S_Winter

Chapter Thirty-Nine: Bribe

Creating my clay pots definitely takes longer than I’d expected. Just forming the first one takes the rest of the time until dusk. Gauging my tiredness level, I decide to continue by the light of my fire. The downside there is that in order to see what I’m doing, I have to work quite close to the fire, which means my clay dries out more quickly than when I was working further away. That, in turn, means that although I manage to finish the second pot, I’ve run out of water in my canteen....

Chapter Thirty-Eight: Inter-dimensional Amazon

The first thing I check is my experimental cooking arrangements. The chimney is looking pretty good, and seems to be directing the smoke out of my cave rather than into it, which is good. Not so good is the draft that the fire is creating by pulling air in from Kalanthia’s cave – I’ll have to do something about that… Not now, though. Now I check the grid I’ve been baking just above the fire. It seems pretty sturdy, so I use a couple of thick sticks to lift it so it’s sitting on th...

Chapter Thirty-Seven: A Good Addition

When I get absolutely sick of twisting bark fibre and watching clay dry, I decide to move onto a different, equally important project. Walking out of the cave, I find Kalanthia sitting outside.

“Hi, Kalanthia?” She turns her head towards me and cocks it curiously. “Do you mind if I make some changes to the land around here? I want to plant some things.”

Go ahead, Markus Wolfe, she tells me neutrally, not seeming particularly interested in the topic now – perhaps...

Chapter Thirty-Six: Round the Twist

I continue building my fireplace, using the same strategy of moulding a thin sausage of clay, choosing shards of shale, pressing down gently, then rinse and repeat. It takes me a while, but I can’t say I really notice the time passing. I have to break some of the stones into smaller pieces by banging them carefully with one of the flint nodules I picked up, and sometimes they end up a lot smaller than I intended, but even the small stones find a place in this 3D puzzle of mine.

Chapter Thirty-Five: From an Unexpected Source

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 on...

Chapter Thirty-Four: Smack in the Face

Walking out of my cave the next day, I feel a mixture of glee and guilt at the sight of my new Bound still lying at the entrance. It’s awake, looking at me with calm eyes, not seeming to be railing against its loss of freedom the way I would have. Though that could be another function of the Bond, for all I know. I remember my resolution of the evening before and look at it squarely.

“I’m sorry,” I say first, taking myself a little by surprise. It was hard to start, and I hadn�...

Chapter Thirty-Three: Bound

The porcupig – Grenslar, whatever – follows me into my alcove, though the darkness inside combined with its murky colouring makes it almost impossible to see. In fact, it’s only by the odd shine of its quills in the shaft of moonlight entering my cave through the hole in the wall that I can see the creature at all.

I imagine rolling over in the night and smacking into those quills point first with either my hand or my face and shudder a bit. No. But equally, I don’t want to send...

Chapter Thirty-Two: Biological Digger

For a moment, I feel disorientated and blink quickly at the suddenly bright light piercing my eyes. Fortunately, neither effect lasts long and I’m soon fighting-fit again. Though, if that’s the result of a successful Dominate – at least, I’m pretty sure it was successful – what would it have been like if I’d failed?

The porcupig is still. Alive – I can feel it breathing steadily – but all that frantic fight has left it. Has it worked? Only one way to test. I wit...

Chapter Thirty-One: Pressure

I’ve been going without a fire most of the last few days. In fact, I’ve only really lit one to boil water once a day and to cook the hearts of beasts I’ve killed, and that only because I know the Energy in it will be wasted if I wait or put them in my Inventory. Even after finding a safe spot, I haven’t wanted to risk upsetting Kalanthia with smoke filling the cave or Lathani accidentally burning herself either in the fire itself or on the embers left behind.

I’ve been living ...

Chapter Thirty: Fade

“Sorry,” I tell her sheepishly. “I’ll clean up. I was just levelling up.” There’s a huff and the rumble cuts out, but no words. Matching action to words, I do my best to clean up. It’s unpleasant, but after I’ve hauled away as much as the mess as I can, and have buried the rest with earth, the smell clears fairly quickly.

