24. BURN IT!

The last few days have been chaotic. You've doubled in level, become a micro-boss, and are well on the way to making a dungeon. However, at your core, you're a drakeling. As the serrated blade-tongue grows ever closer, you fight back the pain, take a great lungful of air, and exhale a white hot stream of flame.

The Tranquil Mosquito lets out a shrill shriek of pain and stumbles away from you as its leaking ichor ignites. You watch it thrash with a sort of detached pleasure until the stench reaches you and causes you to gag. After a few moments, the beasts wings flicker to life and it lurches into the air, trailing acrid smoke as it's parabolic flight takes it from your sight.

As the adrenalin slowly leaves you, you realise quite how much pain you are in. Your right forelimb throbs in time with the half of your tail that you can feel. You take a few moments to examine yourself and are far from enthused.

You must have caught your claws on something, because your right front claws are just gone, leaving a bloody mess behind. Thankfully you can still use your proto-fingers well enough, but there is no way you can attack with it. Your tail is bent in two about half way down, and the majority of your teeth are missing. Your winglet is similarly useless, hanging limp at your side. The attack that had grounded you had gone right through the controlling muscle, the bicep equivalent, before tearing along the flight membrane. You were going to be walking... limping... everywhere for a while.

You curse as the reality of your situation hits you. You're not sure where you are, bar around the half way point of your journey. You have no idea if your injuries will carry over a respawn or not, and you don't really want to die in any case. The gods have ways of punishing those who try to use death to their advantage.

You consider, for a moment, turning back. You really were in no shape for any further fights, after all. But then, you were in no shape to walk back either, and crippling damage would take a long time to heal.

I need a healer in the lair, you think, the persistent pain making you somewhat grumpy. You allow yourself to wallow for another few minutes before forcing your battered body to its three working feet. There's little point staying here, after all, and little more attempting to return to your lair. You may as well press on until death.

It takes you some time, limping through the under-brush, to find a rhythm of movement that avoids aggravating your right forelimb, left winglet, or tail, but once found your loping stride carries you relatively swiftly. From the gentle slope of the earth, you hope to come across a hillock or rise soon to let you get the lay of the land, but as the sun starts to set in earnest and you realise you have been walking for hours, no break in the trees has revealed itself.

The forest grows dark around you as the sunlight slips away, the thick canopy serving to block out what little light dusk had to offer. Still, you push on until the darkness becomes so oppressive you're no longer sure you could walk without headbutting tree trunks.

You curl up in a hollow of roots as the creatures of the night begin to stir. Birdsong is replaced by the buzzing of insects and you shiver involuntarily. Trees shift and stir around you, and you huddle deeper into the loam. Without a pile of stones to heat with your breath, you know it will be a cold night, but you aren't going to risk flame in the middle of the woods – not least because it could attract unwanted attention.

The trees shift and mutter again, branches swaying, visible only as they block the stars just beginning to show. The earth is slightly damp, and seems to wick away what little heat you can generate. You spare a thought to be thankful that there seems to be no wind tonight, and then still as the trees sway again.

When a figure, visible only in it's own faint glow, runs into view between the trees, you are not as startled as you could have been.

As it runs closer to you, you are able to make out more details, although the faint glow blurs the specifics. It looks tall, with disproportionally long legs for a human or elf. However instead of looking graceful the figure looks stretched, like its height has come from its width and as it runs, bolts, really, around obstacles it contorts and bends as if to fall, only righting itself at the last second. One particularly fast turn requires it to reach out with one impossibly thin arm and push off against a tree trunk. As it pushes itself up again, the trees all bend and billow forwards, as if they're reaching out towards the glowing figure.

You stand, stiffly, as the figure draws ever closer. Its path seems like it will take it past you, and you don't trust your ability to remain hidden.

They never reach you, collapsing to their knees some dozen feet from you, panting loud enough that you can hear it clearly. The branches around you curl towards them as they kneel. As you watch, they seem to shrink and fill out, until they stop at about the size of a human, although it's still to far away to make out details.

You're not sure they'll be friendly if approached, but then, you're not in the best condition to run either.

What to do?