Twilight Sparkle - Day 2Twilight Sparkle - Day 2
Southern Jungle - The Island
I couldn’t remember if I had any dreams when I woke up. That was pretty rare for me. Normally I remembered every dream I had, good or bad.
But not this morning. It was just me and the eerie quietness of… Dawn? Early morning? I couldn’t quite tell. The pale orange-yellow rays of sunlight which managed to pierce the thatch walls of my ‘cabin’ weren't quite enough to tell either way.
But I could definitely tell it was quiet. Spooky quiet. I could hear some insects buzzing about, and the gentle lapping of water on stone. No birds, no distant cries of animals.
I frowned and sat up slowly, wondering if there had just been a major storm, or if there was one about to break. It wouldn’t be the first time I had slept through a heavy rain, or a thunder storm.
I sniffed the air. It didn’t smell like rain… But then again this body was part human, and from my experience humans had a horrible sense of smell. They couldn’t even detect their own species sex via scents, let alone identify people, or as would be very helpful here, assess the current weather.
I had to know. Did I have a pony’s sense of smell, a human’s, or something in between? That was critical. Because the only other reason I could think of for a jungle to be quiet was a big predator being nearby.
The scary thing was I couldn’t just smell myself to see if I recognised my own scent. If I did have my proper sense of smell, I’d be used to my own scent on everything in this cabin, and not notice it.
I bit my lip nervously. What did I do? I could wait here, in shelter, for the jungle to get noisy again. I didn’t have to do anything outside at the moment, right?
”Actually, Camoflauge said getting a bed set up inside the hut was a priority,” imaginary Flash said without appearing anywhere. ”Not in those words, but his tone, the context, it’s an important thing to do.”
Hmm, now that I remembered that, yes. He did indicate it was pretty important. But it could wait a few minutes, or a couple hours, right?
”Also,” he added. ”I’m pretty certain that when explaining how people came back he mentioned that they break beds so people can’t reappear at them. Which means you will revive at a bed of yours if you die. And implies if you don’t, well, you either pop up at random, or in a designated zone that the inmates know about, and are probably watching in order to get their victims.”
“Crud…” I grumbled to myself.
That was a really solid argument. Then again, I was arguing with my own imagination. It's pretty hard to disagree with yourself.
But since I was apparently heating my own inner thoughts as if Flash spoke them sometimes, I would probably get to that point sooner than later… Maybe I should try to find where Cam was living now? Having someone to talk to would be a good idea.
But before that, bed. If it meant I would reappear here if anything bad happened instead of having a bad thing become worse, I needed that bed.
I flexed my wrist, the blue glow of my implants interface lighting up the cabin nicely as I looked through the interface to see what I needed to make a bed. Each recipe conveniently listed all the numbers of ‘things’ you needed to make it. I’d half expected you need to figure it out yourself to make things harder, or at least that you’d need to work out the values of odd groups.
Nope! Nothing like ‘three linkonis of wood and four frumples of fiber’. One unit was one unit. Whatever the hay these units were.
“Okay, bed!” I said as I finally found the icon. “I need, fifteen wood. No problem I still have that… Eighty thatch. Yep, still have that… Oh cool! If you have enough the text is green otherwise it’s red. Sooo all I am missing is-”
My ears drooped with a mixture of nervousness and sadness.
“-forty hide…” I mumbled.
My stomach turned slightly. It wasn’t that the idea of handling something made from animal products bothered me. I wasn’t stupid. I knew where leather came from, and I’d handled books all my life. I knew what parchment was. I knew how gelatin was made.
It’s just that it’s one thing to use something, but another thing entirely to get it yourself.
To have to go find a living creature, kill it while listening to it’s cries of distress, then cut off the skin to take for yourself.
A natural thing. For predators at least. But not for prey.
You never really think about it much, but ponies are a prey species. We have homes and spells and weapons and lights to keep the monsters at bay, but we’re not hunters. It could all too easily be me getting killed for parts-
”Yep. It could very easily be you. At any minute. Which is why you need the bed to begin with,” imaginary Flash reminded.
I sighed and looked at the door. Yes, this was about survival… Of a sort. Death may not be permanent, but mental scars definitely would be. The bed would minimize suffering. I had to do it, or go through a lot more pain myself.
