//------------------------------// // Chapter 3: Surviving The Night // Story: The Centurion Project // by TheEighthDayofNight //------------------------------// Journal Entry Day 1402 There are probably about a million different “survival guides” out there, but let me say, most of them are absolute shit. They’ll feed you some crap about how a human can survive weeks without food. Maybe that’s true if you consider breathing “survival”. Lemme tell you something though, a working man can only go about a week without food before he starts to get crazy. When you’re really hungry, you’ll start trying to eat anything, even if you know that it ain’t any good. About noon yesterday I saw this bony looking guy, had to be almost 50. Anyway, I haven’t eaten in two days, but this guy, he looked like he hadn’t eaten in two weeks. I watch him as he wanders around my shelter, but he doesn’t try to get in, simply looks at the boards and ignores it. I almost threw up when he found my shit bucket lying on the ground and went to work. I’ll spare the details, but needless to say that bucket was clean once he was done with it. Winter is always a fucking time to try and survive, but damn if I’m ever that desperate, the only thing I’m gonna bite down on is a bullet. Elias groaned as he gently eased his feet into the stream. His sandals would need to be replaced soon. Normally, they protected his feet just fine for a long day of walking, but today, he had more than one blister on his foot where the shoe had been worn to nothing. The cool water provided temporary relief though, and Elias was more than happy to rest for a few minutes to give his bloodied, aching limbs a break. While he hadn’t had to go far to find the stream, he had kept walking alongside it until the sun was setting to ensure that he wasn’t being pursued. After hours of only himself and the birds, he decided to finally go about cleaning his wounds. He started by washing the caked blood from the previous night from his hands. After he was relatively satisfied that his hands were clean, he set to work unwrapping the bandage from his leg. Elias grimaced as blood dripped from the wound into the stream. The day’s movement had not been kind, and the wound had only barely begun to scab around the edges. The rest was a vibrant red mess that hurt more than Elias would have liked. Filling his hands with water, he did his best to clean the wound, washing away any dirt that may have slipped under the bandage. Once it was clean enough, Elias used part of his other roll of gauze to bind the wound again. He then gingerly prodded at the wound in his chest. The bandage was in much better condition than the one that had decorated his leg, but it was still a bright red, and he knew it needed changed. He took his time with this bandage, slowly peeling back the layers to save himself as much pain as possible, until after several minutes, the bloody red of the arrowhead touched the air. As soon as the last of the bandage pulled free, Elias immediately began wrapping it up with fresh gauze. He had no idea if it would make the wound worse trying to wash it, so, with caution in mind, he bound it tight once again. With his wounds bound, Elias dropped the soiled bandages to his side and laid back, content to let his feet cool in the stream. The sky was clear of any clouds and was painted in a stunning array of oranges. The air was still warm, and Elias believed he could get away with another night without a fire or shelter. For the first time in years, Elias felt truly relaxed, and he began to doze, the babbling of the stream like soft music in his ears. His eyes closed for what felt like a moment, and then a twig snapped. Elias’ eyes snapped open and his hand shifted immediately to his gladius. The sky was still devoid of clouds, but it was clear that darkness had fallen long ago, and now Elias was out of his element. Whatever was in the woods behind him was likely nocturnal, and likely had the advantage of being able to see him clearly. Elias removed his feet from the stream and slid on his sandals, not bothering to dry his soaking, wrinkled feet. He could worry about the blisters after he managed to outrun whatever it was that was watching him. Elias stood up and strapped on his ruck, making sure that his shield was ready for use on his left arm. He squinted into the darkness of the forest, trying to spot the tell-tale glare that told him he was being watched. Spotting nothing, he instead looked for the ideal direction to run in. He was thankful that it was so clear; it allowed the moon to give him just a touch of light to make out the stream bank. Following his gut instinct, Elias moved upstream, making sure to stay well clear of the trees. While the moon could guide him in the open, the trees would make it too dark to see, easily concealing anything that might have deadly intent. Elias hadn’t walked a hundred steps away from his napping spot when he spotted a pair of dark forms darting from the trees out the corner of his eyes. He dropped to ground, rendered breathless for a moment as the arrow drove itself a bit deeper into his body as his chest smacked the ground. As he regained his breath, he watched the pair of forms. Green eyes stared back at him and Elias tensed, ready to fight if he had to. Elias felt his jaw almost drop in shock when the two creatures looked away and began scanning the ground where he had been laying moments before. 