I woke up angry. Here I was, imagining myself to be the new king of the jungle, and yet I allowed a bunch of aquatic muppets to scare me away from a major food source. I defeated the wolverine, why should I fear a bunch of otters? Just because each was bigger than I was, had jaws like a bear-trap and there was a whole pack of them?

Angling aside, I had to find a way to scare them off, because I wanted to cross the river one day. Armed with a spear and some attitude, I returned to the jetty.

The otters were gone, or at least not visible. My fishing rod was still there, entangled in the branches of the fallen pine. The line was stretched all the way into the reeds.

I pulled at it. It seemed stuck but not hopelessly so. It felt like someone tied an anchor to the other end. After a few minutes of tugging it gently, I pulled a giant clump of algae, muck, and reed roots towards me.

And In the middle of that clump was a magnificent catfish, far bigger than any fish I have ever caught in my entire life. In my old world, it would make my fellow anglers fume with envy…

Or at least, it was two-thirds of such a catfish. It looked like the fish took my bait, got entangled in the reeds, and something, likely one of the otters, chose that opportunity to tear off its exposed tail. Everything behind the pelvic fin was gnawed off, but it still left enough meat on the fish for a family meal, and then some.

Astonishingly, the fish was still alive, or maybe just twitching in post-mortem spasms. It kept opening and closing its giant maw, which was big enough that I could easily fit my whole fist inside. I took it back to the shore and butchered it. I threw its head far away into the water, as a tribute paid to the otters. The fish guts I wrapped around the hook, as bait, and tossed it back into the scummy shallow nearby. Who knows, maybe I will hook another one, or an eel this time? Both catfish and eels were nocturnal scavengers that could be fished a year around, even from under the ice. If I mastered this and made a truce with the otters, I could feed myself continuously, even in the winter.

Aside from the meat, which soon started to sizzle nicely over the fire, the fish provided another benefit. Its bones made for much better needles than the hedgehog quills.

Soon, I was dining on the fish, letting the delicious smell permeate my camp. It could use some spices, or at least salt, yet another reason to take a trip downriver. If the delta fell into the sea, like it normally would, I could pan for salt there. If there weren’t any humans around the shore, at the very least the trip would not be in vain.

But as usual, every plan I had hinged on having made the tools that I did not have yet, and those depended on resources I could not gather without different tools, which again depended on other things I was missing. If I wanted to sail across the river, I could likely jury-rig a raft quite easily. But If I wanted to sail down to the delta, cross it, find the sea it was flowing into, and come back alive, I needed an actual boat, or at least a good enough watercraft that could survive the trip, and not fall apart from the first tidal wave that hit it. Moreover, it would need a real sail, and sturdy oars, so that I could ever hope to go back, fighting the flow. It would also need to be fast enough, and tall enough at the sides that I would not be easily boarded by bloodthirsty otter pirates, or other prehistoric beasties the river would undoubtedly surprise me with.

I knew I was good enough to make such a raft, I was, after all, all my other failings aside, a damned good woodworker. But at this point, my tools consisted of a piece of flint glued to an elk jaw, several haphazardly knapped shards of chert, and a bone chisel that was so dull I mostly used it to pick my teeth after meals. I would barely be able to make a toy boat model using those, not a chance of making the real thing.

I needed proper metal tools, and for that I needed metal. In theory, one should dig for metal ore, smelt it, and then hammer the resulting metal into a useful shape. I understood the basic principles of blacksmithing, because a fellow smith let me dabble in his workshop every once in a while. But smelting metal, not to mention, actually finding ore, was something I had no idea how to go about.

Where to find iron ore? I assumed it looked like rust, and existed underground. It would be a hopeless endeavor to just dig at random spots looking for it, what's with my only digging tool being a tiny trench-digger, but what if I surveyed the walls of the gulch for ore deposits? The stream already did most of the work for me, carving a trench twice my height through several layers of soil.

With my belly full of fatty catfish, and my backpack full of tools and spare torches, I entered the woods. On the way, I checked my traps, caltrops, and snares. All but one looked untouched, so likely no huge beast prowled around, or if there was one, it was more nimble and clever than I thought. One snare had been sprung. A bush bird must have triggered it and got entangled, judging from the handful of feathers still tied to it. But the bird itself was gone, taken by some predator who likely could not believe its luck. All that was left of it, were small bits of fluffy dawn and a few specks of dried blood.

Drat. Between the poached bird, and the catfish situation, I saw an unpleasant pattern. This place was so full of hungry opportunists, that if I caught anything with my hooks and snares, it would be stolen, or at least gnawed at, long before I got there to claim my prize. Logic dictated I should wake up with the morning sun every day, to check on my traps immediately. Maybe I should tie knockers and rattles to my traps, so that the caught animal would make some noise and alert me sooner? But then again, it would attract thieves as well!

