Before

I wake up when a ray of sunlight hits my face. No, actually, I wake up and decide to get up then: it hasn’t exactly been a restful night. I think I might have spent more time awake during the dark hours than asleep, and the graininess in my eyes attests to that. But I finally give up when the sun is actually shining in my eyes.

It’s a little above the horizon, high enough to have started shining through the forest and send long fingers of shadow everywhere, but still early enough that the dawn chorus is only just transitioning into the daily sounds of birds. How do I know? Apparently birds sound pretty similar even across worlds. Also something that’s true across worlds: I want breakfast.

Helping myself once more to a disciplined handful of beans, another handful of jerky, and a couple of dried seaweed pieces, I’m set for the day. Well, that’s what I tell myself – my stomach isn’t entirely convinced and keeps sending me images of pancakes with syrup or a good hearty English breakfast or, heck, even a bowl of muesli would go down nicely now.

Shaking my head sharply, I redirect my thoughts to what I need to do. Quickly packing away the small number of things which make up my ‘camp’, I pause thoughtfully. Maybe this is a good spot to sort out my bird meat? I already have a fire, though it’s almost completely out thanks to the hours of inattention on my part. Plus, I’m planning on moving on anyway: leaving entrails and blood here isn’t going to be a problem. Deciding that it’s the best idea I’ve had all day, I pull the bird out of my Inventory.

It thumps on the ground, literal dead weight. Somehow smaller than I remember it being – for some reason I’d thought it to be the size of an ostrich when it’s more like a cassowary. That said, it’s nothing like the cassowary in shape, rather being more like a vulture but with the beak of a hawk. Actually, it’s surprisingly heavy considering it could fly. I’m a bit of an amateur bird-watcher, one of the few outdoor activities I enjoy, and often went on research binges about different facts of birds.

From what I remember, the heaviest bird on Earth that can fly is only something like fifteen or twenty kilos. A cassowary is significantly more than that, adults being over fifty kilos, and an ostrich is more than double that, but neither of those have hollow bones beyond their femurs. Based on how difficult I found it to lift this bird yesterday, I’d guess that it’s at least the weight of a cassowary, maybe a bit more. How then could it fly?

Still musing over the mystery, I start considering how to do this. Considering how big it is, it would be far better if I could hoist the corpse up by its feet. Really, I’m not well prepared for the task, but c’est la vie. Supposedly, I should be able to remove the skin and feathers quite easily, but the size of this thing is daunting. I’ll probably have to do this piecemeal.

First of all, I inspect the condition of the carcass. There’s no strong odor, at least nothing that my absorbed memories tell me is anything unexpected from a beast with feathers which never takes a bath but preens itself instead. The body is not bloated in any way. The feet are stiff and the flesh is starting to show signs of rigor mortis. The eyes are still wet and full. All these signs taken together, I have to conclude that my Inventory keeps things in stasis, or at least does not allow significant decomposition. Considering it’s been almost twenty-four hours since I killed the thing, it should be in significantly worse condition if there were no intervening effects.

A smile of relief takes over my face. That’s good news. Excellent, actually. It makes my food situation so much easier to manage. I decide not to cook all the bird now then. That will save a lot of time, and it also means I’ll be able to cook it in different ways later. I’ll still cook some for immediate and emergency use, but the majority I’ll return to the inventory. I can only hope that it will stack, otherwise I’m going to have a problem. Oh well – I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.

So, following the memories that flash through my mind as I think about dressing a bird, I shift the bird to lying on its side and then make a cut on the underside of its breast. From there, I try to pull the skin and feathers off all in one go. Try, being the operative word. It’s immediately clear that having the knowledge in my head is not the same thing as being able to actually do it.

It takes me a lot longer than it should, and a significant amount of cursing, before I finally manage to get the skin off. It’s not in one piece, either. Still, I’ve succeeded in the first step. I make the next few cuts with a similar amount of precision – or lack of it, rather. I don’t think I’ll be getting all of the meat off this carcass… Just to test, I take three different cuts of meat from the back, the breast, and the leg, and I put them in my Inventory. To my continued pleasure, they do stack.

With that clarified, I continue, cutting through the joints with difficulty. My hand slips in the blood several times and I have to pause and go wash it in the stream, not wanting to cut myself. It’s hard work, and would be better done with an axe or saw, but a knife is what I’ve got so... It’s only when I cut into the body cavity that I realise that I’m dealing with a corpse.

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Maybe that should have been obvious before, but it’s when I see the heart and the intestines, and get a faceful of ‘corpse’ smell that the fact really hits home. Feeling faint and nauseous, I stumble over to the stream to wash the blood off my hands and splash water on my face. This is nothing like the neat and clean packaged cuts of meat in the supermarket.

