The next few days were painful for Valen. He could not, would not dismiss the realization that came to him. However, that meant every waking day was spent wracking his nerves, full of what-ifs and grim thoughts that wouldn’t leave his mind alone. A small mercy was that the Elder left him more alone than he thought it would, which lessened the pressure on his mind somewhat.
The water the Valstrax brought him needed to be boiled before he could drink it, but it was a lifesaver for him nonetheless. He hasn’t used all the water in it for himself but emptied it anyway before it soiled the whole mane and made it unusable for every future refilling.
He also started to take notes of what he learned about the Elder in his notebook, in the extremely unlikely case of managing to escape from this jail. The Guild would more than surely be very thankful for the findings. So every time the Valstrax left the cave to do its own… whatever it did, Valen pulled out his notebook and hurriedly wrote everything he could think of, then hid the book again when he was satisfied with the writings.
What worried him was that he wasn’t sure how long he could keep the façade for. He was truly fearing the day his jailer would grow tired of not learning anything and would decide to dispose of the weight draining his resources. Small mercies were the fact that it seemed that it was still interested in keeping him alive, as the lengths it went to provide him water proved.
However, on the fifth day, he barely saw the Elder at all. Tt only brought him his meat then… Was nowhere to be found.
‘If it wanted to observe me, wouldn’t it want to stay here as much as it could? Leaving me alone for a whole day sounds counterproductive… Then again, I’m doing the same thing so it probably grew tired of not having anything new.’ He reasoned. ‘It's trying to put me at ease so that I slip up tomorrow.’
Satisfied with this reasoning, he resolved to not change anything for the next day.
Then the next day the same thing happened. And this time he couldn’t justify it as much. ‘It’s making me confident, that’s all there is to this. There must not be any other explanation.’ However, this justification rang a bit more hollow than it did the day before. Even so, it still felt that it was the most logical explanation. It had to be. ‘Ugh, all this brooding is making me cranky, I’ll try to see if I can walk tomorrow. Not going to put any pressure on my healing leg though.’
He took a deep breath and then stretched himself. All of his days in the cave had been spent being bedridden, but he felt like he needed to exercise soon, or else he’d be in for a painful time once he was completely healed.
Looking outside, he noted that the sun was setting and decided to go to sleep. He didn’t even realize that he didn’t wait for the Elder to be asleep or even present before doing so.
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Valen yawned as he woke up and stretched. He had gotten a good night’s sleep for once but was still worried about when his next nightmare would hit. They normally happened at a regular frequency or when he was in a period of stress. But he would take any small mercies that he got.
He looked to his side, and sure enough, the Valstrax was there, but for once, it was asleep. Valen mentally debated making an attempt to stab his head, but shook his head. If he did, he would more than surely die of dehydration and would have to attempt to scale down the cliff, a death sentence in and of itself in his condition.
He then thought about how he would go about trying to get some exercise and decided that his best bet was to do some steps while using his hand to stabilize himself on the walls of the cave. With his plan set in mind, he shuffled, using his hands to support himself so as to not put pressure on his healing leg. A small mercy was that he made sure to unwrap his bandage every day and boil it to keep it clean. He knew he was lucky to not have gotten an infection with the shoddy work the Elder did while he was still unconscious, but he wouldn’t push his luck any further.
Once he reached the wall, he took a deep breath and stood up on his good leg, using the wall as a support. He took some breaths to stabilize himself and then hopped alongside the wall, making sure to exercise his leg. He preferred to overdo it than to not do enough. And the slight ache this caused helped to quiet his mind, the repetitive motion enough of a distraction against his constant stress. When he was about to reach the entrance of the cave, he turned around and hopped back, noting that the Elder had now woken up and was looking at him curiously but elected to ignore it for now.
He did his self-imposed exercise for a dozen minutes before the pain became too great and relented, then went back to his bed and rested.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
The dragon observed for a couple more minutes before it seemed to realize he wouldn’t do anything more unusual for now and flew out of the cave. Valen took this opportunity to massage his healing leg gently and do some lifting with his arms, deciding that his cooking pot filled to the brim would be good enough. He missed dearly being able to train with his Switch Axe, but he knew that wasn’t something he would be able to do until he got back to the guild… If he got back to the guild.
