See, was that so hard? I almost want to make a joke about his indecisiveness, but I don’t think he’d take it too well right now.

“Right! Great, thank you for agreeing. In that case, I’ll get going straight away. I’ll check the camp you had, but… yeah. We’ll see.” Saying so, I head for the door. As I grab hold of its fleshy hinges, I keep my eyes on Simel. He’s still looking down, periodically checking the little puddle he expelled. Right. Okay. I don’t like not being able to fully trust him, but it’s not like I’ve got any choice. I pull open the door and step out, keeping my head inside just long enough to call out, “I’m going—see you soon!”

And then I close the door.

Haaaah…

Sighing, I lean my forehead against the door. Right. Right. Okay. Yeah. Yeah…

I’m starting to get a feeling that the real answer to the God of Pain’s question wasn’t that he’s gotten married recently. Maybe he’s picked up an instrument? Hmm. They do say that some music is more communicative than words, so if I get him a flute or something, maybe he’ll talk to me through that?

Yeah, that might work! Maybe.

Well, no use in procrastinating.

I turn away from the giant and take a deep breath through my nose. Sni—ff. Alright, the camp is that way, and if I keep the same speed as I did last time, then it shouldn’t take much time at all to get there. Probably. Before I leave, I take a quick glance over my shoulder. Man, not being able to smell what he’s doing is seriously messing with my brain. Is he standing up? Is he sitting down? Is he walking around? Is he lying down? I have no idea.

It feels weird, but for now, I really don’t have any other choice than to trust that he’ll hold true to his promise.

As I grumble and mumble, I pull a pair of snake skins out of my inventory and tie them around my hands and arms. Now then.

Going down on my hands and feet, I start running towards the camp on all fours. At this speed, the otherwise sweltering heat of the sun and sands becomes more of a breeze. Still horribly hot, but it feels slightly cooler than otherwise. Even better, when I’m running like this, I don’t have to think so much. It’s just me, and the horrible searing pain in every single one of my limbs. It’s very simple, I suppose. Unlike emotional pain, physical pain is straight-forward. It says, Here’s the thing that’s gone wrong, and Do something about it.

And while you’re feeling that WHITE static of burning neurons and electric impulses, nothing else really matters. The brain prioritises and decides that the pain of my flesh being cooked alive is slightly more critical than the fact that Simel won’t even talk to me.

My breathing, previously even and controlled, hitches.

Still, the pain won’t entirely drown out the memory of Simel withdrawing at my touch, of his darkly burning eyes—of his strange, unreadable expression.

I bite my lip and chew straight through it, the blood distributing itself evenly between the inside of my mouth and my chin. It cools me off slightly, but even the taste of warm copper won’t make me forget the thoughts bubbling to the forefront of my mind.

Simel. My good friend. My very first friend.

Something clawed and wrong coils around my brain and squeezes hard.

Maybe it would have been better if I never removed that hood.

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My body goes cold.

My arms turn frozen and all of a sudden I can’t run so I tumble to the ground and the soot and a massive snake of some sort leaps out to constrict me. I kill it. When it’s dead, I keep choking it. Once its neck goes cra—ack, I drop it and it falls into the sizzling soot.

Haah. Haah. Haah. Haah.

I look up. Ahead of me, just beyond a little soot dune, stands the camp. Straightening out, I walk towards it on two feet. The ground is covered in little mounds of soot. When I check inside one, I find a little goblin body, encased in ash. The body is nothing but cinders and bone. I continue.

Following scent, I move towards one of the tents. Ignoring the one that held the prince guy, I instead head towards the other, larger one.

The entrance is slightly blocked by soot, with the fabric of the entrance held down by a few pounds of ash. I push the cloth to the side and enter. The inside is mostly unscathed from the ash storm. The main feature would be the large round table placed in the middle of the tent. There’s nothing on it, though. The interior walls of the tent are mostly barren, though a few cupboards and similar are placed next to them. I can’t smell anything normally edible inside though, so I quickly leave.

Sniff sniff sniff. I can smell something alive. Large. Warm.

I head towards the nearby cliff. Unsurprisingly, there’s a cavern in its shade. The smell is coming from inside the cavern. Mutely, I head inside.

The floor is littered with small planks of wood, ripped fabric and bones. A few opened crates stand here and there. One of the more complete ones seems to contain a tent of some sort, made out of a slick, white leather. Another crate contains half-eaten dried rations. Right.

Heaving deeper inside the cave, I eventually find the reason for this all.

Laid atop a ripped-apart tent is a woolly drake and two smaller woolly drakes. Their blank, black eyes turn to me. I kill them.

Since Simel is waiting for me, I disassemble them as quickly as I can. Then, I leave.

No luck with the rations.

Emerging back out into the searing hot desert sun, I take a deep breath. This time, the scent of cacti hits me like a tennis racket. It’s a bit of a detour, but I need to do it.

I trudge into the desert and continue my sprint. Eventually I find a cactus, good and edible and decidedly non-poisonous. The kind with pink blooms. I’m just about to slice it up into nice even chunks when I realise that my hands and my claws are covered in almost a year’s worth of grime. Or, well, considering Moleman’s powerwash, it’s closer to half a year or so. Still, half a year’s worth of blood and internal organs and bile and disease can’t be good for you.

In that case, I’ll need to… Or should I… Or would it be better if…?

…Damn it.

After about five minutes of grumbling, I decide to just uproot the entire thing and carry it back as-is. It’s not like Simel will eat the skin and inch-long barbs, so it should be fine if I touch that. The spiny needles easily stab through my hands and palms, affixing it in place. Huh. Hey, light-bulb moment! You know in cartoons how they sometimes have a guy fall into a cacti patch and then he comes up and all of the cacti have gotten stuck to his back? Yeah.

I stab the cactus into my back. It’s a little heavy, but my stats can handle it. Even better, it’s firm enough to withstand me running with it on my back. I now have all the strats and advantages of a hedgehog, minus the spin dash.

Or do I?...

Over the horizon, I spot a long-legged bipedal bird stepping carefully over the soot.

Target acquired. Initiating wind-up. Charge commencing.

Speeding up to incredible speeds, I zoom toward the roadrunner-looking bird. By the time it notices me, it’s already too late. A leap, a roll into a ball, and then I tackle into it. We both go tumbling, its startled legs kicking frantically but finding no luck. I, in a similar vein, am trying desperately to catch a hold of its slim neck, but it just won’t get into reach. What in the heck is—

I stand up. Oh. Suddenly, my cactus backpack feels a fair bit heavier. Looking over my shoulder, I find the answer staring back at me with black, unblinking bird eyes.

Never before have I so thoroughly considered the possibility of being in a looney tunes sketch. For what feels like entire minutes, the both of us just stare at each other, fastened by the spines of a cactus squeezed in the middle. Now, I don’t know how you imagine my physiology to look like, but I am actually—fun fact—nothing more than a man. I don’t have arms on my back. My arms are also not made of rubber like a certain pirate king-to-be.

I can’t reach this fucking bird.

“Squowk!”

However, its beak can reach me, and with the haughty, reckless abandon of a creature with only barely enough brain to dig worms out of sand, it attacks me, bringing its face to my face for a peck. You see where I’m going with this, right?

I bite its beak, cracking a few of my own teeth in order to crush it between my molars. The bird makes some strange blubbering sound but I don’t let go, biting a hold first of its tongue and then anything else I can get into my mouth. Blood spurts, cartilage breaks, and after a bit of a tussle, it finally loses enough blood to go limp.

Good grief. Alright, then…

Which way was the crib now again?