Undermind

In the silence of the deep place, she began to stir.

How long she had been here, she couldn’t say. Time had little meaning in the deep place. It was the only world she knew, and her dim awareness didn’t question it. But now she was beginning to emerge from her fugue.

First came the sensation of movement; of water flowing against her skin. She was moving; rising out of the depths, propelled by some unseen force.

Feeling a gentle tug on the back of her neck, she turned her head and saw several spindly flesh-coloured vines trailing behind her, coiling together before vanishing into darkness.

The pull of the vines was not enough to halt her ascent. As she continued upward, a tangerine glow began to fill the water around her.

Slowly, the light began to take shape. High above her, a veil of rippling waves, lit by the rising sun.

She rose to meet the new dawn, feeling a strange blend of joy and sorrow.

Saskia opened her eyes. Then she closed them again. She repeated this action several more times experimentally.

Nope, she thought drowsily. Still dreaming.

She lay in a shallow pool at the centre of a misty forest glade, beneath a starless night sky. Looming over her was a solitary tree, gnarled and twisted, with golden bark and red leaves. Perched amidst a tangle of branches at the top of the tree, like an oversized Christmas decoration, was a large glowing computer monitor.

It was one of those old cathode ray tube monstrositors she remembered from her childhood; boxy and flickery and eye-strain-inducing. There was no image on the screen, just an eerie grey glow. If she were awake, the fact that it was able to glow and flicker would be a little unsettling, because…where was the power outlet?

There was a grunting sound nearby, followed by a soft moan. Saskia looked over at the grassy bank beneath the tree, where a young couple were—oh…

Even in the dream, she felt herself blushing.

Filling her nostrils was the smell of mouldy leaves and a hint of…wet dog? Slimy rocks pressed against her back. Warm water lapped between her…

It was then that Saskia realised she too was naked.

Oh, so it’s one of those dreams, thought Saskia.

Except now she thought about it, this didn’t feel like a dream. No dream was this…this tangible.

Saskia sat up abruptly, wrapping her arms about her knees and emitting a noise somewhere between a squawk and the honk of dying hippo.

And that was when she saw herself.

Her arms were grotesquely long and spindly, covered in grey flesh, their topsides dotted with lumpy moles the colour of dark moss. Ebony claws curled from the tips of her fingers. She swallowed, feeling her tongue press against a row of sharp teeth.

There was a muffled shriek. The couple in flagrante were now staring at her, a deer-in-headlights look etched across both of their faces.

“Sorry!” blurted Saskia, rising to her feet. “Don’t let me interrupt!” She saw with horror that her arms almost drooped into the ankle-high water. Then she remembered her bits were hanging out, and she awkwardly tried to cover herself while sidling away.

Shouting in a language she didn’t understand, the pair bolted for the treeline, leaving their clothes in a heap on the grass. Bemused, she watched them go. Their bodies were incredibly slim, almost anorexic, and completely hairless except for the tops of their heads, which sprouted long feathery tresses that fluttered behind them as they ran. Their skin was mottled with flecks of gold and laurel green. They had strange ears; long and slender, and tapering to a narrow tip.

Actually, strange wasn’t the right word. She’d seen ears like that many times, in movies and games, and on fantasy book covers. Just not in person, outside of a few cosplay events.

Are they…elves…? Then what does that make me? An orc? No, not with these arms; these claws. A troll!?

Again, Saskia glanced down at her misshapen body, and groaned. She resembled a spindly, hairless gorilla, with lumps in all the wrong places. No wonder the elves were running like their butts were on fire.

Dropping to a crouch, she stared at her own reflection in the water. Any lingering doubts about what she’d become vanished right there.

Fantasy settings were not very consistent in how they portrayed monster races. But her appearance had a definite troll-like quality, not unlike the malformed creatures she’d created for Threads of Nautilum. Her ears were wide and tapered, a bit like those of an elf. A mess of green tangles hung like seaweed around her shoulders. Her facial features were still vaguely recognisable, but twisted out of shape, with scarlet, slitted eyes, extremely prominent brow ridges, a large nose, and a wide, toothy mouth.

