Following Keldryn on his trek through the tundra was an eye-opening experience for Mikayla.

Keldryn was fast, and agile too. He scrambled up trees and cliffs at the slightest provocation with his binoculars in hand, and bounced across uneven terrain with such agility that Mikayla half suspected him of being more rabbit than fox.

By contrast, Mikayla struggled to keep up. The bushes and weeds clawed at her, and only her burgeoning Local Map kept her going in a straight line.

The Local Map had been a revelation all its own. The second night they made camp, it occurred to her to ask, “How are you navigating? You seem to know this place like the back of your hand, and I’ve never seen you look at a map or anything?”

Keldryn had given her what she was coming to recognise as his ‘are-you-ignorant-or-just-stupid?’ look. “Have you not used your Local Map at all?”

“My what?”

“Tell your System to pull up your Local Map,”

“Local Map, please?” Mikayla tried.

A blue pane appeared in her view, charting a series of squiggly lines that were focused around what she recognised as Astralia’s Spear. Then she noticed the pit that she’d escaped from upon being Stranded in this world, and a location marker indicating her current position, and deduced that it was a record of everywhere she’d been since entering this world.

The immediate area around her was slightly brighter than the rest of the map. She focused, and the Local Map reacted to her desires, zooming in, and suddenly she could pick out the branches swaying in the wind on the map. Panning down showed that the dimmer parts of the map were static.

“Oh this is very cool. It charts everywhere I’ve been?”

“Yeah, but it won’t keep itself up to date. Here, look at mine,” With a wave of his hand, Keldryn flicked his Local Map over to Mikayla.

The ranger’s Map was a series of squiggly, erratic lines that crisscrossed the tundra and linked four settlements, as well as Astralia’s Spear. Conveniently, they were labelled; [CLIFFWATCH], [TOPWATER], [ROOTWAY], and [RUINS OF FARMSHADOW].

She guessed that Farmshadow had been Keldryn’s home, destroyed by the Cityvore, and decided not to press it. More importantly. “You can share your System screens? How?”

“Just try to let someone else see your screen,”

Mikayla experimentally tried to throw her Local Map at Keldryn, and it shrunk into a tiny blue cube and flew away. Keldryn’s eyes unfocused for a second, then he waved his hand to dismiss it. “Yep, see? Wasn’t so hard,”

“ I didn’t say it was, I just didn’t know it was possible,” she huffed.

It was now their third day of travelling together, and her first clue that something was wrong was when Keldryn hesitated.

“What’s -“ Mikayla started, only to freeze when Keldryn pressed a finger to her lips with the speed and furore of a whip-crack.

“Do you feel that? In the ground?”

Mikayla looked down.

Naturally, she couldn’t see anything, but she could sense it. When she stopped and really focused, there were faint tremors shaking the earth.

“What is that?”

“Whisper!” Keldryn quietly commanded. “Burrowing Kaijus. There must be a nest nearby, which means this area is a Burrow Zone. Probably insects. But if we’re unlucky, it might be a Mole,” A shudder ran down his tail. “Or, worse, Ants,”

Mikayla blinked, trying to picture a Mole Kaiju. With its giant mouth full of fangs and massive claws erupting from the ground beneath her feet, swallowing her whole . . “Okay, I’m sure I’m going to have nightmares about that,” She lowered her voice. “What do we do?”

“This would be the part where we go into the trees. But you’re not trained to parkour between branches,” Keldryn’s brow furrowed.

“I mean. I could try,” Mikayla winced, but the ranger was already shaking his head.

“One bad fall and the thump will attract every earthworm for miles. Too risky,”

“Can’t we just go around their territory?”

“We’re already in the Burrow Zone, and I have no way of knowing where it ends. Every direction is equally dangerous now, so we might as well forge onwards,” Keldryn rubbed his chin, thinking.

“Burrowing Kaijus would hunt by listening out for footfalls, right?” Mikayla thought, trying not to cast nervous glances at the scraggly grass underfoot. “Maybe if we did something to muffle my footsteps?”

