On the third loop of the first of two nights before Doetrieve’s scheduled death, the dwarf held the reins of the lieutenant’s arachnid as it traversed a sea of branch and leaf. Something hopeless had grown within the dwarf. He tired of repeating not only the same two days but the journey, especially unbearable--even if much quicker than on foot. But the speed did not really help considering the dwarf couldn’t be active within the elf settlement during daylight. And he could not shake the sight of dead Doetrieve nor the feeling of having taken a tool to Locust. Truthfully, the dwarf enjoyed the latter, and it surprised him to revel in his violence. The dwarf thought of the massive frog that once swallowed him up and how, after escaping, he had pummeled the defenseless crumpled creature into submission, death and food. The dwarf remembered his own pinning of Doctor Mallow to the church’s walls, funguay blood tricking from between prongs. He could not imagine the depths of shame his father would beat into him having learned any of his son’s acts. But the same went for the dwarf’s thievery and breaking and entering. What had become of himself?

With the transition of tree to fungi in the environment, the dwarf slowed the already gentle pace of Paris. It begin trotting parallel to the high dividing natural line between forest and elf territory. He had come to learn well the fastest path from the steeple to the settlement thanks to the time and nimbleness of the lieutenant’s borrowed pet and its ability to supersede the forest itself. But the dwarf did not yet know well the surrounding area so far down and away on sand, and the dwarf especially had not ventured near the plains again--not where captured nor anywhere else. But unable to stomach the sight of another elf, he commanded Paris on ahead where trees thinned.

The dwarf thought more of his father. He wondered what his father would make of him. But had time passed at all? What if, the dwarf posited, the moment the dwarf occupied was but a flash in his old world? The idea lifted from his stories, it was one theory. The dwarf wondered if he could return and be back at the farm the same night in flee. But a familiar, dour suggestion flashed across the dwarf’s mind: did he want to go back? The answer seemed to be yes: he was not once miserable, merely tired and overworked. Ever since his encountering of bark which damned him, the dwarf’s life involved ceaseless justifying of his own right to exist. Any rest granted his body demanded was in-between intervals of unending battle. The dwarf’s mother had not even died, was his level of exposure to the concept of death. Now he faced it in handfuls, he regretted bitterly. Of course animals died, and he held the notion tragic, and he still fondly thought of the slain Chef Girlodee and those by his father’s hands and even his own. But walking, talking, so intelligent beings perishing--so forced onto the dwarf, he could hardly process what death actually meant. He thought of the struggling Doctor Mallow, its airways tightened with vine, its face a display of clear fear and desperation. The dwarf had nearly suffered the same fate. The dwarf had fallen into ravines and down tunnels and been stabbed and done the stabbing himself, oozing in all instances, a pathetic heap every time.

The dwarf’s eyes remained dry. As he and Paris approached where trees began to greatly decline in number, an idea occurred. It was still some hours before evening with plenty light before nightfall. In the midst of the sunset the unusual planet of blue wove itself into the blanket of emerging stars. He wondered whether its sole dot of green really did mean land in complete sea. It was always the same way at church. It felt that way now.

But such a leisurely reflective walk atop green ceilings would not result in good time, the dwarf wishing for as much night to work with as possible. He at once hitched the spider into a fast pace and the two worked towards a substantial hill in the distance among the lower, lesser plains. On the way the dwarf tasted Tryse and remarked at its suddenness before realizing, remembering, and wallowing in annoyance. The dwarf never accepted Funguayou’s offer, or perhaps had never pursued it, and did not know where to begin in hunting the herb. He could only remember its life as garnishment in a meal served by the dwarfen funguay, and the taste frustrated him. He hated his illegitimate offspring’s complicity, and thus he hated it. The dwarf did not wish to remember any meal made by the terrible sight’s illegitimate hands--not that the dwarf felt overly attached to his changed form. Funguayou was a terrible mirror, a reminder of what he was, and what he no longer wasn’t. There existed no regret of the beard. But all else that grew around was not him.

