I shook that nonsense straight out of my head. I could easily make it through this… so long as I wasn’t stupid enough to assume it would be easy. Best to assume it would be a miserable slog and move forward carefully.

I shadowed the ant procession from the side of the branch, keeping my profile low as I moved. I honestly wasn’t sure how much good that was doing. Did ants even have half-decent eyesight? I had no idea, and until I did I’d act like they were fucking hawks.

The ants didn’t seem interested in their surroundings, which I couldn’t help but see as a good sign. It didn’t matter how sharp your vision was if you weren’t using it.

Aaaaand that was a helpful reminder to watch where I was going. I split my attention and put one eye on the path ahead.

The branch stretched on, gently curving upward before it split into dozens of lesser branches. The ants split with it, going off in countless different directions in search of food. That would make things more difficult. It was simple enough to keep an eye on a single line of ants, but a thousand little foraging groups would be a different matter entirely. They were defensive, so if I surprised one it could easily react violently.

Until then, things would hopefully go smoothly.

Shockingly enough, that’s actually what happened. I trekked along the side of the branch without anything trying to kill me even once. A bat did kill some ants, but that wasn’t my problem.

Okay, so it nearly gave me a heart attack when it just swooped down and snatched up a mouthful of ants, but still, close only counts in horseshoes and fireballs. Ultimately I just had to drop back lower on the branch and get out of sight as they bunched up and clacked their mandibles at the air angrily.

After a few minutes the clamour died down and it was back to business as usual. The ants weren’t emotional enough to slack off just because of a few deaths and as soon as it became clear that there was no immediate threat they marched on, and so did I.

With [Beggar’s Disregard] pumped up a bit and an eye on the sky, of course.

A few more bats made passes, but they didn’t seem to have the same balls as the first, veering off as the ants raised their butts threateningly and clacked their mandibles in the air. Note to self: the ants have something dangerous in their butts.

No, scratch that; the ants have something dangerous about their butts. There, that was a much safer way of phrasing things.

Well, a bit safer anyway.

Things changed when I approached the first offshoot. Up to this point was barren, whether naturally or stripped clear by ant foragers, but once the branch split there was too much ground to cover for even the colony to completely consume. The leaves here were wide as sails, far too large to be stripped by even the most ravenous of foragers.

The parade of ants continued onward, with only fragments breaking off here at the beginning. An equal number were coming out, laden with freshly cut leaves.

I stuck to the main path, not trusting the foliage just yet. Better to continue on for the moment. The main branch kept on curving upward, so it’d be back to branch hopping soon. Once the central branch was less of a path and more of a cliff I’d head out along the offshoots. Near the tip they began to interweave with higher offshoots, so I’d be able to jump from one to the other and inch my way upwards.

The greenery grew thicker as I shadowed the marching ants further up the branch. The column continued to shed members like dander with each foraging party that split off, the once dominant line of ants growing ever more tenuous among the thickening foliage looming on every side.

The ants maintained their speed through the changing terrain, but I wasn’t so consistent. With the increasing cover came increasing caution. Not only were there buds and shoots coming up through the bark, but there were all manner of creeping and climbing vines to boot. Add in leaves broad as a barn wall and visibility was cut straight to shit. With that kind of undergrowth, or at least what would be undergrowth in a normal forest, there was no more walking in straight lines, not for me.

Sure, the ants could blaze their own trail with the sheer weight of hundreds of insectoid bodies, but I had no such luxury. Would that I had a thousand minions myself. As it was, I was reduced to creeping through the foliage with a speed further reduced every time I paused to peek around a shoot for predators.

Fine with me. I was making decent progress, so I could afford to be not dumb about this. It meant I’d need to take a few more breaks, but pushing through without rest was very much not a not dumb-idea.

I rebuilt and updated my camouflage as I moved, getting it all well enough updated to the local environs. The shoots were coming right off the branch, and were green growth from base to tip, giving them a look distinct from the brown bark of my current guise. The barky carapace could stay, but the twigs I that jutted out to break up my profile would need to be replaced. By the time I was done I should have brown bark with vibrant green shoots, just like the tree itself.

