With battle done, and darkness still in the air, Elli and I turned to start back up towards camp and possibly get a bit more sleep. However, we quickly noticed that the knights themselves weren’t following.

Turning to see what was going on, I saw that Sir Conrad and Sir Oswald stood guard with their weapons ready while the others hovered over the corpses of the rad-wolves. They had their daggers out, and they were tearing and cutting at the tough hides, crudely separating them into pieces.

Elli and I watched them for a moment, curiosity piqued.

“What are they doing?” Elli asked, her voice low.

I shrugged.

“Looks like they’re cutting up the rad-wolves for something. No idea what for, though. Can’t imagine they plan on eating them. I mean, I’m not gonna try any if they smoke the meat over a flame, no matter how long they cook it.”

“You would just turn into a rad…creature yourself,” CD said over the TUNI.

“Considering he’s already part monster,” Elli whispered, nudging me with her shoulder playfully.

“Monster? What are you--ohh, the--okay, yeah. So you will finally stop hitting on me now that I’m no longer human?”

“Hah! Boy can dream,” she said with a wink.

“Ugh. There’s a reason why I try to stay tuned out, and that there. Okay, aplekings. Go and offer to help them. Win a few monkey-points.”

Sir Oswald caught my eye, looked over to where Elli was staring, and a big understanding grin rolled over his face.

“Hey, guys, we’ve got scavvies sitting here feeling left out. Let’s say we invite them to the big show.”

The knights turned, grinning. Sir Alain stabbed his blade into the ground.

“Come on over. This might be of interest to you.”

We approached, stepping carefully over the tar like blood that stained the ground. I saw that the knights had made jagged rough cuts all over the bodies, digging into the rad-wolves’ chests and abdomens. A steaming pile of warm, fresh, yet somehow rotted flesh lay in gruesome piles near each of them.

“What’s going on?” I asked. “Are... are you scavenging them?”

Sir Alain grinned and nodded.

“Yes, though it’s not as profitable as what you scavvies do. These aren’t treasures you can sell later. They spoil too quickly.”

“Not unless you like rot in your lockup,” Sir Conrad said. I noticed he’d got a little slime on his chin, a problem that he rectified a moment later with a backhand wipe. “Mutants offer valuable substances. The tissue of a rad-wolf’s heart and liver can be used to create field potions. The heart provides an oil that can be applied to weapons to add shock damage. The liver can be used to temporarily raise one’s endurance.”

Elli’s eyes widened with excitement.

“Really? That’s amazing.”

“Only lasts seven days, though,” Sir Eadric added from his place on watch. “Usually less than that. Depends on the heat and the weather, but if you know what you’re doing, it can go up to seven days, maybe a day extra?”

I nodded, suddenly understanding why I hadn’t heard any of this before.

“So it’s not worth it to salvage for cash, because it’ll go bad before you can find a buyer, but it is very much worth it because your chance at staying alive goes up.”

“Yeah,” Sir Alain nodded. “That’s why we call them field potions. No point in bringing them with us anywhere else. We make them in the field when we get the chance. They’re good for an edge.”

“Potions,” CD spluttered indignantly. “Might as well add talismans and magic wands. Your entire race, even its most noble and worthy, has fallen into despairing primitivism. Still, what he says might be useful for later. With the right parts, I can design a refrigeration system that I believe will allow you to store and keep ready a thousand of these such medicines, oils, and elixirs.”

My mind raced with his words and their possibilities.

“We can help. We’ve got experience with this sort of thing. I mean, we don’t just harvest the biggies.”

Sir Conrad raised an eyebrow.

“Think you can do better than us?”

I smirked.

“Let us get our tools. It isn’t top-notch — the scav-man keeps all that. But we’ve got our own kits for smaller monsters. Should work just as well here.”

Elli and I started back to the campsite, only for her to start giggling and blasting forward, sprinting as if the mech god himself was on her tail. We dashed across the uneven terrain, dodging the occasional rock and ducking under low-hanging branches as we worked our way up the slope.

Neck and neck, we sped up the uneven terrain, our breaths coming in quick bursts. I could hear Elli's laughter coming in harder gasps, my own chortles joining them, or feet plodding down hard beneath us.

