14

Why did I wish for this adventure??

His stomach heaved and he vomited again, though there was nothing but bile left to come up. He groaned, leaning against the soiled bark, silently thankful that the festivities at the other end seemed to be taking a break. Roy groped for Sapphire’s lead again and continued his stumbling trek forward. His intestines were full of thorn bushes, his head felt like it was on fire and he was completely drenched in sweat despite the cool air. Even though his trek was relatively slow, his heart was pounding as hard as if he had been trying to race a Falcon.

The water had to be close. It hadn’t seemed like more than a hundred yards from the air. Vomiting in freefall was not something he had wanted to experience an encore of. Again, he felt thankful it hadn’t been worse. Brambles scratched at his bare thighs as he stumbled forward and he grimaced. Thankful it hadn’t continued to be worse.

Wandering naked through the woods, body rebelling, all his worldly possessions stacked haphazardly on the back of a long-suffering horse was not how he anticipated this story to go. Adventures were supposed to be fun, not… Whatever this was shaping up to be. His stomach churned again, and he limped to the nearest tree, leaning against and waiting to vomit.

Nope. Not vomit.

He managed to get a few paces off of the trail, doubled over in pain against the convulsions in his gut. “Just kill me now,” he moaned. Sapphire just waited unhappily nearby until they could continue.

“Poison… Those berries had to be poison… But why aren’t you sick??” He asked the horse. She snorted, continuing to push forward. Water. He needed water, he had never needed water so badly in his entire life. Roy’s stomach convulsed again and he fell to his knees, arms wrapped around him gut as he moaned against it. Sapphire looked down as if contemplating stepping on him and being done with it. He wished she would. Another heave and there was no moving off of the trail this time. Once the wave was over, he collapsed into his own vomit and tried to catch his breath.

After a few minutes of fantasizing about choking on his own bile and ending this hell once and for all, he carefully crawled back to his hands and knees, then up to his feet, pulling on the horse’s halter for support. Sapphire didn’t seem pleased, but the toss of her head yanked him up fully. He released her harness and pushed forward again, barely watching where he was going, simply pushing through the brushes and hoping that sooner rather than later he would find the river he had seen.

As he stepped over yet another root, the ground dropped steeply under him. He couldn’t correct in time and started to fall forward. Halfway down, his leg gave out completely and he tumbled down the path, through the foliage and over the rocks, landing heavily on his face in what felt like wet gravel. Groaning he pulled his hands under himself to try and get back to his feet, but they slid against the slickness of the stones. It took a moment for the realization to push through the ache in his head.

“Water?” He breathed, his voice raw and raspy. Roy looked up and realized he was on the bank of the small river he had seen. With a desperate cry, he scrambled forward on all fours into the cool stream and immediately dunked his head. Without thinking, he started drinking deeply, momentarily surprised that the water was cool and sweet, not a hint of salt or sea brine. Deeper and deeper he drank, occasionally interrupted by painful surges of vomiting, but he would not be deterred. Sapphire stared at him, then moved further upstream to drink out of range of the absolute mess of a fledgeling adventurer.

The fire in his guts finally starting to cool, he crawled to a slightly more shallow area and collapsed in the water, letting it lap at him. The worst was over, it seemed, and he closed his eyes to recover and relax. When he opened them again, joints stiff from a hard sleep, the sun was high in the sky above him. It must have been hours, but he already felt better. Sapphire was standing in the shade grazing. The supplies were scattered near the bank where she had shaken them off. Though still feeling the effects of the berries, the urgency seemed to have passed and he was well enough to try and get back on track. Taking another long drink, he waded deeper into the river to bathe, his wings quickly becoming heavy and waterlogged but he didn’t care. It felt so good just to rinse himself clean of the sickness and filth.

By the time he finally dragged himself out of the water, his skin was turning red from the sun. Rune was sitting on a large rock near the bank, the small explosion of feathers nearby the only indication that she had caught herself a meal. His stomach turned with the idea of putting anything on it again, but he had to start thinking of how to feed himself again.

Just no more berries. Ever.

He gathered the pile of belongings into a slightly neater pile, picking out his shirt and pants from the mess and wading back into the water to wash the sick out of them. After a long bout of scrubbing and pounding on the rocks, he decided he was satisfied with the results and spread them out on some of the sun-warmed rocks to dry. He wished he had more than one set of clothes with him, but there was something primal and exciting to be one with nature. Though with the burn coming into his skin, he wasn’t disappointed that it would only be briefly ‘one’.

