Eric knew that the night before he had been lucky. The large battle sites with numerous bones attested to the ferocity of the monsters inhabiting the forest. The sharpness of their claws and strength of their bones gave him an idea that simply hiding in a tree would not allow him to survive. So for tonight he did everything he could think of to obscure his trail and give him a chance to survive. He cooked a luxurious meal, and carried some meat up into the trees, he dug pits filled with punjis and covered over with brush. He used ash from the fire to cover his own scent, and dug a rabbit hole underneath one of the trees covering the entrance and adding punji sticks to make it look like another trap. Tucked into his hole, Eric felt trapped, imagining his fate if something came and really wanted to eat him. He tried to come up with at least one trump card.

The warg quickly retraced the meat-bag’s trail. Climbing down the tree the Warg approached Eric’s hide. Wargs’ scent tracking was second to none, and it was easily able to find traces of his scent. Having learning it’s lesson the warg decided to dig Eric out. Keeping an eye on the exit, the Warg started to dig towards the hole at an angle.

Eric could hear and feel the warg digging into his hide. Eric had out trapped himself, having put punji sticks and a serpentine path to his entrance. Eric knew that he would be extremely vulnerable as he tried to escape. Yet the warg had avoided all that and it’s intelligence was all the more scary. Eric had visions of Aliens hunting Sigourney Weaver in the dark. I am, most likely going to die here.

As his claws dug deep, the grounds started to be intertwined with the roots of the trees. Initially, the claws slid through roots like butter, but eventually the rate slowed and the warg worked around the larger roots. Finally after 15 minutes of digging, the warg broke through into the meat-bag’s tunnel.

Eric saw the pitch black paws break through the tunnel walls. They were replaced by a muzzle, with the nose twitching smelling his scent of fear. The jaws opened showing a mouth full of razor sharp teeth, ready to rend his flesh from his bones.

Eric kicked coals into the tinder that he had filled his tunnel with. Smoke started filling the narrow tunnel instantly. Eric lifted a crude cover and shoved in into the tunnel to close out the smoke. He started to dig urgently to open his escape tunnel.

The flames burst up into the warg’s face shingling his nose. Jumping out of the flames, the warg sat back and watched. The meat would be worthlessly cooked, but he looked forward to eating it anyway.