TJ didn’t feel hungry at all as he spent half an hour waiting for his Divine Transformation timer to reset. Now that his Endurance, Vitality, Willpower, and Fixation had grown, his current transformation limit was 18 minutes, and his recovery time twice that. Somehow, he felt full but not bloated from all that he’d eaten as a coatl, so TJ set to skinning the coyote body he hadn’t swallowed whole with the time he had before he returned to the snowy peak.
Though his previous experience definitely helped, TJ could feel the difference that Primitive Craftsmanship offered with every movement. The sharpened stone cut cleanly through flesh and skin, and with long, smooth pulls of his blade, fat and meat scraped clean from the skin. Additionally, as he clumsily cured the pelt, TJ understood where to hold it over the smoke to best clean the raw skin. Even more so, he knew that he’d failed to create pelts that would last more than a couple of days. He didn’t use the right materials or time, but that couldn’t matter right now. His next goals were clear, and he knew what to do.
Thirty minutes after his Divine Transformation timer was refilled, TJ set out towards the nearby peak with one more coyote pelt. When he looked closely at it, he got the sense that he could almost see something more, something to do with the System about it, but no matter how long he looked, nothing else appeared and so he wrapped it around his torso under his jacket to keep his core as warm as possible. His mouth was dry, though not painfully so. Evidently, swallowing two creatures, blood and all, was helping to hydrate TJ at least a little, and there was a quarter of his water bottle still remaining.
His journey to the snowy peak was uneventful, but TJ felt the difference in his body’s capabilities with each step. Since the last hike there, he’d gained 6 levels, two of each his Class, Occupation, and Race, and though his Strength and Agility attributes hadn’t changed as much as the others, the hike that he’d needed to stop to take a breather on just the day before now wasn’t more difficult than a light jog on flat ground. The blisters and soreness that had inevitably appeared before had healed overnight, and TJ could tell that he wouldn’t be nearly so tired after his hiking today. Beyond that, the hike had taken him nearly half an hour yesterday, but today, it was well under twenty minutes.
At the peak, TJ watched the slowly rising sun for a couple minutes. He’d been up when the first light tinged the horizon, and though it’d been almost three hours from then until now, the mountains surrounding him kept the warm light from washing over him until he stood on that lone peak. Though surrounded by snow and still shivering, TJ relished the sun and stretched wide. Finally, TJ stooped to gather handfuls of the icy snow into his water bottle. Without hours of sunlight and the warmth of midday to thaw it, the snow was now sheets of ice, and his fingers immediately stiffened with the chill.
After five minutes of painful effort, TJ’s water bottle was pressed full of ice with a little water, and he again shook it vigorously to try to melt some of the ice, to limited success. It wasn’t long before he gave up on the endeavor, instead breaking up a handful of ice and shoving it in his mouth. The chill slowly spread through his mouth, down his throat, and into his core, but TJ shrugged it off and made sure he’d sighted his goal–the log cabin. It would be over five miles, as far as he could tell. He’d never been the best at estimating distances, and he’d guessed at six to seven miles yesterday. Maybe it was Neophyte or Savage or just the insanity of his situation, but TJ today thought he’d overestimated that by a mile or two.
Now, with a goal, a Class, and an Occupation, TJ set off towards the homestead.
With each thudding step down the mountain, TJ’s mind cleared. The panic from Junior’s disappearance still weighed on TJ’s soul, the fear about if he was losing his mind, the rage at whatever it was that was doing this, each negative emotion had hung like a cloud over his head over the past day. And they still did, and, barring the revelation that TJ was, in fact, totally losing his mind, they would continue to bother him. If some machine or System or whatever decided that it was going to upend everything and throw his life into the blender of insanity and violence, TJ was going to have to drink the madness smoothie.
For himself, for his son.
And so, he needed to train and familiarize himself with his new reality. TJ only had the one active Skill at the moment, Divine Transformation, and he could confidently say that it would be what kept him alive from now on. He also had his Primitive Craftsmanship, but that wouldn’t be what helped him right now. There were also the 4 Free Points he needed to allocate at some point, but TJ couldn’t be sure what would be most helpful to him right now and in the future. He had no other Skills, or any idea what the next ones would be, even though he’d asked the System, he’d gotten no response. Strength and Agility were immediately appealing, since they’d assist his Divine Transformation, but would he later get a Skill that changed how his attributes shifted from his coatl body? Fixation was low, but it was one of his most quickly growing attributes. Wisdom, Intelligence, and Perception didn’t seem to do much for him right now, but would leaving them behind screw him over in the long run?
