My health and stamina finally full, it’s time for me to continue. Unlike the snake previously, I'm actually looking forward to trying out the killer-chicken meat. Mm, KFC, I can't help thinking to myself. The reality will be somewhat different, I know, but a man can dream.

Then, heading back to the river, I continue walking. I still haven’t seen any area that looks promising for a shelter, which is disheartening. Sure, I could make one myself, but that’ll take a fair bit of time since I have such rudimentary tools available. Time during which I could be attacked and killed. Frankly, if I never have to lie another night out in the open, it’ll be too soon. Waking up to a load of insects crawling all over me or a snilepede trying to make me its breakfast is enough to put me off sleeping under the stars for life!

Today looks like it’s going to be like yesterday – fruitless and painful – until it doesn’t. Rounding the bend of the river and seeing past a clump of trees for the first time, I catch sight of something ahead which makes my heart rise into my mouth in hope.

For some reason, the next stretch of the river on my side is pretty clear of trees. It’s got a fair number of bushes, some of which are as tall or taller than me, but few of the massive trees I’ve started to get used to. The land, on the other hand, rises quite steeply from about a hundred metres away from the river. I guess it’s some sort of foothill attached to the mountains forming the valley in which I am situated.

Perhaps fifty metres or so from where the steep rise starts, it flattens out into a sort of plateau for a small area, maybe fifty to a hundred square metres in total; it’s hard to estimate since I can’t see the whole of the area due to my perspective. It rises very sharply after that, almost a cliff, with a waterfall running over the top and cutting down past the plateau. The little stream joins the river by which I’m walking a bit lower down.

Piquing my interest is the fact that if I look at the right angle, I see something that might, just might be a cave. If it is… well, starting a shelter with a cave would save a lot of time. Plus, this is an ideal placement: not too far from the river, and with lots of potential prey nearby.

I pant as I walk up the hill. This is far more exercise than I’m used to getting, recent improvements aside. A few minutes later, of a steep, but manageable climb on foot, I reach the plateau. There, ahead of me is exactly what I was hoping to see: a cave.

It’s a strange sort of shape, though it takes me a little bit of squinting to work out why. After a few long moments, I suddenly hit on the reason: I can’t work out how it was formed. As far as I’m aware, caves are formed mostly by water erosion. Sure, you can also get ones formed by an area being sandblasted or something, but mostly it’s erosion of either waves, a river, seasonal floods, or rainfall. This doesn’t look like it was made that way.

Although there is a stream running nearby, there’s no hint in the rocks above that this cave could have been formed by that, even assuming that the stream was diverted later somehow. Equally, it’s not a shape that indicates it could have been softer rock layered between harder rock that was washed out. We’re nowhere near anywhere that could create waves either. If anything, the cave looks like some giant hand came down and pushed its thumb into modelling clay to make a hollow, then smoothed out the area above and in front. Seriously. The cliff above it is sheer in a way that no other area nearby is, the inside is even and smooth, and the mouth is big and round. Like, what?

The sound of rustling makes me snap to attention, cursing myself for paying far too much attention to topograpical concerns when I should rather be making sure that nothing is about to eat my face. I duck down behind one of the taller bushes – there not being any handy trees around – and go still. Looking through the gaps between the bush leaves, I wait for whatever animal is making the noise to emerge. When it does, I can barely hold in my reaction.

It’s just far too...cute! Imagine one of those adorable kittens and then multiply its cute-factor by ten. It’s also clearly going to be a killing machine when it grows up, but for now I can’t stop my insides from melting.

It’s a leopard cub or something like that, but it’s really fluffy, and keeps tripping over its own too-big paws even as it tries to pounce on something that’s caught its attention. Like babies of any species, it’s pretty oblivious to its surroundings, fortunately for me as I reckon I’d struggle to defend myself against something so adorable. Yes, I’m a cat person. Should I try Taming this cub? My Willpower is still less than ten so I probably shouldn’t try Dominate. Then a thought strikes me and makes my insides feel like they’ve been doused in ice-water. If there’s a baby...where’s its parent?

As if summoned by my thoughts, there’s a growl from the bushes opposite me and a cold sweat breaks out on my forehead. I’m dead. There’s no way a piddly little knife is going to stand up to an enraged leopard mama! I pull it out carefully anyway – if I’m dead anyway, I might as well try to go down fighting.

The bushes rustle, and then a dark shape blurs out of it. I leap to my feet and stab forwards with a grunt, my eyes closing involuntarily as I flinch away in expectation of white-hot pain tearing through me. When it doesn’t come, I crack my eyes open and dare to look at my attacker. Or at least, where I thought my attacker would be.

My knife is clean, and the space in front of me is empty. There’s a growl and pained yowl. I look over to the side and see a ball of yellow and black fur, mixed with green and red scales. It takes me a long moment to process the information – all I can say in my defence is that my mind had started careening down one track, and suddenly I’m having to put the brakes on, reverse backwards, then start down a whole new track. It’s not the leopard mama, coming to slay the intruder who dared come near her cub?

