Tim kicked off a rock before it could stab him in the butt, and his momentum sent him flying toward the path with the arcus plant.

Tim landed on said plant and tumbled into a bush made of prickly thorns and berries that smelled of watermelons and lime. Minus the abrasions and subsequent burn, the landing was a mild success. He stabbed his knife into the hard dirt around the splayed-out green fingers of the plant and sawed around the long root. The healing elements were stored in the white fibers as thick as his wrist at the top and long enough to reach his bicep when he pulled it out.

He cut a strand a little thinner than his thigh wound and stuck it in.

The feeling resembled stabbing a hot pepper into his eye, so, not great, at first. After the initial shock, it numbed the pain and HP digits started to climb.

Your Self Defense skill has expanded with the sub-category of: Healing. The aura within the goods you provide will increase the healing efficacy as you level this ability and related skills like Foraging.

Do I get XP for multiple areas at once? Tim asked. Like Healing and Foraging?

Yes. Any actions that fit under available class skills will gain XP. If items used for healing were foraged, you will also gain XP in Foraging. If they are found in a Forest, you gain XP in Forestry.

Thank you. Tim continued descending the slope toward the staff. The pain faded and an itching heat spread over the no longer bleeding gash.

He skipped and slid over disturbed rocks avalanching toward unmovable boulders at the bottom. The pattering of the stones echoed through the valley over the din of insects and birdsong. Any hunter or predator worth its salt would be homing in on his racket. He had no choice but to do this as quickly as he could.

Midway down, he spotted three people on horseback watching him from a trail fifty yards out. Great! The woman with the black vest lifted her crossbow. Tim jumped for the ledge ten feet down. His stomach bottomed out. The impact jolted his teeth and lower back. He turned over in the rebound and slid off target. His back hit a sharp rock, stabbing deep into his muscle.

Tim held onto the sorest part for a second, then forced himself into a sprint.

The woman with the crossbow found a perch and fired.

He grabbed the staff and dove over the other side of a boulder. The bolt caught him low back.

Tim checked his HP: 34/51.

Rolling onto his side, he cut off another slab of arcus root. His assailant cursed and he heard the disturbance of stones as she descended for the kill.

Can I get some help, Dryfu?

On it. Get up to your brother.

The stykiller flew over the boulder back toward the archer and out of sight. Tim grunted through twisting to reach the bolt in his back. Tears brimmed. He grabbed the blood slick shaft and yanked it free, neighing through his teeth. On his way toward cover, he discarded the bolt into his pouch. Surprisingly, it disappeared into magical smoke like the loot had.

A bolt launched at the same time as the woman gasped. It flew high and cracked through thin branches. She howled and slapped at her pants.

Tim stuck the arcus root in his wound and pressed it home with the tip of Chris’s staff. Aura on its knob fused the root into the gash with ease. He pulled it back after just a few MP and saved the rest for Chris.

The staff helped him climb, and he arrived with his brother at 2 HP, eyes lost in the back of his head and a string of blood drawn from the gap in his lips. “Hold on man.”

He rested the head of the staff in the hole in Chris’s stomach. Chris winced. Then the healing started and Tim gently pulled him back. The tree branch was a thick bugger, as wide as his hand at the base. It slurped at the exit with Chris’s insides and Tim stuck the staff into the hole to stop the flow. The blood at his stomach had turned black and stank of belching diarrhea. Tim swallowed back a bit of bile and held on to the aura discharge releasing from the staff. The exhaustion of being emptied like this gave Tim greater fear of the kinds of magic this world held.

For now, he was glad it was working for them, as Chris’s HP rose past halfway and the color returned to his skin.

Chris blinked and squirmed his way from the suffering, his eyes forming sand swirls in the pupils.

Tim guided a hand to the staff handle. “Here you go.”

Chris’s eyes lit the end of the staff with the same yellow aura glow and smoke rose from the wound. Blood thinned in the streams still leaking. Tim put in a sliver of arcus and Chris stuffed it deeper. He gasped over the din of insects and distant birds Tim trailed as he scanned for company.

Chris’s klandrog, bear thing had sharp claws. “Can your pet shave strands off this?”

Chris grunted ascent and the klandrog cub accepted a full stalk of arcus. It ran its teeth over the side as if it were a corn cob. Tim handed him the last two full ones and took the ready one. He slid it into Chris’s wound, blood gushing over his fingers as the magic melted the plant into healing power. A static shock bit Tim’s fingers. Yellow-white veins grew from the rounded wooden knobs on the staff. They reached long enough to sew into the gulf of damage inside his guts.

Chris’s eyes went dark brown in a tornado pit of aura attaching its power to his seam-weaving.

