It felt foreign, walking into a mist-covered forest after climbing out of a deep dark pit. More so since Micah was on the inside of a massive structure, even if it was the Tower. He was inside, how could there be trees? Maybe to the Dwarf, who was said to have constructed this place, trees were just like herbs you kept in the kitchen or flowers on window sills …

Micah guessed he shouldn’t be so surprised. Still, he walked around in a daze, not even wearing pants and covered in bandages with a chest strapped to his back. That was, until he remembered he was inside the Tower and he adjusted the grip on his dagger. Maybe he should climb a tree for safety? What if the trees were a trap? The trees were quite high, though …

“Trees,” he said, still not quite able to believe it. Also, just to get the word out of his head. Hesitantly, he started his trip proper into the forested floor. He didn’t know anything about it, which meant that he was at least on the third floor, but he had to find an exit. Already, he was hungry and tired. He considered using his whistle, but he didn’t want to alert any nearby monsters. He didn’t want to disturb this peace.

Micah stayed close to the high stone walls that surrounded the forest. He looked up as he wandered, staring at the fake ceiling. There was sunlight. It felt so unnatural. After a bit, the red light from the crystal tied to his arm started to annoy him, so he untied it and shoved it into his pants’ pocket near his shoulder. He’d have to put it in the chest with the other things later.

The forest looked pretty normal to Micah. He recognized most of the vegetation. Their leaves and bark probably weren’t any more valuable than ones he could collect outside the city, and he couldn’t make use of most of those anyway, so Micah didn’t bother collecting them. It would only waste his time. Herbs, on the other hand, he kept an eye out for. They were easy to pluck and carry. Just stuff them away somewhere.

As he made his way through along the outskirts of the forest, however, he found more and more herbs that weren’t exactly nice. Most of them were poisonous. Well, not dangerous poisonous, but they would make you feel sick and your head hurt. Some of them made you see things that weren’t there or see double. He didn’t recognize all of them, but guessing from the majority that he did, he assumed there was a theme to the plants on this floor.

He didn’t want to pick any of the not-nice herbs, not even the ones he knew. He didn’t trust them. Instead, he picked mint and lemon leave stalks on the rare occasions that he saw them. He didn’t have time to pick the leaves one by one, so he just walked around with the bundle of herbs in his one hand. It felt nice, familiar. He let himself think he was just outside the city on a field trip.

After a while, Micah suddenly heard retching sounds and his heart rate spiked. He almost let go of his bundle of herbs. It sounded like someone was throwing up. That meant people. Micah turned at that and followed the sounds deeper into the forest proper. All the while he wondered why someone was throwing up. Had they eaten from the plants in the forest? Micah had a healing potion with him, maybe he could help them in exchange for rescue? The thought brought a smile to his lips and Micah felt excited as he pushed through the undergrowth. He stepped into a clearing.

He found a demon throwing up a demon egg.

He froze. It was a wolf— No, it was a monster, but it looked like a wolf. It looked so wrong to him, he didn’t even stop to consider the implication. Micah turned away and threw up. After the first spray of slush, all that came out was dry retching. It felt like he was heaving up his stomach. Behind him, the monster in wolf’s clothing was doing much the same. Micah could feel its chest heaving with each push. He glanced back and saw its throat bulging. Then came another red worm to the join the wriggling mass of white in front of it.

He kept on staring until it finished. He couldn’t stop himself. The abomination was panting then, and it stepped back, drool running from its mouth. The ball of worms began to hover a little higher and bulge and shift. It grew six protrusions that stretched into four legs, a tail, and the mouth of a massive worm. It had teeth. Human teeth. Then the other worms spiraled into one another and formed see-through red antlers protruding from its shoulders. They smiled.

Finally, like an afterthought, a head grew around the mouth-worm. The head of a wolf. It hit the ground and panted just like its maker. Then it looked up at him and stared. They both were.

They howled. A perfect imitation as far as Micah was concerned.

He ran.

He stumbled over his feet halfway through the brush, but he didn’t fall. Not this time. Still, he fumbled as he ran on through the trees and underbrush, flinched against the oncoming branches and lugging that chest on his back.

The wolves’ cry was met with repetition, half a dozen cries forming a mock cacophony of the real beasts. What are those things?! He thought in terror.

Micah heard them rumbling as they chased after him, a constant low growl in their throats. They were gaining on him. He couldn’t outrun them. There was no way he was going to hide in a tree, either. The vegetation here had it out for you and he didn’t believe for a moment that the demons couldn’t climb. He had no choice. He slowed his pace a bit to preserve his strength and waited until one almost caught up. His hands were at his shoulders, holding the two pants legs left and right. He’d untied them moments before. Then the beast was on him and he let go.

