I managed to sleep in in spite of the intense muscle pain from overuse of my body yesterday and the growling of the caged beast that is my stomach. A feast was set out for me in the morning though, so I ate almost everything by myself as Carol wasn't in the dining area. She appeared just as I was finishing breakfast, but the look on her face removed any urge to greet her happily from my thoughts.

"What's wrong?" was all I could say to her. "The council convened last night without my knowledge. They voted you out of our town." Carol stated, half sorrowful, half angry. I wanted to ask why, but I knew from her tone that the reason didn't matter. I was officially an outcast, and there was nothing to be done about it. "How long until I depart?" I asked in a tone that displayed no emotion. "Before sundown, if you're here at dawn, you are to be executed." The response was short and to the point. "I have taken the liberty of gathering some things for you so that you can travel sooner rather than later." She handed me a bag that seemed rather light for travelling gear.

"This bag can still hold all of your nonessential belongings." Carol informed me as I looked in though the opening in the top. There were so many things in the bag that I doubted its weight would accurately reflect the mass of its contents. "What magic is this?" I asked, bewildred by the bag enough to forget the gravity of my situation. "It's a custom enchant that I developed for travelling. The bag's interior exists in an alternate dimension, causing it to only weigh the amount of the cloth it's made of."

Carol explained the features of the bag quickly and suggested I gather my things and leave quickly before I would have to travel at night.

I packed away everything but my helmet and the clothes I was wearing. I tracked down Carol in the library to give my farewells and she thrust a set of leather armor and a map into my hands. "This armor is my last gift to you as your teacher, and the map will help you find other towns to acquire supplies from on your way. I suggest you travel north to the Republic of Murica, I will arrange things here and then follow you." She sped through the words so quickly that I dared not interrupt, lest I miss something. "When next we meet, we'll no longer be master and student, but travelling companions. Don't die before I find you."

It felt like she had another line about to follow that, but she helped me into the armor and shoved me away without finishing. I put on my mining helmet and equipped my foci before leaving the library and head to the north gate. I ran under the effect of a haste enchant and the newly repaired gate ground shut behind me as I raced out of sight from the town.

I looked up to guage the time, it was almost midday already and I was only just in the forest outside the gates. I walked at a brisk pace to the north to conserve energy and used the same combination of sensory enchantments as I did when I was hunting. The forest canopy slowly grew into an impenetrable green ceiling as I trudged north across its rich black loam. The silence of my immediate surroundings would be broken in irregular intervals as unseen creatures in the distance clashed over territory or called out for mates. Sometimes a startled creature would flee if I got too close for its comfort.

the sounds piqued my curiosity, but I did not let them deter me from a general northerly course as now was not a time to explore an unknown area and possibly put myself in harm's way. I climbed a tall gnarly tree to try and get an aerial view of the misty rainforest and to verify that I was still trekking in the right direction. The low lying fog had grown dense and I did not want to waste the afternoon accidentally going the wrong direction.

The tree swayed perilously as I neared the top. I would have been a splatter on the forest floor if not for my clawed gauntlets. The wind on the canopy's upper branches was fierce. I squinted and scanned the distance for any sign of an end to the brilliant emerald surface. I was still managing to go more or less north, but the green clouds that were the tree tops from my current viewpoint stretched to the edge of my hawk vision. There were pockets of brown where the earth had risen up through the leafy carpet or where trees had fallen and the trunks of their neighbors were seen in the aftermath.I was not too keen on heading into one of those clearings as it could be a monster den, but the day was winding down and I needed a place to camp.

I was about to give up and camp in the mist, when I spotted a large gap in the canopy off to the east. I hadn't been looking there since it was out of the way, but when I turned to descend it came into my view. It struck me as a good place to camp as it was a somewhat straight line leading north. I hoped it would be a river. I quickly lowered myself to the spongy forest floor and started travelling east.

I reached the clearing after a little while jogging while dodging trees and ferns. It was not a river... It was an absurdly long caterpillar plowing north through the rainforest, uprooting tress and stripping them of bark and leaves in its wake. The caterpillar's movment speed was actually slow, but only because it was stopping everytime it reached a tree. The progression of it's path was to the north though. I climbed up onto the tail end of the monster and strung my tarp around two dense, steel-like bundles of hair on its top.

I climbed in the tarp and the caterpillar rocked me to sleep as its hair gently swung my makeshift hammock to and fro. Truthfully, I could get used to travelling by giant caterpillar.

In the early hours before sunlight I woke up on the unmoving caterpillar. I relieved myself over the side of the colossal invertebrate and packed up my tarp and rope. Sensing something was off, I walked along the edge of the small furry jungle that sprouted from the upper back. I saw several scars along its sides that I hadn't noticed the day before using the light from my enchanted helmet.

