Richard woke up to the sun shining into the low area of the forest that he had been sleeping in. Every part of his body ached, unused to the exercise he had put it through the day before. It took him a minute to remember where he was and what was going on, then he froze as he heard voices in the forest.

He carefully lifted his head up above ground level and looked through the bushes around his sleeping area. He saw a group of men walking past him, about a half mile to the north and moving west. They were wearing chain-mail and walking carelessly through the leaves on the ground, so they were easy to hear. Richard couldn't make out what they were saying, but one of them was laughing.

It looks like they're still searching. Richard thought. I hope that means they haven't found Evelyn. But it could be a problem for me.

Moving slowly, trying not to make any noise, Richard carefully lowered himself back to the ground, and stayed absolutely still until the men had passed out of earshot. Once it was clear, he quickly stowed his blanket back into his backpack and crawled out of his bushes.

Let's see. The rising sun on my left must be the east. Wait, can I even assume that in this world? I guess I have to. Ok. So, the town Evelyn suggested we meet is northwest of here, but that's the area all those soldiers are searching in. Maybe if I go south and west, I can circle around, cross that road, and come up to the town from a different direction?

Staying low to the ground and trying not to make much sound, Richard climbed out of the bushes and decided to head south-west for now, to hopefully get farther away from where the groups of soldiers were searching. He stayed low, moving in a crouch, knowing that in this open and flat forest a person standing up could be spotted from some distance away, and avoided stepping on branches or anything that would make a lot of noise. I'm better at this then I should be...that pathfinder skill must be helping.

He traveled that way for a few hours. Walking in a low crouch like that was becoming painful for his back, but he was reminded of why he was doing it when he heard voices again, in the distance behind him. He moved behind a thick tree, standing up and leaning his back against it as to not create much of a profile, and froze, waiting until this group passed by him as well. He resisted the temptation to peek around the tree and look at them, that kind of movement was likely to get him spotted.

Skill earned, Stealth (1)

He stayed there until he couldn't hear the soldiers anymore, and then waited a while longer, before starting to move again.

He noticed he was doing a much better job of trying to remain quiet as he moved through the forest now. Amazing how these skills work...it just feels to me like I've spent a long time practicing moving quietly through a forest, staying low, keeping trees and undergrowth between myself and the area to the north where I expect soldiers to be.

This time though, he didn't feel that strange disconnect between his Skill and his conscious mind that he had with that Riding skill. Maybe because I've been trying to do this myself for real for the past few hours, in a dangerous situation, and trying to learn it for myself. Ikar was right about that.

He didn't tire quite as quickly as he had yesterday, but he still had to stop and rest every few hours. By evening, he was in rougher terrain now, rockier, and hillier. A low creek cut through a hill at one point, and he decided to follow the creek south for a bit, rather than go up the side of the hill and risk being spotted. The creek cut lower into the earth, with stone and dirt cliffs rising up 20 feet on both sides of the narrow gully he was walking down.

People on Earth get killed in gullies like this if they're hiking down them when a flood happens, he thought nervously. Then again that's probably the least of my risks right now.

He stopped to drink some water, cupping it in his hands and bringing it up to his mouth. Running water like this is probably safe to drink, at least on Earth it's supposed to be safer then stagnant water. He drank several more gulps of water and pulled out a water skin he had had been carrying in his backpack and filled it up.

When he stood back up, he heard a groaning sound behind him. He turned and saw someone staggering down the creek towards him. The person slowly staggering towards him looked normal on the left side of his body, but the right side looked black and twisted. At first Richard thought the man had been badly burned, but that didn't seem right, it was more like his body was stretched, or warped. The right side of his face looked blackened and hung limp; the right side of his mouth was hanging open, and his right eye seemed to be covered up by blackened flesh hanging down over it from his eyebrow. His right leg didn't look like a leg at all, instead it was a bizarre blackened shape, curving off to his right with a shape like a hockey stick, which he dragged behind him along the rocks of the creek bed. His right arm was also too long, it was a tube of blackened flesh that dangled almost to his knee and didn't seem to have any hand or fingers at the end of it, or even an elbow, just a long black tube that came to a hard, black spike where a hand should be. The man had on a tattered long tunic and loose pants that were partly shredded.

“Hello?” Richard said. “Are...are you ok?” The words sounded stupid to him as he said them, but he didn't know what else to say.

