Only one problem. The use-by dates on the cans ranged from 2020-2022, which sounded great at first, but then I realized something.
I had no clue what year it was!
So, I headed into the living room and I started checking through the newspapers that I’d found last night.
“Holy shit,” I said, checking the first newspaper.
A crashing sound came from outside, and I almost leaped up to the ceiling like a startled cat. After spending a night alone and hearing no sounds other than the breeze, it set my pulse racing to hear a noise coming from out in the street.
I grabbed my poker and crept to the window. I gently pulled back the edge of the curtain and peeked outside.
Nothing.
Maybe the wind had blown something over?
Just to be sure, I kept watching for a while. I don’t know what I expected. Maybe to see a bunch of mages walking through the village? That the Lonehill clan might have taken pity and come back for me?
I had to be ready for anything in this place. I had to be so prepared that even a party of orcs strolling through the street wouldn’t surprise…
Ah! I noticed it now, movement in my peripheral vision.
My heart started thumping like it was trying to hammer its way out of my chest. I watched the movement over by the tavern on the edge of the village.
A shape darted out into the street.
I breathed out in relief.
It was a dog. A small, black and grey dog. It had floppy ears and a beard around its mouth, and it walked with its nose to the ground and sniffed. Its coat looked dirty and it had patches of fur missing.
Poor guy.
I opened the front door and walked out onto the street. “Hey, boy,” I said.
The dog stopped. Its tail dropped and it took on a wary stance. I wasn’t worried about aggression; this thing was small and thin.
“Come here, boy,” I said.
I kneeled to make myself look less threatening. Right then, winning the affection of this pup became my ultimate goal in life. I felt alone here in this strange place, and I needed a friend and damn it, this pooch was going to be my first. At least the dog wouldn’t abandon me just because I couldn’t cast a fireball from my ass, or something.
The dog took a few steps forward.
I smiled. “That’s it! Come on.”
It bolted to the right, running into a garden way down the street, and then disappearing. I followed it to where I saw another cottage, but no sign of the dog.
Damn it.
I couldn’t go chasing after it. That’d take too long, and I needed to use the daylight. I had so much to do.
“If you feel like you can trust me,” I said, “I’ll be in the house over there. Number…err...three. The sign on the front says it’s called The Gables, but you can ignore that. New management. The name now is the Fortress of…er…Courage.”
I headed back inside and studied the newspaper again. I guess the reason I was so surprised by it was that I’d braced myself to expect something crazy. Like a giant headline proclaiming the end of the world, or something.
Instead, the newspaper was the Kirkwall Gazette. It did occur to me that a village with only five houses and a tavern didn’t need its own newspaper, but I was finding that it was best not to question certain things around here. Why bother? When you realize that green-skinned mages exist, it opens your eyes to the stranger things in life.
The date of printing was August 6th, 2019, and the headline read: ‘Wolves terrorize Farmer Jack’s coop. Ten chickens slaughtered.’
All the other newspapers were older than this one and just as mundane. If anything, the infamous chicken coop invasion of August 2019 was the most exciting thing to happen around here in decades.
In short, it told me nothing about the state of the world. From that I could only make two guesses; either whatever had happened did so without warning. Or, the people of little old Kirkwall just didn’t give a shit.
After a healthy seven or eight hours of sleep that night, the next morning greeted me like a slap in the chops.
I had gotten through another night without dying of poisoning from the berry I had tried, so I decided it was safe to eat more of them. I put the first one in my mouth, and the sugar activated my taste buds as if it was starting a party.
God, it felt good. Not just the taste, but the feeling in my stomach. Fullness, fulfillment. I could already feel renewed energy surging through me.
I gorged myself on half of the ones I’d picked from the bush, and then I stopped. Even though my stomach cried out for more, I rationed the other half.
Next, I went from house to house in the village and gathered anything that might be useful. Jars, knives, logs, firelighters, medicine, clothes. I piled all of this in the living room of the first house, which I guessed was mine now. Finders keepers, and all that.
With all of this stuff, I felt just a little more prepared. Every edge I could get in this world would help me, and I could use everything here. I could fill the jars with water, berries, things like that. The kitchen knives had their obvious uses.
I wasn’t just a guy wandering the wilds with nothing anymore. Woo hoo!
I had checked every bookshelf in every room in every house for a map. An orienteering map, an ordnance survey map, anything that might show me where I was and guide me through the area. But it seemed like I’d used up all my luck finding this village in the first place.
At least I now had kindling, firelighters, and wood. I could have a little light tonight. Maybe I could even heat some water in a pail and use it to fill a bathtub. Houses like this had pails, right?
Nah, that was a waste of firewood. As much I would have loved a soak, I abandoned the idea before I had even started.
Despite that, I still needed water to drink. I packed a few dozen jars in my crazy magic inventory bag and I headed back east, taking two hours to get back to the stream. There, I filed all of the jars and then I hiked back, and it was late afternoon by the time I got home.