No, it’s the cub which is in danger! Logically, what I should do is run away while the two creatures are fighting and continue looking for my shelter somewhere else. I don’t do the logical action. Instead, I pull my water canteen out of my satchel and throw the contents on the two animals. The sudden shock makes them separate, and I shout loudly at the attacker. It looks like a horrible mix between a wolverine and lizard, with the teeth and claws of the former, and the scaly body and tail of the later. From the way it’s snarling angrily at me, even as it keeps glancing at the cub, it’s got the temper of the former too.

I yank the mace from my belt and swing at the attacker, growling back at it. The anger within me which has been growing for days flares to life in my outrage. Try to attack a defenceless, adorable cub, will you? Not under my watch! The wolverzard switches its attention fully to me and the leopard cub takes the chance to scarper, half-limping towards the cave. The time I spend watching the cub costs me dearly as I miss seeing the wolverzard’s approach until it’s already too close to whack at it with my mace without hitting myself.

Fortunately, I have my knife, so I just stab at it as it latches onto one leg. I yell loudly as it buries its teeth in me, growling and shaking its head. In turn, I stab at it and it releases me and jumps backwards as it tries to avoid the blow. I succeed in drawing a line down its side, but its scales are surprisingly tough and deflect most of the attack. My own wound, on the other hand, is already bleeding heavily.

Cursing, I quickly cast my only magic spell, and then flail at the creature with my mace. It dodges again, and...runs between my legs. My confusion is answered a moment later when a weight lands on my back and only my abrupt, instinctive shake stops the bite from digging into the back of my neck. It pierces the meat of my shoulder instead and I feel a sense of panic rising. I throw myself onto my back, trying to at least knock the creature off, squish it if I can.

Once more, the creature is just too fast, and I barely get my hand in front of me quickly enough to avoid it going for my throat. Instead, it makes gouges with its sharp claws over my face even as its teeth latch into my right forearm. It’s got my forearm! I try to shake it loose, but it’s strong, and heavier than I can lift easily in such an awkward position. Its paw drags excruciatingly across my face once more and suddenly one eye goes dark.

Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

Ice crawls through my veins: I hope it’s just blood causing the problem, because if not… But I can’t focus on that right now: I need to survive the next few moments before I can worry about anything more long-term. I grab the knife in my left hand – it’s not as agile as my right, but it’s not currently being used as a chew toy, either. I stab at the beast and it releases my forearm to jump back.

Of course, it’s not content with doing that, and makes another rush at me, going once more for my throat. This time, I’m more prepared and roll out of its way, trying to make my way to my feet. It’s too fast. It knocks me over even as I get to my knees. We go rolling together, probably not looking much different from how the cub and wolvezard had looked earlier, only different colours. It snaps at any part of me it can reach and tries to disembowel me with its back claws, even as I try to grab any part of it with one hand and stab it with the other.

Luck finally seems to be on my side as I manage to stop our momentum with my weight pinning it down enough to stab at its neck. For this, I have to sacrifice one hand to keep its jaws occupied, and I scream from the pain as it rages against my trap. My hand is savaged, as is my lower body from its claws, but I succeed in stabbing it somewhere vital and I keep stabbing until I feel it going limp.

I use the last of my strength to roll off it and stare up at the sky, crying from agony. I can feel blood pumping out of me too – it’s hit something important in my belly. I have so many cuts and bite marks across me that I can barely even distinguish which parts hurt the most. My right eye is still dark, but that’s not going to matter – I’m going to die in a few minutes.

I’ve been casting as many Lay-on-hands as I could summon up the concentration for, and I cast another one as my mana regenerates enough. That’s it, though – I’m clean out, now, and it’ll take at least ten minutes to regenerate enough for another cast. My wounds are still weeping blood far faster than that. I need something with a lot more oomph if I’m to stand a chance of survival.

More oomph. The thought sparks off an idea and I reach weakly for my satchel. I fumble around in it with my cold, clumsy fingers, searching for the lifesaving glass vial. It isn’t there. Why?! I turn my head with difficulty and see it. At some point during our rolling, it must have fallen out of the satchel. My last health potion, my only chance of survival right now, lies a good couple of metres away, glinting in the sun.

Normally, that wouldn’t be a problem. Normally, I’d just get up and walk over there with no issues. Normally, I wouldn’t need to take the potion at all. This is not a normal situation, and I don’t have the strength remaining to do any of that. I push at the ground weakly with my left hand, my right far too damaged to do anything but twitch feebly. I move a grand total of two inches, and that takes almost everything I have left.

I lie there, my head spinning, my heart beating rapidly and shallowly, waiting for death to come and claim me. With nothing else to do, I let my mind drift over recent past memories. They’re not pleasant memories. The moment Lucy, my long-term girlfriend, called it quits because I was ‘more likely to marry my boss’ than her. The moment she killed my final hopes of getting back together by bringing her new boyfriend to the family dinner, cutting me off from the people I considered my second family. The moment I received the call about my father’s death. The moment my boss told me I was fired.