The thing groaned and kept moving towards him. Richard noticed another similarly warped man walking down the creek several feet behind him, this one also looking like he was half human and half...something else. Richard had a very bad feeling about this, and turned to run, only to see several more warped men coming down the creek from the other direction. They seemed to be crawling up out of a small hole or cave Richard hadn't noticed in the rocky stone wall behind him. Each one was warped in a different way, but they all had major parts of their body distorted into long blackened parts. Some could walk, two of them whose entire lower bodies seemed to be a black elongated mess could only crawl on their hands, dragging their lower bodies behind them. All had the same creepy blank look in whatever was left of their face.

He quickly ran through options in his head. I have a sword, and a dagger, but I have no idea how to use either of them, and there are at least 6 of those things coming towards me. They seem to be slow moving, I could probably outrun them, if I could get to open ground. I don't think I can get past them, not in this narrow gully. Which only leaves...He quickly ran to the side of the gully and started to climb his way up.

The first few steps weren't bad, there was a bit of a path that had been worn in the rock by water, but after that the climb got more difficult. Richard had tried wall climbing a few times back on Earth, but he didn't really have the upper body strength for it. Fortunately, the rocky face was broken up, with a lot of good footholds, and he was able to scramble his way up, one step at a time.

As he got higher, now about ten feet off the ground, the cliff in front of him became steeper. He looked down and saw a few of the warped men climbing up the cliff below him. They were moving slowly, none of them had all of their limbs intact, but they seemed to be managing to inch their way up by wedging the deformed black things they had instead of arms and legs into cracks in the cliff as their human hands and feet got purchase on other spots.

Richard tried to climb more quickly. His right leg found a narrow ledge that jutted about an inch out from the wall, and he managed to put his weight on that while pulling up with his arms. His left foot found a crack in the wall that he could wedge his toes into, and he kept creeping up the wall. At one point, the rock he was holding onto slipped out under his weight and fell bouncing down the side of the cliff, but he managed to hang on with his other hand, his stomach twisting, and then found another handhold.

He was only a few feet from the top when his luck ran out. The last few feet of the cliffside were dirt, not stone, and he couldn't find any good hand or footholds to move farther up. He started moving to the left, inching along a narrow ledge, holding onto a rock with his right hand and a root growing out of the side of the cliff with his left hand, and was trying to find another way up, when he felt something grab his right shoe. He kicked down wildly at the warped man, and almost fell backwards off the cliff, but held on by hanging onto the root. The warped man held onto the bottom of his shoe tightly, not letting him go. Richard could see that the warped man's good leg was resting on a ledge below him, and his blackened arm and leg were both wedged into the cliff. Richard wasn't sure if the thing was trying to pull Richard down from the cliff or if he was trying to use Richard to pull himself up, but either way, Richard didn't think he could hold on for much longer.

Richard let go with his right hand and reached down quickly. He wasn't sure if the root he was holding onto with his left hand was going to hold his weight by itself, but he didn't have much choice, and decided to take a gamble. He tried to pull out the sword sheathed on his left hip, but his left hip was pressed against the rocky cliff and he couldn’t get the sword loose. He reached down to pry the fingers from the bottom of his shoe, but the warped man was too strong for him and he couldn't budge them. So instead, Richard yanked on the on the end of the shoelace of his right sneaker, untying the shoe. The untied shoe was pulled off of his foot by the weight of the warped man, and the warped man fell backwards off of the cliff, still clutching Richard's sneaker. The warped man didn't make any sound as he fell, or even show any emotion on his face. He fell to the ground with a loud thud, twenty feet below, and then he didn't seem to be moving.

There were still other warped men climbing up after Richard though, so he had to keep moving. He pushed his right foot into the dirt, feeling the moist earth through his sock, and pulled himself up by the root he was still holding in his left hand. He managed to pull himself high enough, so he could reach up with his right hand and grasp the edge of the cliff. The first time he reached up he came away with just a handful of dirt, but the second time he was able to grab onto a thick tuft of grass and was able to use that to help pull himself up to get his left foot up to a small ledge. He finally managed to scramble up over the edge, and lay there for a second, gasping for breath.

I should run he thought but didn't feel like he had the energy. He quickly checked his status and saw that he only had 3 sp left after that desperate climb. If I try to run now, I won't get very far before I collapse and then they'll catch up with me.

He looked down the edge of the cliff. Two more of the warped men were slowly climbing up towards him. A third had tried but had fallen, along with the one he had pushed down, and he saw the other two crawling around the bottom of the gully, both looking too deformed to even try to climb.