Home. Ha. What a word.
It was late afternoon when I finally sat down on a chair in the living room – I had kept the couch in the hallway so I could push it against the door at night – and placed the book on my lap.
It was the book that Kaleb had given me, with Hrr-Chare: Un gata fur Novicien. The cover was blank save for the title, and the book itself looked like it had been handled hundreds of times.
Inside it were pages and pages of text I couldn’t read, but I still had reason to be excited.
For one, I knew that hrr-chare, roughly translated, meant cast an awesome ball of flames at something
I also guessed that Novicien must have meant novice. So, it wasn’t too much of a stretch to deduce that the title of this book was something like Casting Fireballs: A Guide for Novices.
The problem was, where did I start? It wasn’t as if I had a language dictionary so I could translate the words. That would have been great. Even if it took me weeks to translate the whole book, I’d have done it.
Lacking that, I flicked through the book. It was separated into chapters at least, and each chapter began with a drawing.
I went from chapter to chapter now, studying each drawing until I had seen them all.
There was a medallion.
A close-up of a face with a circle on their forehead.
Numerous stick-figures drawn in various stances.
An illustration of some tiny little creature that had smoke drifting off it.
Finally, a fireball.
Somewhere, amidst all those illustrations, was a guide. I was sure of it, sure that I had deduced the title. A guide for teaching a novice how to shoot a fireball from his hands.
Okay, I was getting somewhere. These were small steps, but at least I was in motion. I just needed to work out what the method was, without being able to read the damn thing.
It was getting late now, after working all day, and I wanted to get started first thing in the morning.
Time to get some rest.
Before hitting the sack, I used the kitchen knife to stab holes in the lid of a kidney bean can, and then I wrenched it open while trying to avoid slicing my fingers to shreds.
Yeah, not a single damn house in the village had a can opener.
After sniffing the beans and not receiving an assault of rot in my nostrils, I guessed they might be safe to eat. I pinched a bean between my fingers and took a nibble.
Not bad! Not a great taste, but it wasn’t rotten. It looked like I might have a feast of beans and berries soon.
Food wouldn’t be much of a problem in the short term, which meant I had taken care of one of my most basic needs. As things went, the last couple of days could have been worse. I had water, shelter, food.
It gave me a basis to work from, because when you take care of survival needs, you can start thinking of more extravagant stuff. Things like magic, exploration, and making friends.
I poured three of the beans into a bowl and then left the house. I walked to the end of the street, where I placed the bowl on the doorstep of the house the dog had fled into.
I had been hesitant to give the pooch some food. After all, he’d already survived on his own. He must have his own supply, whereas my stock of food was limited.
But that was exactly why I needed to befriend him. Maybe this dog had gotten adept at catching rats or hares. Schnauzers were an old German dog, bred for rat catching. If this would bring him round to my side, it was worth it.
Besides, it was only three little beans. I figured I could spare that to help a fellow survivor.
“I don’t know if you’re watching, but you looked like you could use something to eat,” I said.
CHAPTER 5 - Hellcat
“Let’s see. I have a medallion. I have a weird gouge on my forehead. What’s next?”
I was outside in the brisk morning air, contemplating spending a day trying to shoot fire from my palms. Truth be told, I didn’t care if the fire left my palms, fingertips, or my ass; I just wanted to hrr-chare something.
I had to believe that the circle was on my forehead for a reason. And if I could use the same magic as the other guys, I’d feel safer. A fire poker was better than nothing as a weapon, but shooting fireballs was even deadlier.
Looking around, I imagined this had once been a beautiful garden with landscaped bushes and carefully tended flowers. The kind of outdoor space that someone had really taken pride in. Now, it was overgrown.
There was a picnic table and chairs set at one end of it, and I placed the book on the table and got ready to summon a fireball. I had guessed that it was a good idea to do this outside. You know, in case I actually succeeded and managed to shoot a sphere of flames from my palms. No sense burning down my new house.
I knew I had the medallion and forehead circle covered, and I knew that I needed to say hrr-chare to cast the flames. The problem was that nothing happened when I did that.
I stood at the end of the garden and I focused on a moss-covered garden gnome that I’d found in a tangle of weeds.
I propped him up on a fencepost.
“Sorry, Pendras,” I said.
It seemed like a good name for a gnome I was going to shoot fire at.
I pointed my finger at him.
“Hrr-chare!”
Nothing happened.
“Hrr-chare!”
Nothing.
I said it again and again, but not even a spark left my hands, let alone a fireball. Pendras the garden gnome seemed to mock me, with his wide, porcelain smile and his stupid beard. I would scorch the hell out of him if it was the last thing I did.
At lunchtime, or what I’d arbitrarily decided to call lunchtime since I didn’t have a clock, I sat at the picnic table with a bowl of canned carrots.
“Where am I going wrong?” I asked the garden gnome, receiving no reply.
