I found five identifiable human parts in the rat nest: Ahpoyt's head, a foot that was missing its toes and much of its soft tissue, a forearm with a hand attached, a femur picked clean of any flesh, and a sternum that had been broken away from the rest of the ribcage it was originally connected to. The rats had all long since fled from my wanton destruction of their nest, so I sat alone under the sky with my prize. The smell of the nest covered me and nagged away at my nose, trying in vain to trigger a vomiting reflex that I had been holding back for hours. Once I had noticed it the intensity seemed to grow, requiring more and more effort to suppress. It was entirely possible that more of Ahpoyt was still down in the piles of bones, but the combination of darkness, stench, and my unwillingness to risk immolating myself by lighting a fire meant I wasn't going to find them until sunrise.
The question now is, is this enough? I thought. While the head was identifiable to me, I wasn't sure if the humans in the village would be the same. Humans had a tendency to fail facial recognition over very small details, and Ahpoyt's head was missing the majority of the identifiers that they usually used to tell each other apart. As for the other parts, even I wasn't sure if some of them were Ahpoyt's. The forearm had precious little flesh left, but the hand appeared to be the right size from my memory. The foot, as well, was from an adult. The femur and sternum were both merely bones, and aside from the fact that the femur was the right size there was no reason to believe either was Ahpoyt's. I need to store these, I thought as I heard a squeak, maybe I can find one of those plants with the giant leaves.
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Traveling at night was not exactly entertaining or safe, and the particular trip I was on was becoming rapidly less entertaining and safe than average due to a sudden onset of dark cloud cover above me. As if the sky itself was mocking my previous observations about the weather on the island, it now threatened to rain while also blocking out nearly all the light that I would have otherwise had to help me avoid running into trees or tripping and falling. The bundle of bones and rotting flesh that I had wrapped in giant leaves already made my balance uneasy enough when things were visible. I should have brought cordage, I grumbled, how did I forget that? Sloppy.
With a clap of thunder, my world became wet and cold. Winds picked up, seemingly from many directions at once, and whipped water against me. If there was any positive point to the downpour that I was now being subjected to, it was that it was doing a decent job of washing the filth and grime from my clothing without me having to do anything. Aside from that, there was nothing. My whole body was shivering in an attempt to keep itself warm, as my body didn't have any form of heater installed, a fact that failed entirely to surprise me. What little visibility I had before was reduced to near zero as well. Screw this, I growled as I pushed against the wind, I need some kind of shelter.
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After what felt like an eternity I tripped and fell down into a recess in the ground. On my way down I pitched the crude leaf bag and its contents forward, spilling them all over as I faceplanted into the muck. I tried to get to my feet but slipped again, then rolled to my left and slid further down, only stopping when the ground was suddenly dry. Regaining my balance, I tried to stand up and bashed my head into something hard, knocking myself back down again. It was only then that I realized I had slid into some kind of hole in the ground and was out of the rain. I felt the boundaries of the space I was in with my hands, touching dry dirt and some rocks, then sat down and began to make a plan.
The burrow, I assumed it was a burrow for an animal considering the relatively straight tunnel structure, that I found myself in was abandoned. At least I assumed it was abandoned because no angry beast had come out to attack me yet. Considering that it was not flooding, it must have been positioned under some kind of water-impermeable layer with the entrance being elevated over a recess in the ground for drainage. So if I'm lucky Ahpoyt's parts are in the recess and didn't fly too far, I thought. Even without the wind and rain the air was still bitterly cold, and my body wouldn't stop shivering. I knew instinctively from the signals that I was getting that I couldn't simply wait until I reheated, if I did not warm up I ran the risk of ceasing function entirely.
I felt around the walls again, trying to find the texture of wood. It was difficult to tell it apart from stone due to how the cold was dulling the sensory detail of my hands, but I didn't think I could feel any. With a grunt of effort that I hadn't needed under better circumstances, I tried to light each rough patch that might have been wood or rock and didn't succeed at any of them. Checking my heads-up display I saw that I was depleting my high-capacity storage, with my immediate energy having emptied out at some point. Did the cold do it? I wondered, Is it doing cellular damage to my body? Or was it the fall? The heat radiating from my failed castings felt like fire to my starved skin, and I ended up holding my hands to one large rock and repeatedly heating it for warmth.
I lost consciousness for a time, though I wasn't sure how much. The only reason I even realized it was the sensation of snapping awake which I now knew well. I was still in pitch darkness, the rain was still falling, and the wind was still blowing, so it couldn't have been long. My bodily instincts told me that sleeping in my condition was bad, though paradoxically it was also compelling me to do so. My mind was slowing down much like it had when I was drugged with the blowdart poison, but not enough to stop me entirely. Maybe I can dig the rock out, I thought, I can dig it out and heat the whole thing for warmth and- wait a minute...
Summoning up my visualization for creating heat, I spread a volume in front of my hands and tried to heat the air. After a few tries, I did feel some warmth and a rush of air, but not nearly enough to justify the investment of power. It's just blowing all over, I thought, but if I can do it to the air, can I do it... to myself? Slowly, I moved the volume in which I wanted heat to appear into my body, centering it on my lower abdomen to avoid as many vital organs as possible. If I end up cooking myself to death with this I hope nobody retrieves me, I thought grimly, then I pushed power into the volume as slowly as I could.