Tim took the other two arcus roots from bear cub and applied them as Chris needed. As soon as they melded with his wounds, and Tim thought it safe, he helped Chris to stand. His eyes returned their white and color. “Let’s go.”

Tim put the rest of the arcus on his thigh and started the climb.

The black vested woman greeted him with the front of her crossbow. “Not bad for a level one. Not bad for both of you.” She wagged her bow for them to finish climbing and let loose a stubborn grin as though he were the butt of an unspoken joke. “Come on up. I have a proposition for you.”

Not what Tim was expecting to hear, but he was listening.

Dryfu flew off her shoulder and fluttered to land on Tim.

Mind cluing me in here, oh magnificent guide?

Listen to her offer. The Childockian could become an ally.

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She shot me!

She shot at a blur going after a treasure. After helping you escape I negotiated a truce.

His brother winced at the effort to climb. The open flaps in his thin sorcerer robe exposed scar worn flesh pink and bruised brown and blue. Tim knew from his surgeries how the healing took far longer than what you saw on the surface.

He helped Chris help up then tried scanning the woman and her two companions for stats. Jilsarda Leoric lit up over the woman, then Thiszroz over the orange rock skinned lizard man and finally, Thron over the stone lifting bodybuilder who reminded him of Zangief from Street Fighter. He looked like he wasn’t far from lifting Tim into a suplex, were it not for the woman standing between them.

His effort to scan for skills and classes returned with an uncomfortable spasm behind his ears.

They’re not your party yet, but play your cards right and they could be.

Tim studied them as he climbed the last of the ledge. The lizard man, Thiszroz’s facial structure had three fingers fanned out, propping his white and blue hemmed hood from the sides of his head. Similar sky blue patches decorated his desert rock orange scales. A small triangular gemstone of the same blue was flushed in the center of his forehead. On his belt he wore a small rope with silverleaf threading and a holster with a perforated bell dangling from it by two links of a metal chain. A thick green clothed scarf circled his neck and draped onto his back. Sticking out of the bottom of his robe was a long tail slithering in the dirt, jostling tiny wind chimes hanging from metal loops hooked into the plates along the top.

Thron, the clear strongest of the trio, whose muscles made his ripped clothes look like a thin inconvenience to his growth. Atop his shaved head was a blond mohawk and flowing beard. His other patch of hair was on his chest where an intricately shaded black on white tattoo of an elk head with two spiraled horns arching high into his neck. If Tim met that creature alone in the woods, he wouldn’t be calling the park rangers. He’d high tail it out and pray he never met another.

Many scars slashed across the bare skin, but Thron’s posture didn’t appear disturbed by the history behind them, nor the long black disturbance to his pecs. Blood glistened through his filthy gray shirt and stank of rot. The most elegant of his armor was in his hardened leather bracers fit snuggly from halfway up his forearm down to his knuckles. Golden trim engraved over the forest green base as though highlighting the pinnacle of his might. His golden belt buckle had an engraving of a downward punching fist impacting into lightning bolts.

In the center of their group stood the woman, Jilsarda, an archer with an athlete’s build. Her grip lifting him over the ledge proved she could hold her own in a fight, with or without the few inches she had on him. A cursory glance hinted of at least twenty pounds of solid strength beyond his, too.

He needed to get lifting. Her expression seemed amused and alert as her gaze switched from them to the trail and then to helping Chris. “I’m Jil.” Her tone spoke of regal authority and business, with a hint of not wanting to make trouble. Tim liked it.

While all three wore patches that might be flags of their country and branch of military, her leather collar bore two metal pins. One was golden topped in the shape of an arch with rays or claws spreading upward. A silver humanoid figure stood beneath it with arms stretched to the edges in a posture of embracing strength. The other pin was a triple arrow in gold, white and green with two small stars after the tips. Their matching patches were a deep purple background with three armadillo like creatures along the top. The secondary patch sewed into the bottom corner displayed a flowery black dragon stitched onto a white circle.

She caught him looking at her adorning and gave a glint of respect back. Then he took a moment to admire her light brown eyes and the freckles splashed across her cheeks and

Her gaze hardened.

“Do you want to wait around for one of the Wachamians or take my generous offer to train you as a ranger? The Hunt just started, and you’re far out matched by what’s coming.”

Her attention swung behind her to the woods. He tracked toward the echo of a faint voice. She looked him in the eye. “Decide now.”

She left before he could answer.

An intense feeling of get the hell out of here drove him to run after her, aching sore thigh and back be damned.

Lizard man, Throzroz twirled his rope bell as he sprinted. Wind blown music produced a singsong melody floating on wild green currents and spreading outward from their diamond formation. Tim felt fear in the essence it produced as it swept around him.

Sweat broke on his forehead and chilled against a draft of wind blowing through an open field at the hill’s plateau. This place appeared on the verge of fall, both from the faint colorshifting in the leaves, as well as the brief fluctuation in wind temperature.