'They have to be fucking with me,' he thought. There was simply no way that he hadn’t been spotted. He was wearing shiny silver armor for fucks sake. Even at night he glowed like a disco ball. Yet for some reason, the two creatures ignored him completely, instead choosing to sweep his former campsite. Elias, not wanting to throw away his absolutely stupid luck, began to crawl backward through the grass, doing his best to keep a low, silent profile amongst the vegetation. Even though the grass came up to his eyebrows, Elias knew that he was still far too visible, and the fact that he hadn’t been spotted was a miracle. He froze when the horn of one of the creatures lit up in a deep red glow. In the light of its horn, Elias could clearly tell what the creatures were. They were just like the horses from earlier, though the colors were much more muted. The one with the horn was a bluish grey, while the other was almost black, with what looked to Elias like wings. Both were dressed in layered blue armor, including helmets with plumes not unlike the one decorating his own helm. If his memory served, he was staring at a unicorn and a pterippus according to Gallic and Greek mythology respectively. Both of which were armed, armored, and actively searching for him. As distracted as he was with analyzing the horses, he had failed to realize what was suspended in the aura of the unicorn. Elias grimaced and silently cursed himself for being so stupid. Painted even redder by the aura of the unicorn, the blood-soaked bandage that had been on his leg hours ago seemed to mock him. The bandage floated closer to the nose of the pterippus, who sniffed at it. Elias felt his eye twitch. He needed to move, and fast. The breeze was slight, but he was upwind of the pair of horses. Elias slowly inched his gladius from its sheathe, his eyes following the pterippus. He had no way to kill it if it got in the air. As it stood, he was going to have to move fast to even consider grounding the flying beast. He took as deep of a breath as he could and tensed, ready to make his attack, when the pterippus took flight, quickly disappearing over the trees. Elias’ gaze shifted quickly to the unicorn. The red aura was gone, as was the bandage. The unicorn scanned the ground where he had slept, likely looking for anything else that would make Elias easier to track. Elias began to crawl backward again, his eyes scanning the top of the trees for any sign of more pterippi. If he could get far enough away, he could make a dash for the cover of the forest, then he wouldn’t have to… “Please don’t move.” Elias froze and his grip on his gladius tightened. The unicorn was staring right at him, just like the pink one had earlier. Now however, the unicorn was close, and its eyes were glowing bright green. His fight or flight response was in overdrive, but his body simply couldn’t decide which one. On one hand, it was one opponent, and he might still have the element of surprise if he moved fast enough. On the other hand, this was an unknown enemy with unknown capabilities and an unknown amount of reinforcements nearby. Either way he looked at it, Elias was not in a good spot. Elias felt his eye twitch again as he watched the unicorn speak. “You are injured, the bandages tell me that much. Believe me when I say we just want to talk. All you need to do is wait until the princess gets here, then we can see about getting you fixed up.” Watching the words come out of the unicorn’s mouth was a surreal experience. A fairytale creature was speaking in perfect English and not only did it want him to stay and talk more, it wanted to help him as well. 