Micah heard the chest tumble to the ground behind him and assumed he’d missed, so he threw himself to the side instead and readied his knife. But when he looked back, there was no wolf there. Only a fog-shaped impression curling into the air above the chest.

Were they that easy to kill?

No, he thought. No, the wolf-shaped ball of worms had been almost see-through. They were made of essence and— and maybe fog? The ones doing the retching were real, though. That meant the demons probably used the copies to force their enemies into making mistakes, hounding them, keeping them on their feet, making them second-guess themselves.

Why? Why not just overrun them with numbers and strength? Were they covering for some weakness? After the first clone, spotting the fakes would be easy. Maybe in the heat of battle—

His thoughts were cut short by three wolves stepping out from the forest around him. They were all three fakes. That meant the real ones were using them as a distraction. Were they behind him? So he should run at the fakes, right? But what if that was their goal and they were waiting in the undergrowth behind the fakes …

Okay, Micah thought. He suddenly understood the part about second-guessing himself. Maybe the worm-demons weren’t so stupid after all.

The moment he heard a sound behind himself, though, Micah just ran on through the beasts in front of him, heedless of any traps there might be. He grabbed his chest by a side-handle on his way past, ready to slam it into the first real thing that moved. He’d switched his blade to his left.

There was nothing there to meet him. Micah ran on.

Behind him, the wolves howled. There were twice as many calls this time around.

Yeah, yeah, Micah thought, only a little more unnerved than he’d already been, which was still hysteric. But even so, he was getting sick and tired of things trying to kill him with numbers and magic. Pieces of shit! He called back at them in his mind. Half of you are just farts on a stick!

The chest weighed heavy on one side as he ran. Something favored that side as it chased him. Micah thought it a repeat of his last encounter. He spun to get a look at the wolf behind him, ready to continue running if it was fake. The wolf hit him before he knew it and knocked him to the ground.

It knocked the wind out his lungs.

It knocked the wind out his lungs and kept it out.

Micah couldn’t breathe. His spine hurt. His head was throbbing in pain. The wolf was heavy. He could feel its breath at his ear and he recoiled, slamming his fists into its face. All that did was make it growl and snap at his neck. Micah shoved both his hands up against its neck, keeping it off him. He’d dropped both his knife and the chest when it tackled him. Quickly, he glanced to the left to see where they were. When a low growl built up in the wolf’s throat, he looked back at it in fear.

He could feel the growl building up as the beast’s body trembled. It felt so warm, so real. That was real fur, real skin he was pressing up into the squishy neck of an animal. Micah imagined the worms wriggling beneath that skin and felt disgusted. He was touching its meat-suit, its facade. He wanted to get it off him, to kill it, to crush that smiling face on the inside. It was so wrong.

As fast as he could manage, Micah let go with one hand and went for his knife. Immediately, his other hand couldn’t hold the wolf any longer and it dove for his neck. Micah brought his knife back just in time and plunged it into its jaw. It recoiled in pain and went off him, dragged its head along the ground as it tried to get the knife out of its open mouth. Micah saw it rubbing its paws down over its head like a dog might do.

How dare it?

He went for his treasure chest. All he could think of was smashing the box down on that thing’s head until it was mush. But there was a wolf staring at him from the other end of the clearing, the chest halfway between them. Why hadn’t attacked him when he was prone?

Do you really fucking care right now?

No.

Micah ran for the chest. The wolf ran, too. It was faster than him and leaped over the lump of wood, diving for him through the air. Micah simply let himself fall to the ground and skid past underneath it. The grass cushioned some of his slide, but not all of it. The dirt scraped along his exposed skin. When he reached the chest, he swung it around at the wolf behind him. The moment it hit the wolf’s hind legs, the beast burst into smoke.

Micah flinched away and hid behind the chest like it was a shield. He hadn’t been expecting that, but he should have. These were the lower floors, of course there were unmade.

He stared back at the wolf with the knife in its maw.

That one wasn’t.

The beast had stopped its scraping, no longer trying to get the knife out. It looked at him with cold fury in its eyes. Micah felt that raw fear again, the kind he’d felt when the cavern had shaken all around him, the kind he had when the salamanders came for him. The kind of fear that let you imagine the physical touch of what the threat was going to do to you.

He ran.

By the sounds in the distance, the wolves followed him. How many were there, real ones? Micah thought. Seven, maybe? He guessed by the calls. He’d killed one, but only because it was unmade and died in an instant. He didn’t have his knife anymore. It was stuck in a nightmare he didn’t want to go near, one that was quickly catching up to him.