It was as if some cosmic prankster were playing a cruel joke on her. Or maybe that voice-recording session finally tipped her over the edge into bat-guano territory.

She sighed. It could be worse. As far as trolls went, her face was at the less-ugly end of the spectrum. Closer to Warcraft than The Lord of the Rings movies.

There was something else that had changed. Something that would seem utterly inexplicable, were it not for the fact that she was a troll.

Her scars were gone. The places on her face and body where the accident had left its marks were now covered in what for a troll must be unblemished skin; taupe grey with lines of green moles stretching down her arms and back and legs.

Perhaps more disconcertingly, she had no bellybutton. She ran her fingers over the smooth patch of skin where her navel should be. It occurred to her that a bellybutton was also a kind of scar: a perfectly normal scar formed when the remnants of the umbilical chord dried up and fell off after birth. That scar was gone too, as if she’d been reformed from clay.

Saskia felt a wave of anxiety wash over her. She’d never felt more lost or alone or confused. Not even when she woke up after the accident. At least then she’d been surrounded by family and nurses who had done their best to comfort and reassure her.

She stepped out of the pool and inspected the pile of belongings the elves had left behind. Two pairs of leather boots, a woollen tunic and pants, and a turquoise dress with silver embroidery. How very…elfy. There were no undergarments. Apparently they’d arrived ready for business. She picked up the dress, feeling like a creep rifling through their stuff. But this was an emergency. She needed to wear something. Hopefully they’d have spares of whatever she ‘borrowed.’ The dress though—not an option. There was no way she could fit that thing over this monstrosity of a body.

I could totally have worn that when I was a skinny human, she thought wistfully. When I was human. Wow. I’m actually thinking like this already. This is so messed up!

The guy’s tunic and pants were larger, but still far too small to squeeze over her massive frame. So she did the next best thing she could think of. She tore open the front of the tunic, tied its arms around her back and secured it in such a way that it wouldn’t flap about too much in a stiff breeze. She was gonna chafe like a moffer, but that couldn’t be helped. Then she tied the pants around herself like a loincloth. Or nappies. Dogs above, she was wearing nappies!

Neither pair of boots would fit over her massive feet. Besides, her clawed toes would shred any footwear she stepped into. Her feet had extremely thick, leathery soles, so maybe she wouldn’t need them.

Once dressed, her thoughts returned to the questions boiling inside her head. How could this have happened to her? How did she get here, wherever here was?

From the way those elves were acting, she could reasonably assume they had nothing to do with it. Unless they’d summoned her with some kinda freaky sex magic, and then chickened out after they found out what they’d unleashed…

Okay, probably not that.

What about the monitor in the tree? Saskia looked up at the flickering screen. Some sort of control console? A primitive touchscreen, perhaps? It seemed absurd, but if some retro-future-tech had brought her here, transformed her somehow, maybe it could send her back?

She stepped up to the gnarled tree, feeling warmth radiating off the screen as she approached.

A troll’s natural posture was apparently to hunch over like an ape, with her arms touching the ground. Standing this way, she was well over two metres tall, assuming those elves were around human height. But when she stretched up to her full height, her head rose to maybe three and a half metres off the ground. It felt awkward. She wouldn’t be able to maintain this posture for long without causing severe back pain. But this way she was able to simply reach out and…

She hesitated, seeing her reflection in the flickering grey glass.

This is a terrible idea, objected the cynical part of her brain. If horror movies have taught me anything, it’s that I shouldn’t touch the eerie flickering screen!

Saskia touched the eerie flickering screen.

Or at least, tried to touch it. Her claw-tipped finger sank into the glass, and she yanked it back with a squeak. It had felt like she was poking a warm sponge.

Surprisingly, she didn’t get sucked into the screen. Or whatever that thing was, because it was not what it appeared to be. The flickering grew more erratic.

Then a crack began to thread its way slowly across the pane of glass.

