The catacombs were nearly silent around me, with only my own heartbeat for company.

I stopped. “So are you just going to watch?”

A chuckling shadow emerged from the wall, resolving into the image of two familiar Hobs. “That perceptive, are you?”

“Call it an educated guess.” More like I always defaulted to assuming someone, or something, was watching. Privacy had been hard to come by in the cramped confines of the warrens back home, and the habit had served me well ever since.

Khavik threw open his arms. “Fare well and safe travels cousin, and curse the fates that we cannot give you the send off you deserve!”

I shuffled awkwardly. Luckily Khavik didn’t seem to take offense, perhaps chalking my reluctance up to the difficulty inherent to hugging a ghost rather than paranoia.

Honestly I wasn’t even sure it was paranoia at this point. Khavik wasn’t likely to betray me now, the thought of physical contact just made me uncomfortable.

Probably the ghost thing.

Kimakt followed up the wide theatrics of his companion with a more personal comradely gesture: he put his hand on my shoulder. I instantly tensed up, but he had enough respect for my boundaries to not actually put his hand on my shoulder. Instead it grasped the air a few inches above as if it was solid. I suppose that was easy for a ghost, solidity became a relative concept once you could walk through walls.

“Watch yourself.” Kimakt leaned in closer. “And watch your back. There are more than beasts in the jungle.”

I narrowed my eyes. “What, some mysterious new threat and you’re only just now telling me?”

Kimakt glanced around meaningfully. “One is not always free to speak as one pleases. It’s probably nothing… probably.”

I nodded slowly. “Right.”

Khavik slapped Kimakt on the back. “Paranoid old man worries too much! You’ll be fine.”

Kimakt winced and withdrew his hand. “Yes, I’m sure.”

I stepped around them, turning to maintain eye contact. “I’ll be careful in any case. Good bye, Khavik, Kimakt.”

The two ghosts clasped their hands and bowed. I returned the gesture.

And just like that, my time with the Deathspeakers was over.

The light was nearly blinding as I stepped out of the darkness and back into the false sunlight of the hollow sun, but I squinted up and bore the burden anyway. I’d be back in the darkness soon anyway and this might well be my last sunlight for some time.

All time if I was particularly unlucky.

But hey, it wasn’t like I was a pessimist or anything.

I jogged back up out of the hollow and reentered the jungle above. The chirps and calls of life was deafening compared to the soft silence of the catacombs and served as an instant reminder that I was back in enemy territory.

“[Beggar’s Disregard].”

Of course, enemy territory was a welcome familiarity compared to helpful ghosts. The beasts of the wilds were dangerous largely to the unwary, and of my many flaws that had yet to become one.

I leapt from the rim of the hollow and continued my ascent. My claws found purchase on bark and I scrabbled my way up vines in order to reach the more open expanse of the upper canopy. My spear did get in the way somewhat, but the combat readiness was worth it, and after a few annoying snags I even figured out how to use the crossguard as I kind of hook to catch on stuff with extra reach.

Inside of a few minutes I was high enough to bring my destination in sight. The titanic pillar-trees that stretched upwards to support the ceiling would provide effortless navigation in less obstructed terrain, but even here in the dense jungle they were the easiest landmarks around. At my current height gaps in the foliage were frequent and every one gave a good enough view of my destination to course correct.

I bobbed up and down through the treetops, never looking through the gaps for more than a second and never traveling in a truly straight line. Each time I confirmed the tree’s position I’d take off at about a ten degree angle to it. The jungle was dangerous, but what waited above was worse.

The wisdom of the Lifefather’s advice was confirmed when a feathery blur crashed through the branches and snatched an unsuspecting blade baboon right out of its troop. The bird spread its wings and lifted off again, visible only by the gap it blew through the greenery as it broke through back to the open sky above, screeching primate struggling futilely in its grasp.

