As rustling inched forward by the second, Mordemicai considered his options. Likely, it was another peach deer or a hedge badger. On the off chance it was the beast that caused the carnage coming back for its meal, he had to make a choice.
Running was already out, he’d already thought that through earlier. Fighting was an option he wanted to avoid. With no knowledge of what it was or its weaknesses, a completely inexperienced fighter had limited prospects.
Not to mention, his most reliable weapon on him would be a machete. It was the best he could do back when shopping before coming here. Any greater weapons weren’t within his price range or he’d have needed a permit to get one.
Either way, what that meant now was that he’d have to be within arm’s reach to fight it off. It could lead to his own injuries that would result in greater future problems.
Mordemicai thought about climbing a tree to get out of its way, but if the monster could climb too he’d only be cornering himself. Yet, it was still the best outcome. If confrontation was inevitable, taking the high ground was best. If it could climb, Mordemicai would just have to be even higher so he could kick it back down.
Only problem was he had to find a tree that could support his weight. He didn’t have all the time in the world though, so Mordemicai had to make do with his current surroundings.
The source of noise almost upon him, he instinctively reached for the nearest tree without looking away but stopped in his tracks.
What appeared wasn’t a peach deer or a hedge badger, but it wasn’t some monstrous beast either.
A Raortol came out, poking their head from the bushes.
To be more specific, a Raortol, one of the twelve species of mankind, came from the brush.
It was a person.
Raortol averaged around six feet with their most defining feature being fur. From the elbow down, they had thick fluff coating their arms with their fingers protruding from the hair. The same applied for their lower legs except their feet became more animalistic than human like. Not able to wear normal shoes and uncomfortable with clothing over their fuzz, they mostly donned special sandals, capris or shorts, and avoided long sleeves.
Similar to Dogra, they had high muscle volume with low body fat so they shared the characteristics of being stronger than average but poor swimmers. Unlike most other races who had ears on the side of their skull, they were one of the few that balanced their ears on top of their head.; soft oval ears almost like a cat’s or a dog’s.
If there was a stereotype for them like how Dogras were violent, Raortol were thoughtless jocks. In movies, they’d be the cool action guys or the muscle. People drafting for sports teams would chose them first. When Mordemicai was still a student, it was always a problem in the locker rooms that their fur would clog up the shower drains from shedding.
It felt weird to see a person after so long. It’d only been seven to ten-ish days but its feeling was amplified by not expecting to see someone for a much longer time.
The girl was blond, hair and coat alike. Mordemicai found it funny how her natural colors worked as better camouflage than the clothes he’d brought. Only able to divulge to clerks he was going camping for a long time, they’d recommended high-end hunting gear. There was no way any of them could have guessed he’d end up wearing useless green camo in a pink and yellow wonderland.
He didn’t have much time to humor it though as the girl was blatantly armed.
“Holy shit, is that a war axe?!” Mordemicai gawked, trying to contain his excitement.
No clue how she’d gotten it, but it was totally cool looking. The long shaft of the weapon caused it to surpass the girl’s height. Its head had two sides, a crescent axe on one half and a flat, square hammer on the other. The thing was definitely not made for chopping wood.
It’s not as if he’d been overtaken by his dorky interest though. While seeing such a weapon was stirring up his curious adventurer side, he couldn’t ignore that someone unknown was wielding it. Sure, Dogra skin was tough, so tough that kitchen knives couldn’t cut it, but that wasn’t a kitchen knife.
A hit from either side of the battle axe in the right place could take him out instantly. Its long pole gave enough room to maneuver that he wouldn’t even be able to counter attack with his comparably lacking machete. Like the supposed predator, a Raortol would naturally outdo him in speed so running was still off the table, and he’d be at a disadvantage climbing now too.
If his guest was a violent one, he’d have no choice but to just do the best he could.
The girl held out her free hand with the palm facing outward like she was waving hello. Mordemicai copied the action back. At least it didn’t seem like she was a cannibal or blood thirsty lunatic; there was little point in greeting to your food.
