S_Winter

Chapter Thirty-Nine: Bribe

Creating my clay pots definitely takes longer than I’d expected. Just forming the first one takes the rest of the time until dusk. Gauging my tiredness level, I decide to continue by the light of my fire. The downside there is that in order to see what I’m doing, I have to work quite close to...

Chapter Thirty-Eight: Inter-dimensional Amazon

The first thing I check is my experimental cooking arrangements. The chimney is looking pretty good, and seems to be directing the smoke out of my cave rather than into it, which is good. Not so good is the draft that the fire is creating by pulling air in from Kalanthia’s cave – I’ll have ...

Chapter Thirty-Seven: A Good Addition

When I get absolutely sick of twisting bark fibre and watching clay dry, I decide to move onto a different, equally important project. Walking out of the cave, I find Kalanthia sitting outside.

“Hi, Kalanthia?” She turns her head towards me and cocks it curiously. “Do you mind if I ma...

Chapter Thirty-Six: Round the Twist

I continue building my fireplace, using the same strategy of moulding a thin sausage of clay, choosing shards of shale, pressing down gently, then rinse and repeat. It takes me a while, but I can’t say I really notice the time passing. I have to break some of the stones into smaller pieces by b...

Chapter Thirty-Five: From an Unexpected Source

As the poison takes over, I feel my limbs weakening and my stones strike with less and less force. Finally, I lose the ability to keep myself balanced and fall over. By this point, I’ve given up on trying to kill the creature and have turned to stagger off towards home, my only hope that Kalant...

Chapter Thirty-Four: Smack in the Face

Walking out of my cave the next day, I feel a mixture of glee and guilt at the sight of my new Bound still lying at the entrance. It’s awake, looking at me with calm eyes, not seeming to be railing against its loss of freedom the way I would have. Though that could be another function of the Bo...

Chapter Thirty-Three: Bound

The porcupig – Grenslar, whatever – follows me into my alcove, though the darkness inside combined with its murky colouring makes it almost impossible to see. In fact, it’s only by the odd shine of its quills in the shaft of moonlight entering my cave through the hole in the wall that I can...

Chapter Thirty-Two: Biological Digger

For a moment, I feel disorientated and blink quickly at the suddenly bright light piercing my eyes. Fortunately, neither effect lasts long and I’m soon fighting-fit again. Though, if that’s the result of a successful Dominate – at least, I’m pretty sure it was successful – what would it...

Chapter Thirty-One: Pressure

I’ve been going without a fire most of the last few days. In fact, I’ve only really lit one to boil water once a day and to cook the hearts of beasts I’ve killed, and that only because I know the Energy in it will be wasted if I wait or put them in my Inventory. Even after finding a safe sp...

Chapter Thirty: Fade

“Sorry,” I tell her sheepishly. “I’ll clean up. I was just levelling up.” There’s a huff and the rumble cuts out, but no words. Matching action to words, I do my best to clean up. It’s unpleasant, but after I’ve hauled away as much as the mess as I can, and have buried the rest wi...

Chapter Twenty-Nine: Levelling Up

I’m staring at my status screen. I can’t help it: I’m at 99% progress towards the next level and I’m just waiting for that number to tick over to 100%. My progress has been much quicker than I had expected it to be considering I was only looking after Lathani yesterday. This isn’t becau...

Chapter Twenty-Eight: Cat Toy

The next morning, I wake to the sound of a chest-rumbling growl. Ah, my alarm clock. Ten out of ten for waking me up – the adrenaline rush of hearing a large predator growling menacingly gets rid of the grogginess straight away.

Are you ready now, Markus Wolfe? She asks, a note o...

Chapter Twenty-Seven: Predator

By the time I decide to head back to my campsite, I’ve had three successful hunts, and two unsuccessful ones, excluding my encounter with the porcupigs. Despite wanting to try out my Class Skill now that my Willpower’s over ten, I didn’t in the end. Most of the creatures didn’t seem worth...

Chapter Twenty-Six: The Aggressor

It’s an issue I have to face. Unless I restrict myself to only killing seriously wounded, ill, or very old members of the species, I will have to kill healthy members at some point, and all of those healthy members are potential mothers and fathers. Heck, I may end up killing a pregnant female ...

Chapter Twenty-five: They’re Real

There’s one good reason for me to level up as quickly as possible. Apparently I get access to a selection of Skills at specific level intervals. My first Skill selection is at level one, hence my desire to reach at least that level. After then, the next Skill selection is at level five, then le...

Chapter Twenty-Four: Self-care

I sleep. Deeply, and for a long time. I wake up at some point when it’s dark and quiet, my stomach rumbling. Fortunately, the Inventory seems to have a little of its own light – it’s odd because it doesn’t light up the area around me, but I can see the items held inside it fine – so I t...

Chapter Twenty-Three: No Doctor, or Optician

I stare at my status screen, feeling shocked at the amount of Energy that was taken. I’d guessed it might be the case when I saw the messages, but hoped that I was wrong. Sure enough, when I look at my status screen, I can see that there’s fifty percent less Energy towards the next l...

Chapter Twenty-Two: Literal Life-saver

Am I to assume by that comment that you wish to stay here?  She questioned calmly. I nod, then, realising she probably can’t read human body language any better than I can read hers, I affirm my agreement verbally. Very well. Simply focus your attention and intentions and foll...