I don’t know how long I was out. It seems like forever. I was real sick for a long time. Crazy dreams. Really, really crazy dreams. Nightmares. Real bad ones. I think Joey ate one of my rations that I opened. I don’t know if that was real. I hope so. I don’t know where he is.

I hope he is okay.

I hope he can forgive me.

It got really bad there for a while. Real bad. I thought I was going to die. But I figured some things out. I think.

I’m not sure if what got me sick was cleaning my foot in the poop water, or me drinking the poop water. I found a clay jug for three coppers in the store menu. I was real, real thirsty so I drank a lot of water. I couldn’t help myself. It looked clean. Clean enough.

And my foot was throbbing. It’s really crazy how my foot didn’t look that bad at all after cleaning it. Just those seven bite marks and a little puffy. It did get real pink and the bites got white stuff oozing out of them. Then my foot puffed up real big and I started feeling real sick and super sweaty. And I couldn’t move and had to lay there forever, being real, real, super sick with crazy thoughts and dreams.

My foot isn’t too bad now if I don’t touch it.

I’m not hungry but I am really, really thirsty. I open a ration and drink the water. I haven’t ate in a while and the thought of food makes my stomach turn. I got throw up in the water when I first got sick. I really shouldn’t drink that water no matter how thirsty I get. Especially now. Better to waste the food to get clean water. I have plenty of cash for food for a long time now.

I hope Joey figured out his own meals. I hope he isn’t starving.

Where is he?

I’m shaky but I still manage to stand. I use the quarterstaff to help me hobble around. My foot is getting better. It only hurts a ton when my right foot is forward and my left leg is stretched back. And only for a second. I go to the field to find Joey.

I find him immediately. In the bathroom corner stimming with trays. He looks spotless. How is he still clean? I don’t see his meal floating on him. He stands up and does his jumping and noises meaning he wants something. He is not ignoring me. Good! I guess he did forgive me.

I don’t know why but thinking that makes me cry. I know he doesn’t like it but I grab Joey and hug him hard. I cry harder. A big sobbing cry. Joey is less aggravated than usual while I’m hugging him. How does he not smell bad? I stink.

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I buy a recharge for my survival kit and start a new fire. I still can’t see the sun. I haven’t seen it once. And it still hasn’t gotten dark. No insects still either. Warm weather all the time. Joey seems to like the warmth of the fire though, so why not? I do too for some reason. The warmth feels good on my foot.

While I have the fire going, I use my repair kit. My bow goes from 4 to 5 durability points.

The raw beast meat in my inventory looks and smells fresh still, so I use my cooking kit to make it into something called ‘basic plain grilled steak.’ We eat it with our hands and just sit there for a bit, with joey doing his finger thing. I get 1 crafting xp for cooking each steak. At 10 xp I’ll max out my culinarian profession until I can level my class up to 2.

“Joey. I got to talk to you about some stuff. When I was sick I…for a while…I really thought I was going to die and I…I…didn’t mind. That happening didn’t seem so bad. I wanted this to be over. If mom couldn’t beat those dogs how am I supposed to get through this whole place to get us out? Is there even a way out? Mom knew MMA. She was real good at it. And dad was really strong too. I know mom called dad lazy because he stopped practicing, but Carlos said dad could pin mom most of the time anyways.

“I’m not sure if I can get us out of here, but I’m not giving up. Those were just crazy thoughts, defeatist thoughts, and they’re gone now. My main goal right now is to kill the monster that murdered our family. That stupid zombie dog thing. I’m going to make him suffer, and then I am going to eat him. I hate him so much. I’m going to kill them all. Or die trying. If I die I don’t know what will happen to you. You’ll probably die too. Eventually. I’m sorry about that.

“I love you, Joey. I’m sorry I used you as a shield. I had bad thoughts about you, too. I wasn’t a good big sister. I should be your shield. Not make you mine. And I’m going to be. I’m going to take care of you real good from now on. I’m real sorry about before. I just went a little crazy. And I was a coward.

“You know…it’s…it’s. Hmmm. I’m just going to say it all so we can have a fresh start. I hope.”

I take a deep breath and a long exhale. It is scary to say this stuff. This stuff you got to keep inside and never let no one know you think it.

“Since I can remember, mom was always so proud of you. So happy to introduce you to everyone. Her special boy. She was always ashamed of me. Or she seemed so. Sure, she was mad at Carlos a lot, but she wasn’t ashamed of him. But when she introduced me she would always make a comment about my looks, like I could be a weight lifter with my frame. Things like that. You know? It hurt. Why couldn’t she just love me for who I am and what I look like?

“That’s another thing. I think I have a little hate for you because you look so normal. When you sit still you look completely normal. Kind of real handsome. Girls in my school would think you are super cute. How come you get to look normal and handsome when you don’t even care about it? You can’t even talk. I got cankles. I look like a frog. But I’m normal on the inside.”

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I stop for a second because that doesn’t sound right. It sounds false.

“No. No. I’m not. I’m ugly on the inside too. I have a lot of anger and hate in me, and it has gotten a lot worse since we got in here. I want to break things. I want to hurt things. I want to hurt things as much as I hurt inside. And I hurt inside real bad. All the time I do.

“You know, the things they teach me – I don’t agree with them. I nod my head so I don’t get in trouble and so I fit in better, but none of it makes sense. Everyone they say is nice is mean. Everything they say is right is wrong. I know it in my heart. And my heart hurts from pretending.

