CH 8

-Martoel POV-

Three months latter

…

“Wake up boy. Your trial is starting.”

“What’s going on?”

I ask sleepily to the gruff voice that woke me up.

“Your trial is starting boy. Now here are the rules.”

“Wait what Trial.”

“First you can’t come back to the village till you have lived a month on your own out here.”

“Hey listen to me.”

“Next thing is you have to bring back at least one pelt to show your strength to the elders.”

“Ahhh why aren’t you listening to me?”

“Finally you have to live alone and come back alive. If you fail to do any of these things you will be shunned

by all and left to die. Not even your parents could help you anymore. Now good luck kid.”

The man then tosses a chunk of red meat towards a tree near me then turns around and walks away.

“Wait where are you going, take me with you.”

Well this sucks. My hands are tied together, that meat is attracting animals, and I only know that I’m being tried for some reason. Well I better get my hands out of these restraints first. They aren’t too tight so I can get out pretty easily. But it still takes time. The more time I sit here the more likely I’ll be eaten by the wild beasts.

I got my hands out of the restraints and push myself up. On the ground there is a small bag of stuff. I don’t know what’s in it but I don’t really care. I have to get away from here and fast. I grab the bag and start to run in the direction the man went. I follow his tracks until they just disappear. I look around and see nothing other than the snow and the trees.

I don’t know what to do but I know one thing and that is that I have to survive. I decide to run uphill for now so that I can get a better view of what’s around me. I start walking, looking for any movement or safe place to take a rest and see what’s in this bag.

After a while I find a large bolder that has a slight indent in its side. I sit in there and open up the bag that the man left. If he meant to or not doesn’t matter much I’m using whatever I need to get out of here. There are only a few things in the bag. There is an old rusty dagger, five strips of cured meat, an old pot with some rust and no handles, and a bunch of old and tattered cloth. All of this is crap. Other than the food none of this would be acceptable in our home.

Man how did I end up in this situation? The last thing I remember is that we were eating diner as a family as usual. Until mother started to cry and tell me something like that I must survive and overcome everything by my own power through great sobs. When I asked why she said something like this life is hard and to never forget that there will always be a place for me to call home. Then father handed me some sweet liquid and said

“Never lose yourself my son or you won’t live to see anything good again.”

Was this supposed to happen, I wonder?

I really don’t want to die out here. Maybe they left me out here to die? No they wouldn’t have, would they? I don’t know but this isn’t helping. But if I’m supposed to die out here than I should just die right.

No stop it Martoel. That man said that I had to live out here for a month and return. So that must mean that they don’t want me to die right. But that doesn’t mean I can live out here on my own.

“Ahhh this is so frustrating.”

Ok Martoel breath and think nothing good will happen if I panic. What can I do what can I do. I can go look around the area that I have decided to rest in. Yeah that sounds like a good plan. And at least it gives me something to do instead of trying to figure out whether I’m supposed to be dead or not.

I don’t know how useful these items could be but I pick them all back up and get ready to move. I sure wasn’t going to lose these random things that could help me survive out here. I pack the cloth, pot, and meat back into the bag, then put the dagger at my waist. Once I’m sure I have everything I decide that I should look around more and see if I can find the best possible space for a shelter.

…

As I looked around I noticed that the sun just started to rise into the sky. I was too focused on getting out to even noticing something so simple. Whatever, I need to find out where I am, and to do that I need the sun. So if the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, then east is that way. Well that didn’t help much. Until I can see above the trees I can’t get a bearing on where I am.

The only thing around my rock is trees, trees, and more trees. At least the rock is big and easy to find. Well for now that rock will be my base up here.

Ok let’s think about what mother and father taught me. The first thing to do in this type of situation is to make a shelter and build a fire. Well since that rock will be my base I might as well make a fire near it. But I don’t want it to die on me so I better gather as many sticks as I can.

…

I know that I need to gather sticks but this feels so teddies. Well the sun is at the top of the sky so I only have another half of the day to get this fire started. Ok first gather a bunch of small sticks together in a tight bundle. Then I grab two spark rocks and hit them together. Well I don’t have spark rocks so I guess I’ll have to use some of the rocks that are around.

Time to make this fire.

“clack clack clack”

Hum nothing maybe I’m not hitting them hard enough.

“CLACK CLACK CLACK”

Am I hitting them wrong or something?

Ahh the sun is getting closer to the ground, if I don’t start this fire this will be a long night.

“grumble”

Oh time to eat. I grab a piece of meat and eat it greedily. Ok got to save the other four pieces for emergencies.

But how am I going to start this fire.