Oh crap.

Saskia hurriedly stepped away from the fracturing surface, worried it might explode in her face. The object seemed to waver for a moment, and she caught a glimpse of something glistening beneath the surface.

At that moment, a sharp sound drew her attention. Her eyes snapped to a feathered shaft jutting out of the tree trunk. It hadn’t been there a moment earlier.

For a moment, she just stared, uncomprehending. Then her brain caught up. Someone was shooting at her. Her eyes darted over to the nearby treeline, where a figure stalked toward her, half hidden in the undergrowth. Another elf; this one fully clothed and holding a bow. He was not alone.

There had been no warning; no demand of surrender. These elves were out for blood.

Panic seized her. Driven by some trollish instinct she didn’t know she had, Saskia dropped onto all fours and galloped away from the approaching hunters.

Wow. Trolls could really move.

With a splash, another arrow landed in the water somewhere nearby.

“Zig-zag, you stupidiot!”

Saskia had once shouted those words at a character on the TV screen running in a straight line directly away from an archer loosing arrows at him. He should have taken a slower, but far less predictable path, making it harder for his attacker to line up the perfect shot. That character had of course been killed moments before he made it to safety.

Now she discovered just how hard it was to take her own advice when someone was shooting at her. Because holy crap she was gonna die, and she needed to get the frock out of here as quickly as possible!

Two more arrows whistled past in rapid succession. And then she was under a concealing canopy of dense, leafy trees. Immediately, her eyes began to adjust to the darkness in the fog beneath the canopy. Here, there were none of the contrasting highlights and shadows she was used to seeing. More of an undifferentiated gloom that made the trees and undergrowth seem flat and featureless. Almost like one of those old computer games, before advances in graphics technology made it cheap and easy to create dynamic lighting.

This must be some kinda super-enhanced night vision, she realised. Another feature of this new body?

Her retreat came to an abrupt halt when she came to a cliff overlooking a yawning abyss. Peeking over the edge, she couldn’t see the bottom. From the looks of it, her night vision only extended about fifty metres around her. Beyond that, there was only mist-shrouded darkness.

She skirted the edge of the cliff to her left, terrified she’d run into the pursuing elves. There must be a way down, but to get there, she may have to go through them.

A few minutes later, she came upon another cliff, this one reaching upward on her right. Or, more accurately, it was part of the same cliff, and she now ran over a wide tree-covered ledge cut into it. If she came across one of the elves here, it would be very…

Crap.

Two elves stood abreast on the ledge, facing her, toting long spears. Shouting, they charged toward her.

Desperately, Saskia sunk her claws into the rough crumbly stone of the cliff face and scampered upward, out of their reach. Below, there were more shouts, and she heard the clatter of another arrow bouncing off the cliff. With long muscular arms and claws like these, climbing was a cinch.

Soon, the cliff became a gentle slope, under cover of trees. She followed the ridgetop downward. It grew steeper and steeper, until she was more climbing then running.

Half-way down, she became aware of discomfort blooming in her lower back. Glancing at the affected area, she saw with horror that there was an arrow sticking out of it!

Gritting her teeth against the pain, she kept going. She didn’t have time to deal with that right now. As the ground started to level off, the trees gave way to other shapes; great curved spires jutting from the hillside, with pointed tops and bulbous appendages linked by spiralling causeways. Lights flickered from ovoid windows cut into the upper portions of the spires. Buildings, clearly, but not like any she’d seen before. Dark figures stood on the causeways. She could hear raised voices, speaking in a strange tongue.

Saskia squeezed between the buildings, trying to keep low and silent, but feeling like an elephant trying to sneak through an alleyway. Whoever lived here wouldn’t appreciate her intrusion. She needed to get out of here!

Rounding a corner, she came to an abrupt halt at the sight of a small figure sat on a balcony overhead. It was a petite little elf girl, barely tall enough for her head to reach Saskia’s waist. The girl’s eyes bulged. She let out a piercing shriek, which slowly morphed into a growl. Then she whipped out a long knife.

