I woke up slowly, softly, dimly transitioning from unconsciousness to wakefulness. A good sign, far better than the sudden surge of adrenaline that came from being kicked awake. A part of me wanted to just lay there and drift away again, but the insistent urging of a full bladder finally managed to force me to push aside my cloak blanket.

I winced at the cheerily bright canopy, with its colorful leaves and flowers. Note to self, crack the cloak instead of throwing it off, this place had neither dawn nor twilight, just an eternal day that was always ready to jam needles in my sensitive eyes.

I cast a glance in either direction, but I could no more see any threat than I had been able to hear one from beneath my blanket. I stood and walked off a handful of paces to relieve myself. My current garb of layered rags made the simple process of disrobing a bit of a pain, but I got what I needed to do done and got back to my stuff.

I sat back down and threw the blanket back over my head. Trusting the cloak to both contain smells and muffle sounds, I opened up the food pouch and dug in. There wasn’t much to the simple traveler’s fare I’d stolen from Garrett, but there was a reason jerky and hard tack were the staples they were. A hungry belly needed filling food, and for all their flaws the food filled my stomach, and tasted a hell of a lot better than grubs and tree bark on its way down.

I indulged myself in a lengthy breakfast, taking the time to careful pick out each and every stray crumb afterwards. All that eating parched my throat, and I dug out a waterskin to quench it. Half a second after the sweet, sweet nectar of life passed my lips I paused. Half a second after that I squirted the water back into the waterskin.

I took a sip, a small sip, and then held the waterskin at arm’s length, collapsing my blanket tent in the process. How much water did I really have? I hefted the skin in my hand, feeling its weight. I’d say it was a good enough amount for a day hike, but not much more. Was this all Garrett had?

A quick search through his bags confirmed that yes, this was in fact all he had. Goddammit Garrett! You overconfident asshole, why couldn’t you have your bags packed by someone more competent!?

Ugh. I’d need to be constantly alert for refill spots like this. I mean, I shouldn’t really whine too much, one was better than none.

I packed up the blanket and jammed it inside the appropriate extradimensional pouch. I had ground to cover, and it wasn’t covering itself. Once I had everything squared away I plucked one of the little leaves I had stuck all over me and sniffed it. Yeah, it was definitely a bit dried out. Just a hint of browning around the edges, not enough to be actively counterproductive as camouflage, but enough that I should be looking to cycle out the old leaves.

I tossed it away, then, struck by the image of leaving a clear trail of dried out leaves, had a better idea. I snatched a second leaf and tossed it down, chewing experimentally. A bit dry, but that was to be expected. Didn’t taste any worse than the vegetables I’d occasionally nicked from a human garden really. What it did taste was a hell of a lot stronger and that was kinda unappetizing.

Hardly something that had deterred me in the past, but between that and how it dried out my mouth to chew and swallow I figured the dead leaves were more of a liability as a food source. I could just throw them away, nothing was going to track me by dead leaves in a jungle full of them. The ever looming shade of paranoia was right more often than not, but that didn’t mean I could afford to take its words at face value.

Living leaves though… I eyed the nearest leaves. Not only were they were stiff and barbed at the ends, they were covered in fine hairs like a stinging nettle’s. A shame. Goblin skin was resistant to that kind of thing as a matter of course, and my Stats had rendered me all but immune, but that didn’t mean I would feel comfortable inviting it inside my body anytime soon.

I might try out chewing on some fresh leaves if I saw any more palatable ones though. They might just have enough moisture to solve my water problem. If they didn’t, I would have to waste a lot of time hunting out fresh water and I didn’t want to stick around here one second longer than necessary. The idea of invisible raptors swooping down from a clear sky still sent a shiver down my spine, and I didn’t doubt they were far from the only supernatural predator down here.

I kept moving for the rest of this day and the next, at least as far as I counted such things in this eternal day. I was beginning to wonder when the hell I was going to finally reach that damn tree when, on the third day, a faint roaring became discernable over the background noise of the jungle.

Well that wasn’t ominous at all. It was more of a waterfall roar than a giant monster roar, but it had a strange omnipresent quality that I didn’t like. It gave the image of some massive monster, with jaws stretching miles on every side closing its teeth around me.

I shivered.

I stripped the sling from my right arm and rolled my shoulder. A few twinges, but nothing too serious. I wouldn’t call it fully recovered, but the healing was far enough along that the sling was probably overkill. I began scaling a tree, taking care not to put too much weight on my right arm. Even then, it was still nice to be able to move the thing. Wearing a sling had me feeling cramped inside my own skin for the last few days.

I began at a deliberate pace, but as I became conscious of the jungle stirring around me I quickly began to accelerate. The background noise was growing louder, well above the inevitable results of cramming so much life together. I could hear a dozen different birds screeching alarm calls on top of the rustling leaves and shaking branches from monkeys leapt through the branches.

That immediately put a new urgency to my actions. I went from carefully selecting each foot and hand hold to leaping through the branches with the same reckless abandon the monkeys displayed.