The alternative was hunting for food. I would not have to do it too often, since I could multiply meat until the original 'sample' spoiled. But the idea of going into the woods to stalk prey stealthily, was not only ridiculous, with my complete lack of skills, but also plain dangerous. I depended on the smell and sight of the burning torch to scare away animals, and made plenty of noise to warn them. It was necessary for my safety, but completely detrimental to any form of stealth. Besides, I did not think I could actually hit any small game by throwing my spear at it, and the big game animals here were way out of my punching weight. I knew better than to try to bother an elk, a moose, or a wild boar, with only a sharpened stick for a weapon.

Finally, I arrived at the entrance to the ravine. The hedgehogs guarding it sniffed at me, nonplused by my intrusion on their turf. I threw a catfish spine in their general direction, continuing my plan to appease the local wildlife with bribes of food. They swarmed over it, clearing a path for me.

A short trip took me halfway up the gully, to a place where the walls were made of clay packed with rocks, rather than sand and grit. I set several torches around me, to feel safer and to illuminate the shade, and set to work prying the stones out of the wall.

Predictably, most of those were useless. Every once in a while I would find a lump of chert, or maybe flint, I could never tell these apart. But my flint-knapping skills were nonexistent. In all my previous attempts at making stone tools, the best I achieved were awkwardly shaped shards that were sharp enough for me to cut myself on the jagged edges, but not big and precise enough for any useful work. Again, it made me appreciate the wisdom of the cavemen who knew how to turn such bits of stone into all types of precise tools and deadly weapons.

The only useful stone I have found was a fist-sized lump with a natural hole through it, big enough to fit my thumb in. I rammed a stick into it, and waved my new hammer around.

“Behold! I am the Mighty Thor!” I bellowed at nobody in particular. The woods mercifully did not comment on my theatrics.

But soon, my humor deflated. Where was the goddamn iron? The clay around the upper parts of the gully was brick red, so I assumed it must have had some iron in it. What else could have caused such coloration? But I could not find even a single fleck of actual iron rust. I walked the ravine back and forth, scanning the walls, but found nothing that looked even remotely like ore.

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Disheartened, I went back home. Home? I snickered to myself. In less than two months, this weird place grew on me so much that I thought the camp by the river was my home. I tried to remember my actual home, a three-room flat I shared with my wife and kids, but my mind reeled away from that thought. It was too painful to think about them, so the brain kept substituting the here-and-now, to focus on instead.

I knew I was not going back, but if I stopped moving, stopped looking for practical solutions to problems that could be solved, and allowed myself to consider my situation, I would fall on the ground, curl into a fetal position, and cry.

Focus.

Hammer, nail, nail, hammer. And I already had a hammer. I needed some nails!

I sat by my main bonfire, pondering. How can iron be so hard to find? Isn’t it one of the most common elements? I was pretty sure the planet’s surface was littered with it, and it was present everywhere, including my blood! For a second I considered just bleeding a bit, or maybe bleeding a fish dry, and multiplying the blood a thousandfold to somehow extract iron from scabs, but I soon discarded that idea. Turing my camp into a bloody slaughterhouse would be greatly unwise, and attract the wrong kind of attention.

I looked at the lump of clay I brought from the ravine. It was rust colored, and by all logic, should contain lots of iron, but I could not find any in it, or extract it. I even washed it, and poured the resulting orange soup through cloth, fishing for bits of ore, but all I found was sand and grit.

I considered returning to the gully to look for it gain, when another idea struck me. The ravine was not the only place where I could search for ore. There was a swamp not far from where I landed in this world. Digging through it might be a bit dangerous, but it would be vastly easier than digging through tightly packed and overgrown soil.

I multiplied some extra torches to take with me, took my spear and a trenching tool, and jury-rigged simple snowshoes out of sticks and string. I reasoned that making my foot much bigger with a wider surface, would prevent it from sinking in the swamp.

The route through the woods made me feel anxious. I was straying from a known path, into darker, denser, unfamiliar parts. I passed the spot where I landed and met the unicorn, which was luckily absent. The further away I was from the ravine and the sandy hill, the soggier the ground became, and the grasses and weeds were soon replaced by squishy moss that hid pockets of water underneath. I put on my swamp-shoes, after sinking almost to my knees in muck.

Finally, I breached the edge of the forest proper, and walked onto the open marshes. On one side they bordered a wall of reeds that separated them from the river and seemed to stretch forever towards the far horizon. On the other side, the mossy wetland gave way to a slightly drier bog, an uninviting archipelago of patches of peat, separated by lazy canals of brown water.

As unpleasant as they looked, the peat islands at least provided reasonably safe footing, so I went that way. Soon I was coated up to the navel in mud that stank of sulfur and rot, but at least I was moving forward.

Exhausted, I climbed onto a particularly big patch and decided to take some rest. The peat on the top turned out to be relatively dry, so I made a small bonfire that sent stinking smoke everywhere, but let me warm my legs and hopefully discouraged adventurous wildlife.