'Maybe I have gone insane,' Elias thought for a moment. Shrugging off the thought, Elias began to slowly crawl backward again. It was idiotic, but maybe the unicorn was bluffing, attempting to flush Elias out of his hiding spot. That hope was dashed when his foot tapped against a wall that matched the color of the unicorn’s magical aura. “Don’t make this harder than it has to be. We just need to know why you were spying on Ponyville today. Then we can help you. You’ve left a trail of blood in your wake; you can’t possibly keep running as you are.” Elias ignored the unicorn’s words, and steeled his mind as he sprang into action. Flight was now out of the question, he was trapped. That left one option. With a shout, Elias was on his feet and sprinting at the unicorn, his armor glistening in the moonlight. The unicorn was slightly surprised by his sudden attack, but not as much as Elias would have liked. He swung his gladius at the unicorn’s neck, only to have the blade smacked away by a sword wrapped in a red aura. That aura failed when his scutum cracked into the side of the unicorn’s head. The unicorn’s helmet flew free, the strap snapped by the force of the blow. It hit the stream with a splash. The unicorn crumpled to the ground and the wall of energy behind Elias dissipated. Elias crouched next to the unicorn’s still body, his chest heaving. It had happened in seconds, but that brief bit of action had burned clean through his energy. His limbs felt fragile, and the wound in his chest ached with renewed pain. Elias noticed the rise and fall of the unicorn’s chest and briefly considered slitting the creature’s throat. As he got to his feet, he sheathed his gladius, deciding against it. If these creatures were organized, they likely took priority in caring for their wounded, he reasoned. A wounded body could stop three to four more, leaving less to pursue him. Elias stepped over the unicorn and began to walk downstream. It was likely that the pterippus had also spotted him, and would know that he had been retreating upstream. Better to go downstream and attempt to throw them off. He walked as fast as he could, doing his best to ignore the pain in his leg. Elias didn’t make it far before he saw a brilliant red flare light up the night sky behind him. It painted the shadows around him crimson, and Elias knew that even though he had managed to get away, his temporary lead would soon vanish. Walking onward, he scanned the landscape for any place he could set an ambush. Running wasn’t going to work on his busted leg, and Elias wasn’t one to crawl in a hole to hide; he needed a good place to take a stand. The stream to his right began to run faster as he walked, the noise covering the sound of his armor nicely. The night seemed to grow darker as he walked, and he squinted harder to continue making out the landscape around him. Elias had a creeping feeling that the shadows of the trees were hiding an unknown threat. He did his best to quicken his pace, pushing past the pain his injuries were causing him. He briefly considered crossing the stream in an attempt to throw an pursuit off his scent but decided against it. It had had already gotten much faster, with the water rushing ahead to some unseen drop off. If he stepped in the fast-moving water on his bad leg, he would no doubt be swept away. Paranoid and attentive as he was, Elias was still unprepared when several dark forms peeled away from the trees, their quick, diagonal movement making clear their intentions. He gritted his teeth as he began to run, doing his best to stay ahead of the sprinting creatures. Elias assumed that they were more of the armored horses, but didn’t bother wasting time checking, instead focusing on keeping his balance. His leg was screaming at him to stop, any healing it had done in the past few hours squandered as he ran. It took mere seconds for the horses to catch up. Unlike the unicorn, they said nothing, and instead seemed focused purely on running Elias down. Elias grimaced as he made a split-second decision and cut the straps to his ruck, letting the heavy bag fall away. The sum total of his life hit the ground, acting as a minor hurdle for the horses, who didn’t slow down as they leapt over it. Still, without the weight of his ruck on his back, Elias was able to pick his pace up a bit more, keeping just out of the horses’ reach. Elias briefly considered turning to throw his scutum at the horses, going so far to even look back and pick out a target, but decided against it; he would need it when the inevitable fight came. While he was looking back however, he failed to notice that the ground he was running on ended abruptly. He had only an instance to realize his mistake as he pitched over the side of a steep cliff, the thundering of a waterfall echoing to his right. The first hit hurt, his left arm snapping in two as he hit a stone outcropping. The second hit hurt worse as his chest impacted, driving the breath fully from his lungs. The third hit didn’t hurt much at all, but was by far the worst of the three as Elias began to sink, his armor acting as an anchor. Elias clawed desperately at the murky, dark water, his lungs already on fire. His luck held however as his sandals touched the silty bottom of the waterfall’s plunge pool. Elias tried not to panic as he walked forward, using his good arm as a paddle as he moved toward the shallow shoreline. Blackness tinted the edge of his vision as he struggled against the weight of his armor and the crushing pressure his lungs were under. Elias gasped desperately as he flopped out of the water. Using his right hand, he dragged himself forward until only his sandals were still in the water, and then he simply collapsed. Each breath ended with a cough, and Elias struggled to breathe as he hacked up a stream of liquid from his lungs. 