Without wasting time she collected her items, tied a couple of Burrowing Gerbils to her haversack’s straps, and approached the porous stone wall where the gerbils’ burrow was. Its terrain was uneven enough that climbing it didn't seem impossible; besides its porous surface, it had a jagged, broken format, with some strange calcified structures sticking out of some parts. It reminded Maggie a lot of something she would find at the bottom of the ocean, even if she'd never seen one in this life.

So without dallying, she began her climb.

By taking the more jagged path, Maggie made sure she would have more points to support her body, distributing her weight equally, and she was happy she did that. She didn't notice at first, but the gerbils that attached to her shoulder and arm hurt her more than she expected. Physically, it wasn't that deep of a wound, but with the strain she had to put on her arm and shoulder to climb, she soon found herself in a very painful endeavor, and time consuming, considering she had to stop a few times to rest her arms. But in the end, while she may have taken more time than she should have for a ten-ish meter climb, and she almost fell twice as one of the calcified structures crumbled under her grip, she managed to reach the top, out of breath and a bit more out of time. She was always out of time.

“Belinda?” She asked, grabbing at her knees; breathing hard. The climb wasn't that far, but she had to put in a lot of effort, physically, even with the support she had. Once again she found herself vowing to work on her muscles as soon as she had the opportunity.

That took you a bit over two minutes. Belinda answered, the question being obvious.

“Oh, thank you. That felt longer than it was, thankfully.” Maggie deflated. The time does seem to pass slower when you are under physical exertion. But in the end, it all paid off. By climbing to a higher ground, for the first time since she left her initial land mass, she was able to take a good look at her surroundings. And it was just as breathtaking as before.

Now that she was on a lower level compared to before, she was much closer to the fire ocean, “much closer” being still a hundred meters below her. But she had an ample view of the lower area; its strange ocean-like architecture, —or better put, topology, considering she had yet to find a construction down here— and of course, the fire ocean dwellers. She now noticed that, while before they seemed to be just at leisure, following a random, carefree itinerary, now she was certain it was everything but that. In her short but closer observation of them, she noticed they seemed to be actually guarding a territory, like sentries. There were some giant, roughly six meters tall, red-skinned, oni-looking creatures. The closest was still too far for Maggie to make out details, but they were muscular, half-naked humanoid creatures. Some had horns, but most were broken in one way or another. Most of them were just static, watching around, leaning on their oversized club, while others were walking from one place to another, probably following a perimeter, Maggie surmised. She saw one immediately attack a strange giant bird as it got too close to their area. They were fast as hell. There is no way she could ever survive an attack by one of these onis.

It was at that moment that she noticed. As she was about to look further beyond the area the onis seemed to be patrolling, her eyes met one of them, and she was sure he had seen her as well.

Her first instinct was to duck, to throw herself at the ground, slowly crawl away from its gaze, and then bolt away. But she noticed the creature hadn't even flinched after seeing her. He was just looking around, and the same seemed to be true for the others nearby. If all of them had noticed her, she wasn't sure. They either didn't care or couldn't go after her. Maybe there is a proper food chain here? Maybe if this is a show, those are the enemies that give high rewards, but you need to be stupid enough to go after them. Or maybe she was just too small to be worth noticing, and they were just waiting for a bigger fish to eat her first. She for sure wasn't going to be around to find out. So she started to look for a new path upwards, or at least an enemy that wouldn't kill her with a flinch. She wasn't having a lot of luck on the last one. Aside from the onis and the giant birds, the only other creatures she found were a strange tentacle-filled creature that she saw skimming the fire ocean once from afar, and then disappearing further below, and of course, those colossal humanoids carrying the big castles on their backs. She had only seen a couple so far, striding far on the horizon. She was sure there were plenty of Burrowing Gerbils around somewhere, but she came to the conclusion that the smart ones were hidden deep under stone, and the dumb ones to be on the surface were already dead. So maybe she really needed to go back up to be able to find smaller, less probable to kill her, creatures. Like the Imps. With that in mind, she decided to look for ways to get up.

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

There actually seemed to be multiple paths upwards, but to her dismay, most were either a gradual climb, in a very long path that would take dangerously too long to follow, or a mostly vertical path that could be perfect, if only she had climbing equipment, knew how to use it, or could jump two meters upwards at a time. So in the end, she came to the conclusion that the best way was the one that led to a small crater with a print of her face at the bottom.

But changing her focus, what actually drew her attention the most wasn't the strange architecture, unreliable paths, or daunting creatures. It was something that had been surrounding her ever since she started trudging through this strange land. The ever-present, massive mess of entanglement of those strange dark gray wires. From her new perspective, she was able to notice that they weren't actually coming and going from random directions, but from the bottom of the ocean. She wasn't sure if they started or ended there, but they all seemed to converge downwards.

“Why are the wires so tangled down here?” She wondered out loud.

You tell me. I don't have visuals.

She took a better look, circling around her limited area. She was certain; they were all converging at the bottom, but not only that, they were all going upwards in an arch, almost pyramidal format, spreading downwards, but going up towards a center too far for her to see. It was almost as if they were—

“—Wait! Belinda.” She called, suddenly having a revelation. “Those aren’t wires. I think they are some kind of root, circling this whole place and going all the way down to the fire.” Just imagine, if those are just the roots, how big the whole tree must be?

“Holy shirts. Is this like a giant tree drinking fire instead of water?”

Well, if it is true, that makes our lives easier.

“Wait, do you think we should—?”

Yes. There isn't anything more inconspicuous than a giant tree at the end of a dangerous monster-filled path. If you ask me, until we have more information, that is the place we are supposed to go to.

“Well… Ain't that a peach.”

***

As much as they would like to keep looking around and discussing the implications of having to climb a gargantuan tree, time was of the essence. So without dallying any further, Maggie began her climb upwards.

One thing was very clear about the path she chose; falling it was much easier than climbing. If she needed only to jump through platforms dangerously far apart from each other or climb rocks using only her bare hands, that would be one thing. But it was more complicated than that. She didn't notice at first, but some of the platforms were slowly moving from one place to another. Some were even rotating. And of course, the worst of it all; she had to walk through the wires to get to some places.

Imagine the sensation of having your whole body shocked. Not strong enough to stun or to be immediately harmful to you. But enough to be painful and make it very hard to move. Now imagine you have to crawl through a small, tortuous surface, floors above the ground, for minutes straight while you are under this effect.

Let's just say it was not a good experience for the weak of heart.

In the end, the path upwards wasn't much more than 50 or so meters tall, but it took her a good part of 20 minutes to carefully climb it, making some eventual pauses to rest her muscles and to wait for her body to stop tingling when she moved through the wires for too long. But in the end, she did it, she got back where it all started; that damned collapsible bridge. Well, she actually didn't want to even get close to it, preferring to try her luck by climbing the edge of the rocky land mass than touch the blasted thing. But with a lot of effort and some really sore arms, she pulled herself upwards towards the place where she would hopefully find more enemies.

It is a strange thing, to hope for dangerous creatures to fight. But you will find yourself eager to face a lot of things when your life depends on it.

But well, even if she didn't find any creature at first, she did find something.

As soon as she laid eyes on the surface, that strange opening was waiting for her, almost welcoming her, in a menacing way. A large maw of an opening, almost five meters tall, carved into stone. It looked like it was eating all the light coming from the outside, its sinister aura almost palpable.

Taking a deep breath, she slowly approached it.

“Well, that doesn’t seem ominous at all.”