Ahh forget the fire for now it’s not going to happening today. I should focus on the shelter. Let’s take some of the bigger sticks and lay them against the rock in one direction in that indented part of the rock.

Good now that I have a little shelter I’ll need to build it up a little bit more. I should cover the top of my shelter with branches. The sun is getting really close to the ground now. Should I go and get the branches now or latter. I’ll do it now the night is already going to be cold and if the branches can stop that the better it will be for me.

I go out and break branches of the trees near the rock. I layer them on top of my shelter just as the sun goes down.

Now I’m kind of thirsty. The snow is made of water right? I mean it is just ice. And if ice mana is refined water mana does that mean that ice and snow are refined water. I’ll try it it’s better than dying of thirst.

“Aww cold so so cold.”

Well the snows not the only thing that’s cold the air is getting quite cold itself. I should use the fabric in my pack as a blanket for the night. And let’s take my dagger out just in case.

Ahh this is going to be a long night.

…

Day 2

…

Thankfully nothing happened last night. I woke up many times to the howls of the wolves as well as the other sounds of the night. Surprisingly the night wasn’t as cold as I was expecting it to be.

I got moving before the sun rose so that I could get the most out of the day light. Well first I ate half of a thing of meat. Then I tried to make a fire again. Apparently I really do need specific rocks to start a fire. Better go look for something similar to them then.

As I look at the rock that I’m using for my base I spot a shiny part imbedded in it. This looks a lot like the spark rocks that we used to start the fires back home. But it’s darker in color, almost black in color instead of grey like the spark rocks we used. But they are just as shiny if not more. Maybe I can use that to start a fire? I grab my dagger and start to try to chip pieces off of the rock.

“chenk”

But instead of chipping the rock, it spits out sparks. Let’s try that again.

“chenk”

“IT WORKED”

Now I can start a fire without any problems. Well I do have to figure out how to move it over to where I built my little shelter. But I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.

Man I’m thirsty. Better put some more snow in my mouth. It worked last time so it should be fine. Who knows I’ll stop eating it when I start to feel sick. But for now I feel fine, so no harm in doing what I can to survive right.

I only have three and a half strips of meat left so if I’m going to survive up here I‘ll need to hunt the beasts of the forest. But how, I’ve never hunted anything before. I’ll have to kill it but to do that I’ll need something better than my hands to fight with. Hum if I remember the weapons that the guards had was quite simple. It was called a spear I think and is basically a long straight stick with a pointy end. I don’t have anything other than sticks and rocks to make things with so I doubt I’ll make anything that my father would accept in his

forge.

But I’m getting ahead of myself now. I need that fire above all else. If I don’t have that then I won’t be able to survive for very long. So I gathered another small bundle of sticks and take it over to the shiny part of the rock.

“chenk chenk chenk”

I start to strike the rock and make the sparks go towards the bundle of sticks in my hand.

“chenk chenk chenk”

No matter how many times I strike the rock and sparks come out the sticks still don’t catch on fire. I don’t get it why won’t they light. The last time I tried to start a fire was in the first freezing time. Man why won’t they light? Think Martoel think, what did mother and father tell me about the things that can and can’t be light on fire from sparks, dried hay, dry bark, paper, thin cloth, and small dried wood. Wait most of these things need to be dry for them to light on fire. This wood is very wet from being in the snow for so long.

Ahh I’m an idiot for not noticing this sooner. I wasted the majority of two days trying to start a fire that couldn’t even start from the beginning. Ok I need to get this fire started and fast. First let’s take out some of the frayed cloth I had brought with me. Then I’ll take my dagger and cut of the edges off so that the remainder of the cloth isn’t frayed anymore. Now let’s take the cut edges and wrap them around a stick. I remembered that lighting a fire in my own hand is a good way to burn it off.

“chenk chenk chenk”

“Yes!”

It worked the cloth is starting to burn. But if I don’t get this back to the base fast I won’t be able to start a substantial fire. Ok almost there. Ahh why didn’t I set up a good fire pit earlier. Man I can’t keep making these mistakes.

I shove the end of the stick into the ground right next to the opening of my shelter, now to quickly pile smaller sticks onto the torch that I had made. Now I have to blow lightly on the fire to keep it going.

Aww now the sticks are starting to catch fire. Thank goodness I thought I wasn’t going to make it. But I can’t stop now that it has started to burn. I have to build it up more so that it can burn all through the night so I don’t have to light another fire again in the morning.

I pile more sticks onto the fire until it has grown to a significant size. Then I grabbed some more sticks and put them into my shelter, so that I can add fuel to the fire in the middle of the night. Then I crawl into my little shelter and eat the other half of meat. Man I have to kill something tomorrow or I won’t be able to last.