“I’ll have to do it as equinely as possible,” I decided, standing up and opening my cabin’s door.
The outside world greeted me, still deathly quiet, but with the oddly bright light of mid morning shining down onto the lake turning the entire surface into a huge painful to look at mirror.
I’d made a spear yesterday. A crude one, which somehow had a monster fang as the point despite being made from flint, wood, and fiber. I’d only intended to use the weapon to help me protect myself from monsters, because the guns I’d been given would run out of bullets eventually.
I debated using it to hunt as I walked into the forest towards the evil red-light beam tower. I’d noticed that there had been lots of wildlife in that direction while gathering berries the other day, and I didn’t want to be outside too long when there could be something dangerous close by.
The spear though… It wouldn’t do the job well. The poor thing I chose as my victim would suffer a lot. It wasn’t like the point was very sharp, and I couldn’t imagine one poke being deadly. Besides, I didn’t really know how to use a spear other than poke with it.
I could try an attack spell. But with the dampening field, all I could likely do was stun something with a short lived ray. No compressing energy into a spellbolt. I wouldn’t be able to gather enough.
So I could stun something and… Then what? It would be stunned, it wouldn’t be able to run, or feel pain. But it would still be cruel to just jam a spear into it a dozen times. I had a stone pick, if it could break rocks, it could break heads. That would probably kill something instantly.
But could I hit it hard enough? I really, really didn’t want to hurt something. Like, at all. I’d probably not hit hard enough out of last minute guilt.
“I could shoot it,” I muttered to myself, then immediately grimacing at the thought.
That would kill it for sure. I’d seen human guns. I’d seen griffon guns. I’d seen changeling guns. They worked pretty well. Almost as well as an Equestrian crossbow with supersonic munitions.
But they were loud.
And something big could be nearby.
It could be that thing Camouflage called a rex, and all of those bandits. Looking for me.
Guns were out. I’d have to hit it. With my pick. As hard as I could. Otherwise it would be cruel.
I took a deep breath and steeled myself. This was going to be horrible… And the dumb thing was, I had killed before and been fine, but I felt bad about it in this instance. I’d attacked Dawn with the intent to kill. I’d attacked Tirek with intent to kill. I’d killed a lot of Dawn’s demonic soldiers, and didn’t even hesitate, feel bad about it, or anything. Still felt a bit good about getting rid of them before they hurt anypony, in fact.
Why did this feel bad? Because it was just an animal?
My ears flicked as I realized the rather obvious answer. It was because in those other situations, I had been forced to do it. Here, I was the attacker. I was initiating this. That’s why it felt bad.
”You still need to do it,” Flash reminded.
“I know… That’s another reason why it feels bad,” I sighed.
A faint rustling in the jungle to the left made my ear jump. I turned towards the sound, eyes peering into the thick bushy jungle wall in search of whatever made the noise. I was going to kill it. Get this misery over with. Both mine and its.
Now or never, Twilight.
The rustling came again, this time I saw the stems of a fern move. I gathered what little magic I could, spending the few seconds necessary to shape it into a stunning ray as I conjured the pick stored in my implant, eyes piercing the shadows to find-
A tiny floofball that just had to be what happens when a fennec fox loves a kangaroo mouse very very much!
Big teal eyes! Silky-soft looking, sandy fur with a white belly and socks, and bright orange stripes running parallel down the spine, and across the head to the nose.
My lower lip trembled as my eyes teared up. “N-nooo!” I whimpered.
I couldn’t hurt that! It had scared-Fluttershy eyes! And a floofy tail tuft! And was stuck in a snare!
I’d rather use my own body for hide than hurt this little thing. I just couldn’t. I don't think anyone could. It had evolved super adorableness as a defense mechanism. And it worked!
I put my pick away, and walked towards the tiny adorable thing. It was barely bigger than a cat. And had got its neck stuck in the snare, even though it had the big floopy-flop ears that should have been way bigger than the snare would accept.
It only took a second to use the energy I’d gathered to zap the snare and cut it. I expected the little guy to run away into the bushes the moment he was free. Instead, it hopped up to my shin and proceed to huddle against my leg chirping happily.
IT EXCLUSIVELY MOVED WITH LITTLE HOPS!