I swallowed from where I had frozen, pressed up against a tree trunk. Yeah. A disproportionate amount of the Lifefather’s warnings had centered on these fuckers, the chameleon-owls. They would circle about, watching from above until they saw a likely target, then plummet through the canopy like a gull plucking fish from water. Even worse, they were apparently smart enough to calculate your trajectory from a brief glimpse, hence my constant zig-zagging.

My own observations only exacerbated their threat. The blade baboon’s writhing had clearly been intended to free itself with its many namesake blades, but the chameleon-owl’s scaled feet hadn’t taken any meaningful damage. Attacking the feet wouldn’t allow anything to free itself, you’d need to be able to reach the body.

I rubbed my fingers over my spear reassuringly. It was enough to understand why the Lifefather’s just stuck to ground level.

I moved back to running with a reinforced respect for the jungle. Death could come at any moment, a fact I’d come to term with long ago, but that the blade baboons seemed to still be kinda pissed about. They were screeching up a storm, didn’t the bastards know that would only draw something else to eat them?

Oh. Oh, they weren’t screeching in fear. They were screeching in rage.

You could tell by the way they were chasing me.

Goddammit.

I picked up the speed, shifting from jog to full sprint. You could never go all out forever, but few times were as appropriate as when you were being chased by a furious horde of screaming primates.

I glanced back at the blade baboons, tragically confirming that they were still chasing me. Unable to get back at the actual perpetrator of the crime, they had shifted to taking out their rage on whatever happened to be closest. The troop flowed across the branches behind me, but they moved with noticeably less alacrity. They made their jumps more hesitantly, and were too lazy or too stupid to even exploit the fifth limb that was their tail.

I was pretty confident in my ability to evade them, which was damn good considering I was certainly not confident in my ability to beat them in a fight. They all bore long curved blades jutting back from their wrists and ankles, and they looked like exactly the sort of bastards who would hurl themselves onto my spear if they thought they could at least take me with them.

I shook my head. Dungeons did weird things to creatures, gave them more aggression than sense at times. It was enough to make a goblin curious, but my mother’s lessons had only ever focused on what she called ‘natural’, so I only had the superstitions of the shamans and Ol’ Gobber to go on.

Wandering thoughts or not, I still kept up my new breakneck pace, content to maintain it until the blade baboons fell off and I left them far behind.

Until I gave it a second thought. I needed to constantly correct course if I wanted to get anywhere, and these damn baboons were somewhat in the way of that. Even with my Stats to back me up I don’t think I could get away with pausing long enough to take a reckoning. Besides, I’d just have to do it again in another ten minutes and the baboons would keep gaining ground.

Gaining trees? Gaining leaves? Not important. How did I get rid of them?

Throw knives? No, I didn’t have the accuracy for a killing shot and anything less would only enrage them further.

Stand my ground? No, suicidal.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Deploy alchemical weapons? No, I wasn’t wasting the good shit on some dumb fucking animals!

Arggh! Everything I’d done and I couldn’t think of something to get rid of a handful of glorified monkeys!?

Wait.

Oh. A smile broke out across my face. Oh, I hadn’t gone through everything I’d accomplished. One little thing had been forgotten, the most recent of my accomplishments.

My eyes darted about the jungle, looking for what I needed to put my plan into action.

No, too dense…

No, too thick…

I began moving upwards, pushing myself higher in search of the perfect place, the screeching of the baboons growing closer with every step until I found it.

A gap in the foliage, the result of a patch of less fertile ground perhaps, crossed by a single lone branch that petered out halfway through. I pushed myself harder for the final stretch, baboons snatching at my heels.

“[Soft Step].” The words came out in a hiss, forceful yet nigh on inaudible, just as it should be. The shaking branch ahead of me stilled as the force from my footsteps was suddenly cut off from reaching it and provided more firm footing.

