-Break-
Hearing a bell ring, I jump from my bed and rub the back of my head saying, “Guess I couldn’t get up early today.”
Looking around the room I see my roommate still sleeping. “Looks like he does get tired.”
Moving over to him, I grab him and shake him while saying, “Get up.”
But in the moment I get a good look at his face and see it looks sort of bruised. We didn’t do any work where he could have gotten these injuries yesterday.
Dropping him, I put my hands on my head and then I say, “Wait what happened yesterday? If I remember correctly we were planting seeds, then those fucking animals messed with me then I-.”
“You finished all your work then we walked back,” My roommate says as he jumps up.
“Ahhh!” I say shocked.
“We should go, otherwise we will be punished.”
As I get ready to leave, I see my roommate grab the leaf coverings, so I say, “I swear mine was destroyed.”
“I fixed them.”
Grabbing mine, I say, “If I need this again that means today is about to be as bad as the last.” My face turns to one of worry as this realization lands on me.
-Break-
With the leaves acting as shades, the two boys walk down one of many paths alongside the other who hold the same position as they do. But one of the boys takes this time to observe his surroundings.
Looking to my left and to my right I see others in the distance walking down paths similar to the one I am. Then after turning my head behind me, I say, “Yeah that settles it.”
There are way too many people for all of them to be just from our campsite, so that must mean there are a few campsites scattered over the land.
This makes sense because if you simply look at all the land having only us work it would be incredibly stupid, so there had to be more of us around.
But now I am kinda worried. Up until now, I had only run into people from my own campsite, so what kind of work requires all of us over in one place? I hope it’s easy.
-Break-
Location: A few meters away from the River Lúide
I take my incredibly dull spade and plunge it into the ground. Then with all my strength I pull it out of the ground and say, “MY HOPES ARE SHATTERED!”
A beastkin immediately shouts something at me in their irreconcilable language so I quiet down and get back to work.
Today we were all given spades and are tasked with digging up the earth around here. The land was already a bit dug down, but we apparently have to keep doing this until the ground here reaches a ridiculous depth.
At the very least the sun around here isn’t as bad as yesterday, but it is still hot. The ground is also incredibly dry making it hard to dig it up, but regardless I still need to get this job done so there is no use complaining.
Continuing to dig up the ground beside my roommate, I eventually hit something that causes my shovel to vibrate back to me. Dropping my shovel I pick up what I just hit and see it is a green and blue shell.
“This is cool looking.”
Suddenly a little bug head pops out of it and bites my hand. Moments later my roommate grabs my head and throws the shell out of my hand.
“What did you do that for!”
Tasteless like always he asks, “Did it bite you?”
“Yeah, just a little prick.”
My roommate takes hold of my top and rips it somewhat, then takes the ripped part and ties it around my hand. “HEY!”
“You see that man walking over there, follow him. Then when you reach the same place that he is going wash out the poison, if you don’t you will die.”
“EHHHH!”
The beastkin watching us screams at us again in their same nonsense language. So I quiet down and follow my roommate's instructions.
-Break-
Location: River Lúide
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
In front of me, I see a giant river and a bunch of people washing their bodies in the river. I was wondering how everyone didn’t stink all day and now I see why.
Getting naked I walk over to the water and start to follow my roommate's instructions as I clean my body and my hand.
Taking a moment to look down the river, I say, “Are we diverting this river? We have to be because if you look at the way we are digging, it would drain all the water into that area.
But for what reason would we do such a thing? This is an area filled with trash, I doubt those monsters would do something like this for us. I guess they have future plans for this land.
Still, my number one priority should be to get my ass clean immediately.”
-Break-
Walking over with my clothes, I try to move back to work but a beastkin stops me. He says something in his language and then points me towards a bunch of other people.
“I need to get back.”
He says something unrecognizable to me and then continues to point me towards everyone else.
Unable to get past him I just continue down the lake like everyone else I notice that there is a distinct lack of guards, and while lost in this thought I hear someone say, “Catulus leonis.”
Turning to the origin of the voice, I say, “Is that you Vul?”
“Yes, it is.”
Seeing a familiar face, I feel a tear fall from my eyes.
“Now, now young one it isn’t good for the son of such a warrior to shed tears.”
“I know, I know, but I am just so happy to see someone I recognize. Ever since we got captured, I haven’t been able to see anyone I have known, but still is it okay for us to be talking like this?”
“Yes it is, I asked my roommates and they said that the guards are all around watching people dig, so it is very lax on the walk back.”
