Quietly, Jack crept, doing his best to keep out of the line of sight of the myriad reflections along the path. Mirror-polished flora, ponds, puddles — all to be avoided, here, so near to the maze's master. The escapee couldn't be sure that his Keeper's ancient enemy still held the Other's attention. Even now, details of the other side, of Arcadia, slipped through his mind like water though a cracked glass, but he could trust that much.

So he moved forward.

But as he pressed on, as he grew ever more exhausted, as the glassy shrubs gave way to the darkened shade of trees and impenetrable thickets of thorns, Jack eased somewhat. 'Surely,' he thought, 'I can rest for at least a moment.' The trees around him certainly seemed to be a safe enough place in which to recuperate.

The limbs seemed almost designed for climbing, welcoming almost, so climb he did, and Jack felt a sharp flash of nostalgia in the motion, a fading dream of a life once lived, but the sensation faded as he stood upon one of the higher branches and looked out over the forested path.

'Strange,' the man thought, looking back toward his earlier tracks. 'I could have sworn there remained some glass, at least, along the way. Still. Gift horses, mouths, all that.' Instead, merely trees in all directions, and a sound of water far off, though Jack could not tell from where. It seemed to change location depending on where he looked.

The respite, unfortunately, was not to last.

Hearing faint burbling breathing through the underbrush, Jack froze in his tree, attempting to silence his own breath as best as he could.

'Come on,' Jack thought to himself, desperately willing for whatever pursuer sought him to leave him be. 'Nothing here but the briars and the birds. Move on by. Don't look up.'

Apparently unmoved by the Darkling's pleas, the very shrubbery bulged outward, taking on bestial form. Its entire body seemed composed of twisting brambles, twining around into the body of a wolf, bar its eyes and hands, which looked frightfully human. The coppery stench of blood filled the air, burning Jack's nose.

'Shit.'

It seemed almost performative, the way the beast looked about, stopping just short of leaving sight, as though the point were less about quickly capturing a meal and more about letting said meal marinate for a moment in its fear.

'Wouldn't surprise me in the least.' Jack shifted about, searching for any means of escape he could find, before looking back down — straight into the beast's glaring eyes.

With a frenzied howl, the creature flung itself at the tree, whose formerly-welcoming branches suddenly seemed to catch and grab at the changeling with a rapacious hunger.

"Shit, shit, shit!"

As the briarwolf sprang up from limb to limb, Jack finally succeeded in breaking free from the grasping branches and jumped to a lower limb of a nearby tree — a limb which, much to the cursing changeling's irritation, snapped upon his landing, leaving him to fall to the ground, bloodied and bruised by the flora passing him by.

Daring to look back, Jack saw his pursuer follow him down, as additional wolves followed the cacophony of howling.

Fleeing as fast as his legs could take him, Jack sprinted through the old growth, doing his level best to find paths too narrow for his much bulkier assailants. Even then, the trees seemed to be leaning inward toward him, as though seeking to trap him.

Approaching the path, and hoping that the damn thing wouldn't turn to quicksand on him ('oh, please do keep tempting fate, idiot'), Jack faintly heard voices nearby, a woman and a man conversing.

"…there. I can practically feel it. Seems solider, after a fashion, than this place."

"Great. Then ca —"

"Run!" the Darkling yelped out a warning as he burst out onto the path. The voices, resolving into a massive, scaled brute of an Ogre and a slighter, willowy Fairest woman, sputtered out, the two turning to face the undergrowth, from which the current head of the pack swiftly followed.

The Ogre met the briarwolf head on, grimacing as he cut open his arms and hands on the creature's thorned pelt. Holding the snapping jaws away from him, he flung the beast, cracking its back upon a tree.

"The damn things are too quick; we're not going to be able to keep out of their reach forever," Jack panted, adrenaline burst long since drained out of him.

"Fuckin' great, thanks for leading them to us, ass!" an unamused Ogre responded.

"Those muscles of yours just for show?" the woman asked, drawing the group's attention to the trees around them.

"Should do the job," the scaled man replied, quickly grasping the Fairest's point.

The three stopped for a moment, exaggerating their current weakness. Galvanized by the blood still oozing from Jack's and the Ogre's open wounds, the lead briarwolf leapt forward to attack.

"Now!" the Fairest cried.

With a snarl, the serpent-man shifted left, gripped a nearby tree, and wrenched. With a crash, the impromptu wall knocked the airborne wolf aside, while its pack leapt into the overgrowth, preparing to flank the trio once more.

By what seemed to be the sheer force of the Ogre's rage, the twisting path straightened, puddles steaming and shrinking, trail firming, leading onward to an upright well, watery surface reflecting not their faces, but some other place.

Through the opening, Jack could see an old oak tree. Leaning heavily on the Fairest's shoulder, Ogre guarding their backs, the Darkling ducked down into the well and —

— walked through the Hedge gate, Solaris and Hiran by his side.

You couldn't call it the most pleasant or the sanest of places. The Hedge was an ever-shifting mire, reacting to the thoughts and feelings of those within it, a troubling tendency considering the Jack (all three, really) bore rather unpleasant memories of their last jaunt through the Thorns, their madcap escape from their nightmare durances. All the same, they had a job to do — the gathering of serpent gourd from vines high in the trees. Supposedly, the fruits were capable of enhancing a changeling's ability to warp their dreams.

The rare Magi of the Gilded Thorn, famed explorers of the Hedge, had "mapped out" the local Hedge, insofar as it could be. At the very least, the path was well worn and, without the wolves that had chased the motley on their last visit, relatively safe — not to mention the group was actually armed now; Hiran with a sledgehammer he had "borrowed" from his colleagues, Solaris with her pistol, and Jack himself with some dinky little knives.

With time to look around without the threat of teeth tearing out his throat, Jack examined his surroundings — the same forest, the once-more twisted path outward, speckled light falling upon the dirt. White stones jutted out of the ground in a vague mockery of the cemetery the motley had just left. The stones were shifting slowly, bobbing about like buoys. As stones do.

Further out, the trail faded out into the undergrowth; to their sides, trees boxed them into the path, deep shadows warning travelers away from the forest depths. In the distance, Jack could hear the rush of water.

"Done rubbernecking?" Hiran mocked.

Jack merely sighed and followed his companions, not particularly inclined to argue.