DAY 9

I awoke before dawn. There was no sound, and it took me a moment to realize that was suspicious. Sniffing slowly I could smell something new. Before now I wouldn’t have said something could smell angry, but whatever was out there smelled like smoldering rage. While laying in the hole, surrounded by bushes, I couldn’t see much but I could hear a slow and quiet progression of something stalking through the bushes. The invisible tension behind my eyes was throbbing like crazy it seemed to be pulsing towards whatever was out there.

Slowly it moved away, and after an eternity of terror the forest returned to normal. I lay still, barely breathing, until after sunrise. Cautiously I poked my head up, and then crept out of the bushes. I found the creature’s trail only a few meters away. A few clear pawprints in the dirt. This thing had hands, not paws, with what looked like four fingers and an opposable thumb, and claws that would impress a bear. Not too different from mine, except much larger. It smelled of old meat and blood, sweat, leather, and its own particular stink. I clutched my hammer nervously, and then went back to grab my book. I would need to find somewhere new to sleep, somewhere safer.

Jordan hadn’t left his cabin yet, so after drinking some water I went to the forge. Leaving my book on the bench, I started cleaning out the ashes from yesterday. When that was done I puttered around the place. His ledger showed an order for six spades.

I picked up an iron ingot and tried pressing it onto a wooden stick. Nothing happened. Clearly it wasn’t so easy to make an iron hammer. Or maybe it was easy for those who had trained enough.

I brought the firestarting kit to the hearth and got a handful of grass and a pile of sticks set up, just like I had seen yesterday. Then I hauled over a bag of coke, though it must have weighed more than I did. I had to put in one handful at a time. When I used the flint and steel it didn’t even make a spark. I was sure this was the technique he had used, but it took me a dozen attempts to make a spark which just fizzled out. I focused all my attention on lighting this fire. The mental tension was getting familiar by now, and when I held onto that feeling the sparks started coming more regularly. It took far longer than I had hoped to get the fire lit, and then I pulled on the bellows too fast and it went out. The next time it stayed lit, and once the wood was burning I pushed on a few pieces of coke. Slowly I cranked on the bellows and the coke burst into brilliant flame.

“Yeah, bitches!” In my excitement I slipped backwards off the bucket and landed on my ass.

Jordan was standing in the doorway.

“You learn fast.”

“It was harder than I thought.”

Jordan grabbed the kit and put it back on the bench. He paused and then looked at the book I had left on there.

“Where did you get this?”

“In a goblin cave. I can’t read it. Can you?”

“No.” Never seen anything like this.” He flipped a few of the metal sheets, and then shrugged. “Nice crafting.”

He picked up the stone hammer I had made and inspected it, raising an eyebrow.

Under his guidance, with some roundabout explanations due to no longer remembering the appropriate “old” words, Jordan explained how to tell when the ingots were hot enough to craft. His explanation of how the process actually worked left a lot to the imagination.

The practice fell apart when I focused on how to do it, rather than focusing on what I wanted it to be and just hitting it a few times and not worrying about how it worked. My first few nails were ugly, but serviceable. We tossed them back into the fire, and Jordan demonstrated how they could be smushed back together into an ingot. He was much better at doing it, most of my attempts just turned into slag. It was disheartening to know I was so bad at it that I could literally trash a chunk of iron.

After that lesson, Jordan took over to start working on the spades. It only took him about four hits of the hammer to turn a pair of glowing ingots into a large blob of metal, and then four more hits to turn it into a shovel. He tossed each one into the water basin to cool, and then easily pressed each one onto a stick and turned them into spades. The missing steps in everything I thought I knew about crafts was giving me another headache.

We had a short break after storing the spades in a larger crate, so I took the time to bring up the thing in the woods.

“Are there monsters in the forest? Something big was out there last night.” I used a claw to trace the shape and size of the paw prints I had found. It was twice the size of Jordan’s hands, which were already twice the size of mine.

“Bears sometimes. Paw shorter than that, wider. Rabbits, and birds. Some deer. No monsters here. Across river maybe.”

“I might not be the only thing that crossed the river.”

“Show me.” He grabbed a wood splitting axe, and I guided him back to the forest. He spent a few minutes looking at the tracks, and then measuring his own footsteps against them.

“Big. Not a bear. Strange. Come on, let's get some lunch.”

As we walked back, I worked up the nerve to ask.

"Would it be okay if I stayed in the forge at night? Whatever monster is out here almost found me last night."

Jordan didn't answer right away, and we walked in silence for a few minutes.

"Okay. You can stay."

We got back to the cabin and started preparing lunch. This time I saw what happened in the stewpot. Jordan poured in some water, a few handfuls of vegetables, a chunk of salted meat, and then the whole pot shimmered and a few seconds later became a bubbling stew already fully cooked.

“Why did you go across the river a few days ago? The time you lost the bracelet? Isn't it dangerous?”

“Looking for wood. Hlukululu trees. Special trees grow sometimes. Strong, rich.”

“What do you use that wood for?”

“Magic tools. Strong like iron, but holds magic differently. Needs special tools though, I just cut and sell it.”

That reminded me of something

“Those guys with the cart are coming today, right?”

“Yeah. Soon.”

“How far away is the town?”

“About eighteen kilometers.”

“Okay. I’m going to the forest while they’re here.”