The dwarf pulled the reins far before their destination had been reached. A bluff crossed, the dwarf remembered its mounting with Waspig. The sky melted into red satin, remnants of color whipping through the air before arriving to slush at the end of the sea. Before the water was the beach and atop the beach stood the often gazed upon city, its smoke active even into the reds heralding night. The dwarf’s stomach growled in thought of fish--any food at all that was not apple or loaf, though he chastised himself for a lack of gratefulness. He shut his eyes and refocused his thoughts on the plains that stretched far and away, the occasional pine or palm or fusion sole occupiers of the field. They and the mammoths, the dwarf recalled, though none stomped. He wondered whether the tusked or the tuskless seaside populace would sleep first. Beside a tuft of bushes and speckled dirt the dwarf reminisced of the strange sucking and snorting his pigsect had once boldly undertook.

“SURVIVAL SKILL INCREASED TO 15”

Having put together a fire with little else but branch and dry grass, the dwarf after lay in wait afar. Paris caught up on its rest while the dwarf, by now used to seeing through the graveyard shift of the repeating night, watched through foliage with curiosity. Many hours passed (though less than what was wasted before the Beatin’ Bug). Having forced out his anxiety with a wall of complete thoughtlessness, the dwarf nearly did succumb to sleep, and in times of desperation he sought to soothe Paris so as to soothe himself. It was well when he choose one of the many times to place his hand atop Paris’ hind legs, for very early in the morning it began to chitter in response to unknown stimuli, placed into a calm via the dwarf’s movements. Then appeared from darkness a cart and two figures. The dwarf watched them abandon their vehicle and skulk into what black clouds above hid well, and it was some time before the dwarf reestablished sight; a face appeared beneath one sole pine and another hid within reeds of an overlooked pond. And for the next hour the dwarf watched the figures watch a fire burn itself out.

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Pale as the hours were just past midnight, rain never let. What occurred was the eventual abandoning of the ostensibly abandoned campfire, the two figures returning to their cart, exchanging inaudibly, splitting. One took the wood on wheels back in the direction it arrived, and the other crossed into obscured darkness. It agitated the dwarf to choose between leads, but the former impatiently won and on his trail the dwarf followed--from quite a ways, not wanting to cross into the second figure’s view should it linger. Atop the gentle back of Paris, the dwarf began to notice scars and old wounds in the body of the mount. The day in which the dwarf took his pickaxe to glass paid consequences for many parties, Paris included, the dwarf lamented. He thought of the shackled, disgraced Doetrieve. He thought of the lieutenant dead on the log, dead on carpet. He thought of the corpse of Waspig dragged into the desecrated steeple the dwarf knew could not be much further ahead. And, his gaze transfixed to the fast passed fields of flower and green below, he noticed old treadmarks.

After having tracked the figure some ways away from both the elfs and the city--black and gray billowing heap in the distance smaller and smaller--the dwarf rediscovered the gnarled steeple of the plains. This was enough: the dwarf needed go no further, for knowing the journey was all he seeked--this life. Abruptly pulling Paris away from the jutted spears and strung skeletons and back towards the settlement fast took the skulking figure behind them unawares, stumbling backward as Paris seized the bandit. Before the victim could scream, web filled his lungs, and Paris wasted little time in wrapping him up. The dwarf made a move to stop the spider--but what did it matter, he thought, the bandit would be alive next time. Dismounting and gaining physical distance from his own guilt, the dwarf took up a weapon noticed fallen and wielded it awkwardly--the hilt was not made for his dwarfen hands. He tossed it aside and remounted the arachnid commanding it away from its mummified prey, and away he callously rode, little empathy to offer.

