Blackberry sighed with relief when she approached the water's edge. She had seriously doubted that Hydra even held any sort of obvious water source like a river, but one look at the scale deer not far away told her that it was safe enough to drink. And, hopefully, safe enough to wash off her wound.

As she got to the edge of the water, without hesitation, she plunged her beak into the stream, the water soothing her dry, parched throat. The banana she had had earlier had been enough to keep her alive for the time being, but this would keep her going for a while. She took some time to drink before forcing herself to stop so she didn't make herself sick. She stepped back and leaned down, pulling up some of the grass in her beak. It wasn't the tastiest she'd ever eaten before, but after going for so long without proper food, it tasted better then anything she'd ever eaten before.

After eating enough that she was sated but not uncomfortably full, she took a few more mouthfuls of water before returning to her search.

Blackberry carefully stepped into the water, letting the flow stream across the wound on her leg. It stung, but it was a cool relief, washing out the grit and dirt so that it didn't get infected any more then it was. She paused for a moment, forcing herself to stay still and not jerk her leg out of the water, before she continued to wade through, following the trail just beyond. Now that she was rejuvenated with water and food, she was feeling leagues better and hurried after the trial with renewed vigor.

As soon as she laid her eyes on the mouse, Blackberry's heart leaped in her chest. That was it. That had to be it. She narrowed her eyes from her distance, realizing that she could see the amulet.

It was a horrifying thing and Blackberry wanted a closer look. She remembered what the Collector had said about it warning of dangers, not just predators - so she tried to keep her mind focused on just approaching and seeing the amulet up close instead of actually killing the thing. Perhaps she could try and take the amulet without the mouse even noticing, since the thought of murdering a creature just to steal its belongings, even if it was a lesser...it was logical and she was prepared to do it, but her stomach flipped at the thought. It reminded her too much of Jayberry.

She approached quietly from behind, trying her best to set her feet down carefully, but her injured leg made her clumsy and only a few steps in, it cramped and she stumbled forward with a hiss, effectively ruining her attempts to sneak up on the thing.

The quillmouse didn't seem to be particularly scared of her, so her idea to keep her intentions relatively pure seemed to be working. It won't be alerted as long as I don't think about attacking it. Because now she was realizing that there really wasn't any other way to do it, probably. And having it relatively slow and not running away would help.

It was not as hard as she thought it would to keep her mind focused on a singular task rather then the actual take-down, most likely due to the last multiple hours of hardening her mind against her physical pain. But what was more difficult was trying to keep up with it. It was scuttling around too much and her injured foot just couldn't keep up. She wasn't really falling behind, but its movement were just too quick.

After a little bit of just trying to keep up with the mouse, match its pace, Blackberry had had enough. She didn't come this far to play cat and mouse with her target. She wasn't good at coming up with elaborate strategies or clever tricks, she was a creature of brute, forward force. In a moment, her intentions changed from a passive "get close and keep up" to capture and she lunged forward, her good foot striking forward to hold it down by the tail beneath her talons. She was careful to keep her fool away from most of the quills and also careful not to intentionally harm the creature. Perhaps that would give her some respite from the amulet.

Blackberry hissed with frustration when her feet clamped down on nothing and the quillmouse escaped. This was going to be much much harder then she originally thought it would be. She wasn't good at this kind of thing. She didn't have any fancy spells that would capture the mouse. She had her claws and that was it and the damn mouse was way too fast for her.

So she thought about approaching again and followed after the mouse until she was in range again, deciding not to use force like that again. Capturing it wasn't an option. Killing it probably wasn't too. Her best bet now was to maybe try and untangle the chain from its back, but that risked getting quills in her foot. And she'd rather not, especially with the oily substance covered on its quills.

An idea came to her head. If, perhaps, she could use something to pull the chain off of it for her instead of risking her foot trying to grab it off, then she might be able to grab it. So, instead of going directly back to the mouse, Blackberry ruffled through the ferns and vegetation until she found a rather small plant that nonetheless had stiff branches that she snapped off and stripped of its leaves.

With her little tool in hand, she began to approach the quillmouse again, intending on carefully hooking the branch into the chain links instead of hurting the actual creature.

She approached carefully, holding the stick in her beak, pinpointing the exact chain she was going to untangle it from. The mouse was still scuttling around, apparently not alarmed by her current intentions, so she took the opportunity to be brave and step forward, thrusting the stick carefully to catch on the chain.

It was a close call and she almost missed it, but the end of the stick hooked into one of the links on the chain. She realized just as she did it that it wasn't going to be as simple as just tugging and she'd have it - it was really tangled up there.