“Good morning Tandra” His gentle voice soothingly greets her as she awakens from her slumber.

Yawning and rubbing her eyes tiredly, she sits up and lazily looks over towards the strange man, who is sitting cross-legged, wrapping tendons around a bone.

“Morn-” Her eyes blow wide awake in shock “Blaaaaaaargggghh”

“Are you alright?” he looks up from his work in mild worry.

In the midst of violently puking out her insides, she points shakily towards him.

“…Oh, yeah it isn’t the prettiest thing, but I think it works” He grabs the bow and lifts it into the air, allowing the mostly clean yellowish bones to gleam in the morning sun.

“Prett-BLarrrgh…” She stops heaving her guts as no more comes out and drops her head on the grass beside the sick, taking deep air-rich breaths. “…Just what the actual fuck is that…and if you say that it’s-”

“-Your bow, yes it is, the one that you promised you would use”

“No-BLAAAARGH-way” She dry heaves while shaking in terror of the wild thoughts of who and what this man is bombard her mind.

“You did promise me” He chuckles lightly as he twangs the thin muscle string.

She digs her hands into the soft ground, both to hold her queasy self up and also in anger “…I will shove that…that 'thing', so far up your arse that I will use your spine as the bowstring” She successfully looks him in the eye, blotting out the gory looking thing he calls a bow as she threatens him with a thickening Irish accent.

He shakes his head solemnly while grinning madly.

“Spine wouldn’t really work for that, I mean I thought I could use it for the shaft but it’s just too bendy”

She just looks at him confused, as the dots have not quite connected for her yet.

They soon do though as he produces a spine from a small pile of bones behind him and wiggles it.

After another few moments of heaving drily, she looks back up at him eyes flooded with anger but also swimming with horror.

“I...am not…using that ‘thing’”

He places the bow on the grass, stands up and walks off, still grinning like an idiot.

Looking away from the ghastly thing, she starts to gather her things, not wanting to stay anywhere near this completely mad man who seems to have killed a person or two to make this thing.

She had no idea what he did to make the bow, and she did not want to know.

As she was stumbling around trying to find her only remaining weapon; her skinning knife, He bursts out from the trees running like the madman he is.

“YOU BETTER PICK UP THAT BLOODY BOW, OR” He screams himself to a stop in front of her “we’re going to die” He laughs with a slight snort…she can feel nothing but dread.

This dread is quickly multiplied when a bear, looking mightily pissed roars its way into the vicinity, clearly dead set for the man.

Instinctively she goes for the bow on her back, only to feel nothing but air.

Cursing, she dives for the ‘thing’, with no other choice of survival.

He begins to run in a circle, summarily chased by a bear, which swipes skin off his back almost immediately.

She grabs the middle part of the bow, which is two half-circle shaped bones, tied together with tendons. Taking a few seconds, she stops herself from heaving when her hands clasp onto the fibrous tissue.

Ignoring the rising vomiting feeling, she begins by stringing it.

Placing the bottom of the bow, a foot pointed downwards, by the side of her foot, she pulls the middle and bends the top, a whole bone leg with extra tendons tied on, making it bend a lot less than a normal knee joint would.

Sliding the string up to the foot, it slips into a cut on the foot.

Step one…oh shit

“WHERE’S THE ARROWS?” She screams towards him in hopes that he has all of the arrows she shot at him.

“OH RIGHT, I FORGOT” He shouts back as he dodges behind a tree, the bear’s claws slicing down his arm, but not breaking skin.

He appears on the other side of the tree and lobs a pile of bones towards her.

Upon landing, she finds them to be two thin bones tied together, sharpened one end and cut into slightly on the other, a very rudimentary arrow.

Knocking one of the bones onto the string, between two small tied on tendons, she lets the ‘arrow’ rest on her finger.

Positioning herself correctly, she sees the man being batted by the bear and falling into a messy heap a few feet away.

Drawing the bow, both leg parts bend quite uniformly as a bow should.

Taking the string to the corner of her mouth, she lets go almost instantly as the string brushes her lips.

The arrow flies wildly off to the left, snaking uncontrollably.

Calming herself down, she sees the man pinned beneath the bear, pushing its snapping jaws away and slowly losing that fight.

Knocking and drawing another arrow, she aims at the head of the bear.

The arrow flies into the tree trunk behind it, quite high.

Drawing a third arrow, the bear has clamped down on the man’s shoulder, ripping it away savagely along with his right arm.

Letting the arrow loose, this time aiming lower, it flies into the bears flank, embedding deeply into it, the arrow snapping in two.

It roars in both anger and pain, its eyes flashing red as it turns towards her.

Charging towards her, it almost immediately stops as a mad man latches onto its foot, distracting and annoying it back into attacking him.

Her fourth arrow buries itself close to the last, eliciting another roar of pain which quickly dies along with the bear.

The beast drops onto the man; flattening him with a “well s-” before his voice is lost in the mass of fur.

She drops the bow, running over to the bear and pushes it.

After a few pushes she finally rolls it over somewhat, revealing him.

Dragging him out, ignoring the fountain of blood draining out the right side of his body, she frees him from underneath the bear.

“Whoo, lucky you’re a good shot or I might have gone through quite the trip to hell there” He chuckles and grins

*SLAP*

“Don’t you ever pull that shit again, or I will personally make sure you go to hell in the nastiest way I can think of” She jabs a finger into his chest, seething.

“I'd love to see what you can come up with. I'm a hard man to impress ” He chuckles at her confused expression as she truly did not know anything about him.

Standing up, he produces the skinning knife from his inventory and runs it across the stomach of the dead bear, letting its innards spill out into the field.

