Xander ran forward to where Sam jumped to. Because of all of the bushes in the way, he could not see where Sam landed. He started to get worried and ran forward. He didn't hear Sam hitting the ground, but Xander couldn't tell if that was a bad thing or a good thing.

Xander, for the first time, saw the black beast. He thought that it was a panther at first, but when he looked at it more, he realized it was way too big. As he looked at what was on top of the beast, he saw Sam with his arms around its neck, hanging on for his dear life. He then realized that it was running. Running straight to him, in fact.

Xander started to panic. His heart started to pound. He could hear the thumping of his heart, causing his mind to lose focus. He started to sweat and fear started to form in the back of his mind. His hands started to shake and Xander stumbled backwards, he fell landing on his butt.

Xander couldn't see it anymore and that certainly helped. He shook his head trying to clear his head. Any moment now, that beast would go through the bush right in front of him and use its teeth to rip off his neck.

Xander slapped himself. The pain caused him to regain focus. Xander stood up, a bit shaky. He looked forwards, towards where the beast was. He couldn't see anything. Xander walked forward. He didn't notice before, but the rock that he carried slipped out of his hand when he fell down. He went over to it and picked it back up.

Holding the rock in front of him, as if it was a shield, Xander moved forward. He saw the beast now on the ground, belly up. It was moving on the ground as if it had a scratch on its back.

Xander, after a few seconds of looking, finally saw why it was acting that way. He saw an arm coming from underneath the best. The arm was choking the beast. It was then that Xander realized that Sam was underneath it. He wanted to help Sam but didn't know what to do. If he attacked the beast, it could miss and hit Sam instead.

And so Xander decided to wait. He saw the beast slowly slowing down. Its body no longer moved as much as it did at the beginning. Xander thought that Sam succeeded and was going to kill the beast any second now, but something changed. Xander saw the arm, that had been pulling against the throat of the beast, lose its energy. It fell to the side of the beast and lay there with no movement.

Xander saw the beast's eyes fly open. He heard it taking a very long, deep breath. Its limb, which had almost stopped moving, twitched.

Xander thought that Sam died. 'It killed him,' he thought to himself. He remembered the rock he was holding. It was now or never. If the beast came back up, Xander was sure that he would not stay alive for very long. He had been very close to the beast already and only needed to take a step forward to be within striking distance.

Xander took a step forward. He raised the rock, which he was holding with his two hands up, and swung down. As the rock was halfway there, Xander closed his eyes.

He felt the impact through the rock and heard the beast fall back down. He opened his eyes and saw blood on the rock. Unsurprisingly it was red. He looked down and saw the bloody face of the beast. He saw a dent in its face where the rock fit it. Its eyes had already closed and it no longer breathed.

"It's dead," Xander said out loud. He started to push the beast's body off of Sam. It was quite heaving and Xander understood the weight that Sam must have been under that entire time. He finally pushed it off and saw Sam's body. His leg was a bloody mess with a small pool of blood that formed when the beast was over Sam.

Xander looked at Sam and started to cry. If he had helped Sam before, Sam would still be alive. Quite sobs turned into Xander wailing.

Xander cried on and on, thinking about how he could have helped. If only he hadn't been so scared before. If only he never left in the first place.

Xander had not known Sam for very long but he got really close to Sam in the short time that he had known him. They hadn't even talked that much. But Xander had felt that he could trust Sam, that Sam was one of his best friends that he spent years with.

"Cough, Cough. Who died?" Xander heard a voice from beside him. He could barely hear it over his own crying but he still heard it.

"Sam, my closest friend that I've had." Xander paused crying to answer and after he went right back to crying.

Sam who had gotten up waited for Xander to realize on his own. While he was waiting for Xander, he looked around, trying to piece together what had happened. He saw a bloody rock beside Xander and he could see the beast laying there, to the side, motionlessly. It wasn't very hard to predict what had happened.

"Wait...who jus?" After several moments passed, Xander finally realized something was wrong. He looked around himself, trying to find the person that just spoke and found Sam. "You aren't dead?" Xander asked.

"Nope, I died and so did you. This is heaven. When you killed that thing over there, its friend saw and killed you for revenge." Sam said.

"Really? I thought that heaven would be more.... I don't know, heavenly with more clouds and stuff." Xander said as he looked around. He totally believed what Sam said and really believed that he was in heaven right now.

Sam sighed and explained to Xander, "I was joking. We aren't in heaven." Sam was slightly annoyed that Xander would believe whatever he said. Xander did save his life so Sam decided to let it go.

"Oh, okay. Wait that means that you're still alive!" Xander said.

"Yes, Yes. Mind helping me? I might actually die if my leg doesn't stop bleeding." said Sam. His bandages were ripped and he was pretty sure that the wounds were worse than before.

With Xanders help, Sam removed his torn bandages and replaced them with the cloth from his other leg. The bleeding slowed down significantly and Sam started to feel the pain lessen.