Richard was standing on rocky, hilly soil by the edge of the cliff, and he grabbed a rock the size of his fist and threw it down at one of the warped men climbing up after him. The first rock he threw missed completely, but he threw a second one down, and this one struck the warped man on the shoulder. He threw a third rock, and this time, it struck him right in the head, and the warped man fell.

The last warped man paused for a second, looking up at Richard with eyes that seemed almost soulless, and Richard threw another stone down at him. This one struck the thing right in the center of its face, breaking his nose, and a thick blackish blood started to ooze out of it. The warped man didn't make a sound or show any sign of pain, and just kept slowly climbing up. Richard continued throwing rocks down at the warped man, striking him several more times, and finally he fell as well.

The few warped men still in the gully seemed to realize that they weren't going to win this and started crawling away. Richard threw a few more rocks after them and screamed at them. “Get out of here! Get away from me, whatever the fuck you are!” They crawled away back down the gully, and he saw them crawl back down into the hole he had seen them come out of.

Richard's heart was racing, and he got to his feet and stumbled away from the cliff. Within a few steps he realized that walking with one shoe wasn't going to work very well, so he took off his other shoe and put it in his backpack, and then started walking away from the cliff in his socks. He almost threw the other shoe away rather than carry it, but he couldn't bring himself to do it. It was probably the only Earth sneaker anywhere on this world.

For your risky but effective maneuvers during combat, you have earned +9 High Stakes points and +6 Cunning points.

4 Abominations defeated. 750 experience points granted.

Skill earned, Climbing (1)

Skill earned, Thrown weapon (rocks) (1)

Level up, human (3). Max SP +3. Max HP +2. Human racial trait: explorer acquired. HP and SP restored.

Thank the gods for that. Richard had felt too bone tired to move, certainly too tired to run, and he did not want to have to stop and rest here until his stamina came back. There were still some of those things left and it seemed likely they could find another way to get up here. But with that level up he suddenly felt refreshed, as if he'd just rested for hours, and so he started moving again.

Hopefully there aren't any of those soldiers around here. If there are they probably heard that battle and are headed here already. No longer bothering to be quiet, he took off at a jog, heading west towards the setting sun. Even with his skill at traveling through the forest, running without shoes was not fun and he frequently stepped on something hard or jagged that hurt. Twice he had to stop to pull thorns out of his feet. He kept moving though; he didn't want to deal with any more things like those “abominations” tonight.

Skill earned, Pathfinder (forest) (2)

He jogged through the forest until it was too dark to see where he was going. There was a quarter moon tonight, not enough light. He kept walking through the dark, for a little while, wanting to get a little farther away from whatever that was behind him, and then decided it was time to stop for the night before he hurt himself or started going in circles.

Looking for a safe place to sleep, he decided to climb a massive oak tree. He had never been much of a tree climber, not even when he was a child, but he climbed this one surprisingly easily, pulling himself up from one large branch to the next. About 10 feet off the ground, he pulled himself up onto a large branch wider then he was, swung his legs up onto it so he was sitting on the branch with his back to the tree. He took the rope out of the backpack and wrapped it around himself and the branch, tying himself onto the branch so he wouldn't fall off in his sleep. He also tied his backpack to the branch, so it couldn't fall off either. He pulled out some more of the dried jerky the soldier had been carrying, pulled the dirty blanket over himself, and ate the jerky while sitting there on the tree branch, looking up at the stars.

The stars were beautiful. You couldn't see anything like this in the college town he had lived in. Richard had a couple of times dragged his friends out to the middle of nowhere to camp out and stargaze; they probably thought he was crazy driving for hours to get to the mountains just to sit on sleeping bags and look at the stars, but they humored him and they all had a good time. Even there, though, it wasn't anything like this. He could see more stars here than you could see from anywhere he'd ever been on Earth.

Richard did see familiar constellations in the sky, though. This world might have been totally different than Earth, but the stars looked the same. He could see Leo, and Ursa Major. It looked like the same sky you would see from the northern hemisphere on Earth at this time of year in April, as far as he could tell, so wherever he was now it seemed like it was still the same time of year as it had been on Earth.

Maybe this is some kind of parallel universe, then. Richard thought. He hadn't had much time to think about the big questions of where he was and what was happening, but he thought about it now. All the obvious theories were in his mind; he could be in another world, of one kind or another, or he could have had his mind uploaded to a of computer simulation. Or I could be crazy he thought, but couldn’t take the thought seriously; everything here seemed too real to be a hallucination or delusion.

While his mind spun with unanswered questions, the physical exertion he had put himself through today was far more than he was used to, and he felt his eyes slowly close, and he drifted off into sleep.