I walked through the undergrowth along the road to Vehrehr, trying to make good time while watching the sunset in the distance, and all I could think was that I was sure I had been scammed. There's no way that this equipment costs that much normally, I frowned while I chopped apart branches in front of me, not that it's bad equipment, but the economics just don't make any sense. The owner of the weapon and armor shop whose name I had not bothered to find out had not only taken all of my old gear, but charged me all of my money except for twelve ngeyt, which he split into twelve small circular copper coins for me at my request. Those coins with the square hole were worth four times as much as the ones without, I thought, I could have bought... months of food with them. Weeks of shelter. Damn it, I should have tried to haggle with him.
Later, while sitting at a campfire of my own making and munching on some fruit, I touched up the blades of all of my tools, utility knives included. The three small knives had been strapped to my left leg while I was in the store and I had forgotten all about them. They don't have markings, I thought, not on the sheaths or on the handles. As I scraped the whetstones I had been given along the edge of the second knife I wondered how much it would be worth. If a prepared meal is four ngeyt, and a fruit being sold at the market is one ngeyt, I would estimate that this knife couldn't be worth more than eight, I thought, but then again if the gear I bought today really was worth hundreds of negyt these might be worth as much as sixteen, perhaps even twenty-four.
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For the next two days I decided to challenge myself. The road to Vehrehr was said to be longer than the one between Suwlahtk and Frahmtehn if only because it had a tendency to wind back and forth as it decreased in altitude, so as a method to both test my endurance and make good time to my destination I tried to walk continually for as long as possible, only resting to eat and neglecting sleep entirely. Considering that the road itself was well lit even during the night time due to the lack of trees I would have no trouble navigating even when tired.
Or so I thought. The first day went fine, I walked at a leisurely pace and occasionally went off the road to pick up fruit to eat, one time detouring to chase a deer and kill it. Even during the night once I got over the initial wave of drowsiness that the darkness induced in me staying up was mostly easy. I monitored my heads-up display and the purple bar, representing my stamina, fluctuated during that time. It seems almost like it's more affected by my perception of my stamina, I thought, or perhaps it's a way to quantify how much energy my body is willing to make available at any given time. I also encountered a traveler going to Vehrehr with a beast during the night and after a short standoff, I sold him the remainder of my deer for twelve more ngeyt.
The second day went less well. Once the sun came up another wave of fatigue hit me, but I powered through it. Knowing that I could regenerate from physical damage to my feet made me unafraid to keep moving, but the itching from continual healing grew annoying. In the afternoon I encountered another traveling group going to Vehrehr on the backs of beasts, with whom I did some trading to purchase a few rations for eight ngeyt. The rations themselves were made of some kind of nuts mixed with fruit and tasted good enough, so I figured that I got my value out of them since I purchased two meals' worth.
When the sun set again the tiredness that came over me was an order of magnitude more powerful than usual, to the point that I found myself walking with my eyes closed multiple times by accident during the night. Sometime past midnight, I saw a traveler going on foot to Frahmtehn. He was dressed in dark clothing and didn't have any visible armaments, which led me to believe he was a thief of some kind. After a tense wait in the bushes, with battle fervor washing away my sense of fatigue, the man passed by my position without incident. I kept walking for the whole night until the sun began to rise, though the latter half of the night felt like it passed in seconds.
I can't keep going, I thought as I eyed up my heads-up display. The purple bar had been a sliver for some time now, just barely hanging on and threatening to decay to nothingness if I did so much as relax a muscle. The environment around me had turned more wooded as I went down the road and my twitching eyes hungrily sought out a suitable place for me to rest. That bush, I thought as I saw a plant that resembled the one I had slept in during my first few days on the island. I lumbered off the road, walked up to the plant, and after a brief check to ensure it wasn't thorny or occupied I fell forwards into it, losing consciousness instantly.
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Why does my head feel like that? I grumbled sometime later, awareness slowly building in me. My heartbeat felt like it was slamming a blunt object into the entire front of my skull, but when I opened my eyes I saw nothing but sticks and twigs. Where am I again? I asked myself groggily as I retraced my steps. With a groan I pushed myself out of the bush and looked around, finding that it was the dead of night. My heads-up display showed my stamina at just under half, a vast improvement from before. Should I just climb a tree and go to sleep for the rest of the night? I wondered as my ears tried to parse a strange sound.
What is that? I wondered, inhaling deeply to gain some wakefulness. Snapping noise, but it's not sticks, it's... is that fire? No, it's... wet. I looked around me and froze when I saw what was to my left. A gigantic creature, at least two meters tall, two meters wide, and ten times my own mass, was crouched over an unrecognizable mess of mutilated flesh, bones, and organs just ten meters from me. My body screamed instincts at me, conflicting between “RUN” and “FREEZE” while my mind raced to assess the situation. The creature raised its head to look at me, revealing a short and wide snout with a wet nose and two beady eyes. The creature's fur looked to have a striped pattern not unlike a raccoon's tail, but I wasn't entirely sure because of the darkness. For a moment, there was no noise at all.