Suddenly, I found myself back at my cabin, having put Sir Hoppyfox inside the cabin next to a big pile of berries, beside his bed made by simply leaving a little wooden box open, and having made him an adorable bandanna-hat, and had just headed back out to take a second shot at getting hide.
I didn’t even remember deciding to do that. I’d just sort of auto piloted it.
”That’s okay, Twily. You did the right thing,” Flash informed proudly.
“Yes,” I agreed with a grin.
A grin which rapidly faded with each step I made towards the red tower and my displeasure at my day’s mission returned.
The sun was high overhead now; the intense light seemed to push down on everything making the air heavy and hot. Adding physical misery to mental misery as I began to sweat like crazy. Especially under the armored shirt I was wearing, but I didn’t dare remove those steel plates. They’d saved my life not that long ago…
I made it back to where I’d found Sir Hoppyfox relatively quickly. It hadn’t actually been that far, I’d simply been caught up in my thoughts, stressing out over doing what I needed to do in order to avoid suffering. And realizing first hand just how unfair nature was.
It had been one thing to know about nature from books. But being a part of it drove the point home really well.
A stick snapped in the jungle to my left.
I turned to look immediately, a worried frown on my face as I crouched to look into the brush. Had I taken Sir Hopps away from his family? No! No I couldn’t do that!
I’d just have to take them all back to my cabin so they could be together again, and we could all be safe and happy inside-
The air seemed to shake as a large creature belched out a deep, bass, short, warbling bellow of a roar. The thing exploded from the jungle, a tree toppling over as it’s long body whipped around. It looked like a younger rex, and had big bony horn-like crests over its hungry yellow eyes.
Hungry eyes which were locked onto me.
The thing had been a mere meter behind the treeline, its orangeish and white hide not even remotely camouflage, I’d missed it purely based on my personal crisis. I was such an idiot! I’d known something big and horrible had been out here but I’d let myself get lost in personal th-
Two more of the monsters exploded out of the jungle, lumbering along after their companion.
I turned, spinning to my left, pivoting on my heel, reacting without thinking. Instinct alone more than enough to get me to run as fast as I could away from the terrifying lizards!
They were faster than me.
I caught a half second glimpse of dull pink flesh and yellowed forearm length fangs fell from the sky, landing around me. My chest and ribs cried out in agony, I felt myself yanked up and back-
Everything was black.
The pain was gone, but in its place was something infinitely worse. Nothing. I felt nothing.
Physically, that is. My entire mind was locked up with more panic than I’d ever imagined I could feel before. I felt the heck out of that.
Because I couldn’t feel a single body part. I was nothing…
The black nothing formed simple block red letters, spelling out a message which hung in the air before me even though I had no eyes to see it with.
You were killed by a wild Allosaurus.
The red faded away, a pale blue incredibly simplistic topographical map of the clearly artificial square shaped island I had been on faded into view, along with a list to its left which labeled a bunch of different ‘insertion points’ along with their latitudes and longitudes.
Choose reinjection zone.
Now I was going to revive and fall right into a trap! I hadn't gotten a bed made! I should have done it before I went to sleep last night! I was doomed to die again, and again, always returning here, to this horrific nothing!
”It’s okay, Twily,” Flash's voice called lovingly. ”Be brave. It’s not as bad as you thought. There’s many different points to chose from. We were in a safe area, one of these points is probably within that general area too. You can do this. Pick the point closest to where you were, and search for the granite hill. The shiny house on top will make it easy to spot.”
Flash was right. I could do this. There were lots of points. No one group could cover them all. Camo proved that good people were here too. Besides, he’d said that the area around the cabin was safe.
From bandits, at least.
I squinted at the map, trying to understand it. I’d never had access to a compass, and since this wasn’t Equis, assuming that the sun rose in the east. Even if it did, I couldn’t assume that the seasons would align with Equestria’s, nor did I know the date, which would render working out just how far the sunrise was off from due east impossible.
All of that compounding realization was mostly my way of distracting myself from the horrifying fact that I had no idea what the coast looked like near my cabin, and the map did NOT include a mark designating the big tower.
