---- Roland's perspective ----

Bear-bird, hopefully they aren't part crow lest this become a murder

Ha

Jokes aside I have very few options, the creature seems averse to my torch|

Simply staring deeply into the blazing stick.

I swing it around only for it to recoil, eyes firmly on the blaze.

HMMMMMMMMMM

Well it is very clearly not interested in attacking me through the torch.

What do I know that can help

1 seems to be a nocturnal predator

2 advanced climbing and stealth abilities

3 Cautious

4 a potent physical threat to my life

5 Not sure if my handaxe/striker is softer or weaker than this creature.

Knowing my luck it will probably be a form of magical fauna resistant to metal weapons.

The edge of the axe has held so far but refining it will be best when possible.

Tangent over, what do I do against a creature that probably outweighs me several times over, is an ambush predator and is currently vigilant against any perceived movement?

I have my axe, this torch which would be lucky to last 5 minutes

no pegs, no clothes (would kill to have this right now), a few smaller sticks and some unfinished rope.

Oh and my staff/walking stick.

Killing it is probably not an option, at least not without getting a lucky attack off.

In the moments it takes for me to consider these possibilities the creature gets up on its thick and powerful back legs, Silently...

before I can consider the possible actions it is leaping towards me at frightening speed.

I react best I can on the 5m wide space of the branch I am on.

This results in several cuts and gashes appearing on my arm as I smear fire on the creature's face.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

I end up unconsciously dropping the torch, clutching just above my elbow trying in vain to stifle the agony in my right arm.

As my scream echoes out it mixes with the massive creature's howl of fear and pain.

When I am able to tear my eyes away from my profusely bleeding arm the creature is writhing on the tree.

Before it gets back up I pick up the still burning torch, noticing the scorch marks and embers catching the grains of wood, and I jam the lit end into the writhing maw of the creature.

It almost gets away as I stamp forward missing my mark since my left hand isn't my usual one.

Another screech fills the empty night.

My vision swims as I continue to batter and beat the still flailing Owl-bear thing.

Quickly I breathe heavy and I drop to the branch, strength fleeing my body, I vaguely hear a thump in the distance, I can't see at this point.

Blurry vision shows my right arm, the bleeding has slowed significantly.

Not because I sealed the wound though, almost entirely because I have lost too much blood for my body to continue losing it at a rapid rate.

Dragging my right arm towards my torch, it's flame far smaller than I remember.

I urge my left hand to drop the flame onto the still bleeding arm as my body feels cold.

Cold so, cold.

Cold like the winter when the headmaster turned up and took me from my family.

The smiles on their faces.

The weighty pouch of velvet cloth that contained enough coin that my family immediately became a lower noble house.

I had heard from many who went to the academy about how my family went.

Father barely know the word restrain and mother never learnt numbers.

The family is still joked about when the sons and daughters of those lower nobles displaced by the headmaster's generosity capsized their own fortune.

Heat, warmth.

My arm protests against the warming sensation.

But I am too cold, no against my chest will feel better.

A foul smell clogs my nose, I can't smell.

"Iron boy! Men are forged from base boys! We work our flesh til it can resist steel!" One of my instructors had said once when I was doing some physical training.

"But you boy. You Are an Iron lad, Real grit and power behind yer!" he said as I struggled against a young minotaur student who called me out.

Sleepy, this heat is nice, it creeps across my skin, the tingling sensation telling me that I am alive still.

probably not for long though.

15 years... I think.

Going to be honest everything is kinda fuzzy at this point.

...

...

"The fundamentals of magic are rather simple."

A professor goes on about

"how they work however are utterly impossible to decipher."

He continues by demonstrating his own considerable talent with psionics or telekinesis.

"For example I personally imagine a phantom limb for my own ability, while this causes me to have to life an object based on my own body, I can also use the utility of levitation."

he says as he begins to float above the ground with no sign of attention.

"This intuitive use of magic relies on the natural systems that humans and many humanoid creatures develop in childhood around the movements of their bodies."

"for example I don't need to do excess calculations to accelerate a projectile, instead I image my phantom limb throwing the object."

low and behold the chalk he was holding darts across the room striking a student who was asleep and startling them conscious as their face is covered in a thick white powder.