'Funny,' he thought, 'I don’t remember swallowing any water.' His shield was long gone, likely lost when he broke the arm. Luckily, his gladius had remained in its sheathe, meaning he still had at least a bit of protection. On his hands and knees, Elias fell into another coughing fit, this one more painful than the last. Elias tasted blood in his mouth, and he spit out a thick glob of it into the grass. Elias put a hand to his chest as he struggled to take another breath, and that’s when he noticed. The bandage covering his chest wound was gone, and he could no longer feel the tip of the arrow with his fingers. Another coughing fit shook his body, and Elias felt his chest tighten as he desperately tried to take a breath. More blood welled up, pouring out of his nose as well as his mouth. He clutched at the chest wound, praying that maybe if he could contain the blood, he could breathe again. Elias gave himself credit. When the horses impacted the ground in a half circle around him, he was on his feet, sword in hand within an instant. He kept his gladius pointed at the center of the semi-circle, ready to strike if any of them got too close. For a moment, the change in position allowed him to get half a breath of air before his chest tightened again. With his other arm broken, he couldn’t even try to stop the blood pouring from his chest, let alone figure out how he was going to remove the arrowhead so that he could breathe again. Time was as short as the amount of air he still had in his lungs, practically non-existent. Maybe it was the shock, the fact that he couldn’t breathe, or the fact that he was certain that he was going to die, but Elias didn’t even flinch when a horse substantially larger than the rest stepped out of the shadows and lit the surrounding area blue with an aura from its horn. While most of the horses were a good foot shorter than he was, this one matched his height at six-foot even. On any other occasion, Elias imagined that his brain would tell him that this was a leader of some kind. As it stood, all of the alarm bells in his head were screaming at him to breathe as coughing shook his body once again. On the last cough a spray of blood left his mouth, and he fell to one knee. The large horse seemed to take this as a sign to move forward, which Elias quickly warded off with a growl and a half-hearted swing of his sword. The motion brought out more coughing and Elias wheezed as he fell to his hands and knees once more. Any attempt to draw breath made him choke, and the spots in his vision were steadily consuming it. Only vaguely did he realize that the horses were talking. “Princess, I really don’t think you should too get close to that thing. It is still armed and clearly does not want help.” Elias felt a chunk of flesh fall out of his mouth with the last cough. He managed to get a foot underneath his body, but as soon as he put any weight on it, he collapsed completely, choking in agony as he rolled onto his broken arm. His gladius fell away, disappearing into the growing darkness. He seemed to remember the moon being brighter. “Captain, it is clear that the creature is in great pain and is simply scared. As far as we know, it is dying. I will not condemn an innocent creature to suffer in such a manner, call forth a healer.” Elias realized that he was freezing. Odd considering how warm it had been earlier. He curled into a ball, cradling his broken arm. He had extra clothes in his ruck though. He could use those to warm up, get a fire going, the works. It would be a regular camping trip. “Princess, if I may, it has already assaulted a guard and was caught spying on several of the Elements. It clearly has some sort of malicious intent.” Elias stared blankly at the horses. They were talking. They weren’t supposed to be, but they were. The books he read said they didn’t. He had never seen one in real life though, so what did a book know? “Captain that is enough. Malicious or not, we will not be able to tell if the creature dies. Call forth a healer immediately while I attempt to stabilize it.” Elias felt his throat squeak as it searched for air. His chest grew tighter and tighter with each little gasp. It was so cold. He desperately wished it wasn’t. Elias felt something roll him onto his back. It was so much warmer, he wanted to curl around it, let the warmth soak into his very core, but he found that he couldn’t move. None of his limbs would respond, neither would his head. He also realized that he couldn’t see, the world completely black. His last sense to go was his hearing. Elias heard one sentence before he passed out. “Do not worry little one, you are safe now.”