by Dan Thomas
With a bit of force, he pushed one of the Y-shaped sticks into the ground. It stuck easily into the damp mud. He then took a couple of steps and stuck the second Y stick into the ground, laying one of the longer straight sticks over the top of the two.
Max then stuck four more sticks in the ground, about an arm’s length away from the Y sticks, spaced as evenly as he could. He didn’t want to make the panel too long, or it would be awkward to ride the dinosaurs, but it should still cover most of his torso.
Then, he tied one end of the cordage to one of the four sticks, ran it up to the branch across the Y sticks, then ran it back down toward the straight stick. Once he got there, he grabbed another longer branch, and laid it behind the four stakes, tying the cordage to the stick, then cutting it off with the flint scraper he had knapped the previous night.
Max repeated this process across the other four stakes, using most of his cordage to make four separate lengths that doubled on themselves.
Max glanced up to Pez, who was sitting around the fire, axe in hand, chipping away at a long piece of wood.
Cracking his knuckles, Max then set about separating out smaller bundles of grass from the grass pile. He threaded a bundle of grass, about the width of two fingers, through all of the lines of cordage, using another stick to bat it down tight. Grabbing the stick that had been tied behind the four stakes, he raised it up, lifting half of the lines of cord as well. With his other hand, he grabbed another bundle of grass, and inserted it between the lines of cord, before lowering the stick again, which secured the first bundle of grass in place between lines of cordage.
Max always marveled at the simplicity of the primitive loom that people thousands of years ago had invented.
Sitting in a happy trance, Max repeated the process, whacking the grass back to keep it all tight every so often. Before long, he was tying the ends of the grass rope together to finish off the panel.
Max pulled the grass panel off the sticks and used the last of his grass cord to tie a loop through one end so that he could hang it over his neck.
He looked down at the finished grass panel. He could do with making another one so that he could cover his back as well.
He glanced up to Pez who was still shaving down the sapling, though it looked a lot more like a tool handle now than a tree, it appeared he still had a lot of progress to make.
Picking up a new bunch of grass, Max began twisting more cordage, tying it onto the primitive loom, and again going through the action of lowering and raising the cord tied to the back branch while adding in more fiber bundles. Already in the mindset, Max quickly fell into the pattern and finished the second panel in much less time than the first.
He laid it on top of the first panel.
“Arrows next,” Max said to himself. Crafting arrows was something he had done countless times. The Crew was always in constant need of ammunition.
He got up and went over to Pez. There were freshly cut branches scattered over the forest floor from where he had cut up one of the small trees they had felled.
As Max gathered up a dozen long, straight pieces of wood Pez had cut from the slender trees, he watched his friend work on shaping the bow.
“It’s looking good.” Max had never appreciated the quality of crafting they normally hit. Pez wasn’t just carving a piece of wood, it appeared almost as if he had chiseled out a recurve shape from the wood. Each of them had accumulated skills over their time in Primavera that they’d taken for granted. Being Murf had given Max a new appreciation of their Crews’ advanced characters.
“Are you going to stare at me all day or make those arrows?” Pez asked without looking up.
“Arrows.” Max jolted into action, walking back to his loom and placing the wood down on the ground next to the collection of flint. He checked each stick briefly for straightness, and then took out his flint scraper. Taking each stick, he scraped away the bark, which came off with relative ease.
Once the bark was off, he used the same flint to cut a notch in both ends of the stick. By the time he was on shaft number seven, it took Max much longer to chip away at the grain as the flint scraper became blunter and blunter, but he managed.
He then picked through the flint cores that he and Pez had dug up earlier, looking for one that already had a nice platform to work with. He chose one of the rounder pieces that was a solid cream color on the outside, with darker, glossier rock underneath.
Max reflexively reached down to where he normally kept a tool belt for on-the-go crafting, stopping when he remembered that he wasn’t wearing his normal character, let alone his tool belt.