“Come on, Markus,” I tell myself aloud, almost startled at the first human voice I’ve heard in what feels like days. Actually, considering my drunken binge which made four days disappear, it’s been a while since I even spoke to Nicholas. Still... “Get it together. You don’t do this, you’ll starve. So don’t wimp out and just do it.” Taking a few more deep breaths, I decide I feel fortified enough to continue and turn back to the body. Only to see it move.

I watch in fear as the bird’s legs shift and its head twitches. Magic exists, so does that mean...can things become undead? I’m torn between creeping closer to investigate and running in the opposite direction. Then my eyes narrow. I’ve caught sight of something that puts a lie to my panicked supposition. A tail, in fact.

I creep closer and withdraw the knife from where I’ve hooked it in my belt. Sure enough, the bird is as dead as ever – and not undead. What’s making it move are three creatures about the size of a small dog which look rather like baby crocodiles with longer legs and sharp teeth. They’re worrying and tearing at the bird carcass, snatching mouthfuls off and gulping them down with quick head tosses.

I see red. I almost died to kill this thing, and here are these other creatures thinking they can just come and benefit from my struggle? Without thinking, I stab at the nearest creature. My blade strikes at its back...only to pierce the dirt an inch to one side of it. For a moment it’s like time has stopped: the lizard-thing and I just look at each other. The next, a blinding pain hits me.

The lizard has whipped around faster than I could follow and has bitten down on my forearm. I stagger backwards and fall on my rump, flailing ungainly, my hand still clenched around the knife. The lizard is still attached, doing the same worrying technique to my arm as it was doing to the bird. I grab at it and wrench, trying to get it off my arm. It’s only when I succeed in freeing myself from its teeth that I curse myself at my stupidity: when the lizard came free, it took a good chunk of my flesh with it.

Screaming, I slam the lizard against the ground frenziedly, only stopping when it goes completely limp in my hand and its head looks significantly flatter and bloodier. In the meantime, our kerfuffle hasn’t gone unnoticed. The other two lizard things have rounded the bird carcass and are advancing quickly. One lunges and sinks its teeth in my leg. I shout again, this time more in anger than pain, and grip my knife more tightly. I’ve learnt my lesson: I grab its tail and stab at its body with my knife. It take me a couple of tries, but I manage to sever its spinal cord somewhere between its two sets of legs, my knife slicing easily through the rest of its boneless flesh. I ditch the detached half and stagger to my feet, glaring at the third lizard creature. It stares back at me for a moment and then turns tail, clearly deciding that this is not a fight it wants to risk.

“Yeah, you better run!” I shout at its disappearing back. Panting harshly from exertion and adrenaline, I am reminded as I take a step that I still have half a lizard attached to me. Leaning over, I almost over-balance, my head starting to get woozy. Bloodloss, I realise as I look at the blood coating my right forearm and dripping off my fingers. Fumbling with the lizard’s head, I pull its jaws open – easy now the creature’s dead – and drop the head. Fortunately, since I didn’t yank the jaws away, this wound is a lot less serious than the one in my arm – an elongated semicircle of sharp teeth marks oozing with blood.

My forearm turned towards me, I suddenly freeze. The pattern of blood tracing over my pale skin, the bubbling of the fluid from my wound...it all takes me back thirteen years to the nightmare I’ve never truly got over. I see her again, her lips blue and moving faintly and I try desperately to hear the inaudible words they form….

No! I focus on my breathing, try to pick out three things I can hear, two things I can feel, and one thing I can smell. Wait...blood. No good, no good! Wind, rustling of leaves, smell of earth, trickling of the brook… Bit by bit, I pull myself out of my attack, trying my best to minimise the impact of the pain of my wound, the feeling of blood trickling, the smell of the red fluid in fear it will pull me back into that nightmare.

As the panic loses its cloying grip on me, a new sense of urgency overtakes me. My wooziness is getting worse – I need to deal with these injuries now. I cover the bleeding wound with my hand, desperately trying to keep my precious life-fluid in my body. Bandages, I need bandages! What can I use – a shirt? But I need to use the knife to cut the shirt up, and I’m not at all ambidextrous, so my right hand being the one that’s injured is the worst possible situation for me! Why didn’t Nicholas give me some sort of first-aid kit? He must have known I’d be injur-

Then it hits me. I’m an idiot. Of course he realised that, and gave me something better than bandages - or so I hope.

“Lay on hands,” I croak weakly, concentrating on sending a sense of...energy to the wound. A cool stream floods down my arm from the area under my sternum and saturates the gaping hole in my arm. Under my eyes, it starts to clot over and the blood flow stops. Relief floods me, accompanied by a sudden feeling of weakness. Sparkles fill my vision which quickly shrinks, sounds abruptly coming from far away….