As Roy picked up and adjusted the rest of the gear, properly rolling the bedroll up with the warbag in the middle, folding the saddle’s girdle strap, he wondered if this was how Matharell had gotten his start. He hadn’t learned all the legends of the Hero-God, but the man had to have started somewhere. Maybe he hadn’t been thrust into the woods quite so unceremoniously. Maybe he had had proper training on how to saddle and ride a horse. Or how to make fire. Or how to hunt. He paused, fingers tangled in the fine wire that was in the bag. It reminded him of some of the snare wires he’d used with Maven. Slowly he started to grin.

Maybe he did know how to hunt after all.

While his clothes dried, he crouched in the rocks and worked on his traps. He grinned to himself as he scaled down the same snares and nooses that he had practiced on Jacob a year ago. He snickered as he tested a loop, revelling in the snap and spring, remembering the Skyguard’s yell as he found himself dangling by an ankle. He’d tried another time to snare him by a wing, but had misjudged the placement and caught the corner of a passing merchant cart instead. The cascade of wares tumbling gracefully into the sea was beautiful in its own right, but the guilt had put an end to the game.

It wasn’t a game now though. He’d seen the signs of small animals during his staggering trek out of the woods. The clatter of squirrels jumping from branch to branch, a skitter of leaves as a creature ducked into its hole. Broken shells from some sort of tree-seeds, paw prints that he didn’t recognize. All he had to do was catch one or two of these little scurrying things and viola. Supper.

He glanced over at Rune, who was in the middle of cleaning her face, wondering how hard it would be to teach her to bring him one of her kills. She felt his eyes on her and looked up, narrowing her green eyes as she licked her paw. Very. Very hard. Ah well.

After a few hours and a lot of tinkering, he had a handful of working snares. His clothes were dry enough for his liking, and he quickly dressed, feeling the soothing coolness against the heat of his skin. Leaving most of his gear and his dagger belt back with the main pile of a campsite, he set off into the woods back the same way he had originally come. Down the game trail, it was easy to find small areas that rabbits or squirrels likely came through. Roy set his fixed wire snares at the mouths and moved on, in some areas picking nearby berries to set on the other side as bait. He wiped his hands compulsively against his shirt for the next ten minutes after handling them.

Following the trail back down to the river, he paused occasionally to look over his shoulder. He knew that the traps wouldn’t work immediately, but a boy could hope. Besides, he had a rather uneasy feeling being out here on his own. There was a sense of being watched. Roy shrugged it off as nerves. But the feeling didn’t pass when he was back on the riverbank. Sapphire was acting restless, snorting and stamping her hooves every now and then. Roy moved over to the pile of supplies and took out the bedroll, setting it up near the riverbank.

“I know, girl, I know. The woods are spooky.” The sun was starting to set, and he started collecting stone and wood for the fire. This time he ringed it with large stones and stacked the wood inside the circle. He thought of building a spit, like he’d read about in all the adventure stories, but he had no idea where to start with one. Instead, he rolled a large chunk of bleached wood closer to the fire and leaned back against it while he sharpened a couple of sticks into points. In the creeping twilight, looking up at the stars that started to twinkle into view, the fire crackling and flickering before him, there was a real sense of peace. He could hear the nocturnal animals starting to move around and slowly got to his feet. Time to check the snares.

It was too dark to see, so he grabbed a stick he had planned to turn into a roasting spike. One end had been shattered off by something and formed a gnarled, spikey mess at one end. The boy started shoving bits of leaves and bark in between the edges, creating a big mess of tinder at one end. It wasn’t pretty, but when he stuck it in the fire and let it catch, the top lit up brightly, throwing off light all around him. He grinned proudly and slipped his daggers back in their sheathes, leaving them and the belt with the rest of his bedroll.

He moved carefully along the trail, trying to be careful not to catch any of the foliage on fire as he moved. The first of his traps was empty, then the second and the third. He was starting to get discouraged the further along his trail he moved. “So this is what adventuring really is. Just one kick in the crotch after another. ‘Nature provides’ my ass,” he scoffed. But as Roy came across his final trap, he heard the sound of scrambling among the fallen leaves. It was a frantic, unpredictable sound. He’d caught something.