“Better than nothing. Oh! I know,” Keldryn dug into his backpack and pulled out two of the spare coats they’d taken from Astralia’s wardrobe. “We can tie these around your feet. Inside out. It’ll probably wreck the silk lining, but the extra cushioning might save our lives,”

“I can live with that,” Mikayla nodded, offering first one foot and then the other for Keldryn to tie coats around.

“Okay, now walk gently. Don’t step on any branches or roots, stick to grass and soil. I’m going into the trees, I’ll be keeping watch from above. Don’t talk unless you have to. Be stealthy but fast and hopefully we’ll get out of the Burrow Zone sooner than later,”

“Roger,”

Every footstep was torture. Mikayla focused on controlling her motions, making every step gentle, like she was trying not to wake a baby. They progressed in this way for hours, Keldryn watching from above and periodically dropping to the ground to check for vibrations.

The telltale tremors came and went, but never fully abated.

Eventually, the sun was going down with no change in their situation. Keldryn hung from a tree branch like a monkey bar, careful not to let his feet touch the ground, and Mikayla peered up at him.

“I can’t believe how big this Burrow Zone is. I was so sure we’d have left it behind after a whole day of walking,” Keldryn sighed.

“What do we do? Keep travelling through the night?” Mikayla suggested.

“I’d rather not, jumping through the trees is exhausting,” Keldryn groaned, his face falling and ears drooping low.

Mikayla looked up, wondering if they could sleep in a tree. But that wasn’t practical. It was a wonder that these birch trees could even support Keldryn’s weight.

“Maybe Nocturnus will have some ideas,” she mused. “Mana Assist - wait,” Instead of cheating it, she took a deep breath and focused, gently and precisely letting her Mana flow into the Lapis Core.

Slowly, carefully, she manifested the black-and-red armour around herself. “Nocty? How you doing?”

“I feel rather tingly. Nonetheless, this is excellent progress!”

They quickly filled him in, not wanting to waste Mikayla’s Mana.

“So, this burrowing creature has been following us all day but refusing to close the distance?” Nocturnus summarised.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

“What makes you so sure it’s been the same creature this whole time?” Keldryn challenged.

“Burrowers are almost always territorial, but there is a particularly dangerous type of creature that plagued us during the evacuation of Balmwind, a tunnelling roamer that will follow its prey to the ends of the earth. If you’ve travelled that far and still haven’t left its territory, it sounds to me like we’re dealing with this old friend of mine,”

“What is it?”

“It is known as a Mudburrow Marten,” Nocturnus explained. “It is an ambush predator that tracks its prey by following them underground, waiting for them to go to sleep, and then it strikes. The worst part is that it’s a coward. If it fails to kill its target, it retreats and goes back into hiding, waiting until you let down your guard again,”

Keldryn grimaced, considering this. “How troublesome,”

“You fought it before, though? How did you kill it last time?”

“It wasn’t easy,” A wistful note crept into the ghost’s voice.

“It started stalking us not long after we’d evacuated Balmwind. This was before anyone was even thinking about ‘the Five Heroes’, by the way. It was me and my most loyal knights, our Chancellor, and Astralia and her cohort of mages, trying to safeguard thousands of poor souls as we shepherded them south in search of a safe haven,”

“Every night, a campsite would be destroyed, a family slaughtered. A silent predator, perhaps a flier, we thought, one that struck in the dead of night and escaped before anyone even saw it. We strengthened our perimeter, posted lookouts. Nothing worked until, by sheer chance, a messenger caught it in the act. His speed Techniques let him get away in time and told us that we were all wrong. The beast was coming from below,”

“We had to set an ambush, of course, but how? There were thousands of people for it to choose as meals. A mountain was our salvation, of all things; we gathered everyone at the peak of the slope, high up enough that they would be safe, except for a brave few who volunteered to be bait. The Marten wasn’t smart enough not to go for the easy prey. Once it appeared, we skewered it with spears and prevented it from retreating underground. It was a good fight, all the more so because it meant no more innocents would be snapped up as the thing’s supper,”

“. . huh,” Keldryn considered.