Saskia took one look at the little terror, and ran the other way. In the back of her mind, she imagined what this must look like. A creature of nightmares fleeing a tiny girl with a pig-sticker.

Well bog that! She didn’t want to hurt anyone! Least of all a young girl less than a quarter her height. Saskia longed to tell the elves, “I’m not actually a troll! You’ve got it all wrong!” But it’d do no good. She couldn’t speak their language, and even if she could, why would they believe her? In their eyes, she was a monster.

She found herself clonking along a wide causeway that groaned and flexed beneath her weight. Figures darted through the mist, drawn by the screaming banshee and Saskia’s loud steps. Lamplight flickered and weapons glinted. A horn sounded.

Someone stepped in front of her and jabbed a spear into her belly.

Reflexively, Saskia lashed out, swiping her assailant across his face and sending him tumbling through the air. The elf fell hard, cracking his head against the side of a building, and lay still.

She stared blankly down at the long wooden shaft embedded in her midsection.

Then her gaze turned to the motionless form of the elf. There were several deep gashes along his cheek where her claws had raked him. Had she just killed the poor guy…? Yeah he’d attacked her, but he’d just been doing his job. She was the intruder here; a hideous monster. And if he died, she wouldn’t just be a monster on the outside. He looked so small and vulnerable down there. Perhaps this elf was average or tall for one of his people, but next to Saskia, he may as well be a child.

She shuffled over to where he lay and felt for a pulse. Then she let out a sigh of relief. There was a heartbeat; slightly erratic, but strong. She propped him up against the tree so he wouldn’t drown in the shallow water.

Saskia was a little freaked out at how easily she’d taken out her opponent. Her new body may be ridiculously strong, but she didn’t know how to fight. Before today, the closest she’d ever come to actual combat outside of a video game was the time she kicked Timothy Ross in the goolies after he stomped on her sandcastle, when she was seven. She could only surmise this body came equipped with its own survival instincts that took over when she was in peril.

Her attention returned to the—oh yeah, there was a spear in her gut! Well, there was the arrow too, but that was less of a concern. The spear had gone all the way through her abdomen and out her back. Yet still she felt very little pain from that wound. Just an aching coldness creeping over her. She must be in shock.

Shouts rang out from behind her, accompanied by a growling sound that may have come from a dog…or maybe something much worse.

Saskia dared not linger any longer. She didn’t have time to remove the spear. She leapt off the causeway galloped down the grassy paths beneath, desperately seeking the shelter of trees. There they were at the bottom of the hill. Just a little further…

A dim part of her was amazed that she was still upright, let alone able to move this fast.

She felt the sting of an arrow entering her leg.

Then her hands and feet were splashing and sliding through slimy mist-shrouded water. She plunged headlong into the gloom, between thick trees and towering tree-sized fungi that weren’t quite giant mushrooms.

Another arrow whistled toward her. And then another.

This swamp was a primordial howlscape of mud and slime, seething with what looked like large worms that darted around her, probably drawn by her blood leaking into the water. The swamp grew deep and clingy, and every step was a struggle.

She ran until her limbs burned and her lungs ached. And then she ran some more. Slowly, the adrenaline began to wear off, replaced by fatigue. And pain. Now it was really starting to hurt. And she became aware of the blood. There was a lot of blood.

She couldn’t go on like this. Time to take care of her injuries.

Saskia carefully lowered herself down onto an island of tree roots. Inspecting herself, she saw that there were now several arrows in her. Two in her back and one in her thigh.

Best to start with those. She might pass out after she removed the spear. And she needed to test what would happen with those smaller injuries before she could work up the courage to deal with the larger one. If her theory was correct…

She began to pluck out the arrows, gasping as they tore through her flesh. Each time she removed one, there was a spurt of hot blood that quickly slowed to a trickle, and then stopped altogether. The wounds remained visible, but they seemed to be healing incredibly quickly. Already the pain was lessening.