I passed by lots of these badly healed wounds as I eventually made my way up to the bulbous compound eyes sunk into the sides of the massive caterpillar. The eyes had a faint glow that was rapidly fading, a deep gouge that was still bleeding could be seen just behind the heavy plate of exoskeleton on the head. I felt a tingling sensation as I entered the waning sight of the faintly glowing compound eyes.

The tingling in my skull grew stronger as I felt a voice, rather than heard it. The Subjugator? No, something else. The voice seemed to question and answer itself as I stared into the sorrow filled facets the eye was composed of. A guardian perhaps? It has armor. It did us no harm and has been on us for a day. There sounded like there were a myriad of different voices droning at each other as they debated internally over my existence. "I can hear you, you know." I said to the schizophrenic larva. It hears us, it said! Who contacted it? What is it? The voices buzzed their questions at each other and at me each trying to drown out the others for mental supremacy.

"It is a gnome named Thomas." I hated being spoken of as though I weren't there. Doctors used to do this when speaking of me to each other in my room and it thoroughly annoyed me then. Now that I could speak up in the presence of such a rude action, I vented my ire accordingly. ...This one contacted the Thomas gnome... A powerful yet hesitant voice drowned out the din of chaos. ...This one has saved up... Tree energy... To change... I.. offer.. for The Thomas gnome... I understood that the voice had something special to convey. I couldn't make out what it was offering due to the meek personality of the individual voice.

The other personalities had gone quiet as though they were being snuffed out one at a time until only that one meek voice remained. I panicked internally that something was happening, so rather than wait for the voice to clarify, I decided to accept the consequences and tried to save that precious, weak thing. "I accept your offer, quickly let me help you." I tried my best to sound courageous and supportive as the mouth began regurgitating an ovoid object.

The mouth ejected it into the air with the last of the caterpillar's strength, and I leapt from the top of the head to catch it. I caught it in a roll and kept it from hitting the ground and potentially being damaged. I gently cradled the black cocoon and noticed that it had light blue veins running just under the glistening surface in the light of my headlamp. I didn't get long to admire the pupa that had landed in my lap before the giant caterpillar began thrashing.

It was as if this last energy expenditure became the catalyst for the titanic beast to begin its death throes and allow its nerves to expand and contract violently. I darted for the treeline as I heard a sound that reminded me of rivets under strain bursting as they succumbed to the pressure. Acid started spewing from the three parted maw as the stomach muscles contracted and its digestive system began to purge the remnants of its final meal.

The ground sizzled everywhere the caustic phlegm landed and the steel like hairs caught the light of the rising sun as they were launched high into the air like deadly spears made from polished rebar. I couldn't recast my haste rune as I rand with my hands full through the forest, avoiding the steel hairs as they crashed through the canopy and downed ancient trees under their force. I ran in a wide semicircle around the worm as it sent more hair out and away than close to its body.

Boils started to rise up from the flailing behemoth and began rupturing from the folicles that once housed the steel spines. I could see through the filmy skin of the boils even in the dim twilight and tell that there were living creatures rising from the corpse of the great caterpillar. The boils were craking open like eggs and the vespidian creatures were beginning to pump blood into their gore covered wings.

The hair spears had long stopped falling so I scrawled a quick haste rune into the air and ran for my life, trying to keep the weak rays of light to my right while I could still see them. I ran for a long time and failed to hear the buzzing noise I was certain the wasp people would make should they give pursuit. My chest was heaving and my muscles burned fiercely under the sudden strain while my heart beat wildly in my throat.

I ran far longer than I should have been able to under the fear of certain death at the claws, and most likely stingers, of the vespidian horde. I stopped to pant for air with my back against a tree I hoped was between myself and the clearing where the horde was birthed. The cocoon was still in my arms and was drying quickly, it had become as hard as stone in my hands and I no longer had any fear of accidentally crushing it as I carried it to safety. I had a creeping suspicion that those wasps didn't want this creature to survive.

I tucked the pupa into my old bag and used it as a papoose so I could climb a tall sturdy tree with lots of roots leading from its boughs to the ground. I breached the canopy and took in the view under the midmorning light. I was around 20 miles north-west of the clearing that the creature died in. I had drifted a bit, but I was still making good time, without the enchantment it might have taken me days to get this far on foot.

I activated hawk's vision and scanned the north again. I had gotten pretty far it seemed. I had ended up near a ledge looking out across the northern forest, due to the added height, I could finally see the edge of the rainforest thinning out. Now if only I could get there without becoming a meal for a monster, or getting caught by the wasps.