The first thing I did when I woke up was clip my nails. They were getting annoyingly long. I could feel my toenails scratching against my socks while I was trying to sleep, and it drove me crazy. I didn’t know the last time I had clipped them, but it must have been awhile. Either Tom hadn’t clipped his nails in awhile, either, or I had been getting sloppy. Not that I really thought personal hygiene was the key to his success, but you never know. I certainly hadn’t figured it out after all that time, so I couldn’t act like I knew better.

The other thing that had bothered me at night were the sounds. Alien sounds of distant creatures yipping and howling and making other sounds completely unlike any animal I’d ever heard. One made a long, breathy whistle that rose at the end, which woke me in the night at least twice. Another made no sound at all except for its footfalls, which fell like boulders and shook my tent as it passed. I didn’t dare look outside to see how closely it had passed.

I packed my things and strapped on my holster in the light of the rising sun. I hadn’t asked for the holster, but was happy RENA had sent it. I would say it was thoughtful, if an AI was capable of being thoughtful. But I remembered the training video they had all of the employees watch. The warnings. I had to be careful about assigning human traits to the AI, and even more careful about feeling positive emotions towards it. In fact, that was one of the many meanings of the name RENA. From the Japanese Renai Kinshi - or love ban. Her name itself was a warning - do not fall in love with the machine. They’d had problems with previous iterations.

The other meanings included RENA being a female version of the name Rhett - after Rhett Nash, the founder, of course, though it’s a bit of a stretch - and it being an abbreviation for the ironic moniker “Really Excellent New A.I.” Us lower-tier employees had other abbreviations - “Redundant-Employee Neutralizing AI,” or “Robotic, Emotionless and Needlessly Annoying.”

I started walking, filling my head with useless thoughts such as these. A wandering mind keeps the eyes dry.

The mountains were not so far away as I had initially thought. They were still miles and miles off, but I quickly begun to make them out more clearly, and also see the hills that stretched out before them.

I walked until past midday before anything of note happened, besides the gradual color change as the grasses became less dry, and the occasional tree became less blackened and more frequent. It was still a desert, I think - I didn’t know the classifications of biomes - but certainly things were becoming less dry, however slight or gradual.

An hour or so after midday - by that time I was surrounded by miniature hills like gentle waves - a sound stopped me in my tracks. Faint, but distinct. A chittering sound. I couldn’t identify it. It seemed to be coming from just ahead, beyond the crest of a small hill.

I immediately dropped onto my stomach. I didn’t know why, except that it was what a character in a movie would have done. I had no idea if it’s what Tom would have done, but I’d take my cues where I could get them.

I crawled along my stomach, worrying about roughing up my nice new shirt. I hoped it wouldn’t tear.

As I peaked over the hill, I saw it.

It was the size and form of a coyote, or a medium sized dog. It had the same legs, snout, and pointed ears. And teeth, I saw, as it was feeding on a small mammal I couldn’t make out.

But it wasn’t a coyote. Its forehead, back and stomach were covered in bands of what looked like dark-gray armor, nearly black. It was like a coyote had stolen the shell off of an armadillo.

Around the ground near it there were black markings, as if a campfire had been made there the night before, leaving scorch marks behind.

I weighed my options.

Bloodthirsty as it may make me seem, killing the thing was my first thought. I had the jump on it, and it would be good practice. Maybe I could even eat it, although it didn’t exactly look tasty. It wasn’t very large or intimidating, even with its strange appearance. It was distinctly dog-like, which gave me some sort of emotional pause, but I remembered what my mom told me when I was a kid. “If a dog ever attacks you, you can’t hesitate. Kick the dog before it bites you, and don’t hold back.” My mom gave some interesting advice sometimes, now that I thought of it.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

I thought about the boar, and how uselessly my bullets fell around it, not hitting home even a single time. It would be safer to take my advantage, shoot it before my nerves were shot, while I still had time to aim and breathe.

On the other hand, this coyodillo - as I was deciding to call it - wasn’t attacking me. It was just enjoying its lunch. Other than practice - and safety, in a admittedly paranoid sense - it didn’t gain me anything to kill it. And while practice was valuable, what if it was more powerful than it looked? But if I waited, and lost the element of surprise, and it did attack me, then where would I be?

In the end my fear won out. Better to strike first, before the creature noticed me. Just to be safe. Judge me if you have to, I don’t care.

I carefully shimmied backwards down the hill. It wouldn’t do to charge in and hope for the best. I had to prepare.

Once I was safely out of sight, I took off my backpack and rummaged around. I pulled out one of my MREs. I had hardly touched them, opting instead for RENA’s philly cheesesteak delivery service. I’d already eaten three sandwiches - a little reminder of Earth. I wouldn’t miss the MRE.