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I winced and hissed, reflexively scrambling away from the burning sensation that had appeared in my stomach. Even the pittance of power I had used was enough to heat part of my body to uncomfortable levels. At once, I felt both too hot and too cold, a sensation that was hard to process. After some deep breathing to stretch my muscles and test for damage, I concluded that I had overreacted. Any damage that I had done was repaired quickly by my healing ability, leaving only heat behind. If it works that way, then can I...? I thought as I went back into my visualization. Unlike before, I made a tetrapodal shape centered on myself with a small bulb for my head, and used much less energy to activate it.
Warmth, as though from the sun at noon, flowed over my entire body. I stopped shaking within a second, and within a minute I was able to think properly again. Looking at my heads-up display told me that I was using more power than it took to light a fire over a longer time. At such a rate of depletion, I could probably keep the effect up for at least an hour under ideal circumstances. Okay, crisis averted, I thought tiredly, I now I just need to work on replenishing my stores.
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I fell asleep again soon after that, waking up fitfully in the night to re-cast my warmth onto myself, until I finally woke up to light peeking into the tunnel I was in. Now that I could see, looking around told me that I was indeed in a burrow. The tunnel extended inwards another meter before stopping around the remnants of a nest, complete with eggshells. I turned back towards the light and crawled out, squinting and letting my eyes adjust painfully once I reached the surface again. I was covered from head to toe in mud and my spear had come off during the fall, a fact I didn't notice until I saw it sitting in the grass. As I had suspected, Ahpoyt's head and other parts were strewn about inside a divet in the earth I was standing in along with the leaves that had been containing them. By some miracle, nothing was damaged.
After strapping my spear back on and gathering the body parts into their leaf package again I used the sun to determine my direction and set out. The weather was clear, birdsong filled the air, and nothing about the atmosphere suggested that the night before had been an absolutely bone-chilling storm. Soon enough I found the meadow, then the road, and followed it to the creek. Of course I couldn't have been placed into an area with sensible seasons, I griped, at least the rain was largely confined to its own months where I operated before.
At the creek I stopped, looking myself over. I should really bathe, I thought as I checked my nose and found that the stench of the rat den hadn't quite faded away. I knew it was the rat den because it not only smelled of rotting flesh, but rotting plants too. As I took my clothes off, I remembered the meat I had been carrying in my pockets and checked it, wincing when I saw that it was covered in dirt and rot as well. I tried to bring myself to try eating it, but even putting it near my lips was enough to make me gag. Once again, sloppy, I criticized myself, rations spoil when exposed to things like that. I should have anticipated this.
In the creek I first set out to wash my clothes, using some nearby rocks to scrub as much of the gunk from them as possible. Without soap, there was no way they would be fully cleaned, but I could at least get the majority of it. When I finally finished my boots, I then walked into the water and began to clean myself off. Every couple of seconds I flashed my new warmth ability to keep myself comfortable, my face turning into a smile on its own at the feeling. I checked my heads-up display and saw that, to my horror, my blue bar had not replenished at all. In fact, it had continued to fall throughout the night for some reason. Was I using more power than I thought? I wondered as I washed myself. My ponderings were interrupted when I touched the back of my neck, feeling something rough that was not skin and definitely not dirt.
My body reacted badly to this new information, flying into a panic and trying to motivate me to scratch at myself to remove whatever was attached to my skin. Now that I knew what it was doing, however, it was no match for my willpower. Instead of scratching and peeling, I used my fingers to study the texture of the growth. It was rougher near the edges, with three main bulbous portions in the center. Pulling my hand back and smelling it, I detected a familiar scent from the rat den and also saw that my fingers had a thin layer of white-green liquid on them. Parasitic bacteria? I thought, or perhaps a fungus of some sort.
I took out the merchant's knife from my things and got back into the water, positioning it carefully near the edge of the growth. In one smooth motion, I dug into my flesh and sawed, skinning the back of my neck as I ripped the cut skin away with my free hand. The pain was intense and I saw blood fill the water near me, but it faded quickly into the pinprick plasma burn sensation of regrowing skin as usual. I brought the growth in front of me, staring at the mess which was in my left hand and sharing my body's disgust. It was bacterial, definitely, and the bacteria had inflated three of the pores on my neck into cysts which were each nearly two centimeters across, with dozens more pores around them also swollen and oozing.
How did I not feel this happening to me? was all I could think as I stared at the mass of infected flesh. I put the knife back on the shore and briefly considered trying to dissect the carbuncle, but both my instincts and my mind told me it would be best to dispose of it. With a flex of my mind, I heated the skin until it dried, then bubbled and melted, letting the creek's water wash it out of my hand. Checking my heads-up display I saw that my immediate reserves were beginning to replenish and made a frightening connection. It was draining me parasitically, I realized, how is that even possible?
The rest of my bath involved a very thorough checking of my skin for more infection. Thankfully there was none, so after dressing myself and picking up the bundle of body parts I headed back to Suwlahtk.