All I knew was I had been near the coast, at one of the island’s corners. I distinctly remembered a wedge shaped spit of land going off into the ocean surrounding me on three sides. The island was squarish, and had four corners. Two of the corners had islets a small distance away from their coast, which ruled them out.
There had been an island near the red tower, but it had been very close to shore. A river’s span, not a journey out to sea. This left the two western corners of the island, both of which had small islets close to shore. The northern one had three smaller ones, and the southern one had a single large ones.
The map’s lack of a scale and crude detail was more than a little bit of a problem now… I could have been on the southwestern corner and it could only be ten or so kilometers from the river to the beach. Or I could l have been on the southern most peninsula in the northwestern corner, and that could be about ten or so kilometers across.
The map had no way to tell, and since I lacked any sense of where north was, I might as well have flipped a coin to decide. Except for one last factor.
There had been a hill nearby my cabin. And only the northernmost corner had any indications of elevation changes.
I looked at the list of ‘zones’. The closest one to the northwestern corner appeared to be West Three.
“Um, West Three please?” I asked hesitantly.
The map vanishes in less than an instant, the void flashed white as a jolt of pain ran through my suddenly re-existing spine. Then the cold set in. The bone chilling horrible cold of mid-winter. Accompanied by the howling of winds which escaped and slapped at my skin as the world faded in, remaining white.
Because I was in the middle of a blizzard.
“O-o-oo-ooops,” I stammered, pushing myself up with my hands, slipping slightly on the slick sheet of ice I’d come back to this world atop.
WHAT KIND OF NONSENSE IS WHAT FEELS LIKE THE ACTUAL ARTIC NEXT TO A JUNGLE!?
My ears stood upright in pure horror. Wendigos… Windigos could do this. If there were a lot of them…
I looked around, peering through the sheets of dazzling ice crystals which rained down from above, and also swarmed around me from below. I could see a dull red glow in the sky in one direction, and in the opposite direction, I could make out the dark silhouette of another tower. One WAY above me, presumably on a mountaintop, this one with a bright blue beam of light.
Okay. So there was more than one pillar. Good to know. Also, I needed to get above the tree line and get the lay of the land because I missed a freaking MOUNTAIN the size of the one Canterlot sat upon, if the dark shape the snow ‘waves’ broke upon was of any indication.
I turned towards the red glow in the distance. If this tower was blue, then that would be the red tower. Way down there. Barely visible through the biting cold ice and snow.
I felt the bottoms of my feet start to freeze to the ice I stood on. I was literally dying by standing here. I needed to move. Was a run better in extreme cold, or a walk? Ugh! I should have read more survival guides!
Running would be faster, and would generate more body heat, but sweat could freeze in my fur… Walking would be too slow… A jog?
”Anything, just get out of here! Freezing to death is not pleasant!” Flash urged.
I nodded and began to jog south towards the distant red glow. The ice bit at the souls of my feet, occasionally pulling off a layer of skin, which made them itch like mad as my implant regenerated the bottoms of my feet constantly. The winds ripped through my fur, snatching away what little warmth I had.
After a few minutes of running across the ice, my feet plunged into snow, spreading the biting cold up to my knees. I stopped jogging just long enough to cast a quick spell which normally would have made me comfortably warm. Here it only brought feeling back to my extremities.
Just before I began to run again, I swore I heard a distant pop pierce through the howling winds. The sound was odd, to say the least. A sharp pop, distorted by the wind into a mournful howl which sent a shiver down my spine and made my tail twitch.
A second pop managed to break through the blizzard's bellowing, this one possibly coming from a different direction. What was that? It sounded kinda like ce breaking.
Oh no! Was the ice I was running on breaking apart under the weight of all this snow?
I gathered my legs under me and pumped them as hard as I could, doing my best to ignore the stiffness in my joints to sprint towards my goal, desperately needing to clear the ice in case it was collapsing!
Something incredibly heavy slammed into my shoulders and back, crushing me down into the snow.
“NO!” I screeched.
Not again! Oh Celestia not again it hurt so bad-
Two points of fiery agony blossomed on my neck, then vanished as the world turned black.
You were killed by Richard’s Ajax (Sabertooth).
“NO!” I yelled in a mixture of pain, fear, and frustration.
That message implied someone OWNED that Sabertooth. They had seen a person running naked through a blizzard and just KILLED THEM. For no reason!