Relief washed over her. It was just as she had hoped. In many fantasy settings, trolls had fantabulous regenerative abilities, allowing them to shrug off injuries that would kill most creatures. That seemed to be the case here too. But now it was time to test the limits of that ability…

She curled her fingers around the shaft of the spear, whimpering in anticipation of the agony to come. It would be safer to push it out her back. That way the barbed spearhead wouldn’t tear something on the way out. But to do that she’d have to reach around behind her back and pull it the final distance from that awkward angle. She had long arms, but still, she didn’t know if she could do that, even without the pain. Oh this was gonna suck so bad…

Just get it over with, she urged herself. The sooner she got the thing out, the sooner her wound would start to heal. Assuming she didn’t end up with a string of intestines poking out her back…

Crap, I just had to think of that, didn’t I.

Before she lost her nerve, she let out an expletive her mother would disapprove of, and began to push the spear through her abdomen with her left arm, while simultaneously pulling with her right. White hot agony lanced through her, and she almost blacked out. Blood gushed from the wound, soaking into her loincloth and the moss beneath. Shifting her grip behind her back, her fingers struggled to find purchase on a shaft that was now slick with gore. With a final supreme effort, she tore the spear free, hearing it clatter to the ground behind her.

Blood continued to pour forth from the jagged hole in her gut. For a moment, she panicked, thinking she was going to bleed out right then and there. But it soon slowed to a steady trickle as the wound began to close before her eyes.

Then she sagged, overcome by exhaustion. She lay there for a while, wanting nothing more than to just curl up and dream this all away. Regrettably, she needed to keep moving for a bit longer. It’d be unwise to sleep here in a pool of her own blood. The scent would attract predators, and the bloody trail she’d left behind her could lead pursuers to her location.

Sighing, Saskia forced herself to stand. Or as close to standing as she could manage without extreme discomfort. The wound in her abdomen still burned. She took the bloody spear. It was a bit of a burden to carry, but it’d come in handy later, when she needed to hunt for food.

What followed was an agonising trudge through a swamp that grew deeper and more treacherous with every step. She soon lost count of the number of times she slipped or tripped, and her clothing got dunked in slime or snagged and torn on spiny branches and sharp leaves.

At one point an enormous dragonfly buzzed overhead, its gossamer wings brushing her face. She let out a yelp and stopped in her tracks. That thing was the length of her forearm!

There were no signs of other people (not even elves) having ventured into this part of the swamp; no roads, paths, boardwalks, discarded items or footprints. Just lots of damp trees and plants and slime and fungi, rotting logs and—eek! Something large darted out from underfoot. Saskia glimpsed a slimy carapace and lots of legs. She backed away slowly. What was up with these supersized bugs?

Eventually the swamp gave way to dry land, though the undergrowth grew even thicker there. She came upon a mossy hollow and decided this place was as good as any to hunker down for what remained of the night. She sank down into the bed of moss, curled up into a ball, and tried to sleep.

Despite her exhaustion, slumber eluded her. She was cold and damp, and her wound throbbed. And a succession of grunts and growls and snapping twigs, and glimpses of movement through the leaves, kept her wide-eyed and tense long into the night.

When not preoccupied with thoughts of survival, her mind kept returning to the multi-million dollar questions. What was this place? How did she get here? And why a troll?

Before she found herself in the glade, she’d dreamed she was rising up from the ocean depths. But had that even been a dream? There had been a dreamlike quality to the experience. It had been similar to the strange dreams she’d been having ever since the accident. Yet everything that had happened afterward had been so outlandish, she couldn’t help but question the assumption. It seemed a lot like some sort of dream-metaphor for her arrival on this…world.

Because that’s what this place was, right? Another world.

And before that…? Just thinking about it made her head hurt. She remembered collapsing in the hallway outside her bedroom. Another seizure, but this one had been much worse than usual. She must have been lying there for hours before her mother found her. She winced, thinking of the terror in her mum’s voice.

It had felt like she was dying.

