They’d tied him to a sturdy tree, his hands pulled back around the trunk, secured by a thick, coarse rope. David had been twisting and turning his wrists, trying to loosen the rope, feeling the rough fibers of the binding slowly give way under his persistent movements. Each subtle twist and turn of his wrists caused the rope to slacken, the fibers protesting with a soft groan. While he worked on freeing himself, his eyes flicked between the trees surrounding him, scanning for any threats.

A sharp crackling reached his ears from the left, the sound of twigs breaking underfoot. He instantly stopped what he was doing and glanced in that direction. He saw two large male figures appear out of the foliage–his captors had already returned. One of them carried a sack with something inside, and the other one held a large plastic bottle filled with water. Upon seeing the two of them, David gritted his teeth. He’d hoped they would be gone longer. He’d loosened the binding around his wrists somewhat but not enough to free his hands and escape yet.

One of the two sat on his haunches beside a circle of rocks and put some dry twigs in there. He cast a simple spell to create a small gush of fire. The firewood burst into flames immediately. He then stood up and poured the water from the bottle into the pot that hung over the campfire.

While he was busy doing all that, the second guy stepped up to David.

“Look what we’ve brought you,” he said, opening the sack so David could see what was inside. “We stumbled across these mushrooms nearby, but we have no idea if they’re edible. You know what that means, right?”

He laughed in a hoarse voice as he stood up and joined the first guy. He dropped the sack to the ground, and they began taking the mushrooms out of the sack and tossing them into the pot with boiling water.

David resumed wriggling his wrists, not worrying that his captors might notice what he was doing anymore. He had to get the fuck out of there as soon as possible. He’d been their captive for a few days now. He’d run into them when he was exploring the forest, and they attacked him without provocation. He’d lost the fight. They could just have killed him, but instead, they found a use for him. The forest was full of potential food, but they didn’t know what was edible and what was not, so they decided to test out everything on him first.

The last time, they’d killed some disgusting-looking insect-like creature and cooked it. Sure enough, they made him eat it even though from the smell alone it was obvious that it wasn’t edible. When he tried to resist, they’d beat him up, breaking fingers on his left hand. One of them then used healing magic on him, but he didn’t bother to set David’s broken bones first, probably thinking that the magic would take care of that. But it didn’t. As a result, the bones of his broken fingers healed wrongly, in misaligned positions. He lost some mobility in the fingers of his left hand and couldn’t close that hand enough to make a fist anymore.

After they made him eat the meat of the cooked insect-like creature, he’d almost immediately gotten sick, and the whole next day he’d been in so much pain and had such a high fever that he’d thought he’d die. To his captors’ and his own surprise, he’d managed to get through this. And now they wanted to make him eat some strange mushrooms. From their disgusting smell, it was obvious they weren’t edible either. Probably they were poisonous.

David tensed when his captors walked up to him, carrying the pot with the stinking cooked mushrooms.

“I fucking ain’t eating it,” David snarled at them.

“Oh yes, you are,” one of them responded. “If you don’t, we’ll break all the fingers in your other hand.”

“It’s fucking inedible! Can’t you tell by the smell?”

The other one said, trying to breathe through his mouth, “You know he may be right.”

“I don’t care,” the first captor said. “If anything, his suffering might entertain us.”

“You got identification scrolls, dammit,” he yelled at them. “Why don’t you use them to learn what is edible and what is not?”

“Why waste such precious spells when we’re keeping you around for this exact purpose?”

David had known they would say something like that. The reason he asked the question was that he was just stalling for time. He’d loosened the binding almost enough to get rid of the rope. He only needed a few more seconds.

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However, the two captors had already reached him. When the one holding the pot began to lower to the ground, David kicked him hard in the knee. The guy yelped in pain, and the pot flew from his hands. The boiling-hot water filled with mushrooms splashed over the second guy who collapsed to the ground, screaming bloody murder.

“Sonofabitch,” the first one hissed at him. “You’ll pay for this, you mothe–”

He shut up in surprise when he saw David rise from the ground, the binding gone. Now that his hands were free, David could use magic. He knew two spells, but he couldn’t have used them when his hands were tied. Besides, those two spells had been useless when his hands were tied. Now that he was free, his spells could help him escape from his captors. He’d already fought them once but lost, so now he was going to run away instead.

