The hot, fetid breath in his face woke Elrik with a start.

Eyes wide open, he stared at the panting snout uncomfortably close to his face. He lay there, unmoving, on the rocky ground, for a long minute.

The fox peered back, with deep gold-flecked eyes, patiently watching him.

His eyes still steady on the fox, Elrik carefully moved his hands, feeling around, till he felt his fingers close around a decently sized rock. As he did, the fox stepped back, suddenly sensing his movement.

It bared its teeth at him. A low growl rose in its throat, but even as it started, it seemed to think better of it. With a harumph, it turned and trotted fearlessly away.

Elrik lay where he was a little longer.

There was sunlight coming from somewhere, but it was dark where he lay.

He was in some kind of narrow cave, that much he could tell. The little light there was, came from the mouth of the cave, somewhere far out of sight. Crystalline ice hung from the roof of the cave.

[The rocky ground beneath is hard, but not too hard.. Some kind of soft sedimentary rock, probably limestone. Which would explain the cave. The walls are smooth and worn. Stalactites, but worn down. Probably formed as an ice-cave along the underbelly of a glacier. No ice on the walls, now - so the glacier’s long gone. No mud or dirt, just rock: so he was probably above sea-level. A cave too high up to see any flooding. A mountain cave then, on an arete, high up enough that it sees ice in the winter.]

The thoughts came unbidden, which was a little weird. Elrik didn’t remember being a geology nerd. Beyond a smattering of things he learnt in school he’d never had a lot of interest in it. Something about the cold seemed to jog his brain though.. bringing long forgotten memories to the fore.

Carefully Elrik clambered up.

Where even am I…

It took another minute though, for him to register that wherever he was, he was naked.

Naked and cold. He’d been wearing clothes and a jacket when.. When it happened. When he was at the bodega. Now the only thing on his butt was loose gravel.

When the shivers set in, it occurred to him that he hadn’t really felt his feet for a while.

[Numbness of the extremities is the first symptom.. followed by eventual frostbite]

Shit.

Elrik curled up in the fetal position for a minute, sitting on the rock floor, as he desperately tried to rub some feeling back into his feet. That was when he saw the cache.

It was a wooden chest, roughly made, from hewn wood. It looked rustic.. handmade. The lid was weighed down with small rocks, probably to keep small animals from nosing it open and rummaging through it.

Elrik, crawled over and threw it open

The cache was lined on the inside with some kind of oilcloth - keeping the contents dry. It had all the supplies you ask for. Most blessedly, there were clothes - simple, rough tunics and trousers of wool and flax, leather moccasins - and some heavy furs. There were dry rations to last, hmm… maybe a few weeks?

Everything in the box had a rough in exact handmade quality to it. Foreign and strange to a city-boy like him. Like something you’d find at a farmers market in the Renaissance fair. There was even, as far as he could tell, what looked like hand made underwear.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

But it was stuff of good quality, even to his inexpert eyes. The furs felt warm and lush under his shivering fingers as he struggled into them, still shivering.

Elrik quickly slipped on the clothing, as fast as he could manage.

The feeling of his core being ensconced in the warm furs was nearly heavenly - while at once the pins and needles - as his once numb feet regained feeling - was excruciating.

Elrik rubbed his hands and stamped his legs and cursed under his breath.

Once he was clothed he could see what else lay at the bottom of the small chest.

Wrapped in oilskins were a selection of cured meats and biscuits. Dry goods - supplies that would last. A compass. A pen knife. What looked like a small sewing kit. Elrik looked through them all and set them aside.

At the very bottom of the chest lay, what was unmistakably, a sword. A sword.

It was longer than Elrik’s forearm, when he drew it from its sheath. A short-sword, with a wicked straight two-edged blade. It looked compact, sharp and lethal. It had a very no-nonsense workmanlike quality to it.

What the hell..

Elrik stared.

He’d only ever seen a sword in movies or on tv, but this - this was definitely a sword.

Elrik held it up gingerly. It was lighter than it looked, though it had some heft. Even looking at it Elrik knew - if he stabbed with that short sharp chunk of steel, it would simply and easily into a man’s body as it would

What the hell..

A few lengths of leather from the cache let him strap the shortsword sheathe to his thigh.

Elrik rocked back and forth on his haunches, thinking. Then he got up and started to carefully make his way to the mouth of the cave.

...

This whole time, there was one thread of thought skittering about Elrik’s mind that he was very carefully trying not to think too hard about.

He’d been at a bodega by a seedy Berlin plaza. He’d walked out onto the street. He’d stopped and turned his head in the middle of the street (not a great move). There had been a two ton semi truck barrelling towards him, well above the speed limit, with no signs of slowing down. And… he didn’t really remember anything after that.

Then, he was here face down and naked in a cave on a mountain - with no idea how he got here.

Given his limited information, he had a few possible theories:

Theory one - Moments before the truck hit him, he’d been transmigrated to another world - to be given a second chance at a new life.

Theory two - the truck had in fact hit him, and he was still lying on that street dying. This cave was the last hallucination of his dying brain as it shut down.

Theory three - the truck had hit and killed him. There was in fact an afterlife (contrary to his beliefs) and he was in hell.

These were not, as a matter of fact, cheerful thoughts especially since the third felt most likely. So Elrik tried harder not to think them.

When he came to the mouth of the cave he gave a sad groan. Of course.

The good news was that he had been right. The mountain slope was steep, falling sharply from the mouth of the cave where he was. There was snow, patchy. The cliff face curved steeply down, all black rock and snow.

That was as far as he could see

The bad news was that the opening was mostly caved in. He could stick his head out, enough to see the lay of the land. Rays of sunlight filtered in through holes the size of his head - but there was no way he was getting out of the cave this way.

He had to go deeper and look for another way out.

With a muttered curse under his breath Elrik doubled back the way he came, and trudged back into the cave.

...

*[Survival in an unknown environment is always bound by the Iron Rule of Threes

[Three minutes without air]

[Three hours without warmth]

[Three days without water]

[Three weeks without food]

[Past any of those limits lies death]

Scattered memories from distant days in a survivalist summer camp came back to Elrik.

He carefully continued deeper into the cave.

Even caved in, the entrance permitted sufficient air to breathe.

Food and warmth he had, thanks to the cache.Rescue didn’t seem likely. For water, the cache had held an empty waterskin made from what looked like goat leather of some kind - but there was no water to fill it with.

A glacier formed cave like this had to have a snowmelt stream somewhere deeper. The cave seemed dry, not damp. All that melted winter snow had to escape somewhere.

Not to mention, any chance of escape lay deeper in the cave system.

The deeper he went - the darker it got. Luckily his night vision seemed to be coming back.

Eventually, just as it started to get so dark he could barely see the walls he was feeling his way along, he heard the faint sound of water. It was the gentle burble of a tiny spring or a snowmelt.

Water. Glorious wonderful water. Elrik started shuffling faster, feeling his way against the wall, until he could hear the clear sound of water round the next corner.

Elrik had an eager smile on his face, when he rounded the corner, and almost walked into the wolf.