NOVEL WEB Prologue: This New Life
Now
When the attack comes, the flicker in my peripheral vision allows me to avoid it. Barely.
I’ve been trudging through the forest surrounding me for a few hours now, following the river as it wends its way down the mountainside. I’ve been keeping my ears and eyes open, having already learned my lesson about that several times over.
For a while the coast has been pretty clear. Very few creatures have entered my field of vision, and none that try to attack me. I’ve almost started to relax. Almost. But I can’t forget that this place is perilous, far more so than the place I’ve left behind.
At the sound of snapping branches, I flinch. Swiftly putting my back to a tree, I stare around myself suspiciously. I’m heading through a dangerous part of the forest – a dense section of vegetation composed more of bushes than trees. There’s still plenty of space to walk, but there’s also plenty of cover for any ambusher.
I grip my rudimentary spear more tightly and lift it so it’s more of a weapon and less of a walking stick.
It goes quiet for long enough that I start to relax again, wondering if perhaps it was just some other prey animal with the same fearful hope as me: that it has gone undetected. I’m not that lucky.
The creature – or creatures as I realise it is in reality – leap at me from the bushes surrounding me. I flail around with my spear and knife, alternately trying to knock them out of the air and stab at them. I’m not a pro in dual-wielding, though, and any hits come more from luck than skill. Or perhaps we could say that they come from probability: if I flail fast and hard enough, I’m bound to hit something.
I shout – in no way a high-pitched shriek, I promise myself even as the sound emerges – and turn the air blue as something bites down on my skull. Liquid runs down the side of my head as a stinging pain shoots through me.
Dropping the knife, I reach up at the thing and pull.
It doesn’t want to let go. I have to yank several times before I get it free. I’m pretty sure a good chunk of hair has come with the wretch, but at least it’s not biting my head any longer. Throwing it to the ground, I try to stamp on it, but the bugger is too fast and scurries out of the way before my foot lands.
In the meantime, three others have attached themselves to my leg, foot, and calf. I shout again – in a much manlier register this time – very tempted to bludgeon the painful leeches. Unfortunately, I know that if I swing my spear at them like a staff, I’m more likely to hit myself than them.
This is not a good match-up. They’re fast, agile, and too small for my wild spear swings to do more than hit one out of the air every so often. In the meantime, they’ve broken skin in multiple places and I’m starting to look painted in red.
The bites aren’t deep, but they’re painful and every drop of blood lost inches me closer to death. Just thinking about that reminds me of one small light in this green hell that is my new reality. Casting Lay-on-hands – a healing spell – I hope that it will help me keep going a bit longer.
I need to work smarter, not harder.
Temporarily dropping my weapon, I slap at the creatures. Though I’d gladly take killing them, I’ll willingly accept just getting them off.
The little monsters avoid my grasping and flapping hands, choosing to leap away from me. I do hit two of them, but they recover and jump away as I reach for them to wring their scrawny necks.
For a moment, I am free of new pain, though their previous bites sting and ache. With a brief window of space, I take a few moments to think through the situation.
Moving, my attackers seem to be claws and teeth attached to flashes of green – I have no chance of determining their numbers. Hitting them out of the air isn’t working. Maybe playing bait would work better. If anything else, it should get them out of the bushes and allow me to have more idea of what I’m dealing with.
Swiping at the knife and spear I dropped on the ground, I take two steps to put my back to a tree. There I pause, tempting them to come at me across open ground rather than darting in and out of the bushes as they have been doing so far.
I soon have cause to regret my decision. Now not swiping at me in fly-by attacks, they settle against my flesh, biting my legs – chewing, really. The agony shoots up my legs, the sensation joining my bank of things I never want to feel again.
Did that one just swallow a chunk of my flesh?!
At least I’m getting a better view of my attackers now, though. They’re some bizarre cross between lizards and weasels. The shape and approximate size of a weasel, but looking more like a small monitor lizard. Teeth probably like them too, but I can’t see them because they’re buried in my flesh.