At first glance, the bog looked devoid of denizens, but soon I noticed a commotion in the distance. A herd of unicorns, not unlike the one that greeted me rudely when I arrived, frolicked in the distance. As they came closer, I understood that they were not playing. What I took for play, or maybe mating displays, was actually hard work. They would ram their strange horns into the peat, and tear up clumps of it, to feast on whatever it was underneath.

Curious, I dug a hole with the shovel to see what the fuss was about. Sure enough, there was a prize hidden underneath the peat. Some of the green shots that grew through the moss at the top, had onion-like bulbs hidden underground. They looked tasty, and the unicorns were wild for it, but I was not brave enough to try them. Just in case, I packed a handful into my bag for future testing.

Observing the rooting herd, I realized I did not need to dig through the bog myself. I could just follow the animals, and search through the ground they plowed.

I set up to go after them. As I neared closer, the sentries at the back of the herd reared up, sizing me from a distance. One or two trotted a few steps towards me, huffing loudly, but luckily considered their warning sufficient. I did not think my torch would ward them off if they decided to gore me, panicking or angry herd animals tended to act unpredictably.

Without getting any closer to the herd, or making any sudden moves, I kneeled to dig through the overturned peat and splashes of mud they left. At first, the only things I found were some overlooked bog onions, and plenty of horse droppings, but just as I was to give up and raise, my shovel hit a hard lump in a ruddy splash of mud. Digging carefully around it, to not spill anything, I found a lump the size of a fist. I almost laughed out loud. It was a big chunk of rust, obviously it must have been iron! Digging further, I found several smaller bits that, collected, looked like a bunch of asteroids, reddish brown, and pockmarked. Carefully, I cracked one with several hits of my elk-jaw axe. Inside the rusty exterior, was a tiny sliver of unoxidized metal, not bigger than a grain of corn. Gently, I scratched it with the axe, revealing a metallic shine.

I was about to whoop in sheer joy, when another sound froze me in place. A deep, honking, trumpeting roar, as if the sound of a hawk, a lion, and a truck’s horn were mixed into one. It vibrated my guts, and I only dared to lift my eyes without daring to stand up.

The unicorn herd exploded into chaos. And in the middle of that chaos, two monsters towered over the panicking ungulates, catching up to them in powerful strides and axing them down with their beaks. One of the terror birds managed to trap a particularly large unicorn under its taloned foot, and, as the helpless animal struggled, tore its head clean off with one peck. Then it trumpeted again, calling its smaller mate. Most of the unicorns managed to escape, a few lie in the bog, kicking the mud in agony from deadly wounds. The two birds walked methodically from one victim to another, finishing them off, dragging the corpses to a single heap, and piling them up. The bigger bird stood triumphantly over the pile, tearing chunks of meat and swallowing it whole, and the smaller one, which I just noticed was the one that sported the decorative plumage, kept collecting the kills and bringing them to its bigger partner.

Without taking my eyes off the gory display, I laid down on my stomach, and belly-crawled off the patch, and into the watery muck. I let the water close over me, only leaving my face over the surface. I could not see the birds anymore, and hoped they could not see me. My torches were extinguished, but I doubted they would help much if the birds wanted me dead.

Pushing away with the snow-shoes, I half crawled, half swam towards the deeper end of the marsh, and then circled back towards the edge of the forest, giving the birds a wide berth. Only when I was hidden in the bushes, I dared to look back. The big terror bird was still dining on its pile of corpses, but its mate, likely the male of the species, was gone.

I almost rose to run into the woods, when I heard the thumps of powerful running footsteps. The plumed bird crossed the swamp not more than forty steps away from my hiding spot, clearly searching for something, likely me, the intruder on their hunting grounds. Its amber gaze swept over the bushes where I hid, but it had not seen me.

It hesitated for a while, perched on an island of moss in the middle of the swamp. Then its female called, and it burst towards it in a sudden rush of motion, like a roadrunner from Hell.

This thing was fast. Really, really fast. My elaborate traps and defenses that I carefully laid down would do little to save me, because if it ever spotted me, I would be dead in two seconds, long before I reached them. No human alive would outrun it, I even doubted a galloping horse would. And as for my snares and caltrops, they would do little to slow it down, because that thing could cut a pony-sized animal in half with a single bite, or smash it underfoot. As strong as my silk ropes were, they would not be strong enough to stop that… dinosaur.

Or no, a dinosaur is not a strong enough term. This was a dragon, or at least the closest thing to one that I could imagine.

I allowed myself to exhale. The birds were far off in the distance. They did not see me, and probably haven’t caught my scent. It was possible they did not hunt by scent at all, otherwise the plumed one would have found me twice already. Their giant, front-facing eyes suggested they hunted by sight.

I patted myself. I had lost all my gear in that swamp, but luck would have it, the smallest bit of ore, the one with a tiny speck of metal in it, was still safely wrapped in a kerchief I tied and tucked under my pants waist.

‘You just wait and see you goddamned turkeys’. I thought to myself. ‘If this metalworking thing works, Im going to be munching on your roasted legs before winter.’