Pain.

  That is what I awoke to. Searing pain radiating through my arm and shoulder, as well as one of my hips. My head was pounding, and my vision was a little fuzzed around the edges. Black spots drifted across it. They were more prominent than normal which was not a good sign.

  Not to mention the fact that I was facing a behemoth of a tree.

  The light was a little better than it had been the last time I had been attacked by the thing, and I could see a few more details. It was tall—really tall—with a trunk the thickness of old Greek columns and arms about the same size as me. Its eyes had dulled, though as I watched they slowly gained more of a shine as the evening deepened into night. Its bark was gnarled and had scattered bald patches; it had been attacking something that had done some surface damage to it.

  I took in all of this as quick as blinking, but it still didn’t answer the one question that now burned into my consciousness: what in the name of all that is holy was going on? And what was I doing just looking at this thing? I should have been running for the hills with all the speed my aching legs could muster.

  All I could remember was moving forward to confront Dalia and meeting her Shadow. After that… nothing. I was just suddenly here, bumped and bruised and in considerable pain.

  I shuffled backward as the treant took a swing at me, taking stock of my situation. The treant was fast, but slower than I remembered. That may have just been my extra point in agility, but also quite possibly my level increase as well. It was now possible to track its movements. Not that I could have done so last time even at my level now, it had just been too dark.

  So. I was in an empty street—it seemed as though the two guards had done their jobs, that was something at least—with nothing around me but the shattered remnants of houses and a few divots in the dirt of the road. I didn’t see anything around for me to use against this thing.

  Dalia and her Shadow were back where they had originally been. The Shadow was watching me with keen interest, while Dalia was collapsed in a heap, breathing softly. A silver circle glowed around her, floating arcane symbols decorating the darkening evening’s air with a cold, cruel radiance and painting the stars a pale shade of white where they could be seen at all. The colossal trees blocked most of them, though the clearing was wide enough to see a few.

  My back thumped into something and I reached back to feel what it was, keeping my eyes on the treant the whole time. It was the wall of a house that was, miraculously, still on its last legs instead of collapsed.

  I ducked, feeling a rush of air as the treant’s fist crunched into the wall right where my head had just been. That had been too close for comfort, and I used the opportunity to slip around behind the treant and into the center of the street where I had more room to move.

  My shield was gone. I checked my inventory for it, but it wasn’t there. Apparently I had tossed it aside in a fit of madness.

  Madness.

  That’s what had happened to me. I had fallen to the witch’s spell and then… something. Something had happened that had made me take the treant head on even though I knew I couldn’t hope to beat it.

  Memories pressed into the back of my mind. The shadow’s eyes, the curse, warmth, the moon. Terrifying things that caused my mind to curl back in on itself, flinching away from something it had done.

  The treant swung its fist in a horizontal arc that caused me to duck again. Thankfully, it was showing no more sensibility than it had that night I had almost been beaten to a pulp by it. In fact, its mind seemed to have lessened in that time. It was only performing two different strikes: the horizontal swing or punch, and a brutal kick that would have folded my ribs in like little pieces of rubber if it had connected.

  However, I had a problem. I was slowing. My left arm and shoulder were shattered, and my hip was likely bruised if not fractured. I needed to get away. There was only one thing keeping me from doing so.

  I didn’t know which direction the villagers had fled. The quest had updated at some point during the time I was out which meant all the villagers were at a safe distance, but I didn’t want to lead the treant straight to them. That was just asking for trouble. But I didn’t know where they had gone.

  Floor Quest: Escape.

  Do note, this is a solo quest. If you do not complete it on your own, you will be given another.

  My right shoulder made a horrible popping noise as I was forced to take a glancing blow. If this kept up for much longer, I wouldn’t be able to get away at all.

  Making a quick decision, I ran. I ran as fast as I could, feet pounding down the dirt road, breath racing through my throat. It was agonizing. Not nearly as bad as my previous encounter with the thing had been, but still bad. My hip was screaming at me, along with both my shoulders and my left arm. My legs were burning before I had made it twenty feet, my lungs before fifty. But I pressed on, determined to survive.

  The treant lumbered along behind me, and though it was a little faster than I was, I was much more agile and light on my feet. I could evade it for as long as necessary if it meant I would live to see another morning.

  And then I ran face first into a wall.

  It wasn’t the sort of wall you’re thinking of. Unless, of course, you are thinking of an invisible wall that flared silver when I came into contact with it. If that’s what you’re thinking of, then yes, it was exactly the sort of wall you’re thinking about.

  I slammed into it at top speed, then fell to the ground with a light puff of dust, disoriented and hurting. My nose ached now, along with the rest of my injuries.

