Day 34

I woke up early, the first signs of the sun just peeking over the mountain top, and I was ready to go. I crawled out of my hut, wide awake, ready for the day, and started on my breakfast. It had been a day or two since something had tried to kill me, I was feeling refreshed, and I wasn't even feeling that hungry. While waiting for my breakfast to cook, I started grabbing some logs, I was running low, and would soon have to try and fell a tree, I put that on my ever-growing checklist, and quickly dried the remaining logs, and placed them close to the fire. I had a plan for the rest of the day, and it was a simple one, explore that glow deeper in the under forest, and craft some weapons from the claws and talons I had collected. I grabbed a large talon and started walking into the forest.

I reached the hole after an hour, having slowly ground down the talon with the Manaphage, and made a workable handle and edge, and I now had two talon knives, the second one much better and more cleanly carved than the first. Stashing it in one of my many pockets on my leather robe, I reached and grabbed one of the smaller claws, a couple of inches long, and I started shaving this one down, making a little handle about an inch long, and essentially useless. I threw it back in my pocket and had to think about what I was going to do with all the claws I had collected.

I started down the hole, Manaphage up and lighting the way as I slowly walked through the tunnel and eventually made it to the cave floor. I started forward, going in the opposite direction from the mountainside. As I walked on, I marked the trees with my new knife, cutting deep into the bark, leaving large cuts in the bark. I was walking slowly for a long time, before I spotted the distant glow again, unmoving now. The glow looked to be about a mile away and was a faint orange-red like a fire, but it wasn't flickering. I continued on, slower now, making sure my footsteps didn't make too much noise.

The closer I got, the brighter the light got, to the point that there where long shadows cast from the trees, giving everything a slightly eerie vibe. I was about 100 feet away when I started hearing some sort of noise, beyond the occasional creaking of the trees. It sounds like a faint whimpering, like an animal in pain. I walked quicker, curious as to what it was, and quickly it came into sight, a little creature curled up into a ball, with shining fur on its back, glowing orange and red like a fire. As I got closer, its whimpering noises grew louder, and I saw a deep gash on the side of its body, looking similar to the cut from the double cats cut in my roof. I stepped closer, not knowing what I would do, when it turned it head towards me, and looked at me, with a face like a mix between a puppy and bear cub.

Oh, it was adorable, and I walked over quickly and sat down next to it, and put some jerky near its mouth. I do not know what I was thinking, I just wanted to save it at this point, and as I sat there offering it food, it took a bite of the jerky, and its whimpering came to a stop, as it quickly ate up what I gave it. I poured out some water into my hand and stuck it out, and it sniffed my hand, then started lapping up the water, I could feel its rough tongue through my glove, and I was bound and determined to save this glowing puppy critter. I sat there for a while, looking over the glow puppy, the size of a dinner plate, and noticed that the gash in its hind leg was pretty bad, and thought I could see bone or something, I poured some water on the gash, startling the pup, causing it to yip, instinctively I pet its head, giving it a little head rub, and it started to calm down.

I looked around, expecting to see this critter's parents when I saw something horrifying beyond, much deeper in the forest. Several bodies of similar dog-like creatures, I got up, leaving a little food by the pup, and walked further in, examining the carnage. It was bad, whatever had down this had torn through the glow dogs like a blender. They seemed to be the adults of the species, about the size of a donkey, and all had different fur patterns from stripes to dots, to slow gradients from tail to head. They looked like they would have been beautiful animals had they been alive. I suspected it was the double-cat that did this, looking at the wounds on the creature's, the claw marks matched the number of claws on the double-cat, and some of them looked to be sleeping like it had ambushed them, similar to what it tried to do to me. I walked back to the puppy, and sat back down, happy I had chased down the double-cat and killed it, accidentally avenging the pack of glow dogs.

I don't know what it is, but a lot of animals seem to like me, I know, hard to believe, but on earth it was true, I swear, and it seemed that the animal charm was working, the glow puppy had rested its little head in my lap, and I could hear it snoring a little. I didn't want to disturb the little pup, but I needed to start heading back, so I carefully lifted the pup up, and cradled it in my arms, gently stroking its back, careful to avoid the cut, and I started back. Following the markers I had made earlier, I made it back to the spire up, and slowly I started to climb.

I made it through the tunnel, and soon enough entered the forest, looking back at the hole, and planted a spear in the mouth of the hole, clearly, I was going to have to be more careful, my relatively uneventful days had lulled me into a false sense of security, thinking the monsters attacking me were outliers, not the main thing. I probably hadn't encountered more hostile things because of either the altitude or that it seemed to be winter. I was going to have to prepare myself for what was to come, either when I left the forest, or when spring came.

I walked back to camp, already planning on how I was going to take care of the puppy and make sure it didn't attack me when it healed up, which would be a terrible way to go, killed by my own kindness. I got back and got to work, swaddling the puppy in my discarded jacket, hoping to keep it warm, and I went over to the boulder I had broken out a week or so ago, and started carving with the Manaphage.

It took an hour, and most of my mana, but I had carved out a very nice set of stoneware, I now had a cup, a bowl, a cauldron for cooking, a spoon, and chopsticks. I also had made a stone paddle and a plan for the double-cat claws. I rolled the heavy stone cauldron back and quickly carved up a rather large stand for it out of thick wood. I threw a loss of snow in, and started a separate fire pit for the cauldron about five feet further from my hut, and, using my plate as a lid, covered it leaving it cracked to vent. I went back to the puppy, still asleep in the jacket, and started making a small space in the side of the massive log, like a little dog house, and nailed a piece of leather over the top with some bones, to give it some cover, and heated a stone up and placed it in a little alcove I had made above the main area to act as a warmer. The alcove connected to my room, and I was able to heat the stone back up when I needed to.

Soon enough I had my dinner ready, and ate some roast meat, sharing it with the glow pup, and petting its back with my right hand. I had woken it up for dinner, and soon enough when it was full, it fell asleep again. I carefully put it in the dog house, now a nice cozy temperature, and finished getting ready for bed, after putting several bones and chunks of bird beast in the cauldron. I laid down to sleep, and started to meditate, slowly drifting off to sleep.