As the dwarf could not enter the elf settlement during daylight, he brought Paris over to a familiar shrouded grove and climbed off, nestling himself in a dark, ruddy nook. The dwarf felt filthy. He had not employed a bath this second loop, and the dwarf realized what it cost him. Worse, the feeling of scrubbing oneself clean only to blink and be a mess again frustrated his head. He wanted to squeeze his fists but hadn’t the room. He shut his eyes and forced his thoughts away from the dull aches vibrating throughout his worn frame...

Doetrieve’s taught trick in action, the dwarf gained access to the elf mountain, and within it was passed an empty glass cage and console. Entering the main annex of the cave, the dwarf beheld once more the array of crystalline restraints the elfs’ livestock were subjected to, spiders forced within glass, limbs locked in place. What baffled the dwarf, however, was its barren state. No guards walked walkways, and no lower common elf tended to the animals--though, at the hour of night, perhaps this was not so unbelievable. Regardless, the ease of which the dwarf would be able to destroy the console across the cave was palpable. But the dwarf steadied himself. If he were to amass an army, he would need it one recruit at a time. And although Paris stayed situated at its den within elf walls leaving the dwarf alone to train, he wished for this. The dwarf would see alone what his ‘ANIMAL HUSBANDRY’ could do first...

Doetrieve was right. All the spiders were different, with various personalities that pit the dwarf against new and unique challenges more invigorating than draining. One command console at a time the dwarf took a fist to, taming its contents before moving to the next if the night allowed. And it did not for them all: the dwarf spent many of the same two nights within the abandoned mountain, practicing with each spider to the point of memorizing their personalities and how to win them over. Some spiders indeed wished to have their hind legs stroked; others hated the notion. Some liked pedipalp contact; some had rather not. Some shirked once freed; others immediately attacked, and the dwarf did in fact perish at least once for his efforts, a stray claw casually puncturing his chest and leaving him a gasping, dying heap. But he persevered, and found the most hostile of spiders shrank if Paris was present. His offerings of apples and even mushroom loaves were greatly loved and adored by nearly all but the biggest of them--the eight foot beast which once wrecked a prison and nearly killed Locust. This creature was the last the dwarf sought to train, his apprehension no less no matter how many spiders he won over. But so it was in a single night--the first of the two repeated--the dwarf, with Paris, hit every glass cage. Indeed the dwarf exercised his accumulated wealth of knowledge and took to the entire swath of livestock, and with them on his side, the dwarf faced the biggest arachnid of them all. Upon smashing the console, the great hulking monster cautiously exited and surveyed the army gathered around. With no move struck towards the stout, the spider fell in line--the dwarf approached and gently gave strokings, took to its pedipalps--it threw the dwarf about suddenly, a disc through air. It was Paris that shot web with finesse and reeled the dwarf back with motion against the weight of gravity. Recovered, every beast rallied around him collectively chastising the untamed, unruly giant. And with a lowered head it approached the dwarf for forgiveness.

“ANIMAL HUSBANDRY INCREASED TO 34”

“ANIMAL HUSBANDRY INCREASED TO 35”

“ANIMAL HUSBANDRY INCREASED TO 36”

“ANIMAL HUSBANDRY INCREASED TO 37”...

By the end of that same night, guards at the beachside city of Nasteze rose for their shifts, the city otherwise keeping its gates sealed. As a bridge crossed the moat, soldiers balked at the cart of mummified, breathing bodies before them. Some distance away where mammoths crossed and bandits once hunted, the dwarf and his army of arachnids inhabited a desecrated, desolate chapel, its front yard filled with bones, its roof adorned with more, its inside a terrible mess of haystacks filled with arrows, kegs and barrels of a liquid the dwarf’s nose turned up at, all punctuated with a great throne where an altar surely once stood. Before it, however, just as he had seen only once, the lectern remained. Atop it a book of white pages seeped and wicked with crimson flipped its blank contents before the dwarf. A familiar message displayed much to the satisfaction of he who tired of endlessly traveling the great expanse of the forest.

“WOULD YOU LIKE TO SAVE YOUR PROGRESS?”