Hey. Today was an adventure or two. 

First of all, fat-furs have terrible taste in food. I woke up hungry, and as such devoured the berries I had prepared for just such occasion. Lots of seeds, and more sour and bitter than I'd have liked. But at least it was filling. Filling that I immensely regretted when I bit directly into the head of my first river thing of the day. Directly after pulling it from the river.

My mouth was filled with nasty ucky blechy gunky juice, and my entire being rejected it with all its might. Which is when those breakfast berries made their reappearance. They tasted worse the second time.

Once I was done puking my guts dry, I washed my mouth out as thoroughly as possible. Then burnt the river thing to a cinder in revenge. I was surprised to actually find it smelled much better after being burnt, but sadly was unable to salvage any food from it. Not that I would have been willing to try even another nibble of the foul thing.

I have no doubt that good smell was a trap. Deviously designed to lure hapless predators into eating of its horrid flesh. Well it didn't fool me! 

With river thing now firmly off my menu I moved on to the small wrigglies. I was hesitant to try them, no longer trusting fat-furs as food guides. But I was starving, so I tore into a rotted log, and scooped up a double handful of wriggling white things from inside of it.

I washed the wood junk and dirt off of them in the river. Then suspended one over my mouth. A few moments hesitation was ended when my stomach rumbled. I was too hungry to just let another meal wriggle away! So I dropped the first wriggler into my mouth.

They weren't bad. Not a lot of flavor, but they had a good chew to them, and they burst in a fun fashion.

So I feasted of the lot of them, washing them down with more berries. And finally, I was fed and ready for the road. 

Which is where I met the ravagers. Roughly my height, but much broader and heavier. Shiny black chitin plates cover their whole body and they have two legs, six arms, and razor sharp mandibles right at face biting level.

Their legs are short and stout and their arms come in two distinct varieties, the top two are long and tipped with long blunt claws. Which they appear to use for moving about in a sort of shuffling leap while balanced on what I guess would be their knuckles. The other four arms are much shorter and are cradled against their chest. They are tipped with incredibly sharp looking trios of grasping claws which I can declare with certainty are used for ripping and tearing.

The shorter arms are just long enough to reach their mouth bits, which as near as I could tell looked like they could chew through a tree. They use the little arms to rip off bits of their prey, and feed them to the clacking horror show that is their face.

I was just wandering about, having a small bit of adventure when I stumbled into five of these terrors steadily disassembling a branch-brain. I froze, and watched in dumbstruck silence as half of that poor creatures flesh was cleanly removed from the bone and eaten. Deciding I wanted exactly nothing to do with this situation I backed away slowly.

And stepped on an extremely loud twig.

*Crack!*

I looked down in incredulous amazement. Never before had I heard so small a twig make so loud a sound. Which is when I heard it. Silence, the sound of the ravagers tearing apart the branch-brain had ceased. I looked up, certain of hat I would see, and dreading it.

Sure enough, all five ravagers had turned their weird glassy bulging eyes and stubby hairy antenna towards me. So I did what any intelligent, resourceful, handsome person would have done.

I ran for my life.

I could hear them behind me, the thumps of their knuckles and feet against the ground. The excited scrabble of their claws against their armored chests. The clacking and soft chittering of their mandibles. Eerily quiet for such large critters.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

I refused to look back, focusing only on what lay ahead, and how to get through it as fast as possible. But I could hear them closing in. 

My options were dreadfully limited. I wasn't going to be able to shake them, not if I kept on as I was. And I had zero confidence of taking them in a fight. A dozen little green men less than half my height and weight? Sure, I could maybe handle that. Five brutes larger than me, with thirty arms between them to my two? Extremely unlikely I would survive.

So I needed to add something into this equation. Try and dismantle their advantage, or at least distract them while I flee. So I reached out to the only real option at my disposal. Despite how badly thngs had gone last time. I reached for th Tingles. I hummed, heard them pick up the tune. My fear making them shift and jitter. I released them.