As he reached for his bag to grab his hammer stone, he looked up back toward the bank. A little way down the river, he could see the lean figures of the Abelisaurus stalking up and down the water’s edge.
“Here,” Pez called. “Use this.”
Max turned as Pez threw something over the fire toward him. Max held his hand out to catch it but misjudged it, and the heavy item bounced off his leg.
He bent down to pick up the tool, a solid copper piece fitted to the end of a short handle.
“Thanks, I think.” Max chuckled. “That’s gonna save me a whole lot of time and cursing.”
Max picked up the first piece of flint and set it down on the nearby boulder that Pez had brought over.
He took a moment to check the imperfections in the piece of flint, he then tapped it with the copper end of the tool before bringing the bopper tool up and hitting the flint with it. With a crack, a wide flake came away.
As Max carried on, breaking away slivers of flint, he appreciated how much easier it was to work with tools than just bashing rocks together, even if he still broke more than a few flakes.
Once he had around twenty flakes that vaguely resembled arrowheads, Max grabbed the horn out of his bag. Holding it close to the point, he held a flint flake down on the rock and placed the horn against one of the edges of the flake. He applied pressure through the point of the horn until a small piece of the edge of the flint broke away, leaving a thinner, sharper edge.
Max worked his way around the whole of the flake, sharpening it and shaping it until he had a rough-looking arrowhead, but an arrowhead, nonetheless.
He then began working his way through the rest of the usable pieces of flint he had until he had twelve complete arrowheads.
“Almost there,” Max muttered as he took one of the arrow shafts he had made, wedged the arrowhead into one of the notches he had cut, and wound a short length of grass cord around it, tying it off.
If he had more time, he’d have searched the riverbank for a tree to tap resin from or look for a Strangler fruit. But they didn’t have time and so he used more of the cordage to fix the heads in place. The only item missing was feathers on the end to help them fly, which for now meant they were pretty much useless.
“Good job, Murf.” Pez got up with the bow he’d crafted in his hand. “Here.”
“It’s weird you calling me Murf.” Max got up with a groan and took the short bow. The leather around the middle felt foreign in his unskilled hands, but even with the rough finish, Max knew that this would deliver a punch. He tugged at the sinew bowstring, feeling that Pez had even made sure not to make it so powerful that he wouldn’t be able to draw it back.
“Thanks for doing that, man,” Max said. “Just need to teach Murf to shoot the thing now.”
“Yeah, let’s get going and see if we can get Murf some skills on the way back to base.” Pez collected all of his tools and stowed them in his pack while Max pulled his woven armor panels over his neck, adjusting them to cover both his front and back. He hooked the bow over his shoulder, thankful that the game allowed characters to carry something on both shoulders, as well as wearing a backpack. Using more of the cordage, Max tied the arrows together and hooked them to his belt. He was ready.
Chapter Thirty-One
Pez and Max gathered up all the tools and unused resources, stowed them away in the packs, an
d scattered the embers of the fire before kicking mud over it.
The Coprolite Crew made a habit of covering their tracks, they’d been followed home one too many times by other players by leaving obvious signs of where they had been.
“We can’t do a lot about the crocodile carnage.” Max nodded over to the dinosaurs.
Pez chuckled as they began to walk toward the dinosaurs by the riverbank. “We could always take the river again; we won’t have to worry about crocodiles now that Abe and Lis have decimated the population.”
Upon hearing his name, Abe looked up from the half-eaten carcass of a large croc, his snout smeared with blood. “There’s a good boy. You eat as many crocs as you want,” Pez said as they got close.
Behind Abe, Lis lunged forward, spraying river water up into the air, and grabbed a small crocodile that had been cruising back and forth along the shoreline. Lifting her head, she swallowed it whole. Her throat expanded as it slid down toward her stomach and Max wrinkled his face as he watched.
“Definitely looks as if they met their match in Abe and Lis.” Pez patted Abe on his neck, who let out a low grumble as he ducked his head and bit back into the carcass. “Come on then, fella, let’s go home.”
While Pez hooked his saddle onto the leather straps around Abe’s leg, Max approached Lis cautiously. He had to remember that he wasn’t a familiar character to the dinos, Murf didn’t have the same bond with their animals that Holic did.
As Max sidled closer to the large predator, she turned away from watching the river and regarded him with dark red eyes. Max gingerly held out his hand, communicating mentally through the Shard on her temple that he was friendly, and that he needed a ride home.
She lowered her head and leveled her muzzle with his hand. Her head was bigger than the size of Max’s chest. She sniffed his hand in heavy, huffing breaths, spraying droplets of water over him.
She then turned and stepped so that her leg, with the leather rope ladder leading up to the saddle on her back, was level with him.
Max looked up at the saddle, almost half his height again above his head.
“I’d forgotten how intimidating it was the first time I got on one of these.” He reached out and grabbed one of the woven leather rungs between thick leather straps around the dino’s legs.
Awkwardly, Max lifted his leg onto the lowest rung, just below Lis’ knee, then hauled himself up, reaching for the next rung. “Dammit!” He didn’t have enough momentum and fell back to the ground.
Pez smothered a laugh. “This is too funny.”
Ignoring his friend, Max tightened his grip and hauled himself up, this time managing to get his second leg under him and climb up the rest of the ladder, swinging over her back to sit on the wide saddle.
Max breathed heavily as he adjusted his position in the saddle and slowly straightened up. “Under different circumstances, I’d agree. But there has been nothing funny about being Murf, I can assure you.”
“Not even a little?” Pez asked over his shoulder as he used a mental command to steer Abe away from the river.
“Not even a little.” Murf wobbled as Lis took a couple of steps forward and Max had to rest his hands on either side of her neck to steady himself. He had no idea that something he had been doing for so long could feel so unnatural.
He focused on Lis and with a thought brought up the Creature Inspection Screen.
Lis
Creature: Abelisaurus, Female
Tier 3
Type: Dinosaur, Theropod
Diet: Carnivore
Maturity: Adult
Level: 9
Bonding: Stranger
Temperament: Fierce
Species Traits: Cold-blooded, Large, Snacker
Individual Traits: Ferocious
With another thought, Max brought up the more detailed statistics for the dinosaur.
Lis
Health: 6600/6600
Stamina: 1700/1700
Bonding: Stranger-This creature is not hostile toward you, but doesn’t know you. No bonuses
Species Traits: Cold-blooded-Gain negative status effects from being cold much quicker and at much higher temperatures than normal
Large-Take less damage from small weapons and creatures, sprinting takes much more stamina, hunger and thirst decrease faster
Snacker-Deal double damage to small creatures
Individual Traits: Ferocious-Gain buffs to damage, stamina, and damage reduction the longer this creature is in combat
The Abelisaurs were truly the most powerful dinos they had.
“We’re just going to walk, right?”
“For now,” Pez called over as Abe stalked toward the trees, his heavy footsteps crushing plants underfoot.
Murf threw himself forward and nearly overbalanced when Lis’ weight lurched forward as she followed after Abe. Max could feel her gait through the saddle, feeling her powerful muscles working. Sitting just behind her shoulders, her tree-trunk-sized neck moved from side to side as the dinosaur peered into the jungle ahead.
From the time that Max had spent around dinosaurs, he had gotten pretty good at reading their body language. While there was a Trait down the Primal tree to be able to better communicate with animals, Max had never explored it, relying on his own intuition and experience to guess at what the dinos were thinking. It gave him a sense of ease as they followed Abe as he weaved through the trees, Max trusted the Abelisaurus to spot any dangers much earlier than he’d be able to.
Up ahead, Pez ducked under a low branch as the jungle began to get denser. Lis naturally followed in the footsteps of the lead dino, and Max nearly threw himself off the saddle to avoid being taken out by the same branch, which seemed much lower for him as he was riding the larger dino out of the pair. Female dinosaurs were generally bigger and more powerful than the males, but more docile, at least when not in combat.
As the two dinosaurs stomped their way through a tighter patch of trees, veering onto a wide game trail which wound through the jungle, Max gave Lis a scratch on the ridge of her neck.
“Good girl, Lis,” he muttered as he listened to the sounds of the jungle around them. All was quiet while the two large predators stomped through the trees. Vines and curtains of moss brushed against him as they went and being so high above the undergrowth, Max still had a mostly unobscured view of the immediate area but couldn’t see much movement.
There wasn’t likely to be anything large in the thick of the jungle, and anything smaller than a Stegosaurus would have been long gone upon hearing the heavy footsteps of the Abelisaurus.
After some time of walking steadily along the track, Abe lowered his posture and broke into a lazy jog. Before Max could prepare himself and ask Lis to catch up, she had already ducked her head and was running heavily through the trees.
Murf was nearly thrown from her back as he bounced up and down with every step of the beast, clutching onto the pommel of the saddle to stop himself from falling off.
They carried on at a steady pace, the only sound accompanying the thud of heavy steps were the huffed breaths of the dinosaurs and distant rustles as some small animal ran from the sound of the carnivores. Before long, the jungle began to thin out again, the undergrowth growing thicker where more sunlight found its way to the ground-covering fauna. Max finally saw snatches of the tree line, where the jungle ended, and the Tannika Plains began.
As they came out of the last of the trees, and into the sun-kissed grassland, Max gave a mental command to push Lis on, who picked up speed to pull level with Abe.
“Hey, you’re getting the hang of it.” Pez looked over and grinned. “You know, it’s been good to get away from our usual stomping ground and see more of Primeva. We should go explore more. Maybe even explore some of the other worlds.”
“Yeah, I’d be up for it. I was in Gyromeda for a bit earlier. That was one crazy ride. Jag’s base was attacked while I was there.” His hand involuntarily closed over his bag strap, thinking of the box hidden in there.
“Yeah, Sam told me that Jag gave you the Concealer.” Pez chewed the inside of his cheek.
“He didn’t give it to me, he repaired it for me. And I don’t think I would’ve made it out of Cerribue Prime without it.” Max urged Lis to keep pace with Abe who was striding ahead along the trail that cut through the short grass. Max looked ahead, toward a roaming herd of Parasaurolophus, their deep bassy calls just on the edge of his hearing as he turned back to his friend. “Hey, what’s up, Pez?”
“Nothing.” Pez eased up and Abe slowed his pace.
“Nothing?” Max asked. “Is this about the Concealer?” He was unsure of exactly how much detail Sam had shared with Pez.
“Nope. It’s not about the Concealer,” Pez insisted. He ground his back molars as if trying to stop himself from saying his next words. “It’s about how Jag is always the savior even though he left us and went to play at being a full-timer on another world.”
“You miss him?” Max frowned. He had not seen this coming.
“No, I don’t miss him.” Pez kept a straight face.
“Oh.” Max’s frown deepened as he watched his friend’s expression.
“And I’m not jealous. It’s just how he always seems to be the good guy no matter what he does. It’s like you guys forgive him for everything.” Pez kept his eyes forward.
“Right.” Max looked down at his hands. Awkward.
“Forget I said anything,” Pez grumbled. “I just don’t trust the guy, that’s all.”
“You don’t trust Jag?” Max asked in surprise, the weight of the box in his bag growing heavier with Pez’s admission.
“No. I can’t explain it, but I always thought there was something dodgy about the guy, and you guys were always blind to his faults.” Pez’s attention shifted to the left and he reached down and pulled his spear out from where he’d tucked it into a saddle strap under his leg. “Let’s go hunt!”
