Angela pushed her way through yet another patch of dense brambles, stumbling over an unseen root and nearly face-planting into the dirt. Leaves and thorns broke off the plant and stuck raggedly to her clothes, but she ignored them, instead taking a moment to spit out cobwebs that had ensnared her face.

“Ugh!” Angela groaned. “This is just the worst!”

She dragged her fingers through her hair, hopelessly tugging at the knots that had formed over the last two days as she made her way to Palmyre. Or tried to, at any rate. She should have been able to follow the river, right? That should have been easy? Nope. Riverbanks didn’t like to be nice and gentle for the entirety of their length. Instead, she’d been forced inland on more than one occasion. Which meant that instead of a relatively clear space by the river, she had to deal with the dense, bramble-filled, thorny-assed, ankle-twisting, spider-web-in-the-face crap that grew inland, where everything wanted to either scratch her eyes out or hit her with some kind of contact-irritant that made her skin itch and burn like hell. At least she’d picked up some kind of Hiking skill and an Endurance point, but so far it didn’t seem to do a hell of a lot.

Angela looked around to get her bearings, in the process spotting some tall green stalks growing near a tree stump.

She sighed in resignation.

“Better than nothing,” she muttered. Getting down on her hands and knees, she clawed at the dirt until she had exposed enough of the tuber to pull it free of the ground, then jammed it into her belt pouch without looking at it. She preferred to put it out of her mind until she was forced to eat it. Not that the thing was hideous; it was just that looking at it would make her think about the taste, and that would inevitably lead to dry heaving. Even the rabbit that tipped her off to the plant’s edibility hadn’t looked like it was enjoying the experience.

A noise came through the forest, causing Angela to pause in her digging. It sounded like someone slowly letting the air out of a balloon, layered over the cracking and rustling of brush being broken. Given that this was Arenia and balloons were presumably not a thing, combined with the plaintive air to the noise, Angela realized it was the sound of an animal in trouble.

For a moment, she considered not going to help. Gotta stay alive, right? But then she remembered that she was a druid. Or would be. Maybe. If things turned out. Regardless, if she was going to pursue that path, she could hardly ignore the sound of an animal struggling in the woods.

“Fine, fine, I’m coming. Hold your horses,” Angela muttered. She pulled the last tuber out of the ground and shoved it into her belt, then made her way through the dense foliage to the source of the noise. More brambles got caught in her hair and clothes, but she gritted her teeth and kept moving forward, trying to ignore the godforsaken things.

When Angela finally came upon the source of the noise, she discovered that it was a deer in the middle of a clearing, its foreleg caught in a hunter’s trap. The leg was pretty mangled from all the struggling, and even though the trap was likely meant for smaller animals, it had done enough damage that the deer would probably die of sepsis if it escaped. Or a predator would eat it, more likely.

“Hey there, little buddy,” Angela said in a soothing tone. “Everything’s going to be okay, yeah? You just let me come over there and help you.” She made her way slowly across the clearing toward the deer. Its tail twitched, and it looked at her nervously, but it didn’t move. Once Angela was close enough, she slowly got to one knee and bent to investigate the trap. It wasn’t too complicated, kind of like what you would see in a cartoon. Before long, she worked out how the thing operated.

Using her body weight, Angela pressed down on the levers to either side of the trap's jaws. With the metal no longer binding its leg, the deer gingerly removed its injured hoof and hopped tentatively away from the trap, completely unable to put any weight on the injured limb.

“Easy there, fella,” Angela said. “I’m going to give you something special to close that wound right up, okay?”

Angela removed a sprig of mistletoe from her pouch and held it in her hand. She then used the blood on her hand from where she’d removed the trap to gently drew her rune just above the deer's shredded leg.

Satisfied that her rune was good, Angela held the mistletoe to the centre circle of the rune and focused on drawing in the forest's vitality. This time though, she directed that power not into herself but into the rune, willing it to life so that it could perform its magic and heal the deer’s leg.

Once the connection was made, the rune started to glow slightly. Its magic seemed to separate from Angela, no longer needing her as a conduit to draw on the forest’s vitality. Angela watched as the wound sealed itself shut, leaving behind smooth, scar-free flesh. Soon, both the sprig of mistletoe and the rune itself glowed a soft red and then crumbled into dust, signifying the end of the spell.

This! This is why I wanted to be a druid!

Angela’s heart filled with joy. The deer looked at her curiously now, but Angela knew in her heart that it was thankful for the aid she had given it. With a loving hand, Angela reached out and placed her palm gently on the deer’s neck.

As soon as her hand made contact, the deer’s eyeballs went wide, and it reared up on its hind legs like a horse in a slap fight with a kangaroo.

Angela had no time to react. Before she could even cry out, the deer leapt, made a complete 180° turn, planted its front legs in the dirt, and delivered a two-hoofed hindleg kick directly to her chest that launched her through the air and sent her smashing into a tree trunk on the other side of the clearing.

