Wyatt clambered down the tree and retrieved a ration bar from his bag. He checked on his shoulder and was surprised as his wound looked better than he expected. He hadn’t expected to see much change for several days, and it had not even been a full one yet. Increased healing would be nice if that was indeed what was happening. He knew it could have been that it just wasn’t quite as bad as he thought when he bandaged it, but he chose to believe he might be healing faster than normal. With that thought buoying his failing spirit he started walking once again putting the sun behind him. Trying to keep himself heading in the same general direction, and more importantly trying to keep out of his own head. After a night lost in his murky, emotionally repressed mind he now understood how solitary confinement could cause insanity.

Time blurred by as he continued his walk. Whether it was because he was tired or distracted by his unresolved issues, he didn’t have that feeling to warn him of an impending attack. Instead, he was caught by surprise. Three of the hyenas came out of nowhere. Wyatt barely managed to shove the attack off course as one of them attempted to pounce on him the moment it was close enough. Despite diverting the attack, he still earned himself a claw to his hip as he knocked the beast to the side. A gasp escaped him as the pain hit. It took him only a split second to ignore the pain. Pain had been a constant between the labor-intensive jobs, and his training. He could ignore it when necessary. The creatures were starting to circle him. He let his pack slide off his back, and as he did one of them leapt at him from the side. He thrust with his staff hitting the eye of the hyena as it was midair doing some damage and more importantly, knocking it to the ground and disorienting it.

Taking advantage of the momentary pause in combat as the hyenas seemed to be reevaluating him. Wyatt jumped forward and swiped his staff cracking the leg of one of the beasts. The third hyena reacted and tried to take advantage of him being out of position, leaping forward at the same moment he made his strike. Operating on instinct Wyatt had started to roll forward over his shoulder right as he landed the strike to the leg, releasing his staff as he did so. A brief pain in his shoulder forced a grunt out of him as he completed the roll. The move had put him close enough to the hyena with the injured leg that he was able to draw his knife and slam it into the throat of the beast. His roll had caused the initial lunge of the third hyena to miss, but it was already airborne once again flying towards him. Wyatt quickly ripped the knife out and swiveled his body to face the new attack. Still on his knees he brought his forearm up under the jaw of the beast preventing it from biting into his face as its weight knocked him onto his back. He used his other arm to slam the knife into its eye, but not before the claws tore into his arm. Using his legs, he flipped the hyena over his head. A quick glance showed him it was no longer moving. The Hyena he had hit in the eye with his staff still appeared dazed, so he picked up his staff, and smashed it full force in the head crushing its skull and pulping its brain.

Wyatt looked at his arm, and although he knew it had been injured, actually seeing the torn flesh where the claws had ripped into him made him feel sick. He fell to his knees fighting the urge to vomit; only to gasp in pain as he was reminded of the damage to his hip. How was he ever going to be a badass if he kept puking after every fight? He managed to get up and stumble over to his pack to retrieve his first aid kit. He did his best to clean the wound and bandage his arm. The other wound in his hip was a bit more concerning, but ultimately, he cleaned it out as well as he could, and did his best to bandage it. “Well, that will teach me to pay attention,” Wyatt said with a wince as he finished securing the bandage. He wanted to cover as much ground as he could in the hopes of finding water before nightfall, but he had doubts about how far he would make it with the wound to his hip. Wyatt decided while walking that there was no point trying to keep track of time. The days and nights were longer here, and it wasn’t like he had any appointments to get to. He only needed to be aware of how close it was too dark otherwise it didn’t really matter.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

After finishing his brief break and rechecking the wound to his hip. Wyatt opted to change his walking to more of a search pattern spiraling out from where he was currently in the hopes of locating water. He really wanted to find a source of water before his current supply ran out, and with a bit of blood loss and exertion from these fights he was drinking his water more rapidly than he expected. He kept on walking making sure to pay close attention to his surroundings as he did so. Eventually the ache in his hip told him it was time for a break. He plopped himself down on the ground, drank a bit of water, and ate the last of the meat he had cooked.

As Wyatt continued his search, he started to hear a faint rumble in the distance, and then thought he was feeling a vibration through his feet. He got down on a knee touching the ground, and confirmed the ground was vibrating. “Is this an earthquake?” He asked himself. As he listened more intently at the sound, he realized he also heard trees crashing into the ground. This was clearly not an earthquake. He wasn’t sure what to do. If he got in a tree and it got knocked over, he imagined his day would go from bad to worse but seeing something strong enough to knock down trees head on also seemed bad. Those thoughts zoomed through his head, and he knew he only had seconds to make a decision. Ultimately, he climbed a tree. It was a dice roll as to whether this was a good call or not, but he had survived falling asleep in the open. Maybe his luck would hold, and he would make it through this as well. Not even a second after he got himself up a tree near him was plowed over as something that looked akin to a meta rhino went blasting through continuing its charge in a straight line just mowing down the line of trees.

Wyatt closed his mouth after he realized it had dropped open as he stared at the destruction left behind by the rampaging beast. He thought of his mother because whenever he stared at something with his mouth open as a child she had said “are you trying to catch flies?” He laughed a little. It was hard to remember sometimes that his childhood hadn’t been that bad until his teen years, but when you have a few bad years in a row the past starts to fade away or at least that was his experience. He realized he had missed an opportunity the other night. He had a pencil, and his notebook, and although he wasn’t going to be a professional anytime soon, he could draw fairly well once upon a time. It had been years since he had drawn anything other than a doodle on a napkin, but when he was packing his bag for this trip, he brought the notebook for a reason. He pulled out his notebook and sketched out the monstrosity he had just seen. He started laughing when he realized it looked like the greyish rhino from that popular card game with monsters. Although this creature had a smaller tail. It had passed through at such speed that maybe he was filling in details he hadn’t really seen, but it was close enough. He decided to sketch out one of the hyenas as well. Keeping track of everything he encountered may not end up being useful, but it gave him something to focus on other than the isolation.

After taking the time to finish his drawings, and then look to confirm that the beast was truly gone he climbed down and started his grid pattern search of the area. As he walked the devastation caused by that rampaging Rhydon, as Wyatt decided to jokingly call it after remembering the creature's name in the card game, was unbelievable. Trees were completely destroyed, large gouges in the earth were all over where the beast pushed off to gain speed. It was a terrifying site. As he walked Wyatt let his mind think over stories, he had read of various fantasy stories. He couldn’t remember anything quite like this, but he knew for certain he had no desire to run into it anytime soon.