Chapter Fifteen
Giving myself a couple of quick raps to the top of my head with knuckles. I shook myself out of my stupor and told myself to get on with it. I still had a lot of work to do and it looked like I was going to have to get camp set up here. Looking up to the ridgeline I saw the giant above us continue to creep down into the hillside. It seemed unlikely now that I would finish everything I hoped for with the light of the planet and I didn't want a large fire that would broadcast my position from anyone looking up from the valley. I resolved to begin setting up my tent soon, wanting to at least be sure of shelter before I experienced my first night here. No longer having a head lamp, I needed to make sure the tent was set up before the last of the planet light faded away, despite numerous times of setting it up trying to make camp in the dark by firelight is never a fun time.
Looking at the Goblin shaman I decided that if it had the best clothes then it wasn't even worth trying to salvage the cloth for anything else. I wasn't even willing to try to use them to replace the base of my makeshift sled, the smell was that bad. Picking up my fishing spear that the Troll had knocked out while it fed. I unscrewed the tines from the shaft as they at least seemed salvagble.
Looking at the three pieces that made up the pole, the top one bent so badly I was going to have to let it go. Unscrewing it from the bottom two, I tossed it off to the side. Willing to litter now that survival was on the line and I was sure I would be leaving here over burdened as it was. Cleaning the tines off on the ground, I returned it and the two straight parts to their brothers in my pack, before going back to my looting.
Quickly grabbing the jagged knife that had been used to sacrifice the smallest goblin. I used it to cut through the shaman’s belt so I could easily remove the pouch on its side, which looked to be from some smaller creature's now unused stomach. Unwilling to risk my hands on a pat down, I used the back of the knife to scrape down the vest and pants looking for any hidden pockets. Not finding any I sighed in relief at not having to figure out the best way to get it open and remain clean. Ignoring the bone jewelry it had stuck in its face, neck and ears, I set down the knife and grabbed it by its hands and dragged it over to the Troll limb pile.
Leaving a couple of yards of space on the off chance that I was wrong and they were just waiting for their own powersource to consume. I dropped the body down and walked back to grab the knife and continue the fun, fun, happy times of corpse robbing. Fortunately most of the remaining ones only had on loincloths making it painfully obvious that they didn't have anything worth searching for. Most of the loincloths and vests broke apart on the way to dragging them, to what I was now going to be referring to unimaginatively, as the corpse pile… I really hope zombies aren't a thing here, but now that I sent that flag out there I was going to have to figure out a way to get a bonfire going tonight because there was no chance I was going to be sleeping with that thought running through my head.
Fun Fact! I could now state that I was sure goblins were natural creatures in that they had the ‘equipment’ to propagate naturally. While I could only be glad that the trolls either gained that equipment later in their development or they were more magical creatures that didn't need it. Either way I was thankful that I didn’t have to deal with that third leg in my face while removing the other two.
Twenty-three corpses, Fifty-eight spears (six of which had actual metal heads), and three more pouches later. I had finished the first task I had given myself. With only having to stop one time to remove more troll parts I was figuring it had taken about twenty minutes. Looking over to the bear still laying on its side, I was worried that the troll had hit something vital in its efforts to get loose as Yogi wasn't looking so hot.
Tongue sticking out and panting, he had only eaten a small part of the fish I had given him. Going over to my pack I pulled out my water bladder and one of my two collection pails. Taking a beat to drain some of the water down my throat myself, I poured a third of it into the bucket and walked it over to the bear. That left me with about two quarts of fresh water for the future.
While the cold-hearted, logical part of my brain told me that I was only wasting it and that I should be happy that another threat to my life was gone. The stupid part of me that had always dreamed of adventure even though I knew better told the ivory tower bastard to shut its mouth. The bear had fought face to face with the troll so I wouldn't have to, and yes, while maybe it was only returning the favor from saving him from the fireball earlier. Comrades don't count favors, I'd been there for him, and he'd been there for me, that was enough. We had fought side by side, so the obnoxious prick could go stuff it's stupid opinions where the sun don't shine. We had bled for each other, well the bear had bled for me, and if he was going to go. I was going to do my best to ease his suffering, regardless of the later cost to myself. Bending down to offer him the water, I looked into his eyes and at least they seemed clear and that they recognized me.
Rubbing my hand on his side I said, “Hey Yogi, you mind letting me check out where the troll got you? If you let me see how bad it is, maybe I can come up with something to help.”
As he gave me a growl and didn't move I said “What, you don't like that name? Okay, well how about I give you something more noble?”
When he rolled more onto his side and moved his paws to give me more room to look. I wondered if the trip here had increased his intelligence to the point where he could actually understand me or if I was still just projecting. Continuing to talk to him softly I got closer so that I could look closer into its belly area, in a classic good news, bad news situation. It seemed like he had a doozy. “If you don't like Yogi, how about a couple of other famous bear names, I asked? Smokey? Baloo? Teddy?”
