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The ancient mangrove trees creaked in the wind, swaying gently. Zeirdin pulled back his shaggy black hair and tied it into a ponytail with a length of vine cordage.
“The second I get my hands on a metal scrap sharp enough, I’m cutting it all off,” Zeirdin grumbled to himself quietly. With expert speed and dexterity, he began to braid vine scraps into cordage. Cordage was invaluable in the jungle. He used it for just about everything he made, from his loincloth to his satchel, to even his sleeping mat and fishing net.
Zeirdin’s feet itched. Ugh. Over the course of the past six weeks, he’d spent in the jungle, he gradually developed some sort of foot fungus. The problem was he could never get completely dry and due to the wet nature of the jungle and its swamps, he could never find any dry plant material for a fire.
Light streamed into the hollow of the ancient mangrove through massive spade-shaped leaves that hung from the entrance. Zeirdin sat on the floor of the mangrove hollow, surrounded by dried vines. Behind him was his sleeping mat. It was an amalgamation of woven vines, and large leaves. Various dried fruits hung from the ceiling of the hollow, attached to the internal roots by cordage. Plums, oranges, and mangoes, as well as a variety of nuts.
Zeirdin’s fingers danced and spun like a spider’s legs as he braided cordage at a breakneck speed. He estimated that he could braid about a meter of it a minute, a massive improvement from when he first figured out how to make it. He was going to attempt to make a hammock out of cordage so he needed a lot of it. Zeirdin was tired of bugs crawling all over him while he slept.
Hours past. Beside Zeirdin now lay multiple coils of cordage. He estimated each to be around five meters. Hands aching, he dropped the vines in his hands and flopped backward onto his sleeping mat.
“Aaah...” He groaned. “I want a hot shower.” He began to lay out lengths of cordage, cutting them to length with his teeth. The hammock was going to basically be a larger rectangular fishing net. He’d already gone through the trial and error of making a fishing net, so he wasn’t worried about messing up with the hammock. After laying out all the vertical lengths of cordage, he began to lay shorter lengths across horizontally. Next came the worst and most tedious step, tying the horizontal and vertical strips together. He guessed he would need to tie nearly a couple hundred knots.
Evening crept in like an orange cat. Zeirdin wasn’t even a third of the way through with his hammock.
“’Nuff for t’day,” Zeirdin muttered to himself, grabbing an avocado and an Ols fungi pod to drink. He was thankful that he now had the leeway to not eat yemlin meat as frequently. With his stealth, he was able to traverse the jungle to gather fruit and nuts. That being said, yemlin meat still made up about half of his diet.
“Wonder how Jin and the others are,” Zeirdin thought aloud to himself as he lay on his mat. The sun went down half an hour ago. Zeirdin would wake up with the sun too. He knew that Jin and the others thought he was dead. He didn’t know how their reunion would go. Had they moved on from him? Did they even remember him? There was so much pain in the world. Zeirdin pondered his thoughts for another while.
“I have had enough of this place,” he said with conviction as if someone important was listening to him. He had a feeling he must look a little insane. The embarrassment of talking to himself had worn off long ago. While there were many creatures to hear him, none could understand him. Zeirdin wanted to kill the weakness inside of him that stopped him from charging at every enemy unprovoked. He wanted strength. The small child inside of him was afraid of pain, even if it was necessary to accomplish his goals. The voice of reason, half of what made him human.
There was no way he was going to sleep tonight. Zeirdin got up and reached into a woven container of trinkets. He pulled out a small lump of amber that glowed gently in the moonlight. It was his most valued possession. After grabbing a length of cordage, he began to wrap the amber, creating a snug holder for the stone. Then he attached the amber to another length of cordage that he tied around his neck. It was crude but it did the trick.
“All my weakness… All my fear… All my uncertainty...I entrust it to the amber for the foreseeable future...” Zeirdin brought the amber up to his face and gazed into the transparent orange stone.
Fear, uncertainty, grief. Zeirdin knew these were fundamental aspects of being a human. He was not abandoning them. One day, when he no longer needed unwavering strength, he would come back for these things. He was given an opportunity to realize his goals through the form of the black butterfly and Shura’s Contract and he couldn’t squander it. He didn’t know how long the window of opportunity would last. Zeirdin squeezed the amber necklace in his hand.
“Goodbye. I’m getting out even if I become a demon.” He hopped out of his hollow in the mangrove and landed in the waist-high water with a splash. Even after sunset, the water stayed lukewarm. The murky water lapped at his waist. Zeirdin would acquire strength in the quickest way he knew how a method unique to him.
Moonlight streamed through the high jungle canopy, illuminating small patches of the forest floor. Aside from the moonlight, the jungle floor remained pitch black in the nocturnal hour. Zeirdin ran through the jungle. His feet made no noise on the ground. The only noise he generated was the rustling of plants as he ran through them. He was leaving yemlin territory. He was tired of them. He would either make it out of the pit, or he would encounter other hostile creatures. Either possibility was acceptable.
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A metallic glimmer pierced through the lush jungle foliage in the darkness. Zeirdin slowed to a jog, surveying his surroundings. The bushes around the initial location of the metallic object rustled. One blue light peered through the thick jungle foliage before disappearing. Zeirdin’s heart began to pound in his ears in anticipation. He strained all his senses, trying to pinpoint the location of the android.
