I wake up curled in a tight ball surrounded by gently wiggling cubes of goop. They surround me, covering me in a moist barrier much like a blanket. If the blanket jiggled. I sit up and they cascade off, dissolving instantly into the moss around me. A rock pokes into my hip and I shift before deciding to just get up and eat something. I’m hungry.

I gently push the sticks to the side and crawl out from the cave entrance. In the morning sun, this is less of a cave and more like a hollow-mouthed dent in the rock. I could stretch my arm inside the hollow and touch the wall while sitting in the middle. A little burrow just for me.

I smile to myself and try to remember the closest berry bush to this cave…ah, there’s a clearing not too far from here that I passed yesterday. I think I remember the direction being…this way! Walking confidently I look forward to the upcoming meal before my uncovered leg brushes up with some grass and I realize that the many scrapes I got from the river seem to have faded away. Weird, but little kids heal fast so it kinda makes sense.

I sniff the clear air and see if it’ll rain more but aside from damp earth and something I can’t place, it seems like the storm has passed on. I hope that woman survived and didn’t fall in after me, because the fact that I survived seems like some enormous fluke. Not to mention drowning, I could have bashed my head against a rock or froze to death, but each time I thought I was going to die, those little black cubes came to my rescue. Maybe that’s just a part of being a young kid? I get the feeling that the younger you are, the more durable- but isn’t my luck insane?

While I’m thinking absently and sniffing the air I come up to the clearing when a sharp and sour smell invades my nose, causing me to recoil. I focus back on the situation and I hear shouts and clanking of some sort nearby.

 A fight maybe?

 I don’t want to be involved, but I am curious about the drama. I look at a prickly-branched bush near me and decide to shuffle into it and see what’s happening without being noticed. The thorns poke my skin and grab at my clothes, but nothing happens beyond that. Deeper in the bush, I poke my head out and see a group of five heavily armored knights? Of some sort, fighting a gigantic six-legged, and very angry, bug. The bug has large blades on its folded forearms that it uses to slash against the questing weapons, hissing.

Of the knights, there’s one with a red feather attached to the helmet, and he strikes deep into one of the legs, causing it to hang loosely by a pale pink ligament. The bug screeches in rage as it lunges at the knight, but the man jumps out of range as another stabs at the other side of the bug, distracting it. I’m watching this all dispassionately; I don’t know these people but I think they have the situation in hand. Five against one, weapons against bug monster. I begin to work my way backwards, a little bored, until the bug begins to speak. 

“>Stupid food!<” It hisses angrily, managing to get a deep slash against a staff-holding knight’s armor. The voice sounds like the grinding of rocks mixed with retching and I can see the knights stiffen for some reason. They begin to back up from around the bug and one of them, another staff holder, began to mumble something as his weapon begins to glow a golden color. I decide to get out of the bush entirely but naturally, that comes with a few snags. During a particularly stubborn one the bush I’m in shakes, just a little bit.

There was a pause in the air before a shout, presumably from the magic-user, and a sound similar to inverted thunder hitting flesh. The fight was back on and I was finally out of the bush. Not a moment to wait, I turned around and was about to head back to find a less violent set of berry bushes when the bug began to speak again, but the voice felt heavier somehow.

“>Still! Food still!<” It commanded, growled, roared. I couldn’t see what was happening from behind the bush, but it sounds like the bug also had magic. Still mostly unconcerned with the fight’s outcome, but now a little worried that the bug would come after me should it win, I decided to try and help out the knights, at least a little. Worse comes to worst I think I would only be swallowed without being chewed. I peek around the side of the bush.

The bug’s back is to me, and the knights are in rough shape; they’re all losing steam and moving very stiffly…maybe they got injured somehow? I pick up a rock and throw it into a shrub near the bug. The shaking distracts it and the leader knight takes advantage by severing another leg. The lopsided monster screams again and thrusts the sharp forearm at the knight, not landing a critical hit but causing the knight to grunt in pain. The non-magical staff user lands a hit, but her weapon snaps with a loud noise...but that’s overshadowed by the subsequent skewering of the knight. The bug makes a noise that could pass for a chuckle and shakes the limp-bodied corpse off of its forelimb. The knight’s morale has dropped but the shouting of the leader seems to reinvigorate them; maybe vengeance is the way they’ll fell the beast? I can’t throw another rock, that’s a one-use distraction. I look around for other weapons and a possible escape route.

“>Despair! Food still!<” The bug shouts out another heavy line of words and it causes my lip to curl in some deep-seated contempt. Disgusting, I think, absolutely abhorable. Then I shook my head to refocus. Why can’t I feel more invested in this? These people are going to die and I’m watching them like it’s the weather.

The bug is down to half its legs and is now moving with stupid desperation. Despite the fact that it speaks and I can understand it, I feel even less towards it than the knights that are panting and shouting raggedly.

The demon-bug kills another knight by slamming him headfirst into a tree near where I stood as a wet crunch and a splash of pinkish liquid misted onto my face. Ignoring the dampness on my face, I look at the still twitching corpse, hand axe still in his hand pushing forward, just a little, again and again. Still the body fights. I walk around to the side and gently pry the axe from the body’s clenched fist. Hefting the large weapon with both hands I hold it securely before looking around for a second rock to throw. I ought to help kill the bug as a return for this knight’s axe; no rocks to be found but there is a stick.

I decide to throw something again rather than risk my much smaller reach against a bug monster that…just killed another knight. These tin cans fall pretty fast, one after another. Two knights left against a heavily bleeding three-legged monster. I would like to bet on superior numbers but that’s failed pretty miserably after the bug started talking. Some sort of trick in the way of talking though, no cubes or goop fell out of its mouth like whenever I tried to speak. I plant the blade in the soil and throw another arc with the stick, where it loudly snapped against the side with only one leg, causing it to wobble dangerously. The bug turns around hissing angrily.

For some reason, a specific pose came to mind as I thrust my right arm up with the finger next to my pointer in the sky, aimed at the bug. A word pops into my mind, bitch.

“Ey!” I shout, smug until the bug actually starts heading my way and I am reminded of the very large size gap. Fuck.

HelloHound

this my friends, is referred to as a dumb move