Emily wakes in the middle of the night with a foggy head, which she finds an improvement, and the earth furiously shifting and bucking and buckling, which she finds concerning. She places her hands down on the ground and sits up, trying to keep her footing as the rock suddenly buckles up.

  “What… Is this an earthquake?!”

  Emily grasps onto a tree branch for support, trying to stand up. She looks around herself and finds Blue on the ground next to her, screeching up at Emily with fury. Most noticeably, though, Blue is not currently shaking like a bug on a twig during a hurricane. He seems to be quite steady, in fact, and angry at what’s beneath Emily’s feet.

  A rock seems to explode from the ground, growing larger and larger as it reaches into the sky. It lifts fully out of the earth, hovering a foot or two from the ground, before slamming back down into the ground with force, Blue scurrying away from the impact sight while Emily screams and clings to her savior, the tree, for dear life. A second rock explodes from the earth on the other side of Emily, lifting into the air just like the first and slamming back down onto the ground once again.

  For a moment, the forest is silent once again, but for the sounds of Emily panting for breath and Blue furiously scratching at the rock, leaving deep grooves on its rocky surface. Emily manages to catch her breath again, nervously letting go of her tree and checking the ground beneath her, finding it solid and unmoving once again.

  Deciding that she didn’t want to be on top of the horrifying shifting rock a moment longer, Emily scurries towards the edge of it on her butt, planning on jumping down.

  Before she can, though, the rock shifts once again, throwing Emily up into the air and back down onto its painful, rocky surface. Diving to the side, Emily grabs onto the tree at just the right time, as the earth shakes more violently than ever before, almost dislodging her from her perch. She feels the rock shifting once again, as it lifts up from the earth, growing taller and taller and taller.

  Emily screams, as Blue backs up from the moving rock, his feathers fluffed up and his arms outstretched in a clear display of raw ostrich anger and fury.

  The rock shifts and tilts underneath Emily’s feet, turning sideways and almost causing her to fall to the ground ten feet below her, if it wasn’t for the tree catching her in its branches. She looks up in shock to see that the tree - and subsequently, her - are seemingly attached to the biggest rock golem that Emily has ever seen in her life.

  Coincidentally, it is also the only rock golem Emily has ever seen in her life.

  As quickly as she can, she starts to prepare her mana.

  It seems to stretch its limbs, rolling its shoulders back and forward and rotating its head around, the sound of its joints moving against each other reminding Emily of a large avalanche down a steep hill. The sound it makes pierces through the pleasant fog that encompasses her mind, bringing back the head-splitting headache with a furious vengeance, as if the headache took her falling asleep as a personal insult to its crippling might.

  The rock golem swings its torso to one side, stretching it out with a sound similar to that of a bag of boulders being ground against another bag of boulders. It swings its torso to the other side, its elbows raised up and stretched to the side, but it finds its range of motion suddenly blocked by Emily’s current safe spot: the tree.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  The rock golem turns its head to look down at the tree, and she gets a good look at its face for the first time. It looked like some toddler pressed in some half-hearted features onto a clay doll, a slight line dimple for a mouth and a little bump that could be a nose. Two glowing green holes act as the eyes, and they stare at Emily in what she believes is confusion.

  For a moment, hope blossoms in Emily’s heart. Maybe it’s sentient? Maybe she can talk and reason with it?

  Maybe she’s finally made a friend in this hellish place?

  Blue screeches in the background, and Emily changes that thought to “another” friend.

  That hope pops like a soap bubble in a cactus shop as the golem winds back its arm, preparing to furiously punch off the newfound growth from its side and the unwanted passenger lying within.

  Emily pulls her hand up and unleashes a blast of wind right at its face, hitting it square in the forehead, knocking its head back just slightly and doing no noticeable damage unless you count the few specks of earth that cracked off of it “damage”.

  It finishes winding back and smashes its fist into the tree - just barely missing Emily by an inch - and knocking the tree right into the ground. Emily lands on top of it painfully, the branches and twigs digging into her back and breaking her skin in multiple places. Scratched, bruised, dazed and bleeding, Emily almost misses the moment the golem lifts one of its legs as it prepares to crush the mage like a bug.

  Thinking quickly, Emily points her hand down and at an angle to the ground, unleashing her mana in just the right way to widen her usually tight wind blast and launch her in the opposite direction.

  Emily lands heavily on the ground, just in time to hear the sickening snap of the tree trunk breaking in half beneath the behemoth’s feet. She gets up from her feet and her vision goes white, her headache bringing tears to her eyes. She takes a few deep breaths as her ears begin to ring, and she squeezes her eyes shut in an attempt to regain her vision as she feels the earth buck and jump beneath her feet.

  She opens her eyes and finds that she has a pinprick of vision once again, and the ringing is slowly disappearing. That’s a good thing. What isn’t a good thing is that the return of vision allows her to watch as the golem slowly and ponderously starts to make its way towards Emily, its every footstep causing the earth to rumble beneath her.

  She sweeps her head around her and spots Blue on the sideline, close to her, still screeching at the golem. Taking a few deep breaths, Emily decides on her next move.

  “Come on, Blue! We’ve gotta get out of here!”

  Whistling to get the ostrich’s attention, Emily starts sprinting into the forest, stumbling at first as she slowly regains her balance but quickly leaving the golem behind. Turning her head for a moment, she finds that the terrifying behemoth is way too slow to keep up, its every footstep done as if in slow motion. Blue watches her leave for a few seconds, before he too starts running after her.

  Emily slows down to a jog, as the sounds of the golem fade into the background, and then slows to a fast walk when they disappear entirely. Her body feels dry, her lips are cracked, and she barely has the energy to carry on walking, nevermind run any further. Her thoughts feel foggy and slow from the lack of sleep, and her back and arms are itchy and hurting from all the scratches they took from the tree.

  “Turns out, the danger was the rock the whole time… Not what was in it, or above it, or around it… The stupid rock itself.”

  She looks up at the sky, finding the moon close to setting, and knows that it’s going to be yet another long, long day.

  “Just another day in paradise…”

  Now that we've gone beyond chapter 30, how's the pacing been?