Stop Bugging Me

I hate caves, and I hate bugs, so seeing two of my hates in the same place at the same time was like a breath of horrible fetid air (of which the cave smelled like).  I didn't and still don't (nor care to ever) know the exact species of flesh eating creatures that were occupying the cave's central chamber. Centuries ago (gods its weird saying that and not being hyperbolic) I hunted similar creatures with my aunt, but they were a lot smaller than these monstrosities and were only eating peoples livestock and hadn't attacked actual people.  Not that that really stopped us from killing them, but still, I felt its a distinction to be made.

When I recognized the creatures I realized I was in a lot of danger and not just because of them.  See I remembered specifically they reacted badly to fire.  And I don't mean like "Oh they will attack it." I mean "These creatures are explosive, including their nests".  Now you might be thinking "Why Trezlan if thats the case how come your torch didn't explode the nest prior to you arriving in it?" And to that I answer because I hadn't gotten to the nest and upon emerging in the cave with the creatures the torch lit up the nearest protusion. Which caused the insects to freak out (naturally a new person emerged and their cave just got set on fire), they didn't attack thankfully, they ran, and so I ran in the same direction (enemy of my enemy, except in this case the enemy was fire and the insect creatures would surely eat me if they weren't fleeing the flames).  Now there was a couple problems here, I still had my torch, and I had no idea where I was going.

To the first issue it resolved my problem with the insects (the flames jumped from the torch to the creatures and then they caught on fire), to the second problem the cave system seemed rather large which was good (I couldn't have outcrawled a huge explosion), but being in a state of fleeing firey doom I wasn't really watching ahead of myself very good (which was bad). Which lead to me running face first into a wall too late, knocking myself clean out.  You see this is the problem with trying to outrun fires, you stop doing things like "making sure the path ahead is clear".  At least while I was knocked out the whole fire thing solved itself. Not that that was a positive development but neither is anything in my life ever!