Sitting back down in the fading light, I pull up my status screen and look at my new stats.

2023-07-23 08:18:59 +0000 UTC View Post

Chapter Twenty-Nine: Levelling Up

I’m staring at my status screen. I can’t help it: I’m at 99% progress towards the next level and I’m just waiting for that number to tick over to 100%. My progress has been much quicker than I had expected it to be considering I was only looking after Lathani yesterday. This isn’t because I’ve had a fortunate encounter with Energy-rich, but easy prey. No, it’s due to my lacking calculations. Turned out, when I estimated three days, I forgot to account for the Energy I absorb whi...

Chapter Twenty-Eight: Cat Toy

The next morning, I wake to the sound of a chest-rumbling growl. Ah, my alarm clock. Ten out of ten for waking me up – the adrenaline rush of hearing a large predator growling menacingly gets rid of the grogginess straight away.

Are you ready now, Markus Wolfe? She asks, a note of impatience in her ‘voice’.

“Just give me a moment,” I groan, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes. I changed last night, but only into new clothes, so I don’t need to do anything there. ...

Chapter Twenty-Seven: Predator

By the time I decide to head back to my campsite, I’ve had three successful hunts, and two unsuccessful ones, excluding my encounter with the porcupigs. Despite wanting to try out my Class Skill now that my Willpower’s over ten, I didn’t in the end. Most of the creatures didn’t seem worth it, and the one that did was far too aggressive for me to try. I have to marvel at the wildlife in this new world. At first I thought that everything here was either reptilian or avian, but now I’m...

Chapter Twenty-Six: The Aggressor

It’s an issue I have to face. Unless I restrict myself to only killing seriously wounded, ill, or very old members of the species, I will have to kill healthy members at some point, and all of those healthy members are potential mothers and fathers. Heck, I may end up killing a pregnant female at some stage, quite unknowingly. I do seriously consider only culling those which are likely to die anyway, but dismiss the idea after a while. In the end, I have to recognise that I need to accumula...

Chapter Twenty-five: They’re Real

There’s one good reason for me to level up as quickly as possible. Apparently I get access to a selection of Skills at specific level intervals. My first Skill selection is at level one, hence my desire to reach at least that level. After then, the next Skill selection is at level five, then level ten, level fifteen, level twenty, and then subsequently at intervals of ten up to one hundred. There’s no information about levels after one hundred making me wonder if there is anythin...

Chapter Twenty-Four: Self-care

I sleep. Deeply, and for a long time. I wake up at some point when it’s dark and quiet, my stomach rumbling. Fortunately, the Inventory seems to have a little of its own light – it’s odd because it doesn’t light up the area around me, but I can see the items held inside it fine – so I take out my canteen and a couple of handfuls of meat, giving myself a midnight supper. Or whatever the time is. My hunger and thirst satisfied, I drop back into sleep, not waking until the next morning...

Chapter Twenty-Three: No Doctor, or Optician

I stare at my status screen, feeling shocked at the amount of Energy that was taken. I’d guessed it might be the case when I saw the messages, but hoped that I was wrong. Sure enough, when I look at my status screen, I can see that there’s fifty percent less Energy towards the next level. After having reached more than two-thirds of the way to the next level after the chickens and wolvezard, my Energy has taken a nose-dive down to the bottom again.

2023-07-22 16:16:06 +0000 UTC View Post

Chapter Twenty-Two: Literal Life-saver

Am I to assume by that comment that you wish to stay here?  She questioned calmly. I nod, then, realising she probably can’t read human body language any better than I can read hers, I affirm my agreement verbally. Very well. Simply focus your attention and intentions and follow my lead. I’m not quite sure what she means by ‘focus your attention and intentions’, but I guess I’ll work it out. I, Kalanthia, mate of the Primal Nunda, agree to a pact of mutual...