Chapter Sixty: The Venom Coursing Through My Veins (Patreon)

The next morning is a bit of a repeat of yesterday. Food, stoke the fire, and then prepare for the day. This time, I’m intending on going out into the forest rather than digging a pit, so my preparations are a little different.

The main task I need to do in preparation is check my Inventory to minimise the amount of stuff I’m carrying with me, while also making sure that I have enough supplies for any eventuality. It’s complicated by the fact that I have a number of corpses stored in stasis which I don’t have time to deal with now, and don’t want to just abandon. The corpse of that snake-thing might be useful, for example, as a source of poison for arrows. I’ll need to test to make sure it doesn’t just denature after a short time exposed to the air, but again, I don’t have time to do that now.

In the end, about five of my twenty slots are filled with corpses – I’ve managed to open up one of those slots by pulling the lizog corpses out for Bastet and the cubs. A number of other slots are used up with my cooked meat, raw meat, some emergency clothes, the bark-fibre rope that I salvaged from my trap, rocks, branches, and a few other things I figure I should keep with me. My backpack by this point has joined my suitcases in staying permanently in the cave. It leaves a handful of slots free for any new corpses or interesting things I find, which should hopefully be enough.

I consider once more taking Spike with me but I don’t think I’ll find much use for his digging skills, and I don’t want to put him in more danger than necessary. Sure, it should be a peaceful walk through the forest, but when has that ever worked out?

Casting a final glance around the room at the playful cubs and their guardian raptorcat, I mentally check through my to-do list. I can’t help but feel like I’ve forgotten something, but I often get that feeling even when I haven’t forgotten anything. I think it’s the result of being employed to do a job that always has more jobs to do than there are hours in the day to do them: I’ve built up an expectation of myself which is not necessarily applicable now.

Even though there’s always something to do here – and always something I need to complete beforeI can even start what I need to actually do – life still feels a lot more measured than my job used to. Perhaps it’s because I don’t have a boss with unreasonable expectations which I have to do my best to meet, then justify not meeting without actually outright calling her unreasonable…

In the end, I decide I’d better leave before I can second-guess myself further. I’ve been out into the forest hundreds of times by now and I’m still alive. Well, not hundreds of times. And I have come close to death a few times, but just like in horse races, close means it didn’t happen. So yeah. Feeling a little more confident from the impromptu pep talk, I stride towards the entrance to the cave.

“I’ll be back by this evening,” I promise Bastet on my way out the ‘door’. She sends a wave of wariness at me. I’m partly warmed by the message, partly insulted. Warmed because she’s essentially telling me to ‘be careful’. Insulted because she’s only doing that because she doesn’t think I can take care of myself. And that’s not just me jumping to conclusions – the feeling was accompanied by the image of a wide-eyed raptorcat cub venturing into the forest...and getting snapped up by the first predator it comes across.

In the end, I just raise my hand in a gesture of farewell which she probably doesn’t understand at all, and then march out the cave. Encountering Kalanthia lying in the sun in the clearing, I give her a quick summary of my plans.

Your Bound and her cubs will be staying here, I presume, she states.

“Yeah, I don’t want to risk the cubs,” I confirm. “Is that OK?” I suddenly check, not having thought of the fact before that it might not be fine to leave my Bound predator alone with my apex-predator landlord. Or landlady. Whatever.

As long as they do not bother us, it makes no difference to me whether you are here with them or not, she tells me, stretching languorously. Right, that gives me a new worry: that I might come back only to find the raptorcats in pieces because one of the cubs has tried to chase Kalanthia’s tail or something.

“Just remember, they’re cubs, OK?” I ask tentatively, trying to avert that possibility. Kalanthia fixes me with a chiding eye.

Do you think I do not know that, Markus Wolfe? I’m hardly going to hold the curiosity of a cub against them. I hold my hands up in surrender.

“Just saying,” I reply defensively. “And now I’ll go.” Marching off smartly towards the river as my first stop, I feel a blush rise in my cheeks. Told off by a giant leopard – what next?

Heading into the forest, I venture in a different direction from one I’ve gone in before, hoping that this way the pickings will be a bit better. My Stealth Skills get a work-out as I try to walk carefully and unnoticeably: no reason to invite conflict unnecessarily. The first section is one which I’ve already partly cleared, so it’s only when I’ve been walking for about an hour that I start seeing an area which is completely new to me.

I’ve been heading either along the same level or up the slope a little, so it’s not surprising that eventually I clear the tree line and see the mountain looming above me. I pause there for a moment, marvelling at its magnificence – you never really understand how big mountains are until you’re standing at the foot of one. Then, shaking my head, I turn so I’m heading further into the forest again: it’s all very well trying not to go deeper into the valley to avoid meeting strong predators; it’s another heading out of the forest when I want to collect wood.

