The troll inhaled deeply, it’s nose in the air, trying vainly to catch Paul’s scent.

Just meters away, Paul pressed himself desperately into a shallow alcove in the cavern wall, breath held, muscles tensed. His heart hammered in his chest, each beat like thunder in his ears. Paul knew the Troll probably couldn’t hear this thudding heart, but couldn’t be sure.

The troll sniffed the air again, turning momentarily with its bulbous upper eyes to rest on Paul’s hiding spot. Paul clenched his bone-shiv in sweat-covered palms, willing the Troll away.

You don’t see me.

Paul’s levels in [Tracking] had given him the knowledge to hide his scent, and he had rubbed his body with several substances he’d rather not think about, but this close, he didn’t know if it would work. The troll took a step toward him, peering toward him in the darkness, and Paul’s grip on his shiv tightened. Spots appeared in his vision, and his lungs cried out for air, but he clenched his teeth and kept his breath held.

After an eternity of a moment, the troll finally turned away and loped back down the cavern. Paul forced himself to wait until he couldn’t hear the troll’s footsteps any longer, then finally allowed himself to breathe again. He slid to the cavern floor, gulping in breaths of sweet air. As his racing heart rate returned to normal, a message flashed through his brain.

*[Hide in Shadows] has increased to rank 5*

It was the third rank in [Hide in Shadows] that Paul received since making his furtive trek back through the troll-infested caves to his camps. He had been frustrated to find that the Trolls had not halted their search for him, and now they hunted throughout the caves in ones and twos. While Paul thought he could kill them in these small groups, he didn’t want to provoke them further than he already had. Leaving bodies seemed like a great way to encourage the trolls to continue searching, so Paul endeavored to escape undetected.

He avoided the trolls altogether when he could, taking alternate routes, or moving out of their path into deeper passageways then doubling back once they passed. Paul counted his blessings that the trolls, while quick, weren’t particularly stealthy, allowing Paul to hear them long before they heard Paul.

[Silent Movement] also aided Paul, allowing him to creep silently through the caverns even with his heavy pack, over the past few hours of skulking he received two additional ranks in the skill. Listening for the trolls movements had awarded Paul another power as well, [Sound Localization]. After receiving the skill Paul thought he could better determine which direction the troll’s foot-falls were coming from, but he couldn’t be sure.

Paul’s most significant advantage was the trolls running out of torches. Without those lights, Paul soon found that his [Darkvision] skill enabled him to see better in the dark than the troll’s enormous upper set of eyes did. Several times he thought for sure he would be spotted as he rounded a corner to find trolls further down a passageway, but their glances passed over him. Paul wondered how in pitch black, without photons hitting his eyes or the eyes of the trolls, either of them could see at all. He eventually resigned himself to the fact that the troll’s vision and his skill, which ranked up during the ordeal, were probably magic as well.

Using his mental map, Paul had been able to navigate himself through the searching trolls to two caverns with stagnant pools of water, so while his stomach complained - sometimes too loudly for Paul’s comfort in the otherwise eerily silent caverns - his waterskins were full.

After his most recent close-call, Paul pulled himself to his feet and began his quiet walk again. He could sense that Seymore’s hunger mirrored his own, and tried to send soothing feelings his way.

Soon, little buddy. We’re almost there.

He was reasonably sure that he had passed the edge of the troll’s search radius and wanted nothing more than to jog back to his nearest camp, but he forced himself to maintain his methodical pace through the caverns. Slow. Silent. Watchful.

Paul was terrified that the trolls might find one of his camps, but when Paul finally emerged into the fungus-lit cavern, there was no sign that it had been disturbed, and he sighed heavily in relief. Like all of Paul’s caches, this one was located in a cavern with a water source and bioluminescent shelf-fungus.

Paul unlimbered his pack and retrieved several hunks of salted cave musk-ox from his cache and refilled his waterskins from the small trickle of water that trickled down the cavern wall. He sat and gnawed on the dried meat, feeding Seymore as he did so. The tiny, hand-length long lizard perched on Paul’s knee and greedily gulped down the finger-nail sized morsels of meat that Paul fed him.

Paul exhaled, and forced his muscles to relax. He wasn’t sure how long it had been since he set out from this camp and found the mantis-trolls - two or three “days” by his estimation - but here, in the weak light of the warm shelf fungus and a full stomach, he finally felt safe. He absently rubbed Seymore’s head, and his eyelids began to droop.

He contemplated sleeping right there but forced himself back to his feet, slipping Seymore back into his pack. From the impression of annoyance he received from Seymore, the lizard had been close to falling asleep as well.

“Sorry friend,” Paul murmured. “We’re still closer to those trolls than I’d like. Let’s get back home, then I promise we can sleep for a day.”

He groaned as he stood, and took a moment to stretch his stiff and aching muscles before shouldering his pack and leaving the cache behind.

Paul made good time on the way back, moving smoothly along passageways he had traveled many times now. Without the fear of running into trolls, he also was able to summon a light sphere, and it’s glow lit his way through the twisting tunnels.

He practiced summoning more spheres and was pleased to find that whereas before he struggled to keep four spheres active simultaneously that the levels in [Manifold Intent] he gained during his fight with the trolls allowed him to summon five orbs at the same time, though the fifth required his continuous concentration lest it wink out into nothingness.

Now that he was in a section of caverns that wasn’t crawling with Trolls, he came across animal life again and had to wait out a herd of cave-muskox as they squeezed through a passageway on his path home. He also came across one of the massive snakes that prowled the cavern depths, but it wasn’t the largest he had seen, and a lucky mentally-flung light sphere into its eye made it blink in irritation and slither away.

Paul could hear his base-camp before he could see it, the same gurgle of water that had helped him find the vast cavern when he was new to the caves welcoming him back. He began to jog the last kilometer back but thought better of it as the pack jostled on his still-tender shoulders. Still, his pace quickened, and soon Paul stood in the massive cavern he had made his own.

Home sweet home.

Paul smiled and inhaled deeply, then frowned, the smell reminding him that he had rubbed himself in cave-muskox droppings to mask his scent.

After dropping Seymore off with Audrey, Mushnik, and Orin, Paul took care of his bodily needs at the latrine, then carefully disrobed and washed. His harsh homemade soap stung his healing skin, and he didn’t bother to heat the water from the stream, so by the time Paul was finished his teeth chattered, but being clean was worth it.

Naked, Paul clambered up onto his shelf-fungus bed and slithered into the warm furs, cradling a delicate object in one hand. He could hear Seymore and the other lizards chirping happily away at each other, along with the splashing stream beside him. Above him, the rainbow-hued firmament of the cavern ceiling glittered in the bio-luminescent fungi’s flow.

If this is all there is for me, I could live with it.

Paul held the feather he stole from the fire-wielding troll at arms-length in front of his face, twirling it between his fingers.

But there is more. There’s an outside. An escape. A place where birds fly.

...Or maybe this is from some sort of flight-less cave ostrich. He grimaced.

Either way, I know I have to find out. And that means I have to find a way past the trolls. Or through them.

He let the feather fall to his chest and watched the pool cast limpid reflections on the cavern ceiling.