With a growl he denied them all.
“Okay, how about Corduroy, that was a favorite of my kids when they were little?”
With a snuff he put the nix on that as well. Looking closer at his lower abdomen, the good news seemed to be that only one of the spikes had broken through his thick hide. With the bad news being that the one that did looked to have broken off part of it and it seemed deep.
“Okay, well fine if you refuse to help, I'll just keep spouting off more names.” I told him as I started to stand up and brush myself off. “We're going to have to leave that alone for right now. I don't want to pull it and risk causing more problems until I have camp and a fire. Worse case scenario means I’m going to want to cauterize it and that means getting a fire pretty hot.”
With a whine that I took to mean agreement, the bear settled back down. As I finished getting up and went to start setting up my tent, he snuffed at me questioningly.
“What?” I replied, “I promise I'll get back to you.” As he snuffed at me again I took a different guess. “What’s my name?" I asked, As he seemed to nod in agreement I spoke my thoughts out loud. “Well if trolls and goblins are real here, then until I am assured otherwise I have no reason not to think that the Fae might be a thing as well.” I pondered out loud while thinking back on the limited time that I had been here. “I don't think I have even thought about it and I know I haven't uttered it, so let's do our best to keep our true names out of this world, on the off chance that the old tales about names having power over us turns out to be true.” I continued softly, almost to myself. “I have always loved the name Gaian... you know I always dreamt of being a druid when I was younger.” Rubbing his head some more, I continued on. “I wondered what it would be like to transform into a bear like you or maybe into a mountain lion.” I quickly turned my laugh into a cough at his woof of derision.
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“Hey, better them than a wolf, those dogs are useless without their friends and I'm too much of a loner for a pack.” He settled his maw down on his paws as if to concede the point. “Being able to send my thoughts out to talk with animals, hurl bolts on energy and transform all while living in nature has always been a dream of mine. I've always believed in duality. So I figured if Gaia was the loving, nurturing, and healing side of nature. Then Gaian must be the male defender, representing power, protection and an eagerness to push back on the encroaching civilizations! Whenever I played a druid in any kind of game, that was always my name for him.”
With a little yip the bear called for my attention. “What?” I exclaimed. “You want my handle? A name I have literally spent years of my life turning real?”
With another yip my new friend indicated that he had no shame. “Okay, well you definitely lived up to the defending aspect of him in your willingness to throw yourself into the fight with the beast. So I guess it's the least I can do. I bequeath the name unto you.” I said formally as I set my hand on his brow.
The bear… no scratch that Gaian, seemed to have a shiver run through him as he accepted his new name. Or maybe my mind was just overimagingin again. With another questioning yip he seemed to ask me again what I would choose for myself.
“No, I don’t think I will go with any of my alt's names.” I replied to the implied question. “I think that I would also like to go with a descriptive pseudonym, I have always liked to putter around learning different new things. Seeing as how we both have a whole new world to explore, I really have always thought being a generalist is the better option than specializing into something and running up against a bad fit. It's the whole reason I loved playing druids and shamans really.” I continued to monolog. “In that vein let's go with Jack.” And as I made my declaration out into the world, I thought I might have felt a shiver run through my own body at this new universe's acceptance of the new me. Who had been born anew today on this planet. “Yes,” I said as I clapped my hands together and stood up. “Just Jack will be enough for me.” I said again with a small, sad smile as I tried to accept all that I had lost yet still refused to believe was gone completely.
“Okay, well now that we have figured out what to call each other, I need to get back to work.” I said out loud to Gaian as I took another look at the troll’s center. Not looking like it was ready for a trim yet, I moved over to my pack and pulled the tent from where it hung from the bottom. Small and light, it was easy to set up, with full light even though most of the planet had disappeared into the ridge above. With practiced motions, I staked it into the ground. I ignored the footprint which was part of my travois, but staked down the overcover and vestibule as well. It wasn't looking like rain, with such a clear sky, and I didn't want to get dirt all over the fish taking the sled apart. So I decided to just take a chance and resolved to just quickly carve a channel around the edges if it started to look like a storm was coming.
Going back to carefully trim down the troll again and throwing the nubbins in the growing pile, I really hoped it would run out of life source soon. Otherwise trying to get any sleep was going to be impossible, as I had no desire for the wakeup call I would receive, with no alarm to remind me of the bihourly trimming I needed to continuously do.
