***Tirnanog***

***Magnus***

I awoke when the sunrays of a new day started to grill my face and hurt my eyes with their brightness. Upon opening them, I had to amend the conclusion that my half-asleep mind had come up with.

The day probably wasn't so new anymore, since the blue orb that seemed far larger than Earth's sun dominated the sky of this world. I knew that was wrong since white dwarfs were generally much smaller than our own sun. It was simply a case of the planet being much closer to its star.

Which had already risen high in the sky, telling me that I had slept through the early morning hours.

“Nothing found and ate me during the night. Probably used up all my luck for the next year,” I commented in a clipped tone while drumming on my legs to get some feeling back into my body.

“And I am already talking to myself,” I muttered. “That's not a good sign. A single day on this world and I am already behaving like a lonely recluse.”

I stretched and groaned in pain once my nerves and muscles reacted to the movements and made their displeasure known. My new physique was phenomenal, but it apparently didn't help one bit against spending the night in a tree in an awkward position.

Once I paid some more attention to my surroundings, I froze.

Well hidden by their plumes of green and blue feathers, the flock of saurians had settled in on the branches around me. And they were watching every movement I made.

Given their scavenger nature, the little fuckers were probably waiting for me to fall off the tree and break my neck. Then they would swarm and eat my corpse.

Or they were just waiting for me to get them more food. Which would mean that they were just lazy! And far too smart for their own good.

I grumbled, telling myself that I probably shouldn’t get too comfortable around the saurians. They were by far the least fearsome creatures I had encountered on Tirnanog. But that didn't mean that they wouldn't go for my throat if I showed weakness.

Ignoring them for now, I started picking at the injuries that I had received yesterday. There wasn't anything I could do if they decided to swarm me, so worrying about it was pointless.

The blood had turned into a dark scab that was covering the wounds, but the flesh around them looked hale enough. Touching them still hurt, but I was fairly certain they weren't infected. My limited medical knowledge made me assume that an infection would have made itself known with red, inflamed tissue by now. Maybe some pus? I wasn't sure.

At least a little relieved, I loosened the cords I had made with the gathered lake algae. They had kept me from rolling over and falling to my doom while I slept.

Then I made my way down the tree.

After relieving myself, I cleaned up with lakewater and shouldered my backpack. With my needs taken care of, I continued much in the same way as the day before, catching two eels for breakfast on the way.

Two, because I needed a little more food to store away for my intended excursion into the forest. Sadly, most of my two catches went to the insatiable swarm of saurians that was following me around. Somehow, I had gotten used to reaching in between the swarming creatures in order to claim my part of the catch.

I was wondering whether I was in the process of taming them when I remembered Roderick. They had followed him too, paying no heed to his attempts at killing them. The only thing that mattered was the food on his belt.

“Probably not...”

I muttered to myself and increased my pace until I arrived at the point where I had started the journey around the lake. All signs of the drama that had played out here the day before had vanished.

Something had cleaned away the last traces of blood. And whatever other animals had visited the shore during the night, had trampled down any signs of a previous fight.

I huffed and had to ignore the long faces that the little saurians made once I deviated from my path around the lake. They looked like they understood this meant no more eel for them. Once the flock was certain I wouldn't turn around, they nonetheless followed me.

My path took me through the denser underbrush. That wasn't a nice experience, but it allowed me to avoid the spike-grass that was still capable of piercing my shoes and my skin.

Given the general sturdiness of the plants on this world, I expected it to be only a question of time until all my clothes gave up the ghost.

A few strands of the lake's seaweed were strong enough to hold my entire weight, but that didn't mean I could turn them into clothes.

I just hoped to find other humans before I was forced to weave something from what I had gathered. Some braided cords and knots were well within my capabilities.

But weaving? Hell, no! The attempt alone would likely turn into an ugly mess. It would take me days to figure it out.

The best course of action in my mind was to try and see how braving the forest went.

I could always spend more time around the lake, but I needed to find other humans. Roderick's directions were the only hint that I had. The large man had been an asshole, but his demeanour and equipment made me assume that the people in this world did at least a better job at survival than me.

Most of the exiles who were sent to this place were criminals, but I didn't believe there would be no society at all because of this. No matter their deeds, they were still the children of civilisation. It couldn’t be that all of them turned into solitary cavemen after being deported from Earth.

My pace was unhurried as my path led me deeper into the forest. All the while, I tried to think of positive things. Like this Old Camp for example. It would surely be a place of safety with none of the native species around.

Well, there were likely a lot of untrustworthy humans there. They were possibly an even greater threat than the monsters out here. But at least I knew humans.

After about half an hour, I came across the first new thing that stood out from the strange vegetation. It was a human in the grey prisoner's garb of an exile and he sat leaned sideways against a large tree.