I gained ground even as the branch thinned beneath me, making each step more precarious than the last. One, two…

Three! At the last possible second I leapt, leaving the branch behind me just as the first of my [Soft Steps] started releasing force. The mounting wave of blade baboons were already past it and the branch bent sharply downwards beneath the combined weight of primates and magical energy as I soared across empty space to reach a fork in the branches on the other side.

I glanced over my shoulder and was rewarded with the sight of backpedaling baboons struggling to regain a foothold on the branch. Heh. Bastards try and catch me. Me!

I turned back to find my landin— Oh, shit!

I turned my spear in the air, widening its profile so it caught on the fork of the tree I was plummeting towards on the other side. I jerked in the air, coming to an abrupt stop with my spear jammed into the fork and supporting me mere feet above death.

The tree fork that I’d chosen as my landing was no benign split in the branches, but a thorn trap. The trunk below hid a substantial hollow, and this hollow was no accident of growth. It was lined with thorns, each gently curved spike facing backwards like the teeth in a beast’s throat, and for much the same reasons.

I’d been warned about these trees. They couldn’t hunt like other predators, but the inside of the fork was lined with tough slippery bark. For any unlucky climber who didn’t have a spear to wedge across the opening the slick branches would funnel them down to their death.

I shivered. Death was always around the corner in the jungle.

But at least that was true for the baboons as well, which did a lot to cheer me up. The frontrunners of the troop had lost their grip and plummeted to the forest floor far below and the rest…

Well, what always happens whenever something pokes its head out too far in this jungle?

They met the exact same fate they were trying to avenge, snatched up by invisible talons. A mere handful survived long enough to reach the shelter of the shade again and none of them looked eager to resume the chase.

I shook my head. Apparently not even the dumbest species could be universally stupid.

I turned away from the bloody end of my pursuers and back to getting my fool ass out of here. I swung back and forth a couple times to build up momentum before swinging high enough to yank my spear out of where it had wedged itself into the wood.

Spear free, I used the extra reach to hook the crossguard on a vine and pull myself free of the thorn trap. Gravity took me and I felt the the heady vertigo of freefall for a split second before slamming into a branch feet first. I bent into the impact, spreading my toes and sinking my claws into the bark.

The branch sank beneath me, doing its part to absorb the force, and as it sprang back to straight I pushed off to regain height. I’d lost a good deal in my race with the baboons, but it didn’t take me long to regain it.

A quick look up to regain my bearings, and I was back on track.

I resumed my travels with a new wariness. I’d hardly been reckless before, but near death has a way of hammering life’s lessons into you. The baboons were no exception. I couldn’t afford to slow my pace, so I ensured my constant awareness my occupying my mind with cataloging the sounds of the jungle. Each time a new shriek or howl reached my ears I’d compare it to the mental checklist of beasties I’d been taught by the Lifefathers.

It served a dual purpose in dodging boredom as well as maintaining vigilance, all the more so because I’d only had time to learn the most threatening creatures. Each grunt and holler conjured new images of gruesome deaths to keep my mind awake.

It was this practice that first let me notice that the jungle was oddly… distant. There were as much cacophony as ever, it just seemed that less of it was near me. At first it comforted. After all that meant nothing was too close.

But as always, that comfort turned to fear. Why was I being avoided? Or more importantly: was it me they were avoiding at all?

It would be bad news on its own that everything around me could pinpoint my position like that, but was it worse if they were all seeing something I wasn’t?

Yes, yes it definitely was. The first only meant something could pierce through all my defenses and attack me. The second meant something was already doing so. As if to add confirmation to my theory that the worst outcome was always the most likely, a quick flick of my ears confirmed that the normal jungle cacophony resumed closer to my front. The center of the silence was behind me.

I picked up the pace. Not quite to the level of my mad dash from the baboons, but far more than normal. Whatever they were, I wasn’t going to make it easy for them. Or it. There was some freaky shit that lived down here.