With a frown, something odd tugged at my brain, something was wrong. Going back over everything with my mind and taking a quick count. I quickly confirmed the number of corpses hadn't changed and that the corpse pile didn't look any different. The troll was shaved back down so that wasn't it. Looking at the limb and nubbin pile it didn’t look like anything was growing or out of place there. Wishing I still had access to the phone on my camera, so I could compare and contrast it later as I did my next cutting. I looked over to Gaian to see if he had noticed anything wrong, but he just stared back at me like I was crazy. Shaking my head I resolved to perform my next shaving more carefully to try and figure out what my subconscious was trying to shout out to me so unsuccessfully.
Walking back over to my pack, I used the shaman's sacrificial dagger to loosen up the three pouches and turn them over with the tip of the blade to dump the contents out onto the ground. I really wanted to see what the little monsters used as currency, or just thought was important enough to be the only thing they carried with them other than weapons. I really thought it strange that none of them had anything like I would have considered to be a backpack, or even anything smaller like a bladder filled with water. Either they had been planning on drinking the bear's blood before carving it up and using the hide to cart back the meat to their nest. Or, perhaps they just planned on gorging themselves on the bear once it was dead and were okay with just leaving the rest to rot.
As I turned the pouches over one by one several stones rolled out of each of them. Using the blade to fling the pouches over to the corpse pile to burn later with their owners, I used the knife to tap them gently. There were eight glowing rocks. Three had come from the shaman’s pouch, while the other three and two from the ones that had held the sacrifice for him to slaughter. They all had different colors to them, three seemed to glow green, three had a brown glow, while the remaining two glowed blue and gold. They hadn't seemed to be divided up by color, with the shaman who I could only presume was the most powerful and had received first pick. Instead they seem to have been separated by how round they were. With the flattest ones belonging to the lieutenant that was slightly smaller and also had a more dubious looking spear.
None could be considered fully round, and they ranged from the size of a quarter, down to one barely bigger than a dime that was clearly the smallest one. But again the dime sized one was the closest one to being globe like and so that had been in the shaman's pouch. It was very confusing. They also seemed to be covered in bits of dried blood, but whether that was because they had been won in a fight or just were the goblins' poor housekeeping habits I really wasn’t able to guess at this point.
Scooping them up with the rag I had dried my knife and ax head off with. I gave them a quick rub and then tucked them all back into the baggy and put it in a side pocket on my pack for easy access to ponder over later when I had time.
Not wanting to walk around in just my boxers for my next task, I brushed my legs off as best I could. Then after removing my belt and boots, quickly redressed my lower half. After pulling my boots back on and lacing them up I decided against adding the gaiters and tossed them into my pile of soiled laundry. Again not wanting to dirty up the fish I left them on their little sled and grabbed a second bundle of paracord from the bottom access flap. Unclipping my pack from its separate metal frame, I was left with something much more barebones. Normally I used this method to pack out caribou or elk meat after a hunt, but today I was going after something much simpler but still just as necessary for maintaining life.
After asking Gaian to keep an eye on the troll, I shouldered the frame and picked up the strongest two goblin spears, one of which was definitely not like the others. One clearly hadn't been made by goblin hands, it was sturdy, with a pole a little taller than me before running up to a foot long hilt riveted into the top. The hilt had a crosspiece like a boar spear and was topped with a beautiful looking two foot long leaf blade, which looked to carry a decent edge. This was all at total odds for every other piece of equipment the rest of the little rats had carried. With one spear for throwing and another to defend myself if I ran into anything else, I felt this was as good as I was going to get. So I started off jogging farther along the flatter part of the hilltop, heading to the small copse of trees about a quarter mile in the distance. Not wanting to get too far, with the bear in bad shape and still having the neverending troll to worry about. I figured this was safe enough, as if I really needed to, I could drop the pack and sprint back in about a minute.
Getting there quickly while still being just slightly out of breath. I placed the frame on the ground next to the spears. I quickly began gathering up whatever dead branches I could find from the ground and placing them on the frame. After gathering a decent amount, I took the paracord and looped it around the top of the frame. Then throwing it over the branches, I ran it back up through the bottom and pulled it tight. Cinching it down, before gathering the spears to lean against a tree for easy access once I managed to get the pack up on my back. Heaving it up I quickly settled it on my shoulders, and grabbed the spears. Walking at a steady pace, I wanted to get back but didn't want to trip and end up in a worse situation than the bear.
It had to be closing in on the fifteen minute mark by now and that was a lot longer than I wanted to be away from the troll. With no optimum scenario and a pit starting to grow in my stomach, I picked up the pace to a brisk walk as the weight of the branches kept me from jogging. Despite the camp still being in sight and nothing that seemed to be going on there. I told myself that it was just nerves, and nothing too bad could possibly be going wrong. Rapping my forehead with the knuckles of my free hand, I don't understand how I am able to keep the name I was born with out of my thoughts, but was unable to stop taunting the universe.