“Fuck!” A gruff male voice yelped fearfully. “I’m sorry! I’m being raided. It’s hard to see through this storm. I thought you were one of- Just, please, tell your tribe mates I don’t want any issues with the Beastfolk. This was an accident. I’ll send tribute or someth-”
Another of those odd pops pierced the winds.
“God damn suppressor using bastards!” The man swore, his voice growing distant as the very unhelpful map faded back into my vision.
Oh… Well, I guess that’s different then.
Choose reinjection zone.
“West Two please,” I requested after a few moments.
I expected the white light this time, but I’d forgotten that instant of pain. It felt like being drug through burning hot sand. Not that I ever felt that, but the scraping, burning, oily sensation seemed to-
“AAAAH!” I gasped as the world snapped back into existence around me.
Sand. beach. Waves to my left. A quick tilt of my head showing jungle to my right, and the big red evil looking tower floating in the sky in front of me.
“Ow…” I moaned, sitting up slowly, grateful that I was at least somewhat close to my home.
The internal debate I’d been having could be settled now. This place was real. I’d traveled here. It hurt too much to be any sort of afterlife.
I looked out to sea, hoping to get a look at any kind of landmark. A largeish island covered in thick trees sat just a river’s worth of water away from-
MY eyes widened to the size of dinner plates. My ears stiffened. My tail stood upright as I squeaked fearfully.
I was right where I had first appeared in this world! The bandits were just to my right, up that hill, atop the cliffside.
What do I do? What do I do? Oh my gosh, I have no idea what to do… Flash! Help!
Wait, no. No I didn’t need his help. I was just panicking. I had to not panic. Yes, don’t panic. Just be completely quiet and sneak home along the cliff.
I stood up and sprinted to the base of the cliff, moving as fast as I possibly could. While that wasn’t exactly stealthy, moving along the beach when I was bright purple would be very dumb. The cliff would make it harder for some to notice me if they were atop the cliff… Hopefully they didn’t have beach sentries.
The moment I made it too the cliff I dropped flat on my stomach, grunting irritably as my teats smacked roughtly into the sand. If that had happened this morning, I would probably have hissed or moaned in pain. But with my pain threshold freshly adjusted, that was nothing.
So at least one good thing happened to day.
That… That was very weird to say on a day you got eaten.
Taking a deep breath to calm my nerves, I pulled myself slowly over the sand, hugging the cliff, crawling as fast as I could while remaining as low to the ground as possible.
Arm over arm, decimeter by decimeter, I crept towards the red tower, always hugging the hill.
Progress was agonizingly slow. But the alternative was get captured by the cannibal bandits. That Allosaurus had given me a taste of what it was like to die here. I did NOT want to go through that again… Ever.
What nonsense had Cam been spewing?! Dying was definitely a big deal. A HUGE deal! It hurt, a lot. So did coming back!
And on top of that pain, it robbed you of your ability to survive. The armor, guns, knife, spear, and everything else I had in the world was now inside a mysterious lizard's belly… One which was still near my home…
Dying had gotten rid of anything I might use to rid myself of it.
When I started to crawl, it had been mid afternoon. I made it to the swamp as the sun began to set. That had been fine, the swamp had been safe the other day. And the Bandits didn’t like to move through it, they flew over it.
I hadn’t seen a single flying creature all day. So they weren't out flying. It was safe. Or, it had been.
I had planned on simply jogging home from here. I remembered the way. Unfortunately, a crude raft blocked the way. A raft which four humans sat on, clustered around a fire in the center, while sitting atop some storage boxes.
I had managed to find a large rock to hide behind and watch them. They were talking to each other, but unlike a normal conversation, each member of the group was looking off into the swamp. They kept watch.
They also were armed, each of them had a rifle, a machete, and a large knife. For the life of me, I wondered why they weren't keeping those weapons in their implant’s quick conjuration slots… Had to be less cumbersome to carry them like that. But at least it let me know what they were armed with.
Because they all had those bone helmets fashioned from a creature’s skull. Just like that one bandit had. And each helmet had a purple stripe painted down the center. The same shade of purple as Charlie's cloak.
These were the exact people I wanted to avoid… And they were searching the swamp for me. Maybe. Hopefully not.
