NOVEL WEB Book One: Leap - Chapter Twelve: Now
Before
I wake feeling disorientated, my muddled brain taking a few moments to straighten things out. I’m staring up at the sun, or at least, at the sun through the dappling effect of layers upon layers of leaves. Large, green leaves attached to trees. The effect is beautiful, but I soon realise that there’s something wrong as I’m struggling to breathe, a constriction having tightened around my chest.
My tentative thoughts of perhaps having a premature heart attack are soon put to rest as I see the real reason I woke up from my post-prandial nap: a large snake – or snake-like creature – has wrapped itself around my body and is squeezing rather uncomfortably. As I start struggling a little instinctively, it reacts by swiftly burying its fangs into my shoulder, the pain knifing through me every time it constricts a little more. I sure hope this variety isn’t venomous, I think as my mind races, my fear transforming into anger like a burning ember becoming a bonfire.
“Get the hell off me,” I shout, or wheeze rather as it’s already constricting around my ribs rather hard. Fortunately for me, I never sleep in a ‘corpse pose’ – ironic, as that’s exactly what I would be in a few minutes if I did – and I’ve also learned to keep my knife handy by now. My spear too, but that’s unlikely to help much right now. My right arm is trapped which isn’t ideal, but I’ve learned in the last few days that I’m fairly ambidextrous when it’s my life at stake. I grab the knife next to my head with my left arm and stab at its nearest coil.
The position is awkward and if I’m not careful, I’ll stab myself instead of the snake. Of course, the anger makes it difficult to be precise; at the same time, it does make each blow stronger. Just as my restricted oxygen starts impacting my vision, I feel something give under my knife. The majority of the snake body goes limp.
I start wriggling, trying to push the dead weight off me even while the head is still hanging on in there. Succeeding in freeing myself after a good few minutes, I pull the head of the snake off in disgust and stamp on it to make sure it’s dead. Take an afternoon nap in a murder-forest, great idea Sherlock, I say sarcastically to myself as I stand there panting with the effort. Well, I suppose I’m not feeling sleepy or muddle-minded anymore. Adrenaline: better than coffee.
Casting Lay-on-hands, I watch as the two stab marks from the snake’s fangs heal over before my eyes. Within a short moment, my skin is unmarked. In some ways the instant heal is almost disorientating – my mind thinks the injury is still there even as my eyes say something different.
There are things I could do with a dead snake and I’ve got a few spaces free in my Inventory so I just stick it in there. I hope that what they say about snake meat tasting like chicken is right, if I ever get hungry enough to try it out. The area clear, I just take the few steps to the river to have a drink and rinse my hands. Time to go – I’ve been asleep for longer than I wanted. Checking to make sure I haven’t left anything important behind, I continue walking downstream.
The forest is still bright and deceptively peaceful. I find it hard to relax, though – waking up to a giant snake trying to kill me is not a way to find my inner calm. Even with the adrenaline gone, I’m still antsy, jumping at every rustle and crack.
Man, I need to find some way to control this or I’m going to go mad in days. And I can’t afford to go mad. Losing my sanity means losing my reason, and losing my reason means dying. I don’t want to die! It seems so ironic considering where I was standing only a few days ago, but if this deceptively-peaceful battle-ground has taught me anything, it’s that my desire for survival is a lot stronger than my desire for death.
When I consider the emotions driving me to the roof of my apartment not long ago, I can only laugh grimly at the naïve idiot I was then: how life has changed in such a short time.
*****
Now
Despite my attempts to keep an eye on my surroundings, I still end up being attacked by the pack of weasitors. After I’ve given myself some time for my health, mana, and stamina to refill, I pull myself out of my reminisces and continue walking. I need a shelter, after all.
With all the dangerous situations I’ve encountered so far in this world, I’m really feeling a desperate need to have somewhere safe where I can relax. Whether I’ll be able to find something suitable in the next few days, I don’t know, but I can’t help feeling that my sanity’s on a bit of a knife’s edge. The few weeks before ending up this world were far from stable or good for my mental state; being in constant life-death encounters is only degrading my sense of well-being even further.
The stream continues and the waterfalls start getting higher and higher. I find a couple of caves created by the back-splash of the waterfalls, but quickly decide that they’re unsuitable for shelter: they’re not big enough and I, and all my stuff, would just be permanently wet. As the stream descends, river now really, more and more fish start crowding the pools, and more and more animals the banks. Well, not crowding, exactly, but in the first three hours of my walk, I only saw two animals come to drink, and that was a pair of deer-like creatures. In the last hour, I saw about ten, and one of those was clearly a predator hunting the others.
I pause at this point, hesitating over the decision I need to make. Should I carry on, despite there being more animals, and therefore more risk of encountering something I can’t handle? The weasitors that swarmed me not long ago are proof that I could hit something that’s too much for me or that’s too numerous for me to be able to cope with. Or should I carry on because I still haven’t found anything suitable for a shelter. The snake, after all, was proof of why a proper shelter is an absolute must. Not to mention the mini-crocodiles this morning, though there I suppose I was dealing with a corpse. It’s not surprising other animals were attracted to the site.
It’s a hard decision. I haven’t found anything I could easily turn into a shelter, which means I’d need to either build my own, or go looking elsewhere. Building a shelter will take time, time in which I am not protected at my most vulnerable. Also, to build a proper shelter will take tools which I don’t have, meaning I need to spend even more time ahead creating the tools – and the tools to make the tools. Sure, there are some quick-build shelters I now have in my memory, but they’re equally not particularly protective, not even from weather.
Looking elsewhere without going downstream means leaving the water edge. I’m not keen to do this because I know water is going to be so essential to so many of my pursuits, and running water is even more useful.
However, going downstream brings me back to my initial fear – that of encountering a predator which is much better at killing me than I am at killing it…
Sighing, I decide to stop for the day. It’s already almost time for sundown, and I’d rather have the time to build a little shelter for myself tonight – it will be better in terms of both warmth and protection, especially given the proximity of potential predators. I’ll think about the dilemma overnight and hopefully come to a conclusion by the morning.
All of which poses the question: what kind of shelter and where should I build it?