One good thing comes out of me almost leaving the forest, though: I see a tree which was obviously struck by lightning. Why is this good? Because I see an opportunity to save myself work. The tree didn’t crack down its length; instead, it looks like it exploded near the base. Or something like that, anyway. I’m not a tree expert, and even the memories I’ve absorbed from the stones aren’t helping me much with this.

The point is, all that’s left of the tree is a jagged stump with a hole in the middle. The stump has been further degraded by weather and rot as it’s clear this isn’t very recent. It takes a bit of work, but the roots are thoroughly dead and aren’t too difficult to break away. Within an hour, I’m left with a large stump which I just about succeed in getting in my Inventory.

Thank goodness for my increased Strength: I’m pretty sure that I wouldn’t have been able to lift that at the mere six I started with. Now, why do I want some old tree stump? Because it looks ideal for making the container I’ll need to filter the wood ashes for making lye for soap. It’ll need a bit of work, but there’s still plenty of solid wood there which hasn’t been eaten by rot yet.

If I can get rid of the rot, then shape the remaining wood into a container shape with a slope at the bottom down to a hole in the centre, I can then half-fill it with some fine pebbles I’ve spotted by the river, then put in bigger pebbles on top, and rocks in above that. All that together should create a good filter for ash, and maybe other things if necessary. Much easier than trying to construct a water-tight container myself. Or chop down a healthy tree and cut a slab to size.

Heading back into the forest proper, I continue collecting branches of various sizes, letting my Inventory sort them into three different slots according to its own specifications. Given that each branch is different, I suppose I’d better be glad that it doesn’t consider each individual piece of wood to need a separate slot…

I never really stop for lunch, instead just chewing cooked meat as I continue scanning the surroundings, always keeping an eye out for movement beyond leaves in the wind. This particular area is a bit of a wind-fall – a whole copse of dead and dying trees with all the detritus of their fallen branches below. I find myself wondering why all the trees in this area are so sick but then push the thought away with a shrug: again, I’m not a tree expert. Maybe they don’t have enough water, or there’s some sort of disease they’ve all caught. Trees catch diseases too, don’t they?

Walking into the centre of copse, my foot suddenly goes into the ground up to my knee. I frown. It’s not like when this happened before where there was a narrow hole in the ground: this is more like a bed of leaves. And the ground beneath my foot is sloped, like it gets deeper.

My danger sense suddenly yells at me. What if this is a tra-

A monster bursts from the leaf cover right in front of me. It’s too close to avoid, and I’ve been bitten before I can even react. I don’t think, I just move. Grabbing my knife, I stab it into the face of the creature that’s got me with its mandibles. It’s some sort of over-sized bug, but I’m not willing to risk dying because I’ve tried to categorise it while in the middle of a fight.

The bug hisses at me and opens its mandibles to back up defensively. It pulls two of its hairy legs in front of its face to protect its numerous eyes. I take the opportunity to grab my mace from where it’s hanging loosely across my back. We stare at each other for a moment, and I wonder whether the creature might actually back up. It’s almost my size, but it’s clearly an ambush predator and its ambush has failed.

Then I feel a creeping weakness and I see my health bar starting to decrease slowly but visibly. Poison!

I can’t risk dragging this out. I have to either finish the fight quickly or run now while I still can. My ego bristles against running from a fight, but I’m more than just my ego, and I’d rather live to run another day than die in a pointless last stand against a too-powerful foe.

The creature decides for me. It lunges at me, its movement lightning quick as its multiple legs propel it forwards. I’m faster than I’ve ever been, but I doubt I could beat that. And if I turn to run, I’ll be presenting my vulnerable back to the creature. Better to face it with mace and knife.

Meeting its lunge with a smash of my mace, I briefly stop it in its tracks. It’s enough time for me to cast a quick Lay-on-hands to counteract the venom coursing through my veins with every beat of my heart. Enough time, but only just. I dodge the swipe of one of its legs and swing my mace again. Unfortunately, this time the creature blocks it with another of its innumerable legs and its counterswipe slams into me and knocks me off my feet.

Lunging for me again, its mandibles bite my leg sending another wave of venom into me. My health bar starts dropping more quickly and I curse even as I cast another Lay-on-hands, the healing energy fighting against the damage the venom is causing me.

Unable to regain my feet due to the mandibles pinning me in place, I can’t help the thought that maybe I should have run away after all.