying down.

"While I really can't thank you enough for saving us, I don't think it's fair to accuse us of intruding somewhere when you [i]wake up[/i] there to begin with," Nick responded, wincing as he pushed himself off the ground and attempted to brush himself off. "If your... Uh... I'm going to assume they're a familiar? Right, if they saw us, wouldn't they have thought it was weird for us to be as disoriented as we were? I don't know when they caught sight of us, but we were pretty out of it until we heard [i]that[/i] thing coming."

Honestly, given how mismatched the three of them were when seen as a group, their excuse for being here should've at least made [i]some[/i] sense to their savior.

[@VitaVitaAR][@Raineh Daze][@Pyromania99]