Of course, building up a proper suit of camouflage wasn’t a quick task, and by the time I was starting to get comfortable with my new getup I was beginning to notice the blurring at the edge of my vision. I checked behind me, but in the last few hours it had gotten too dense to really be sure how far I’d come. It felt like I’d come a long way, but that wasn’t really a great way of measuring things. Vague impressions could tell you things indiscernible to your conscious self, but they could also be lying bastards.

At least the increased cover made it easier to find a place to bunk down. I squirmed in between a bundle of fresh green shoots and wove them together over my head. It became a bit awkward as the foliage bound up my movements, but I worked through it. By the time I was done I had a leafy cocoon to conceal me as I slept.

I drifted off into a fitful sleep, ears twitching at every sound.

I jerked awake, panic flashing through my veins as my limbs hit binding fibers around me. I was already moving to struggle free as my eyes snapped open and I remembered that it wasn’t human ropes around me, but my own woven nest.

I let the breath I’d gasped in out slowly. I was fine.

A slight sniffing came from behind me and all the tension I’d lost flooded back in. At least I was awake enough to maintain my sense this time, and I didn’t move a muscle. Jostling the foliage the way I had upon waking would only aid in finding my position.

Camouflage was great, but it fundamentally worked best on the unprepared. Blending into the background only worked when you were in the background.

The creature huffed and its breath washed over me. The gust blew through the foliage with the smell of rotten meat. I swallowed. Judging by the angle of the bending stalks, its head would be about a foot behind me and maybe a couple feet up.

I moved one arm beneath the cover of my body, fingers finding a knife hilt. When it struck I’d duck my head to guard the throat, then bring a blade around to aim at it. Most animals, natural or unnatural, didn’t have the flexibility to reach around the back like that, so my counterattack would be surprising enough to get through. If I was lucky, maybe my strike would even land on its own throat.

Claws scraped across bark and I could feel the shifting weight as the beast turned and prowled away.

I let out the breath I’d been holding, shuddering with the awful release of tension. All the building panic and adrenaline was left without the fight or flight it demanded, leaving my blood teeming with hormones I had no use for.

I needed to calm down, but the hells was I going to be doing it here. I hurriedly sliced my way out of my little nest as soon as the soft footsteps retreated out of easy hearing and scuttled off in the opposite direction from where the creature had wandered off. Not sticking around.

I tucked myself behind some shoots a few dozen feet away and took slow, deep breaths. The first came out ragged, but by the second there was nary a hitch to be heard. When I exhaled on the third breath it had finally become smooth and silent.

Alright. First, secure my new position. I gave my immediate surroundings a second scan with eyes and ears alike, but if there was anything larger than a shrew, it wasn’t showing itself.

A proper shrew, not whatever warped hell-shrews called this place home.

More importantly, I could hear all the little hums and chirps of life starting back up. Whatever the creature had been, it was gone now.

Unfortunately, the beast’s last known position was along my current path. I’d need to move past it if I wanted to leave.

I shook off my thoughts. It was just another animal, ranging in its search for prey. I’d give it some time to finish its business before moving on myself, and our paths wouldn’t cross again.

As a side benefit, I had an excuse to take my time with breakfast for once. My hands furtively darted from pouch to mouth filled with nuts and berries, but such simple fare just wasn’t filling me like it used to. I might have ignored it on another day, but with my progress already delayed for the morning, why not indulge?

My eyes closed in satisfaction as I savored the meaty goodness of bacon before I forced them open again. Satisfied no lethal danger had appeared in my half-second of blindness I went for a second piece. Damn but this stuff was good. I should steal from humans more often.

But, all good things came to an end, and even the measured pace of my eating couldn’t stretch breakfast out forever. I went over a few non-food related tasks like touching up the edge of my spear, but then it was time to move on.

With any luck the beast would have moved well on by now, so I assumed it hadn’t and proceeded with caution. The leafy walls jutted out haphazardly, forming a kaleidoscope of green that blocked any notion of visibility, but the thin membrane of a leaf did little to inhibit sound. Noises simply bounced and echoed throughout the greenery with neither origin nor termination, baffling the ears as thoroughly as the eyes.

Not about to be stopped by that, I hugged the side of a leaf and crept along it. One ear brushed up along it, listening for whatever sounds made it through, while my eyes kept watch on the other side.

