45. Depths (Patreon)

Water splashed. Ike landed on the final step and looked back up. The waterfall towered over him, seemingly unreachably high. He saluted to it, saying farewell to his campsite. “Hopefully, I won’t be back.”

Dense, thick forest awaited him. Ike walked the edge of it, searching for tracks and markings from monsters or other animals. There were plenty. Deer hoofprints dug into the mud, alongside something with three thick, fat toes. Small paw prints, too, marked the water’s edge. From the long, slender fingers, they belonged to raccoons, or something like them. Larger paw prints were present as well, without defined claw marks. Ike raised his brows. They could belong to a large cat, a panther or a tiger. I’ll have to keep an eye out.

No ducks swam in the cool water at the bottom of the waterfall, but webbed-toe marks indicated that they, or something like them, had passed by recently. There were also strange marks, half-obscured or blurry ones that Ike didn’t recognize. But the most important marks were the ones that weren’t present. Shoeprints. Footprints. Aside from Ike’s own, there was no indication that any human had come by the waterfall any time recently. 

I really am alone down here. It’s nice. Peacefull.

Loup trotted off into the forest ahead of him, leaving Ike behind. Ike watched her go, then turned back to the tracks. He crouched next to the three-toed track and spread his hand out beside it. The track stretched wider than his fingertips by an inch or two. Vicious claws had torn into the wet mud at the very end of the claws, leaving little tunnels into the ground. He followed the traces until he found a place the creature had slipped. There, a mark behind the foot suggested a dew claw of some sort.

Ike stood. He turned toward the forest, gazing along the path of the marks. They grew more indistinct as they passed onto hard, dry ground, then vanished into the undergrowth. A path of torn and trampled undergrowth vanished into the forest. Ike entered the path, following the wavering route through the woods.

Loup appeared from the depths of the forest. She looked at him, then at the path. Pausing for a few moments, she sniffed the ground, then loped off into the woods. She pulled ahead of Ike and quickly vanished.

Smart dog.

A pale, fluttering object caught his eye, snarled in a thorny vine. Ike plucked it free. A feather. Fluffy and about as wide as it was long, the down feather stretched from the tip of his middle finger to the base of his palm. Ike tucked it into his pack. If the down’s that big, the bird’s gonna be bigger than I thought. I need to be prepared.

He paused for a moment, reaching into his bag. He drew out the spear head Silver had loaned him back during the owl fight. He’d taken it out of the owl’s body and kept it, despite Silver grumbling about how he ought to destroy a flawed product like it. As he walked, he kept his head on a swivel, looking for downed branches and small saplings, anything good, straight, and sturdy that would make for a spear shaft. In the shade of an old hardwood tree, he found one. He bound the barbed head to the spear with the wolf’s tendons. Even though he didn’t need to conserve everything any longer, the way he had in the resource-limited desert, there was no reason to discard the materials he’d worked so hard to procure.

Loup walked up just as he was softening the tendons. She sniffed the material, then looked at Ike, a confused expression on her face.

Ike showed her the tendons. “Remember your packmate that fell into the Abyss? They died when they hit the ground. I’m making use of what remained.”

Loup opened her mouth. Ike held steady, prepared to defend himself if he needed to. Instead, she carefully pulled one piece of the tendons out of his hands. Dropping back to all fours, she vanished into the forest with the tendon.

Ike watched her go, then shrugged to himself. After all, death is always present in the forest. It’s not as if she’s never seen a packmate die. Especially if she’s a higher Rank, and therefore longer-lived than the rest of her pack. For a monster like her, who lived in the wild, there was nothing strange about losing a packmate. Nor was it his fault that the other wolf had died. There was nothing to be afraid of, as long as she properly understood the situation.

He came upon a pine tree. Kneeling, he checked the roots and lower body for resin. The bird’s claw had slashed open the root, and nodules of resin collected over the root. Ike collected the resin, peeling the pale-gold substance off of the tree. An ant was stuck in one edge, and a few pine needles clung to it here and there. He tucked the pine resin into a dirty scrap of cloth and grimaced as it stuck to his hand, unwilling to release him. He wiped it off onto the cloth, then wiped his hands on the cloth, but the sticky sensation didn’t fade. He shook his hand a few times, hoping the air would help, but it did nothing.

He looked at his hand. Dirt and pine needles already stuck to his skin, the sticky stuff picking up scraps of whatever he touched. He kneeled again and wiped it off in the dirt, then lifted it. The sticky parts of his hand had turned black from the filth, but the stickiness remained. He made a face. I guess this is how I live, now.

As he walked, whenever he came across a pine tree, he checked it for resin. The cloth slowly filled up, and his hands grew stickier and stickier. By the time he was ready to make camp for the night, he already had more than enough.

He ate the last of the wolf jerky that night, resisting the urge to make a face. Putrid, gamy flavors spread across his tongue. Staring into the fire, he made a silent vow: I’m eating that damn bird for dinner tomorrow. I don’t care how big it is. It’s dinner.

Ike swallowed the tough meat, then leaned forward, checking the pan. The resin had already melted to a pliable state, so he grabbed his spear and the tendons, and fixed the tendons in place with the resin. He held it in place as the resin set, securing the spear head firmly to the staff. It wouldn’t snap off or break mid-battle. It would hold, exactly as he needed it to.

With the size gap between me and my prey, I need a pole arm to help even the balance. He tried out a few thrusts, then set it in the ground by his tent, spear point aiming at the sky. If I were a better archer, I could rely on that, but Bow Handling Lvl 1 isn’t going to be enough to take down this beast.

He sat back down, munching on the bitter greens he’d foraged. As he flicked a bug off a broad leaf, the saplings opposite the fire suddenly shifted.

Ike jumped up. He reached for his spear.

Loup paced in, her head low. She licked her chops, clearing the last of the blood off them, then settled down in the clearing to sleep.

“When I hunt, I share my kills, but you just eat it all yourself, huh?” Ike muttered, disappointed.

Loup opened one eye. She yawned, big and wide, then settled in again.

Ike shook his head. “Rude.”