Chapter 7
“I don’t even get to choose?” He looked down at the tilted head of the little creature, apparently called a Pangolor, who was looking up at him curiously.
He placed his hand down on her hard scaled back gently. It felt hard as a rock, but he felt the small creature’s rumbled purr and a few tiny little kwinns.
“No offense,” he said as she leaned against him, triggering memories of his and Erik's dog growing up, and Oskar couldn't help but smile.
She's a leaner like Benji was. And it's obvious that promises mean something here.
Even without the word Gambit, he knew immediately he’d made a bet of sorts. It was almost like being on the verge of a shiver. Oskar would have to be careful with his words, as apparently, even saying something to a dying animal could generate a Gambit if there was enough emotion or intent behind it.
He stood and looked around, but his PUB interface pulled his attention back to the corpse of the serpent. He reached down and touched the corpse, careful to watch for any movement, and a notification popped up telling him he’d gained an Insight Gemstone-Uncommon. A tiny emerald stone in the shape of a tear drop appeared in his hand, smaller than a fingernail and filled with a smokey emerald liquid.
There was no further information, but he was hoping it was something he could use to trade for more water or food. He wasn’t hungry yet, but he was fighting the urge to drink all his water instead of pacing himself until he could find some place safe.
Oskar wasn’t sure about what to do with the body of the Pangolor mother either. So, to the sad curiosity of the little creature following him, he carefully scooped sand out from under the mother, and then did a token job covering her with the sand.
The little one was forlorn as he finished burying her. He knew it wouldn’t do any good against scavengers, and his hands felt like he’d just pulled a baked potato out of the microwave without an oven mitt, but he felt strange, not at least making an effort.
These guys are obviously intelligent, and that was the little creature's mother, after all.
Feeling an unexpected tightness in his chest, he sat there, staring down at the sand. Why was this suddenly hitting him so hard emotionally?
The little Pangolor chirped softly, its eyes fixed on the makeshift burial site, before nuzzling him affectionately. Oskar stood up to leave, and after a moment’s hesitation, the Pangolor followed him.
I need to keep moving.
The heat was suffocating, so he drank a swig of his precious water which sent unnaturally refreshing chills down through body.
This is good stuff.
Oskar walked onward, but the heaviness went with him.
A long, sweltering measure of time later, he glanced back at the little Pangolor. Sand slid off her gorgeous copper scales as she came up after diving underground for some morsel. He decided he was going to name her Penny. She looked much like a pangolin from earth, but with a more feline snout and golden-brown eyes sparkling with intelligence.
“You like Penny as a name?” he asked her, sure she could understand him, and she kwinned in response, content and watching him with curious brown eyes.
He continued in the same direction for what seemed like hours, sipping carefully on his meager water supply. The issue with walking on the sand with a prosthetic right foot was the lack of feeling in the limb. It was hard to tell the positioning of the foot on the sand without looking, and he couldn’t just stare at his foot while he walked. Thankfully, the sand was reasonably level and consistent step to step, so long as he stayed near the center.
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He got more surefooted as he walked, but the heat and constant movement were taking a toll. On two separate occasions, he noticed his attention being pulled gently towards the ground. The first time, he thought he’d imagined it, but the part of him that was new sensed something important was happening. It was a burgeoning sort of awareness inside him that had to be related to his new powers, if they could be called powers considering he had no skills or spells. So far, there was no tangible thing that pointed to him being a Druid except a growing awareness.
That particular concern was addressed about an hour later. He knew the second time that he passed a place and something grabbed his attention, that there was water somewhere deep under the sand. He didn't know exactly how he knew, but he had the distinct feeling that if he had the time to sit there and work through the feeling…the awareness, that he’d figure it out. Unfortunately, the suns had other plans, so he continued traveling.
A notification blinked red in the corner of his vision, which must have meant it was important. It was.
// Ability Synced: Water Sense
Nice job. We’re just getting started. This is gonna be so fun! Yaawn. Okay, nap time, for realsies this time. //
“Well, Water Sense,” he mused, “that’s gonna come in handy.”
He added a mental maybe since he still had no idea how to get to water that deep under the sand. His earlier assumption- that the interactions the PUB added to notifications took some amount of effort or energy- still held true. It also appeared that, for now, it could only interact with him by altering notifications or adding onto them like it just had, other than the cool misty form combat tip he’d gotten in Battle Mode.
Oskar walked and tried to pay attention to the world in a new way. The little Pangolor easily kept pace and even wandered around, possibly searching for something else to snack on. He began to instinctively feel something else under the sand, and the first time he knew for sure something living was moving under the sand, the little Pangolor dove at the spot, coming up with a scorpion the size of his fist in its mouth.
It wasn’t long before Oskar could feel life all around him. Or maybe it was the water inside life, but he’d had no idea the desert was as lively as it was. There were hundreds of small bugs and little beasties running everywhere, most of them completely out of sight. He was even able to figure out what they were simply by prompting the PUB interface to outline them under the sand.
Penny also seemed to pick up on his awareness even faster than he had, as if the companion bond between the two gave her some of his growing awareness as well. She would react to the smallest direction or movement from him, even when she wasn't watching him.
He began mentally pointing out small targets, and she’d playfully dive after them, coming up with the beetles, scorpions, and even a small purple spider that she seemed to have a real taste for. He had to make it a point to ignore them, or she’d dive after every single one they passed. However, it appeared she was gaining some measure of his Water Sense, anyhow, and still found some of the ones he’d tried to avoid.
Oskar supposed it didn’t matter if she caught every single spider and scorpion they saw, as long as she didn’t get hurt. The spiders just made such a gross crunch, and that added to the heat, was making him a touch queasy.
She came up once with a small, bright striped lizard he’d sent her after, and she’d dutifully grabbed it but then sat it down very gently. She watched him, and he got the feeling from her that she grabbed it to show him she could, but had no plans to eat it. He reached for it, but she nuzzled his hand away.
“Poisonous?” he asked, and she kwinned in agreement. The lizard swam back under the sand, and after that, he’d stopped sending her after random things that caught his attention.
The red tinted sky slowly darkened into a deep purple as the red sun disappeared behind the dunes, leaving the blue sun chasing it into the horizon. Penny poked him and abruptly dove under the sand, sitting completely still. A sudden sense of certain death came over Oskar, and he fell back against the dune he’d been walking by. Adrenaline coursed through him as… something massive flew overhead. His PUB confirmed what he already knew: black outline- indicating an impossible threat that looked like a half-rotted condor.
If a condor had the wingspan of a twin-engine airplane.
Looking closer, he saw its feathers were almost completely gone on its right wing.
How the thing was maintaining altitude was beyond Oskar’s understanding. He’d caught a glimpse of a milky eye, but he glanced away after only a moment, fighting back a terrible feeling he couldn’t shake that focusing too much on it might somehow call its attention to him. He closed his eyes tight, pressure building as he felt the fringes of his mind touched by something he couldn’t see. His heart rate skyrocketed and his muscles locked tight.
The memory of impossible creatures shuddering across the sky, their horrifically long limbs moving wrong. Even after it had been gone a full minute, Penny sat with him, Oskar's hand on her back as she purred. They sat in the heat of dusk as they waited for the feeling of dread to pass.