Chapter Thirty-Five: From an Unexpected Source (Patreon)

As the poison takes over, I feel my limbs weakening and my stones strike with less and less force. Finally, I lose the ability to keep myself balanced and fall over. By this point, I’ve given up on trying to kill the creature and have turned to stagger off towards home, my only hope that Kalanthia might be able to help me in some way. Unfortunately, by this stage, I only manage to make it a few paces before going to my knees and then falling flat. With my last strength, I turn my head to one side so I can at least breathe. Much good that will do me, though.

After a while, I realise that although the poison has been able to run unopposed through my body, it’s not actually killing me. I can still see, though my vision is blurrier than normal. My heart pumps, albeit more weakly, and I can still draw in breaths, though it’s a much more laborious task than usual. In short, it seems to be designed at weakening muscles, but only to disable, not to kill. In fact, fallen here on the floor with nothing else to but hope the poison wears off quickly, I notice that my stamina bar is completely empty and strobing. A poison that attacks stamina?

Of course, that only leaves one more conclusion: that once the prey has been rendered helpless, the predator then comes to feed. When I see a black blur shift in my peripheral vision, my neck muscles too weak to move my head, I resign myself to finding out exactly what it means to be eaten alive.

My salvation comes from an unexpected source. The creature has shifted around to my head at this point, not starting with my feet as I thought it might. I’m not sure how to feel about this, though relief is rather the prevailing emotion: I don’t want to die, but if I have to, I’d rather it be over quickly. Going feet first while I can still feel every bit of sensation seems to be particularly tortuous. Even more tortuous, however, is how slow the creature is moving. Its sloth-like pace allows me to feel fruitless hope that I might recover from the poison in order to make a last-minute breakaway, only to be disappointed at every moment.

This means that when a body comes and imposes itself between me and my attacker, I can actually see it, the blurriness of my vision having mostly cleared up. Seeing is believing, they say, but I can barely believe what I’m seeing here. Spike.

The porcupig is standing between me and my attacker, hissing menacingly, his quills stuck up threateningly. The black creature hesitates, but then starts moving forwards again, seemingly planning on pushing past my guard. Spike isn’t having any of that: he whirls around like lightning so that his quills are pointing directly at the dark creature. There’s a moment when he seems to focus – frankly, he looks like he’s got constipation. Then, my attacker gets a faceful of quills as they are propelled away from my follower’s backside.

It makes a noise for the first time, a kind of confused chirring sound and it backs up a bit, pawing at its face. Spike turns around again and once more hisses threateningly at the animal. My attacker pauses, quills still stuck in its face, clearly deciding whether I was worth fighting with a porcupig over. Eventually, it seems to decide in the negative, and turns to lumber slowly away. Not surprising in the end, as it seems to be a one-trick wonder: from what I can see, it has no real combat ability, and doesn’t even have speed on its side.

The reason for it aiming for my head is also cleared up as soon after, I start regaining control over my muscles. It seems that the paralytic, or whatever it uses, is pretty short-lived, so it has a limited time frame to make sure that its prey is out of the game. The nagging feeling resumes and I have a feeling I’ve gained a stat point out of this experience.

That knowledge pales in comparison to the tumultuous feelings I have when I look at Spike.

“You saved me,” I say quietly. He, of course, doesn’t reply. I don’t know how I know it, but I do, that me dying would actually break the Bond between us and set him free. Knowing that, the question is: does he? Probably, at least to whatever capacity he has in understanding such things. If I know it instinctively, I can only guess that he would too – it just seems fair. Yet he saved me. “Well, for whatever reason, thank you,” I say, trying to make sure my gratitude goes through whatever link we have.

There’s a moment where I feel like we are connected, beyond the link created by Dominate, that is. Then it’s broken as he turns away and resumes foraging.

I stand up, brush myself down, and cast a quick Lay-on-hands to deal with any lingering damage. Casting a last glance at my foraging follower, I then turn and resume walking back to the cave, this time paying a lot more attention to my surroundings.

Could there be some sort of protective element to the Bond? Or was it what I said to him earlier today and giving him a name? Or are porcupigs just naturally protective? Either way, I’m glad I didn’t attack that porcupig family a few days ago – the quills are bad enough, but if they can actually use them as a ranged attack as well… Still, at least that puts my mind a little at rest in terms of his safety while foraging for food – although I know that there are plenty of predators which could take him down either through force of numbers or sheer size, the fact that he has some natural defences as well as an offensive attack improves his chances of survival.

It doesn’t take me long to get back to the foot of the hill – we didn’t wander far as the main purpose of our walk was to let Spike forage for food, not to cover ground. Fortunately, I succeed in making it back without being attacked again. That’s two strikes, I think darkly as I remember the ambushing creature. One missed, one hit; the next one will end up with me as the victor, I decide. But to do that, I need a ranged weapon.

Well, after I’ve sorted my fire situation, maybe my next task should be to create a bow and arrows. Speaking of, time to get to work.