A few minutes ago the mental image of mile wide jaws closing around me had been nothing more than deliberate hyperbole, designed to make whatever horror reality met me with less overwhelming. Now I could only desperately hope it wasn’t all too literal.

Flitting shadows brushed against the edges of my vision, but none so much as took notice of me. I paused long enough to make out the truth behind the shadows and saw the predators of the jungle on the move. Jaguars, bundles of toothy tentacles, even a few birds of prey, all running with the same desperate energy as the monkeys they would be happily eating on any other day.

I glanced in the direction of their flight. Safety, or what the beasts of the jungle seemed to think of it. And in the other direction… a faint roar, like the raging rapids of an untamed river. I hesitated, but in the end there was only ever one thing I was going to do. My paranoia was a constant companion, always at the back of my mind, but if there was anything that consistently overwhelmed it it was my curiosity.

I continued my scramble upwards. Just a quick look, a handful of seconds at the treetops, then I’d be gone. Not long enough to spell my doom, right?

Right.

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The foliage began to thin out around me, but not quite enough to see out over the treetops. I kept moving, even as I felt the trunk beginning to bend beneath my weight, finally reaching the height where I could gaze down at the majesty of the jungle.

A riot of green spread out before me, stretching out to meet its end in a blazing wall of orange and red. The flames towered above the trees, twisting in the open air and spawning swirling vortexes off their edges. Down in the forest proper I could see straight down to the ground, the trees already stripped of their greenery. Even as I watched I heard the thundercrack of a mighty trunk rupturing from the heat and exploding into splintery shrapnel.

Ah, fuck.

I turned and dropped, plummeting to the next branch thirty feet down. I stretched out all three good limbs to absorb the impact but even so the force drove me down far enough to slam my face into the wood.

The branch cracked and bent beneath me, absorbing some of the force, and I leapt from it before it could finish tearing itself free from the trunk. I caught a thinner branch in midair, but the thinner green wood bent beneath my weight, slowing without stopping me.

Perfect. I twisted around the bending branch, redirecting my flight to land me on a sturdy looking branch near its base. I rolled as I hit, dodged around the trunk, and kept running. I didn’t stop, couldn’t stop, not before the force of nature that was the firestorm behind me.

I hurled myself forwards, falling further downward and using that momentum to drive myself faster. I moved faster than I ever had, keeping even with the breakneck pace of the fleeing wildlife, at least until I hit the ground.

I rolled to absorb the impact, the hard ground of gnarled roots leaving bruises across my back. I pushed off as I regained my feet, striving to wring some extra speed from my fall, but there was only so long it could last. Without the ability to steal gravity’s strength I was inevitably moving slower than before.

I sprinted through the dense jungle undergrowth far faster than would be even remotely sensible in any other circumstance. I could try to duck and weave all I wanted, but in the end I just couldn’t dodge every obstacle. I was plowing headfirst through as many obstacles as I was dodging and I could hear the roaring flames growing closer with each passing minute.

Worse, flames didn’t get tired. Goblins did. I wasn’t some human, with their stupid long legs and ability to lope along for miles. Admittedly, a lanky-ass human would be plowing face first into ten times as many vines and branches as me, so they’d be just as fucked. Garrett would be just as dead here as me.

Well, Garrett would probably try to fight the fire, but even a sensible human (I had it on good authority that they existed) would be dead. I chuckled at my own joke, then immediately cussed myself out for wasting breath. Then I cussed myself out for wasting breath on swearing, and that was just counterproductive.

I shook my head and broke out from the recursive loop. I was going on weird tangents, and I knew what that meant. Bad air. Mom had had plenty of fancy words for it, but for all her knowledge she was just explaining something every goblin was taught from the cradle.

The goblin teaching methods involved more beatings than Mom’s, but they did work. They had too, there was only so much air to go around in the caverns, so we couldn’t afford to let every goblin light a fire and corrupt what little breathable air we had. That was why only Hobs got candles while the rest of us bumbled around in the dark.

I tried to run faster, but it wasn’t like I’d been slacking off before. The fire still grew closer, and the smell of smoke was overwhelming. I pulled up a rag over my mouth and nose, but that was just a stop gap measure. Cloth could block out smoke, but it couldn’t add back oksy-whatever that was already gone.

My ears pricked up as a new sound reached them. The fire wasn’t the only thing growing closer, hoofbeats were beating the earth behind me. A bit of a late comer compared to the faster animals, but that wasn’t surprising. Even a creature powerful enough to shake the earth with its steps wasn’t immune to the predation of fire and smoke.

Wildfires were frightfully common on the surface, where they could burn freely without fear of choking themselves on their own bad air. Thanks to that particular horror I’d seen a handful before, and knew to fear no beast. To put it lightly, no predator gave a shit about eating you when it was on fire.

So whatever was behind me was no danger to me.

On purpose. Trampling me in its flight on the other hand…

“Fucking demon balls.” I swerved to the side, putting myself a handful of feet to the right of the beast’s path. It didn’t make all that much difference, but my ever helpful supernatural senses let me feel the heat of the blazing flames grow hotter against my back as I lost ground in my race against death.

