He was in a small woodland, only several hundred meters across. He could see grassland off in one direction with a river running through it and a small lake of to one edge. None of that was what bothered Gar. What did was the huge walls, cliffs all around they must have been at least a kilometre high if not more. It explained the darkness in the forest, it was almost completely in the shadow cast by the cliff face. Gar was in a massive cenote; a sinkhole, kilometres across, a waterfall pouring over the side into the lake, flowing down the river before disappearing underground. This was not good Gar wasn’t going to be able to get out of this easily and he couldn’t see any signs of sentient life anywhere, no buildings, no smoke from fires nothing to indicate there was any help nearby.

Gar climbed down a little found a branch that would take his weight and sat on it to rest and recover his stamina for the climb down. He took this time to decide what his next move should be, with where he was he wasn’t going to be finding help any time soon, so his priority had to shift from finding a village to survival. Gar was no survival expert but had seen enough of those survival TV shows to know the main three things for survival where, water, food, and shelter, so that would be his goal for now once he had that established he would explore from there. So he wasn’t too worried about water, that river and lake should solve that pretty quickly. Food and shelter on the other hand where going to take a bit more work, food would be seeing if he found any plants he recognised as edible. He wasn’t sure he would recognise anything, at least not confidently enough to eat it, so that would mean meat. Perhaps there were some rabbits about he could catch, he had eaten rabbit once and it wasn’t bad, or maybe there was fish in the river he could catch. Food decided for now he thought about shelter, finding somewhere that would work or building something those where the only options. he could probably build something but it would take time and he wanted somewhere before night fell. So that left finding somewhere it was a risk but one he thought he should take, with a bit of luck there would be a cave he could use in the walls of the cenote and it would give him a chance to start looking for a way out.

Mind made up and stamina recovered He started making his way down again. At the bottom he gathered his stuff up into his bag, picked it up only to remember the straps where broken, pulling out a knife from the bag he quickly cut off the waist straps he had added and tied them on to extend and repair the shoulder straps. Hoisting the bag onto his back he set off towards the river he had seen, as where ever he set up base it was going to have to be near enough to his water source.

It was quickly obvious to Gar that he was not going to be able to carry his bag for long; it was uncomfortable, it moved, and rubbed, most of all it was far too heavy. he had stuffed it with everything he thought he might need and some extra stuff as well having been told he could take as much as he could carry but now it was a detriment his stamina was depleting rapidly and he wasn’t going fast. There was too much good and useful stuff in there for him to abandon it or throw it away, that stuff was all he had and he was going to need it to survive but he was not going to be able to properly explore taking it all with him. Through stubbornness and determination Gar carried it through the couple hundred meters out of the trees, and all but fell to the ground as he dropped the pack his stamina again all but bottomed out.

He had to change up his plan because what he was doing wasn’t going to work, that bag was far too heavy. Resting to get his breath and stamina back was long enough for Gar to realise his only option. He was going to have to leave the bag and come back for it. He couldn’t just leave it anywhere he didn’t know what was about and needed to be able to come back for that stuff. So reaching into the bag he pulled out a large knife and a length of rope. Putting the knife to one side he tied a knot in one end of the rope to give it some weight, then after several attempts he was able to throw it over a sturdy branch in a tree right on the edge of the woods. Tying the rope round the bag, then with a lot of heaving and pulling he was able to raise the bag into the tree, it then took some climbing up and down but eventually he had the bag nestled nicely in the crook of a sturdy branch and tied down so it couldn’t go anywhere. Once on the ground he used the tip of one pointed finger to carve a big X into the tree to mark which one it was, then marking a few trees on either side of it with arrows, pointing towards the tree that held his bag. Hopefully that would be enough for him to find it again.

Large knife in hand he set of again towards the river this time at a much faster pace. He was now in a grass plain with a spars scattering of gnarled trees, a gentle slope towards the river which was still quite a distant away only really visible by the flashes of light reflecting off of it. The grass was tall and green but slightly dry in the hot sun, it reached about mid-thigh on Gar, so he kept his pace reasonable to watch out for holes and rough spots but otherwise the grass wasn’t much impediment to him. A fifteen minute walk later and he was hot, the grass was becoming more annoying and Gar was realising the river was further away than he thought. One thing he had noticed was he wasn’t sweating, that could have been because gargoyles couldn’t sweat or they needed more than this to sweat. As of yet he had no idea if this was a good thing or not it was just a thought that had occurred to him while walking. Gar was pulled out of his musings by a sudden pain in the back of his leg, there was a cut across the back of his calf it wasn’t too bad but it was bleeding a bit. Not sure what happened and not noticing anything nearby Gar cautiously continued forward eyes and ears peeled for any signs of, well anything. It was only a few steps later when Gar received another cut in the same leg and as he span knife out to face whatever had attacked him he received another cut on his other leg. With no sign of any attacker and now pain in both legs, Gar needed no more convincing and took off back the way he came receiving one more cut on his way. After running for a minute and no more signs of attack he redirected towards the nearest tree in the sea of grass and climbed up it nestling in its branches well off the ground.