  The treant barreled toward me, bearing down on my skinny figure with great, feral stomps that shook the street as much as my stomach. I was terrified, naturally. Not of death as some might think—I was somehow already too numb to risking my life for that—but of the pain. I had felt way too much of that recently and was not in the mood for another round of it just yet.

  As I watched and waited for death’s dark scythe to claim my soul, I thought through the situation. Things weren’t good, in fact, they were going rather badly. But I still had a measure of hope, didn’t I?

  As long as I was still alive I had hope.

  That gave me an idea. It was crazy and suicidal and all other kinds of adjectives that describe the type of madness desperate people descend to in their final moments, but it could work if I pulled it off.

  I scrambled back until I was pressed firmly against that strange barrier. It felt oddly cool against my spine, like a newly washed blanked let dry on a sunny mid-autumn day. Not cold, just cool. And it was rock solid. I couldn’t break through it for all the world put together.

  The treant, however, had no such problem. It charged, and as it approached me, I simply slid to the side by about two feet. It crashed through the barrier of light like a train through some hopeful spider’s poorly thought out cobweb.

  Immediately, the silver light tore where the treant touched it, parting in a great wave until the seam reached the heavens. Whereupon it promptly splashed to the ground like a pool of liquid mercury and then vanished into thin air.

  Breathing a sigh of relief, I began my desperate run again. I had done it. I had escaped that strange, ethereal wall of solid light. I was free!

  This was when I almost ran right smack dab into the treant. It was staggering around drunkenly, looking for all the world as though it had been sucker punched just as it had opened its mouth to start singing an opera. That would have made for quite an amusing sight on any other occasion. However, I was fresh out of humor at the moment, and so was the treant.

  It’s fist slammed into me in a great sweeping blow, tossing me back half a dozen yards to skid along the dirt road. I groaned, feeling like a nail would have if it was made of rubber and plastic and someone was trying to pound it into sheet metal.

  I rolled to my left, just barely avoiding the stomp that followed up such a monumental blow, and screamed as I ground my snapped arm and shoulder into the dirt.

  Scrambling to my feet, eyes blurry from the pain, I sprinted for the nearest gap in the wall that I could see. That gap just happened to be the exact one the treant had made on its way into the town in the first place. I could just barely make out the splintered timber of the wall so recently reinforced with wood I had gathered. So much for that now.

  By now, my arm was hurting so badly that when I barely even brushed one of the fallen logs, it rent a screech from me. I was running with my left arm clamped firmly in my right, trying desperately not to jostle it. It wasn’t working, but I tried all the same.

  Massive trees trundled their way past as I sped off into the darkness of the forest, the treant in hot pursuit. Silence fell around us as all the little crawling, scampering beasties recognized a large predator and shut up so they wouldn’t be found. I wasn’t concerned with them, however. I needed to find a place the treant couldn’t get.

  I swung my eyes about as I ran, but nothing stood out. There were small gaps in between trees, sure, but those weren’t secure. The treant would just go around. I needed something better. Something tight enough that the treant couldn’t reach me.

  There.

  It was a particularly ragged looking tree. Larger than all the rest by at least five feet in diameter if not more, it had an old look to it. Like a withered grandfather sitting comfortably by the fireside. It had seen a thousand winters and a thousand more summers; it had listened to the wind whisper its merry way through its gentle bows for ten thousand months; and it had sheltered ten thousand thousand animals with nests in its branches and dens at its roots.

  The tree had a small crack in it, starting at a place in between the roots and moving upward a good two dozen feet or more. The crack ran deep into the tree. It was a perfect hiding spot.

  I raced up to it, hoping to fit myself inside before the treant caught up to me, but to no avail. So I was forced to run around again to gain some more distance on the thing. That didn’t work either. I was just too slow.

  Frustrated beyond belief, I looked around for a way to get ahead of the treant. There wasn’t anything particularly obvious, but I did find something. There was a pair of trees off to the right with a small gap in between them, large enough for me to fit through, but not for it. That would have to do.

  I ran over to the gap and slipped through, just evading the treant as it swung for me and forcing it to go around.

  But when the treant came around the other side of the tree, I was nowhere to be found. I had slipped back through the gap and was well on my way toward the crack in the elder tree.

  Squeezing into the crack right shoulder first, I found it wasn’t actually quite as roomy as I thought. It would do, though. I was far enough back so as to be out of the treant’s reach. Now, I had done it. I had escaped the treant and Dalia, hard though they had tried to stop me.

  The treant roared in frustration, slamming its fists into the tree over and over again. But the tree was old and solid. It wouldn’t budge or break.

  I just had to wait it out until moonset.