The General woke up in a great deal more pain than when he fell asleep. He wasn't sure if that was a bad thing or not, though, truth be told. The pain meant lucidity, and that everything was working, give or take. In the hours it took to reach the center of the maze and shove that massive stone into place, he had been quite certain that the bleeding would take him. That he would just keel over and die, right there. Thankfully, he had done it; he had persevered through the last challenge of that stupid cave. He was rewarded with a free relocation to this fancy temple, apparently.

A temple to which he was tied. Thick, mostly green vines were wrapped around his chests and arms, forming a basic loop that bound him to one of the many marble columns. He could break out of it given time and sufficient energy, but that wasn't a good idea. If the amazon that had bound him to this pillar was coming back, she'd be even more wary if she saw him escape on his own. That gave him time to go down the checklist. His poorly cut and wrapped Mole-taur clothes had been trimmed and laced through with similar rope to the kind tying him to the pillar. The knives were nowhere to be seen, but that was to be expected. As long as they weren't gone forever, he'd have a solid supply of weaponry. It was often necessary in battle to drop or leave a weapon behind, so spares were a must.

He tried not to pay attention to the fact that a cute indigenous girl had also evidently stripped him. It was a bit too embarrassing to even think about. To his surprise, he realized that he even had the capacity to be embarrassed again. That was quite un-General-like. Perhaps it had just been the danger spurring him on? In any case, he now had workable clothes tied to him, rather than just sticking to him with blood-paste. That was thankful enough. He realized that his hand, still throbbing, was in much better shape.

It was undeniably broken, but the bones were in some semblance of where they should have been, and the swelling had dropped enough that he could even tell where the knuckles had rolled or the carpals had snapped. It'd need to be rebound if he hoped to move safely- any touch would send roiling agony through him- but it would do, for now. He was just glad that it was his left hand, and not his right. In any case, the amazon was clearly treating him. He was treated, but he was not trusted. So they want to trust him, but they couldn't until he was awake? Was that it? What a strange situation.

He didn't feel quite as thirsty as he did before, either. It had only just occurred to him that he may have spent days in his escape without even realizing it when he stopped being hydrated enough to think straight. It was dumb luck that he had even survived that, really. Internal bleeding had taken quite a few unsuspected soldiers through-out history, especially before they had figured out how to deal with it. It was quite impressive that he had been brought back this far, almost as though…

The girl came back. He recognized her now. She was one of the thirty people who had been dumped in the cave with him, and it had been awhile since they had even interacted. They were both fairly recluse, after all. He had spent time in the caves to find an escape route and locate resources, while she spent time in other caves to do something or another. He had never really found out. They just didn't mingle much. He wished he had, now, considering that she had saved him, and also the fact that she actually looked better in clothes than naked.

The amazon impression he had gotten when he was delirious made a lot more sense, now. She had fashioned clothes for herself out of the massive leaves the trees had in the distance, the twine that she had used for his ropes, and she had impressive muscles. They weren't massive, but in the light of day, they were certainly visible. The thin, lithe muscles, trailing all the way up her legs and down her arms and like a flash, the embarrassment came back. He cursed silently, swearing at the other him who could tear a monster limb from limb without even retching and who had apparently receded to the back of his brain. When she saw that he was awake, she dropped aside the things she had been holding.

He tried to speak, but the girl beat him to it. "Are you sane?" she said. "I really hope you're sane. Too much work saving you if you're looney."

Okay, so she wouldn't be so hard to deal with. If she was actually good at this whole 'socializing' thing, he would have been around her pinkie in a heartbeat.

"I'm sane. Promise. Where are my knives?" he said, trying not to sound too anxious. She scowled, eyeing him up and down. "What sort of sane person wakes up tied to a column and asks their captor for weapons?" He had to grunt at that. "The kind who can feel his arms again."

She rocked back a little, much less intent and back out of his personal space. She was a bit jittery, maybe a little too excited to actually have real banter with someone her age for the first time in god knows how long, and it showed. He tried to avoid the annoying whisper that told him to keep asking for his weapons back and focus on convincing her he was, in fact, sane. All in good time.

"I'm the General. I don't think I ever got your name?" She laughed a bit, turning back to the objects. They were quite mysterious. The first was a clearly dead animal, something like a rabbit mixed with a hamster. It was adorable, or it would be, if it wasn't so smelly. A skunk-rabbit? Skabbit? Losing his mind had further damaged his already questionable naming sense, apparently. "My name's Catarina. You can call me Kat." She said, ducking to strike together two of the other objects. Too his surprise, one was a massive bug. It was a six-legged creature with an impressively long torso, and it had either died or went into shock. She struck it against a shiny, green rock a few times, and suddenly, it burst into flame. The bug started writhing, coming out of its comatose state. She dropped it on the pile, hurriedly, and he realized that the rest was all a mixture of strange plants and fire-wood. "I had hoped you would be awake," she said, "Force-feeding people is so much harder than you would think. You nearly died."