Rushing forward, saw that his snare had caught a rather sizeable rat around the belly. But to his surprise, it was still alive. And it was pissed. Upon seeing him, it let out a furious squeak followed by a growl, a sound he didn’t realize could be so intimidating for something that size. It bared its teeth at him furiously between thrashes that only seemed to tangle it up worse. Roy frowned, not sure what to do. He drove the end of the torch into the ground and carefully crept forward. The rat shrieked and thrashed, even lunging at Roy in an attempt to bite him. The Aven stumbled back a step, not wanting to get in range of its rage. He looked back up the trail, considering going back for his daggers, but even with them, he’d have to get closer than he was comfortable to this ball of fury and teeth. Every now and then it made a horrific noise that bordered on a snarl.

Shit. Now what? He had to find a way to kill this animal that clearly had more will to live than he did. Even if he wanted to get close enough to release it from the snare, the rat wasn’t going to give him the chance. He thought about just leaving it there and coming back after it had worn itself out, but what was keeping a more opportunistic predator from coming to snatch up a free meal?

None of this sat well with him, his stomach turned with guilt. As he tried to move closer, wondering if he could just untie where it was attached to the sapling, the rat squealed and lunged again, driving him back. Caught around the gut, it stared at him with black eyes bulging from their sockets, panting in panic. From deep in its belly came a rumbling, surging snarl, making the little beast seem much larger than it actually was. He had to finish what he started, no matter how distasteful. This was no different from how his ancestors hunted. But he couldn’t shake the realization that he was ending a life just to extend his. The rat had committed no crime other than being smaller than him and falling for a poorly executed trap.

Roy looked around for the tools he had available. There were sharpened sticks back at camp, but they seemed too big for such a small animal, and while they had more reach, they didn’t have the precision to ensure he could kill it quickly. Even with his daggers, he’d have to get too close and the little creature had a way of becoming a blur every few seconds. He had to figure out something else.

The Aven wandered up and down the path for a few minutes, looking here and there, before his eyes settled on a large, flat stone. Grimly, he picked it up and tested its weight. It was heavy. It was solid. It would work. He turned with a stoic determination and walked back to where the animal was caught. The rat panted as he approached, then started its lunging and snarling all over again. Lifting the rock up over his head, he closed his eyes. “Kataya have mercy,” he murmured and brought the stone down as hard as he could. There was a strangled squeak that cut short with the thud of the stone.

The forest was quiet with an eerie suddenness. His own footsteps as he backed away were deafening in his ears. The crackle and rush of air from the torch seemed to echo as he stared at the stone. The end of the rat’s tail, the only part of the creature visible from under the slab, twitched and spasmed and then too fell quiet. Roy didn’t know what to do. It felt wrong to take it now, but it felt wrong to leave it. He couldn’t bring himself to lift the stone to inspect the state of the carcass. He couldn’t bring himself to just leave it for a scavenger. Between his lack of stomach for killing and the deadly berries, he started to seriously wonder how long he could really go without eating at all.

He needed to clear his head and steel himself against the anticipated gore. Roy started to walk further up the trail, planning to pace for a few yards and come back, letting himself calm down. He hadn’t planned to move too far out of the ring of light set off by the torch, but as he walked, a heavy branch was set at an angle across the path. Odd, he didn’t remember that being there this morning. Then again, the entire morning was a blur of shit and vomit, not exactly precious memories. Roy moved around the branch, coming slightly off of the trail as he did. Something didn’t seem right, something nagged at him not to go any further, but he ignored it and pushed through to a smaller path.

As he kicked through a small pile of leaves, there was a sickening flip and suddenly he was flying, crashing through small branches, twigs slapping his face. He bounced for a moment, then realized he was hanging by an ankle, wings splayed at odd angles. Roy tried to bend at the waist and untie whatever had caught him, but the knot was too tight. He hung back down again, grunting in frustration. Already he could feel the blood rushing towards his head. He sat up again, this time pawing for the rope that held him, but it was too thin to get a good grip on. He was uncomfortably reminded of how ridiculous Jacob had looked dangling there. How futile his struggling flails had been.

Roy flapped his wings, trying to right himself, but he only succeeded in putting a slight spin in the way he was dangling. He had to stay calm, he had to think rationally and figure out how to get out of this. Maybe if he could just wriggle his boot off…

His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of approaching footsteps. First one set, then another. And another.

Then suddenly, the forest was not so quiet anymore.