The next three days I spent listening quietly at my door. I paid careful attention to the regularity and pattern of footsteps, morning, noon, and night. As I had suspected, it seemed like the only time the building stood vacant was in the early hours of the morning. Some time before the sun would raise its head. 

Creepy Old Man, seemingly, had been avoiding me - and I hadn't received any new visitors in all that time. It would have been excruciating, I supposed if it wasn't for the nervous energy slowly building up in my stomach. 

It was the fourth day when I finally decided to put my... I'll be it somewhat hasty plan into action... I took great care to sleep all through the day, awakening late into the early hours of the night. I crept over to the door, not out of a desire for stealth (as I knew was impossible to me), but rather out of instinct and the bundle of nerves that even now churned through my stomach.

Hand but inches from the door, I began my attempt at escape. Knowing that with the first spell, there would be no turning back. For the scorch marks on the wood and brass would show my plan to all the world, dead to rights.

Hellfire, Frost. Wait five minutes. Hellfire, Frost. Wait. Hellfire, Frost. And so on and on it went. Two hours? Three? The door finally cracked. It was coming apart at the frame and, finally, it allowed me to push my way past with only a few long creeks and snapping.

The first hallway, as I had planned, was free of life. As was the turn to the entryway. Slowly moving to the door, finding and lifting the latch, was as easy as turning a knob. And I started to feel the thrill of victory.

But only started, as behind me came the sudden sound of something being dropped. Being dropped and thudding, methodically, down a long flight of stairs.

I looked up, a Hellfire chant already half spoken upon my lips, when I saw a face that I... strangely... recognized. Wearing an apron and a battered pseudo-french-maid hat, there stood a girl that I did recognize from my first day trapped inside this hellhole. (well, inner layer of hellhole, I guess I should say).

When I had first seen her she had been missing her nose and an ear. Burn scars marring her from chin to brow. But now there was a face I remembered from after my own personal treatment, staring down and back at me. Relatively unmarried, with a cute pug nose and a set of all too boring round ears. I also noticed that she did little more than nod at me, almost solemnly, and turn around to head back up the stairs, I supposed, as though she had never seen a thing.

I could chase her down, I thought. I could silence her permanently. But yet it didn't seem worth the risk, nor the commotion, nor the all too heavy body upon the floor. I somehow had the feeling that she meant me no harm, and I was in too much of a hurry to think about it overmuch.

Sliding now out the door, I focused until I felt my features broaden. I slipped off my nightie, though I kept it near at hand, and I strode down the dark streets wearing the form of a short, broad-shouldered man. 

The drawstring, soiled pants that I had taken from that first man in the woods, I realized, would only aid in the deception. Being cut and fitted in a manner befitting and styled more for a man than a woman. I had to tighten the draw, some few inches, however as I learned my hip size had also shrunk to match male proportions.

And... oh... there was something else as well. Something that slapped against my thighs as I walked and that made it that much more uncomfortable with every turn of my hips. Jesus. Or Belial. Or whatever the hell was out there, anyway. Now I knew for certain why men lumbered along like addled monkeys.

And I found myself blushing, all the same.  

It seemed like it took an eternity before I wandered my way out of town and into the awaiting wheat-fields. My intent was to wander east, then north, then east again and eventually make my way out of the country. Assuming the maps I had been given were in any way accurate. It seemed like a good bet that the 'Machina Graveyard' and, later, the 'Neutral Zone' would provide me ample diplomatic uncertainty and would, hopefully, dissuade any pursuit on my eventual path to Southshire. 

I had no idea what spells or abilities the villagers might be using to track, but just in case I went ahead and took off my sandals, holding them tight in my hand and, instead, using magic to heal my feet every few minutes. I did not want the scents to stay with me, assuming that, like any other primitive society, they would be using hounds to track. And I had a hope that the little bits of blood and skin that I left behind would not be enough to get a fix on me. 

No, I'm not stupid, in fact. Instead, I focused and shifted forms every five or so minutes. Now I was a male human. Now I was myself. Now I was a female human(native). Now I was a male elf. The shape change, as far as I could tell, was more a change of actual shape than any sort of illusion, and from my experiments, it seemed as though my shed parts managed to maintain their form even after being separated from my body.