Yet a different worry of his was shortly confirmed afterword.
“Rekk cshone! Alva jun delco Vuuska?”
He had no idea what she was saying.
“So that’s the Language of Savages, huh?” Mordemicai thought it sounded awkwardly nice.
When he was younger and doing all his preparations for his trip to the Wilds, it was one of his greater concerns. Even in his extensive research, there was very few mentions about the dialect of the people who lived there. It’d been dubbed as ‘The Language of Savages’. It was said that indulging in it would rot one’s mind by sinking to their speaker’s ‘uncultured level’.
Basically, the mumbo-jumbo of self-righteous individuals. However, this meant there were absolutely no sources studying or teaching the Language of Savages. For all Mordemicai could tell, there could be countless languages in the Wilds that had been mislabeled as all the same.
Without anything to work with, Mordemicai did as he always had and just tried to do whatever he could. Stretching his formidable intellect, he’d studied handfuls of other tongues, both modern and ancient. Most vernaculars derived from others, it was possible that the Language of Savages was an evolved form of some other language.
It was the bet that Mordemicai had made and the bet Mordemicai had lost.
Feeling downhearted that all his effort was for naught, he tried to shake his gloom. Just because his planning fell through doesn’t mean he got to be done with the one-sided conversation.
“Sorry, I don’t understand…” he held his hands up faintly in hopes that despite not being able to talk, he could communicate he meant no harm.
It seemed the message got through as the girl had realized their mutual conundrum. She focused on him for a bit, wheels turning audibly in her head.
“Hello, pleasure to meet you. My name is Ather.” It was clunky, slow, slurred, and weighed down by a heavy accent, but it was undeniably the main language of his home planet Caotomn.
Mordemicai was in shock! It was amazing news that they could now speak but he also felt a little like an idiot for never considering that there’d be people out here who knew his dialect.
“Ah! Pleasure to meet you, my name’s Mordemicai.” She already sounded like she was having trouble with the translation so he tried to respond in the same way to make it easier.
“Mohmedmisigh?” The complete butchering of his name, despite it being one of his greatest pet-peeves, wasn’t enough to ruin his mood. His name was pretty long and she was trying her best so he’d let it slide. It would have to be something they’d work on. With both of them residing in the area, they’d keep running into each other so it was best to try and get along.
“You see Vuuska?” It must’ve been the question she asked earlier now posed so he could understand. Yet, there was still a word he couldn’t determine.
“Vuuska?”
“Vuu-ska” she began charades to get her point across by gesturing at the deer they’d been ignoring and then scrunching her hands up in a clawing motion.
Oh! Did he see the monster?
“No. I just got here.” Mordemicai was only drawn here by the peach deer. He’d heard that the Raortol had sharp noses when it came to blood so she might have also been drawn by the smell.
Mordemicai hovered uncomfortably, unsure of what should come next when the girl suddenly chopped off the miserable deer’s head with one swing of her mighty axe.
He’d be lying if he said he didn’t flinch. It was brutal. Despite Mordemicai’s revulsion to the sight, he knew it was a mercy kill.
“No safe with Vuuska.” The statement was directed at him. She was right, it wasn’t safe here now with this ‘Vuuska’ running around.
“Yeah, I was thinking about where I should go…” he halfheartedly scratched the back of his head. If the lady with a killer weapon who had lived here longer said it was a bad idea to stick around, then he should believe her.
“I have burrow, you come?” An invitation to live with her for the time being?
Mordemicai, who took joy of throwing caution to the wind, was hesitant. Even toddlers new not to follow strangers home. While they did seem to be getting along fine, they really did just meet.
Albeit, what were his options really? Stay here and get eaten by whatever a Vuuska was, try to rough it on his own and hopefully run into another good camping spot, or follow a stranger home.
Mordemicai felt the obvious choice was to go with the Raortol. It wasn’t because he was a chicken who didn’t want to take chances, otherwise he wouldn’t be out here in the first place. Rather, he’d happened to meet a person who knew both the dialectal he spoke and the dialectal he wanted to learn. Stick with her and the impassably rare opportunity to learn the Language of Savages becomes a possibility.