“Hey! Theos!” called from behind them.

An archer drew an arrow from the opposite tree line but didn’t fire.

Tim leaned into his habitat bonus. He had to trust it. Dryfu said Jil had shot at a blur. The stones he’d kicked out had likely given him away. He got an idea and searched their path for a rock he could hurl. Foraging kicked in and he found one in seconds. “Wait for my signal,” he told a crouching Jil at the head of their unit.

“What?”

Tim ran with it, breaking through the terror of sprinting into an open field to become the possible target of at least one archer if this didn’t work.

You’re good. Keep going. Just don’t run at any of them and Fleeing will protect you.

The archer scanned slowly the wrong direction. It was working!

Twenty yards to the other tree line. Tim was already winded. His legs burning for him to slow down. He had to do this right… He hurled the rock into a tree trunk hard enough to send the echo back across the field. Next, he jumped and grabbed a handful of thin branches, snapping them loudly in the sudden silence.

Clamor erupted behind him. Lights and song. Then darkness and the stunned quiet forest.

Tim slowed and rubbed at a cramp in his side. Sweat dripping with a chill, maybe from the nausea, maybe the night air. While waiting for Jil and the team, Tim Foraged and found some syrup in the crook of a tree. The little bugs added a hint of bacon, he told himself. Right as rain.

Jil led them nearly miles more before he had to request a break. “I’m sorry,” Tim said.

“No, it’s good. We’ve made progress,” Jil said.

“On the plus side, I earned a Map Making skill, so at least I’m not a hundred percent lost. Where’re we going, anyway?” Tim asked.

“Just far enough to avoid them finding our camp. We can setup here with some lean-to’s. I’ll show you how.”

Tim followed her lead, harkening back to his Cub Scout days and the familiar blue and yellow and merit badges. They made a fire in the center and propped Thron close by. “Can you Forage for an antidote for Thron?” Jil asked Tim. “Iklingaki grows around here. Yellow center on white petals.”

“Got it.”

Tim finally found the iklingaki plant as the forest passed dusk and the white fireflies joined the crickets and wolves.

Those aren’t wolves.

Oh? Friendly doggies?

No, Frung’suq. Stronger deer than you can imagine with deadly antlers and poison tongues as long as you are tall.

“Does my habitat evasion work against them?”

Not at your level. Not the adults anyway.

His Map Maker skill allowed Tim to make markers in his mind within an indistinct cartography. At least at this level he could tell there were four, and within a hundred feet of their location. He hustled back to camp and gave Roz the iklingaki.

“Thank you.” Roz took it to the steaming cast iron pot hung over the fire.

Tim relayed his news of company.

“I’ll take care of three,” Jil said, more to Roz, “and save one for near our camp for me to teach you how to set a trap,” she told Tim. “While I’m gone, Forage for encib bushes.”

She left and Roz and Chris loosed flower petals into the steaming pot hung over the fire.

With his bear on his shoulder, Chris muttered after Roz and stirred the concoction with his staff. The strange brown color to his eyes took over as he chanted his spell. Tim didn’t want to interrupt but he was a little jealous at what Chris could do already. Truthfully, he was happy for his brother, especially seeing the smile when Roz exclaimed that the antidote was done. Tim stepped aside as Chris carefully carried the ladle with the boiling liquid.

“So, don’t punch you right now?” Tim asked.

“Kick you in the face,” Chris mumbled playfully.

Thron garbled and cursed under his breath as the antidote burned through the poison. Jil told Tim earlier how they had uncovered a trap that flung the urtec onto Thron. The low level land jellyfish had a nasty poison in its tentacles, and when combined with its bite made for a nasty wound even on the big guy. His high constitution combined with the creature’s low level were the only two reasons he was able to walk and not be in a coma, Jil had said.

Tim bent to get under a branch and started his Forage.

He made it back to camp with five bushes waiting and a nice sense of accomplishment he never felt coming home from his day job at Hy-Vee.

The scent of death and charred beef lasted well into the night. Chris and Roz started working on a new boiler concoction, so Tim worked on stretches he knew to combat the stiffness in his legs and back.

Your Healing Skill has expanded to add the sub-category Recovery.

He transitioned into lying down exercises. A slight kick to his leg startled Tim.

Jil stood over him, arms folded across her chest. “Ready to make your first trap?” she asked, a bit sharp on the question part.

“I am,” he said and picked up his twine. He squinted into the dark and followed her away from the warmth of the fire. His ranger sense didn’t make the night any brighter, but his path through it felt as easy as a stroll down a newly paved sidewalk. In time, this could become his new home.

A different sense alerted Tim of a frung’suq rising from a hiding spot he struggled to track in the trees.