I left the cabin, and went in the opposite direction as the mysterious beast had been. This side of the clearing was much. A few hundred meters past the tree line I found a deer trail, and frequent rabbit activity near a berry patch. As I walked I practiced crafting stone hammers. Much like the nails had, taking them apart again destroyed them more often than not. I left several handfuls of gravel and wood splinters behind me. When that started to get boring, I practiced using the hammer to split open other rocks. When I found one that split to a decently sharp edge I used that to make a stone hatchet. Using it on a fallen tree was much the same process as crafting iron had been, just focus on the end result and hit it a few times. In short order I turned a fallen tree into a pile of logs. When I tried to combine them into the floor of a cabin they just flopped onto the ground in a loose pile. I must be missing some important step in that process.

My next experiment was stone spears, which were just as easy to make as the axe had been. I made a dozen of them and spent a while practicing throwing them. They weren't my preferred option due to the low range, but they worked. After an hour of practice I felt comfortable enough to go rabbit hunting.

I had no idea if my next plan would work, but once I had caught a rabbit I grabbed it and after focusing for a moment I took a deep breath and pulled it apart. The rabbit shimmered and the hide separated first, then the stringy sinews combined and and came off in one long length, and then the meat in several distinct chunks. I held the hide up, it was clean and looked already tanned. That made things a lot easier.

I ate the meat raw, and left the bones on the ground. The sinewy string I wrapped into a bundle and tied to my belt. I wasn’t sure what I would do with it yet.

The sun was about to set, so I headed back to the forge for the night. I emerged into the clearing slowly, making sure the visitors were gone. Jordan was already in his cabin so I didn't want to disturb him. I grabbed a bucket of water from the well and sat there drinking it.

This world was broken. Some things were the same, like in real life, but others were laughably different. The rabbit hide I held was one example, and the stew that cooked in a few seconds. If I went back tomorrow, would that same rabbit be there again, respawned as though nothing had happened? Could I eventually hunt the rabbits to extinction? I hadn't seen any tree stumps near the cabin, so had the lumber been hauled in or had the trees regrown? Jordan didn't strike me as the kind of guy to go through the trouble of digging up the stumps and roots.

There seemed to be a functioning economy, so presumably there were not unlimited and easy resources. Or maybe there were, and much like Jordan everyone else was content to do their scheduled tasks and then stop working. If I decided to spend the entire day tomorrow making nails would I destabilize the economy? Would it even matter, or would the next day’s order for one box of nails come in like usual?

The sun was setting, and I sat there watching it, even though it still stung my sensitive eyes. My hands were shaking a little, and I might be growling a little. I was going to find whoever or whatever had trapped me here, and then I was going to pull them apart and eat them one piece at a time. First, I would need training, and then weapons, and then information. Maybe this “god” Huora could explain the situation for me, if they truly did come from another world.

I went into the forge and looked through the selection of wood that Jordan had. Most of it seemed the same, but a few felt different. What would I see, if I got more than this headache from thinking about the mechanics of the world? Would these have full durability? Would they have a bonus to their quality? Was this a +1 stick? A superior stick? I took it to the work bench and ran my hand from one end to the other. I rolled it over and inspected the other side.

When I was confident in the mental image of what I wanted, I grabbed the bundle of sinew from my belt and laid it overtop of the stick. With one hand on each side of the stick and sinew, I bent it. With a shimmer, it bent and the tension in my head heightened to a scream and then popped, leaving blessed relief. I grabbed the newly formed bow and held it up. I was actually a little surprised it had even worked. Crude as it was, it would be functional. There were small details I hadn't really thought about at the time, such as the grip in the center wrapped with what seemed like twine. Where had that come from? I used a claw to pick at it until it came loose, then pulled it off, and it disintegrated in my hand. The bow made a twanging sound, shimmered, and left me with a stick and a pile of sinew. Grabbing it again, I recombined them into a bow, and it was good as new.

"No infinite twine, I guess."

Glancing at the rabbit hide gave me a sense that it wasn’t enough to make a quiver so I just put it aside for now.

Creating it left me feeling exhausted. There was an empty spot in the far corner of the forge, behind the stack of ingot crates, so I put the bow and rabbit hide over there, and then my metal book as well. I sat with my back against the wall, and closed my eyes.

Reaching a hand out I could almost feel something. It felt like it should be there. My chest ached almost like heartburn. There was something I couldn't see yet, just out of reach.

With slow deep breaths I kept reaching for it, and it was always just a bit farther. Straining for it, a sharp headache started pulsing in time with my heartbeat.

The feeling of expectation kept wiggling away. I kept trying to focus on it, fighting through the pain.

From within the pain came a memory, flickering in like bursts of static between the pulses. I lay slumped over on the back seat of dad's car. My eyes were stinging from the smoke. My face was wet, chunks of something sliding off as I tried to clear my eyes. The only light came from the dome light. The airbags blocked the windows to both sides.

"What happened?" I croaked, throat dry, jaw sore. I could barely hear my own voice over the ringing in my ears.

The front of the car was gone. Replaced by a metal wall pressed in so far the seat headrests had been bent back. I reached for the back of the front seat to pull myself upright and my hand squished into something. Squinting, I lifted my hand up, seeing the clump of long hair sticking to it.

I blinked at it for a while, tears slowly washing the blood out of my eyes.

"Mom?"

I reached forwards again, my hand only grabbing pieces where her head was supposed to be.

"Dad?" Looking over at the driver's seat, it was the same. He was...not there anymore. Just pieces.

"No. No."

I pushed against the metal wall, recognizing it. The side of a truck. My hand slid down it, leaving a smear through the blood, and I passed out.