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It was worth the risk.
“Sure, but Miss…uhm…. Sorry, what is your name again?”
“Ather”
“Miss Ather, I have some things to grab first. Is that okay?”
----------------------------------------
The arrangements worked out so that Ather was carrying his duffle bag with its straps looped around her axe. In her other hand, she held the disembodied peach dear head by its antlers. This left Mordemicai with his suitcase slung over is back and the roped-up deer carcass on his other side held as far away from his body as possible.
He’d been hesitant at first to take the deer corpse along, it’d been grossly chewed on by its attacker. Yet to his own dismay, the carnivorous part of him was overly rejoicing at the idea of meat. It was clear he wouldn’t be able to catch his own anytime soon so the limited offer had him considering breaking his morals.
That wasn’t the only problem with the meat Mordemicai had been worried about though. Besides decapitating the deer, they hadn’t done anything to preserve the meat. He’d read somewhere that in the state it was in, the meat could spoil within an hour of the kill. He’d decided to leave his concerns unvoiced, relying on Ather’s expertise; perhaps things were different in this aspect just as how many things in the Wilds were.
As they marched along, the two chatted idly. Mordemicai had eagerly used the opportunity to learn many things.
The Burrow Ather spoke of didn’t mean what he originally thought. It was more like a community center than someone’s house.
People out here moved in groups, clans, tribes, or whatever you wanted to call it. How and where they traveled was decided by the group individually. Some did looping routes to accommodate with the seasons, others had religious or traditional aspects they abided by, and there were even those who just wandered around without any goal in mind.
The only thing they all had in common was the universal belief that to stop traveling was taboo. If one tribe settled down and started trying to build a town, other tribes would band together to knock their skulls off. The only exception to this rule were Burrows.
Burrows were structures that acted as neutral ground and offered services to everyone. It was a place that anyone could seek shelter from storms, treatment for the sick, news and knowledge of the area, or get goods that would be otherwise impossible to make with their vagabond nature.
In a complete opposite reaction to building towns, if someone attacked a Burrow the other clans would group together and wipe the aggressors out.
Naturally, for Burrows to work, they had to be run by someone. The people who managed them were titled Burrow Masters; Ather was one of them.
The invitation to come to her Burrow was less like inviting a stranger into your house and more as if she was guiding a lost, confused child to a safe space.
Mordemicai decided to appreciate the sentiment.
He’d also been misguided in the belief that she’d lived nearby. It was actually quite the distance to their destination. A journey that’d begun at noon had ended shortly before the sun was setting. By then, his arm had given up on holding the bloodied peach deer at a distance as the thing limply bounced against his legs while he walked.
They’d arrived in a hilly area shrouded by tall-grassed golden plains. He followed the Burrow Master to wide stone patches that’d been placed logically in what Mordemicai believed were to act as markers. Like a dotted line on a treasure map, they lead to an area where the grass had been mowed down.
It was there. At the bottom of one of the waving hills, a short staircase to a door was indented in the rising ground. There were no hinges, rather it was basically a thick portion of sculpted wood covering the entryway that had to be picked up and moved.
Once inside, Mordemicai became a child in a fairground. He spun slowly, trying to take in the room in its entirety. Walls were lined with tightly packed stone and wood giving way to small circular holes methodically carved following the sun outside to give the cave light. Open air flowing through those windows swayed hanging plants that’d been strung up to dry out giving the Burrow an herb sent.
The entry room was a large, round shape with one side opening up into deeper hallways. In Mordemicai’s guesstimate, the rooms diameter would be six to seven cars long. Showcased in the room was a dozen rudimentary tables accompanied by benches organized in rows. Mordemicai found that the set up bore strong resemblance to a school lunchroom. Not to be outdone by the dome’s walls, the floor was made of large stones with only a few deviating from their task by rebelliously sticking up.
