Splitting pain and a sensation of movement woke me up from unconsciousness. I nearly let out a groan on pure instinct but caught myself at the last second. I recognized the sensation as being almost identical to when I awoke in the cell in Suwlahtk. It works, I thought with as much elation as I could manage, the solid sap gets liquified by body heat and enters the bloodstream. I can probably put it on a crossbow bolt, or some kind of bladed weapon. Unless Yaavtey can catch it before impact with his force magic it's a guaranteed knockout. A rumbling noise reached my ears, and the sensation of movement increased. Stupid stomach, I cursed, it's going to get me caught.

My whole body was experiencing the sensation of pinpricks across its skin, with my extremities being numbed. I must have just dosed up on a lot more of the poison than was used on the darts, I noted, it's a good thing that it's not easy to overdose and die. With my eyes still closed I stretched out, moving my fingers and toes around to increase blood flow. Once my hands had regained enough feeling I reached onto my chest and was relieved to feel the knife exactly where I had dropped it. I sheathed the blade, then took a deep breath and peeked out at the sky with one eye.

Night, I observed, still very dark, so I can't have been out for more than six hours or so. My eye craned around, looking for hints of sunlight peeking over the horizon, finding none. The rumbling noise sounded out again, and I tried to will my stomach to stop making it. Then, oddly, the tree began swaying back and forth. That's weird, I thought, there's no wind. I thought the sensation of movement was just a side effect of the poison. Another rumble came, this one louder than the last, and my ears had recovered enough to place its location. It wasn't coming from me, but rather from below me.

Slowly and carefully I turned my head until I could see the ground with my right eye, and I felt my body prepare for combat instantly when I sighted the source of the noise. Not more than a meter below me was a bear that was standing up on two legs, with its paws placed on either side of the trunk of the tree and its eyes locked on me. With a groan, it used its massive weight to shake the tree from side to side again, then it looked up and met my gaze. I inhaled sharply and my chest began to thump, my right hand already reaching for my sword.

Two chuffs came from the beast, followed by a bellowing roar that split the night's silence. The sound was like artillery fire, so loud that it was more felt than heard. My eardrums popped and stung as my body healed them back together. The bear dropped back down onto all fours and turned around, then lumbered away to some distance from the tree. Just as I began to hope it might leave, I saw its dark shape turn back around and start to run back towards the tree.

I had just enough time to brace for impact before the bear ran headlong into the tree at full force, only veering its head away at the last moment to absorb the impact on its shoulder. The trunk creaked and popped, flinging me nearly two meters in the direction of the impact before its natural elasticity began to swing it back in the opposite direction. Another roar sounded out as I was flung backwards, only keeping my grip on the tree because I managed to interlink my arms around it. I felt my forearm bones bend, then some new micro-fractures quickly stitch back together.

My mind raced as the bear walked back to its start line. This tree is going to come down, probably in another two to five hits, I reasoned, I don't know if I can outrun that bear on foot in this terrain. I glanced back at the beast and did some quick estimation. It's larger than the last one, so its stride will be longer. They're not that smart, but I'm not equipped to do anything to defend myself. I looked at the bag of blue leaf, then discarded the idea I was beginning to form. There's no way I can prepare poison up here, I thought, besides, that thing must be ten times my weight. Unless our tolerances vary wildly, that means I would need at least forty leaves. Didn’t that woman say something about them eating blue leaf too?

The tree swung again, further than the last time. Its swing back was not as powerful either, and it sat at a slight angle once it had righted itself again. Could I fry its brain? I thought, scrambling for ideas, I can use heat magic pretty quickly, but would it even give me the chance to grab its head? It would see me coming. Maybe I can- I stopped thinking in words and resorted to just ideas as the bear ran at the tree again. Gesturing with my hand, I summoned up my mental image of a ball of light, then waited until the bear was just a few strides from the tree before forcing as much power into it as I could.

A wave of purple illuminated the forest for dozens of meters, causing me to see stars even through my clenched eyelids. A roar came from below me just before the impact, which itself had an extra crack that hadn't sounded in the previous two. The tree swung, but not as far as I expected, then righted itself. I toned the light down, holding it in my right palm so that I could see with my now-ruined night vision, and looked down at the bear. The beast had fallen and blood was pouring from its nose and eyes. With no hesitation I jumped out of the tree, landing on its back to cushion my fall, and began to sprint towards my best estimation of where Vehrehr was.

