"If we're going to make a living for ourselves, we should organize jobs so we can cover all grounds. What do we collectively need as a group?" Domin asked us all, forming a little circle where all of our heads poked in.

"Food, water, and shelter. We have clothing covered, so that'll be okay, right?" Dani responded to Domin. Domin nodded and turned to all of us.

"There's five of us right now and three things to do. Water would be the easiest thing to collect alone, so somebody can get that, while groups of two make a shelter and hunt for food. Sky, what do you think we should do?" Domin turned to me.

It felt nice being depended on by the group. I'm not sure if the statue and what I learned in there were messing with my head, but I felt useless compared to the people in front of me. Domin including me was enough to push away that feeling, so I chipped in to finally feel useful.

"Carl and Red seem strong and motivated, Dani seems creative, and you seem smart. If we split that apart, I think we can leave the water to Dani and the shelter to Carl and Red. That leaves us for food. We can use your smarts to figure out how to hunt or which berries we can or cannot eat. Sound good?" I asked. Dani nodded excitedly and Domin agreed to my terms as well.

"We'll make a room for everybody! Good luck out there!" Red said to us. The axe was handed off to Carl and Red walked in the opposite direction with him. Dani followed us to the beach and then went over to the water to figure out how to collect some of it for drinking. That's when Domin turned to me and his original mood changed.

"Now that they're gone, I would like to talk to you about some things," Domin told me. I reluctantly nodded, waiting for his questions.

"What made you think I was smart? And what the hell did you find in that statue that made you that upset?" Domin said, walking along the shoreline with me. We scanned the inside of the forest to see if any animals were lurking, or berries stuck out to be obvious. Most of the other people on the beach have scrounged up everything, so it was hard to see anything in the open.

"Call it a gut feeling... and I don't think you'd want to know what I found in that statue. It was... scary," I told him. Domin didn't care, as he continued to push for answers while we came upon the first curve on the beach. The curve led around some trees and several rocks big enough to act as a blockade if need be.

"I wouldn't have asked if I didn't want to know. Could it have helped our survival in any way? What made it scary?" Domin pestered me. He seemed genuine enough to not leak anything out to the others. Not that it would matter, but I would rather bear this burden silently.

"There are others... like me," I said, pointing to my Stone. "Others who think of me and our friends... everybody on the beach, as invaders. People who are here to mess up the general flow of the Isle... people who need to die." Domin shot back in surprise.

"That's... pretty important, why would you tell anybody about this?!" Domin asked in a raised tone of voice. I tried to dismiss the harsh attitude he had. I couldn't think straight if he used that against me.

"Because now you won't be able to stop thinking about it. With the way we're heading, there will be a group on the beach, right?" I asked Domin. He nodded.

"People will always gather no matter what, but are you sure you want Ullr at the head of things?" Domin asked me. I shook my head.

"No, but if we're together in one big group when we're hunted, would it matter who led so long as we had one common goal?" I responded to Domin.

We came up further on the beach, looking at the berry bushes become plentiful again. This must've been the point where the people on the beach stopped collecting. Once Domin and I heard the noise from the forest, we both understood why.

"What's making that noise?! That's loud! Hide behind that rock!" Domin shouted out to me. I ran with him to get behind the large rocks on the shoreline and we both peeked over in a synchronized motion.

"That didn't move as calmly as a herbivore... or moved like a running one." I could seem Domin scan the forest by the noise instead of the shoreline like I was. To always think ahead like that, I envied the way his brain worked. I mimicked his movement now, watching into the forest for any clues.

"Oh, look, a fox," Domin said, pointing ahead to the fox galloping around on the beach, sniffing around for the strange scents in front of him. It looked like he had identified our scents. I continued to watch in the forest for a clue on what was making the loud noise.

"There! It's a deer?" Domin pointed out the deer running from the forest as it bumped into various things, slowly approaching the shoreline to where the fox was sniffing around.

Once the deer spotted the fox, the head tilted up and foam spilled out of its mouth. Rabies? It was some sort of disease. Deer didn't eat foxes, but the bloodlust in its blank eyes was undeniable. That deer had a goal in mind, and that goal was starting to run at us.

"What is that fox doing?! Is he trying to get us killed?!" Domin hid deeper into the mess of rocks he stood behind, but I was frozen in place, watching the fox jump right over the rock I had hidden behind.

Deep down I knew that standing here would get me killed by that deer if it dared to have a taste for flesh. I didn't want to take the chance. Regardless of if it had sharp teeth ready to hack away at me, the rabies bite would kill me before the hunters could get me.

As soon as the legs of the little fox passed the tip of the rock, the hooves of the deer followed right behind. I pushed my body up against the rock to avoid being hit by the jumping animals. Before I knew it, the fox was bitten by the deer. It yelped in pain as drool seeped out of the deer's mouth after the small bite. The fox limped off into the forest, it must've caught his leg by a narrow margin, but once it turned around, I locked eyes with the rabid animal.

It growled or made some sort of noise that gargled the foam and saliva in its mouth. That's when the deer finally committed to hunting me. It closed the distance between us in what looked to be only a few galloping steps. He was uncoordinated, even losing his balance while running at me. I took advantage of the fact and dodged to the left as fast as possible, pushing my entire body into the deer's legs and tripping it as it bumped into the rock.

"Sky! Take these!" Domin said, throwing two fist-sized rocks over at me and I caught one of them, letting the other fall to the ground. I picked it up with my left hand and ran to throw them at the deer, but even I knew how stupid that plan was.