What if she had died? What if she’d died and this was some sorta bizarro afterlife? She shuddered, imagining her mum sobbing over her lifeless body, inconsolable.

Well one thing was certain. This place wasn’t heaven. Not unless God was a real donkhat. Which, on a day like today, she couldn’t entirely rule out. He did invent earthquakes, mosquitoes and menstrual cramps. It wasn’t the biblical hell either. At least, not the fire-and-brimstone part of it. Hell didn’t have cold days. There were, of course, plenty of other possible flavours of afterlife proposed by various religions throughout history: Valhalla, Hades, Sheol and Purgatory, to name a few. Perhaps one of them had gotten it right.

Then there were all those who believed in reincarnation. Well, here she was with a new body, so there was that. But clearly this wasn’t a typical case of reincarnation, or she’d have come back as a squalling baby, or a dividing embryo. Now that would be her definition of hell. Saskia could think of few things more horrifying than being an adult consciousness trapped in a helpless infant’s body. She’d had a taste of that after her accident. Never again.

Reincarnation of a more technological nature then? Her soul uploaded into a computer simulation? A ridiculously immersive virtual reality game? Perhaps that could explain her present situation better than a magical afterlife. It still seemed extremely unlikely though. Nothing like that was within the reach of present-day technology. Unless she’d been cryogenically frozen and…

Saskia awoke to the feeling of her dog climbing over her and licking her face.

“Get off, Cerberus,” she murmured. “Go bother Mum. I need to sleep a while longer.”

Hold on…that couldn’t be right. Cerberus had been run over by a garbage truck when she was seventeen. Saskia no longer had a dog. And even if she did, there was no way…

She opened her eyes. That was no dog. In fact, she could scarcely imagine anything less dog-like than the long, sinuous creature that now crawled across her back, probing her face with long hairy feelers. She stared into its glistening compound eyes and twitching mandibles. Something with this many legs had no right to grow so large.

She sprang to her feet and did the nope dance, yelling, “Aargh! Get it off! Get it off!”

Ignoring her attempt to dislodge it, the giant crapoodling centipede crawled around her neck like a wriggling scarf.

She snatched at it, accidentally driving her claws into its soft underbelly in the process. The creature screeched and tightened about her throat. Saskia screeched and tore at it with both hands. A spray of ichor splashed onto her face and torso. When she came to her senses, she realised she’d ripped the unfortunate creature in half. She let go of the two halves, watching them twitch on the ground, tiny legs kicking in the air. Attempting to scrape the gore off her body only served to smear it around.

That had to be her second—no, third—worst wake-up call ever.

She stared down at what was left of the centipede, which had finally stopped moving. Her stomach growled.

Oh no…

Her mouth flooded with saliva. The smell emanating from the oozing remains was confusing her brain. She wanted to throw up. And she wanted to snatch up the delicious bug-flesh and devour it.

No way am I putting that in my mouth! I’d rather starve. I’d rather—eugh!

Seemingly of their own volition, her traitorous hands grabbed the back half of the centipede and pressed it against her mouth, which bit down reflexively; sharp teeth tearing off a huge chunk of acrid, rubbery meat.

Gagging, she chewed and swallowed the putrid—yet strangely tasty—mouthful. She took another bite. And then another. By the third bite, her gag impulse had weakened, and she was beginning to think this actually wasn’t so bad. This was food. Her body needed food. It wasn’t a human body, so why should she expect her old human tastes and aversions to prevail?

Within minutes, she’d eaten both halves of the giant centipede, guts and all. That was more meat than two whole chickens. Meat and…other things. She shuddered.

As she scrambled out of the hollow, she suddenly realised that there was no pain any more. The wound in her gut had closed completely, leaving only a thin red scar, which was already fading. Trolls sure healed fast! That was good, because she might need to do a lot of walking today.

This part of the forest was quite beautiful. She hadn’t really taken it in last night, what with the terror and pain and exhaustion. Now, although still wary and sore, she could begin to appreciate her surroundings.