I exploded with fire. My desperation fueling a vibrant blast of heat and flame around me. I heard a deafening shriek cut into my ears from far closer than I'd feared. They had nearly been on top of me when I ignited! Fear gave me speed, and fire gave me a chance. I didn't look back, I just kept running, and running, and running.

Hopefully the trees didn't join the party this time, but I felt, and still feel, I had no other option.

Finally, my weary bones demanded a rest from all the jolting and jostling, and my aching lungs and heart agreed. So I slowed to a walk. Finally looking behind be, I saw nothing but forest. I have no idea if the ravagers are still tracking me even now, or if I happened to kill or maim them with my sudden explosion. Regardless, I could run no more.

The sun was well on its way down from the sky, and my mind wandering far from my feet when I felt the earth shift beneath me. With an odd strangled hoot I fell two bodylengths into a pit.

I leapt to my feet as quickly as possible. Which means I lay on my back and gasped for breath for a good long while before finally slowly shambled to my feet. Any thought of climbing out was buried deeper than I was by the smoothly worked sides of the circular pit, and the multiple rings of sharp looking stakes that lined the rim like overlarge wooden teeth. 

I tried climbing anyway. I could dig handholds and footholds, and even managed to get up a fair way. Before the dry dirt crumbled and I fell back to the bottom. Oh well, nothing ventured, nothing gained. I lay there. Face up in the dirt. Staring at the small patch of blue sky, and trying to get my breath back from wherever the fall had knocked it.

Hungry, tired, and sore. I remember thinking, 'well, at least it can't get any worse'. And that was when I heard the sky roar.

Dense gray clouds boiled into the small patch of blue above me. Devouring the cheery sky in its more fitting somber shades. With another throaty rumble from the firmament water began to fall from the sky. I was soaked in short order, and the water started to churn the dirt around me. Turning it to mud, and then murky water starting to fill the pit with disconcerting speed. That wasn't the first time I missed the caves, but it may well have been the most fervent of them.

So, I was in a pit. Whose walls I cannot scale, and which is filling with water. Yup. That sucks.

The water fell in a torrent, and soon it had risen to my hips. No problem, I thought, I can stand this (pun intended). Then it rose to my chest, and  had no pun for that. Finally it was at my neck, and I started having to swim just to stay afloat. I flailed about for a while before settling in to tread water and hope something changed for the better. Unsurprisingly, it didn't.

The sun went down and the water kept falling. I was cold, I was wet, I was tired, I was hungry, and I was starting to get rather upset. I reviewed my options as best I could.  So, I'm in a pit. I can't climb the walls, I've tried. I can't stop swimming or I'll drown. And I can't get any purchase on the floor to try and jump out, not that I'd make the jump if I could. 

I decided on a plan. I would just continue to tread water, until it had filled the pit. Then I would simply swim out. As soon as I had chosen this as my plan of action, The water ceased falling from the sky.

That was the moment I gave up.

I had nothing, no plan, no hope, and no memories. Well, except for the last handful of days of course. 

So I thought of those times. The good and the bad, my triumphs, such as they were. And my losses, again rather small and mild. I thought of the meals I've eaten, the creatures I've discovered, the places I've been. The things I've done.

Which is when I recalled something vital to the situation at hand. Three days ago, I had leapt into a river while aflame. And a burst of steam from the water had picked me up, and carried me away. 

Why wouldn't that work here and now?

I gathered all the Tingles in me. I pushed them together, into as small a bundle as possible. The highpitched whine I felt more than heard from them led me to believe I was on the right track. Then I shoved them down towards my feet. As hard as possible.

*BO-BOOOM!!!*

The blast threw me clear of the pit. Launching me high into the air in a jet of incredibly hot steam. One of the spikes along the edge had caught my left shoulder on my way out, leaving a gash two hands long, a finder wide, and a knuckle deep along the outside of my left arm from shoulder to elbow.

I arced through the cool nightnair, and finally I landed in the welcoming branches of a tree. I can't hear anything since the big boom. I might have overdone it with the fire power on that one.

I wearily sent Tingles to my shoulder and ears, and now that I've written down my days adventure I suppose I'll try to get some sleep.

Goodnight.