At first I couldn't believe it. The Forest gloom swirled around me, pressing in on all of my senses. My eyes were fully open, but there wasn't enough light to even make out silhouettes. Strangely, I could still feel the warmth of the fire, despite its absence. Even the smell of ash and smoke was the same. I listened, but the sound of the Salamander's voice and its strange fire were missing. I strained my ears, and began to make out other sounds. Off in the distance, I could hear something huge moving through the undergrowth, grumbling as it went.

As I lay on the forest's ground, my sight began to adjust. A rippling, smoldering light pulsed through the world around me, just barely enough to see. I pushed myself off the ground, my arms brushing across the ferns as I did so. Where I touched the dirt the shadows oozed away into the trees, and I could see orange sparks passing between the cracks in the earth.

I stared at the ground. What is that? Nothing came. I half expected the strange spouts of knowledge to come to my aid again, but apparently this was one of those things the Salamander knew and I did not. I pushed my fingers into the dirt and the light flared up again, pushing the shadows back even further.

I was so lost in my investigation that I didn't notice the silence - until it was almost too late. The shadows were beginning to push back towards me like a living thing, but with them came a solid white wall of mist. At first I thought nothing of it, but then it touched my legs and arms. I immediately lost sensation, and I stumbled to my feet, trying to stay upright on legs that no longer felt like my own. The mist began to curl around me, closing in on all directions. I swatted at it with my now useless arms, trying to push it back. I stumbled and fell, but as I did so there was a sudden rise in temperature and the ground where I fell flared up in retaliation, blowing back the cool fog. I slammed my arm into the ground and the heatwave happened again, giving me even more space to breathe.

"So you don't like the fire?" I pushed myself up again and stomped as hard as I could. With numbing mist in effect I wasn't sure how hard that was, but the response was immediate and unexpected. Plants blossomed from my hoof and spread around me, glowing with an unearthly scorched light. Leaves and vines pushed out of the quickly dimming soil. I could see the same light I had noticed earlier sparking along the flora, and I watched in awe as it grew around me. Experimentally, I stamped my other foot down and the process accelerated.

The ground beneath me began to crumble, and I had half a second to regret my choices before I realized my error. A hole opened up in the earth and I lost my footing, rolling down into the freshly made cave, trying to stop my fall. Once I came to a stop, I shook the dirt and roots off my horns and looked around. This time, something became very apparent about my vision: It was very, very dark, but I no longer had any problem seeing. Observing my surroundings was now as easy for me as a cave might be for a bat -- No, even easier than that. That same smoldering light I had observed outside the cavern was here too, but light wasn't the right word. It was closer to... I don't know how to describe it. Like a cross between touch and sight. I could feel the invisible light on my skin, and that let me see through it.

I looked around the small pit I'd fallen down. Thick roots covered the walls, breaking through into a subterranean jungle of their own. On the roots small mushrooms and other fungus grew, melding into the earthy walls. As I touched them, they twitched out of the way, opening a path for me to follow. Without a way to get back up, I began to follow them deeper into the caves.

Eventually I reached a deep cavern with a pooling spring in the center. Bones surrounded it, and I noticed long gouges and scorch marks on the walls. While roots still dominated the room, many of them had been burned or scorched away, and I couldn't help but notice that the roots didn't seem to burn easily. The walls were almost always more damaged than the tree's nether reaches were. I picked through several of the bones, picking out what appeared to be an oversized femur. If I was going to be stuck here, I might as well have a weapon to defend myself with.

I was looking into the pool in the center of the room when smoke began to rise from an entrance I hadn't seen before. Fearing the worst, I quickly ran back to the way I had come in through and hid. As I touched the tendrils they meshed in front of me, forming a wall. I gawked for a moment in surprise, before storing that away for later. Peering through the mesh, I saw only moments later that I had been right to flee. A huge dragon, easily 40 feet long, pushed through the wall of roots on the other side of the room, revealing a much larger entrance than my own. Even as I watched, the roots began to reform the wall, but it turned around and clawed them away, before breathing blinding white fire down on the gouged plants. They writhed at the fire's touch, but the attack proved effective and eventually the plants stilled. Even as the plants finally extinguished, I noticed the light inside them never followed suit. The dragon turned to another site of the room and began to dig with its massive shovel-like claws, ripping huge chunks out of the wall. Within seconds, the dragon disappeared back underground, leaving yet another passageway behind.

I pulled myself from the cocoon of roots and creeped into the room once more. I could hear the dragon's grunts as it continued to dig, but could no longer see it. Only the smoke it breathed remained in the room - and the path it had come from. I peered down that hole, hoping to get a glimpse of what lay beyond it. Even with my augmented sight I couldn't see far enough to make out much. However, I got the impression that the path was slowly curving up.