“Why are you giving me that surprised expression?” Nocturnus demanded, indignation creeping into his tone.

“I just . . didn’t expect all that from the Black Traitor,” Keldryn reluctantly admitted.

“Everyone’s the hero of their own story, boy,” Nocturnus gruffly pointed out. “I certainly did my best. Even if I did fail at the end,”

“Good bedtime story, but we’re only two people. How do we deal with it?” Mikayla questioned.

“The same way, of course! Setting a trap!”

<=====}—o

Mikayla and Keldryn looked at their handiwork, erected under Nocturnus’ instruction. They had used their blades to chop down several trees and arrange the fallen logs in a crude circle, creating an impromptu killing zone. Branches had been shorn away from the tops of the trees to let Mikayla walk atop them, while Keldryn got settled in the middle.

He’d insisted on being the bait because he had better agility and was more likely to escape when the marten came knocking, denying any allegations of chivalry. Nocturnus had agreed, saying that Mikayla was better suited to spring the trap anyway.

So Mikayla waited in the most comfortable spot she could find, watching Keldryn as he pretended to sleep. It was obvious to her that he was merely faking - he hadn’t laid out his bedroll or taken off his outer layers, and was merely laying on the ground and pretending to snore. But hopefully that was enough to fool the Mudburrow Marten.

Half an hour passed without incident, and Mikayla had to pinch herself to stay awake. Despite how uncomfortable the trees were, after a long day of walking, constantly on edge for threats from below, her fatigue ran bone-deep.

Then it happened.

The ground shook, beginning to distort, and puddles of murky liquid seeped up through the soil. Keldryn tensed, leaping to his feet. Skyward Grasscutter’s digitigrade legs sprung into existence around his own, its armoured skirt wrapping around his thighs and tail.

He launched himself into the air a second before the ground fell away into the jaws of a man-eating weasel.

Mikayla hadn’t been quite sure what to picture when hearing the name ‘Mudburrow Marten’; she’d imagined something like an otter that dove through mud to dig its home. But once again, she’d underestimated the Kaiju Coast’s nomenclature.

Its fur was made of mud. It resembled a giant, elongated brown bubble that dripped with slime and ended in a sharp pair of teeth. A single eye blinked at her, with tiny, stunted front limbs that reminded her of a T. Rex’s arms clawing at the air.

True to Nocturnus’ warning, the Marten shrieked in distress when it saw Mikayla, who was already manifesting her armour and sword, preparing to strike. But it had overcommitted, and Nocturnus’ strategy worked perfectly.

Using her sword as a substitute for a spear, she thrust it forwards and let it grow in her hands, impaling the Marten against the far side of their wooden kill zone.

Keldryn bounced off a felled tree and flew back towards its face, his wrist blades extended. His aim was perfect, he was flying right towards the Marten’s throat.

Unfortunately, the Marten had tricks of its own. It twisted its neck at an angle Mikayla would have thought impossible, and a muscular tentacle of flesh covered in small barbs erupted from its mouth.

For a moment, Mikayla was just stunned by the mere existence of a horned tongue.

Keldryn was already too close and couldn’t change direction in mid air, and even if she hadn’t frozen up there was nothing she could do to save him. The freakishly powerful tongue slapped him out of mid-air and sent him flying into the distance, away from the kill zone.

Despite the bloody wound on its chest, the Marten chittered triumphantly.

Mikayla cursed, forcing her leaden limbs to respond. Still gripping the sword and leveraging it, she barked, “Mana Assistance! Black Knight! Size five!” The Black Knight swelled around her, and she hooked the Marten’s jaw with the tip of her sword, hoisting it into the air.

“Yes! Good! Keep it in the air! Don’t let it get back underground!” Nocturnus’ warnings bore fruit, and Mikayla followed suit, leering at the ugly weasel. With its mud dripping away from it, it really did look like an ugly, slimy, rat.

