It was at least late afternoon when me and Ento arrived at our cave. Using the last remaining light I started to remove all the wood we had diligently collected during the day. Ento helped by stacking the wood by size. Soon we had a decent amount of the wood separated into small logs, branches, sticks, twigs, and finally our two bags of pine needles. Honestly, it was an impressive haul, and I couldn't be any happier about it. The only thing we hadn’t found was berries to help in recovery in the case that Ento was injured. Pussing such thoughts to the back of my mind I turned my attention to starting the fire.

Taking a small handful of pine needles from one of the bags I placed them on the nearest platform. Grabbing my old government notes I tore out two of the pages smiling as I stuffed them underneath the pile to use as starter fuel, Mr. Storm wouldn’t like that! Next I set a pile of small twigs and branches off to one side to add as necessary, finally I grabbed the cheap lighter, it took a few tries to get the cheap striker to light but when it did I immediately set the paper alight. The needles quickly caught fire with a crackle and a pop grabbing the smallest of the twigs. I started to slowly add them to the pile increasing their size slowly, next I added the branches building up until i was feeding the largest of the pieces to it, lastly I set one of the smaller logs on the pile of burning wood, and presto!l I had a nice burning fire, sitting back I smiled as it grew. Holding my hands in front to keep them warm I turned my head to look at Ento. The steel dinosaur was in the cave entrance like he was last night smiling at him. I walked over hugging my clothes closer as I felt the chilly night breeze.

“It’s been a crazy few days huh?” I asked as I scratched him in the gap between his armor plating. I got a pleased grumble for my efforts. Chuckling to myself I just snuggled in closer to my “small” Aron and continued to scratch at the spot, just losing myself for a moment, eventually I got up, sighing, I couldn’t keep putting off the book I had been given by the mysterious “system. Pulling it out I examined the old weathered thing. It was a small black leather bound book with runes I could only compare to Japanese with the intersecting lines and criss-crossing patterns, the book brought many questions to light. This “system” had given me things from the Pokemon world, and I had gotten Ento and I had things from the game, but the pokemon franchise never had a way to improve the character, and abilities or skills were only given to the pokemon. I started to slowly open the book, in fear of what I would find inside. The first page was admittedly normal, filled with the same runes, and when I say filled I mean filled to the brim. I turned each page slowly, studying the strange letters and patterns. As I slowly went through it I had the urge to speed up and just flip through it, but every time I would slow down before doing so. It must have been several hours later when I realized that there was a pattern. Every ten or so symbols three symbols would always repeat. After noticing these letters the distance between the symbols slowly closed the distance. After ten pages it was nine symbols then eight then seven, and so on, and so forth. When I finally reached the last page it was filled with the three symbols, repeating over and over. A splitting headache was what affected me first, grunting. I was able to push through it with slight spikes of pain every now and then, very slowly the pain spread across my body, then I felt my muscles start to break down. That’s when I started screaming. The pain was unbearable. A feeling unlike anything I could have ever imagined. The process couldn’t have lasted more than a few minutes but to me it lasted ages. The pain was unbearable as they broke down and reformed, twisting and braiding themselves around each other. I was panting like a bellows when it was over, lightheaded and feeling close to throwing up. I sat up, signing in relief. I went to stand up… I was hit with another bout of the pain, this one was blinding to me as the pain turned everything white and a ringing like a bomb had gone off next to me filled my ears. I don’t know what happened after that as I dwelt in the pool that was pain incarnate. In my state of never ending suffering, I felt my body twist and shift as things broke, bent, snapped, hardened, and changed. As I sat in this pool of anguish I heard the faintest of rumbles and a weight settling near me. Through my half aware consciousness I could tell that it was Ento, the poor guy was probably freaking out about my sudden collapse, and screaming as my body tore and repaired itself. Slowly the pain built itself into a crescendo that would have put any choir to shame, causing me to pass into the deep and dark depths of sweet unconsciousness.

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