Now, the thing about yellow jackets that people tend to forget is that they eat meat. That means that they hunt, and they tend to chase things that are bigger than them. There is a reason that they have such a bad reputation. They are unreasonable. They feel a breeze blow them away from where they want to be, and you are close by; they sting or bite the person. They see the sun sting someone; they don’t see the sun; they sting someone.

I did what every sane person in the world would do if they saw a 3-foot long flying stinger of hate. I ran like the chicken that I could be called.

The problem with this strategy was the nature of yellow jackets. The unreasonable part. I jumped the broke and ran for all I was worth, hearing the weed trimmer buzzing behind me and closing. What was worse was that I could hear three different tones.

I heard the sound behind me change just before I felt pushed forward and felt a weight added to my back. I listened to the clicking of mandibles right behind my ears as I went into a forward roll.

I wasn’t sure if I would trap it when I rolled, but I figured that if I tried to roll, it would come off one way or another. I was happy when I saw the thing on the ground as I recovered. However, the other two flying at me made me much less optimistic. In fact, I would say they made me downright scared.

The one on the ground was working on getting its wing-back in place. I didn’t have many options now. If I ran, then I would be chased, and my whole body weight didn’t even crush one of these things.

The two flying ones started to circle, and I backed myself up to a sizable tree. I wanted to cut out one direction of attack. I chose to keep my backpack on for some added protection, even if it made moving odd. I also didn’t want these things to carry off my bag or run me off as the wolf did.

The one on the ground was angry and moving towards me. She hadn’t gotten her wing fixed but was going to fight me on the ground.

I readied my spear and took a baseball swing for the flying ones. I thought that I missed the first one as my spear went under it but instead, I caught the wing and took a section out, dropping it to the ground.

While I was celebrating my victory over the flying monster, the other one landed on my back and stabbed me with its stinger.

I felt the very tip of the stinger enter into my lower back. It felt like it was just a scratch until I felt a rush of liquid being pumped into the wound.

The red bar showed up again full, but beside it was the same neon green drip that showed a 5 on it. I screamed in pain and slammed my back against the tree behind me.

I heard a crunch that sounded like the world’s largest cockroach being stomped on. I also felt the stinger slide deeper into my back. I saw my health dip as I staggered forward.

The two nightmares on the ground were coming at me with their mouths clicking. The first one was moving towards my left while the one I had just downed was coming right at me.

I dropped my pack, which pulled the smooth stinger out of my back. I yelped in pain as the stinger angled out of my back, causing a larger wound to appear. I was only a few moments into this fight, and it wasn’t looking pretty to me.

The good thing was that the yellow jackets were much slower on the ground. The bad thing was that my primary weapon was used to pierce, and they were armored.

As the two monsters approached, I saw the envenomed timer click down, and a 10th of my health disappeared. I wasn’t sure how long the singer’s venom would affect me, but I knew that the two guys on the ground could kill me if I didn’t finish them off.

I stepped towards my right to try to keep them from getting to me at the same time. Then I brought my spear overhead and dropped it down like a hammer at the fair. I made contact with the yellow jacket’s head and watched as my spear slid off. I hadn’t even made it move. It just took the hit like it was nothing.

I started to back up. I wasn’t sure what was going on. I killed the one that was on my back when I slammed it into the tree but here it shrugged off my swing like it was nothing. I looked over at the dead one and saw that the thorax with all its little hair was cracked and that the abdomen was separated from the rest of the body.

I circled around as the insects kept coming at me, clicking their mouths. I stepped in and swung at where the thorax and abdomen met and was happy to see the back half pop off. Yet, even in my joy, there was a pain in my left leg as the other one had jumped and bit me with its giant mandibles. I dropped towards it as my leg gave out from the pain and landed directly on top of it. My red bar was flashing, showing 1/3 of my health was gone in an instant.

The one that I broke the back off was still alive, and it was walking towards me like it was going to kill me. I didn’t have time to stand up; I had to act. I shoved my spear at it only to see it bit the tip and drag me towards it.

I let go of the spear just as it bit through it, turning it into two parts. It was dead, I knew that much, but if I didn’t make some room between it and me, I was going to be finished as well. I pushed myself up off the ground and shook the head of the dead yellow jacket off my leg. Then I grabbed my bag and finally started to move away.

I had my life but felt like I lost in that fight. The venom was done removing health, but I had something flashing on the green bar, and I had an outline of me with my left leg and lower-right back flashing. I was guessing that those were indicators as to where I needed medical treatment.

I kept going upstream at this point. I wanted to put some distance between me and the dead yellow jackets as I didn’t want to be there if their family showed up. Three almost killed me, and I knew that they never all left home at the same time.

There was a nest of those evil things downstream, and I still didn’t know what was going on with me. My only hope was to find a place to rest and then figure out what was done to me and why.

After another ten minutes, I took a break and hobbled into the river to wash off. I adjusted the leggings that I had and tied them so that they would cover the messed-up part of my leg. Then I pulled the leftover snake and ate the rest.

Finally, after about twenty minutes of rest, all of the icons in my vision were gone, and I could get to hiking again. I looked around and found a stick in, just a few moments that I could use to hike with. I would need to figure out how to put a point on it as I lost my other one.

I went up the river until about midday. Hiking the river was just about as hard as I thought. Rivers in the mountains tend not to have shallow banks but start to cut into the stone, which I was hoping for. I needed to find a place that was both easy enough I could get to it without getting hurt and easy enough to defend. It also needed to be high enough above the waterway that I wouldn’t get caught up in a flood nor too hard to get to the river so that I couldn’t get water. A perfect place would be hard to find, but a place that I could make perfect might not be that hard. As it turned out, I was wrong. A good place was hard to find, and so was a perfect place.

That being said, about two hours after midday, I saw a passable place for the night. I needed water, so I had climbed down the bank to a sandy spot. There were large boulders that I used to jump from one to the next as I made my way down to the sand. As I went down, I saw a small rock outcropping about twenty feet lower than the dirt above and a short climb across a small ledge where my feet would hang off a bit.