I tore it open. Inside, there were small white pieces of what the packaging optimistically called “chicken chunks.” I spilled them out on the floor.

Then, I retreated. Or, tactically repositioned, if you prefer. I doubled back to lay behind another gentle hill, where I could watch over my bait behind some dry grass, which was as good of cover as I was likely to get. Unfortunately, it didn’t afford me a line of sight on the coyodillo’s current location, but I could wait. I unholstered my revolver, and steadied it, aiming at the chicken pile. It was entirely possible that the coyodillo wouldn’t smell it, and wouldn’t happen to come this way, and I would have wasted the food for no reason. But that suited me just fine too, if the creature happened to just wander off and leave me alone. This plan also gave me the option of changing my mind, even if it did come this way, which is always a valuable part of a plan.

I waited. The sun beat down on my back, which was already drenched in sweat from the journey. My sunburn still stung. I’d have to remember to get RENA to send me some Aloe Vera. I wondered what my bill was up to by that point. A few hundred bucks? A thousand? I didn’t want to know, but I knew I really should not be working backwards like that. I was in that dimension to make money, not to spend it.

It took longer than I had naively hoped, but just after I thought the creature must have wandered off, and just before I gave up, the head of the coyodillo peaked over the hill. I was at a right angle to it - I hadn’t wanted to be dead-on, since that seemed more likely that it would spot me. I watched as it bounded up and over, trotting over to its second meal of the day.

It’s a good thing it’s that hungry, I thought.

As the coyodillo came closer to the bait, it slowed down. It seemed to be looking around, as if it sensed that this was some sort of trap.

Now or never, I thought. I adjusted my aim.

Suddenly a burst of flame, appearing just in front of the animal, which scorched the bait. The flame came from the coyodillo. It was breathing fire, like a dragon. The fire shot out in one short blast, and was over in a moment.

“What the hell?” I said to myself, and regretted it instantly. I saw every muscle in the creature grow taut, and it turned to face the noise.

Shoot, damnit, shoot. I aimed, and…

Hit. Right in the forehead. I would have deserved a medal for that shot, except- except it ricocheted off of the animal’s armor, plinking uselessly. It must have hurt, though, because it was easy enough to tell that the animal was now pissed. Tiny tendrils of fire escaped its nostrils as it breathed. It bounded towards me.

I imagined Tom. Cool and collected Tom, shooting again, not panicking. I fired another shot.

This one caught it in the leg, which was unarmored. The coyodillo let out a pathetic yelp, which made me feel bad, even though it was a fire breathing monster making its way towards me. Why did it have to look like a dog?

The coyodillo changed its mind. With a significant limp, but still about as fast as I could probably run, the thing beat a hasty retreat. I fired two more rounds at it as it went, mostly for practice, but missed both.

“Not bad,” I said to myself. “Not bad at all. Batting .250 is a world better than batting zero.”

The leg wound the coyodillo sustained had looked pretty bad, and a trail of blood snaked up another hill where it had fled. I guessed it probably didn’t have long to live.

Then, a feeling. A new feeling, not quite like anything I’d ever felt before.

There was a warmth in the pit of my stomach. I heard the crackling of a fire, smelt the heavy smell of smoke, tasted charcoal on my tongue, but these sensations seemed to come from inside me, not outside, as if they rose from out of my throat. There was a fire burning in my gut. That was the feeling. And another feeling, like… like a question. There was a question inside me. It sounds crazy, and I certainly thought I was crazy, at the time. I thought I was having a stroke, or a panic attack, or something. A heat stroke didn’t seem unlikely. I grabbed my canteen from the pack, gulped down some water. It didn’t help. Still that warmth, and that question.

Yes, or no, the question seemed to ask. Or something like that. A simple yes/no question. I don’t know what sensation gave me that knowledge, but it was like it was implanted into my brain. Yes, or no? Accept, or decline?

Accept or decline what? The warmth? I was losing it. I looked around me for the nearest tree, and went over to lay in the shade. Apparently my nerves weren’t cut out for hunting. I needed a rest.

Nothing changed. Still that feeling. If I wasn’t already sweating, that internal heat would have made me start, I thought.

A thought. Could this be magic? A stupid thought, I knew, but I couldn’t help it. It felt so foreign to anything I’d ever experienced, foreign in a way that reminded me of the Cho’l, with their sail-arms and knife-nails. Olim had mentioned magic, acted like I could learn how to use it.

I knew what Tom would do. Yes, I thought to myself, aiming the thought at my gut.

And just like that, the feeling was gone. Except I felt slightly stronger, in some way. It was just as hard to place as the previous sensations, but it felt like something had changed. I instinctively looked at my hands.