Unprepared Castaway Chapter 6 (Patreon)

And this is as much of this story as I've written. No plans to continue it atm.

Greg woke up in the sort of bleary-eyed way that might make the phrase 'came around' more accurate. Maybe even 'regained consciousness', although that implied a totality that wasn't present. There was still plenty more consciousness left to regain.

"I'm having the weirdest case of deja vu," he muttered.

And then, yes, he threw up again. This mattered less than upon his previous awakening, partially on account of the way he hadn't eaten anything since then, so there wasn't an awful lot of material available to work with, but mostly because he was already outdoors, rather than in his bed.

In fact, there no longer appeared to be a bed. Or an indoors. Also, the world was on fire.

Greg didn't even swear. Instead, he just looked around in utter incomprehension. The landscape was massively changed compared to when he'd been stabbed. The vines and the ruins were gone. The nebula and moons were not visible, masked by the extensive light pollution. For the same reason, the silhouettes of the distant landscape were absent. The formerly spongy ground was charred and brittle.

Greg himself externally appeared almost unharmed. Not a single burn decorated his skin. There were a couple of puncture wounds, both already scabbed over, where the needles had hit him, but beyond that there was nothing but a few scrapes. He could be fairly sure, because inspecting himself was quite easy on account of the way all his clothes had gone. Even the helmet was missing, else his vomiting would have been rather more distressing.

And, as already been mentioned, there was extensive light pollution, on account of everything being on fire.

Greg waved his exposed arm experimentally through a pillar of blue flame. To him, it seemed merely pleasantly warm, yet the flesh of the beast beneath it was bubbling and crackling. More flames were bursting out everywhere, seemingly at random. One would cut out only for another two to erupt a few feet away. And even if the flames themselves weren't hot, the flesh of the monster was.

"Why can't I just go back to sleep until things start making sense?" he complained, before inspecting his stash of salvage. Or at least, searching the area for his stash of salvage, which had vanished along with the rest of the ruins. "If this fire doesn't burn me, why did it burn all my food?! No clothes, no shelter. Never mind water, I don't even have anything to carry water in. If my diary still existed, I'd need to make some updates..."

On the basis that he should probably leave before his body noticed he wasn't supposed to be flame proof, and that there was no longer anything to stay for beyond the all-he-could-eat barbecued meat buffet, he pointed himself downhill in what he guessed to be the direction of the spring and started walking.

The field of flames didn't end, forcing him to walk around puddles of bubbling meat and further messing with his sense of direction. They continued even after he reached the bottom of the beast, the blue grass gone, and the soft soil crusted with thin shards of dirty glass where it had melted and re-solidified. There was no trail of vines left to follow.

Given his complete nakedness, which obviously included a lack of shoes, the glass was even more of a problem than the burning monster. As long as he gave the bubbling puddles a wide berth, the heat from below was uncomfortable but not burning, but there was no way to step around the glass.

"Don't stuntmen walk over broken glass?" he pondered. "Was there some trick to it? Like keeping your foot flat, so pressure is never concentrated at one point? Or is the 'trick' that they never use real glass? Maybe I should crawl, to reduce the pressure even further..."

He gingerly took a step, ensuring he kept his foot as straight as possible, and only gradually shifting his weight off the relative safety of a burning, ten-thousand ton monster.

"Ouch," he said, because he was standing on broken glass, and so 'ouch' was an appropriate thing to say.

Despite the pain, nothing cut into his skin. The glassed soil wasn't exactly high quality, and with his careful walking, posed no threat. It did mean his walking speed was heavily hampered, though, especially since he still needed to walk around the still-common erupting flames, so three hours later without seeing any interesting scenery he wasn't sure if he'd missed the spring or not even got that far yet.

"Just how big was that explosion? What the hell happened?" he mumbled repeatedly as he walked, munching on a handful of monster meat as he went. The increasing distance pushed up the lower limit on the first question, but each step made the second one all the more urgent. Nevertheless, desperation drove him on. While there was as much food as he wanted behind him, there was nothing to drink. There was no shelter.

And, of course, everything was on fire.

It took another two hours before the glass ended, and, after picking up the pace, another half hour after that before the grass was once again blue and unscorched.

"Finally out of it," he muttered, shivering. It still wasn't cold, but being naked and having spent the past half-day walking through a sea of flames, the disparity was goosebump inducing. "Of course, it's not as if I'm magically going to find any clothes..."

He continued his march, and with the nebula back in view, could finally orientate himself again, ensuring he walked in approximately a straight line.

It was a mere ten minutes later that he found his first bundle of vines, snaking perpendicularly across his path.

"Do I keep walking, or try following them and hope they lead me to water?" he wondered, looking one way then the other, but not seeing anything in either direction. "If I come across one of those trees again, I'm going to end up a hedgehog. Not to mention I have nothing to chop it down with. On the other hand, I'm really thirsty... Maybe I'll find a river, rather than a well."