Looking back down the other tunnel, I made my decision. I couldn't stay down here. Eventually that thing was going to come back, and who knew how friendly it would be. I hefted the bone over my shoulder and began to walk down the path.

It took an unusually long time to make my way out of the tunnels. I began to suspect that something was constantly changing the way the roots connected, and I began to even mark paths by breaking pieces of roots from the walls. It was simple enough to see these breaks with what I began to dub "ash sight", as the wounded plants glowed brightly to the point where I could even feel it before I saw it. After the third time I did this, I found myself staring at a dead end and turned around, only to find that not only had the passageway changed, but the breaks in the roots were nowhere to be seen.

I wasn't alone down in the rootways either. Every now and then I'd encounter another denizen of the forest, but each time I did they ignored me, appearing to not even notice my presence. Once a gigantic beetle nearly ran me over, clearly too busy with its insectile life to even glance at me.

But they weren't the only things I met in the labyrinth of roots. To counteract the giant bugs, I also began to see a plethora of smaller ones. My mind referred to them as “the Ants”. They swarmed around the walls and through the roots, digging and moving them. Sometimes I would see them cut apart one of the roots only to graft it onto another one. At first I thought they were the reason why the tunnels were changing, but I shook that thought away quickly. As industrious as they were, there was no way they could change the cave topology on the sheer scale I was noticing. What unnerved me more about the Ants was that they seemed to be watching me. Unlike the other creatures, they would pause and turn to me, forming immobile rings of watchers as I passed. What did they want? I didn't stop to find out.

And they weren't the only thing that was watching me. Just like I'd noticed above ground, the shadows down here seemed to be alive. I could see them creeping in, even in the pure darkness. Something about them was different from the nature my brain had associated with the word shadow. When it got too close I could feel a tickling itch that echoed along my spine and pulled at my senses. I began to hear words, though they were indecipherable. If I concentrated on them, the words dissolved like the smoke I already knew made up this world. It was calling to me, but the more I tried to follow it the further away it shrank. I found both an unusual comfort in that thought and an unexplainable fear.

At last, I exited the tunnel through a hollow in a massive tree. Usually this would be something out of the ordinary, but it seemed in the Dark Forest (for I had no other name for it) this was just another thing of happenstance. Indeed, there were at least four similar sized trees within a stone's throw away from the exit.

I attempted to lean back against the tree, seeking a moment's respite, only to discover both the tree and the entrance to the rootways had vanished. In its place was a small creek, which I promptly fell into. Levering myself up to my feet with my third femur, I looked around. This time I was sure of it. Whenever I looked away from anything it seemed to change. Looking down at the creek, a sudden thought came to mind. This water had to flow from somewhere, which meant that as long as I kept part of the creek in sight I could probably follow it. If I did that...

It was then that the sense of surreal finally crashed down on me. Here I was, a half-man half-goat, with a brain packed full of information it shouldn't have, stuck in a world where none of that information held sway. How was I supposed to survive in this world? Had the Salamander abandoned me? Was it because I had asked too many questions? I considered the water flowing over my hooves, and decided against it. It had been too scared to simply abandon me... which led me to another conclusion. Something outside of its control had happened. For whatever reason, I had been yanked from the Campgrounds and pushed out into the forest. Could I find it again? It might be my only opportunity to find the answer for the questions I had. Even if the Salamander hadn't been able to answer much then, maybe I just hadn't been asking the right questions.

As the cool water flowed around my hooves I suddenly noticed something. I could see the water. And that meant there was actual light. If there was actual light, then it had to have a source, and the only thing that produced light in the Dark Forest was the Campgrounds! I began to scan the trees, looking for a place where the light was coming from. It didn't take long to realize a flaw in my logic: the light wasn't coming from between the trees, but from above. Filtering through the arched ceiling of the Forest, moonlight made its way through the leaves, diffused and scattered in a hundred different directions as it met the canopy. It provided the faintest glimmer of light, allowing my night vision to supplement the ash sight that I'd learned to rely on.

But it gave me an idea. If that moon was like other moons, then it wouldn't stay consistent. I just had to wait until a new moon rose. Then I could try and hunt for the Campgrounds and the Salamander, and finally get the rest of my answers. After that... I didn't know. I was still coming to grips with the idea of existence.

What did I want? Could I even answer that? I thought about that for a bit, standing ankle deep in the stream. As the cold began to seep into my bones, I remembered the warmth of the Campgrounds. That was what I wanted. I wanted a home. A place where I could belong and be accepted. Maybe I couldn't be people, but I could be me. I could be...

What was my name?