And I needed some time to figure out what kind of freaky shit it was stalking me now. A writhing mass of tentacles could move quietly or quickly, but never both, which thankfully ruled out the most disturbing options. A more… humble predator was likely. Something more mundane, if still well adapted to stalking prey in the jungle.

No shortage of that here. The question was what could evoke such universal fear in everything around it, and how was it doing so? What had the stealth to hide from me, yet not anything else? Call it pride, but I was loathe to think that I was the blindest creature in the jungle.

More likely it was simply my nature as a foreigner. For all my skill, I was still a stranger here, and didn’t know the warning calls that permanent residents would. Either way didn’t matter. I had a pursurer to shake.

I pushed the pace a bit farther, moving at a steady jog now. I even dipped into my Skills, using [Soft Step] wherever it might help me cross a gap or avoid a detour. All the while my ears flicked in every direction, rapidly switching focus to ensure I kept an up to date image of my pursuers likely location.

And it wasn’t getting any farther away.

It was getting closer.

I glanced backwards, but couldn’t catch more than a tawny glimpse before I had to turn back around. I was hardly sprinting over level ground here. Still it was something. Dense fur, graceful muscles. Some kind of cat probably, and not one that was too much bigger than I was.

Paradoxically, that was not good news. The beast was big by any reasonable standard, but standards here were unreasonable indeed. It was tiny compared to the top predators here, there was no way the jungle would fall silent in fear of something so petty.

Which meant that it packed a serious magical punch. A powerful predator could be tricked or avoided, but a magical one?

The best way to fell a mage is to see he dies before he casts a single spell. Beasts weren’t mages, but the Katturk’s old advice still applied. If I didn’t know what it could do, I’d best not give it the chance to surprise me.

I glanced back and confirmed it’s position before darting around a particularly thick tree trunk. I kept sprinting past the tree before activating [Soft Step] and [Beggar’s Disregard] at full power and turning on a dime. The cat drew close enough for me to hear it’s claws scratching across the bark, but I was already back against the trunk when it rounded the corner, watching it from above.

The cat was a spotted leopard, born to hunt and kill in the treetops, but that didn’t add any eyes in the back of its head. I leapt for the kill, spear falling with every pound of my weight and momentum behind it, only the slightest scrape of toenail on wood to signal my coming.

But the leopard didn’t need eyes in the back of its head to see behind it when there was mouse fart to alert it. Life and death could be decided on the narrowest of margins and the energy for [Soft Step] had run out before I finished kicking off, revealing me.

The leopard responded with, appropriately, catlike reflexes. Twisting in midair, the exposed stretch of neck vanished, replaced with bared fangs and open claws. But I wasn’t another cat, or some tentacled horror for that matter. I was a goblin, and spears didn’t care about your claws.

I thrust down, blade darting just under the leopard’s mouth to land in its throat. It’s teeth and claws closed around the spear in a move that would have insured the death of any beast attacking with it’s own claws, but only achieved a few shallow scratches on the haft of my spear.

Back met bark in a spray of shed fur and the keening wail of the injured cat cut off into a choking gurgle as my weight drove the spear tip deeper. I rode out the impact with one foot planted on the crossguard before leaping backwards off the cat’s stomach and, more importantly, out of range of its claws.

I took a few hopping steps back to absorb my momentum, but as my eyes came up to focus on my opponent they widened in horror.

No!

I lunged forward and just barely managed to catch the back end of my spear before it finished tipping over the edge with the leopard impaled on it. Whew. That was close. I’d just made this thi—

The falling weight wrenched at the spear in my grip. I scrabbled to get my feet back beneath me as the dead weight pulled at me. I gave up on dignity and fell flat on my ass, digging both heels into the bark and slapping one arm against the branch for friction. For one more dreadful moment I felt the bark tear under my claws, and I thought I’d have to let go.

Then weight vanished with a final shlurp of suction. I jolted back, slamming my head into the tree as I struggled to counteract a force that was no longer there.