“So… Are we going to go up there and check for any hut she’s built?” One of the humans asked in a nasally voice. “We’ve been sitting here all damn day.”
“After luring those Allos down here to flush her out? Not a chance,” another scoffed in a deep voice with an accent which reminded me of a zebra’s. “Charlie can get someone else to do that. I’m not tangling with a whole pack of them twice in one day.”
“We should still go look for her body at least. We don’t know if she stayed in this area,” a third proposed.
“I already walked past Nyota’s base TWICE today,” the deep voiced one snapped. “I’m not making that three times. You are new here, Ray. You’ve never seen her fight… You think Charlie’s savage in one of her rages? She’s got nothing on that woman.”
“Yeah, but the Dragonslayers are pulling out of the Island,” the fourth said, her voice oddly soft. “Nyota joined up with their crew a year ago. So she may not be home. She’s probably moving things out to Ragnarok. That’s why I said I’d go put that jerboa out as bait.”
“And we know she didn’t take the bait because the alarm didn’t go off. No way she didn’t yank on that tripwire getting it out of there,” the bass voiced bandit declared. “There’s also no way a Beast didn’t try to help the stupid thing. She’s not near the Obelisk. I don’t care what Charlie thinks, she’s not there.
“We just sit here till midnight, go back to base, and insist we didn’t find a damn thing. That’s what we were asked to do, and we’re doing it. We’re not going to sweep the whole damn peninsula for one pony-folk.”
“We could go collect the hide from those Allosaurus though,” the soft spoken women proposed. “No way stumbling into the minefield didn’t kill them.”
“If not that, I’m telling you guys I heard her autoturets fire. Those things are dead… And it IS a lot of hide,” the nazily bandit said, mulling the idea of going near my cabin over.
“Fine! Go!” The deep voiced one snapped. “Go, and when she’s choking the life out of you with one arm, and casually breaking your bones one by one with the other, all the while praising her fucking pet raptor while it mauls you, Kass.
“Yeah, that’s right. Remember now? She’s got that damn Alpha through whatever bullshit she pulled! The thing will flay you alive, only to leave you not quite dead at the jungle’s edge, your hamstrings cut more cleaner than Doc could ever hope to, to lay in a bleeding heap next to an ant colony, then you two can come crawling back to me, begging for a healing draught.
“That’s when I’ll pour it out right in front of you to remind you of just how stupid you are!”
Something snorted behind me, its hot breath rippling the fur on the back of my neck.
I froze, turning white as a sheet under my fur, bladder instantly emptying in terror.
No fair! No fair! I hadn’t heard anything! Not again. Please, please make it quick so it won’t hurt!
A half minute passed. The bandits simply continuing to argue. The thing behind me continuing to breathe on me. I gulped, slowly mustering the courage to turn around, finding myself face to nose with one of the HUGE crocodiles I’d seen here the other day.
The monstrously huge reptile had silently floated up behind me. Just sort of sitting there in the water. Looking at me with it’s slit eyes. Doing nothing.
D-did it want to chase me? Lots of predators prefered food that they could play with…
I bit my lip, and called upon my magic. Trying desperately to cast a spell I’d worked on to try and help Fluttershy with her animals. It didn’t take much more power than a language translator spell… It should work, right?
My horn sparked lavender for a few moments as the spell completed. I clenched my teeth nervously, expecting either the crocodile, or the bandits to do anything.
Nope. The bandits kept arguing. The croc kept floating.
Letting the spell do it’s job, I focused my mind on the crocodile, searching for it’s basic thoughts.
Not-food before-dark-time light-down color. Nice. The spell ‘translated’, stitching the crude pictures in the beats mind into the closest words the simple spell could.
I blinked. The croc blinked.
“Huh,” I said to myself.
It thought I looked nice. Interesting. That would make it about as smart as one of the animals we ponies kept as a pet. Perhaps these creatures were arcanely enhanced too!
In which case… I had an idea. An awful idea. I had a wonderful, awful idea!
I pointed to the raft and pushed at the crock’s mind with my spell. “Those want to eat me,” I whispered.