I darted from leaf to leaf, making sure to minimize the time I spent in the open. Navigating was a bit tricky, but ironically easier than the relatively mundane jungle below. Enormous size or not, the curves of the tree branch were still a whole hell of a lot easier to pick out than the shape of the cavern floor. That was more than enough to keep me headed up-branch, even with the wider environment only visible in the occasional flash of brown through the thick canopy.

Tragically, my many stolen accoutrements didn’t extend to pocket watches, so I didn’t know exactly how long it took, but I ultimately slept twice more and ate five times before the curve reached the critical point.

The branch had been sloping up for quite a while, but it was hitting the point where I might as well climb, so climbing was exactly what I was going to do. I left the main branch behind me in favor of the offshoots.

.I scrambled up the ridged spine of a leaf, hurling my spear up as the leaf began to bend beneath me. The weapon arced over a higher branch and I jumped to catch it on its way down. With trailing rope looped over the branch it was the work of a few seconds to haul myself up again.

The world opened up around me, if only by a little. Step by step I climbed higher and step by step the leaves thinned around me. I took a good look at where the ant’s branch met the cavern ceiling, locking it in my memory. If I couldn’t find any promising leads straight up it wouldn’t be too far to move over there and find whatever exit it was that the ants had.

Until then, up it was.

Climbing up wasn’t exactly easy, but it was oddly safe. The foliage thinned between the largest branches, so it wasn’t quite the same nightmare of maze-like greenery with stars know what around any given turn, but thinner was only a relative term; it still didn’t have enough open space for any of the flying megafauna to swoop in.

It was a nice respite from the rest of this place. I didn’t get in a life or death struggle even once on my way up.

With my new fondness for the outskirts I circled around the denser areas. It didn’t help any when I saw a ‘leaf’ snatch up some kind of sloth in its claws and bury its hungry mandibles in the still living animal. I watched my step a whole hell of a lot more carefully after that.

When I next slept, safely ensconced in a cocoon of leaves, I dreamed of eating delicious crunchy bugs, only for them to grow and grow inside until I looked down and saw the soulless black eyes of a mantis head exploding out of my chest.

Fucking dungeon. I couldn’t afford to get put off eating bugs, they were too good a source of protein to lose.

I tore my out of my leafy sleeping bag with more violence than strictly necessary and resumed the climb. The ache was really starting to set in after this many days of successive climbing, but I just ate an extra big breakfast and moved on. I could use more muscle anyway.

Inspired by the green-carapaced horror that I’d spotted chowing down on that sloth I cut out a section of leaf and wrapped it over me like a cloak. It wasn’t the most elegant camouflage, or the most comfortable, but it was enough to get me within sight of the cavern ceiling without any major encounters.

That was where I was now, squatting beneath a folded over leaf tent and staring upward. This was the first time I’d really gotten a good look at it. Stats or no Stats, my eyes could only pick up details for so far, and the vague haze hovering about the top certainly didn’t help.

Now, not only could I peer through that haze, I could see it for what it was: clouds.

Fucking honest to stars clouds. They were a bit pathetic as far as clouds went, wispy and faint, but that still put them head and shoulders above what most caves had. There wasn’t enough for any real precipitation, but past a certain height they condensed and dripped off every leaf and vine.

Still, the constant drip wasn’t enough to distract me from my true objective: the path out. Unfortunately, it did make it that little bit more difficult to tip over the edge into something I couldn’t be sure of getting done from down here.

You see, the ceiling wasn’t exactly uniform to start with, and the various obstructions built up off of each other into something truly annoying, no matter how slight they might be on their own. The interweaving branches created countless dark gaps while the mist prevented me from picking out the promising leads from the red herrings. Any one of them might be my path out, or yet another waste of my time.

I shoved a handful of food into my mouth. Sitting around wasn’t all that productive, but neither was looking under every branch and leaf. I’d think of a better way if I could, but if that better way took more than a few minutes to think up, then I’d just have to sigh and do it the hard way.

I paused as I reached for yet another handful of food. Something felt wrong.

No. Not wrong, just… odd. Wrong was a blade in the back, this was merely somewhat off putting, a slight itch at the back of the brain.

I reached up and pulled off the rags that obscured my face. At least I tried too, but they’d bunched up around my nose when I’d pushed them aside for eating and by the time I’d yanked them out of their bind I’d triggered a chain reaction with rags slipping and coming loose everywhere.

Dammit.