She hurriedly stripped the thing of its nastiest bits with a level of precision that could only impress him. It was disgusting, sure, but it was still a feat of skill. Talent must be respected. It took him a moment to realize that she had just admitted to nearly choking him to death, but all things considered, he wrote it off. When she finished setting it up to grill, he started again. "Can you untie me now? This is actually pretty uncomfortable." She worked and mulled it over and then walked to the other side of the pillar. The ropes fell away. "Welcome to the land of the living, 'General'. Man, is that really your name?"

The General shrugged. "It is now, at least." She nodded. "I'm going to call you Gennie." He gawked at that. "Call me what?"

"Is Gennie no good? Gen, then? No way I'm calling you "General" left and right. It'd be like a bad war movie." Gen- no, the General scowled. "I happen to quite like bad war movies." She laughed. He was serious, but maybe it would be better to just play it off. He wasn't sure why the nickname was bothering him so much, though. It was a silly name to begin with, wasn't it? It was hard, but he managed to pull himself together and get a move on. First things come first. He re-wrapped his hand; the part of the hide he had used to cover it had been set just out of sight, and set to fixing up his strange little jacket. All the while, the girl kept working on the meat. It was actually starting to look like it was going to taste good. How long had he been out, exactly?

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The biggest concern was their next plan of action, anyway. The temple was neat, but they couldn't just stay here forever, especially if the animals might attack at any moment. Kat was more reluctant. She insisted that a 'magical wizard shield' was keeping the animals out, and that they could abuse that fact until he healed most of the rest of the way up. Gen wasn't going to argue. He had, after all, just been teleported from a murderous labyrinth all the way to this temple. He couldn't even see the cave-mouth on the mountainside, anymore. It amazed him that Kat had even made it this far. The Dragons that coasted by every so often were terrifying enough, he couldn't even imagine what else hid in the brush.

After all, they still hadn't figured out where the lizard man came from. He was huge, well-equipped, and properly genocidal. "Hey, about the big lizard," he said.

 "Yeah, the crocodile man", Kat said quite emphatically. Gen- the General didn't have much room to argue. 'Crocodile Man' was a campy, B-movie grade name for a bad guy, but 'big lizard' wasn't any better. "Where did he come from?" he said. Kat shrugged. "I didn't see them on the quest down to here. It's pretty strange, really." He sat up. For some reason, that fact was really bothering him. If there was no crocodile men army, or no crocodile man village, then where had it come from? More importantly, how had it found him?

"Kat, I don't know if we can stay here," Gen said. She suddenly snapped to attention, a strange movement for someone who was always so fluid, so very much in movement. "Who's saying that, Gen?"

That was confusing. It was him, wasn't it? He blinked a few times. "Me, of course," he said, but even before he got through the 'of', she was already cutting him off. "You missed it when you were delirious. This place is doing something to us. The temple made it sound more like we were being set free, actually," she said. "So, who's saying it? Gen? Or would it be 'The General'?"

"Why would it matter?" Gen said, groaning. "Even if I'm going to acknowledge a split personality or whatever all of the sudden, they're both me. And they both are wary of the fact that the big- the crocodile man found us, in the middle of a dangerous jungle, in a recluse cave." She blinked. "I didn't mean a split personality, man. It's not like that." Kat patted his shoulders, and pointed to the floor. She mimicked an overblown, sagely voice that could only be described as 'Gandalf, but squeakier', and said "Faith in yourself, and stake your claim, the legacy of mankind!" She coughed. "Or something like that. My memory isn't the best. Just pretend this temple is your home and have utter faith in your abilities."

He groaned again, this time with added emphasis. "I'm trying, so just trust me," he said. Wasn't he already having 'faith in himself'? What sort of stupid superpower was that? He really, really hoped that wasn't all he had to work with. When he actually did believe it, that the temple was his turf and that he was the unconquerable General, he felt different. More detached. More observant. He could feel eyes crawling up and down his back like spider. When he spun around, there was no one watching, but he could still feel them, the unerring gaze of someone, somewhere. They had been watched.

