Day 17

I woke up before the sun peaked over the mountain, my campsite lit by embers and the glow of the Manaphage. Some noise had woken me up, like a distant screeching, and it seemed to be getting closer. Terrified I got up and grabbed a spear, hiding the Manaphage under my layers of jackets, looking to the sky I saw beautiful shades of dark blue, dimly lit, and the vague outline of something flying. I could tell it had large wings and a roughly rectangular body. I quickly set aside the spear, and grabbed my scattered things, and jogged into the forest proper, hoping to get there in time.

It was a close call, the creature above had at some point started to dive as I entered the forest, and crashed into my campsite with a loud tearing noise. Looking back, I saw it was unmoving, the embers of my fire floating for a second, then dissipating. I stopped jogging into the woods, and pulled out the Manaphage, raising it above my head to try and see the hopefully dead animal.

The beast was big, about the size of a van, and even from here I could tell it was alive, but not for long, its chest was slowly rising and falling, its dark brown blood pooling around it. Its wings were three times its size, and leathery, I could tell, because one was laying close to where I was, torn from the body in its crash. I started to approach, leaving my stuff on the ground, only carrying my spear, my ax in my hammer loop on my pants. I got closer, walking around the wing, the Manaphage held above my head, and I saw its eyes open up, looking at the Manaphage, then at me, it tried to move, but couldn't do much besides weakly flex its legs.

I stopped, not wanting to get close to its massive talons, and felt a tug from my left wrist, like the Manaphage was pulling at me. It seemed to “smell” the blood pooling around the creature, and I felt an urge to comply. I hesitated, not wanting to listen to some sort of compulsion from a magic item, but as I waited the smell started to wash over me, at first I smelled iron, salt, and sulfur, making me almost gag. Then I started to smell something under that, something sweet, and almost spicy. When the rattipede had been bleeding out, I don't think I smelled anything like this.

I was entranced by the smell now, it started to smell tasty, and before I knew what I was doing, I kneeled down, and started to absorb the splashes of blood between the creature and its wing. I could taste it faintly in my mouth, a sweet and spicy flavor, and it quickly faded, leaving me wanting. I got up and looked at the creature, still struggling, more and more faintly, I strode over, tossing my spear aside, and grabbed my ax. It was barely moving when I got to its chest, three or four claw marks covering its stomach, I didn't say anything as I looked at the wounds, and thrust the Manaphage into its stomach. It screeched then, almost rupturing my eardrum, and making me dizzy. I shoved the Manaphage deeper into its guts, willing it to absorb as much as possible, wanting to end the creature quickly now.

As I absorbed the blood and life force, I tasted the sweet and spicy flavor again and started to feel light-headed. It didn't have much life left in it and died well before I absorbed all its blood. When it died, the taste slowly disappeared from my mouth, leaving my taste buds feeling contented. I stood there for another five minutes, making sure to leave some moisture in the creature's body. I stood back and looked at the beast's body, now looking emaciated, it was still a large, imposing figure. I got a good look at the rest of it. It had four legs, about as round as dinner plates and 4 feet long. It had 3 massive hooked claws, about a foot long, on each paw. It had a purple hue to its short bristly hair, and its body was dark blue. Its head was avian in nature, a large beak, big eyes, and no ears.

I started to clean up the rest of its blood, somewhat hoping to taste the sweet and spicy flavor again, to no avail. When I was done with my cleaning, it was already mid-morning, the sun fully showing, no longer hiding behind the mountain. I sat back, wanting to take a nap, and get the rest of my sleep before I had been so rudely interrupted. I had already tried pushing the creature off my campsite, and it was still far too heavy to do so.

Deciding that it was now or never, I started a small but spread out the fire, and built up a kind of wooden rack above it, and started breaking down the large creature. First I laid out my blanket and impromptu ceiling and started carving the creature with my ax, being careful to avoid tearing too much of its skin. I laid its meat out on the blanket, still a little wet with blood and hemoglobin. Then I took its skin, and as carefully as possible, laid it aside, hoping to use it later, as so many of my hunting friends had shown me how. I took its bones next, piling them up to the side, clearing away all the bits of meat from them. I piled the organs up separately from the rest of the meat. Lastly, I was able to drag the wings over and pile them atop one another, keeping them out of the way.

The work of breaking down such a large animal took me the whole day, including breaks and time to eat. I had slowly roasted a fist-sized piece of meat, watching it change from light brown, slowly turning to a light shade of blue then started to burn. Which is when I pulled it off the fire, cutting into it, and seeing that it was light blue throughout. “I guess that's... medium?” I said to myself, my voice a little hoarse. I sniffed it first, and only smelled a cooked meat smell, masked by the smoke of the fire, and took a bite. Instantly I was salivating, it tasted sweet and spicy, only much milder, but still present. Quickly I made a makeshift wooden rack, and placed it above the small fire, slowly cooking a large slab of the meat. After making sure the fire wouldn't go out anytime soon, I decided to meditate and go to bed, hoping to wake up to a large juicy slab of meat.