There was a platform midway up the branches I was climbing. Except the word platform was a bit of an exaggeration, more it was a broad surface made out of tree branches.

There was blood and goblin guts spread everywhere and an unusually ape-like creature all green skin and bright fuchsia hair and a shiny fuschia butt like a psychedelic, psychotic baboon. My mind immediately wanted to scream hobgoblin, but that was just a guess.

Whatever the creature was, someone had taken wooden stakes and driven these sharpened wooden sticks through the creature’s hands and feet before slowly peeling its skin off. Wilmette had been here.

The only way off the platform was up, back down, or a vine that conveniently hung midway between two trees but had one end draped across a branch within easy reach. I looked down. I was about 40 feet up, and beneath me was a massive thorn bush. If I swung on the vine, there were two choices of platforms about 25 yards away. I could see bodies littering both platforms, but I couldn’t tell which way Wilmette had gone.

Taking hold of the vine, I backed up a little, gave myself some room to run and lept from the platform made of branches I was standing on, into the open air. Gravity took me almost immediately, the vine pulled taut, my brachiation carrying me down down down then back up up up and I almost missed the platform I was aiming at but I was able to stretch and somehow hooked my foot into a root and stopped myself from falling backward like a pendulum with its energy diminished.

I scrambled up onto the platform. The corpses were older here. Weeks old by my estimate. Some were months old. There were another two baboon-like creature staked out and vivisected.

From my admittedly limited studying, plus from the occasional novel back before I died, I was under the impression that Dungeons were supposed to remove, reduce and recycle their dead, converting bodies into the energies that allowed them to grow. That wasn't happening here for some reason.

By now I was getting used to the smell of death, so I looked closer at some of the bodies. A lot of them had arrow wounds. Wilmette must have climbed up to the other platform and peppered the goblins over here with a spicing of wooden love. It made sense. Swinging like Tarzan onto a platform of angry monkey goblins might be suicide even for someone with Wilmette's skills. Though it was also possible, he didn't want to break a nail.

On the platform, I could climb up to another platform up above; I could swing to another platform a short distance away or crawl across a branch to a third platform a short hop away. I chose the easiest and climbed up.

I climbed the tree I was on another fifteen feet. There was a portal, more a glorified hole, that led up through the branch floor. The scene here was similar to the one below. Corpses lay everywhere and the smell of weeks old death wafted through the breeze.

The only ways off this level seemed like up or down, so I climbed up again. At the top level of the tree, I found a massive goblin that been crucified to the side of the tree. All around the tortured goblin were dozens of regularly sized goblins in various stages of decomposition. I'd gotten used to the carnage and ignored it.

I was now standing above the canopy of the forest. A few other massive and scattered trees broke the canopy, and in the distance, I could see lifeless goblins littered far and wide. The silence and the lack of scavengers was eerie.

Wilmette must have been coming here from almost the from almost the day after I'd found this place. Returning day after day; making his way through this mess. I had lost him. It would take me days to explore this entire labyrinth of trees. And using woodcraft to follow him was a pure waste of time. The standard "broken twig, footprint, game trail" logic wouldn't work. Wilmette had been all through this warren of shit-chuckers. He had left ample evidence of his passage.

And even then an old part of my long-dead American heritage resurface. Was shit-chucker a speciesist slur? That thought made me uncomfortable for a fraction of a minute before I forgot about it.

Instead of looking for another path off the level I decided to use the fact that I could see for other similar tree crowned surfaces to go into stealth mode and watch for Wilmette from afar. If his path to wherever he was going took him up, and over the tree canopy I would see him and get a rough estimate of a direction to head.

I also needed to clean this damned level up. Wilmette had left a mess, but I didn't want to stand for hours in the lingering smell of death surrounded by corpses. My first thought was to roll the bodies over the side, but that might get them lodged on a branch I needed to climb down. Which left, picking up the dead bodies and throwing them.

Fortunately, goblins are small. They are quick and agile, but they are tiny. I could make a game of it and aim for a particular hole in the forest canopy then score myself for how close lobbed each goblin.

The unexpected problem with my plan was that after I had thrown my third goblin into the hole, I heard an incredible amount of swearing in hillbilly Cretan. After that, a rain of arrows one after the other shot towards me glowed with a life finding rune. Luckily I was still using my stealth spell as the arrows honed in on the minuscule long gone life energy of the remaining goblins that lay around me. Otherwise there was no way I could have dodged.

I guess I had found Wilmette.

Since there was squat he could do to me since his arrows kept missing, I kept lobbing dead bodies down on his head. Eventually, an arrow with an enormous amount of mana, even to my mana sight flew up and directly at me.

I was midway through throwing another goblin, and that arrow looked dangerous, so as gravity drew the arrow on its parabolic rainbow descent of destruction, I linked with the goblin I'd just thrown and began to pump it full of mana, sending it tumbling back down towards Wilmette.

