As Rehtul ran, he could hear the sloshing of the wetlands under him echo out into the darkness. With no native fauna around, the sounds carried for what seemed like miles. He could hear even through his own steps that Felicity was already closing in.

"Damn," he muttered under his breath. "I was hoping to buy a few more minutes." He slung his hand out and drew upon the water beneath him. He shaped it with his mind into a makeshift pole and vaulted himself up onto a shelf about seven feet off the surface of the water beneath. He tossed the weapon to the side and began concentrating his magic. The weapon stopped in midair and began to reform into a pair of floating hands. While he stood there, he turned toward where he was sure the young woman would be climbing. As he did, the hands were doing work off to the side, pulling up strands of filament from the surrounding fungi.

He could see through his peripheral vision that his experiment was something of a success. He was getting some high tensile strength filaments from closer to the top of the fungus, where the body was far less stiff and settled in place.

As she climbed up in front of him, he drew the hands back to himself and had them wrap the filament around his arm like a length of rope.

"Felicity," he said back, somewhat mockingly in response to his own name. The sing song tone of his voice didn't match the reality of their situation at all, and the slight grin creeping across his face told it all. He was, for once, just enjoying himself here in this moment.

Without another word he backed up and dropped off the side of the small cliff and splashed noisily into the dark green-black muck beneath him. His coat felt heavy from the coating of muck and water infused within it, but he paid it no mind. He breathed in and out calmly as he waited for the inevitable angry red head to begin following him again.

He hoped she would attempt to jump down on top of him, reckless as she tended to be, for he was prepared for that. He gauged where he most thought she was likely to jump from and stomped his foot in the muck. A few feet out from the edge of the short cliff several spikes of ice erupted, ready to impale anyone foolhardy enough to make that leap.

Even if it doesn't win me the fight, if my guess is right, this attack should remove her from the equation long enough for me to start using these makeshift ropes.