The cock hissed angrily, it’s black snout vanishing into the inky black water as it sank like a brick. I waited three seconds. The raft surged upwards amid a torrent of water as the massive crocodile exploded upwards out of the swamp beneath it, its sheer size letting it upend the raft, sending the four bandits tumbling into the water amid panicked shouts and curses.
I turned towards the far side of the swamp and sprinted away as fast as I could, the sounds of thrashing, gunshots, and hissing roars behind me. The deep mud at the bottom of the swamp pulled on my feet, slowing me, making every step a hard won bit of ground.
I didn’t care. I kept going as fast as my legs would move. I had no idea how long the croc would occupy those bandits for, or if they had somehow seen me sprint away when it attacked them. Or if any predators in here were just as stealthy as it was which didn’t consider me to be ‘not-food’.
I couldn’t keep that up forever though. My legs and lungs were burning by the time I reached dry land on the far side of the swamp. I couldn’t keep running, if I did something was going to pop. I could tell. So I flopped down into the closest patch of tall grass to lay down for a few minutes.
As I lay on my back in the grass, I noticed the sky had gone completely dark. Not in the horrible nothingness of death, but that the sun had gone down. I hadn’t really looked at the sky here before. The stars were… Odd.
They seemed to dance and twitch, as if they were all moving back and forth a very small amount. I frowned, trying to work out what phenomenon could cause the stars to appear to visibly move. Unless… Were those not balls of gas far off in deep space?
Perhaps they-
“Woah,” I whispered to myself as a cloud moved and I saw the moon.
The moon was HUGE, and full. Completely full. And HUGE! AT LEAST fifteen times the size of the moon I knew back home. A massive yellowish-white lamp in the sky.
No wonder you could still see pretty well at night. That thing had to reflect so much more light than Luna’s moon. I wonder if-
My ears twitched as the water a the edge of the swamp sloshed. I managed to roll and jump as the grass started to sush as something huge moved into it next to me. By a small miracle, I managed to land on my feet, ready to run. I twisted, moving to sprint away and-
The crocodile's black pebbly snout poked through the grass next to me, a human leg clamped firmly in its jaws. The crock gently bumped its snout into my left hip, chuffed, then dropped the leg, and waddled backwards, returning to the swamp.
I blinked. Did… Did it just give me food? Like a pet? Wut?
“Um… Thanks?” I said uneasily. “I-I’m glad you’re okay!”
Pausing only to giving my new found crocodile friend a wave bye, just incase it was smarter than I thought, I quickly sprinted towards the distant hilltop. That crock might be friendly, but that didn’t mean others would be…
Because nothing here seemed to be friendly.
Well, not literally… But this place was dangerous. Very dangerous. I wasn’t going anywhere tomorrow. At all. My cabin was safe. I was just going to sit in there and work out how to get my magic to work better here. Magic had been the solution thus far. I would figure out how to access my full power and then be perfectly fine.
Yes. That was the plan.
”You still need a bed, Twily,” Flash’s voice reminded me urgently, but oddly quietly.
Yes. That’s right. I did. I absolutely needed a bed.
I needed a bed because the alternative was to get lost and be killed by a random person’s pet while freezing to death. Or spend the whole day freaking out while crawling through mud, sand, and swamp water while trying to avoid cannibals who can somehow imprison me to hunt me repeatedly. Or be roaming around this place, completely lost, and get eaten. Again.
And I could still remember how badly that hurt… I’d felt my ribs pop like dry twigs.
I needed some hide. Right now. And… All the other things I’d need to make a bed. Because I’d lost them.
I kept walking until I reached the shore of the lake my cabin was on. There were plenty of rocks in the area, and it took me no time at all to gather everything I needed for a new pic, hatchet, and the raw materials for a bed. Except for the hide.
That was tricky. Not because of any ethical concerns. No. Not this time. Not after today.
I couldn’t find anything.
I circled the lake a good four times before deciding to give up and check for creatures in the morning. I wasn’t about to go near the jungle at night. I could see things on the lake shore. Couldn’t see anything in the shadow of the trees. This wasn’t a place you traveled unprepared.
I’d learned that today.
Turning around to go back to my cabin, I saw the first creature I’d seen for the entire hunt. I had no idea what it was, some kind of bluish tropical chicken. It didn’t look big enough to provide all the hide I needed.
But it would be a start. And I could get the rest tomorrow.