"Hey, we're going with that whole 'magic' thing, right? What are the odds they can use it to spy on us?" He said. Kat contemplated for a moment, and then shrugged. "When you put it like that? I don't think any odds in the world could save us from the shit hand we've been dealt." She handed him one of the little cooked creature's thighs, expecting him to eat. It was hard enough to eat around her, as awkward as he was, and harder with the army of eyes on his back. 'No,' he realized, 'it isn't. A General is always confident.' And so he was. The taste was actually quite good. He nodded, gratified. "What did you do to get it like this? It's so tender." She pointed back to the fire, smiling. "Some of the plants burned seemed to smoke out some flavor, and the meat's already fairly high quality, for such a little creature. Thanks."

The meal was short- it had to be, between the limited portions and the fact that they had to ditch the temple as fast as possible. Every day, every hour he had been out, the crocodile men had been getting closer and closer. He shook off the worries. They were two highly-trained soldiers, why would they lose to some big lizards? Not a problem. Gen groaned. He could really use some highly trained soldiers right now. No matter how much he had faith in his ability to conjure an army from the air, though, nothing happened. Whatever was happening to them, it wasn't quite so potent.

He liked to think he was intimidating, what with his knives and his cave-man attire. Now that he was out of that damned maze, things were almost exciting, as long as he ignored the fact that his parents were dead and he was so far from home. The excitement and sudden, gut-wrenching mourning alike were suppressed remarkably quickly, he mused. Only time would tell if it made him a better person, or just a more effective one. Kat was a whole different beast. She was unarmed, but visibly raring to go. He had once been to a dog park when he was young. The biggest take-away he had from it was the pure violence of the pets while they were leashed, their desperation to be freed and join the rest of the pack.

She had seemed so reluctant, before, but now she was tense and primed to bolt. What did that make her? If he was 'The General', was she 'The Sprinter'? Gen shook his head, that title was too silly to be right.

Kat was staring at him, but when he met her eyes, she started to move. In an impressively graceful motion, she strode to the edge of the dais and dropped from the side. He had to hurry to catch up, and by the time he lowered himself to the ground, she was at the cusp of the jungle.

"I, uh, you're going to have to go a bit slower," he said. "I'm not quite sure how you're doing that, but I've never been a runner." She turned, a little bit frustrated. He put up his hands in a placating gesture. "I'll try to follow along as best I can, but it's not going to be easy. It'd be better if we stuck together, wouldn't it?" He said.

Kat seemed to agree with at least that much. "I'm sure I can keep myself safe in here, but if you lose the trail and I lose you, it's going to be a pain," she said. "Have faith in me."

Gen caught up, but it took way more effort than it felt like it should have. Maybe he was just tired? "What do you mean, exactly?" He said. "That's the trick to it, apparently. I have to be confident that I'm amazing at this, and then you have to believe in that, and I'll find a path we can both take," she turned quite suddenly, following a path that apparently only she could see, "or something like that. I'm still a bit too fuzzy on the whole thing myself."

The whole 'have faith' thing felt so much more right when he was in charge, when he was leading. Every army had reconnaissance after all, and what would be the point if he didn't use them? Especially if they were as eminently competent as Kat seemed to be. Although the occasional branch smacking him was annoying, they hadn't run into any animals, and they seemed to be covering ground at an astonishing pace for a jungle. He had read into some accounts of Vietnam, and man, was this a breeze in comparison. It was almost like having a local navigator. A bit too much like that, in fact. At this point, though, he had to resolve to the fact that something strange was going on with the two of them. Not trusting anyone is far more dangerous than being too trusting. Still, he had to run through the facts.

Kat quite hoped the boy behind her wouldn't notice how hard deciding the trek actually was. He hung a bit behind, and seemed too concentrated on her- the sleaze- to notice how risky the last stretch was. They were two meals in a jungle and covering ground fast enough to catch the creatures that she was abusing for safe passage. She had spent a few hours playing cat and mouse with the catbeasts while Gen was still out cold, trying to figure out a smell or animal that could ward them off. She had nearly lost toes on multiple occasions, but it had paid off. The biggest tip-off was the temple. It didn't have the dense growth of the jungle at all, with the plants thinning out into the grassy plain it sat in- a grass that was quite uncommon everywhere else. Sure enough, most of the animals despised it. Whoever made the temple didn't use some animal warding after all, just a good old fashioned repellant. She promptly decided that working some into her outfit and taking a handful would be a generally good idea.

Still, she needed the catbeast's sensitive nose to win out over their hungry guts each and every time. By this point, they were being tailed by four of the things, waiting for that horrid odor to fade enough for the two big hairless meals to enter their grasp. Kat was certain she would be fine- she had plenty of practice. Her companion? Not so much. Better to just let him believe they were safe and sound; worrying him would only slow them down.

She only had to hope that it would never get to that point, and everything would be completely fine.