“Doesn’t that mean we could use this time to escape?”
“I thought the same thing, but alas it isn’t that easy. We are currently around the northern edge of the campsite, if we head north to escape that is around where all the guards are, and if we try to escape in any other direction the distance would be too long, and we would without a doubt be caught.”
“So I guess the only thing we can do is wait for Mother and Father to come and get us.”
“No, we can still take action.”
“What do you mean?”
“I have run into a few others in my campsite and I have asked them to scout around their areas and report the layout back to me, and I would like you to do the same.”
“But we can’t move around.”
“According to my roommates, our schedules rotate so eventually, you will be in the grasslands again, and thanks to the flower height you should be able to hide yourself and should be able to get a good look at this.”
Remembering the face of the man holding his head in terror I freeze up somewhat.
Stopping in his tracks, Vul says, “I know this is such an arduous task to ask you to do, as an adult I should be ashamed to ask a young one such as yourself to do such a thing-.”
“It doesn’t matter Vul, you guys have always been protecting me since I was young lots of you even stayed behind to get captured with me so I wouldn’t be alone, but I am no longer a cub. I can do this much.”
With a proud face, the man named Vul says to the young man beside him, “I see, I wish you success in your endeavour.”
-Break-
That night, as the young man slept like a log. His roommate walked into the hut with both of their leaf coverings but was slightly more injured than he was in the morning.
-Break-
Location: Íogair grassland
As I face the sunflower in front of me, I say, “I will make you bastards pay for my clothes.”
But then one of the giant flowers withers in front of me. “Oh come on!”
Behind me, my roommate says, “You didn’t learn from last time?”
The words he says don’t come off as a snarky insult, but a genuine question, which annoys me more than it should. “Don’t you have work to do?”
“Yes,” My roommate says as he walks away. Stopping in his tracks, he says, “The new people tend to do stupid things when they figure out that rotations are happening. So I would suggest that you don’t take part in that.”
With sweat trickling down my face, I say, “Whatever could you mean.”
With a tasteless expression, he says, “I see, you really can’t take in information at once. I will repeat myself a few times to get the information across then.”
The pure honesty of the words he says to me strikes me in my soul, “I got it so go away.”
Turning around he walks away, a bit then stops, and within a few moments, he says, “People in our campsite don’t tend to be killed, even the people who failed on the first day were just beaten. But in our campsites I have heard from whisperers that people get killed for even the slightest provocation.”
“So what?”
“Be careful of the lives around you,” With that, he runs away.
When the boy gets far enough out of sight, I say “Smartass.” Then run head-first through the flowers.
“During my walk from and back to the campsite which is on the southwest in relation to the grassland, I have a pretty good grasp of that area, so I should aim to get a look around the east of the campsite.”
Running around, I say, “Let’s go.”
Running through the flowers a little bit I see a group of others working, each one and equal distance away from the other. If I want to sneak past them I need to push them all up together.
Moving close to the one furthest away from the rest, I let go up to the flowers and say, “You ugly hideous creation.”
Then I dash away as the flowers in his area start to wither.
“The people around start to scream at him, in utter anger but as they do I dash to the other end of all of them then from one field to another.”
Running through the next field of flowers I say, “People from Victoria really are soft, how did you people even let your guards down like that? Unlike in Terrafide where everyone is on edge by the ridiculous number of wonderbeasts all the time.”
Remembering my roommate I say, “Though I guess they aren’t all fragile, considering that a dainty boy like him can still move with all those injuries. But who cares what matters now in to continue my scouting.”
-Break-
On his way back to the campsite the younger of the two boys sees the older run up behind him, and then he asks, “Why are you out of breath?”
“Nothing let’s just go.”
“Ok.”
As the two boys just walk back to the campsite, a beastkin stares directly at the older.
-Break-
Location: Scortha fields
With great fervour, I pull up the dirt under me and plant, the side which I have been given.
“I got a good bit of information to report to Vul tomorrow, I can finally help everyone. No one is going to call me Catulus Leonis anymore, maybe they will say Rex Leonum. I can’t wait I am going to make everyone proud of me.”
-Break-
Location: River Lúide
I left digging even earlier than last time, but I couldn’t wait I had to tell Vul the good news straight away.
After cleaning up my body, I waited as long as possible while waiting for Vul to show up, but he never did.
I waited for so long that the Beastkin had to scream at me to move on. So I did all the way back to the campsite without ever seeing Vul.”