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He spent a good while observing his surroundings looking for any sign of his attacker but had already figures they must be hiding in the grass. There was no sign of anything no hint of anything in the grass, but with no desire to go back there himself he took the opportunity to examine his legs. The cuts weren’t bad, all but the last one had already stopped bleeding but they still hurt, on a side note his blood was a blue grey colour but that currently seemed unimportant. Deciding that the cuts needed no more attention and they were nothing serious. The injury’s though reminded him of another thing. As he thought of it, it popped up on the edge of his vision, a health bar the bar was a blue grey colour and mostly full, it only took Gar another thought to know he had 107/126hp. Amounting to losing about five hp apiece to each attack. He hadn’t read that he had just kind of known it when he thought about it, that seemed somewhat useful. Those cuts weren’t dangerous alone but enough of them could easily be trouble, seeing no other option and really not wanting to go back into the grass, those cuts stung, Gar got as comfortable as he could in the tree and watched the grass, particularly the area where he had run from, it was pretty obvious he had left a trail of flattened grass wherever he had went. It was a hot day, but the shade in the tree was quite nice, he would have liked a drink as well but whatever was in the grass was between him and the water. So he waited and waited he wasn’t sure how long he was up in the tree but he saw no signs of anything in the grass, despite feeling like whatever had attacked him was still there.

While waiting eventually a few of what looked like small deer, but slightly off, wondered into the grass towards the river, as they passed the area where he was attacked, he missed what set them off but suddenly they were running all of them, although one of them seemed to be having some trouble, watching that one closely Gar saw is yelp, cry out and rapidly change direction this happened several times before gar saw it. Something had attacked the deer thing it had been green and quick, attacking from behind. It took several more attacks before he was able to piece together what was going on these green topped balls where jumping out of holes in the ground as the creature passed taking quick attacks before dropping back into their hole leaving only there grass like tops visible, as the creature ran on more and more would pop out and take a cut as it passed before dropping back into their hole, it was an almost perfect example of death by a thousand cuts. The deer creature was slowing now legs almost crippled from cuts, and blood loss, it was brutal but effective, the deer creatures group were long gone by now leaving the weakened one. It didn’t take much longer before the thing fell to the ground and a minute or so more before it stopped moving altogether. It was only once the thing had completely stopped moving did any of the attacking creatures comes out of there hole and Gar got his first real look at them.

They were two short muscled legs with what look like a large claw on the feet, a round body which is also the head, small eyes low down and a large mouth almost running the width of its body with the top of it growing “fur”, “hair”, whatever it was it stood straight up and looked an awful lot like the surrounding grass, it’s what gave them there perfect camouflage when sat in there holes. Once confirming the death with a slash to the throat the creature sliced off a chunk of the animal grabbed it in its mouth and went back to its hole.

“New skill acquired Observe level 1”

Flashed up in his vision Gar blinked it away so he could continue watching. In quick secession a series of these creatures came out sliced of a chunk and returned to hiding, in a matter of minutes the entire corpse was gone bones and all. All while only one of the creatures had ever been exposed at a time. Looking around now Gar was even more worried than he had been before these things where vicious, deadly, and could be anywhere, having already proven he was considered prey. If he had chosen to run towards the river instead of back the way he came it would be him that was dead now and served up in chunks. He needed access to the water though so he was going to have to find a way to spot these things. Gar thought about going around or approaching the water from a different angle but he had no idea how many of these things there where if there were more groups or anything like that. So he would prefer to learn as much as he could from this group he found, especially as his watching had allowed him to work out roughly the area of them and where there territory seemed to start. Deciding he was going through these things to get to the water, Gar started focusing in on where he had seen several of them drop into their hiding holes, because the first step to getting past them was going to be finding them.

Gar watched for over an hour more and in that time came up with several observations, the first was that many of the places where he thought they had returned to seemed to have red marking around, remnants of previous preys blood he suspected, the other thing was that the tufts he thought where these creatures seemed a more vibrant green, much of the grass around here had gone a slight yellow from the sun. These two things where what allowed him to start coming up with a plan along with several assumptions he was making about their habits, such as they only ever had one exposed at a time and that they would not give chase preferring to return to their holes and wait.