Immediately the party increased their speed, Tormacc and Athra running full-out to try and keep up with Zedna. It wasn’t hard to push themselves to the limit: they had a literal monster on their heels after all. It made for quite a good motivation to keep going. Tormacc had been a little suspicious of how scary Zedna made the Greenstone Rager sound, but seeing it himself, he knew she had actually undersold it’s might. It was the first monster he had come across that had an aura. He could feel the strength it radiated, and if it reached them it would only take a single punch to splatter him into goo.

The Greenstone Rager, upon seeing its prey so close, let out another roar before sprinting after them, it’s steps powerful enough to cause cracks to form in the super dense mountains. It’s speed might have been its least powerful aspect, but “least” was relative, and no monster that powerful would have such an obvious weak point. Tormacc wasn’t sure how long it would take for the Greenstone Rager to catch up to them, but despite them now going as fast as they could he suspected it wouldn’t be more than an hour.

As it turned out, his hour estimate was long, and not even twenty minutes later the beast was closing in on them. Because of their reliance on skills Tormacc and Athra weren’t able to keep up their top speed, their movement skills sending them forward in spurts and bursts. It was far from enough to escape their pursuer, and Tormacc was beginning to despair. They needed a miracle to escape.

“Ahead, hole,” Athra gasped out, her normally rocky voice sounding breathy from the running. Despite her rock-like exterior she needed air just the same as any other living creature, and in this case her hard skin actually caused her problems, as her respiratory functions didn’t have the needed elasticity to provide her with sufficient oxygen in a long sprint.

Tormacc was much better off in this regard, as his improved physical specs also correlated with an increase in lung capacity and capability, so his breathing was just fine, the strain from skill overuse the bigger issue.

“How far ahead?” Zedna said. “And which direction. I might have a plan.”

Athra barely gasped out the location of the hole, but from what Tormacc could see the area she was describing was solid ground, looking exactly the same as the rest of the mountains. Zedna seemed to know what Athra was talking about this time though, so he was the only one left out. But if Zedna had a plan he was going to trust her. He certainly didn’t have any ideas of how to get out of their situation.

Zedna adjusted their path towards the hole, slightly veering off from where they had been running. Then when they were right before where Tormacc thought Athra said the hole was, they swerved, going around the invisible hole. Tormacc really wanted to ask what was going on, but the Greenstone Rager was almost upon them, so his thoughts were occupied with running even that tiny bit faster.

A rumble echoed out, and both Zedna and Athra turned to look behind them, Tormacc following suit. His mouth then dropped open, and he gaped in shock. The Greenstone Rager was gone, and in its place was a giant hole, exactly where Athra said it was.

“Let’s take a brief rest,” Zedna said, slowing down.

Coming to a halt, Tormacc and Athra plopped onto the ground. They were both on their last legs skill-wise, and if they had to run for another few minutes they would have run out of the mental energy required to activate skills.

“What happened?” Tormacc said once he recovered a little from the mental strain of his skill use.

“Stone Wurms,” Zedna said. “This was why I wanted Athra to come with me over the mountains. The Stone Wurms have the ability to create deep holes in the mountains, covering them up to appear like normal rock. Even I’m unable to tell where the holes are, and because of the gravity in the mountains it’s almost impossible to get out once you fall back in, leaving you with a one-way ticket to a Stone Wurm nest.”

“So we lost the Greenstone Rager then?”

“Unless it manages to climb back up somehow, then yes, we’ve lost it,” Zedna said.

Almost as if to contradict the statement she just made a loud bellow echoed out from the hole the Greenstone Rager fell into, the soundwaves so strong they were almost visible as they were channeled up and out of the hole. Zedna frowned, walking over to the hole to peer into the depths. She took her time staring into the abyss, and from her expression when she walked back it evidently stared back at her.

“Even I know that face,” Athra said. “That face of someone who not lost Greenstone Rager.”

“It’s climbing back up,” Zedna said. “I don’t know how, but it’s climbing back up.” She said it twice for impact, the meaning of what she said barely getting through to her.

“So it’s still coming after us?” Tormacc said. “What about the Stone Wurms? Didn’t they attack it? How would it start climbing back up so fast?”

“In hole, no wurms,” Athra said.

Tormacc looked at Zedna questioningly.

“Look, I’ve never actually been IN the holes,” she said defensively. “When I came here before, the hole one of my companions fell down had a Stone Wurm in it, so I figured this one would too. Maybe this is an older hole or something and the Stone Wurms have since moved on. We might be too close to the edge of their territory.”