Her aversion to animal cruelty was nowhere to be found. This monster had hurt her friend.

“Okay, you little bastard, let’s see how you handle fall damage!” She gripped the hilt with both hands and, leveraging all her Strength, flicked the Marten into the air. It screamed as it went flying.

Letting it go, Mikayla abandoned the kill zone and shrunk back down. “Oh crap, oh crap, Keldie don’t die!” She scrambled over to him, inspecting the bloody wound in his chest. She wished she had some kind of Identification Technique or something similar, anything of the sort that would let her check his Health.

“Give him a potion!” Nocturnus reminded her.

“Right!” She fumbled with the vials strapped to her wrist, pulled a Health potion out and prayed that the two-hundred-year-old liquid had been preserved well enough. She held his mouth open and tipped it in.

“. . Wait. Isn’t there a chance he’ll choke on it? Keldie!” Mikayla, realising she might have screwed up, shook him. “Swallow! You have to wake up and swallow!”

An upsetting gargle came from the foxkin’s throat, and Mikayla frantically tried to remember how to do CPR. Unfortunately, she had never learned how to do CPR.

Keldryn stirred with a moan that turned into a cough, hocking up globules of potion. He choked it down with an audible gulp, blinking and struggling to focus on his travelling companion. “What was that . .”

He gasped as vital energy suddenly and visibly flooded his body, sending a faint glow across his skin. Before their eyes, the wound knitted back together, reabsorbing the blood and sealing itself up. Within moments, there wasn’t even a scar left.

“. . Health potion?” he managed to guess, still looking a bit queasy.

“You looked like you were about to die. I panicked,” Mikayla apologetically explained. “You almost choked. I’m sorry,”

“Doesn’t matter. My Health’s at max and the Bleeding status is gone too . .” He sat up with a groan, then squeaked.

“What’s wrong?!” The panic came rushing back.

“. . I sat on my tail . .” he mumbled with a definite hint of embarrassment, adjusting his position and settling properly into a cross-legged stance. His fluffy orange tail curled around into his lap and he gingerly stroked it. “Hah. There goes my full Health. 1699 out of 1700 for sitting on my own tail,”

Mikayla couldn’t help the guffaw that bubbled up from her throat, fuelled by the nervous energy that hadn’t yet abated. Nocturnus didn’t bother, laughing out loud. Even Keldryn chuckled self-deprecatingly.

Once they’d all gotten that out of their system, Keldryn flicked his wrist and Bluebell popped out. The bright blue goat settled down and he leant against her flank, gesturing for Mikayla to join him.

With Bluebell serving as their impromptu couch, Keldryn heaved out a long, slow breath. “Thank you. I . . I would have died today, if you hadn’t . .”

“Aw,” Mikayla promptly pulled him into a one-armed hug. “Any time, Keldie. What’re friends for?”

There was a sudden rush of wind, and they both looked up.

“Oh, stars,” Keldryn breathed.

The Giant Roc was swooping overhead. In its beak it carried the Mudburrow Marten, which was struggling. By some miracle, there was enough cover where Keldryn had fallen that it didn’t see them, and they both scrambled to put the tree trunk between themselves and the massive bird.

“Is that the same Roc from Astralia’s Spear?” Mikayla hissed.

“Can’t be. We’re outside its territory. It’s probably just a coincidence, or maybe a relative,” Keldryn denied in a whisper.

A crack ran through the air as the Roc snapped the Marten’s neck, and a notification appeared in Mikayla’s vision.

[YOU HAVE EARNED XP POINTS FOR KILLING A MUDBURROW MARTEN! EXPERIENCE IS REDUCED DUE TO THIRD-PARTY INTERVENTION!]

They stayed still until the Roc was gone, and barely dared to breathe for ten minutes after that.

“Okay. I think we’re safe,” Keldryn finally asserted. “Now let’s finally get some rest,”