"You're very disappointing. You know that, right?"

Phonian's voice was muffled and came to her in the darkness between dreams and awakening.

Consciousness returned to her slowly after several attempts.

With awareness came pain. Weight pinned her on all sides. She had bruises and cuts that were slowly leaking into the ground around her. Her right arm was agony. She couldn't tell which way was up.

Moving her leg, she broke it above the surface.

Face down, then? Her aching ribs struggled to draw in air. Her left hand still clutched the bottle she'd been holding at the top of the cliff. She knew she'd lost the sword.

Stubborn determination forced her to use her elbow instead of her hand to shove at the material that cocooned her. Struggling with her one free leg, she wiggled her other leg free, then slowly inched backward out of the hole she'd landed in. The loose rocks cascaded down to fill where she'd been, and finally, Freya sat back.

Sweaty, bloody, filthy, she turned her face upward to stare at the moon.

Phonian was nowhere in sight.

Drinking the potion, Freya felt most of her injuries knit and her energy return, but she knew her arm was screwed and would need a real doctor. While Phonain was not an immediate concern, she was still stuck with the problem of being lost.

However, she'd remembered seeing something amid the supplies in her bag, and if it was what she thought it was...

First, she needed to be less exposed. Getting her bag settled on her shoulders, Freya stumbled and slid down the remaining loose slope to the treeline. There, she put her back against one of the trees and breathed.

She now had a choice.

She could get her light out and hope Phonian wasn't around to see it, or she could stumble through the trees in the dark and hope she was going south.

Deciding she didn't want to risk getting spotted, Freya took a third option and made her way deeper into the forest a short distance using the light of the moon alone. Once she couldn't see the mountain, she sank down to sit. Blindly, she pulled the sleeping bag out of her pack, opened it over herself and her bag to create a makeshift tent, then found the light.

When she opened it, she was glad she had taken the precautions. It was bright as daylight and blinding.

Terrified, she shoved it down into the pack to dim its glow and carefully started looking for what she'd wanted.

Once she found the flat black square, Freya began her inspection. Logically, if the previous owner of this pack had been an adventurer, they would have a map. Or, if they were local, they'd have some way of talking to friends and family in the area to check in. This item looked like a smartphone, and that was what Freya was praying for. Phonian hadn't reacted when she'd found it, so likely, the creature didn't know what it was either.

Feeling it over with one hand, millimeter by millimeter, she finally found a small button on the top.

The screen lit.

Her heart sank. The text on the screen was unrecognizable, but the message was clear.

She needed a password to open the device.

Dropping the item back into the bag, she clicked the light closed, tied the bag shut, and curled around it beneath her sleeping bag. Tucking her face against the bag that smelled like death, she tried to hold back her tears.

I have potions at least. That's better than I was yesterday.

Freya took a deep breath and released it. Tomorrow, she would start walking down the slope. Tonight, she would get some sleep. Tonight, at least, she was free from Phonian, and maybe that meant she would have more of a chance at surviving. After all, Phonian was actively trying to get monsters to attack her. Why it thought she was capable of anything still baffled her. She closed her eyes and forced herself to relax.

She knew she couldn't go on further without actual rest.

**

The waking birds woke Freya from her fitful sleep. She hardly felt better for it, though.

Body aching and head throbbing, Freya forced herself to get moving. First, she packed the sleeping bag away and shouldered the pack. Her right arm was entirely unusable, throbbing and swollen so large it strained the sleeve of her sweater. It was a blessing that the forest was kind of cool, but she already knew from yesterday's hike that she would start sweating soon enough. This time, because she wasn't following Phonian in a straight line, she took her time to find a path that might be easier to follow.

Shuffling through the underbrush, she finally found something that looked like the bed of a runoff stream. It was bare dirt and rocks, but currently dry, and following it certainly would lead her down the mountain.

On the way, she found a sturdy stick and started using it to help with balance.

While she was drenched in sweat pretty quickly, Freya felt like she was making good time getting away from where Phonian had last seen her. She knew how fast it could move, but if she could get far enough away before it thought to go check on her corpse... she hoped she had a chance.

"So you did survive."

Freya's heart stopped. Her footing slipped. She landed on her knees in the dirt, jostling her broken arm. Looking up, she found the silently hovering yellow berrykin hanging over her. "I'm sorry" slipped out before she could stop herself.

"No worries. We'll just go back up the mountain and try again."

"I--I can't--" she stammered. "Sasquteel are too strong... I need... smaller things. Please. Something smaller."

"You'll never grow if you don't challenge yourself," Phonian chastised.

"My arm is broken. I need to be Healed. I can't hold a weapon," Freya tried. "I can't do it like this."

Phonian floated closer, leaning down with its mouth agape. Two hairy finger-like appendages poked out of the slack jaw, holding the berrykin's mouth open wider as it leaned in to look at Freya's arm. "Drink a potion. You'll be fine."

"Potions can't heal this. I need a Green Mage to Heal it," Freya insisted. "I can't fight like this."

Phonian drifted back, giving her a clear view of the insect's eyes and feelers as they retreated into the berrykin mouth. If she hadn't known before that this was some kind of creature wearing a berrykin like a suit, she knew it for sure now.

"You're really turning into a bother. You know that? If you're not going to do what I want, I should just get rid of you," Phonian said.