I didn't even get twenty steps before a roar sounded behind me and I felt vibrations in the ground. Making the mistake of looking back, I saw a now visibly angry bear rushing after me as quickly as it could, galloping like a horse to increase its speed. Small flecks of burning plant matter rose up each time its feet touched the ground, and the light from my orb made its eyes flash menacingly. I swore internally and kept running, willing force magic into my legs in an attempt to increase my speed to stay away from the beast.

A time that felt like five minutes passed, and the bear had not gained much on me. The force magic in my legs had increased my stride enough to match the animal's speed, but not exceed it. My eyes kept moving to the blue bars in my heads-up display, watching the top bar slowly deplete as I used more energy than it could refill from storage in my effort to escape. I probably lost power from the poison too, and the light, I thought, do I just blind the animal again to gain some distance? Even at this speed I'm still an hour or more from Vehrehr, and I can't maintain this speed for an hour.

As I was coming up with a plan, a lumpy shape lumbered out of one of the bushes fifty meters in front of me. I learned what humans meant when they described their heart sinking as my eyes registered a second bear, albeit a smaller and less pissed-off one, looking at me as I fled. I made movements to try to get around it, but because of my increased speed turning was difficult. Please, just stay right where you are, I asked the beast mentally, don't move to intercept. I turned to avoid the second bear, and the second bear began moving to intercept.

Knowing that I couldn't possibly turn enough to avoid it, I instead resolved to jump over the bear. Normally such a jump would have been on the verge of impossible since the bear stood as tall as me without even standing up on two legs. With force magic, however, I knew I could do it. As I approached I changed the structure of the magic already in my legs, increasing the force it was outputting at the expense of speed. With a great heave, I planted my feet and dove with my arms out, and the bear raised its head.

Sharp pain exploded in my left leg as razor-sharp teeth closed around my thigh. The force of my dive tore my leg from its grip, but in the process tore my leg’s flesh all the way down to the ankle. Because of the bite’s effect on my momentum, my clean dive's direction had also been disrupted, and I impacted the ground with my right shoulder, sliding a meter before stopping. I felt the rapid healing engaging in multiple points across my body, but when I tried to move my left leg nothing happened. I flipped over using my arms to see the bear towering over me and opening its mouth, and that was when my luck turned for the better.

With a great thump, the first bear smashed into the second bear and sent both of them rolling. I managed to roll myself out of the way as several tons of bone and flesh shook the earth with a combination of roars and physical impacts. The ball-like configuration the bears had ended up in smashed into a thin tree, snapping it to the ground like it was made of straw. I watched as the bears lost momentum, then dislodged from one another in a huff, all while I was frantically testing my leg to see if it was usable.

Cold dread filled me as both bears got to their feet while I was still crippled. I drew my sword, pointless as it was, and pushed myself to a sitting position in preparation for when I could stand and run. This is going to be close, I thought, I think it's only going to take another ten seconds before my leg is fit for basic movement, so if they can stay stunned that long I might be able to escape. The smaller of the bears, the second one, sauntered over to me and bared its teeth, then let out a low growl which shook my bones. Its paw raised up, and I prepared to dodge, but then it was shoved to the ground again.

The first bear, now thoroughly bloodied, roared so loudly that the sound broke not only my eardrums, but likely the bone structures inside my ears as well because everything went silent instead of muffled. Like before, sparks and small flames licked at the ground near its feet, but unlike before it wasn't roaring at me. Instead, it was staring down the second bear, which roared back just in time for my newly-healed ears to hear. The second bear's roar was noticeably less powerful, but the heat coming off of it scorched my skin even though it stood somewhere between three and four meters away. The two animals both stood up on two legs, then shuffled towards each other.

In my moment of pure shock, I hadn't realized that my leg had healed enough to move. I scrambled to my feet just as the first bear threw a steel-shattering blow at the head of the second bear. Any normal animal on the receiving end of such an attack might have been killed instantly, a human certainly would have been torn in half, but the second bear was only momentarily stunned. It then returned the favor to the first bear as I hobbled into the best jog I could manage to put distance between myself and the bears. More roars sounded out, and the ground shook like I was in an earthquake, but it seemed the beasts were content to fight each other rather than chase their prey.

Sometime later I was in another tree, trying to rest as I sucked down a newly-picked juice pod. The sun was due to rise, but hadn't yet risen. I felt the urge to sleep finally taking me, but the unmistakable roar of a bear in the distance snapped me awake instantly. I never thought I would want to be back in that filthy inn, I muttered to myself mentally, willing my heart to slow down and my mind to relax again.