Aster walked over and helped Castle to her feet, grimacing at the damage to her arm. “You gonna be okay?”
“Yeah,” Castle said, fumbling with the strap on her bracer and removing it. It was dented where the raptor had bitten, but she was able to pop it mostly back into place with a couple of hits from butt end of her knife.
While Castle did that, Aster looked over herself and frowned. Her once shiny chainmail was coated with layers of red blood and dust from getting thrown into the ground. She also found that the haft of her spear was more slippery than she’d prefer, having gotten coated in dino juice after traveling entirely through the first raptor she’d killed, so she rolled it around in the dusty earth to dry it off and coat it in something with more grip.
After that, Aster went and inspected one of the raptors, prodding it first with her spear. Not because she doubted its death, but because there were plenty of examples of reptiles and birds with the ability to react to stimulation after death, like snakes and chickens. But the springclaw raptor remained still.
“Look at these teeth,” Aster commented. They were unique, with cutting teeth like a shark in the front of their mouth and rounded, molar-like teeth in the back. Were they omnivorous? Unlikely, considering the teamwork they’d presented. Maybe there’s something they hunt that has a thick shell?
“Don’t need to,” Castle replied, holding up her arm with the roughly repaired bracer on it. She tugged at the leather strap with her teeth, tightening it. “I got a pretty close look just a few moments ago.”
“You get any levels?”
“Yeah, three class levels, but only one race level.”
Aster nodded. “I think it’s a two-to-one ratio. My race leveled up once my class hit level two.”
“Agreed. I also think it’s good to note that we both got the same amount of experience, even if I actually only technically killed one.”
“For sure.” Aster left the raptor and went to look at the first one she’d killed. “That’s bound to help in the future.” This raptor was perhaps in the ‘best’ condition of the three. Inspecting the plumage running down its back, she got an idea.
It took a few tries to find some feathers suitable for her plans, but in the end she’d gathered fifteen that she thought could work. She also collected a tooth she’d found by where the last raptor had latched on to Castle, as well as a bushel of grass she thought might be helpful for starting a fire later that night.
“Done yet?”
Aster sighed. She wished she had a notebook or something to take notes with, but as she didn’t she tried her best to commit the raptors’ anatomy to memory. “Yeah, let’s go.”
She tucked her trophies into the pouch at her side with the potions in it and followed behind Castle as they headed down the slope that headed into the canyon below. A thought struck her. “What are you going to do with your free points?”
“Haven’t thought about it yet,” Castle said. “That was easier than I thought it was going to be, but it still could have gone worse in a dozen ways. Maybe I’ll shore up my defenses a bit? Throw them into Toughness and Vitality?”
Aster agreed and after a moment, put two points into Vitality and two into Agility. Then she pulled up her Status.
Status
Name: Aster Rose
Race: [Human (G) – lvl 1]
Class: Warrior (Medium) — lvl 3
Profession: N/A
Health Points (HP): 140/140
Mana Points (MP): 150/150
Stamina: 140/140
Stats
Strength: 13
Agility: 17
Endurance: 14
Vitality: 14
Toughness: 17
Wisdom: 12
Intelligence: 12
Perception: 12
Willpower: 14
Free points: 0
TP: 13
Titles
[Forerunner of the New World]
Class Skills
Basic One-Handed Weapons (Inferior), Basic Two-Handed Weapons (Inferior), Basic Sword & Shield (Inferior), Basic Throwing Weapons (Inferior), Balanced Approach (Inferior)
Race Skills
Endless Tongues of the Myriad Races (Unique)
A hundred and forty health was a fantastic change, considering her starting health had been just fifty points. Toughness and agility were now her strongest stats, which made her happy. That had always been the case, in her opinion. Nothing felt better than outlasting an opponent when they started to tire and get sloppy. And she’d always been quick, but now she felt like she could break speed records on her feet.
“What’s your highest stat now?” Aster asked.
“Strength,” Castle said. “It’s at twenty after those free points.”
Aster scowled, “You said you were putting them into Vitality and Toughness.”
Castle shrugged. “I said ‘maybe’, and being stronger will help with defenses, too. Besides, it feels good to get stronger with just a few points. Definitely better than hitting the gym.”
“Really trying to live up to the name, huh,” Aster mumbled.
“Why? Got a stat you want to brag about?”
“Nope,” Aster said. “I’m completely content. Everything’s good. I’m good.”
This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.
She was not good, and wanted desperately to get more levels soon.
--
A few hours of walking later found Aster and Castle making camp next to a stream they’d found, Castle clearing the area of brush while Aster worked on building a fire.
It wasn’t easy, and Aster thanked her foresight at bringing dry grass down into the canyon with her. She tried to remember anything she could from the handful of survival shows she’d seen, but very little had stuck. She knew she’d need kindling, tinder and fuel for the fire. The dried grass would be kindling, in this case. Aster took her tomahawk to one of the sagebrushes and stripped it down to a loose pile of dried sticks for tinder.
Now to make heat. She needed friction, or maybe…
“Does this look like limestone to you?” Aster asked Castle, pointing up at the canyon wall.
“Uh… maybe?” Castle looked up. “Why?”
“I’m looking for a particular rock that you can find around places like this, around sedimentary rocks. It’s gray and breaks into sharp pieces.”
The sudden silence that followed made Aster turn to Castle. “What?”
“Can we go rock collecting later? After the fire’s made?”
