Night fell by the time Handy worked up the courage to pull himself out of the ground. Climbing the tree had been a risky venture, but it was his only way up without climbing up through the toxic vapour rent in the earth he had fallen down. He knelt on the ground to catch his breath as he studied his surroundings. The sky was thick and heavy with clouds, the stars nor moon unseen. The landscape was as desolate as it had appeared from the air, nothing but dry, cracked ground, craggy peaks, distant, harsh-looking mountains, and rents in the earth from which gases erupted forth.