Not having any reason to believe ignoring the vines would lead to anything useful, he took a left turn. And, twenty minutes later, he came across a green structure even larger than the first. At its base, the bifurcating upright vine was too wide to wrap his arms around, and the highest reaches were five metres up in the air.

It was, alas, not grown over a river or anything else that provided accessible water. Whether there was another well wasn't obvious from a distance, and Greg had no intention of getting closer.

The plant suddenly creaked, the upper branches swaying in a non-existent breeze. Greg took a step back.

Man and tree stared at each other for a few moments longer. Or at least, man stared at tree. The tree didn't have eyes, yet Greg was left with the distinct impression it was staring back. The others had certainly seemed to know exactly where he was for the purposes of using him as a pincushion.

Something off to his side went plink.

Glancing over, Greg boggled at one of the vines, gradually arching and raising itself into the air, a thin dribble of clear liquid leaking from its side. He watched as it beaded, running down the side of the vine and forming an expanding drip beneath it, which grew until gravity overcame surface tension.

Plink.

"What?" he asked rhetorically.

He continued to stand statue-still as the vine rose to eye level. The seeping area expanded, the slow drip turning into a steady trickle.

"What?" he repeated, before deciding it was time to put his brain to use.

"Okay, I have enough corner pieces to get this puzzle started. First, this thing tracked me. I damaged it, and it came looking for revenge. That implies some level of intelligence. Second was that explosion. Given the timing and the blue glow, it seems likely it was related to the water. And it was triggered by that thing's needle. So, it doesn't want to needle me, lest I explode again, but it also doesn't want to let me damage it or drink the blue water. So its best option is to give me clean, non-glowy water. Am I right?"

The plant didn't respond, which wasn't a complete surprise. It didn't have any ears.

"So... important question. Is that water poisoned again? Not that I have much choice. I don't really have the leeway to ignore it."

Greg, unwilling to lick the vine—a perfectly sensible decision, given that he strongly suspected it of trying to eat him—held his mouth under the dribble of liquid.

It was indeed water. Quite possibly the best water he'd ever tasted.

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Had the sovereign of Regnum Ligno been of a species that sweat when nervous, it would have been sweating buckets.

All of its attention had been focused on the deadly bomb walking through its territory, the large grey creature continuing to make its way north, when an autonomous node on the border of the new mana-poisoned area had pinged about an approaching object.

It had been another of the smaller, pink creatures.

Where had it come from? The sovereign hadn't discovered any other anomalies nearby. Was it one that was missed? Why did this one not have a hide like the other? That aside, they looked identical.

It thought nothing of the matching appearance. It wasn't as if the sovereign knew what humans were, so it had no idea they weren't supposed to have matching faces. Even if it did, it would have been unlikely to tell the difference for much the same reason humans would struggle to identify specific cockroaches.

However, it did spot the fresh scar right where its enlarged dart had been aimed. That was enough for it to recall the first shot it had fired, before the creature had switched hide, and spot that wound too. And that was enough to sow the seeds of doubt.

It was impossible. There was no way anything could have survived the mana burst, whether the creature was truly 'living' or not.

But what if it had?

The alien creatures must not be permitted to absorb mana. Exaggerating the stakes was impossible; they could turn into walking oceans of poison, spreading it everywhere they went. They could pose a threat to the entire world. And so the sovereign gave the creature what it was looking for, providing it with its own sap to discourage it from its continued search. It already knew this creature was sedentary; it would be unlikely to move away from a supply of sustenance.

Even better, it would likely track a supply of sustenance. The arch in the vine began to move ever so slowly away from the node, leading the creature away.

The sovereign often had reason to bemoan its slow growth. The other creatures of the world could run rings around it. When this creature had turned up with its external teeth and thicker hide, there was nothing it could do but watch, enduring the pain as its flesh was severed. Nevertheless, it had survived since days of antiquity. It was an official member of Crepusculum Concilio, and Regnum Ligno was recognised as a sovereign state. There was a reason for that.

It's ability to adapt quickly might be lacking, but given time to prepare?

Its venoms might be rendered useless by the creature's alien biology and unique interactions with mana, but all that meant was that different tools were needed. It already knew the creature couldn't produce its own water. Likewise, it had seen the creature's nest; the node had not grown to maturity, and the full set of senses were not available to it, but it had seen enough to deduce that the creature relied on tools. It would not grow a new hide, or disgorge another of those toothed weapons from inside itself. Then all that was required was to trap it, and it would eventually perish on its own, unable to escape.

The arched vine continued its slow journey, leading the danger away from the node and the waters of Lacum Lucis that it protected, and towards a growing mat of vines.