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Light?

But my room should still be dark, I do night-time classes I find the night a easier time concentrating.

I try to turn over to no avail.

My eyes open slowly to a bright blue sky.

What? I was just in class and had went to sleep...

And the memories of the past day flood my hazy mind as I slowly peer at my body.

burnt blackened flesh stares back. the tree around me coated in a thin layer of equally blackened blood.

I pull my right arm from the tree as the crackling of my charred skin and blood flake off of me.

This will make survival more and less difficult.

Upside natural camouflage at night.

Not a bonus, I will be in pain and suffering and everything will get worse from today onwards.

I do manage to pry myself from the tree.

I am head to toe, both naked, burnt and surprisingly not looking like charcoal.

My skin arranged with large black plates of skin broken by faultlines or areas of flexibility.

Which appear as a pink-white or red.

The hair on my body is burnt off and I constantly feel a tingly sensation across my skin, like the flames still burn.

I try to move and stumble which causes just a few problems.

First I drop to the branch and steady myself since I just scared what remaining bravado out of myself.

Second I black out for half a second which was ultimately fine but I never want to climb one of these trees again.

I have to assume I don't have a huge amount of blood left.

enough to live though.

Shaking off the splinters and needles crawling throughout my aching and burning limbs I carefully and slowly descend the tree making certain I keep my hand axe on me.

And on the floor of the forest roughly an hour later. My loverly friend from yesterday night is on the ground clearly dead.

The corpse reminds me of myself in a way. the charred flesh and lack of fur or feathers that it's former incarnation used for considerably impressive stealth.

it's current charred and mangled corpse breeds a certain pride in my ability to jeopardise a number of beings myself included.

And so I set to crudely butchering the creature.

Without a hook or anything even close to supporting the weight of such a big creature, it is going to taste like crap no matter how I slice it.

I tear its charred flesh and take my time to wrench out the stomach and bowels.

The other organs while less tasty ordinarily, are still edible.

As such I prepare my savage breakfast and am forced to stop and hurl a few times.

Strips of flesh are left on some branches set strategically at to be heated by the fire but not burnt by it.

Fuck, I am so tired.

back to grinding random rocks into a vague tool shape before I try to fuck around with the river banks.

I also harvested some of the owl-bear's blood, Considering the possibility that even baseline creatures in this world have a bit of magic in them, I see no reason not to use some as formation inks.

While I would need to plan out the larger enchantments I can do the normal ones with even sticks, stones and stealthy as fuck Owl-bear bones.

Grinding bones to powder mix with a little blood, make a marking then stick the rocks into a fire for a few seconds and sculpt the deformations.

Finally the stressful part.

Attempt to actually use the fucking enchantment.

usual types require activation for the first time.

Very rare and expensive versions draw from the world itself.

Something about the whole needing life to work, 'give life to your creations, breathe in the lifeforce of our world and breathe out the cosmic might of gods!' some preachy fuck once said when I asked why lifeforce or whatever it was did what it did.

And hey fuck it, if life is what it needs I pour my blood into the shallow grooves of the crude incantation for object reinforcement.

Stranger still a chill wind rushes past me as my blood boils in the grooves and eventually stains the blood/bone mixture.

I run the native ore axe over the rock chisel to check what happened and to my surprise while the native ore is still harder, I am assuming it is iron, the rock is now acting like a metal, it doesn't split but deform under pressure.

Weird, I suppose I hadn't used my own blood before.

Supposedly doing the whole blood thing is just begging to become a dark caster.

Sacrificial rituals to gather the blood necessary to add magic to an item, and often these items were said to feast in one's body and soul to use.

Well, that was kinda anti-climatic.

Though learning magic would be harder.

Then again I did only do an enchantment, actual blood magic is far more difficult and dangerous.

Especially since curriculum never covered the practical applications of blood magic.

So, maybe I just had a great talent for blood magic?

Not a great sign.

After all blood magic is meant to be a corrupting influence on you.

Not exactly what I want to get into if I am to re-join my original world after two years.

I hold the now lightly blood coloured pale white rock.

pretty sure this one was either a partially formed crystal or bone which has been compressed into stone.

But that leads to a single question.

How do I learn this as fast as possible?

One answer I have.

Experimentation