“Bloody stars.”

I shook my head and rolled over. At least that was over, though I couldn’t say I’d handled it well. Note to self: practice murder skills. They could really use some work.

I pushed myself to my feet. Time to get out of here before the scavengers could start fighting over the carcass. I could already here something flapping about below.

And getting closer. I stepped forward, with slow aching steps that rapidly quickened as the wingbeats didn’t slow down to go for the carcass.

I’d only managed a dozen feet before the bird’s flight reached my level and I was forced to turn around or have an exposed back to a potential threat. I whirled around with spear pointed out to face the threat.

A harpy eagle rose into sight, but I’d barely had the time to assess its size, taller than me and with a wingspan wider than the height of an adult human, before its form was gone. Warped and twisted flesh hung in the air for one fell moment before gravity asserted its dominance. With the crackle of a popped joint or torn ligament a leg sprung forth and slammed into the bark.

With that same sickening crackle bones sprouted and spread wide before meat writhed like tentacles to cover them. For a full second I was exposed to a skinless frame, open veins pulsing with every heartbeat, before skin sprouted across the barren flesh.

The Hob that the flesh had resolved into cracked his neck as if he wanted to look intimidating. To be far it might have worked if it wasn’t followed up with him wincing and clutching at the ugly red scar on his throat.

Wait. I glanced down at the bloody spear in my hand, then back up at the puckered mass of scar tissue just above the hollow of his neck. Wasn’t that familiar?

The Hob glared at me like I’d personally offended him. “You little—”

I backed up carefully, shuffling each foot slowly to ensure I didn’t slip off the edge. How in all the hells did you evade a shapeshifter? “Do I know you?”

“Arrrrrggghhhhhh!” Muscles surged in the Hob’s neck as he clenched his jaw and screamed into his teeth. The puckered scar at the base of his throat faded to barely a shade brighter than the surrounding skin before smoothing out as if one were folding out the creases in a sheet. Soon the scar wasn’t visible at all.

I braced myself, finding a more secure stance so that if he rushed me I wouldn’t lose my balance and his fury would earn him nothing but a spear planted deeper in his chest, but the expected attack was not forthcoming. Instead the Hob took several more breaths, each slower and deeper than the last.

The two of us stood there for a few moments, simply staring each other down. I took the chance to glance over his gear while he was busy glaring. Surprisingly enough he did have some, all of it looking like it’d been carved from some animal or another. He had the same simple loincloth as the Lifefather tribesmen tended towards, but the great cat pelt across his back would have been the envy of any of them and his neck was festooned with as many pouches and talismans as any shaman.

“Well,” The Hob spat out, “At least I was wrong to worry that you might be too weak.”

“You were following me.” It wasn’t really a question, but that didn’t mean I was looking for an answer.

The Hob snorted, the behavior oddly reminiscent of a chuffing lion. Or maybe it wasn’t really all that odd. “Yes. Perhaps I should have let you leave ignorant rather than trouble myself to help you.”

Nice try, but I wasn’t about to accept such empty platitudes as a motivation. “Oh, and what grand wisdom of the ages does this cat have to offer me?”

The Hob narrowed his eyes. “You would be wise to heed more than one source. Wisdom springs from many places, and no Hob can claim to have it all.”

I cut off a hasty retort, but that didn’t mean I was about to let his claims go unchallenged. “And what source have you drunk from? I’ve already been to two of the three tribes, and I don’t take you for a Rockbrother who’s spent his life mining in a hole. What are you really following me for?”

My eyes centered on his chest, knowing that was the best place to catch any hint of movement across his body. [Rag Armor] was at the tip of my tongue, claws weren’t known for their penetration, so when he closed the distance to attack I’d have enough time to respond. The spear had failed me, he healed too damn fast. I needed precision, so I’d let him close to melee and then take a dagger to his brain—

But the Hob merely smiled. “I see no one’s told you about the fourth tribe.”