Five minutes later, I had to stop. The stitch in my side made it impossible to breathe, and my leg hurt. I could tell it was bleeding from the squishy feeling in my shoe.

I stood there, bent over, gasping. If I got out of this situation, I was never going to complain about Gwen’s workouts again — clearly, I needed them.

Only after a couple minutes did I realize I was lucky not to have left the tree-’pus behind. Usually it bailed out when I fell. This time it hadn’t, but I hadn’t stopped to think about it before I ran.

“Sorry, buddy,” I said, reaching through its watery casing to pat the limb it had wrapped around my chest.

Feeling very shaky, I limped downhill. Hopefully the minis would be satisfied with their meal. If not, I didn’t think I could escape. There was nothing at the bottom of the mountain but fields of grass. Nowhere to hide.

The dead mini bought me more than an hour. I pushed as fast as I could with my injured leg. By the time they caught up with me, the slope had begun to flatten out. The trees were growing sparser, and the patches of ferns came more often. I was leaving a trail of bloody footprints.

This time, they came on without hesitation. I heard the rustling in the ferns and didn’t even get fully turned around before they were darting in all around me, clawing and biting. I swung the sack of stones and connected a few times, but there were too many. They started leaping up at me, aiming at my face and neck. I staggered back and fell, and they swarmed me. Instinctively, I threw my arms up to shield my face and neck, even though it was pointless.

Something wet shuddered past me with a deep whump, and a force pressed me down into the ground for a split second. The biting stopped.

After a few moments, I raised my head. Everything within a forty-foot ring around me was destroyed — there was nothing but flattened ferns and downed trees. A few minis were lying some distance from me, moving feebly. The others were out of sight.

I looked for the ’pus and found it a few feet behind me. Its watery coating was gone, and it was coated in pine needles.

Painfully, I rolled over and stood. I’d been bitten many times and could feel blood running down my legs. I gathered up the ’pus and staggered on.

Half an hour later, the ground leveled and the trees petered out. The lush, green valley I’d seen that morning stretched out ahead of me. The greenery wasn’t grass, as I’d assumed — it was ferns, a dense sea of ferns.