It was easier to leave than I had expected. The guards waved me off, not caring about the threat to my person. I guess I wasn’t worth caring about given I had cast off belonging to the hamlet. They were only meant to protect those who fell into the fold, not those who wanted to throw off the shackles of their role in life.

I didn’t have much on me. Just a few changes of clothing and food. The hut was never truly mine anyway, just belonging to the person who had been assigned the role of fisherman. So little to carry and yet so much to leave behind.

Merchants had come by the village twice every year. They had brought much needed infusions of wares that we couldn’t produce with our own materials and ingredients we were lacking. From what I could recall when speaking with them, they said that the city was off towards the east. “If one follows the road, they will eventually end up at the city,” they had said. “Of course, if one follows the road unprepared, one will end up the food of spike feeders.”

The old me would have been more concerned about my passage to the city, but with my awakening of my second tier and my enhanced proficiency in my electroreception, I felt confident enough that I could make it to the city intact. Surely in the city I could be accepted into the city guard. They had to be less discriminating there.

I turned back, taking one last look at the walled-in village, marveling at its stature compared to the world on the other side. It had seemed so large in there, and yet, when looking from the outside, the village had never looked smaller.

The trees surrounding the road were twisted, wretched things. Their trunks started off sturdy but the closer they approached the sky, the more they bent. The treetops fought for whatever space there was, craving the sunlight, entwining around other trunks just to emerge within an isolated space in the canopy. They were ashen pale, leaves tender little notes of green foliage sprouting off of the wicker-thin branches. One could question which was twisted first, the trees or the spike feeders, but there was no answer to that question. Just an attempt at understanding the wretched place that was the forest.

Light shined where the trees failed to cover the skies, few trunks snaking over the main road. But the forest floor was dense and dark, the skies crowded out in the quest for sunlight. Weaving through the trees was a trial, especially as one forgot the spike feeders living within deep in the heart of the forest. That was the assumption the townsfolk had carried, given that the spike feeders only appeared from the edges of the woods, and never the roads. There were rumors, of course, of the spike feeders attacking travelers, but given the straightforward roads or the twisted forests, the path forward was clear.

“So long,” I muttered under my breath, walking down the road towards my new life. I couldn’t abide by the past any longer.

The road wasn’t well worn, travelers only coming so infrequently. It was made of a coarse dark material, which ate the sunlight and repelled the cold. There were rumors of other villages nearby if one traveled the other way on the road, but they fared no better in terms of travel. We had needed to be self-sufficient in our village, or as self-sufficient as we could be. No one could afford to expect regular travel when the spike feeders lurked about.

The records in the village were absent of most things, but what they also failed to reflect was how long it took to get to the city, and my beast soul’s information certainly wouldn’t be able to fill that gap. I figured as long as I traveled cautiously along the road, I could make it intact, even if it took a few days. I would just consistently leverage my electroreception to ensure that I was aware of any other potential visitors.

Of course, reality takes offense to idealism displaced into its realm. By the time the sun set, I was deep onto the road, surrounded by walls of trees, feeling colder under the canopy of ash. None of the moons shone overhead. Even though I had my electroreception focused, that didn’t mean I wanted to continue about. I wanted some sort of shelter to help avoid any spike feeders that might roam about throughout the night.

I hoisted myself into the tree, using my skinning knife to aid in my climbing— I had been sure to retrieve it from the pond, avoiding staring at the still corpse of the spike feeder I had killed. If they wanted to ignore the evidence of my success than I would let it malinger within the waters. It was for the next village fisherman to resolve that problem. I didn’t live there any longer.

I wasn’t quite equipped for climbing, but I hoped that being higher up would give me relative safety. I draped my cloak over my possessions and myself as I leaned against a crook of branching limbs. This wouldn’t be perfect, but perhaps it would suffice until morning where I could rest more safely. Sleeping with an actual fire, instead of shivering under the empty night sky.

I was all set to suffer in a half-sleeping state, when I heard an awful shriek echoing through the woods. It sounded like it was getting louder with every few moments… I wished against everything it wasn’t a spike feeder but there was no way to be sure in this darkness. I could avoid it with my electroreception, but that didn’t guarantee I could do it longer than it could chase. I had to leave, now.

I bundled my worldly belongings against my body and jumped off of the tree, running on the tips of my toes, trying to minimize the sounds I was making as I traveled through the woods. Anywhere that was quieter from the noise was better than the opposite. Adrenaline surged through me, panic my master. Sleep no longer was a possibility, only running and hiding.

When all of my breath had faded, I collapsed at the roots of a tree, listening to the forest to determine if I could hear that awful noise still. I counted underneath my breath, waiting for the noise to appear or be absent altogether, until the faintest noise appeared ever so quietly, much quieter than before. I didn’t know if it was a shriek of rage at my absence, a mating call, or something else altogether, but it was certainly further than it had been before.

