Khai opened his eyes slowly, taking in his new surroundings. Huge trees towered over him on all sides, barely letting a few rays of light through to the dirt floor beneath him. Okay a jungle, a jungle wasn’t the worst place he could have been thrown into. Wait. No, a jungle was a terrible place to be stranded in; Jungles have slithers, and spiders, and hellcats, and..and…Admittedly, Khai wasn’t actually sure what lived in jungles, but he knew there would be slithers, and that was reason enough to be as far away as possible. He needed to move.
Pushing off from the damp dirt beneath him, Khai had barely put one leg underneath himself before his vision blurred and he sunk back to the ground with a loud thump. Okay, moving could wait a bit longer, there was no point rushing things after all.
Khai lay on his back as his vision slowly returned, the canopy above slowly steadying itself and growing still. He wasn’t on his island anymore, his island was gone, his family and friends, everybody was gone. He could feel his heartbeat increasing, his breaths getting shorter and more ragged. The whole island was gone, and the Spirit had spoken to him, saved him from death and sent him here. His vision started to darken at the edges, the air felt heavy, too heavy, pressing it’s whispy hands down on his chest and forcing him into the earth. This was fine, he would return to the earth and the Spirit would claim his soul once more. It would all be over.
A shadow leapt across the canopy above him, snapping Khai out of his stupor. Another shadow quickly followed, then another, until a small horde of the shadows clambered across the branches high above, shaking a flurry of leaves loose. This was a nice view, the light looked so pretty as the leaves played in the wind. Khai had always wanted to be Aeros, the stories his mother told had made it sound so freeing, dancing across the sky with the wind itself at your fingers. Maybe he would get to see it one day. Khai took three long breaths, imaging himself floating with the leaves. The air must have heard his praise because it released some of the pressure from his chest. How thoughtful of it.
Khai opened his eyes, his vision slowly returning to normal. It would be okay, the Spirit mentioned something about the attack not being an accident, he would focus on that, make that his reason to keep moving forwards. For now, he just needed to start moving, but which way?
Moments later, as Khai used the nearest tree to steady himself, the jungle decided which way to go for him. A long, resounding growl echoed from the direction the earlier shadows had come from. There hadn’t been many predators on the island but Khai knew that whatever it was, if it wasn’t scared to announce its presence like that it must have been high up on the food chain.
Snap
The thing was close, and he was under the assumption that everything in this jungle would likely try to kill and eat him on sight, probably in that order. Or would they do it the other way around? Not important, should he run? Hide? Try and defend himself? The last option would likely result in a very quick death as his combat experience was as extensive as the occasional wrestling with other boys his age. Lacking something sharp, the closest stick would have to do. Barely as thick as his arm, it probably wouldn’t do much against anything looking to kill him, but at least it felt better to have something to try and protect himself.
Snap
That was closer, much closer. Turning to the right, Khai could see the leaves of the far trees shaking, the whole jungle felt like it had already ran away from this thing. Spirits tits! This stick wouldn’t do anything, everything in this jungle probably has claws or teeth or any number of ways to gut him before he even swung the stupid thing.
The rustling stopped. Had it gone away? No why would it leave, it was probably getting ready to pounce on an easy meal stood stupidly out in the open. Khai tried to put as much bravado into his voice as possible,
“I’m armed…and not afraid to use my weapon…just leave now and you can walk away from this” The words were supposed to sound brave, but they mostly just came out In a whimper.
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Khai knew he was dead. There was no way he could outrun whatever it was that attacked him, and after his noble attempt at defending himself had definitely pissed it off enough that it wasn’t going to let him get away now. Khai ran as fast as he could, blearily stumbling through the maze of trees, bushes and vines that snaked endlessly throughout this stupid jungle. He wouldn’t survive this encounter, he couldn’t fight a predator in its home terrain. So Khai did the brave thing, he threw his stick to the ground, turned and ran to the side. Hopefully the thing would just charge forward and not notice him.
With an ear spitting shriek, Khai risked a glance behind him just as the dense trees split open and the creature leapt into the opening, barely five steps from where he’d been standing seconds ago.
It was huge, twice as tall as Khai and wider still. The things body was covered in a fuzzy green and brown hide, the legs ended in horrific paw-like-appendages with claws gripping into the dirt. The creature paused, it sniffed the ground once and turned its snout toward Khai, pointing two curved tusks in his direction.
The creature shrieked, a deep and primal sound, this was it, that would be the last thing Khai heard before he was killed and eaten. Typical, he made his peace with not dying and now he was going to end up as food.
No he can’t die here, he hadn’t done anything incredible yet. Everyone gets to do something incredible in their life at least one right? He was barely 22 years old and so far the most impressive thing he’d done was managing to catch a fish bigger than a small child. Running wasn’t going to work, that thing would catch up in seconds. Khai made a decision he hoped he wouldn’t regret very soon.
Quickly searching for the lowest branches and a thick trunk, Khai found the nearest tree and started to climb. The creature had claws but maybe they were just for running and killing, something that big wasn’t supposed to be able to get up into trees was it? Hurriedly, Khai grabbed branch after branch, climbing as high as he could up the thick trunk without looking back to see if the creature had followed.
High enough that he was confident the creature couldn’t reach him without climbing, Khai settled onto the next sturdy looking branch he found. Breath heavy and arms burning, he turned to look for the creature.
The thing was at the base of the tree, looking up at him with wide, hungry eyes. It prowled around the base of his wooden salvation, what was it doing? Was it looking for the best way up to its prey, or seething in defeat at a lost meal? Khai held his breath, this gamble was all he had left, if the creature could climb it was all over.
The creature circled the base of the tree once more, scratching its tusks against the trunk as it went. After two more circles it let out a loud grunt and started to walk away. Khai let out a long breath and smiled to himself. He’d done it, he’d survived the attack and wasn’t going to be killed before he…
The creature had walked barely 30 steps from the trunk before turning back to face Khai, it lowered its head and Khai could see its claws tensing and gripping at the dirt. Oh no, it wasn’t going to charge his tree was it? The creature was huge but the tree was easily thrice as wide, it couldn’t knock it down could it? The creature charged, it started slowly and built up speed faster than Khai thought possible for something that big, it was a battering ram aimed straight at the base of his tree and to Khai’s horror, the creature crashed its flat head directly into the trunk with an earth-shattering crash.
The whole tree shook long after the creature had made contact, Khai barely held onto the grooves in the trunk as whole branches fell to the ground around him. A storm of leaves and small fruits fell around Khai and he could feel the tree rocking back and forth. The tree held, barely staying upright as it finally stopped shaking. With a loud grunt, the creature started to walk away again, no doubt preparing to bring the whole tree down in the next strike.
This was it, he’d gambled on the tree being his salvation and the creature was quickly going to bring the whole tree, and Khai crashing down along with it, in the next charge. The creature had walked back to where it stopped last time, turning back and preparing to strike. Khai closed his eyes, hopefully the fall, or even the tree crushing him would kill him before the creature did, he really didn’t want to feel it’s claws and tusks ripping through his body before he could die. Why did the Spirit send him here, was it just some sick sense of humour to save him from a quick death and be gored at the tusks of a different creature?
Khai heard the creature grunt, probably in smug satisfaction at its soon to be meal. Then it started charging, he may as well have been in a thunderstorm as Khai couldn’t hear anything except the thumping sound of paws against earth as each step brought him closer to a painful death.