“We have to change if we’re going to get out of here. Or I have to. Not you. I hope you don’t change. You’re annoying, but you’re my brother and I love you. I have to change to get us out of here, but I can’t pretend with this, too. Like I pretend with everyone else. I have to become more. Mom would say to her MMA class…well, it doesn’t matter. What matters is I got to not….just be…not scared of pain. I got to like it. I got to train. I got to get a lot better. I got to suffer some. So I can make the monsters suffer more.”

Joey picks up his trays and starts rocking and stimming harder. I doubt he understood what I said. That’s okay. It’s probably better if he doesn’t. I don’t know what the right thing to do is, but my plan sounds right. Better than some of the crazy stuff I’ve been thinking.

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It’s nice how the arrows just snap into place on the string and I can shoot with gloves on. I wish the arrows just snapped to the target when I loosed the arrow. How can this place be so game like and so real at the same time? I thought about it a lot and game mode isn’t good if you’re solo. It doesn’t allow you to dodge or block or move or nothing. Having the game aim for you and shoot arrows for you is nice, but avoiding damage is more important. I’m leaving it on free attack so I can hopefully attack more than once a round. With auto all I’ll get is one attack a round, and there really isn’t a benefit for auto until you get more attacks per round. So game mode and auto-attack are out. Mom was right about free attack mode. I just got to get better with the bow. A lot better.

And I am. I am getting much better with the bow.

The spear too – I think. It is hard to know since I never learned any stances or forms. Well, a little from the training room in fourth age. But not anywhere near enough to know if I am doing anything correctly now. Kind of like if you tried to teach yourself taekwondo by watching a couple classes a couple of times. But sticking the pointy end in things seems like a no brainer.

I can use the spear and the light shield, but I am better when I use the spear two handed. I noticed in the SRD it says rogues can’t use shields. But the info for both black raven and fourth age says rogues can use light shields and bucklers. Spears are only two-handed weapons in the SRD. I wonder why? That doesn’t make any sense. And that halfling military from the fourth age story all use shields and spears as rogues. At least I’m almost positive they are rogues.

The main point I’m focusing on for training is ferocity. Explode. Be fast, be strong, be relentless, and be ferocious. Don’t let up. Attack, attack, attack. Every strike is an explosion of speed and strength.

I still feel really heavy and slow, but there is nothing I can do about that. Well, almost nothing.

I think I figured out a few things. Having a medium load lowers my dex by 2. It also makes certain skills go down by 2, or 3 including the lowered dex. Hide and move silently are two of those skills. I should have checked my skills page before trying to sneak around the dog. I definitely need to improve myself, but I also have to improve my knowledge of the game and systems. I’ve been reading the information in the SRD for d20, as well as what is included about black raven and the conversion to fourth age and twitch combat. But I have to piece together how things actually work here too. It ain’t the same as fourth age.

Medium load makes the heavy and slow feeling worse. It’s supposed to just lower my land speed, but I don’t think that is how it works here. I don’t think land speed is a thing here. In the character sheet it just has an asterisk for land speed. I think being a halfling makes me just slower in general. I also think the 8 str makes me weaker. In fourth age dex doesn’t make you faster, just BAB and AB do. And as a level 1 rogue I have zero BAB.

I can walk normal, like I could in real life, and my legs are just as long. It has to be a total speed debuff or something. I may be just as strong now, but maybe I just feel weaker? Maybe not. It is hard to tell. I’m definitely noticeably slower though, and get even slower with the medium load debuff.

I’ve been running to overcome it. Or at least get used to it. I think of it like the grav training mom used to do.

I’ve also been thinking about HPs. I think they work as a shield. And when the HP shield is gone, you start taking real injuries. I saw mom flash when the dog bit her. And when the dog bit my foot I didn’t feel anything at first. Not until a second after the damage notification.

I shouldn’t think of it as a dog. The monster. Filthy, murdering monster.

My foot is mostly fine now. The injury did help me get used to working through pain.

Every day I do a ton of push-ups, mountain climbers, crunches, sit-ups, jumping jacks, up and downs, and other exercises we used to do in class. There is a big branch I use for pull ups and chin ups. I have to use my army top as a rope to climb to the branch. I would like to do rope training but getting an actual rope would cost me a gold.

I also use Joey for squats. He doesn’t like it. Once in a while I run with him on my back, over my shoulder, or cradled. He doesn’t hate the piggy-backs, but he is not a fan of the rest. Oh well.

Since I started training I’ve had 14 long sleeps. I planned on only seven but I pushed it to 14. Another monster dog has joined the one who killed mom and dad. So now I got to kill them both. I’m giving myself 14 more long sleeps as a hard deadline. That will be about four weeks total. And then it is me or the monsters dying.

I went and looted the other stuff off mom and Carlos. I have everything in a pile near the path to the store. I can sell things to the store, too. But I haven’t yet, not really. Besides Carlos’ sling and the extra kits. No use for those I can see. I don’t know what I really need yet, and the store only gives you a fraction of what things cost to buy. And the armor and weapons have durability, so I might need to replace something important down the road. Kits don’t have durability. Just charges. All the extra loot is at our little camp area.

I can’t figure out the durability. My game boots say they are at full durability, but there are bite holes in them. Weird.

I look over and see Joey playing with his trays. He has a ton of them now. He really loves them. He’s really easy. The only thing he does that’s been driving me nuts is not eating all his food. He’s always been a twig, but the meals aren’t that big. I can’t really tell if he is skinnier. I think he maybe is. I wish he’d eat all the food. Sometimes he does, but not usually.

We both seem fine now with the amount of water that comes in the rations. I’ve kind of gotten so used to being thirsty that I stopped being thirsty.

I wish I had a mirror so I can see what I look like. They cost 10 gold in the store though.