Niphru awoke to the smell of smoke, and shook himself awake.  It appeared the roots had returned and as he had hoped, his foxfire had managed to burn them before they could do anything, forcing them to pull away again.  The smoke was hard to deal with however, so he headed back outside.

The sun was still high in the sky, and he was still quite tired, so he simply sat outside the burrow waiting for the smoke to clear out.  A few moments later he headed back inside and curled up to resume sleep.  As before, he set the foxfire spinning around himself, then relaxed, knowing it worked once before.

He awoke once more as the sun was setting, no roots having intruded on him this time.  Deciding to look for food again, he headed back to where the lovely berry bush was, only to find it missing, with a hole in the ground and odd tracks leading away.  Desperate for more of the berries, he sniffed around to see if he could find any left over, only to be disappointed.

Going against his instincts, he began to follow the trail leading away.  After a few minutes, he came across a shocking sight; the bush from before was tangled around one of the wolves he had run across, and every few seconds it pulsated.  As the bush pulsed, the wolf would twitch, then deflate slightly.  As this happened, the brush visibly recovered, small buds beginning to form on the branches as they finished growing.

Suddenly fearful, he fled, and as he did so, began feeling intense pain in his backside.  Stopping his sprint away, he crouched and pushed, whining in agony as he defecated out a fist-sized mass of seeds that was already beginning to send out sprouts covered in thorns.  As it fell, he felt some of his mana tearing away and going with the seed, which reminded him that he hadn’t tried to drain his mana, and was likely near his safe limits.

He hobbled away, putting his foxfire on his rear end with the intent of healing, and began to experiment with a tendril of mana, trying to produce fire with it.  He had found fire to be an amazingly useful tool, so he wanted it to be the first magic he learned.  After expending the mana within a dozen tendrils, he still hadn’t stumbled across how to produce fire from mana.

As he had experimented, he had slowly been recovering from his ordeal, and set his mana back out into a sphere, rapidly finding another of those hidden lizards.  This time he was hungry, so he hurled his foxfire at it with the will to burn, watching the suddenly visible lizard thrashing about for a moment before it stopped.  He returned the foxfire to healing himself and began to eat the well-done lizard.

Having gotten a snack, he struggled back to his den, swearing in his mind to never eat the berries here again.  Upon arriving, he found that an odd moss had begun growing in it, as well as roots tangling through the hole again.  Annoyed with this development, he again sent in his foxfire to burn everything out.

As he waited for the smoke to clear out, he heard a piercing whistle far behind himself.  A moment later, another even further away sounded out.  Then a third.  He assumed this was due to the warriors of the Church of Conflict, though he expected he had longer before they began hunting.  Fortunately he was over a day’s travel into the forest, so they would still have a while to go before he was in danger.

Once the air finally cleared, he fought through the pain and made it into his burrow, replacing his foxfire on its healing duty.  Tonight had been quite unpleasant, but hopefully tomorrow would go better.  At the very least, he thought to himself, he wouldn’t be eating the berries again.  With that thought still on his mind, he finally fell asleep.

He awoke an hour or two later as something brushed against his fur.  Mind racing, he realized he hadn’t had his foxfire circling him, and figured it was one of those questing roots, even before he managed to open his eyes and verify it.  Whipping his foxfire to the side he was touched on, he opened his eyes and immediately stopped the foxfire in shock.  It wasn’t a root after all, but instead a small creature that seemed unafraid of him.  And behind it was the root he was expecting, except it was being gnawed on.

The odd creature looked almost like a squirrel, except the tail was covered in flexible spines that were currently arranged such that they didn’t poke out anywhere.  And the teeth seemed more similar to those on a rabbit, and were making short work of the roots around him.  With a quick thought, he sent out a mana tendril to link with the creature, remembering as he did so that he needed to expel mana again.  As the tendril connected, the creature paused for a moment before looking at him, then returning to eating.

From what he could feel over the link, the creature was relatively intelligent, and content as it was, with a small amount of wariness towards him, and no feelings that led him to believe it was a threat.  He pushed a feeling of thanks through the link, watching the creature pause and look at him again, then cut off the link.  Following that, he expelled as much mana as he could safely and returned his foxfire to its healing duties.

With a wary eye on the creature, he curled back up to try to get some more rest.  As he expected, it simply continued munching on the roots.

He awoke to a loud hissing noise and pressure against his face.  Opening his eyes in shock, he found the face of the creature pressed against his own, its tail puffed out in the opening of the burrow.  A moment later it jerked and there was a yelp outside the den and scrambling noises.  The small rodent chittered for a moment before backing up a few steps, waving its tail around.  There was another yelp from outside, then the sound of many retreating footsteps.

The creature stood there for a moment before walking back into the den, smoothing down its tail full of spines as it did so.  Niphru could see bright red blood on the ends of the quills, but also an odd nearly metallic liquid deeper inside.  With a quick thought, he sent the foxfire to the rodent’s tail, still with the intent to heal.  The creature jerked back, hissing at him as its tail puffed back up, only to still as nothing happened to it.

A few moments later, the creature relaxed again, then laid on the floor.  As it rested, he poked his head outside the den, seeing a surprising amount of blood, as well as wolf tracks circling the burrow.  He headed back inside, seeing the rodent watching his every move, then curled up to rest a bit more as well, hopeful that he could sleep until sunrise this time.

Again he awoke to unexpected noises, this time a snuffling noise.  As he opened his eyes, he saw the creature from before poking at the wall, then turning to look at him.  Since it seemed fine, he pulled his foxfire back to himself.  Guessing at what it wanted, he moved over and started digging into the wall, very quickly breaking through into an underground chamber with water pooling up inside.  The rodent quickly ran inside and began to drink from it.  As it did so, Niphru sat in thought.  He hadn’t drank anything in a few days, yet somehow didn’t feel thirsty.  Was it perhaps due to the berries he had eaten?

Regardless of what was going on, he knew he should get something to drink as well, so he waited for the creature to finish drinking.  Once it was done, he moved forward and drank his fill as well, carefully holding his mana stone under his tongue as he didn’t trust leaving it on the ground around another.  Meanwhile the rodent moved to the side, beginning to chew on the roots in this chamber.  A moment later he heard another piercing whistle that sounded fairly close by, then another almost directly over himself.  A third whistle came from further away.

A moment later, a thick metal blade slammed through the original chamber of the den, and the rodent raced outside, hissing, as he stood still.  He heard several voices outside, mentioning that the fox they smelled had to have moved on if one of those had moved in.  Remaining still and silent, he waited, hearing the humans above laugh, then begin to move on.  Shortly afterward, the creature returned through the caved-in ceiling, giving him a look before it returned to eating the roots.