Day two in the plains and I already noticed my first penalty. I could no longer regen Mana. After looking over my attributes sheet, I realized all the basic needs of common life were tied to attributes. Failure to meet the needs would penalize the attributes. It also appeared I needed to eat more food depending on my strength attribute. I had found about a pound of berries in the morning, and they counted for only one hunger point. I was down to twenty points. Shelter was at zero because we slept outside in the rain the night before.

I struggled to even sleep at all. I was not sure what kind of creatures hunted the plains at night and I could hear hoots and howls all night. Combined with that every time I closed my eyes, I could see the Shade pouncing out of the dark. I found Shia standing on a boulder in the middle of the night looking out across the field with her dark owl eyes.

“I sleep at noon.” She had said. “I rest in the sun so I will keep watch, you should sleep Chief Pug.”

“Can’t you come up with something else to call me?” I grimaced.

She regarded me for a moment. “Ever see those little broad-shouldered dogs with the short hind end and the stub tail? They have a big round jaw, and their teeth stick up from the bottom like this?”

“Yeah,” I narrowed my eyes. “We call them bulldogs.”

“You have the face of one.” She said without even smiling. “You grunt like one and snort too. I had one when I was a girl. He had a low deep half-hearted bark. I think I was five when we got him, and I thought he was so cute. You’re kinda cute too.” She pinched my chin with a hand.

I pulled away. “Thanks, I think.”

“Sorry Chief, I was just saying we used to call him Barker.”

“Barker?” I heard radio chatter in my mind. Something from far away. Something familiar. “Officer Barker.” The voice on the radio said. The memory felt like Deja Vu. I shook it away. The experience was surreal. It made me feel off, out of place. “Officer Barker.” I looked up at the sky. The game, I remembered, but it was like trying to think drunk. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. “That was my name,” I said aloud hesitant, was it? Yeah, it was my name. “Barker.”

“Should I call you Chief Barker then?”

I sat in the tall grass looking down the hill the next morning watching a herd of rhinos, maybe? They had skin like rhinos but faces like frogs. It wasn’t the rhino frogs that had my attention though. There was something closing in on the herd from three sides. I could see the dark paths cut through the grass as the predators slinked forward but they were shorter than the chest-high grass so I couldn’t see them yet.

They were patient. I had been watching for over an hour. I knew it was coming sooner or later. Mia came over and sat beside me on the rock looking down the hill. “Good,” she said, “some of the tribe is getting hungry.”

I raised a brow, “tribe?”

“Your tribe.” She gestured with her thumb over her shoulder. “You have a strange one for sure. Shia is rooted in the ground sleeping. She grew branches and leaves up out of her hands and turned as solid as a tree. The good thing is she covers most of herself with bark when she sleeps so the men stop gawking.”

“She said she slept during the day. Gonna make it hard to travel with her sleeping in the day and us sleeping at night.” I said, keeping my eyes on the certain ambush below.

“Maybe we should leave her.” She prodded. “What?” She batted at me with a soft blow. “I saw the way you look at her.” She looked away, she had managed to break my attention from the pack below, so now I was looking at her and she was looking down at the pack. She had a sleekness to her. A softness. It was even more distracting to look at her now that we were in basic cavemen clothes and I felt like a perv staring so I tried not to let her catch me anymore. I allowed myself a moment now. She had firm sleek muscles and beautiful curved features. If she were human I would have placed her in her early twenties. She had a playfulness in her eyes when I looked into them, well, until the Shade took us. Now she seemed distant, guarded. I noticed she always seemed ready to pounce.

“We can’t leave her and I still look at you the same,” I said and when I looked up at her eyes I saw she had been watching with the side of her eye and was now blushing. “I am tied to you all now.” I meant the game but I kind of liked having them around too. It would be lonely in this plain if they weren’t here. I had just been wondering what would creation be if there were no sentient, observant creatures to take it all in. To see the beauty of the blue sun and feel the breeze across the grass. To admire the swaying of the trees and listen to the bird's song. What if no one ever saw the white clouds contrasted against this violet sky? If it were only predator and prey, rocks and nature. It would be wasted beauty without a witness to understand the blessing.

“I know, Chief.” Mia mocked. “Chief Barker.” She smirked.

“That name is hilarious.” Tootsie said from my other side. “You do look like a bulldog, but you look more like his other end.” She laughed at her own joke and I pretended not to hear her.

Mia looked down at the herd and hissed. I followed her gaze to see the predator's pounce. They were dogs, marbled fur tall and skinny like a greyhound but looked more like dingos from Africa. They were taller than any dog I had seen though and they had ears like a jackrabbit. A half dozen of them poured out against the rhino frogs and managed to take one to the ground. It let out a sound like a strangled duck and the herd stampeded away. If you could call it a stampede. They were heavy and slow but when one of the straggling dogs went after one he got a back kick to the ribs and didn’t get up again. Mia hissed again. “I hate those things.”

I watched as the dingo dogs ripped viscera from the downed foe. They were vicious. Calculated, militaristic. One watched to the sides as two pinned down the beast. They were familiar in some ways. Like a pack of wolves. I watched a few moments longer until I was sure the frog rhino was down for good.

“Call the tribe, we have food,” I said. One problem solved. Well soon anyway. First, we had to take on a pack of wolves, naked. I wrapped the spine around my forearm and clutched the hook at the end of the tail.

Orc

Chief Pug

Pig Face

Level 19

Strength: 22. Hunger 20

Dexterity: 10 Thirst 08

Charisma: 5 Entertainment 4

Intelligence: 18 Concentration 18

Manna: 0 Shelter 0

Constitution: 14 Energy 12

Perception: 14 Hygiene 13

Exp: 19,610

Soul Points: 27

Skills: Furious Feline: cost 2 mana,

Dex: +3, Claws, time: 1 hour

Carapace Skin: +4 Constitution,

Cost: 2 Mana, time: 1 hour

Phantom Cloak: Cover a target area of three square-meters for 7 minutes (Stage 2)

Cost: 2 Mana

Coin:

$0

Gear:

Shade Tail and Spine

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