Despite failing to shoot fire and being completely unable to read the book, I wasn’t ready to give up. Kaleb had known I couldn’t speak his language, yet he’d given me the tome. There had to be a reason.
I flicked through the book, imitating some of the stick-figure stances in it, whilst saying hrr-chare over and over again until the words lost what little meaning they had ever possessed.
The stances were strange; one involved me raising my right arm above my head and bending my elbow, forming a backward C shape.
Another had me balancing on one leg while bending the other so that the ball of my foot was resting against my thigh. That one took a lot of time and a lot of falling over.
To me, they seemed like a martial art of some kind. I had no idea whether they really were because, as far as I remembered, I had never learned a martial art. But I couldn’t shake the feeling.
What did the stances do? Did they help build up magic, or something? Did they focus my mind?
Even after I tried each stance and spoke the casting words, nothing happened. And I was pretty sure two crows resting on a tree outside the garden were laughing at me.
Defeated, I sat down again and poured through the book, wishing I could see what I was missing.
I had just turned a page and noticed something that caught my eye when I heard a noise.
Something behind me. A rustling sound.
I went to reach for the poker I’d placed on the table, but then I stopped. I listened intently.
The sound was too loud, and something told me it wasn’t hostile.
Could it be the pooch?
I had to play this carefully. I grabbed a couple of carrots and I slowly turned around.
“Hey, buddy-”
Something leaped at me. A mass of fur and claws, oil black in color but too fast for me to see properly.
I staggered back and hit the table, sending carrots flying everywhere. A claw scratched my cheek, ripping a trail of burning agony over my skin. It dug its nails in while screeching in my ear.
I grabbed it by the…the…
…I didn’t know which part of it I grabbed, but I got a firm grip and I threw it as hard as I could.
The shape crashed into the wooden fence that surrounded the garden. When it righted itself and got to its feet, I saw that it was a cat.
Well, almost a cat.
The kind of cat you’d find in a world inhabited by mages that shoot magic from their hands.
It was shaped like a common tabby, with black fur and a slinky feline body. But its face was overgrown, almost mutated as if its skull had never stopped getting bigger. It made it look completely out of proportion with the rest of its body.
It mewed now, but it was less the mewing of a family pet, and instead sounded like it was in pain. Was it because of its mutated skull? Was this thing living in agony?
I grabbed the poker while keeping my eyes on the animal.
It slunk down low, like a tiger stalking a bison.
Its claws began to glow red, and some of the grass beneath its feet wilted as if someone had held a lighter to them.
Steady, I told myself. It’s going to leap. Concentrate…
A bird flew overhead then, cawing.
It broke my attention for less than a second, but that was enough.
The cat leaped at me, covering the distance between us with barely any effort. On instinct I swing the poker, smashing it in the face.
It fell to the ground, screeching. I raised the poker and clubbed it again and again until it was still, and then I slumped onto the picnic bench. My heart was racing, my face burned from where it had scratched me.
I held the poker in my hand, my grip so hard that my knuckles were ghost-white.
The cat didn’t move. It was dead, the poor damn thing. Why did it have to attack me?
As I stared at the cat and reflected on what a pathetic end the feline had, I noticed that there was a pile of red-colored ash next to it.
I went to pick up a pinch of it, but when I did I realized that although it looked like ash, it stayed together in a solid form.
Animal [Minor]
looted!
- Fire Elemental x1
Spell Category created!
Fire
Rank: Grey 0.00%
Stored Fire Elementals: 1
Spells:
None
Spell category? Now, this was interesting!
Collecting something from the cat had opened a spell category for me, which put me a step closer. Thanks for the information, weird text dude!
Even so, it was still pretty vague.
I didn’t know what an elemental was, other than a pile of ash left by a dead hellcat.
I didn’t know what spell I had just created a category for. I didn’t even know what to do with it.
At least it was something.
And now an idea came to me, a punch of inspiration in my carrot-filled belly.
Feeling the adrenaline rushing through me, I flicked through the book until I found a page that I had remembered.
“Here we go!”
A wide grin spread on my face. I was looking at a page near the beginning of the book. The text was still gibberish to me, but my gaze was drawn to the diagram. It showed two things.
A medallion.
And a pile of dust.
I had already had the medallion, and now it looked like I had a pile of dust, which I now knew to be called an elemental. I was getting closer.
I felt like I was pushing on the door of understanding, and the wood was creaking and it was almost ready to give way.
I could do this. I knew it now.
Feeling a renewed energy course through me I hrr-chared the rest of the evening away, to no avail. But even though I hadn’t cast the spell yet, after getting the elemental it felt like only a matter of time to me.
As the sun set and darkness began to set in, I visited the cottage at the end of the street. I was tired in the kind of way a person gets when they have earned their tiredness. It had been a long and somewhat productive day.
At the end of the street, I saw that the bowl of beans I had left before was empty. I placed a few more beans in there.
“Night, buddy,” I said, hoping the dog was listening.
Everything Is Worth Killing- Isaac's Tale Page 4