Something rustled near his left hand. Zeirdin swiveled like a door on a hinge, only for a sharp burning pain to fill his shoulder. The small android yanked the metal spike out of his shoulder and darted back into the darkness. It looked as though it was originally constructed from some artificial white material that was now covered in moss and dirt. Steel plates protected its vitals. The android had a small head with a single blue dot for an eye. Exposed hydraulics and wires snaked all over its dilapidated body, yet it made no creaking noise.
“Wish I had a rock or a stick,” Zeirdin sighed. He was probably going to break his hands, whether he survived or not. Hot liquid streamed out of the wound on his shoulder and he ignored it. This android was probably a mangler. Stories of wandering mangler androids massacring entire villages in the edgelands of Laurentia were not uncommon. They were impervious to most civilian weapons and were not designed to be expendable. Zeirdin flared up his mana circulation and focused it in his fists.
He followed his intuition and jerked to the right, avoiding a liver stab. Once again, the android dashed into the bushes, but this time he followed in pursuit. He focused a portion of the mana current into his eyes to see in the dark better. It worked partially and his surroundings got a little lighter. Any extra information his eyes could gather would be critical to his survival. The thrill of battle began to fill Zeirdin as the true gravity of the situation set in. The android whipped around realizing Zeirdin was not carrying a weapon. All caution vanished from its movements and it went on the offensive.
The machine’s strikes were brutal. With its nonbladed arm, the android flung a jab. Aided by advanced artificial sinew and hydraulics both predating The Cataclysm, the jab hissed through Zeirdin’s defenses. Unable to react, the strike connected with Zeirdin’s left pectoral muscle, striking like a meteor. All air was forcefully pushed out of Zeirdin’s lungs like a bellows. Pain and fire filled his chest. A bloody, crater-like hole was formed on his chest. The jab left as soon as it came. The fist returned back near the android’s head in its guard stance. The android was a killing machine programmed with self-preservation in mind. A slow rechambering of a jab could mean destruction for the machine if the arm was caught.
Zeirdin winced, wheezed, and coughed but did not lower his guard. He was dead if it could get a full combo to connect on him. The machine gained more confidence with the successful strike and rushed forward. Zeirdin danced backward doing his best not to trip in the underbrush. Finally, he saw a small opportunity. He focused mana in the shin of his lead leg and delivered a sneaky low kick to the android’s front leg.
The kick was by no means a light kick, especially for a lead leg kick. It collided with the android’s leg with a clank, bending the outer metal housing of its shin. Zeirdin winced and felt his shin bone indent slightly against the metal. He guessed that against an average human, his mana-infused kick would’ve snapped a shin.
The machine shot backward and returned to a defensive stance. With each hit exchanged, the android slowly calibrated Zeirdin’s threat level. Once it realized that Zeirdin was significantly weaker than it, he would be done for. His shin ached deeply and he felt a hot throbbing mound form on it. Zeirdin weighed his options while he caught his breath. Flesh on metal was no good, he would do as much, or more damage to himself than the machine. His only real option was to somehow restrain it and yank its head off.
The android watched with its glowing blue eye, calculating and observing every muscle twitch Zeirdin made. Triggered by something unknown, the android’s behavior pattern switched once again. It closed the distance in a powered leap and landed with a whir before Zeirdin. He stumbled backward and the onslaught began. The machine must've realized that he wasn't much of a threat. The android lunged to the right, Zeirdin prepared for an attack on the same side. He misread.
The machine’s corded metal arm swung into Zeirdin’s shoulder like a metal bat, shattering his left humerus, scapula, and clavicle like pottery. He gritted his teeth under the intense pain and let out a guttural grunt. Black spots appeared in his vision like mold. Zeirdin mustered all the willpower he could and grabbed its shoulder. Startled, the machine bucked away but Zeirdin held on, delivering a mana-enhanced right roundhouse kick to its torso. It connected like a beaver’s tail on the surface of a pond.
The kick bent the steel exterior housing of the machine and crushed a hydraulic fluid valve, spraying black fluid all over his leg. It was his strongest kick yet. Pain filled his shin, the special sort of throbbing of a fractured bone. He was running out of body parts to injure. Zeirdin hobbled slightly as he quickly rechambered the kick. The machine quickly caught on and twisted out of his grasp.
Polished steel glinted in the moonlight for a moment before he felt a hot horizontal line of pain materialize across his stomach. Zeirdin looked down at his stomach in shock to see his entrails partially spilling out. The similarity between his organs and those of animals was striking. In the end, he was also meat. The android stepped back, acknowledging the killing blow it dealt. Heat and strength gushed out of Zeirdin in the same fluid and he fell to one knee. Reality finally set in. He wasn’t going to defeat a much stronger foe with only effort and willpower.
It had been the same for the yemlins. It took him weeks of dying, fighting, and dying before he was finally barely able to eradicate a troupe. Zeirdin felt foolish for having a small glimmer of hope. Yet he didn’t fear. He no longer feared death or pain, but he still respected it. That was what separated him from suicidal fools.
The android took one finally surveying glance at Zeirdin on the ground before turning and walking away. It now had multiple bent metal panels. Using his one good arm, Zeirdin pulled himself over to a tree. It would be a few minutes before he died of blood loss and he wanted to be comfortable. Leaning against the tree, he swam in increasing numbness. The crickets chirped without a care in the world. Bullfrogs croaked like the bass line of the jungle. The wind rustled the trees revealing the moon. Zeirdin closed his eyes.