At the end of the room opposite to the entrance, there were three beckoning doorways that didn’t even bothering having the same wood covering as the door leading outside. The left and right hall descended downward to areas he couldn’t see. The middle one however was a large opening that proudly boasted an elevated kitchen area. Separating the kitchen from the entry room was a dinner-like bar with its own stools and sculpted stairs on each side to get to the room it guarded.
All in all, it was much more impressive than Mordemicai had expected.
“It’s like a medieval tavern” he made note while observing the unlit candles on the long tables. In all the material Mordemicai had gotten his hands on, the researchers consistently downplayed the level of intelligence in the populace. However, those same researchers had been so narrow-minded as to not even attempt to learn the local language.
He should probably consider their research based in prejudice opinions null and void at this point.
“Monormechai!” Ather called to him from further in.
“Ah! Coming!” Mordemicai placed his suitcase on one of the benches and followed her to the kitchen with the peach deer. Time was of the essence when it came to spoiling meat.
The kitchen had a counter that wrapped all the way around the room with a square island piece smackdab in the middle. The only break in the counter was to make room for the fireplace-chimney combo that housed a giant witch-like cauldron.
Watching the unidentifiable contents boil without reserve, he humored once more the idea that Ather might just be a cannibal out to eat him.
He jolted at the sound of ripping flesh, whipping around to witness that Ather had begun disassembling the peach deer.
Equally disgusted and mesmerized, Mordemicai awed at how flawlessly she was able to take the creature apart. He tried to absorb as much information as possible from the Raortol’s fluid movements; effectively dismantling was another thing best learned from experience so he wouldn’t squander the chance to watch a master at work.
If Ather had noticed him staring, she didn’t seem to care much.
The pelt skinned in one piece without any nicks, tendons stripped, internals removed and organized. The chewed areas were cut off leaving the remaining flesh to be diced with some of the organs and thrown into another pot near the witch caldron.
“Macronike, help me with these.” Okay, now Mordemicai was sure she wasn’t even trying to get his name right. While most of the meat had been put into the pot, she’d left the legs and intestines on the table and was now asking for him to help carry them.
If he was being completely honest, he really didn’t want to touch them. This was definitely out of his comfort zone. Mordemicai wanted to gag just looking at the still bloodied appendages and organs but he refused to act like a sissy.
“I’ve just never done stuff like this before. I’ll get used to it eventually.” He encouraged himself while making to grab the load Ather had left. Mordemicai was never one to back down from a challenge or new experience before, that wouldn’t change now just because it was gross.
They held two legs each as Ather lead them back outside and around the mound the Burrow resided in. He realized that he hadn’t seen the dirt side path earlier because they’d arrived from the other side.
Trailing it led to a shack not nearly as extravagant as the insides of the hollow hill. Noticing the dense smoke rising from the building, he sniffed the air with anticipation to confirm his suspicions.
It was a smokehouse, a structure dedicated to the curing of food via smoke. By the looks of it, the smokehouse was built to be extremely sturdy. Upon getting closer, he found out why.
Scratches of all different sizes and depths clawed at the walls. Mordemicai wasn’t the only one who got excited while smelling the cooking meat.
Counting the gash marks, he heard a scurrying noise from inside when Ather opened the door.
Oh?
It was quickly followed by aggravated hisses.
Oh???
Peeking to see what the racket was, a trap full of caged hedge badgers glared back.
Oh!!!
There had been one opening purposefully left for the smaller variants of thieves that came to take from the forbidden, smoky treasure chest. They’d creep through the hole only to get trapped in a box that can be entered but not exited due to the way it was made. Using the smell of cooking meat to lure in new meat to cook; a self-fulfilling trap.
Mordemicai chuckled maniacally at the stupid little rodents for getting duped.
What kind of idiot would get lured into such a simple trap by the promise future security only to get eaten by the mastermind?
Haha,….. ha………… Mordemicai was going to shut up now.