"You're not going to win this time, Alaric!" she gasped, pulling ahead slightly.

"We'll see about that!" I shot back, pushing myself to run faster. The cool air turned hot, sweat rising against my skin, as I tore after her.

As we neared the lip of the hill, the ground became steeper and more challenging to navigate. I could feel the burn in my legs as I pushed up the incline. It had been so much easier running downhill and away from the rad-monsters that I cursed myself for a moment. I even decided to play her games.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

Elli was right beside me, and too late I saw a glint of mischief in her eyes.

“Oh no, a root,” Elli said. Her foot almost convincingly ‘caught’ on a protruding root, and she stumbled sideways, bodily slamming into my shoulder. She reached out, grabbing onto my arm and pulling me down with her as she tumbled to the silty soil. We both went sprawling, tumbling down the slope in a tangle of limbs and laughter.

"Oops!" Elli exclaimed between giggles, her eyes wide and laughing as we rolled to a stop at the bottom of the slope. I couldn't help but laugh along with her, the sound echoing through the quiet forest.

"You did that on purpose!" I accused playfully, propping myself up on my elbows and giving her a mock glare.

"Me? Never!" she replied, feigning innocence as she wiped a tear of laughter from her eye. "I think you tripped me!"

We lay there for a moment, catching our breath.

“Every day I question life and why I decided to go along with you two simians. Truly, you are prime specimens of how not to behave out in the real world.

"Alright, truce," I said, extending a hand to help her up.

We both ignored his jabs as she took my hand, and together we stood, brushing dirt and leaves from our clothes. The campsite was just ahead, the flickering light of the campfire visible through the trees.

“You know, Al, nobodies watching us right now. We could, you know,” she said, pushing herself up against me. My heart beat hard as she brought her lips close to my own . . . and then shoved me into the dirt. She laughed loudly as she sprinted up the slope and into the campsite.

"Dirty Al, you can only think of one thing!” Elli said, her tone becoming more serious as she glanced back toward the rad-wolves' corpses. “We still have work to do."

I shook my head, chuckling. There was no one else on the planet like Elli, and I was lucky to know her. Even though she was a special case, I had learned how to deal with her.

I hurried up the rest of the way to the campsite and joined her in grabbing our kits, double checking the pouches and tools within, before heading back out the way we had come. I glanced at Elli, appreciating her resilience and spirit. In the midst of danger and uncertainty, she remained a constant source of strength and encouragement. Together, we returned to where the knights were cutting up the wolves, ready to demonstrate our expertise.

“Watch and learn,” I said, moving to the side of a rad-wolf and rolling up my sleeves. The knights now stood in a semi-circle around us, big grins on their faces as if this entire episode had been their plan after all.

Didn’t matter to me if it was. This was the sort of thing I’d spent my life training for. And CD’s promise of what he’d be able to do with the concoctions, if I learned how to make them, was exhilarating.

“Primitive enthusiasm can be endearing,” CD commented dryly. “Just don’t get too caught up in the moment or you might cut yourself.”

Elli and I stepped in, and in no short order, our practiced precision came to bear. The knights oohing and aahing as we sliced and diced the beasts in a fast and efficient manner. I’d noticed right away that the tearing way in which the knights did their work actually harmed their progress, slowing things down and risking damage to the very organs they were hell-bent on retrieving, and so it was with gusto that we showed off our prowess.

In practically no time at all, we had neatly extracted the hearts and livers, laying them out in a clean row. They looked just as abhorrent as the creatures they’d been stuck inside, but if we could use them to stay alive and have a better fighting chance, I wouldn’t mind if they even looked like piles of…okay, that was a bit too much, even for me.

The knights clapped, impressed.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Sir Conrad congratulated them brightly. “If you two fought like you carve, you’d be unstoppable.”

“If Alaric fought like he carved,” Sir Oswald added, “He’d have done half this work in that tree over yonder.”

The knights and Elli laughed, and I thought I heard the tiny little startled chuckle from CD himself, though I couldn’t say for certain.