The arrow abruptly changed course and steaked towards the goblin as it fell towards Wilmette. When the arrow struck the goblin, an explosion shook the forest, and tiny shrapnel of goblin rained down onto the forest below. I don't know how Wilmette had gotten that much mana into the spell he'd used on his arrow. One thing was for sure. If he had hit the platform I was standing on, it would now be toothpicks and I would be dead.

"Witch, fukr. Yu stop yus buggering pet gobbles to trys to bugger me? Get yus ass bak to Dugun start hole." Wilmette yelled up through the trees. He wanted me to go back to the start of the dungeon.

I was tempted to lob a couple more goblins in his direction on general principle but decided against it.

As I turned to climb back down the branches I'd come up, one of the burls in the side of the tree caught my eye for just a second. It seemed out of place. I went over to it and started fiddling with the knob of wood and sure enough pushing with enough pressure moved it, and I found a deep dark cavity, I reached in, and felt some fabric.

Pulling the fabric out, I saw that I had found a money purse. Inside of it were a dozen silver coins, a gold coin and a handful of copper coins.

Pushing the burl back into place, I hurried down the branches, to the platform I'd swung too. Down below the thorns were as sharp looking as ever. Taking better aim this time, I managed to fly through the air and only bash myself a little bit into the tree on the other side.

After I was out of the dungeon, I found a large tree, on top of a hill where a cool breeze gently wafted away the smell of decomposing goblin, to wait for Wilmette. He hadn't been that far ahead of me when he entered the dungeon nevertheless when he emerged it was almost midnight.

I got up from my resting spot and stumbled down to meet him. The look he gave me had an odd combination of anger and resignation, but he motioned for me to follow him.

Instead of heading back into the forest labyrinth we traveled about a mile away to yet another campsite he had set up. This must have been where he had been spending his time when I was back not at all being worried sick about the twisted bastard.

My mind took me back to long gone earth for a moment. I had to hold back a laugh at the momentary sudden mental image of some pampered spouse waiting at home for their partner who undoubtedly came home late from work or an affair or got stuck in traffic or from their bookie, and now had to listen to the requisite: "The dinner is cold, the children were worried, I was about to start calling the hospitals, don't you love me?"

I realized that had Wilmette not shown up for a couple of weeks, I would have assumed he was dead. I would not have bothered to look for him and would have had a tough time caring. My most significant decision would involve trying to choose between whether or not to head south to one of the nations where the Twice Lived were treated with respect or to head back home and risk trying to survive and endure long enough to receive the effervescent and elusive promise of Status magic.

There was another leanto that Wilmette had set up that he went. Unfortunately, there was no place for me because the idea of crawling into his leanto with him was kind of repulsive.

The next morning, Wilmette was waiting by the fire cooking something that mixed berries with deer meat. There was a chill in the autumn air that had, through the night, made my body stiff and unwilling to start the day. I hadn't even thought to bring a blanket and had finally settled on using some storm fallen foliage and dried leaves for warmth. Undoubtedly the tics had fed well.

I shuffled over to Wilmette, and he grunted and handed me the pot of foodlike substance.

When I had eaten, he got up, and I followed. We walked to the dungeon in silence. The first place we went was the same. He climbed up to the first platform and then waited for me to make like a monkey -- ahem goblin -- join him. Then he grabbed a vine, motioned swinging, and lept off the platform arcing gracefully over the thorns below and landing on the platform that I had not gone too the day earlier.

I followed with much less grace and said "Oof. Ow. Shit," when I landed.

Wilmette continued to ignore me. We climbed up another level, and he pointed to a large branch.

"Fukr. Luuk." Wilmette said. Then he straddled the wooden pathway and began shimmying forward with the massive tree between his legs. About ten feet out the tree limb split into two paths; he motioned for me to come out and join him.

When I had managed to propel myself down the bar to him, he reached up and grabbed a long stick that was growing from an adjacent branch and broke it free. He then used the twig to point to a few tiny holes on one of the two branches forward, probably from insects that I hadn't noticed on my way over.

Then Wilmette pushed down with a minimal amount of pressure on the divided pathway that we were looking at and I watched with horror as the entire route cracked, crumbled into wood-chips and sawdust, and thousands of tiny termites rained down on the forest below.

"Trap," Wilmette said.

He lifted his leg and began shimmying down the remaining offshoot. I followed until we got to yet another platform. Then he climbed down the tree to the forest floor.

An epic battle must have been fought here because the ground was littered with goblin bodies. There were a few of the pink-hair pink-butt baboon beasties, and I walked over to one and pointed at it. "What?"

"Hobble Gobble" Wilmette said.

So I had been right, they were hobgoblins. "Gobble Gobble?" I said trying to make a joke.