I had seen him only thanks to the colour of his clothes that stood out amongst the green and otherwise colourful vegetation. If that hadn't been the case, I could have walked past him just twenty metres away, never the wiser.

“Hello?” I called out to him and got no reaction. Which was strange.

I stopped walking.

Yesterday, I had proven myself dumb enough to almost become worm-food.

But not today!

This time, I would think before I acted.

Even I could smell something wasn't right about this situation. Why would someone just sit leaning against a tree in a place like this? Staying still was just asking to be found and eaten by something. Not to mention that you would die of thirst fairly quickly. And if he was dead, then why was the corpse untouched?

I turned and looked around while I pondered. My gaze found some of the saurians who blending seamlessly into the shrubbery on the ground. So I pointed at the body. “Look, food!”

They looked but didn't show any more interest than that.

“Okay, so now I know definitely that something is wrong.”

If those insatiable sacks of hunger wouldn't go for a body, then something was wrong with it. Wary of a trap, I circled around the scene, keeping a respectful distance from the tree.

Now that I had seen it from different angles, I realized that it looked strange. The bark was very odd and stood out from everything else nearby. Covered with pointy cysts, its enormous trunk tickled something in the back of my brain.

The tree looked wrong compared to the others in the vicinity. Maybe it was more similar to a cactus? Also, each cyst had a pointy tip.

I just couldn’t tell what was wrong with it. Even my second sight didn’t reveal anything that set the tree apart from its surroundings. With the exception of its looks.

Well, it definitely wasn't an animal. Those appeared much brighter than the surroundings in my second sight. And I had already the eels and the saurians, and myself as a comparison.

Once I had circled far enough, I got to see what was hidden to me earlier.

The man was somehow nailed to the tree and held upright by a set of serrated spikes that emerged sideways from the front of his chest. Together with the paleness of his skin, I concluded that he was most definitely dead.

I bit my inner cheek and chewed on it as I thought.

The guy was unlikely to possess anything I needed for survival since he had entered the world the same way as me and must have died last night when he ran from the monster.

The point that the body hadn’t been eaten by something remained strange.

Ergo, I had no reason to approach the body and risk falling into a trap.

The sensible course of action would be to turn my back on the scene and to walk away.

Contrary to that, not knowing what had killed the man was equally bad. What if I unknowingly ran into a similar trap because I hadn’t bothered to investigate? Surviving meant knowing your environment.

I sighed and came up with a compromise.

Two stones.

I would throw two stones, and if that didn’t trigger the trap, then I would walk away.

After readying one of my primitive spears, I retrieved a stone from my seaweed pouch and threw it at the corpse.

‘THUD!’

I blinked – then slowly turned my head to look at the serrated spike that had hit a tree not half a metre away from me.

Ever so slowly, I looked back at the large cyst in the tree which had fired the spike and was now connected to it via a long cord of pulsating flesh. And now, it was slowly reeling the spike back in.

Slowly, I took one step backwards, then another step sideways, bringing the nice, normal tree between myself and the flesh-eating harpoon cactus.

Then I turned around and bit into my knuckle. “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Even the trees are evil!”

After quickly checking the surroundings trees for similar cysts or warts, I relaxed slightly.

“Fucking trees!” I cursed and continued on my path even slower this time.

Now, I was using one eye to check every tree and bush for things that looked even slightly threatening. The other one, I kept on the saurians, figuring that if they started to behave oddly or fell behind, then something was up.

I wandered for a little less than an hour on what appeared to be a natural path through the forest. It was likely a trail maintained by wild animals.

My journey was blessedly uneventful, right up until I stumbled upon a huge corpse.

The creature was the size of a tyrannosaurus and looked like some alien dino twisted together with a praying mantis on four legs.

If I had encountered a living one, my immediate reaction would have been to run for my life.

Thankfully, this member of its species was quite dead. A husk that had already been fed upon by creatures large and small. I didn't want to wrestle with whatever had cracked open its torso and slurped out the insides.

My little friends swarmed forward and all over the corpse, followed by a roar that had the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

Something rose from the monster's emptied shell and took a swipe at one of the saurians who neatly dodged the attack. Unbothered, the saurian bit into the dead giant’s flesh and started to feast.

The saurians kept dodging the slow monster that had declared the corpse as its shelter, showing the creature no respect at all.

This new monster was too slow to do anything to my saurians, but it had been birthed directly from hell in my eyes.

The creature's head was strangely warped and covered by a multitude of eyes. Some pitiful tufts of hair remained of what was likely a neat haircut just hours ago. Human skin had turned to pallid chitin. Only the joints remained fleshy. The arms were warped and twisted. It looked like they had been in the process of transforming into something else and then decided to stop. Even more disconcerting was the shredded prisoner's garb that still covered the mutant in some places.