Micah fumbled in his pocket until he found his whistle and blew like his life depended on it, because his life did depend on it. Not for a second did he believe he could kill a whole pack of those demons.

Something hit him from the right and sent him sprawling. Micah hadn’t even heard it coming. The wolf wasn’t on him, but everything was tumbling and spinning. He felt like throwing up again. He could feel the chest at his feet and grabbed it as he tried to get up. Something was— Something was circling him. That was the second time a wolf didn’t attack him when he was stunned.

Two’s a coincidence, he thought, three’s a pattern, but Micah did not want to let himself get stunned a third time. He had to take a chance. He ran at the wolf the moment he could see straight. If they didn’t attack him while he was stunned, it might be because of some weird pack dynamic. Maybe the real wolf he had wounded had some kind of claim on him. Or maybe, a voice inside of him said, maybe it was because they were weak.

Micah dragged the chest behind him as he met the wolf. It growled and stood its ground, but when push came to shove, it wimped out. Oh thank fuck, Micah thought when it turned to flee. He kicked it hard in the ribs. The wolf fell over, but it didn’t disappear. It seemed to be leaking light somehow as if its shell were cracked.

He brought the chest up and—

Another wolf slammed into him. He went tumbling down a slope he hadn’t even noticed before. Micah hit the bottom of it almost as hard as the ground when the wolf had tackled him, but only almost. He was up on his knees in an instant, crawling towards where his chest had fallen open, its contents spilled out in the grass around it. He would have to abandon them now.

The wolf was there before he could reach the chest, though. Micah turned to face it and it pinned him to the ground with a weight, even though it wasn’t wounded. It was another fully-formed one, then. There wasn’t just one in the pack. How many more? Micah despaired. How many more?

He was screaming when he elbowed it in the face. It flinched to the side and turned back, looking angry. He’d clearly pained it a little, but that didn’t matter. Micah kept on beating it with his one fist, hoping to get it off, but it just took the beating with an ever louder-growing growl in its throat.

It stared at him when he stopped, and Micah stared back into its red eyes.

“Why won’t you just kill me?” he asked. In the distance, the pack howled. One of the screams was savage. It promised blood.

There was his answer.

Micah had been groping in the grass around himself all the while he fought it. Finally, he felt a sharp pain in his hand and knew he had found what he was looking for. He picked the jagged shard of glass up and plunged it into the beast above him.

It reacted instantly, howling and going for his neck, but Micah reached up and hugged it as tight as he could while he kept on stabbing it in its back over and over again. The shard was cutting into his skin, slipping from his grip in the slick of the blood and forcing him to grip it tighter which made the cut even deeper. Only the bandages kept it in his grasp.

But that was just pain. The wolf died beneath him. It tried to run, but Micah wouldn’t let it. He straddled it and kept on stabbing until he could feel its strength leave. And then he kept on stabbing.

“Why won’t you leave me alone?” he screamed at its corpse. His voice was hoarse and tore his throat. “I just want to leave! Just. Let. Me. Leave!”

Another wolf panted as it came rushing down the slope towards him. Micah saw and ran up to meet it. He rammed it and plunged the piece of glass into its chest. The beast pushed up against him. For a moment, he feared it might topple him over, but then it burst into smoke. Micah fell through and breathed some in, coughed, and spit on the ground in disgust.

There was another one up above, the one that was leaking light. Micah threw a stone at it and missed. It ran for him. He threw another stone and missed again. Then he just threw indiscriminately, as quickly as he could. He pelted it with three before it could reach him, a snarling mess of leaking light. It was almost tumbling down the slope. Micah just dodged when it came, and kicked it along its way. It hit the ground hard and burst.

Then there were four.

Micah ran and they chased him through the forest. They would all die, though, eventually. Even the angry one. Micah gagged it with his pants when he went back for them, to keep it from biting him with a dagger stuck in its mouth. He pulled that back out and defeated it.

In the end, Micah found a cave up high in a wall where the last wolf died. He found another treasure chest inside. He didn’t even look at it. He just put his first one down next to it and huddled into a ball.

He held his whistle against his mouth with his right hand. With his left, he pressed into the wound of its palm.

It’s just a cut, he told himself as he whimpered. He had more. A dozen small cuts along his body from where wolves had scratched him. Every time one did, it felt like fire along his skin and Micah froze up for a moment. Every time, it nearly killed him.

It’s just a sharp pain, he told himself, not fire. He needed to do this, needed to be stronger when he left again if he wanted to survive. He shut his eyes.

It’s just the darkness, he told himself. Not the void. You made it through that ocean.

Micah lay there and whistled.