Before

“Wha’?” I mumble blearily, staring at the rock in front of my eyes. The rock which is covered in blood. My blood. I got hit by a rock? I can only blame the almost certain concussion for the slow progress of my thoughts. Probably only the fact that it seems to have been a glancing blow, is what saved my skull from exploding like a watermelon.

I hear a rustle of feathers and turn towards it just in time to see a sharp beak coming at my face. I flinch back, my head protesting fervently at the movement. It’s enough to avoid getting my eyes pecked out, but not enough to avoid having my nose latched onto. “Gerrof!” I shout, squinting through tears of pain. I flail my arms in front of me and, more by luck than design, manage to hit it in the neck.

“Wark!” I hear and the bird lets go. The relief is temporary – now it’s released my nose, it has full access to the rest of my body. I curl up, trying to avoid the painful bites as much as possible, all while my stomach tries to exit my body as my head makes its complaints known. My nose would also like to register its discontent, but I have no time for that.

This is not working. The bloody bird is going to win at this rate. The rock it must have dropped on my head has done half of the job for it already. The rock!

Bit by bit, I shift back towards the rock, covering it with my body. I grip it with my hand, preparing even as the bird starts drawing blood even through my clothes. Summoning up all my strength, I explode into movement. Well, I’d like to say I explode. In fact, it’s more like stagger to a half kneeling position, scrabble with one hand to grab the bird anywhere I can – its neck, it turns out – and flail with the rock.

Once more, luck seems to be with me – I’ve actually grabbed it at a good point to drag its head down to the ground where I can start beating at it with the rock. I start swearing with each blow, taking out all my anger and fear at the situation I’ve found myself in on the now-helpless bird.

Eventually, it stills and its body collapses, its wings going limp from where they had been battering at my body. I stop myself when the head is just a bloody mush and lean back to sit on my heels, staring blankly ahead of me.

Emotions course through me, unfamiliar both in their type and intensity. Recently, all I’ve known this strongly are fear and grief. And, of course, the leaden dragging of hopelessness and depression that has almost consumed me more than once in the last week. This...there’s fear, to be sure: the lingering twisting, curdling sense of terror.

But how ironic for someone who stood on the edge of a building so recently, only a bare inch away from tumbling to my death, that the fear is of dying. A perfect opportunity to have solved all my problems by just letting the bird do its thing, and I suddenly discover that I don’t want to die.

I laugh suddenly, feeling like a weight has been lifted from my chest. It’s illogical, and ridiculous, but so many of my thoughts over the past while have been consumed with questioning whether I even wanted to continue, or just try to end my life. To suddenly be confronted with an unmistakable desire for survival is...a relief. A decision, finally.

Having acknowledged that, I now realise what the other emotion running riot through me is: triumph. This bird attacked me, tried to kill me, and it failed, because I succeeded in killing it first. It’s been...so long since I have felt the triumph of winning that I almost don’t recognise the sensation.

Of course, then I realise I’ve ‘won’ by killing another living creature and I feel a moment of guilt, and not a little nervousness at this new side of myself. I’ll admit it – I’m a soft middle-manager. I like civilisation. I like drinks and parties and holidays on the beach. I have never been even remotely interested in those survival programs – ‘I’m a celebrity, get me out of here!’ is the closest I’ve ever come to those. I don’t even kill spiders I find in my bathtub! Never in a million years would I have imagined I’d be in the situation where I had just brutally beaten in the head of some bird.

I console myself that I didn’t go seeking this fight: the bird is the one who dropped a rock on my head. That, of course, reminds me of the pain in my head, and my nose, and uncountable places in my body which are no doubt becoming dark bruises as I sit here and think. Plus, if another of those creatures attacks me with my head the way it is, both with my state of mind and my actual physical state, I’ll be done for.

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Actually...wasn’t there something about healing in the list Nicholas wrote? I check the table, and see that the flailing around of either the bird or me has knocked everything off its surface. I curse as my stomach drops. Now that I’ve rediscovered a zest for life, I feel like I’m scrabbling for every possible advantage I can get. I need to find those stones! Setting the table back on its legs from where it had been knocked onto its side, I search around the area for Nicholas’ gifts. The letter is an obvious pale spot and I grab it. It’s slightly smudged by blood, but still legible, thankfully.

I use the list of items to find everything and put them back on the table. My stomach only settles once I’m sure I haven’t lost anything. With how disadvantaged I am already, I really can’t afford to lose even one of these lifelines – the last few minutes have proven just how quickly things can turn into a fight for life or death.

