Honestly, with Bastet still significantly injured, it’s going to take too long to heal her and expect to also get out of the forest in the light. And frankly, walking through the vine-stranglers is tempting fate enough in the light, let alone in the dark. I’m down to my last torch, and that one’s half-used. The torch I had been using is finished – I was too distracted by the salamander to put it out. Between that time and the time spent healing Bastet, the little that was left burnt itself out. It’s not a big loss: it was starting to flicker out anyway.
I now only have a single half-burnt torch stuck in my Inventory and based on past experience, that’s nowhere near enough to get us through the danger zone, light or dark. That by itself isn’t the end of the world, though: I’m surrounded by trees which have proven to be vulnerable to fire. I didn’t dare create more torches while actually in the forest, but we seem to be out of easy reach from their spearing branches here.
Of course, that’s assuming that they aren’t capable of remembering that my torches are made out of their branches. Being trees, normally, I wouldn’t even consider it, but since they appeared to herd me here to face another of their threats? I’m suddenly questioning everything I knew about trees. Anyway, is waiting until the morning and then continuing through the forest the best idea?
Staying here for the night should be fine; much longer isn’t really an option. We have plenty of food, between the salamander carcass and the load of corpses I have in my Inventory, but I’ve finished the water I had in there. And that’s besides the fact that there’s really nothing here. Even if the trees can’t get at us, we’d just be prisoners. No, we’ll have to brave the forest at some point, though it would be good to have an idea of how far to go, so I can make some plans. On that note, I wonder where the bird has gone. Has she taken this opportunity to fly into the clear skies and leave us permanently?
No, I can still feel the Bond – she hasn’t broken it from her side, at least. She’s far enough away, though, that all I can get from it is a vague sense of direction and steady emotional state.
I turn my thoughts back to the present situation. After casting Lay-on-hands once more on Bastet, I find my eyes being pulled inexorably back to the hole that lies at the lowest point of this shallow bowl-like basin. I’m not quite sure why it seems so important to me, so I try to relax my mind: if I hunt for the feeling like a blood-hound, I’m bound to just scare it away.
Deciding that Bastet can afford me looking away from her for a time, I close my eyes. Maybe meditation will help me out here. If nothing else, my new Skill in it means that I should regenerate my mana quicker. I didn’t dare to do it before: Bastet needed healing as quickly as possible and with the way time seems to slip away while I’m in meditation, I couldn’t be sure that I wouldn’t just meditate her life away.
Besides, before now, it would have taken more time to calm myself sufficiently to actually properly engage in meditation and gain its effects: I would have been dropping out almost before I’d managed to slip into the trance-like state. Now she’s more stable, though, I figure I have the time and my emotions are a little more settled. In fact, if I allow more mana to accrue, it will also allow me to heal in a more efficient way: just like using Energy in bulk to raise stat points is more efficient, so is healing with greater quantities of mana, it appears.
Breathing deeply, my eyes slide shut of their own accord. I reconnect to my surroundings, frowning a little as I feel the differences. There’s something...odd about this area. It’s probably just the smoke I can smell in the area, but it feels like fire. I try to push past the ghostly flickers of flame against my skin, the memory of the fire snatching at my flesh. Wrestling my thoughts under control since they’re snapping me me out of my meditative state, I open my eyes and stare at the hole, even as I direct my newly regenerated mana into Bastet’s body.
Thoughts percolate like water through coffee grains. I feel a realisation slowly come closer. It’s hard to just wait for it to come instead of mentally reaching out to snatch at it, but I know that that’s completely counterproductive. In hopes that it might spark something, I let my eyes drift around the area, alight briefly on the salamander’s corpse with my Bound and other companions digging into it, then wander past to pass over the trees around us.
The realisation I had been waiting for hits. How did the salamander get in here? I mean, I’m assuming that the destruction in this area of the forest was caused by it, but based on what I saw of it attacking the tree, I think that my supposition is justified. And if that’s what it does to the area around it, why is there no evidence of its path through the forest? I mean, I suppose that the trees could have regrown, eliminating all evidence of its passage.
That doesn’t make a huge amount of sense, though – I can see what it’s done to trees here and there’s really nothing but ash to indicate that they were ever even here. Besides, why would it have wandered through the forest, and then randomly stopped and made a rough circle with a hole at the centre? No, another explanation makes far more sense: it came up through the hole. All of which indicates to me that there might be a way out though the hole too.