I even took care to put the sandals back on, every few miles. Just on the off chance that I was wrong and I was just leaving a far more obvious trail behind me. 

I made my way fairly deep into the forest before I heard it. Not a sound of barking but, rather, a hissing and scratching and screeching. Even from the distance, it was obviously some kind of creature, and it sent the most intense chills of fear up through my spine.

I hurried for a while, hoping to put some distance between me and... whatever it was... until the sun's light began to shine over the tops of the distant trees. But for all my speed and effort, even my own casual disregard for my own well being, the sounds came closer and closer still. 

Soon, too soon, they were sounding much too close. And, out of fear and panic and a sheer exhausted anxiety, I spent what time there was left climbing upside the nearest tree.

And it didn't take long after that. It didn't take long indeed, not before a horrifying creature came scurrying along out the underbrush. Claws and teeth and twisted, mismatched limbs that assailed my eyes with the sheer sense of... wrongness. It had the snout of a dog, yes. But it had the legs and claws of a cat. Did I say cat? I should say multiple cats, for the front legs were striped like tigers, while the back was spotted like a leopard. And the head, the head was the strangest of all, for, shining over the snout, was a very distinct set of human eyes - set deep within a skull and surrounded by the leather skin of a lizard. 

It waited there, at the bottom of my tree. Almost patiently. And it looked at me, it looked at me, as if seeing not just my face and limbs, but the bones and organs struggling to give me life beneath the skin itself.

And it didn't take long after that. Not long before I heard the actual hounds baying in the distance. And not long before the distant trot of a horse blustering its way through the undergrowth could be faintly heard in their wake.

The gig was up, I knew. And as I allowed my features to swim back into the human semblance to which I had become accustomed, as I slipped my nightie back over my head to maintain some fraction of modesty, I clung to the branch and thought desperately of some final method to escaping my fate.

It was, of course, my own personal Dirty Old Man who rode up upon me. Following in the steps of those hounds and the path of that... Chimaira. It turns out.

He put on his most winning smile and looked up at me, waving his hat from horseback. "Come on down, girl. I don't know what you were thinking. But all I want to do is take you back to your safe little room where you will be warm, and fed, and cared for."

Furious, defeated, but likewise exhausted and full of spite, I took a breath and shouted back. "You're full of it. You're going to take me back and shackle me to the bed at this point. Gods even know what you plan to do after that!"

My answer didn't come from him, but rather in the way of flashing text that filled my vision. A giant red status update telling me that I had just ranked up.... and hesitantly, I read:

Skill Increase! Insight +1

Skill Increase! Insight +1

And as the glowing text faded, I looked back down at his so sweetly smiling face below. And I thought 'shit."

He caught the glowing ember of Hellfire I through at him then, grabbing it from in front of his face and quickly smacking the flames out against his breeches. I took little comfort in seeing that it took an agonizingly long time for him to finally put out the flame, and his hand was still scorched something fierce after. 

My freeze spell he caught his other arm, allowing the frosted limb to fall and hang loosely at his side, as his smile turned into a crawling leer. He looked up at me, in the hiding spot that was now my prison, and his grin spread menacingly. "Oh, child, I hope you know you'll be healing that. And taking very good, good care of me besides."

I fell, not climbed out of the tree. My last hope being to break my own neck against the rocks and earth below me. Return, perhaps, to some unknown point of re-spawn some months or years down the road. I did not know what awaited me there, in the outer realms of hell. I only knew then what awaited me there. Leering up into my face. And whatever negatives I would take from death seemed like nothing next to the debuffs this creature was even now planning to unleash upon me.

When I woke up, however, I was not floating bodiless with countless other lost souls. I was not floating among the demons drifting back toward this world. Instead, I was staring up into a very familiar set of eyes. And I was feeling rough hands caress the length of my long and pointed ears.

Yet, worse, I felt the weight of chain wrapped heavily across my feet.