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With a sigh, TJ left the Free Points alone, for now. If there was anything even remotely dangerous that appeared, like the unlikely mountain lion or black bear, he’d dump all of them into his Strength, but until then, he could only practice his new Skill. He knew that he could keep his clothes, at least, when he transformed, and keeping his backpack would be ideal. Maybe, that was something that would just come with time. But if he ended up buck naked every time he had to fight, then that’d suck in a big way.
That was how TJ ended up, every minute or so, stopping in his tracks, channeling Divine Transformation, and trying to keep his clothes with him, somehow.
Initially, he held completely still, eyes closed and concentrating when he shifted. Only once his body was fully serpentine would TJ open his eyes. And, for the first five attempts, he opened them to see his clothing, backpack, and shoes still on him. Then, he took a moment to look around, still without moving, with his enhanced senses before shifting back to a human. The first time he shifted back, his jacket had somehow gotten fully turned around backwards with neither of his arms in the sleeves. Both of his legs were painfully crammed into one leg of gym shorts, while both feet were bare and his backpack laid upside down on the ground.
The second time, his clothes were still strewn about him. When he shifted back, both his legs were in the correct leg holes, but somehow his boxers had been left behind. His jacket was twisted 90 degrees, and the backpack was, again, left behind. Socks were on, though twisted around.
The third time, he was convinced that he could feel the jacket merging with him as he channeled the Skill. Sure enough, his jacket was nowhere to be seen after shifting, and on his return, his clothing was mostly in order on his body. His backpack was nowhere near being on his shoulders, though.
Keeping that in mind, on and on he practiced. After an hour, TJ could shift and bring his clothes with him, so long as he stayed in place before, during, and after the transformation. Even so, there was no progress on his backpack coming along. He focused instead on his ability to move as he shifted. While slowly walking and shifting, TJ left behind just both socks, bizarrely enough. Then, confusing him again, when he shifted, everything but his backpack disappeared as usual, but when he returned to his human body, his stupid jacket was backwards.
“This’ll take more practice.” TJ muttered to himself, two hours into his hike at this point. He’d made good time, he thought. Maybe halfway to where he thought the cabin was? Then, when he was about to begin one of his regularly scheduled transformations, TJ heard a rustle in the bushes. Without a thought, he channeled his Divine Transformation. Faster than ever before, TJ became a coatl, his scales scraping on the earth underfoot. Or, underbelly.
Three heat signatures. He could taste them. Coyotes. His belly was still full from this morning, and TJ resolved not to overfill his coatl stomach. The comedy of a very fat snake fighting for Divinity wasn’t lost on him, but TJ pursued the nearest canine. Significantly larger than the rest of the other five or so of the scavengers he’d seen thus far, the coyote snarled its challenge.
A mere dog dared to challenge a divine serpent? One of the feathered ones! An unplaced pride swelled in TJ, and he somehow roared a hiss at the coyote. More air than should have been possible rushed from TJ’s maw, and a gust of wind blew his enemy’s ears back. Even so, there was no need to delay, as TJ could feel the other two approaching. He struck with his jaws, but the dog danced back out of reach. Again he lunged forward, to no avail. A third time, and he bit only air.
Reacting on instinct, TJ struck a fourth time, but with a deep inhale as he did so. Again, an unnaturally powerful gust of wind accompanied his attack, but this time, the coyote, airborne and unprepared, was hit. The winds whipped around the canine and pulled it ever so slightly closer to TJ’s attack, and he caught its paw. It whimpered, pained and terrified. TJ didn’t hesitate, his coils speedily enveloping it in scaly death. Cracking of bone followed the forced whoosh of air from its lungs, and TJ released its foot from his bite. It struggled, fighting to escape and survive, but TJ knew and showed no mercy. His jaws flashed, and though his fangs were obviously not made for ripping and tearing, with one, two, three quick bites, TJ broke the coyote’s spine at the base of its skull.
The iron taste of blood filled his mouth, but before TJ could finish it off or glory in his success, a sharp tear of pain interrupted him. Another coyote, just as large as this one, had torn into the thick center of his body, and different from the ones this morning, its fangs didn’t struggle to pierce his flesh. The coatl, instincts now taking control over TJ’s mind, immediately released the crippled coyote and whirled to face the other two that had finally arrived.
One, that which was gnawing on his spine, was a little larger than the crippled coyote on the ground. It snarled as it continued to chew, but TJ didn’t care about that one. No, the other, different, black one instilled TJ and the coatl alike an instinctive, deep fear.