Right, time to deal with these obnoxious weasitors. Since no more parasites have leaped from the bushes to attack in the past few seconds, I guess that this pack is limited to the seven nasty creatures currently attached to my legs.
Dropping my spear, I use a lightning-fast movement grab the weasitor currently gnawing on the flesh of my right calf just below my knee. It’s slower to detach, thanks to its deeper bite, so this time I succeed in getting a hold of it.
Squeezing its kicking rear legs, I pull it out perpendicular to where its head remains attached. With my other hand I stab at it over and over again until it’s dead. I don’t remove its teeth from my flesh – yet. I’ve already made that mistake once and almost paid the ultimate price for it.
I succeed in grabbing and killing another before the rest realise they’re in danger and jump away. They disappear into the bushes like the vermin they are.
“Oh no, you don’t,” I growl.
Casting Lay-on-hands again, I pull the dead weasitors out carefully, unhooking their needle-sharp, curved teeth from my legs rather than just pulling my flesh with them. Then, pretending to be weak, I lean back against the tree, slumping down to one knee.
Fortunately for me, these creatures are pros at ambushes, but amateurs at spotting bad acting. They jump at me again, this time aiming higher than before.
I slam one against the tree at my back when it makes the fatal decision of latching onto my shoulder blade. I know it’s not dead because I can feel it wriggling, but it’ll have to wait until I’m done with its friends.
I trap another under my elbow against my side. When it sinks its teeth into my sensitive side, I shout at the pain. Agony, really, but what’s new? Then, snatching a third out of the air as it leaps at my head, I stab it with my dagger, its guts spilling out to slide down my wrist. Grabbing one of the only two still free, I manage to catch it with the tip of my dagger just as it jumps away with a chunk of my flesh in its mouth.
Stabbity stab stab. Another one bites the dust.
Am I going mad? Possibly. Probably. But frankly, right now, I don’t care.
With a growl, I slam my blade into the one trapped under my elbow, wriggling my dagger until I feel it go limp, its spine severed. Leaning backwards with my full weight and then some, I crush the one behind my back until it’s stopped wriggling. Twisting round, I make sure it’s dead with a knife through its skull, grim satisfaction going through me.
Presuming there were seven in this pack, there’s only one left alive. If it knows what’s good for it, it will stay far away from me. Right now, unless it got me somewhere vital, it’s not much threat on its own. I still wait for a while, my senses remaining on high alert.
Nothing.
“Huh, perhaps it’s smarter than its friends,” I comment to myself, cautiously hopeful. I just wish they had been smart enough to maybe, well, not attack me in the first place!
Leaning against the tree, I cast Lay-on-hands again. The promises I was given haven’t exactly turned out the way I was expecting, but at least the ability to heal almost instantly is awesome. I’ll need to cast it a couple more times, but it’s better to let the magic of each heal-over-time finish first before casting again. Otherwise, at best, I waste the mana; at worst, I’d cancel some of the beneficial effects out.
Too bad the spell’s effects don’t appear to stack.
I probably need to let my health and stamina refill a bit too. I've worked harder physically in the last couple of days than I ever have in my life, but it feels...surprisingly good. Plus, from what I have seen so far, the new system I have access to now could be a bit of a game-changer.
Game-changer – hah!
Being able to see my capabilities in numbers is useful, if a little disheartening, and may offer the possibility to directly improve things such as health and stamina in a way that would have been impossible on Earth. And besides, what did I have to stay for on Earth, anyway? Being attacked by weasitors might be painful as hell, but at least I feel alive now – that’s more than I had back there.
Thinking back to the fight, how I succeeded in not shouting, screaming, or going out of my mind at the pain of literally being eaten alive, I don’t know. Maybe it’s just the burning anger in the pit of my stomach that grows every time I’m attacked by some other opportunistic blighter.
I’ve made it through another fight – and my opponents have not. Taking a moment to relax, I pull out some food and water. While I refresh myself, I find my thoughts wandering back to the events which started it all.