It’s a tantalising thought: not having to dare the vine-stranglers where one foot wrong could lead to our deaths. Where I’m constantly worried that one of the pack will wander a bit too far and be trapped and killed before we can save them. Or where a lucky strike could kill any of us at any time. Not knowing when or if the trees will risk calling my bluff keeps me on the edge at all times. And even if they do, can I bring myself to cause a forest fire when I’m still in the forest? Especially now I’ve seen how easily these trees can burn. The trees’ fear of fire is well-explained. If this hole is actually a tunnel, do I dare to risk that it’s any safer?
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I could be clutching at straws here, barking up the wrong tree, pun fully intended, but I think it’s worth a try. If it’s a tunnel infested with those fire salamanders, we’ll brave the forest instead, but if it’s not… They say that fortune is for the brave, and that we make our own luck. Is it too late to find out if that’s true?
Either way, before we can do anything like that, we need to all be mobile, and Bastet isn’t yet. Besides, River said that he thought the bird was scouting; perhaps we should wait to see if she has any new information to add: I would hate to only be a half an hour walk from the closest edge of the vine-strangler tree forest without knowing it. Something else I can do now, though...
“River,” I start, turning my head to look at him.
Master? Discomfort nags at me at the address, but I push it aside.
“Can you just walk down to that hole in the centre? See whether it’s just a pit, or whether it looks like it goes somewhere.” I feel his assent and shortly after he departs, the spear I gave him held ready for any attack, I speak again. “Lathani,” I say next.
Yes, carer? she says, though since it’s a mental voice, I can’t use it to tell exactly where she is.
“Can you keep an eye on River, please? If anything moves anywhere near him, let me know.”
Sure, she agrees, something unreadable in her tone. Unfortunately, I don’t have the connection with her that I do with the others, so I can’t investigate any further. I miss Bastet and her cool efficiency. She wouldn’t have needed to be asked: she’d already have been keeping an eye out. Pushing the thoughts away, I return to what I know I need to do to get her back on her feet.
I continue meditating and then intermittently emerging to heal the raptorcat. Her health point pool must be several times that of mine because she’s already absorbed enough healing to bring me over half-full, and she’s still significantly injured. Bit by bit, though, River’s stopgap measure of herbs and unguent is pushed out of the wounds as healthy flesh takes its place.
Rousing from my latest bout of meditation, I cast Lay-on-hands again, once more following the channeled magic into Bastet’s body and healing the last of her wounds. She’s still unconscious, but I reckon she’ll wake up soon – the sense I get down the Bond is that of exhausted sleep rather than deathly unconsciousness. There are still a few more wounds to heal, but they’re little more than skin deep. I’ll meditate to let my mana regenerate a bit more and then hopefully clear all of us of wounds.
Looking around, I almost jump as I see River sitting within arm’s length.
“When did you get back?” I demand to cover the fact that my heart is now racing and my hand has automatically gone to my knife.
A few clicks ago. I tried to rouse you but you were dead to the world. Huh. So that’s what my latest upgrade message to Lay-on-hands meant when it said that I would not be able to detect my surroundings. I might not have gone so deeply into Bastet’s healing while River was out scouting if I’d realised that Lathani wouldn’t actually be able to wake me from it if there was danger. I’ll need to keep that in mind. But first...
“What did you find?”
It’s a tunnel, River replies. I lean towards him, eagerness and hope running through me.
“What is it like? Could you see the end?”
It is a single, large tunnel. It’s large enough for the creature we fought to move through easily enough, but its end is around a bend. However I strongly suspect that it has an exit elsewhere. My eyebrows shoot up at the lack of doubt in his mental voice and through the Bond.
“What makes you say that?”
There is a strong breeze that caresses the tunnel walls; moreover, it brings with it the faintest hints of the normal forest. I grin, hope lighting in my heart. I want to see what the bird has to say, but already the hole is rising to the top as an option for our escape. Then a thought occurs and my grin shrinks a little.
“Did you see any signs of other salamanders?” He clicks his mouth closed twice as negation comes through the Bond.
It was clear of movement as far as I could see, he confirms. My grin widens once more. Excellent. No guarantee that there won’t be critters waiting around the corner, ready to pounce, but it’s a good sign nonetheless. I decide to wait until the bird comes back just to confirm that it wouldn’t be a better idea to go through the trees. I decide to go back into meditation until my mana has fully regenerated: I never know when I’ll need it next. Letting River know that, I drop back into my trance.