Weaver needs an opening, and Reiju intends to give her one. The fight is arduous and takes every ounce of her strength and determination, for even when the thing is trapped, its many limbs are mobile - as is that huge head with its terrifying teeth, made more fearsome when it tears into Stone and drops his lifeless body to the floor.

Worse is the howl of its mind. She finds herself faltering without having even been dealt a blow. For a moment she stops to catch her breath and watches the others - and then begins slowly, calmly, walking toward the creature's jaws.

One of the others snaps her out of it, and shaken, she resumes fighting back, but it's terrifying to feel the power these things wield, and she feels its hunger resonate within her. The same hunger she almost tried to sate. For the next month, Reiju feels ravenously hungry herself, and acquires a particular taste for anything metallic - for the coppery taste of life-giving blood itself is what her tongue remembers from the fight.