Chapter 31: A Detour
The first real problem came back up when Simon re-entered the forest to fight the Owlbear. Well - to hopefully not fight it, actually. If he didn’t need to fight any of this shit, then discretion seemed to be the better part of valor when the enemy was over eight feet tall and had claws that could rip him to shreds as far as he was concerned.
That monster stalking him through the woods wasn’t even the problem, though, it was that there were no obvious landmarks to guide him. Last time, it was only pure luck that he’d made it to the road and that terrible wreckage. What if this time he turned right when he’d turned left before, and ended up lost in the woods until he starved to death?
He’d done that before. More than once actually, he thought resentfully, and it hadn’t been any fun. With the crossbow and the fire spells, he thought he could make a better showing of it this time, but he’d much rather be exploring the Pit than one stupid forest inside it. The rain fell softly on Simon while he tried to remember what he’d done last time, but he couldn’t exactly, so he decided that he probably would have just gone straight.
A few minutes later he was rewarded with a distant shriek, which he took to be a good sign, so he kept going until the overgrown bird got too close for comfort, before hiding as far under a fallen log as he could wedge himself. The Owlbear stomped around the area for almost two minutes looking for him, and at one point even stepped on the tree that hid him, but fortunately the old lightning scarred trunk bore the weight of the raptor.
Last time Simon was in this moment he remembered bolting in a panic, but this time he very slowly slid out from under his hiding place and did his best to sneak off into the densest part of the underbrush he could actually squeeze through. He didn’t really want to just run and hope for the best. In his current situation, that seemed like a recipe for disaster, so he did his best to be as quiet as possible, and stayed on the lookout for the noises of that thing coming back.
Though the Owlbear got uncomfortably close a couple of times, Simon managed to avoid crossing its path before he reached the road. This time he noticed that he’d walked quite a bit farther than he had originally, and the wreckage of the wagons was only just visible at the next bend in the road.
Simon felt naked in the open without his trusty pike, but he drew his sword and kept his shield up in case of ambush. Fortunately, one never materialized, and he reached his goal. The clouds cleared up a bit as he got closer, but being able to see better did him no favors.
Both of the wagons were still wrecked, with one shattered, and the other one on its side. That wasn’t the problem, though. The problem was that the men and horses surrounded them hadn’t been butchered - they’d been shredded. Simon doubted he could have matched the bloodstained limbs to the body they belonged to if he tried.
Not that he would ever engage in such a gory pastime. This time he would take a minute to go through the more intact wagon, though. A water skin would be a nice score, if he could find one. He was feeling thirsty, and he still had half a dozen floors to get through before he would see new content.