I take in a deep breath and try to pull myself together a bit. I may still have a stomach that feels like a pile of quivering jelly, and a probably-concussed head, but that doesn’t mean I can’t think. Still, sorting out my physical discomfort would probably help.

I knock back one of the health potions. In just a few seconds, my head is significantly clearer – and painless. My eyes widen as the implications sink in, then my stomach sinks again as I realise that I might have made a mistake. If it cleared my cracked skull and other bumps and bruises so easily, how would it do with more significant, life-threatening problems? I have no idea of what is facing me; what if tomorrow I end up with a broken bone or something, and no potion?

Come on, Markus, I tell myself sternly. Pull yourself together; think logically – you can’t change the past, but you can change the future. Alright, I’ll try to think through this logically – like it’s just another problem at the office. Though maybe that’s a bad idea as I was recently fired to be replaced by some ticketing system probably based in India… I redirect my mind away from a topic that’s sure to rebind me in those chains of depression.

Problem – I’m stuck far from home in an environment which I find very unfamiliar.

Solution – I need to check out the resources which have been given to me and make a plan.

Right. Sure. I can do that. I review the item list in the letter again. Which items are essential for my survival now, and which will be more important later? I’ve already absorbed the Class stone, and Nicholas suggested absorbing the Lay-on-hands Skill stone after the Class stone. I don’t know what it’s supposed to be for, but I’ve already decided that I need to trust his advice. That seems the next step.

After that, there are four more stones. Two knowledge stones, a lore stone, and a skill stone. I don’t know if there’s any difference between the capital ‘S’ for the Lay-on-hands Skill stone, and the small ‘s’ for the Tracking skill stone, or if that’s just a writing error. From what I understand of the implications of Nicholas’s letter, I can absorb a ‘Skill’ stone and ‘knowledge’ stone without a problem, but can I do the same with a ‘skill’ stone and ‘knowledge' stone? Do I want to take the risk?

Probably not as the risk is that I lose a large part of the information from the stone, making it worthless. All of these seem far too important to my survival to do that. In fact, that’s the problem - I can’t really decide which one stone is the most important now: they’re all important!

Although Nicholas didn’t put a description of the stones into the letter, I have to guess that the Tracking and Hunting stones are what they say on the tin, and that’s going to be absolutely essential for me once the rations Nicholas has given me run out – hunting to provide the meat, and tracking to find the animals.

As for the other two, the System lore stone will probably tell me more about the Class system, which will be important as I progress. Of all of them, this is the only one I can put in the ‘important later’ category as it doesn’t seem quite as essential to my immediate survival. The final one, on the other hand, is a good candidate for the first stone I use after the Skill stone, if it does what I think it might. Woodcraft could mean carpentry – literally crafting with wood – but I have to guess from what Nicholas said that it’s more likely to mean the other sense of the word – being able to survive in the wood. While that might not help me much with the mountain I’m currently on, it will no doubt be invaluable in the forest that fills the vast majority of the valley I’m more likely to spend time in.

Of course, before I can decide on the order, I need to check out my Intelligence level. Nicholas was clear: unless I have an Intelligence stat over 10, I can’t absorb more than one stone a day. That said, I would imagine my Intelligence is over 10, unless I start at 0 because I’ve just gained my Class. After all, I always did pretty well at school and I left Uni with a First Class degree. Plus, I’ve worked most of the time since leaving Uni and my managers have generally been satisfied with my performance. Until the last one – cost-cutting misers.

Still, I might as well absorb the Skill stone as I know I’ll definitely be doing that first, and it might make some changes to my status.

I pick up the ‘aquamarine’ stone hoping that I’ve correctly identified the colours. Knowing the difference between ‘light blue’, ‘light green’ and ‘aquamarine’ was more difficult than it should really be. Thanks to the instructive message, I think ‘absorb Skill stone’ at the object. It takes a moment, but then it’s almost like the stone turns to gel, slumping into a pool in my hand. The semi-liquid is quickly absorbed, leaving a faint glow in the palm of my hand that just as quickly disappears.

Unlike the previous time, there’s no pain. Instead, a sort of ecstasy envelops me, an energy running through every cell in my body and making it feel completely fresh. I regret once more taking the health potion: I reckon that if I hadn’t taken it, this Skill stone would have healed me anyway, it’s just the impression I get. Then again, if I had been trying to make important decisions with a concussion, I would probably had made more errors.

The next moment, I groan and keel over forwards as someone drives a railroad spike through my head.