He shook his head. "Hobble Gobble. Gobble Gobble soon." He turned and bent down and pushed a berry bush out of the way. Behind the shrub was a low tunnel underneath the thorns. Wilmette got down on all fours and crawled into the passageway.

I followed behind him. I of course was much smaller than he was and had no difficulty ducking under the overhanging foliage and prickly walls of sharp spikes. Wilmette on the other hand could barely fit, and often the branches and thorns tore at his skin and clothing leaving occasional wet patches of blood in places that I had to crawl.

We emerged into a small clearing on the other side. While Wilmette was healing the cuts on his body, I looked up and for the first time in while I could see the sun. There was a beautiful pond in the center of the clearing that was empty of dead goblins, and I wanted to refill my water rations.

There were also goblins on the ground in various states of decomposition, but there were also a few hanging in the branches as if they had been casually lobbed there by some asshole. Bits of exploded goblin lay spread across the ground.

Wilmette glared at me but said nothing. If it weren't for all of the dead bodies, the meadow would look serene. Wilmette grabbed a goblin corpse and then walked over to the pond and threw the cadaver in.

Immediately the water began to thrash and boil. Tens of thousands of tiny fish, no bigger than minnows tore into the goblin, quickly devouring its despoiled flesh down to the bone.

Wilmette turned to me and said. "Pee in wata und th'll swim up ya piss and gnaw ya pecker." If I were to go the bathroom in the water, the fish would swim up the stream of my urine and try to eat the flesh of my penis. Supposedly President Teddy Roosevelt had once discovered something similar in the Amazon river, so I didn't doubt Wilmette. Instead, I backed away from the pond, and it's flawed promise of rest and fresh spring water.

Three large trees possibly led out of the clearing. I saw lingering traces of carnage and long gone death on all of them. Wilmette had been exploring for months and must have gone down most of the routes.

He led me to another tree, this time with no branches that were easily accessible. Instead, he took off his leather shirt slung it around the tree trunk, grabbed hold of it on both sides and used the shirt like a lumberjack might use a chain or a rope as leverage to climb the tree.

I followed his example. It was a lot harder than using easily accessible branches, and I was somewhat surprised he hadn't just nailed a makeshift ladder to the side of the tree if he came through here often enough.

But then Wilmette was a wilderness man through and through. Maybe climbing trees like this was just second nature and he didn't think of it. There was a bowl in the tree where it made a Y shape. From there, there was a nice walkable tree branch that led to another platform a short distance off. When I was up top, Wilmette motioned that I stop, he then pointed to a burl about midway through the walkable branch and pulling out a rock made threw it at the knob of wood.

It hit, and from up above three hornets nests fell from the branches, exploding on what looked like the easy passageway and bringing with it thousands and thousands of oversized angry, stinging insects. Luckily we were far enough away that they didn't come near us.

"Trap," Wilmette said.

Instead, Wilmette grabbed the side of the 'Y' branch of the part of the tree trunk he was holding and swung to the other side and stepped down into the leaves. Hidden under the leaves was a yet another branch, much thinner, flimsier, and unseen than the more obvious path.

Wilmette slowly walked across this branch, balancing like he was on a tightrope. Down below the everpresent 30-foot fall and floor of deadly thorns bushes waited for even the smallest slip.

At long last when Wilmette was across, I too started to follow. One foot in front of the other. The branch must have only been about 3 inches across. It bounced and swayed under my weight and in the wind. Then I was across.

This tree was well branched making it much easier to climb. So up we went. Like everywhere there were signs of battle, and the goblin corpses were much fresher here. Days old instead of weeks old.

About midway up our climb, there was a section of the tree where Wilmette motioned for me to stop.

"Watch," Wilmette said.

Wilmette jumped off the branch he was standing on and grabbed hold of a tree limb slightly higher. The bough bent, and I heard an audible clicking noise. Suddenly it was as if the entire tree was moving and masses of branches swept through the area where Wilmette had been standing. The only reason he was still there was that he was dangling from the one safe place. Even I down below almost got knocked off the tree.

Masses and masses of branches swept by and then swept back up the woody leaves of death that we were climbing up which had bent out of shape somehow reformed and transformed back into shape and Wilmette found leverage and began climbing up the tree again.

"Trap," he said, like fucking no shit.

The dangling routine was every bit as hard as it looked. The branches came sweeping down from above whipping against the bark and the path upward like a pine tree stuck in a hurricane gale. Needles and branches brushed against my skin as I clung to the trap lever for my life. Then it was over, and I climbed up to join Wilmette on the platform above.

On the platform there were three dead hobgoblins and something that looked like a silverback gorilla, except it there was streaks of green in its silver and it had tusks jutting out of its mouth.

I pointed at it and said. "What dat."

He merely said "Gobble Gobble."