Getting as close as I could to ensure my spell wouldn’t miss was creepily easy. The bird didn’t seem to care that I walked towards it. I flinched, fearing that it would suddenly turn and spit acid into my face or something else horribly deadly. No creature lets things walk this close to it unless it does not consider them to be a threat…
WIth a nervous wince I cast my spell. The pale lavander ray smacked the bird squarely in it’s back causing it to flop over limply, as if I’d just turned it off.
I took another step forwards, raising my pick to give it a swift merciful death. “Sorry, but if I die again, I’m going to return to a safe place… I’m pretty sure you’d kill me to do that too,” I whispered apologetically.
To the corpse of a bird.
I blinked in shock. The stupid thing was so weak that the stun spell must have stopped it’s heart. I had no words.
Well, at least it was painless.
That left me with a new problem, though. How did I get the hide off it? I had my hatchet, I could try scraping it off with the blade as it was the most knife like thing I had. But I’d never butchered a bird before. I had no idea where to begin.
Deciding to just try cutting a circle around the thing, then pulling, I set about the gruesome task. The uneasy feeling in my guts came back as I started to make the cut. I wasn’t going to stop, but this was definitely a gross-
The bird’s corpse suddenly dissolved into nothingness just like any plant I’d gathered so far.
Added: 14x Hide
Added: 8x Raw Meat
“Oh. That aspect of survival is all gamified too,” I said aloud in pleasant surprise.
I wasn’t going to have to get covered from head to hoof in bird gore. Thank goodness!
Since getting hide was really just the same as gathering plants, except you had to hunt a creature, I decided to get the bed put in tonight. I continued wandering around the lake’s shoreline, keeping my eyes peeled for anything moving. It wouldn’t take more than a second for something to burst from the trees and eat me. Or for a smaller thing I could hunt to run away from me to some hiding spot.
It felt weird to think like that… I was an equine. A prey species. And I was hunting.
I would never get used to-
Movement in the grass to my left caught my eye. I wheeled around, conjuring my spear, ready for one of those huge beasts to jump out of the brush!
Instead, I watched as another of the chicken-like birds simply grew out of the ground like a super fast growing bush, chirped, and then walked off down the lake shore.
They were artificial! Every creature here was created expressly for this place, by this place!
That made me feel better about hunting things.
I spent another hour hunting, managing to find and kill another three of the chicken things. They had given me all the hide I needed by some small miracle. I could feel myself about to fall over with exhaustion. I’d spent the entire day stressed out beyond belief, and now I was up incredibly late doing even more walking around, and spellcasting.
Spellcasting was extremely tiring here… I’d definitely work on that tomorrow.
As I pushed open my cabin door, an excited squeak caught me off guard. What the heck was-
The little fox-kangaroo mouse hybrid creature I’d rescued excitedly hopped over to me, scrambling up my leg to perch on my shoulder, nuzzling into my neck gently.
OH MY GOSH YOU’RE SO ADORABLE! How did I forget about Sir Hoppyfox, Knight of the Yet-to-Exist Table, Comforter of Stranded Mares?
“Hey there, little guy,” I cooed sleepily, giving his little nose a gentle skritch as I shut the door behind me. “It’s time for bed.”
It took me a matter of moments to instruct my implant to craft the bed, and place it in one corner of my cabin. As I watched the bed resolve into existence bit by bit, I couldn’t help feel a bit bad that those birds had died to make something that crude looking.
It looked like someone had lashed four two by four boards together wish strips of leather, tossed a bunch of hay into a crude cloth bag, and then called that a bed after throwing a sheet and a cruddy pillow from a budget motel onto it.
Hopefully it would be comfortable… Not that I cared much. I had a bed now! I was safe. Kind of. Safe from the kind of tartarus I’d gone through today at least. VIctory for Twilight!
I lay down on the bed, carefully picking up Sir Hoppy and sticking him on my chest so I wouldn't lay on his tail by accident.
“I immediately regret this,” I groaned, squirming to try and find a comfortable spot on the lumpy brick slab that was this mattress.
The floor was somehow less hard and more ergonomic than this thing was!
I winced. “Sorry birds… I’ll try to make this more comfortable tomorrow,” I mumbled before passing out.