Used to both the sight and the smell, it wasn’t too discomforting for her. What discomforted her is the fact that he seemed so non-chalant, when his entire right arm from the shoulder is missing and he didn’t show any sign of pain.

“Bear is edible right?” He asks her with a raised eyebrow as he tries to one handedly slice off some flesh

“Yes” She wrestles the knife from him and begins properly cutting pieces of flesh.

“I’ve got to wonder, why are you fine with getting all up in the bear, but not so strong when it comes to my bow?” He asks as she works away, arm deep in bear.

She stops, turns towards him and points a bloody knife his way.

“This, I do all the time. That” She points to the bow “Is something from a nightmare. That’s human body parts, human! Who the hell did you find and kill out here to get those?” The knife stops inches from his face, vibrating in resonance with her.

“Don’t worry” He pushes the knife down with his hand “I only cut of my legs twice for it…and part of my arms”

He chuckles at the aghast face she pulls and bounds over to the bow.

“You see, I used the entire leg, strengthening the knee joint with a few more tendons to make it require a lot more strength to bend it. Then I took my second thigh bone, cutting away at the knee joint part to make a U shape and connecting it to the ball looking part of my whole leg. I did this twice, hence why I had to cut my legs twice.

With a couple of tendons to hold it together, it still bends a bit. For the middle part, I cut down the ball parts of both thigh bones, making them flat on one side. Tying those together, I’ve got myself a whole bow. Which bends on the limbs but not in the middle. Pretty sweet right?”

She hadn’t gotten past the fact that he cut his own legs off twice. Twice…

If she was cutting her legs off, she would definitely be making enough noise for someone to wake up. But she had remained fast asleep when he had cut his legs off. Also, the fact that he made arrows from bones and had a spine too, means he did a lot more to himself than he just mentioned.

“…Just what are you?”

“A man trying to gain immortality” He states confidently and proud as he looks up into the sky.

She doesn’t know whether to laugh or to cry at him. All the reaction she can muster is to blink in wonder.

…

..

.

“Fuck it, I’m out” She turns and begins to walk away into the forest.

“Waaaait a second” He runs past her putting up his hand, with the bow still held, to stop her.

“One, you’re crazy. Two, you’re insane. Three, you’re an absolute wackjob, so please get out my way so I can run as far away from you as possible” She tries to remain calm, but her voice cracks in unnerved fear, fueled by her dreading imagination.

He turns his hand palm up “At least take the bow, as you promised”

“You have got to be shitting me” She walks past briskly.

He quickly appears in view again by her side this time.

“Oh c’mon, I spent the whole night making this for you; I even kept it quiet to let you sleep”

She swerves towards him, still walking furiously, causing him to backpedal “Kept it quiet? You took out your own spine!? How in the name of the seven bloody hells can you ‘keep quiet’ when doing that??? Do you even feel pain?

“I do still feel pain, somewhat…” He rubs the back of his head while looking away.

It was then that she figured out that the amount of pain he would have had to go through to be able to ‘keep quiet’ would’ve been tremendous.

This gave rise to sympathy for him, which overrided every other emotion she was feeling towards him. Though a small niggling thought of how he was still fine hurting himself, rooted itself deeply in the recess of her mind.

She stops walking “What the hell have you been through?” her voice is a mix of sadness and anger.

“A bit of self harm, some sexual torture…actually quite a lot of that. Yeah, that wasn’t fun” He shivers at the memories, covering his groin protectively “but it seems I haven’t done enough” he looks down at his missing arm.

This was her second vivid realization about this man: he wasn’t some pompous fool shouting about gaining immortality through magic or something. He was aiming to gain it by strengthening his body.

Mad…yet at the same time very logical, so much so that her image of a crazy man hurting himself broke down and was washed away with some of her fears of him.

Insane…she still firmly believed he’d classify. Especially with the stunt he pulled while laughing his ass off. But she doesn’t believe he’s the kind of insane that will want to kill her for one reason or another.

After a small internal debate, she lets out a heavy sigh.

“Fine…you can come with” She begins to walk away.

“So you’ve decided I’m not insane then?” he quickly follows.

“No, you’re still insane, just not the bad kind…I think”

“I’ll take it as a compliment. Now, before you storm off into the woods, you need to grab the arrows and the bow too” He waves the bow in her face.

She looks into his eyes, unamused, horrified and disgusted.

“…Fine”

Snatching the bow away, she quickly grabs the ‘arrows’ from the floor and the bear, placing them into her empty quiver before storming off once more.

“By the way, where are my arrows?” The question pops into her buzzing mind.

“Oh…they broke when I took the guts off, sorry” He shrugs.

She was almost sure he was lying, but then again he had just told her something pretty dark that was barely comprehensible to her mind, and it was the truth, so he wouldn’t have the need to lie about something trivial such as her arrows.

Unknown to her, she was correct with her first thought. He had actually used the arrows for kindling, since he had planned to make new ones anyway.

The two of them begin their day trek in the rising sun, him with a gleam on his face and she with a look of horror as she spots bits of flesh still dangling from some of the bones.

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Author's Corner: Heyyy!! i posted this one pretty quick because wasn't tired enough for a kip.

But now i am!

Hope you enjoyed the chapter and hopefully you've got a good idea what the bow looks like (i was having trouble describing what it looks like (man art skills would be awesome to have right now...hmm maybe i should get an arty person to draw it... hrrmmmm, any volunteers who have nothing better to do with their time??)

Anyways, comment and reviewww my readers :*

ALSO I FORGOT TO DO THIS:

I HAVE OVER 100 FOLLOWERS WOOOOO!!! that means i have at least 100 people reading my fiction decently avidly :D.

To all my followers, *muah muah muah* you're lovely whomever you are.

-TRUE NORRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRD