Ch. 3: First Day
Chapter Three
A songbird woke him, its trilling cry echoing out across the rime covered forest as Dane cracked his eyes open. He rubbed at them, tired as he stifled a yawn from echoing out as he looked at the burnt remnants of his little fire. The small circle he had built was full of ash and embers, heat still wafting off of it in the morning.
Dane moved to the edge of the snowbank and looked out the gap between the snow and log, searching for anything that was moving in the early morning. The sun was cracking the horizon, more bloody red than his world’s sun, casting a red haze across the world as it reflected off the snowbanks.
Dane cursed to himself as he saw his tracks, plain as day, leading straight to the hollow he had rested in. If anything had been hunting out in the night they would have found him easy to track. His tutors would have beat him bloody for such a foolish mistake.
He drank his clean water and repeated the water purification process he had done the night before as he thought out his orders. He may be an exile, forbidden from standing in the sunshine with the others of his bloodline, but he was still a loyal son. It was all he had left after all.
Dane left his temporary shelter and started trekking across the foreign forest. His staff stabbed deep into the snow as he looked over the new world. The capital world of the empire had been built over in layers and layers and layers of civilization. Skyscrapers build side to side, canyons of steel and glass, rivers of concrete without a single piece of greenery to be seen.
Now he stood in a forest unlike anything he had ever known. The closest comparison was the simulators where he had experienced blistering cold, or learning how to trudge through snow. But the simulations couldn’t have prepared him for the scent of pine on the wind, or the songs of birds as they woke in the morning, or how the sun reflected off the sea of snow as he left the protective forest and stared down and across a plain.
Dane froze for a moment in shin deep snow as he stared at the blue mountains with thick white tops that stretched halfway down their great peaks. How they rose and rose and rose until they were lost in fluffy white clouds. His breath was stolen from him at the majestic beauty of nature.
Then he looked down to the base of the mountain and the massive dome of purple energy that rose up hundreds of feet. A main incursion group. Dane moved back into the edge of the forest, relying on the trees to protect him from anyone that would see him from the dome if they were watching.
When one came into an incursion without blooding a coin they were routed to their faction's protected zone. For seven days the dome would remain and allow them to build defenses without worry of the natives destroying them instantly. And it would allow scouts to leave and return as long as they had their iron coins.
There would be scouts coming out to sweep the area here soon if they weren’t fools. Dane would have to be prepared when the scouts came through his section, but for now he needed to do his job. Which was finding any type of advantage that the Empire could use when the seven days ended.
He backed deeper into the forest and started searching for a base he could use to operate out of. He had teleported near the edge, with a spur of the forest protecting where he arrived from where the massive incursion had arrived. The hours slipped by as the sun rose higher and black clouds rolled off from the direction of the mountains.
He found a series of fallen trees, clustered about in a tangle, half rotten and with built up snow piles. It was a natural shelter and Dane was careful as he approached, the lack of animal tracks over the last few hours had made him nervous. Besides that single monster he had killed early on, there was nothing out here larger than a bird.
Dane circled around the collapsed trees, looking for any signs and almost feeling relief when he saw tracks in the snow. The first fat flakes of wet snow started to descend, drifting past the tree limbs. The trampled snow was muddy with three toed prints similar to the monster he had killed yesterday. Dane drifted around the edge, senses alert, as he looked at the tracks. There were at least two different beasts, if not three, but the messy nature of the tracks made it impossible to tell.
“Just got to get it done,” Dane whispered to himself as the snow began to fall faster. He took his pack off and hung it on a tree branch and moved closer to the den, moving as slowly and softly as he could. He kept his staff in hand as he leaned over and looked into the dim den.
Red eyes stared back. Dane leapt back, instincts screaming as the rotted logs burst apart as the beast came scrambling out of the den, slavering with its long tongue lashing the air. Dane stabbed it with the end of the stick, twisting his hips to put force behind the blow, and aimed it at the buggy eyes. The creature screamed as an eye popped as the jagged edge of the stick pierced it in an explosion of gore.
Its legs went limp as his impromptu staff pierced its skull and went into its brain, sliding through the slush to fall limp at his feet. Dane looked up as another of the beast came bounding up from the den, yowling like a scalded cat. Dane cursed and tried to pull his staff free, but the end was wedged solidly in the creature’s skull.
The beast slashed at him, Dane rolling backward, popping to his feet as the beast landed on its paws and burst toward him like a dog. Its teeth snapped close, inches from his stomach as Dane bowed backward, bringing his balled up fists down in a hammer blow on top of the beast’s bulgy skull.
It slammed into the slush and mud, scrambling upward as Dane kicked it with all his strength, the monster’s head snapping to the side as it rolled around. It rose to its feet, shaking its head as its red eyes were crossed for a moment.
Dane didn’t waste a moment, crossing the distance and kicking again, his heel connecting to its jaw again. It went limp for a moment and Dane repeated his original execution stomp, shattering the vertebrae that connected its spine to skull. The creature spasmed a few times, then went still.
Dane breathed heavily, gasping as the sudden surge of adrenaline hit him. He mastered himself, going to the first of the beasts he had killed and putting his boot on the creature’s head and pulling the staff free with a wet schlurp . He walked slowly towards the den and looked down into the little hole the monsters had been nesting in.
A stench slapped him, rotting meat and dung, and Dane backed out gagging. There was no way he was going to be habitating in that den. He gagged again as he dragged the two corpses back to the den, rolling them into the den. There was no world he would ever try eating the beasts, but they had to have some type of prey around here. He grabbed his bag off of the limb he had left it and started off again.
The black clouds were now blotting out the light and the snow was falling fast and heavy. Dane cursed himself for not marking out his way back to the small hollow he had rested in last night as he struggled through the piling up snow as darkness crept about.
“I’m not dying before the damn System arrives,” Dane swore out loud. He stopped and pulled out his small hand axe, looking at the tall trees around him. In the roots of the largest tree he scooped out as much snow as he could, his hands turning red and raw, melted snow clinging to his hands. He cut and hacked limbs off, as many as he could and built a lean to, stacking the branches tightly over the dugout in the roots and piling green boughs over the top before crawling inside of the damp and muddy ground.
He was trembling, shaking viciously as he tried to get a fire going, shedding his wet clothes as the fire slowly started to burn. His red skin prickled in the heat as he leaned against the roots, looking up at the ceiling he had made and hoped that it wouldn’t crack and cave in on him overnight. He forced himself to heat up a bottle of water, sticking the scalding metal close to his skin as he hung his wet clothes over the small fire to allow them to dry out. His bed of small, rough, boughs was far enough from his fire pit he didn’t worry too much about it catching on fire.
Dane leaned back, shivering, wrapped around his hot water bottle, thinking back of the old days, before the demon brands. Before he was no longer allowed to stand in the sun with the rest of the old-blood. His heavy eyes closed and he breathed slowly as he fell asleep, his first full day in the integration.