“Comes with the territory,” I replied, wiping my hands on a rag. “Let’s get these back to camp.”

Together, we carried the organs back to our campsite. The knights followed though they stopped to pick up their crossbows on the way, as well as any other items that’d gone errant in the fray. Once there, we all spread out again to gather fuel for the fire, piling it high and setting it alight. The flames roared up quickly, easily coming to life in the dark red glow of the fire pit’s last burning.

Two of the knights again took watch as the others went to the Cataphract. From the mech’s storage, they dug out a large cauldron and a sack of various oils and herbs. They proceeded to bring the cauldron down and set it over the fire. There, Elli and I watched as they carefully placed the rad-wolf hearts inside, adding a mixture of herbs and oils from the sack.

“CD,” I whispered as I watched them. “Can you analyze those ingredients and make a recipe from which we can replicate all this later?”

“Already on it, ape,” he said, a hint of indignance to his voice. “Sheesh, what do you even think me for? An apeling in heat? Pfft!”

I snickered, and Sir Alain turned his head from the flames.

“Something on your mind?” he asked.

“Was just thinking that this is one of those things that’s probably on the Church’s Do-Not-Do list,” I said, thinking fast.

He laughed.

“Most everything is,” he said with a wink, turning back to the cauldron. He stirred the pot with a long wooden spoon. “We need to boil them for a while, then distill the mixture. There isn’t much to see for a while now. Take a rest if you wish.”

Elli and I sat down in the grass nearby, well too interested to leave it be. As the hearts boiled, the air filled with a pungent, herbal scent that didn’t smell like something I’d eat, but was just possibly something I might bathe in…or drink? The two knights on watch cycled with the ones distilling, and after some time, Sir Oswald declared the brew, “A disgustingly effective success.”

It didn’t take long for the two of us to see what he meant. The liquid had turned to a yellow-green mucus-like mess, something that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a sneeze.

However, the knights didn’t just gloop the mess out into bottles. Instead, they took out another device, this one a complicated-looking colander spigot with collapsible legs, and they set it up nearby. Using this distillation apparatus, they carefully separated the oil from the rest of the mixture by plopping it in and letting a clear oil drip from the thicker viscous mess above. This drip then filtered to a spigot at the bottom of it all, which they could open or close by means of a simple lever. Turning it off and on, they collected it all into a series of small, clear bottles.

“Amazing,” I said, holding up a bottle to the light of the campfire. The oil glistened, now a more beautiful golden color.

“If only your simple mind could appreciate the complexity of such a process,” CD interjected. “But then again, you wouldn’t know a diamond if it dropped on your head.

“If you find that impressive, just wait til you see the shock it adds to our weapons,” Sir Alain said, smiling as I ignored CD yet again.

Next, the knights repeated the process with the rad-wolf livers, boiling them down and distilling the liquid into a red-tinged, bubbly potion. The scent was different this time, a mix of earthy and metallic tones.

“This will help with endurance,” Sir Alain explained, collecting the potion into more clear bottles. “Drink it before a big fight, and you’ll feel a noticeable boost.”

“Drink it?” I asked, eyeing it warily.

“Or don’t drink it, and maybe get killed,” Sir Conrad said with a shrug.

The fire was dying down now, with five potions of yellow and red lined up neatly beside us. The night had been long, grueling, almost fatal, and quite surprising.

“So does this mean we’re ready to go now?” CD asked, his voice sarcastic and slightly impatient. “I can’t wait to see you apes choke on those potions. Hmm, I might even opt-in to study your demise, so I know where to tweak the recipe.”

“Who will even brew them for you, then?” I whispered and cleared my throat.

“So do we head out now?” Elli asked simultaneously, noticing the rising gray of predawn.

“To the Geared Hells with that,” Sir Alain answered, raising a hand to his mouth. “Two more hours, people. 30-minute shifts,” he yelled, his voice no doubt reaching the two knights on watch, before turning back to her. “Another rule of the Wilds. Don’t travel tired. Not when you don’t need to. If we’re late, we’re late. Better late than dead.”

Elli and I nodded before heading off to take a well-deserved short rest.