Chapter 27: The tree of promise.

I awake with a start and draw in an unsteady breath as I become aware of the cool breeze blowing by me and cooling my already chilled body.

"Damnit that's cold!" I hiss as I slowly sit up, working against the protests of my still sore body that just wants to keep lying down.

A quick survey of the immediate area shows no signs of beasts or monsters, so I refocus my attention on my immediate concern: My chilled body.

Looking over at the campfire, I see that there are just a few ember's left of the firewood, so I lumber over to put on some more firewood; And for good measure, I blast the firewood with some fire magic to jumpstart the fire once again.

A minute later I am sitting close to the campfire and vigorously trying to warm up my chilled body as best I can.

Half an hour later, I am warm once again and hunger has started gnawing at my stomach by now, so I go and get the skewered remains of a critter from yesterday that I left close to the campfire yesterday.

While the remains have dried a bit on the outside but a closer look tells me it would, probably, still be ok to eat; Once it is cooked properly, of course.

Giving the meat a good 30 minutes of cooking over the campfire, I cut into the meat to check if the meat is probably cooked or not; But as I can't quite tell if it is really probably cooked, so decide to leave it to cook for a while longer, just to be safe: Better safe than sorry.

Once I am certain that I won't get sick from eating the meat, I break off a leg from the now well grilled piece of meat and gingerly take a bite out the leg: It tastes good enough, so I take another bite. Then another, and another.

It doesn't take long before I have eaten my fill of meat and drank my fill of water.

I am now sitting by the campfire and staring into the fire for a long moment as I ponder my situation. After a few minutes of staring at the fire, I sigh and stand up, and start getting ready to continue my trek towards the deepest and oldest parts of the woodlands.

It doesn't take long before I have put out the campfire and am once again on my way towards my destination while keeping a close eye on my surroundings.

---------(&'.')&-------

After a good few hours of trekking along, I come across a sudden cliff and a sheer drop of easily a hundred, or perhaps as much as 200 meters high; It is hard to tell with the massively oversized trees that grow in this woodland for giants.

The view from the cliff shocked me; I could see as far into the distance as my eyes would let me, and the awesomeness of the sight almost physically hit me, and I had to take a step back from the cliff unconsciously as I let the awesomeness of this magic saturated oversized woodland slowly sink in: The scenery reminds me of the Amazon's; If the Amazon's had super sized trees and the creatures living there were living on steroids, that is.

A good long moment passed as I let the scenery sink in as I stared out over the scenery in dumb silence.

A brisk breeze hitting me brings me out of my daze, and I start thinking about what to do next I need to get down there, somehow; The question is: How?

"Maybe I can climb… down…" I mumble but quickly realize it will only end with me dead by falling on sharp rocks. "Yeah, not very likely…" I conclude gloomily.

"What about finding another way down?" I ponder aloud as I lean over the edge and inspect the cliff side for a more easily traversed path; But even after a good 10 minutes of actively walking along the edge and scrutinizing the cliff wall, I still can't spot any easily accessible and manageably path of descent.

I can only give up my idea of physically climbing or otherwise trying to descend from the cliff, and instead begin to brainstorm for other ways to get down.

"What about somehow grabbing a tree and climbing down said tree?" I mumble as I search around to see if there even are any trees that are tall enough and close enough to the cliff for the idea to even be considered possible at all.

After a few minutes of searching I do find a tree that just barely, maybe, is close enough to be able to reach; With a generous amount of magic usage, of course.

With the tree in my sights, I carefully make my way along the edge of the cliff while being mindful of keeping the tree I'm placing my hopes on within my sights at all times.

Once I reach the spot on the cliff that is closest to the tree of promise, I deduce the distance and height difference between us: I am about 50 meters above the tree and from my estimates, should be about 30 meters away from it.

With those details in mind, I recheck the prospects of actually being able to reach the tree as well as the probability of being able to climb down it; Both return a positive result: It seems possible. I'd give it a 70-30 chance of success, maybe.

"Still… that's a looong way to fall, if it doesn't work out…" I mumble as I inspect the area around the tree and the drop I would eventually take, should something not work out as I have planned; Which is not at all in thinkable.

'Do I really want to try this?' I ponder as I simulate the process of my plan in my head. It seems just fine; It would likely work.

"So… What am I missing? Why do I have this bad feeling in the pit of my stomach?" I ponder aloud as I go through the process over and over, trying to find any errors in calculation or inconsistencies in my plan.

No inconsistencies come to mind however, even after eating lunch leisurely while musing on the topic; And so, I decide to simply go ahead with my plan: To start with a running start, use magic to give my jump a boost, and then again use magic to slow down and control my descent toward and finally land on one of the branches of the tree.

"It seems simple enough, and it is doable, I mean… Magic, right? What can't you do with it?" I mumble to myself as I try to pep myself up to actually execute my plan. It's not working very well, however.

Taking a deep and slow breath, I hold it for as long as I comfortably can hold it before I slowly and in a controlled manner exhale my held breath.

"Ok, let's do this; It this or simply jumping down and hoping I can slow myself enough to almost overcome gravity, in a controlled manner over a significant time period." I say firmly.

"I really don't think I have the control for that…"

So I back up a good distance from the cliff so I can get a running start, then I shake out my nervousness, jumping in place lightly as I focus all my thoughts on the tree of promise I need to reach to make it down in one piece.

After shaking out my body, I lightly stretch while still keeping my focus on the tree; Once I have stretched, I stand up and take a steadying breath, inhale - hold, slowly exhale. Repeat 3 times.

"Let's do this!" I exclaim and start running at full speed towards the very quickly approaching cliff edge. As I reach the cliff edge, I jump with all my power to get as much height and speed as I can as I sail out over the cliff edge and into the open sky.

"Uuuuaaahhhhhhhh-

End of chapter 27