I’ve felt like a failure many times. But one thing is different this time: I saved the cub. At least my death now has had more of a positive consequence than just stepping off the roof would have.

*****

Feeling far too weak from pain and blood-loss, I’m still aware enough to open my eyes when a shadow falls across me. I look back upwards to see a massive shape standing menacingly over me: Mama leopard has arrived.

I’m so fucked, drifts into my mind, the swear word completely appropriate for the situation in my mind. Not that I wasn’t dying before but now...there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell that I’m going to get out of this alive, even if the health potion were to magically levitate over to me.

She’s huge, and not just in a ‘I’m on the floor staring up at an apex predator’ kind of way. No, I can’t get an accurate measurement of her height from my angle, but the paw that’s sitting near my head is more than half the size of my torso – even were I not to be injured, she’d be able to pin me down with no trouble at all. Of course, with me as I am now, all she needs to do is step on my face and I’ll be done even faster than the blood-loss will take me.

I grimace, chuckling darkly and brokenly, the agony which had dulled down a bit shooting through me once more with the convulsive movement. How ironic. Slain by the leopard whose cub I’d just saved. The stories I read never ended like this – a hero was always rewarded in the end. He didn’t die in such an ignominious manner.

With the lack of anything better to do while I die, I gaze at the magnificent beast before me. Oh well, if nothing else, I’ve succeeded in seeing a leopard in the flesh – I’d always wanted to go on a safari. To my surprise, the leopard doesn’t take that moment to kill me, but moves off to sniff at the wolverzard. Perhaps it’s obvious enough that I pose less threat than a wet, paper bag.

There’s a chirp from the direction of the cave and a tiny figure comes barelling through the bushes. The cub bursts out of the covering foliage and comes to rub up to its mum, already making a demanding – and heart-meltingly cute – noise. The mama leopard makes a deep huffing sound and sniffs her cub, licking its head with a tongue that’s almost bigger than it. In fact, the cub doesn’t even come halfway up the leopard’s legs – it’s completely dwarfed by its parent. Maybe its dad was really small? I pull my mind away from that disturbing train of thought, not hard to do as my thoughts seem to be escaping my grasp like water from a cupped hand. Or blood from my body.

“Your cub is... adorable,” I tell the great cat hoarsely, probably a bit delirious. I figure that since I’m about to die anyway, I’ve got nothing to lose. “I’m glad it – he? She? Didn’t get... killed by that... thing.” I chuckle again, though it ends with a gasp of pain. “Sure wish I... wasn’t dying, though,” I admit. I don’t exactly regret saving the cub, but I do thoroughly regret that I’m the victim instead. If only I’d been smarter about the whole thing. Shows how useful anger is when dealing with a problem, right?

I could have used a stone or something to attack the wolverzard from a distance – though I ignore the fact that I would have been too worried about hitting the cub instead. I could have taken a few moments to plan a better strategy – at risk of being too late given how quick the wolverzard had been.

The leopard moves off to sniff around the site of churned up ground and grass. She pauses over the vial of health potion. “Yeah, that’s a...health potion,” I tell her. “Since I’m... going to be... too far gone... for it soon, why don’t you... keep it and give... it to your... kid if needed.” I don’t even know why I’m bothering to waste my final breaths on talking to an animal, but I’ve got nothing better to say, or anyone better to say it to.

The leopard looks at me with an expression which I would have classed as thoughtful on a sentient being. Then, before my disbelieving eyes, she gestures with one paw and the ground beneath the glass vial moves.

I blink. Did that happen? The glass container glints in the sun, only a few inches away from my half-decent hand, tempting me to reach out and grasp it. Is this all a hallucination brought on by my near-death? The fading around my vision and my increasing sense of disconnection with my limbs make it clear that hallucination or not, this might be my only chance to survive the next few minutes.

With what feels like the effort it would take to lift a car, I work my less injured hand towards the potion. My vision narrows – literally, the darkness is becoming more and more intrusive – and all I can focus on is the health potion; everything else has disappeared. Inch by inch, moment by moment, I see my salvation coming closer.

It’s another race. Like with the snilepede earlier, it’s a race between whether I’ll get the vial to my mouth before my blood-loss stops me. My fingers are cold and numb; so are my arms. I don’t have the strength to lift it. But I must. I have to. I tilt my head to one side and somehow get the mouth of the vial close enough wrap my lips around it.

There’s a stopper. Of course. I try to pull it out by fixing my teeth around the stopper and pulling on the vial with my hand, but I don’t have the strength.

I could cry. So close, but too late.

I am crying. Wetness traces its way down my face, collecting on my nose before slipping over the bridge.

No.

No, I’m not going out like this!

I fix my teeth in the stopper firmly, and then yank the bottle with every speck of strength that still remains in me.

I feel the stopper slip loose and then pull out just enough. Shoving half the vial into my mouth, I turn my head to face the sky, letting gravity do its thing. The stopper isn’t out completely, but it’s loose enough that the potion starts trickling out around it.

I’m so tired. My eyes flutter closed and not all the will in the world – or Will – could force them open again.