I didn’t know how I would rest… if I should even bother getting in a tree anymore… my mind was a distant thing, lost in the fear coating my perception of the world and the blood thrumming through my veins. For now, the answer was just to cover myself in my cloak at the foot of the tree and hope that my huddled form would be too small to note, just another being of the forest, another slumbering prey hoping to get through the night.

When my eyes fluttered rapidly, my nascent mind realized that sleep had come upon me in the middle of the night. The thin beams of light filtering down through the canopy told me a story that my mind was slow to capture. I understood what panic had wrought last night. I was utterly and totally lost.

There was no sign of the road I had traveled from. Each direction was covered in a thicket of trees, no indications of my frantic travel reflected in the scattered twigs on the ground. I had no idea how I was supposed to find my way back to the road, let alone the city. Electroreception was good for tracking other creatures, not where I had been. I really had no good choices here. My senses weren’t made for this sort of this thing, human nor beast.

In the end, the only thing that made a semblance of sense was to pick a direction and hope that I would eventually exit… using my electroreception to check if any other creatures were about. I would hate if I ended up back at my village in my misdirection, but better that than being trapped in the midst of the forest forever, to be hunted by a stray spike feeder. Not even the birds liked to linger in the forest, landing only for brief rests lest the spike feeders attack them too. While I could defend myself better than a bird, that didn’t mean I wanted to be in a worse state than one.

With no other choices, I headed out again, walking through the trees ever so quietly, with my electroreception constantly active.

Electroreception proficiency: 75%

The boon of having one’s sense actively being used is that one’s proficiency was likely to increase. I felt like I was getting a better sense of the wildlife around me, sparse as it was. I was also getting quite hungry, and my desire to sleep was returning in waves, threatening to overthrow me and have me just crash on the ground, passed out. It wasn’t a great option to be so vulnerable but I wanted to make good progress through the woods, for better or for worse.

There was periodically a blip of activity at the edge of my senses, my electroreception noticing something moving. I hoped that it was just the outermost perimeter than the other woodland creatures were willing to go about in my presence, few that they were, but something within me knew that I wasn’t that lucky of a person. I had an inkling I was being stalked by the spike feeder.

If I was lucky— and I very much doubted that— I would be able to trap it and lure it in for another kill. If I wasn’t lucky, odds were I was going to die. There wasn’t much room for any other options in the midst of the woods. Life or death. I had expected nothing less. If I was going to have a chance at survival, I needed to rest.

I climbed up into another bowed ashen limb, noting that the sun was still peeking through the brush overhead. I could only hope it would prowl about and give me enough time to recover, not realizing what my lack of movement was until I had slept for an adequate amount of time.

I laid my cloak upon myself once more, falling into a fugue state, ready to leap into action at the slightest provocation. One last moment of extended rest before I fought the other spike feeder.

A few blinks of my eyes, and day turned to night, my nap having gone faster than I realized. Even with the wink of sleep I got, my body still craved more, but more couldn’t come until I was truly safe. Just little pockets of slumber grasped wherever I could take them. The sleep had been hard fought for, my body aching from the contortion it took, stiff and reluctant to move. A necessary price to pay.

I checked with my electroreception, seeing if that recurring blip had grown any further or worse yet, closer, but the activity seemed absent when I checked this instance. That was worrying, but I would just have to keep moving along with my plan. The safest time to move was the night, given careful sleep during the day was the only reprieve I could get from moving without thinking.

Every step I I took down from the tree was careful, my feet gripping the chipped bark, my knife digging into the sap with its pointed grasp. Then a brief hop down the last bit right onto the floor of the forest once more. That was the signal I didn’t know I gave. My mind tingled with a sudden surge of activity, my electroreception having sensed movement. Hundreds of feet away. The spike feeder had closed the gap while I slept, presumably triangulating my location and taking the opportunity to rest until I moved once more. Shit. Time to run.

I summoned my second tier onto me, manifesting the spurs onto my hands. The webbed hands and feet would not be the most useful at this time, but the spurs could allow me to kill the beast if it fell for acting. That, however, was contingent on this spike feeder being as weak as the prior one. I wasn’t likely to be that lucky.

It burst onto the scene, needle sharp teeth displayed in its feral scream, swinging from tree to tree with its tail hoisting it aloft. Its spikes gouged giant chunks of the trunks out, splattering the debris across the forest floor with each leap. It was a size-class larger than the spike feeder I had stumbled onto killing. I didn’t think I was getting away from this one. Well, I wasn’t getting away intact, anyway.