Although walking through the forest with Spike had been relaxing, I’d also taken the time to note down a number of resources. One of which was something I’d been keeping an eye out for: flint. Heading back to the river, I walk along it until I find the spot again. Easy enough now I know what I’m looking for. Inspecting the cache, I find a smile spreading across my face.

The nodules to the side of the river look exactly like what my absorbed memories tell me they should – a white waxy sort of stone on the outside, with darker patches showing here and there. One nodule that’s actually been broken open by something is instantly recognisable; it would have been even without the wilderness survival knowledge I was given.

Glancing around to make sure I’m not suddenly about to be jumped, I crouch down and start filling a couple of the slots in my inventory with good sized flint nodules. I would have preferred to only use one slot, but apparently that means they have to be within a certain size range, otherwise it automatically goes into another. Since I don’t need any small stones, I go for medium and large sizes.

After I’m satisfied with the number of nodules I’ve collected, I note the area down on my map for future reference. Then, I keep heading along the river, but don’t break away from it to walk up the hill to the cave. My next task is going to require a fair bit of water, so better to do it near the river. On my way back, I spotted a bush with leaves the size of my head, so took a moment to grab a few. These come in helpful now as I spread them out to make a workspace.

Kneeling down, I take some clay out of my Inventory. As I’d noted before, it’s full of stones so I start rubbing it between my fingers, working out the ones that are likely to interfere with my work. I’m not making a pot at this moment, so the clay doesn’t need to be as fine as for that, but stones which are too large are likely to still cause problematic faults over time.

As I do that, I add water until the clay reaches the right kind of texture. Then, as I finish a handful’s worth, I press it into a ball and return it to my Inventory. By the time I feel I’ve processed enough clay to reach my objectives, Spike has finished munching for now and has returned to me. For a time, he just sat watching me, but eventually he curled up nearby and went to sleep. It’s...cute. I admit it. Not nearly as cute as Lathani, but then few things could be.

As I finish up, I wake him gently by saying his name. He opens his eyes and blinks at me.

“Let’s go, Spike,” I tell him. “Have a drink if you need to.” He doesn’t, so I guess he’s all sorted. We head up the slope. I pause at the entrance, looking down at my knee-high Bound. “Do what you like as long as it doesn’t cause damage or disrupt Kalanthia or Lathani.” For a moment I feel a sense of doubt that such an open-ended command would be understandable enough for an animal like Spike. Whether it’s understood or not, he just curls up in the sun and to all intents and purposes goes back to sleep.

I go into the cave which is currently empty – Kalanthia and Lathani must be playing somewhere else. Entering my alcove, I look at the wall thoughtfully. I want to make something that’s going to be multi-functional, but I’m rather hampered by the lack of metal. Still, I should be able to make something decent.

In addition to the clay I’ve been preparing, I also took a bit of time yesterday while collecting the river clay to also collect flattish stones. Fortunately, I guess that there’s shale or something in the mountain as there were many flat stones with evidence of layers when looked at sideways. I carefully pull a whole load of these stones out of my Inventory and pile them close at hand.

Starting with some clay, I create a ‘sausage’ about a centimetre in diameter and arrange it so it’s in a semi-circle with a radius of about fifty centimetres. Taking the stones one at a time, I arrange them on top of the sausage so they’re end to end with only a small gap between them, and press down. Creating another sausage, I repeat the process, though try to offset the stones so that each layer isn’t stacked directly above the previous. It’s actually quite a fun puzzle, finding the right size stones to fit the context – I wasn’t expecting it to be as enjoyable as it is.

I pause when the ‘wall’ is about fifteen centimetres high, looking thoughtfully at what I’d created and thinking about how I’m going to use it. Then, as an idea occurs, I go outside briefly, hunting for a stone of a certain size. It takes me a few minutes to find one that I think will be suitable, but once I’ve got it, I return to my cave. Putting the stone against the front of my ‘wall’, I carefully ease out stones until I’ve made a hole just a little bigger than the stone. Using more clay, I fill in the sides of the hole until it’s a snug fit for the stone, or reasonably so, at least.

This should allow me to control the airflow into my fire better, especially when it’s just getting started. Having a fire choke in the first few minutes because of lack of air is annoying. Plus, it’ll make cleaning easier – I’ll be able to just sweep out the dead coals and ashes onto a leaf or something and then carry them outside. A much easier arrangement than the one where I’d have to crane my wrist awkwardly to try and grab everything.

Returning to the rest of my fireplace, I hesitate as another thought strikes. Cooking. My wok has a single handle which won’t make it easily suspendable so it will have to sit on something… a possible solution comes to mind and I start doing my best to prepare for it, without knowing whether it will actually work. It’s not something that comes from my survival knowledge, but I’m applying my understanding of different areas to try and make something that works. We’ll find out – I’ll put in alternatives in case my idea doesn’t work out.

So, in preparation, the next layer of my fireplace wall uses stones which are significantly wider than the previous ones. I arrange them so they’re flush with the other stones on the outside, protruding in towards the fire instead. They’re a little precarious at the moment, their unbalanced weight pulling them down on one side, but hopefully that will sort itself out as I continue building.