Aster felt a flare of anger burn up—actually burn, in this case, as she’d noticed a warmth following these emotions throughout the day. But she squashed it down with a deep breath and a determination to prove herself right.
It took only a minute or two to find what she was looking for: a bulbous looking white rock. It sat unassuming in a rock pile where the wall met the canyon floor and was far lighter than she’d expected it to be, but maybe that was just because she now had the strength stats of an Olympic bodybuilder?
“Come on, Rose,” Castle groaned. “It’s getting cold. Can’t this wait til— what the fuck?!”
Aster had thrown the pillow-sized rock against the wall near Castle, sending it shattering into little shards and chalky dust. Before Castle could bitch at her again, Aster picked up a piece of slate-gray rock and smiled. “This is flint,” she said, not overly concerned that she could have taken Castle’s head off with the throw.
Castle was busy coughing at the dust in the air and glaring at Aster, who calmly walked over to her pile of kindling and sat down with her speartip in hand. “And when you hit flint with steel,” she struck the cold steel against the flint, sending a spray of sparks into the kindling, “you get fire.” A few more strikes had the kindle smoking and a small flame burning away.
“You could have told me that before instead of trying to take my head off,” Castle said, still miffed but not quite so angry after seeing the fire start to burn.
“You could have trusted me,” Aster responded, not looking up as she tended the fire with tinder and then finally some thicker branches from the sagebrush. An off-white smoke blew up from the flames, rising against the canyon wall. Hopefully the wall can reflect some extra heat our way, she thought.
While the day had been sweltering, Aster knew that nights in the desert had a habit of dipping into freezing temperatures. With such little foliage and humidity to hold in the heat from the day, nights in the desert could easily be more dangerous than the days. Even with her naturally hot metabolism, she didn’t know how well she’d do spending a night outside in those kinds of temperatures.
“We should set up a watch system tonight,” Aster suggested once Castle had sat down to warm up. “I’d take first watch if you wanted to get some rest. There’s something I wanted to try now that we’ve got fire.”
Castle sighed and nodded. “Sure, that sounds fine. And what you said earlier is fair. I need to try and remember that you’re not the bitch I knew you as.”
“Nothing like a uniquely literal second chance at life to melt an ice queen’s heart,” Aster offered a smile, though it didn’t last long. “I’ve always kind of burnt my bridges,” she shrugged. “It’s just who I am. I wasn’t interested in trying to keep a relationship with my family. My father… I’d rather that bridge go up in flames than risk him trying to cross it. My friends, well… you were around often enough to see how often they visited. You can imagine my relationship with authority in general.
“So to say that I was in a bad place when you came around is like calling the sun warm,” Aster folded her arms over her chest despite the warmth and stared into the fire. “I never talked about this before. I knew I was dying, and the only thing I wanted was to see the world burn with me.”
“Not an uncommon feeling,” Castle said, her voice matching Aster’s whispering tones. “I’ve met far too many dying people, and while plenty want to plan for their families, or fight until the last breath, or simply want things to end, I’ve met my fair share of people who want to go down swinging.”
Aster didn’t respond, just tucked her knees in tighter. Castle couldn’t understand—she doubted anyone could.
All her life, Aster had fought to quench that burning feeling. She’d meditated, found outlets in competition of all sorts, and cut herself off from anything that would fuel the flames. But when she’d gotten sick, and she couldn’t compete, couldn’t attend class, couldn’t keep her eyes open long enough to finish reading a single fucking sentence, the fire had only grown stronger. She had sat for hours receiving chemo and radiation, with nothing to do but fume. She’d stare at the ceiling, too achy to sleep and too tired to move, as the inferno raged.
She hadn’t wanted to go down swinging. She’d wanted to burn all of existence down to ashes.
“I do trust you,” Castle said, breaking the silence. “At least enough to fight some dinosaurs with you,” a little smile forming on her lips “So I should be more honest with you, as well.”
“Oh, yeah? You gonna share your deep, dark secrets with me?” Aster didn’t look up from the fire.
“One of them.” There was a beat as they watched the fire together. “I was approached by the FDA to become a plant in your father’s pharmaceutical company.”
Now Aster looked up. “What?”
Castle spoke softly and slowly, as if reciting a rehearsed speech. She described how a friend of a friend had approached her about wanting to get coffee one day. Once she’d arrived, she found the acquaintance with a stranger who happened to work for the FDA. They’d gotten a chance to place a mole inside the same pharmaceutical company responsible for the environmental disaster that had killed Maria’s family.
It turned out that the CEO’s estranged daughter was sick, and their contact inside the company was made responsible for hiring someone to care for her.
“There’s more to the details than that,” Castle said, “but overall my goal was— aside from providing care— to get you to make a statement before you died. They knew you’d signed some legal documents that prohibited you from talking about your father in public, but their lawyers had apparently found a way to make your testimony count. It might have had to wait until after you were dead, but that was going to happen anyway at that point—”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Aster shook her head. “Scratch that, I get why you wouldn’t come forward with that right off the bat.”
“I was about to tell you in the elevator,” Castle said. “And then the world ended.”
“Very fair. And I would have helped in a heartbeat.”
“I believe you.”
It was dark now, the fire crackling away as the two women spoke in soft sentences, completely unaware of the creature that would find their scent by morning.
After all, the raptors they had killed had been called ‘Hatchling Springclaw Raptor’ for a reason.