“So what, we try to lure it deeper in?” Tormacc asked. As plans went, it was something, but he wasn’t happy about it. This whole trip was turning out to be a lot more danger filled than Zedna made it sound, and while he was still scared of her, that fear was slowly starting to turn into frustration. She had lead them into the mountains so she damn well better lead them out of them.

“Unless you have a better option we have no choice,” Zedna said. “I could have never predicted we would run into a Greenstone Rager, but now that it’s on our tail we have to get rid of it, and luring it into another hole is the best way to do that. Multiple if we have to. Even though we both are missing one arm, I need that arm much more than it does, and if it comes to a fight I don’t fancy my chances. Killing two of them was already a miracle, frankly.”

The hole went down quite a ways, and because of the gravity the Greenstone Rager was forced to endure the arduous climb to the surface, the time it took to climb up giving Tormacc and Athra some much needed rest. They couldn’t rest for too long though, as they needed to find another hole to lure the Greenstone Rager into, and Athra couldn’t sense any in their immediate vicinity.

Proceeding deeper into the Stone Wurms’ territory, the group started off at a more sedate pace before accelerating once the Greenstone Rager climbed out of the hole. They had a head start on it, but it would only be an hour, maybe two hours tops, before it caught up to them again. They needed to find another hole to lure it into before that happened.

One hour passed by and Tormacc was starting to get desperate. The Greenstone Rager was hot on their heels, and he and Athra had started to burn through skills rapidly, as the closer the Greenstone Rager got the faster they had to go, which meant more accumulated mental strain from skill usage. And unlike them, the Greenstone Rager only seemed to go faster, it’s rage spurring it on to reach even greater speeds.

“Hole, ahead!” Athra said.

Tormacc almost tripped as his body let go of tension he hadn’t been aware he was holding. Finding another hole meant they could at least take a rest while the Greenstone Rage climbed out and potentially ending the chase for good if they could drop it in a Stone Wurm nest. The days of running were wearing him ragged, the strain from so many intense skill sessions building up to a migraine that was currently half-formed, at the moment only threatening him should he overwork himself further.

Under Athra’s direction the party swerved towards the hole, once more skirting around it and luring the Greenstone Rager right into the trap, the beast too enraged to think critically about their movements. And since on its own the Greenstone Rager was unable to differentiate the hole from the rest of the ground, it once more found itself subject to a long fall.

As soon as the trap was sprung both Athra and Tormacc collapsed, trying to gain even a few second more of down time to rest and recover. Glancing over at her, Tormacc couldn’t help but think Athra was starting to look a little cracked, her normal rocky skin appearing to dry out. He was thankful he couldn’t see himself as he was sure he looked even worse. He could feel a scrubby beard coming in, not having had the time to shave in the past few days.

Unlike the last fall, this time there was clearly something down there, and the roars of the Greenstone Rager were answered by some other beast, likely Stone Wurms. The sounds of battle quickly escalated, and even if the Greenstone Rager was able to come back up the hole after defeating the Stone Wurms it wouldn’t be for a while, giving them more time to create distance.

“Can you see anything?” Tormacc asked as Zedna walked over to peer into the hole.

“Not much,” she said. “There seems to be a fairly large space down there, and battle isn’t going on where I can see. But if I’m hearing things correctly there’s at least two Stone Wurms down there, maybe three. The Greenstone Rager should be able to easily take down one, but two or three should be enough to finish it off.”

Tormacc let out a sigh of relief as he lay down on the uneven ground, the sharp rock jabbing into him feeling like the softest bed he had laid on in years. He didn’t want to jinx it, but it seemed they were finally home free. Barring anything like the valley where the Greenstone Ragers had lived Zedna and Athra combined should be able to safely guide them the rest of the way through the mountains and to the exit portal.

Their rest was accompanied by the screams of battle, the noises reverberating up the hole and serenading them as they recovered. It wasn’t quite pleasant, but it wasn’t unpleasant either; the screeching roars a reminder of what they had just overcome. After about ten minutes all fell silent, and Zedna got up and stalked over to the hole to see if the Greenstone Rager won or the wurms did.

“I don’t see anything,” she said. “If the Greenstone Rager is still alive it’s not crawling up the hole, so I would say we’re safe for the moment, although I still suggest we make haste to get out of here. There’s no reason to stay in the mountains any longer than we have to. If…”

“Below, wurm!” Athra shouted, interrupting Zedna mid-speech.

Like a shadow Zedna flitted away, one moment standing next to the hole the next standing in front of Tormacc and Athra with her weapon raised. It wasn’t a moment too soon, as seconds after she moved away the ground exploded, a Stone Wurm rising up, its maw enclosing the space Zedna occupied just moments prior.