Plan

When she rose from her seat, Alice had a clear plan in her head. She grabbed her phone and the newly improved club, removed her makeshift barrier, and crawled out of her home.

82%. When she arrived in the space she was now starting to consider her antechamber, Alice quickly checked it for ambushes and then approached the third opening in the rock. She considered going through it, searching for an exit in the yet unexplored passage, but quickly dismissed the option.

She had a plan, and she would stick to it.

After arriving within the main cave, she started by scanning her surroundings for any changes; not noticing anything different, she lowered her club and got to work.

78%. It took Alice a long time to search the entire platform without making noise, but her efforts proved fruitful and a small stack of loose rocks was soon piled just inside the crevice while another stone lightly bounced in her right hand, the left one holding her phone, using the torch to survey the area.

She took a deep breath and tossed the rock on the ledge in front of her, the pebble bouncing lightly and stopping just on its edge.

Now let them come.

It didn’t take long for the first of the flying bats to glide down, impacting with the stone and immediately chomping on it with savagery, apparently oblivious to the teeth they were cracking on it. Alice didn’t move.

The platform was soon swarmed by the little creatures, each trying to get to the perceived prey and only managing to become prey themselves as the other inhabitants of the massive cave started emerging from their burrows and scaling the slick stone with talons or prehensile legs. She held still while the slaughter took place.

Like the previous day, the bats started escaping from the other monsters, scrambling with their four talons to get purchase on the wet ground as they tried to reach the safety of the ceiling.

This time, however, it was different.

During her first experiment, the stone she had thrown had bounced right in the middle of the cavern and the bat colony had been attacked from all sides.

This time, instead, only a few of them were caught unawares, the rest of the cauldron realizing their mistake and starting to crawl in the direction of the walls.

Straight towards her.

The little white fliers didn’t seem to notice the light they were crawling towards, nor the young woman raising a stone club with a focused expression.

She struck once, then twice, three and four times, the crunching sound after every hit something that would accompany her for a long time. It only took a couple of seconds for Alice to snatch her kills, toss some rocks near the pursuing insects and escape with her catch while the scene devolved into further chaos as the monsters turned on each other.

73%. Alice felt like puking but kept moving forward, one of her hands holding five bats by their wings. Her last strike had clubbed two of the creatures at the same time, apparently only dazing one of them. The only survivor was trying to free itself, impeded both by the awkward position and its dead brethren. It soon resolved to screech weakly, the sound bouncing around the tight walls of the passage.

Only when she was back in her base, the stone palisade in place, did she take a breath of relief, raising her trophies to examine them.

She took a seat near the pool, moving the water and noticing how the light particles seemed to be already more numerous, enough for her to turn off the screen of her device, the faint light adequate for what she was going to do.

That was rough. I feel bad about the live one, but I’ll keep it like that for now.

She dropped the dead creatures on the ground and took some of the leftover rocks from her previous work, soon creating a small enclosure where she put the little bat, which was now actively trying to bite her, hissing loudly at her every movement.

Now it’s time to really check what I caught.

Raising one of the carcasses, she started inspecting the anatomy of the being.

No legs, two pairs of wings, each with what seems to be a single sharp talon to climb onto the rocks.

It would even be cute with its white furry ears, sadly the rest of its face isn’t looking so nice. Damn you’re ugly.

The creature had two skin-covered, vestigial eye sockets; a flat nose with a single wide nostril; and a huge mouth filled with two rows of semitransparent, needle-like teeth.

I’m glad I didn’t try to catch them directly, a couple of them are a nuisance but a swarm would rip me apart really quickly.

Also, I’m tired of calling them bats since they are most definitely not normal ones; since I’m the only one here I guess it’s my job to find a suitable name.

She held the corpse in her hands and raised it to eye level.

“Since you are incredibly noisy but also quite small, I hereby name you a Screechling, a group of you will obviously be called a noise” she chuckled softly “I’m already starting to lose it, talking to a dead winged rat, oh well”.

And now the worst part of all.

She approached a calcite formation that seemed particularly sharp and, after taking a deep breath, Alice gripped the head and body of the creature and tried to use the edge of the stone to slice into the neck of the screechling. It took her a couple of tries to split the skin but, in the end, the jagged stone ripped a hole straight into it.

With difficulty, she gripped the hanging skin and, after much slipping and swearing, she started pulling it down to the first set of wings, where the skin got stuck on the protruding limbs. Trying to break off the wings proved to be quite difficult with her fingers covered in blood, so she resorted to ripping off the skin and revealing the meat inside.