Angela lay groaning in the dirt as she watched the deer bound off into the woods. “You motherfucker,” she wheezed.

She tried to grab a pebble to throw at the animal, only to discover that her arm now possessed an unexpected joint in the middle of her forearm.

“Nyaah!” she shouted, clutching her broken arm and rocking back and forth. “Stupid fucking animals in this stupid fucking forest on the stupid fucking planet!” She looked skyward and shouted, “This planet SUUUUUUCKS!”

Gritting her teeth, Angela forced her way back to her feet. Something was definitely grinding against something inside her arm, but at least it hadn’t broken through the skin. There was also something super shitty going on with her ribs. It helped to know that she could heal herself once her spell was off cooldown, but it’s not like that made it hurt any less.

Furious at the outcome of her attempt at being a good little druid, Angela picked up her shillelagh and staggered in the direction of the river, swearing every step of the way.

Her grumbling and swearing were still going strong when she rounded a tree and was surprised by a stocky gray creature, the beast spinning to face her. Its mouth opened wide as it delivered a sharp-toothed hiss, waving its long-taloned paws at her threateningly, the hair on its back rising with an air of menace. Without a moment’s hesitation, Angela swung her shillelagh at the thing, smashing the weapon down on the creature’s head and killing it with a single blow.

You have slain a Level 2 Terrified Juvenile Badger.

Congratulations on the cold-hearted murder of an animal that mostly eats worms. I’m sure Ennàd will be super happy about that.

25 XP Earned

NEW WEAPON SKILL LEARNED!

Clubs – Skill Level 1 (Tier-0)

Again, congrats on clubbing to death the animal equivalent of an 11-year-old child.

50 XP Earned

“Oops,” Angela said. A rumble of thunder sounded in the sky, and she waved sheepishly skyward. “Sorry about that! It’s just that it caught me by surprise, and I was already in a bad mood ’cause of the deer thing, and in my defence, it looked pretty dangerous. I mean, it doesn’t now. Now it looks pretty small. Like, really small.”

She nudged it with her foot. Yeah, the thing was definitely a juvenile. She briefly considered whether it would be okay to skin and eat it.

No, you’re a vegetarian, you idiot!

Still, she was freaking hungry.

“No. Just… no.” Angela turned her back on the corpse and headed toward the burbling of the river, which had finally seen fit to announce its presence. Wait, was she supposed to bury the badger or something? Meh, something will come along and eat it—circle of life and all that.

When Angela arrived at the river, she discovered that for once, she had been in luck. Her detour had taken her far enough downstream to avoid the rocky outcropping that forced her away from the riverbank earlier. Now the water was accessible by simply hopping along a few rocks.

Angela made her way to where the water was running clear and shallow and opened up her pouch to make sure nothing had fallen out during the encounter with the deer. Fortunately, everything was accounted for.

“Small miracles, I guess,” Angela muttered. Still… if she’d lost the vegetables, it would at least spare her from eating them.

Kneeling on the rock, Angela took out one of the tubers and resigned herself to an awkward one-handed washing experience. Maybe she could rub them in the smooth gravel to clean them off? That should be pretty easy.

She leaned forward to get the tuber down to the bottom of the water, only to discover that the refraction of the light in the water had made it seem much shallower than it truly was. A fact she discovered by leaning in too far, slipping off the rock, and falling sideways into the glacier-fed water.

Angela didn’t even bother moving. There was no point. Instead, she simply lay there dejectedly as the water ran past, halfway up her body. For a moment, she considered dunking her face and sucking all the water she could into her lungs, but she instead opted to roll onto her back and stare at the clouds overhead. Without thinking, she took a bite of the starchy tuber and winced as the taste of turnip and battery acid filled her mouth.

Why is it that the worst tasting thing in this forest is the only thing I’ve found that’s edible?

Closing her eyes, Angela forced herself to endure the meal. Chew, swallow, repeat. Chew, swallow, repeat.

I wonder if that badger is still there…

The turkey raced through the woods in utter panic. Hairy creatures on two legs tried to grab her, but she scrambled away, looping between their legs and out of their grasp. The turkey lost a couple of tail feathers in the process, but that was a lot better than losing her head. The hairy 2-legged creatures made loud noises, sort of like the wrinkly creature that had caught her before she ended up in this forest, but different.

The turkey took advantage of the hairy 2-legs confusion and darted into the bushes, racing through the groundcover as she tried to get away. It was strange and springy, not like the warehouse she had grown up in, but the turkey liked the bounciness. The plants seemed to keep the 2-legged things from catching it as well, which was a benefit she had come to appreciate.

When the shouts died to nothing, the turkey stopped to peck at some seeds. Then she stopped, her head perking up. The feeling had returned.

Without really knowing why, the turkey felt compelled to move towards the feeling. Sure, the wrinkly 2-legs was the reason she was in this forest, but he had let her go instead of eating her like everything else tried to do. That had to count for something.