Resisting the urge to look behind you isn't so difficult when you can hear the stampede scramble ever closer to your back. Your muscles aren't burning yet either, finely honed to hours of much more strenuous activity than this. No, of all things the biggest challenge has to be resisting the primal urge to chuck your shotgun away and dump all of your attention into a final, desperate sprint.

Panic is not the answer, it is certain death. Wishful thinking? Perhaps this is all a dream, there has to be an easy solution, what if you're just hallucinating? Certain death. This is exactly what you trained for. Well, not exactly, there was nothing precise at all about the art of training to be ready for the unknown. That training is, most of all, what will set you apart from the people who have come before. It will make you a force above the lost: those unfortunate few who wandered in to this place unawares, the hardened soldiers that followed them not long after, and even the elite few sent to rescue them. These unlucky and venerable few were not you. Certain death is your friend and it has been your life's purpose for nearly as long as you remember. The fact you can so much as have these pointless thoughts is a triumph, but that triumph does not mean your mission is complete. From the moment you took your first breath of alien air in this desolate place, death was no longer an option.

Your mind races, adrenaline surging through your veins, yet just as quickly as the burst of panic arose, you wipe it away.

Goal one: outrace the rodents. Aside from how alarmingly fast they seem to be in a dead sprint, this goal is harder than should be. You are not just outrunning the rodents behind you, but also an invisible tide of future enemies - even as you try to escape the ones behind you, the sound and vibration of the stampede are causing more dark patches of terrain to collapse. The mole-whip-rat event horizon is accelerating faster than you are at the moment, and soon you may be dodging threats from ahead as well. No obvious solutions stand out, at least none you can implement while running.

Goal two: locate safe terrain. Any manner of choke point might do. Losing any equipment so quickly - even just hiking equipment - is a poor omen. You suspect this threat is eminently manageable, but not if you're going to be buried alive under thousands of tonnes of rat meat. Nothing obvious sticks out on the horizon, so for now you resolve to make this more of a marathon than a sprint.

What do I need? Distance, to thin the crowd...

You promptly give up on the idea of somehow beating the event horizon - no wishful thinking allowed, not even in this. It is an unavoidable problem, so it should become part of the solution instead You begin to curve, running dangerously close to one of the odd-colored patches of sand and clay even as it collapses. As you run along the edge, you bow back, only shooting brief glances behind to see if the strategy is working.

Mostly our of sheer inertia, dozens of the rodents bowl over each-other, collapsing into the newly formed hole. Curiously, it seems to be more the product of inertia than anything else - even the rodents buried in the tide swerve promptly, somehow aware of the newly forming pothole without any realistic way to see or even hear it forming over the sound of a thousand feet slapping dirt.

Milky eyes from underground - fair to assume they're blind. Using vibration, somehow? You can't "smell" a hole, unless the weird dirt has a signature smell.

The strategy isn't as effective as your best case scenario, but you are still getting some traction out of it. As you run straight for the next circle of collapsing turf, the cusp of the tide falls slightly further behind thanks a bout of overcorrection. You repeat the strategy, over and over, shotgun tight in a deathgrip. It's a strange thing, to feel like a race against death is repetitive, but the monotony of the chase makes it feel like it's taking a year to get anywhere. Notheless, with your hardest effort and gentle refinements to the strategy you've managed to stop the growing wave of flesh trailing behind you from truly nipping at your heels.

Unfortunately, the turf ahead is growing more and more pockmarked; the nearest of the circles have already fully collapsed, chittering rodents peeking above the edges. With a saut de chat that would stun a professional dancer the steel toe of your combat boot slams into the chin of a rodent even as it turns to snarl at you. The creature's neck snaps, and it rolls with the momentum, flinging itself - and several other rodents - back down the hole. You never even break stride, landing in a full sprint, but not every problem can be solved with a well-timed kick to the head.

More fortunately, something seems different about the land ahead. At a point, the circles of off-color dirt and sand just... stop. You can't see any more of these strange nests, not even out to the horizon. In fact, you can't see anything at all, just endless and wholly unremarkable open terrain, as though someone drew a line in the alien terrain and declared all interesting features stop here.

That doesn't fill me with much confidence - if it's so barren, there's got to be a reason why. Something meaner than angry moles? Natural disasters?

Without much of a choice, you press on. The creatures ahead are beginning to pile up as well, snarling and snapping at each-other and trying to push your way. You have to weave away from the edges of the holes now, gaining more value from the meters you put between you and the rodents ahead of you compared to trying to distance from those behind. All the while, you push inexorably for that liminal edge of nothingness.

As if reading your intentions, the furthest rodents do something strange. Rather than running straight for you like the rest, they begin to aim for where you will be. Intelligence, or a hunter's instinct? Either way, you have to address the threat.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

Swerving hard, you shake things up, first running around the right edge of a hole ahead. The tide is pressing on behind you now, you can practically feel the pressure... but you defy your instincts to keep running, swerving again in the opposite direction. The mass of rodents behind you practically short-circuits, turning on a dime in a way it hasn't needed to before; the frontrunners of the mass of bodies are buried or shoved into the abyss, unable to escape in time, but they are quickly replaced by ever more gnashing teeth. You ignore all this studiously, dead set on what comes next.

Unlike all the other holes, you see rodents ahead simply waiting. As if they anticipated your sudden turn, a trio of rodents sit snarling in the space between holes, ready to intercept. You run straight toward them, and they scatter at your approach, scattering around you.