“We should have dropped that satellite onto their research facilities,” I muttered as I stared at what had been one of my fellow exiles just yesterday.

My throat felt dry as I raised the spear in my hand.

The creature saw me and roared again, showing no sign of human intellect.

It jumped out of the cavernous husk and rushed towards me. The lower jaw split, revealing a set of mandibles that didn't look friendly.

My hand blurred as it launched the spear.

It was almost impossible to miss with my attacker’s straightforward approach. The weapon flew true and struck the mutant's upper torso.

Wood proved to be no contest against hardened chitin and the weapon split. A larger splinter was deflected upwards and impaled the mutant's less protected throat, while most of the spear harmlessly bounced off sideways.

The creature gurgled as green blood spewed forth from the wound, but it kept coming.

I didn't think.

I just grabbed another spear that was attached to my backpack by a lighter cord and ripped it free. Using the same accelerated movement that helped with throwing, I brought it around, swinging it like a baseball bat!

There was another 'crack!' as the mutant's head whipped around at an odd angle. The force of the blow sent the creature tumbling off course, which allowed me to sidestep it. It still hit me with one of its deformed arms, driving the air out of me.

Thankfully, whatever mutation the creature was undergoing wasn’t finished. The knobby appendages hadn’t fully transformed into the sharp weapons of its larger counterpart.

Gurgling, it fell and continued flailing on the ground.

I recovered from the unintended blow and stepped forward. Then I adjusted the grip on my stick and made the most out of its reach as I brought it down on the mutant several times. At last, the strong chitin on its head cracked open, allowing a white mass to spill out.

It finally stilled.

The last blow had also finished off my second spear, which left me with four more serviceable ones.

I spit and threw the broken remains to the side. Not even driving a stake through someone's eyeball compared to this world's goriness.

Using my ability so many times in direct succession had taxed me heavily and the muscles in my arms ached, so I took a moment to have a breather.

Maybe it would have been more effective to electrocute the thing to death. My new electric ability would have definitely bypassed that armour.

But I did not want to touch the creature. Almost kissing an eel would haunt my nightmares for weeks to come. There was no need to add Frankenstein's Praying Mantis to that imagery.

The tension left me when some of the saurians started picking at the corpse. If I had learned one thing so far, then it was that they wouldn't touch living things, so I relaxed a little.

I nonetheless retrieved another one of my spears to have it ready at hand. This time without ripping the cord. On my path ahead, I would have to look out for some straight branches to replace the two spears that I had lost just now.

I didn't look forward to that!

Making a primitive spear with a sharp stone was time-intensive. Chipping through the wood of a decently sized branch took half an hour without my ability and sharpening it properly required even more time.

Not that having a sharp point on my projectile had helped me in this particular case.

Maybe I should just look for the sturdiest piece of wood that I could find and caveman the shit out of the next monster that tried to kiss me.

In the aftermath, I didn't even try to gather Mantis meat, but I managed to break off some pointy bits of its chitin, which provided me with a set of natural daggers.

The saurians could have all the meat they wanted from that one if it turned people into mutants!

I narrowed my eyes as I remembered the doctor warning us away from eating insects once we arrived... because adding their DNA first was problematic... or something like that.

My eyes wandered to the mutant and then to the tyranno-mantis. “Nah! He couldn't have meant that. Right? He definitely didn't mean that!” Then I realized that I hadn't noticed anything that would count as a bug in this world.

Fuuuck.

After a decent pause, wondering whether the tyranno-mantis was this world’s version of an insect, I continued on my path through the woods, hoping I had packed enough eel-meat for the trip. How long it would remain safe to eat?

Suddenly, my worries weren't just about getting eaten by something. They were also about eating something that turned me into a fucked up mutant.

Well, I probably was already a fucked up mutant, but not as fucked up as the guy who had eaten the mantis and I wanted it to stay that way!

Things got a little more interesting in the evening.

I encountered something stomping through the underbrush, but I didn’t bother to stop just to check what it was. Having seen the tyranno-mantis, I decided that I didn't want to tangle with whatever had made the noise.

Hence, I quickly hid in a tree after having fled in the opposite direction. With the sun already setting, I decided to stay there for the night.

Like the night before, the flock of saurians settled in around me, greedily staring at the food I had brought with me.

I had wrapped the eel sushi in large leaves, hoping to keep it as fresh as possible in this environment. Nonetheless, I anticipated to suffer from diarrhea after the flesh had ripened for a day, only protected by the banged-up crate I had revitalized as a backpack.

To my great surprise, the eel meat had dried and tasted even better than when it was fresh. The fishy taste was gone and had been replaced by a slightly sweet flavour that had me salivating.

I wondered what that was about.