The stupid fucking animal barreled past me, annihilating any undergrowth that dared bar its passage with brute force. It was some kind of boar or warthog, taller than a human at the shoulder and with the mass of three or four horses. That might actually be a low estimate, given the ease with which it leveled the ground in front of it.

Finally, my luck was looking up. I swerved back over to run in the boar’s trail, making far better time on the cleared ground. If the beast wanted to make an easy path through this jungle, fat be it from me to pass up the opportunity.

Hell, with new advantage I might even live! That’d be nice. I mean, I did have to stare at the surging muscles of his furry boar ass and I damn well hope that wasn’t the last thing I saw, so I’d fucking better get out of this alive.

That hope was crushed when the boar began to slow. What the fuck you dumb animal!? We were all about to die! If you were just going to stop trying why the hell did you bother catching up to me in the first place?

That was just rude. I couldn’t afford to slow down again, so I just kept moving. If the beast was too tired to run it would be too tired to take a swing at me, so I wouldn’t have to bother giving it a wide berth, I’d just run straight past it.

The boar inhaled deeply and the entire jungle bent towards its nostrils. The force of its breath was tremendous and I immediately began to rethink any plan that involved going anywhere near it. Anything that size was strong, but to have that level of supernatural strength… not only could it reduce me to paste without half trying, I’m not sure it would even notice.

It snorted with the same incredible force, shaking even its massive bulk with the recoil. Red hot flames blasted out of its snout, jetting forth and leaning a trail of blazing foliage in its wake.

I leaned backwards so hard I almost fell over in my haste to stop, skidding painfully across the forest floor.

The boar eyed its work and snorted in disapproval. Exhaling again, it held the breath as it swung its head back and forth, spraying fire across the forest in front of it in a wide cone. The boar huffed proudly as it examined its work, then raised its head and squealed in triumph. Dimly, I could hear the high-pitched tones of answering squeals cutting through the roaring flames.

This boar… it was all its fault! My hand tightened around the grip of a knife, ready to drive it down through gristle and bone, but I forced myself back from thoughts of reducing the stupid pig to bacon. I could still survive this, fire ahead of me or not. The fire ahead was young, only just beginning to catch and nowhere near the intense heat of the furnace behind me. I could survive it, for a time.

I released my knife and began to sprint off at a diagonal. No way was I going near that damn pyromaniac boar.

Of course, I wasn’t the only one getting going again. The boar had resumed its flight as well, barrelling through the fire it had created without a care in the world. I hesitated, then zig-zagged back towards the boar’s trail, swearing. Dangerous as the beast might be, I couldn’t afford to pass up on the advantage it's cleared trail offered.

My bare feet pounded on the fallen cinders as I sprinted after the boar, but my feet didn’t stick around long enough to burn and I ignored the pain. Pain was just motivation, and stars knew I needed it right now. My exhaustion was a constant shadow at the back of my mind, not yet powerful enough to overwhelm my adrenaline, but it would be eventually.

It didn’t help that I had nothing to run towards. This whole damn place was made out of wood, would the fire ever end or would it just burn forever? I could only outrun a wildfire for so long before my legs gave out, and the knowledge that there might be no safety to run to wore away at my will to move on.

The boar skidded to a stop ahead of me and blasted out its infernal fire breath again before bounding ahead again. The damn beast seemed intent on spreading the flames. Why, I had no idea. What a boar had to gain from burning its habitat to the ground was beyond me.

Except it wouldn’t burn to the ground, would it? Any environment full of fire-spewing bastards couldn’t be that flammable, could it? I glanced behind me, but it looked pretty combustible back there, given the fact that it was currently on fire and all.

There was no telling when the flames would die down, but I was getting a better and better idea of when I would die, and I wasn’t finding the knowledge particularly encouraging. I needed to move far faster, fast enough to stay ahead of the spreading flames the way boar was doing.

Damn bastard, evading the consequences of his own actions like th—

Of course!

I accelerated, pumping every last ounce of strength I possessed into moving faster. My already panicked flight doubled, then tripled in speed as I cast aside any notions of endurance or sustainability to wring even a tiny fraction of additional speed from my body.

What better way to escape the flames than hitch a ride on something already doing so?

I darted over the scorched ground, even my renewed speed only fast enough to claw me closer by inches. The boar was fast, faster than me, but it wasn’t half trying. I was, and I was inching closer by the second. My pounding feet ached and the burning air seared my lungs as I gasped for breath, but I was getting closer.

By inches. The boar had been outrunning me for a while by now, so catching up was no simple task. In fact, with its current speed it could keep running well after I’d collapsed from oxygen deprivation, but I knew it wouldn’t keep up this pace for much longer.

I suspected it could, if it wanted to, bu— There! The boar slowed as it began to inhale in preparation for its fiery breath and suddenly I was rocketing forward compared to its stationary bulk. I leapt over a falling tree and planted my foot on it, driving myself higher as I jumped off it in midair. I kicked off the side of another tree, digging my claws into the bark to redirect my fall and plummeting down to land dead center on the boar’s back.