Five meters away, you couch the combat shotgun and fire at the central mole. Its head practically disintegrates, and the body flips backward from the force. There are some benefits to putting heavy munitions in little guns; unfortunately, the cost of keeping steady without breaking your stride is taking all the recoil from said heavy munitions straight to your core.

Goddamn, that hurts.

The wave of rodents behind you shriek desperately, recoiling from the sound of the blast. One of the rodents ahead rolls over, thrusting its paws over its uncovered ear-slits. The shrieks actually seem to do as much damage as the blast from the gun, fueling the cycle. It's the worst cacophany you've ever heard, worse than the sound nails of a chalkboard, or even Charming Asshole's signature ear-shattering snoring, but as chaos inflicts itself upon the hostile horde you're almost glad to hear it. It's quite nice to get confirmation of a tangible weakness, especially if it comes to the point where these damnable things are your only neighbors for the rest of time. Let it be known: they hate loud noises, especially high-pitched ones. Bring a vuvuzela next time.

The otther rodent ahead looks at you with a bitter hate in its decidedly un-milky eyes. Rather than the off-white of all the rest, this creature's squinting, pained expression reveals two cherry red eyes, giving you the distinct impression a lab mouse. Even as a trickle of blood drips from its ears, the red-eyed beast charges you, and even as it moves the other moles regain focus and try to move with it - what few creatures that aren't busy rolling over each-other or infighting, that is.

Intelligence of some kind, and even pack behavior? How is it controlling the rest? Regardless, I think I know why they're starting to get smart. This thing has to go.

Three meters away, you pivot hard, running toward the downed, blind rat. As you swerve, the intelligent rat swerves further past, trying to cut you off, just like the hordes of rat ahead try to cut you off far in the distance. This time, though, you're feeling well prepared. You bear down hard, willing all the energy you have left into your legs.

The gap between you two foes closes astonishingly quickly, and the creature is firmly ahead of you now, rearing back. With a grunt, you lift the gun, and those beady red eyes go wide - it dodges to the side and rolls, whip-like tail swinging wide away from the downed rat, reaching for your furiously running legs. It hardly has time to notice you didn't pull the trigger.

It misses, catching only air. Not because its prediction was poor - quite the opposite, you are going where you think it's going, it just didn't understand your full intentions. When your foot comes down, you aren't trying to dodge the downed, flailing molerat - your boot lands first on the mole's head, even as it gnashes and writhes its way towards you, trying to snag a quick bite. It hardly has time to react to the blow as your other foot slams down its porky belly, causing it to caugh up blood. Then you push hard, throwing yourself off the mole, foot hanging out on your way up- and then crashing down atop the red eyed rat's brow. The creature had just enough time to try flings itself up in the air, trying desperately catch your leg or thigh. The mole's panic only serves to put it exactly where you wanted it.

Your front foot's heel smashes into its nose, and the momentum carries, your back foot catching its shoulder mid-air. You skate on the mole's thrashing form for a long moment, its body skidding across the dirt, before you push off hard once more, crushing its windpipe in the process.

With the ringleader dead, the rodents ahead seem to scatter from their initial course, either too stunned or too furious to implement a strategy more complex than "run at you desperately." By the time your feet hit hard ground again and you throw yourself back into a dead sprint, you have a clear shot to the invisible finish line.

Three... two... one! With that, I'm clear. Hopefully whatever's in these boring sand dunes is a little... less...

Crystalline blues and a vivid purples like nothing you've ever seen before flood your vision, twisting and tumbling over each-other, an invasive kaleidoscope.

You slow to a halt as your haphazard steps crunch on soft tufts of grass. The scenery has changed, now night-time, but the kind of bright night you'd expect with a full moon - not that a moon hangs overhead, or even a single star. The rolling sand and clay you got used to seeing has been replaced with rolling hills of grass, and you can see little vistas of vibrant life all around. Scattered rocks and bushes abound, you can hear the familiar chirp of insects in the night - at least you hope it's just some cicadas, and not another manner of alien creature. There's even a small creek in the distance, curving through the horizon. It wouldn't be unfair to call the scene picturesque.

You stepped from a desert, no, a barren inhospitable alien planet even, to someplace plucked straight out of a hiker's favorite travel guide. Yet, when you turn around, all you can see is more of the same, disturbingly so in fact. The creek in the distance looks a bit wider, and it seems to be running in the wrong direction, but it's sitting in about the same place proportionally. The bushes in the inverse-space are morphed and degraded, twisted to be tall and tree-like, and the grass looks thin and almost sharp. Despite the lack of cover for any critters, the landscape is utterly devoid of animal life. The aimless expanse of sand dunes didn't set off many alarm bells in your mind, but now every fiber of your being is telling you that this bizarre clone of natural beauty is not right, that it is not to be trusted.

To make matters worse, now that you have time to slow down and observe properly things, you can see a vague, translucent film blanketing the eerie space. It looks as though someone plastic wrapped the scenery, forming a perfect flat surface that traces the sky as far up as you can see, straight down to the ground, and possibly beyond.

You're immediately tempted to touch the surface, but even as your fingers twitch your self-preservation kicks in, grinding any inclination to tempt fate to a firm halt.

You take one deep breath and then turn abruptly, putting the barrier and your curiosity both physically and mentally behind you.

Exploring the strange rules of this world can wait - I have a job to do...

Figuring out what's going to try and kill me next, for starters.