And now? What the hell do I do with the organs? Am I supposed to eat it raw? I don’t think I’m hungry enough for that. Yet. I guess I’ll try to get some knowledge for the future.

By trial and error, she butchered all the dead bats, finally finding a method that seemed to work better than the others.

She would first break the limbs at their joints, using the sharp rocks to slice the skin of the head and wings before ripping them off. She would then pull off the skin, exposing the flesh underneath.

The only way for her to get to the organs was to pry off the meat something that, the first few times, resulted in the body splitting open, a mess of organs and blood sloughing off on the ground and causing her to retch from the disgusting smell they produced.

In the end, after more than two hours of bloody and thankless work, she found herself with two small bat breasts, some fairly ripped skins, and a whole pile of disgusting remains covered in blood, undigested fluids, and guano.

“This is the worst thing ever. And it wasn’t even worth it. I’m not going to risk eating that meat without knowing if I contaminated it.” she finally said after taking a good look at the gore she was covered in.

at least now I know how to do it. She thought, trying to look at the bright side.

She took the two cleaner pieces of muscle and approached the enclosure of the living screechling. It had gone silent after a while but, as she got closer, the creature started once again flapping its wings and hissing in her direction.

She sat near the enclosure and threw it the first lump of meat. Without hesitation, the little bat jumped on the chunk, chomping down and practically swallowing it whole. The second breast suffered the same fate, quickly vanishing in its maw.

At least someone appreciates it. Let’s see if it’s still hungry.

She proceeded to throw a few more chunks of her butchering to the little creature which, in turn, was growing increasingly bloated. It was only after the sixth piece that it turned its head and ignored any more attempts at feeding it, now practically rolling in place.

After the short bonding moment, Alice took all the skins she had harvested and inspected them. Every hide sported large, rent holes from where she had been too violent and, on top of that, they were also wet and slimy with residual flesh.

At first, Alice almost gagged when she started scraping the fleshy part of the skins with one of the loose rocks she had left from the construction of the palisade. Over time, however, the repetitive movement lulled her into a flow of grinding and scraping, the skins slowly losing the thin layer of meat that had been clinging to them.

When she felt the hides were clean enough, she dipped them in the glowing water, using the opportunity to also wash herself of the fluids coating her.

At the very least, I didn’t wear the shirt, even though topless is not my favorite adventuring outfit.

While washing her hands, she noticed that the water around her hands and stripped skins seemed to glow much brighter than the rest of the pool.

She silently observed as the multitude of light particles converged around the blood stains and pieces of meat that remained from the skinning process.

Slowly, over the course of many minutes, the living light feasted on the remains, only removing the skins when she saw the holes had started getting larger.

Definitely an organism, also a flesh eating one… I wonder if it’s only for dead flesh though, I certainly didn’t get eaten when I slept in there. In any case, I have acquired a way to remove trash from here. They also seem quite gradual with their consumption.

Inspecting the skins once again, she noticed how thin they were now, the material almost translucent.

She smiled to herself. The plan had a couple more steps to it apparently.

69%. The next day Alice did exactly the same thing she had done the previous one, this time coming back with six more of the screechlings, their numbers in the large cave not having diminished noticeably. After butchering them and offering the meat to the captive one, she cured the skins in the pool and got to work.

First, she took one of the heads she had previously submerged in the water until it had been stripped of everything but the bone. With caution, Alice removed the thin mandible from the skull and proceeded to puncture time and time again the ragged leathers she had acquired.

After many hours of work, she finally had a large number of thin and wet strips of hide, which she proceeded to tie together in three long strands, which she then intertwined together, forming an eight meters-long rope of braided skin.

She tied the newly crafted item to a stalagmite and pulled a bit on it, smiling triumphantly when the cord didn’t snap, only tensing under the stress; it wouldn’t hold her, that was for sure, but it might work enough for her to enact her plan.

After coiling the rope, she took another stalactite point and started scraping it on the ground, its shape growing flatter and pointier by the minute.

It took her a long time, but in the end, she had a very pointy and quite sharp limestone blade, which she turned into a knife by wrapping some of the leftover string around the handle of the weapon, forming a more secure grip.

Alice’s belly rumbled once more in the silent cave. She was starting to feel quite weak.

After drinking from her personal bowl, she retired to her “bedroom”, readying herself for the next day.

One way or another, tomorrow she would eat.