River’s nervous. I don’t mind admitting that I am too. In the twilight as we are now, the shadows of each tree are deep, the whole forest seeming even more threatening than it did before. The flickering of the torch doesn’t help: it deepens the shadows even further and makes them move in my peripheral vision, a thoroughly unnerving experience as it leaves me feeling permanently on edge. Then again, I probably would be anyway considering the threat that surrounds us.

The lizard-man sticks right next to me, though I see him make an effort to watch our backs more than look in the same direction as I am. I appreciate his efforts; hopefully we won’t be attacked, but if we are, at least we’ll have as much warning as possible. I stoop down and collect the dry wood cracking with our footsteps. Wanting to have enough for another fire to cook some food if necessary, I just collect any piece of dry wood that comes to hand, letting my Inventory sort the pieces out according to size. Fortunately, with my level up a couple of days ago, I still have several slots free.

We don’t go deep into the forest, sticking to where we can see the clearing through the gap between only a few tree trunks. I sense the forest’s anger around us, though I don’t know if that’s because we’re collecting wood, because we avoided its trap, or because we dare to walk with impunity within its bounds. Frankly, I don’t care. After a while, I even feel like I’m relaxing just the slightest, the foreboding threat but lack of actual action leading me into a sense of relative security.

A false one, it turns out.

I hear the bubble of water as we pass one tree and my head goes up in excitement. I turn from one side to another, trying to identify the direction of the sound. It’s deeper into the forest, of course, but I would guess it to only be a short distance away. I step towards it eagerly – I’m already thirsty and the opportunity to refill my canteen and water pot would be most welcome. With the branches I’ve already collected, I’ll even be able to boil it!

Mas-Markus, are we not staying close to the edge of the forest? River asks, his tone uneasy.

“I want to get some water,” I tell him, my voice hushed. Not that I think anyone’s listening, but just like a church, it doesn’t seem the right kind of place for loud voices.

I don’t think there’s any water here, he says, confused. I thought we were collecting branches?

“Yes, but if I can collect water too, that would be a bonus,” I tell him, then I pause. Wait, I thought that he had senses at least as good as mine, if not better. Why can’t he hear it? “Can’t you hear that stream?” I ask. Negation comes through the Bond even before he answers and a sudden sense of foreboding fills me.

I can’t hear anything but the wind in the trees. As he speaks, the trap which I had so unwittingly walked into closes on me. The forest floor a mere foot away from where I’m standing shimmers, only to reveal a bulbous body and gaping maw filled with teeth. Before I can react, tentacles snap out to wrap around my body. I shout as serrated edges bite into me. Why is everything in this forest either thorny or spiky?

The shock of being attacked wears off very quickly: I was mostly-expecting it, anyway. Even as I grab my knife from my belt, thankful that the creature left my right arm free, River charges in with his spear held in one hand and the flaming torch in the other, bellowing in rage. I’m not sure why he’s so angry – whether it’s because he now considers me the best hope for his tribe, because I was attacked under his watch, or because he has some racial hatred for this creature. Whatever the reason, it’s clear he would like to teach my attacker the error of its ways – in a permanent fashion.

Between us, we manage to make quite short work of the creature. It’s only after the thing has subsided to the ground that I realise I’m feeling more lethargic than I should be after such a relatively short fight. The lethargy is soon joined by nausea and dizziness, and I see that my health is dropping even as I look at it. Having already experienced something of this sort twice now, I have an idea of what’s going on: poison.

“I’m poisoned,” I warn my Bound even as I cast Lay-on-hands and channel my mana through my body to counteract the damage the poison is doing.

What are your symptoms? he asks, his tone urgent.

“Lethargy, nausea, dizziness. It’s doing damage to my insides, I think,” I tell him shortly, worried about how my health is still decreasing, even with as much healing magic running through my system as I’m channelling. My wounds are still bleeding, too. They’re small but painful, and the number of them mean that I’m losing quite a lot of blood. I have to guess that the poison also contains something which stops my wounds from clotting. I tell River this too. I hope it’s a quick-lived poison; if not, I may end up running out of mana before it stops affecting me. With the blood-loss added in, that would probably be fatal.

I have herbs which will help back in the clearing, River tells me. I look up at him muzzily, at some point having fallen to the ground.

“I don’t have the same physiology as you,” I point out. “They may poison me instead.”

I know the poison which affects you. If not stopped, it will ravage a body in a very short time. You don’t have a choice.

“Great,” I sigh. So much for a quick jaunt into the forest to pick up some wood. I try to push myself to my feet, but lose my balance before I can. River holds out his clawed paws and I gratefully use them to help steady me. He starts off towards the camp. “Wait,” I say, a thought occurring. Confusion emanates from his side of the Bond but he helps me as I return to the corpse of whatever it is, heave it just off the ground with a grunt – if River hadn’t been there, I’d have fallen over again instead of succeeding – and stuff it in my Inventory. Such a poison sounds like a great one to add to my collection and there’s no way I’ll be coming back to find the corpse later. “OK, let’s go,” I tell my companion.

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We walk out, River on high alert to attempt to compensate for my lack of ability to defend myself right now. My stomach roils with every step, but somehow I manage to keep it down. Fortunate, that – I wouldn’t have wanted to have to live with the nasty taste and no water to wash it out. The trees shift around me and I fear for a moment that they’ll take advantage of my incapacitated state to attack. The torch still burns brightly, though, and clearly that’s enough to keep them at bay. We manage to make it to the clearing with no further attacks.