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Some kind of bear, I thought, snout is short, mouth is very wide, and those claws are enormous. I need to get away without attracting its attention. The locked stare between myself and the creature had caused both of us to freeze, and I was the first to break it by stepping backwards with my right foot, moving no other part of my body. A powerful low-frequency rumble came from the creature, which I felt more than I heard. It could probably jump me from this distance, I thought as my eyes darted to its legs to estimate its mobility. The creature noticed the break in our stares and bared its teeth, taking a step forward to match me. Should I fight it? I wondered, if I could stab it in the heart with my spear, I might be able to-
The creature's mouth opened, showing just how wide and tooth-filled its maw was, then it roared. The sheer volume of the sound coming from its mouth rocked my eardrums so hard that it disrupted my sense of balance. Worse still, as the creature roared I saw the grass dry, then start to spark and catch flame around its paws and belly. Oh that's not good, I thought as a pit of dread formed in my stomach, that's magic, just like what I can use. I didn't have time to consider the implications of an animal being able to use heat magic before it kicked up and broke into a run in my direction.
I need to weave between the trees, I thought as I sprinted as quickly as I could. My ears had barely recovered from the assault of the roar, but I could physically feel the creature's foot impacts through the ground from its heft. I dared not look back in case it slowed me down, so instead I made a break for the road and adjusted my planned path to zigzag closely around the edges of trees. When I kicked off the ground to shift my trajectory forty-five degrees to the right around the first tree another roar came from behind me. The sound allowed me to judge that the distance between myself and the creature had not increased, but lessened.
The sound of straining and snapping wood from just behind me confirmed that I was being pursued closely. Another roar, more frustrated, followed what I assumed was the creature impacting the tree trunk or sliding against it. Still sprinting, my left hand reached down and grabbed one of the utility knives from its sheath. I need to look to throw it, I thought while I gulped down air to fuel my body, one smooth motion, one hundred and fifty-degree head turn with a simultaneous throw preparation. Accuracy will suffer but I can't risk being caught. The next tree was under five seconds away so I did it, turning rapidly and loosing the knife from my right hand over my left shoulder the instant I spotted the target.
A squealing roar of pain confirmed that I did hit the creature, but as my head turned to look forwards again I pumped my legs harder than I thought possible anyway. Barely five meters between us, I thought quickly, need to turn right, around the left side of the tree. I dashed to the left of the tree, grabbing it with my arm and pulling on it to rotate around the trunk and change directions with minimal loss of momentum. Seconds later the creature smashed into the tree, and I stupidly glanced back at it. The trunk bent tremendously as the creature's whole torso slammed into it. Unlike my swift motion, the animal had tried to change directions instantly, resulting in it physically sliding into the tree sideways. It didn't even slow down, I growled.
The chase continued as I neared the last tree and the road. I grabbed another knife, seeing that the first one was embedded in the creature's eye I reasoned that another throw might let me disable its vision entirely. It could still track me by smell though, I thought, but without sight, I could probably fight it. No, that's stupid, it could cripple me easily and I have almost no way of wounding it fatally. I gritted my teeth while running towards the final tree, wracking my brain to come up with some kind of plan. I am not going to be decommissioned by some stupid animal, I raged with teeth clenched, even if it can heal from any wound. I blinked and saw the tree in front of me and realized I had gotten distracted. I wasn't going to be able to swing around it.
On pure reflex, instead of trying to go around the tree I put a foot up to the trunk and stepped against it. My knee screamed out at the sudden force and a stinging itch told me I had damaged it, but I put my other foot above the first on the tree trunk and willed my momentum upwards. Two more steps later and gravity was starting to take hold, slowing my upward speed to a crawl. I kicked off, diving away from the trunk and spinning in midair. Beneath me the creature was still charging forwards, head facing straight into the trunk. Wood and bone both snapped and the tree was almost uprooted from the impact. I landed on the ground behind the creature, which turned towards me staring bloody murder into my eyes.
Blood was running out of the creature’s face, not just from its knife wound but also from its other eye and nose. Broken teeth popped out of its mouth and were replaced at ludicrous speeds by new ones, and as it licked its nose I saw part of its tongue growing back. Another low growl sounded, followed by the same sort of roar that had started the chase, and the knife in the creature’s eye began to glow with heat. This time, however, I was prepared. My right hand flung forward, releasing a dagger at exactly the right time to sail into the depths of the maw in front of me. The roar abruptly stopped, and the creature let out a sickening cough. A gout of blood flew from its throat, splattering on both myself and the ground. I drew my new spear, unfolded it, and dashed backwards to a comfortable distance, ready to respond when the creature attacked me.
The attack I was expecting never came. Instead, the creature growled and roared, spitting up yet more blood and scratching at its throat with its front paws angrily. I stepped back further, watching it for signs of aggression, but for some reason the creature had lost interest in me. I watched as it turned around and began smashing its own neck against the damaged tree behind it, howling in pain and frustration. I need to get out of here, I thought, backing up more. I walked backwards away until I had put twenty meters between us, then folded my spear and dashed off. To be safe I walked over a kilometer away from the last place I had seen the creature before circling around in a wide arc to head back to the road.
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Later, in the morning, I walked by a man heading to Frahmtehn on the road by foot. He looked to be a vagrant of some sort, dressed much like myself though with less armor and weaponry. Upon seeing me he smiled and waved, then gave a single piece of advice: “It's ngahp season, watch out and make sure you sleep in a tall tree! You wouldn't want to get eaten!”