He was idly wondering when the Elder would come back after a long time exercising that left a pleasant burn in his arms but still supportable, when he heard the usual sound. Looking towards the cave, he noted it was the daily delivery of meat. And for once it didn’t bring back a Ludroth but a Bullfango this time. He was internally pleased, he much more liked the tusked beast’s meat compared to the juvenile leviathan.
Once the Valstrax ate its part and left him the remains, he tended to the meat, cutting it into chunks like usual, then started roasting it.
But it seemed like fate decided that she had enough of the past monotony, and it was at this precise time that the stick he managed to carefully maintain until now had enough and broke midway while the meat was still cooking, making the tip fall directly into the flame pot. Valen swore and scrambled to turn off the fire, then looked at the damage, and indeed there was a gap between the meat strips that allowed the stick to char and break. He could continue with the halves he still had but it would make things harder for sure.
He sighed, this was bad news for sure but he’d just have to bear with it for now. At least the meat was done when it happened so he could get his fill.
However, the Elder had watched the happenings and after a while, walked outside and flew away. Valen was surprised, it usually stayed with him when he ate, so he wasn’t sure what prompted this unusual behavior… Unless it had something to do with the fact that his stick broke? A few days ago, he’d have dismissed the hypothesis, but now? He had an inkling of what was about to happen.
He finished his meal alone and watched the entrance, waiting to see what shenanigans his jailer would get up to this time. And to his surprise, it came back far earlier than he expected. But he also immediately noticed that… The Elder was carrying a few sticks in its beak, and it immediately walked up to him and dropped them next to him, letting out the now-familiar rumble after doing so.
Valen shook his head, the actions of the dragon still confusing him. ‘Still trying to make me comfortable… But… This doesn’t make any sense. Or… Maybe it wants to see how we craft tools? I’ll have to be careful to not give too many clues then. But I still need a stick to roast my food.’
His course of action set, the hunter first checked the quality of the sticks that were brought to him. Surprisingly they were all rigid enough to use, but he guessed that the Elder picked only the ones sturdy enough to be carried in its beak. He picked one of a decent length then grabbed his knife and started whittling it down, making a point at the tip.
The task took him a couple of hours but once he was done he was satisfied and stowed away the stick.
He then looked at the extra few sticks that he had, and one extra-thick one gave him an idea. He would make a crutch so that he wasn’t tilting awkwardly when trying to walk, but he’d have to try to make it out of the sight of his minder. So he sighed and resolved himself to wait for it to go for its daily long flight.
Surprisingly enough, it left fairly quickly, now that it noticed Valen finished his task. So, he quickly shuffled to the wall and used it as a support for his back, then he went on trying to dig a hole big enough in the stick without breaking it… It was going to be tedious and delicate work, but he had nothing else to do right at the moment so he just went at it.
It took a fair bit longer than his roasting stick had, but it was done, and he had also managed to sharpen the other stick which would form the handle of his crutch. Then once his crutch was complete, he wasted no time in testing it out. And to his satisfaction, it managed to handle his weight well enough, with no creaks either. It should last him long enough for his leg to finish healing.
He dared even say that this gave him more hope, but his mood immediately turned sour when the realization that his situation still had no escape in sight came back. He sighed. He had explored all avenues possible this morning, but he truly did not see any way he could get out of this situation… He just prayed to the Sapphire Star that some salvation would come to him, as it was the only hope he had before his jailer got tired of him.
Speaking of which, he heard the telltale sound of it arriving, quickly debating hiding his crutch, he eventually decided to just leave it out in the open. There wasn’t a place big enough where he could hide it, anyways. He wondered how long it’d take it to notice the stick.
Surprisingly enough, it did so almost immediately, tilting its head and then walking to it to nose it from the tip of its beak. The inspection lasted shorter than he expected it to, but then the Elder looked at him with a curious eye, which made Valen feel uncomfortable, but just as he was about to wonder if Valen’s daring to do something while it was gone was going to finally be enough to make it snap, it relented and went back to its usual spot.
‘That was close. I don’t know if it was mad at me for doing something while it was away or something else, but my time is running out… And quickly.’
The hunter debated trying to do something else to placate the Elder, before a yawn escaped his jaw. ‘I guess this answers my question, it may still be day and not even sunset, but the stress these past days must be getting to me. Sleep sounds nice.’ Thus he decided to just try to sleep off the night.