Around her spread a tangle of ferns, strange fungal growths and damp leaves. Far above was a thick canopy, held aloft by towering, moss-covered trees. A gentle breeze lifted the first wisps of fog from the air, and the trees came alight with dappled yellows and browns and greens.

Saskia had always loved hiking in places like this (minus the impossibly large bugs), but she hadn’t done much of it over the past two years. She’d spent most of the first year after her accident as a total invalid. And in the second year, she’d been too busy with her job, and still not exactly in the prime of health. She’d gone hiking with her old friends a couple of times, but they were still as fit as ever, while she…wasn’t. They were very patient with her, but she’d still felt like she was holding them back.

Well that wasn’t a problem any longer. Injury aside, this body was monstrously fit. She felt like she could run up mountains.

First though, she’d settle for a hill. One with a good view of the surrounding area. She needed to get her bearings and decide where to go next. Find some people who wouldn’t kill trolls on sight. Perhaps seek out other trolls. Although, judging from how they were depicted in most fantasy fiction, her own kind might be no more accommodating than the elves.

Saskia scrambled up a steep slope onto a ridgetop, then followed the ridge up to the highest point. Unfortunately, even up here, the view was blocked by layers upon layers of foliage. To see anything beyond, she’d have to climb one of these ancient trees. It’d have to be a very sturdy specimen to support her weight.

Finding a suitable candidate, she shimmied up its massive trunk, ascending high into the canopy.

It occurred to her that if she had another seizure up here, she’d have much worse problems than just being lost. On the other hand, she put her life at risk every time she hopped on a bicycle, yet that didn’t stop her from doing it.

Actually, come to think of it, this wasn’t her old, damaged body, was it? None of her old scars were present now. Either her trollish regeneration had erased them, or they were never on this body to begin with. It stood to reason that the internal injuries she’d had as a human, including her brain damage, should also be gone. And that would mean…

No more seizures.

She almost let go of the branch she was holding. If she really was free of the seizures, it’d make everything else she’d suffered worth it. Almost.

Something rustled and chittered nearby. Whatever it was—bird or bat or gigantic man-eating bug—Saskia hoped it wasn’t too enraged at her for invading its nest.

Teetering atop the highest branch that would take her considerable weight, she poked her head through the curtain of leaves and looked out across the treetops.

“What…the…?”

Her mouth dropped open. Something buzzed inside it, and she swallowed absent-mindedly.

Before her, a lush green forest swept back into jagged peaks, shrouded in fog. Nestled in a valley between the mountains was the beginnings of a serpentine lake. To her right, the forest just ended, as if disappearing off a precipice. And behind her, the landscape tilted upward into some impossibly tall…something. It didn’t look like any mountain she’d ever seen.

Back the way she’d come, which was now on her left side, great spurs of stone jutted out of the swamp at an oblique angle. She was pretty sure those things were defying the laws of gravity, such was the extent of their overhang. Their slopes were covered in trees, except for the lower reaches of the closest one, from which jutted the strange spires of the elven town she’d just fled. Somewhere up there, she knew there must be a misty glade with a gnarled tree, something pretending to be a cracked computer monitor, and a bunch of angry elves, still looking for the troll that had eluded them…

Spectacular they may be, but these strange rock formations were not what what had elicited her expression of astonishment.

In the direction of the lake, beyond the veil of mist was a dark silhouette. Too substantial to be clouds, yet seemingly too vast to be anything else. An immense column jutted up from the horizon, filling a large portion of the sky. Overhead, the column split into tendrils of darkness that reached out across the firmament.

No, not tendrils. Branches.

The horizon was all wrong. This land wasn’t spherical or flat, but elongated, like a…

This was a tree. Or what a tree might look like if viewed by a microscopic creature sitting on one of its branches. Like Yggdrasil from Norse mythology; the granddaddy of all trees.

Those distant peaks; they weren’t mountains. And those immense spikes…weren’t just rock formations. The forest, the swamp, the lake, everything around her…they were perched on a single colossal branch of an unfathomably large tree.