I GET WELCOMED BY A loving slap to the face.
"Demiurge save us, you're finally awake!" Back with the paroxysm, Foras hovers in front of my face. My face throbs where his tiny hand hits me across and I glare back at him. He completely ignores me, wiping snoot from god-knows-where because I clearly cannot see a nose on his round body.
Getting up is a struggle. Even with the chaos ensuing around me, I breathe out hard, trying my darn best to remain calm and inspect my surroundings. I glance up to realise that I have tumbled down a steep, sliding slope. The fire seems to be contained above the slope, a momentary accidental win for me. Every inch of my body aches as I move my hands, dusting myself off from the dry twigs and roots clinging to my torso. Thankfully, no part of me seems broken and that is definitely a plus.
"How long was I out for?" I should stop making a habit out of this whole blacking out and waking up thing.
"A couple minutes," Foras growls. "Let's move! The fire will catch up soon!"
Foras is screaming into my ears but none goes inside. My deep, calming breath gets caught in my throat when I look down at my arm. The burn wound is gone. Except for the sweat and soot, there is nothing. No trace of the painful ulcer. It is like the wound did not exist in the first place.
Ignoring Foras, I reach out to The System inside my mind. But unlike all the other times, she doesn't respond back. Worse, I don't even feel an ounce of her and her arctic presence inside.
"Looking for the System?" And extremely like every other time, Foras is scarily accurate, driving a nail to my head. I nod and his wings flutter like a moth.
"She can't converse with you about the quest while inside said quest. That's against game rules."
In other words, I'm, once again, in this all alone with nothing but Foras for help. I choose not to point out that she, in fact, spoke with me the time I set the forest on fire. Instead, I concentrate on actually completing the first quest. Better stay alive and have the questions for later.
Even though I know it won't yield me any definite answers, I still ask Foras. "Would walking from this slope get us out?"
Foras is back with his unimpressed how-are-you-even-alive look but surprisingly, for once, the floating ball actually replies coherently. "The slopes, the crevices, every inch in this place– everything is part of the maze. There should be no shortcuts."
He stops to give me a pointed look. The kind that isn't judging but instead the kind you'd give your best friend to signal something. I should be freaking crazy to be making analogies in such a situation but there is this pull in my gut . . . also a pull on Foras' forehead where normally people would have their eyebrows. I wouldn't talk for anyone but for some reason, I felt it in every fibre of me that Foras was pointing at a loophole.
There should be no shortcuts.
I rack my brain harder than I've ever done, while looking out for fire. Because of the head start I had after starting the fire, I was a good few hundred metres ahead of the fire. Still, the heat radiated like an uncontrollable pizza oven, sucking in all my focus and energy. Even on a normal day with my mind in its prime, I'm not the type to figure out problems. Let alone in a dark place with darker trees which I personally set on fire.
Suddenly, my breath catches and my heart stops for a split second. Foras said there should be no shortcuts when he could have easily said there are no shortcuts. And Gaal's grove was every bit as dark even with the fire. A freaking forest fire nonetheless.
With the sudden epiphany, adrenaline courses through my veins, igniting an urgent fervour. I jump up on my feet, ignoring the way my limbs are protesting. Foras' eyes light when he sees me move and a crazy smile blooms in me.
"Let's get out of here."
Since Foras makes it pretty clear that sticking to the base of the slope is as bad as walking on it, I quickly made up my mind to climb it. Quickly, I tear a long piece of cloth from my shirt and tie it across my nose and mouth to resist the smoke. For whatever I have in mind, the more on par I'm with the fire, the better.
But climbing up the slope is easier said than done, especially since my tumbling descent was quite an easy mode of transport. Gravity is a brute and god am I in for a rude awakening of how badly unfit I was for any physical activity that isn't track.
I grumble all the way while I climb the slope, holding on to roots and creepers and climbers and basically anything that was worth holding on to. Foras tries his best to pull me up with his stick hands and moth wings.
After a gruelling five minutes, I'm up the slope and on my original escape path. I break off a lower branch from a nearby Stygian fir and light it on fire to light up my way. My trained athletic muscles burst with energy and adrenaline so without catching my breath, I make use of them and start running, as far away from the fire as I can. The more I run, the steeper the ground gets, all the more evident that we were rising to higher ground. Wind hits across my face, harder as it gets sucked by the fire behind me.
I gasp, sweat as stray tears trail into my mouth. The heat from the torch isn't cosy either. But I don't stop. Not to wipe them off, not to catch a breath, not to even look back. I keep running and running until the ground gets steeper, so much more than the small slope I had fallen into. If not for my dire need for some break from this fatigue, I'd actually smirk right now.
I almost forget about Foras until he tugs at my shirt. The grade D armour. His face is blank, an empty canvas and at once, I know he has figured out what I had figured out, too.
As I push up the way, fresh air breaks out around me, washing away the smoke induced weariness to me. I glance back and reel from satisfaction to find the rest of Gaal's Grove stretch beneath me. Rows of an unsolvable maze ignited in fire.
Foras finally speaks.
"Hyung, now what?"
I finally break out of my sprint into a jog, taking hold of more dry flora. I bring the torch I had used to light my way in the dark to light them. They quickly catch on fire.
"Now we wait."