"What should we do now?" asked Xander.

"Get away from here. I don't know if that guy is jungle or not but I know several other beasts that would love to come over and have a free meal. Everything tastes better when it's free, ya know?" Sam said. "We can't exactly move it, it's too heavy for that. So we must move."

"Can you move, with that wound and all the blood loss?" Asked Xander, concerned about his revived friend.

"It's fine. As long as we only go for a short distance and I lean on your left shoulder, I should be fine." Sam said. It was definitely a lie. Every time Sam's right foot took even the smallest weight or moved the smallest amount, Sam felt a flash of pain go through this mind. But this didn't help anyone. If they stayed here, Sam would have to worry about a lot more than just a little bit of pain.

Xander, while letting Sam get a short break, went toward the dead animal. He got on his knees and started to search for something. He felt the body of the beast and tried to find something hard. Sam, when he saw that Xander was kneeling down, thought that he would do a weird death ritual or something but he was somewhat confused when he saw what Xander was doing.

"Um.. Xander? What are you doing?" Asked Sam.

"I'm trying to find a core. You know, the colorful rock that you can find in high-level beasts." Xander continued searching.

Sam couldn't bother saying anything so he just watched. When he saw Xander lifting up the rock, Sam, horrified, asked "What are you doing?!"

"I think the core in its brain and the only way I can get to is to smash my way to it." Xander replied. Sam was surprised at the sudden change in Xander. A few minutes ago, Xander was crying and now he was about to ruthlessly destroy the dead body of a beast with no hesitation.

"Stop! I don't think that that has a core. The only thing you'll get if you split open its brain, is me picking." Said Sam as he watched the rock in Xander's hand. Thankfully Xander stopped when he heard Sam and set the rock down to the ground.

"If you say so." Xander didn't sound too convinced.

After a few minutes, Sam and Xander headed off, towards the direction they had always been going towards. After around half an hour or so of walking, Sam stopped.

"This should be far enough," Sam said. "Let's stop here."

There was nothing special about where they were. Just trees, bushes, and the start of a mountain to the side. The only difference was that there were several berry bushes around so they would not have to go far to get food.

"Let's get some food and head up a tree," Sam said. Sam took off his jacket and let it fall to the ground. Xander did the same and then, while Sam watched, he picked the berries and put them on the jacket. When he had almost completely run out of berries, he stopped. He wrapped up

the berries with the jacket.

"You need some help getting up?" Xander asked. He didn't think that Sam would be able to climb very far with his injury.

"Yes, obviously," Sam said. He didn't like that Xander was treating him like a cripple. Sure, he was a cripple, but Xander didn't need to make it so obvious.

Xander couched next to a tree and told Sam to climb on. Sam put his left leg, the one that wasn't injured on Xander's shoulder and told Xander he was ready. Xander stood up and with him, Sam rose up as well. Sam grabbed the lowest branch with his hands and pulled himself up.

"Catch" Xander threw the two jackets filled with berries up, and Sam caught them.

After he saw Sam catch the berries, Xander started to climb up himself. He went up to the second branch and Sam threw him one of the jackets up. He caught it and laid down.

"Now what?" Xander asked Sam.

"We wait."

"For how long?"

"Until I can walk properly again."

For the rest of the day, they didn't move. Sam fell asleep and Xander ate a few berries when he felt hungry. Sam finally woke up right before the sun finally set.

"I need your help again," Sam said. "I want to get higher up. Who knows if another one of those things shows up again. If it does, at least we're both high enough up that it can't reach me."

"Sure." Said Xander and climbed down to where Sam was.

The reason that Sam waited until now, was because of his injury. He felt like if he was forced to climb up again in the morning, his wounds would have opened again and so he waited until they healed enough to climb to the second branch.

Xander repeated the process from before but this time, he and Sam were a lot more careful. They could not fall from the ground but now they could. Both of them still remembered the pain from the previous day. Sam pulled himself up to the second branch and caught the jacket that Xander threw up to him. Xander climbed up to the third branch and caught his jacket bag that Sam threw to him.

They talked for a few hours while it was night. Then both of them fell asleep. This time Sam didn't wake up and nothing disturbed them in their sleep.

The next morning, Xander got down to stretch and Sam stayed up. After a few minutes, Xander came back up and they spent the rest of the day talking. Xander could have explored while Sam stayed back, but both of them agreed that that was not a good idea. Sam didn't want what happened yesterday to repeat and Xander wanted to know Sam better. He regretted not talking to Sam more when Xander thought that Sam died and so thought that it was more important to get to know Sam better than walk around for a while, all alone.

Sam and Xander got to know each other a lot better. They talked about their lives from before they became warlords, about where they lived, their friends, family, and even about Xander's dog.

This continued for four more days. Sam's wound got slowly better and he was able to move more. After the second day, he joined Xander with morning stretches. By the fifth day after Sam's injury took place, Sam knew that he was healed enough to continue with their journey.