I was a fairly skinny man. I didn't have any strength behind my muscles, so I needed to use these rocks as if they were my fists to kill the deer, or at least knock it out... No, I couldn't let it live, not with Dani, Carl, or Red sitting in the forest so close. I had to put it out of its misery here and now.

With the deer running at me and his mouth wide open, I needed to think quickly. The deer got up fast after stumbling over and I had no time to think afterward. I swallowed all uncertainty left in my head and opened my eyes widely to watch all things around me.

Domin stood behind the deer in fear and prepared to run away. He scaled the opposite end to run into the forest where the deer came from. The deer wasn't looking to attack with its legs, so I didn't have to worry about them. I had to stop his bite with something, and I happen to have two pretty hard objects in my hands to contribute to that.

Just as his mouth opened its widest; right as he was about to bite into my shoulder, I shoved the rock as far back as it could go into his mouth, pulling my hand from the foam and saliva leaking out of his mouth. I took the other rock and slammed it into the deer's teeth, but I only made them, sharper as they shattered inside of its mouth.

I pulled the rock back and slammed it into his forehead as he attempted to spit out the rock from his mouth. I had lodged it in there as far as it could go, so he almost appeared to be throwing up while trying to get it out. Repeatedly, I slammed the rock on his forehead until he took another stumble, falling on top of me.

I slammed the rock into his throat as the heavy animal fell onto my chest. He was past biting me as the rock was lodged even further into his mouth. I saw blood seeping out of the corner of the deer's mouth, falling to the ground with saliva and more foam. I managed to slip past his legs and get up above him. He was gargling the liquid I saw falling to the floor, choking to death. I'm sure the rock contributed to that.

I slammed the rock onto his head more and more, tilting my head away from the splatters of blood that emitted off of the cracked skull poking through his skin.

Authority: 2

"Sky are you okay?!" Domin shouted at me. I wiped off the blood from my shirt and nodded, checking my face to see if anything was left on it. Once I peered into my reflection from the water, I could tell nothing changed. My hair was the same brown and my eyes were the same blue, at the very least.

"Let's get back home." Domin declared, but I shook my head. We needed food, and I wasn't going to let that fox escape. We needed to kill it before it hunted another animal and infected him with rabies.

"No. We need food to bring back home. We'll at least collect the berries in the bushes, but we need to also kill that fox." I explained.

Domin agreed and discussed making traps for the fox. Foxes would eat small animals or berries, and we happen to have one of those things. Domin and I collected plant twine from nearby to fashion into a string as thick as we could make it.

"You know, that was pretty amazing, you seem to be the fighter out of all of us," Domin told me. I appreciated the flattery, but I only got lucky. I also seemed to have increased my authority from my system to level 2, whatever that meant.

"Thanks, but I couldn't have done it without your help. Okay, so explain the trap to me," I asked Domin. Apparently, with the way it worked, we would lead the fox into a small pathway to narrow its escape paths once it traveled through the thick string at the end. It would trap the fox in place and we could strike from there, putting it out of its misery.

"As long as we cut out the bite wound, so around the fox's leg, then we can eat the rest of it. We have ourselves dinner." Domin said, giving me hope. We sat around and waited for a while, watching the wind blow against the thick leaves of the trees. It seemed that this general forest was darkened by the thick leaves that prevented sunlight from entering.

About an hour passed before the fox came sniffing around at our berry trap. Before we knew it, the helpless creature ran through the conducted path and was stuck against the rope, struggling to escape. Domin and I ran over and he held it down with its neck against the palm of his hand.

"Just kill it now. Remember, you're doing him a favor. I'm sorry little guy," Domin whispered to the fox. I hesitated for longer than I liked to admit. In a way, I saw myself within this fox. I hated to bring it up again to Domin, but I wanted him to know why I was stopping.

"He's helpless, isn't he? It's wrong to kill something so helpless... just like us. That's what I see in the fox. Sorry, that probably sounds pretty weak, doesn't it?" I said out loud. Domin shook his head, looking up towards me.

"If we were diseased like this fox was, with the danger of our brains melting and becoming rabies-infested Arkians, then I would want our hunters to put us out of our misery as well," Domin said. I paused, looking at him with confusion.

"Arkians? Where did you hear that term?" I asked him.

"Huh? You don't know what we are? That's our species, a sub-species of human." He explained.

"It's weird that you know that... so we need to kill him, don't we?" I said, tightly gripping the rock in my hand.

"Just drop it on his head... end it as fast as possible for him so it doesn't hurt," Domin told me. No matter how much he said in defense of killing him, I couldn't help but see us within this animal. I set the rock down to the ground.

"Tie him to a tree. I will come back with the axe and amputate his leg. That will save him, and we don't have to kill him." I said to Domin.

"What's the difference? The wild would kill a disabled animal in a much more gruesome way than we would. Just give me the damn rock." Domin said with an irritated tone. I handed it off of the ground to his hand and he slammed it into the fox's head, killing it instantly.

He got up off of the fox and picked it up by his front legs, looking at the bitten leg on his back-left side. "Such a shame the deer bit him. Sorry, little guy." Domin walked ahead as I followed slowly behind, thinking about that fox more and more. No matter how much I tried to ignore it, I only saw myself in him.

Domin and I made it back to the forest after an awkward, silent conversation. He tried to speak to me, but I couldn't find the words in response.

"Fight! Fight! Fight!" A crowd chanted off by the beach. In the forest stood a small shelter made of logs and leaves, the axe sitting inside of it. I picked up the axe and ran out to the beach to see who was causing all the noise.