David held his hand out toward the other guy, and cast a spell, causing a powerful rush of wind to slam into him. The guy was hurled backward a few feet away from him, but before he even hit the ground, David had already spun around and burst into a run.

“You’re fucking dead,” he heard the guy who’d gotten burnt by the boiling water yell. “You ain’t getting away from us!”

It wasn’t long before David heard his captors crash through the foliage, hot on his heels. He used his second spell, temporarily turning himself invisible. He hid in the nearby bushes, watching the two guys close in on his position. As he watched them, he realized that while they couldn’t see him, they followed the path he’d made through the foliage without much trouble. Their Hunting skills must have been pretty good because his captors were able to discern his footprints set into the soft ground very easily. At this rate, it wouldn’t take them long to reach the spot where he’d hidden. By the time it happened, his invisibility spell might have worn off. He had to continue to run while he had a bit of an advantage over them. He jumped to his feet and resumed running away. Sure enough, his captors heard the noise he was making.

“I can hear him but can’t see,” one of them yelled.

“The bastard must’ve used the invisibility spell,” the other one responded. “This way!”

Legs pumping, hands flying, David ran as fast as his legs could carry him. At some point, he became visible again. He learned about it when he heard victorious shouts behind him.

David noticed something up ahead. It was a treehouse that was built around the huge trunk of an enormous tree.

“What the hell,” he muttered. He didn’t expect to stumble across something like that. He was so surprised he even slowed down, but a second later, he heard the footfalls behind him and accelerated again.

“Help,” he yelled as he ran toward the treehouse. There was no answer, and nobody peeked out the windows.

David spotted an elevator that could be used to get up to the treehouse. Without giving it much thought, he jumped onto the platform. There was a lever, and when David gave it a tug, the elevator began to ascend. At this moment, the two guys burst out of the foliage. Looking down at them, David wondered if they knew about this place. Judging by the surprised looks on their faces, it was the first time they’d seen it too. After they realized David was slipping away from them, they burst toward the great tree but immediately stopped–the elevator was already too high. One of them fired the crossbow he was armed with, but the bolt passed harmlessly over David’s head. The other guy launched a fireball, and it exploded upon impact with the trunk of the great tree. Seeing that he’d missed his target, the guy readjusted his aim and was about to cast another fireball, but the first guy stopped him for some reason.

The elevator finally slid inside the treehouse and stopped its ascent. David ran to one of the windows and looked outside. His captors stood at the same spot, looking up at the treehouse and conversing among themselves. They couldn’t get up to the treehouse, this much was obvious. David was safe.

Then he realized he’d just barged into somebody’s house, and whoever lived here might not be happy about it.

“Hello?” He called. “Sorry for barging in, but it was an emergency. I can explain everything.”

He listened for an answer, but nobody responded. The treehouse was very quiet. Maybe nobody was home, but David had to make sure. He slowly walked from one room to another. The treehouse was huge and built around the trunk of the great tree, so eventually he returned to the room he’d started from. Nobody was home.

The house was so huge several people could live there, but only a few rooms were furnished. The treehouse had a lounge, a kitchen, an alchemy lab, a storage area, a bedroom, and even a pretty spacious balcony with a couple of armchairs and a table. Whoever built this house had done a great job. All the rooms that were furnished were quite comfy. David immediately liked this place. In the storage area were stacked enough self-heating meals to last the owner of the treehouse for months.

In one of the other rooms, bookshelves lined the walls. He took one of the books and opened it. As it turned out, the book had lots of potion recipes written in it. Whoever lived here must have been pretty good at alchemy too. David returned the book to where he’d taken it from and walked over to one of the windows. The two guys still stood at the same spot. They still hadn’t figured out how to get David and were probably now wondering what they should do.

David wondered the same thing. Whoever lived here might return soon. And then what? Who would they side with? Would they help David out, a person they didn’t even know or would they rather team up with his ex-captors to help them get him?

What to do? David thought nervously. What to do?