Stepping into the smokehouse, he made sure there wasn’t any human body parts strewn up with the other products. There weren’t but even if she was a cannibal Ather seemed smart enough to not leave that kind of incriminating stuff out.
He knew it was super rude to keep suspecting someone without any evidence, but it couldn’t be helped. Mordemicai’s only insight to people like her came in the form of biased researchers. He might have flawed information, but only a fool would disregard everything they had heard before confirming it for themselves.
They worked together to hang up the deer legs before heading back to the Burrow as the sun disappeared under the horizon.
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Entryway secured, Ather went about lighting some of the candles to rid the room of evening darkness. Mordemicai sat at one of the many benches and rested his head on a table, the fire gleaming off is retinas as his mind stirred.
He had learned a lot today, more than he had within the last seven to ten-ish days. It was good thing, he always craved to learn more especially when it’s related to out here, but with new information comes new outlooks and ideas.
Mordemicai had been acting with the knowledge he knew and now that he knew more he should adjust his plans to accommodate that knowledge into better reaching his goal.
His goal, his purpose was to explore and adventure till his heart’s content to uncover the mysteries of untold. He’ll admit, he set his sights high. There was no direct path to starting what he aimed for. Mordemicai could also end up searching his whole life and never get even a taste of what he is after.
He wouldn’t say he’d be fine with that, but it was something he had come to accept. What he wouldn’t allow though is missing out on the opportunities that do come his way. The more time it took accommodating to the Wilds, the less time and chances he’d have at truly exploring them.
That’s why it was so important to make the best choices early on.
Silence allowed slight ticking of the inept watch in his pocket to ridicule him, asking how much time he planned to waist fumbling around blindly.
His brooding contemplation was cut off by a carved bowl being placed gently onto the tables in front of him. Ather gave a friendly smile from her position over him before seating herself across from him.
Finally sitting up properly he could see that she’d brought a bowl for herself as well, both sharing the same contents as the witch pot in the kitchen. Remembering that he hadn’t eaten today, Mordemicai looked at his first proper meal in a while; yet he wasn’t hungry. His head was so full of thoughts that they spilt over into his stomach and left no room for food.
Weakly stirring his weird soup, he tried to lay out all the new things he’d found out. Burrows, tribes, language, and culture: knowing now what he hadn’t before, turning tail and going back to camping would be unproductive. Yet, he didn’t have the resources or connections to pursue the new landscape that’s presented itself.
“Is something wrong?” Ather probed after he had failed to eat anything and just kept playing with his soup.
“Sorry. I’m just…. thinking.” Mordemicai groaned back, exasperated by his own head.
“I see.” Ather hummed. The look she gave was as if she was trying to read his mind.
“Well, Mardoshin…”
“It’s Mordemicai” He sighed blandly, not having it in him to hold back from correcting her anymore or be upset.
“Mor-de-mi-cai” she sounded it out gradually, making her effort clear in trying to get it right.
“Yeah?”
“The seasons changing soon. There will be many things I must do. From what I see, you don’t know a lot.”
Ouch. That hurt his intellectual pride. Her statement was just like her nature he’d been quickly catching onto; harsh, but true. Ather seemed to have great talent in reading other people, or maybe just at reading Mordemicai. He hadn’t seen her around anyone else so he couldn’t be sure.
“I could use hand, you could use teacher. Burrows are made to trade help. Give and take, yes?”
The offer made Mordemicai stop his stare-off with his meal. Was she offering to give him a job? No, it was more like an apprenticeship. By working at the burrow, he’d be allowed to learn through his tasks with Ather’s guidance.
There was no question as to what the best choice was continuing forward.
Sure, he was a little disappointed that his rugged, roughing-it lifestyle was ending so he could play house; but those were the mere prattles of the child in him feeling like this was less of a typical adventure than what he’d been doing before.
“Yes please, Miss Ather. I look forward to working with you.” But that disappointment was trounced by the chance before him.
“Then quick, eat. We start tomorrow.” He felt that she’d have tacked on ‘I’ll work you to the bone’ if she’d known the phrase.