By the point we’re sitting down with Lathani, the bird, and the cubs, my health is down to a quarter and my mana is almost out. I’m getting more than worried. It’s not long since this was the condition Bastet was in and we almost lost her. I don’t want to die either! River quickly leaves me as soon as we’re in safety, striding to his little box of wonders. I slump to the ground, weakly batting away the cubs who crowd me, obviously sensing that something’s wrong.

What happened? Lathani asks frantically, her hackles up and a growl in her throat. Is there an enemy?

“Not now,” I tell her. “Killed it. Poisoned”. Short phrases are easier than anything else to communicate. “Give River space,” I urge her as he turns and strides back to me. She backs away and he crouches down, a number of plant parts held gently between his paws.

Eat these, he tells me brusquely. I take them but hesitate.

“You’re sure they won’t poison me? More, I mean.”

No, he replies grimly, the emotion saying more than the words. Well, he’s honest at least, but I’d have rather had a comforting lie at this point. But as he said earlier, I don’t have a choice. Or I do, but I don’t think that relying on the poison running out just before I die is a good plan. Sure, it worked like that before, but depending on luck is a poor strategy.

I stuff the plant parts into my mouth and chew on them. They’re nasty, a mixture of bitter and sour. Though, there is one in there which I wouldn’t mind having again – something that reminds me of mint. Without water to help me swallow, it’s hard to choke the things down, and my continuing nausea doesn’t help. Nonetheless, I manage eventually.

My stomach spasms a bit, and I’m convinced for a moment that the herbs are going to come right back up. I even turn over and retch a few times into the ash. Is my body rejecting them? With a final cramp, my stomach calms and the nausea mostly abates. With the nausea goes my dizziness, albeit more slowly. I cast another Lay-on-hands, chanelling it until my mana is only the tiniest sliver – I don’t want the nausea and exhaustion that comes with mana deprivation to make me feel even worse.

I bite my lip, my stomach roiling from something other than the poison. My Lay-on-hands helps, this time actually pushing my health up a little, but only from about five percent to fifteen percent. When it stops working, my health starts ticking down again, bit by bit. My wounds are still bleeding sluggishly, but I think that they are starting to clot. I’m slumped on the ground, feeling absolutely wretched, seeing my end tick closer and closer. Was this like it was for my dad? It’s depressing that even having access to literal healing magic isn’t a sure defence against dying by inches.

Can you do anything else? I ask River, too exhausted to open my mouth and form the words. A sense of helpless frustration comes over the Bond. I know his answer before he says it.

No. I’m sorry. I close my eyes briefly in despair before opening them again. I can’t see the number of health units I have left in numerical terms, but I would guess that it’s only about seven or eight. As I watch, another sliver leaves the bar. If it was eight, it’s only seven now.

My mana is still almost drained, though it is regenerating slowly. The problem is that I’m losing more health than I’m gaining mana. Like a drowning man clutching at straws, I close my eyes and try to calm my mind. Not exactly easy as close as I am to dying, but somehow, though a force of will, I manage to do it. Perhaps it was all that practice in the lizard-folk’s camp. The fifteen percent increase in mana gain may not be massive, but if it can keep my health above zero units, then I don’t care.

I think I once heard someone say desperation is the mother of invention. Even as my body fails around me, my mind races, searching for some solution. Any solution. I touch the connections around me. Surely this can’t be it? I pluck at the links around me, touching them with a sense that I cannot name. And then a thought sparks.

What did the Meditation Skill description say? Why does Meditation help my mana increase? I don’t dare drop out of the trance to check. But wasn’t it something about improving my connection to the world around? Isn’t that why my mana regenerates faster when I’m in it? And are these connections anything to do with all that?

A gut instinct tells me that they are; that they’re integral to the whole thing. And if the connections are the means by which I gain mana, could I do more than just passively absorb it? What if I actively draw it in? It’s worth a shot.

Of course, conceiving of an idea is one thing; putting it into practice is something completely different. I’m sensing connections in a way I cannot describe and never felt before the previous day; now I’m trying to affect them somehow using that sense. It’s like trying to fish spaghetti out of water, except I’m not holding the fork – it’s attached to a series of pulleys by a string and I’m having to control it like that. Blindfolded. With gloves on. And with no experience of pot, fork, or spaghetti. Impossible, right?

But never underestimate what a desperate person can do and I sense that I am very, very close to the wire right now. I can’t see my health bar in this state, nor really feel my body’s physical state, but something about the way many of the connections around me are reacting tells me that I’m probably only a couple of health units away from death. Even a blindfolded, gloved, pulley-controller can get lucky once and pull a strand of spaghetti from the pot.

And, despite really not understanding what I’m doing, despite fumbling in the dark, I get lucky. A flash of heat travels into me and I feel a sudden pain from the Bond I have with River. I’m pulled out of Meditation. Immediately, I register that my health bar is, indeed, almost entirely empty...but that my mana bar has enough of a sliver to cast Lay-on-hands. Not wasting even a second, I pour the mana into myself, not even leaving a single unit of mana in the tank.

I get hit immediately by the effects of mana exhaustion. Nausea returns, as does a cracking headache. My limbs already feel encased in lead, so nothing changes there. But my health bar has jumped up again. Not much – my Lay-on-hands has increased the number of points it heals by, usually hitting twenty or so for a single cast, but with my larger health pool that means it’s only filling a bit over ten percent of my bar at a time. However, when death is the spectre raising its scythe over my shoulder, that’s a massive difference. I still feel like I’ve got one foot in the grave, but I’m not quite as close to losing my balance and tumbling in.

However, whatever I did has had consequences, if the look on River’s face is anything to judge by.