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Mita felt helpless as they were carried by the current down the river. The ants who were holding on to Grud when the bridge had released him to try to escape within the first few minutes of being submerged.

 

Throughout their time being carried by the current Grud had been dragged down by the current and smacked against some rocks more than a few times. Somewhere along the way, Mita felt Grud lose consciousness as they drifted.

 

As they traveled down the river, there were a few times that Mita noticed they were close to the river bank on either side and took on her corporeal form to try and drag Grud to shore, but the water current was too strong, Grud’s body to big, and Mita was not the best swimmer around.

 

Eventually, after two days of riding the river, they came upon a bend in the river that pushed Grud’s body close enough for Mita to pull Grud to the shallow water, from there, even with her small stature, she was able to hold on to Grud to prevent him from drifting away.

 

From there, it took the better part of half an hour for Mita to drag Grud’s dense and heavy body out of the water and onto dry land. By the time she was done dragging Grud, Mita was winded and reverted back to her wisp form and went inside of Grud to rest.

 

When Mita was finally feeling better, she made her way out of Grud to see the true extent of the damage Grud had sustained.

 

It was horrible most of Grud’s skin was melted off and did not seem to grow back, the main reason being his body was constantly fighting off all the bacteria in the river water that tried to invade his body now that he essentially had no skin.

 

After checking all over Grud’s body, Mita found out that his skin was not the only thing that suffered. Grud’s muscles had suffered extensive acid damage and lacerations, most of the deep lacerations came from the giant ants, while other smaller lacerations were made by some fishes taking small bites out of Grud as he floated downstream.

 

With all the wounds he sustained, any lesser man would have died ten times over, but unbeknownst to Mita and Grud, the mutating agent in his body was working overtime redirecting resources to keep Grud’s body alive, and messing with his hormones to increase production of white blood cells to fight off the constant assault of bacteria invading from every part of his body not covered with skin, which was the majority of his body.

 

When Mita was done inspecting Grud’s body, the only positive thing she could say was that he was alive and there were no broken bones, other than that, he was in a terrible state, the only other way to verify if those were his only issues, she had to wake him up.

 

Mita started prodding Grud at the back of his arm where one of the last few patches of skin was located while calling his name. After a few minutes of trying to wake Grud up, he woke up with a jerk, and a second later all his muscles tensed as pain coursed through his body.

 

He started coughing up water followed by hyperventilating while he tried to get control of himself from the pain, when he tried to look around, he noticed that he could not see anything, the only thing he could perceive after covering and uncovering his eyes with his hands, was light, other than that, he could not make out any details.

 

But besides all the pain and blindness, another need made itself known, Grud’s stomach, it growled and rumbled for sustenance.

 

Hearing Grud’s stomach growl with hunger, Mita checked with Grud if there was anywhere else that hurt, after Grud said that his whole body hurt and could not tell one hurt from another, Mita decided to do what she could at the moment and went to find some food.

 

She turned into her wisp form and zipped into the woods to find anything she recognized from observing the expedition testing edible plants and, fruits, and meats.

 

After searching the area, she found a few fruit trees and berry bushes, and after collecting what she could hold in hand, she rushed back to feed Grud. After a few rounds of gathering and feeding Grud, he finally fell asleep, the next item on the agenda was to build a shelter for Grud to rest.

 

This was something she saw Grud do countless times while riding in his body, so it did not take long for Mita to gather the materials and whip up a simple shelter.

 

Besides providing Grud with food, water, shelter, and comfort. There was not much Mita could think of to help Grud recover, the only thing she could do was trust in her husband’s strong life force will do the rest.

 

—

 

Three days later, Grud’s situation had greatly improved, the majority of the skin on Grud’s head and torso had grown back but there were still a couple of patches that had not grown back skin yet, as for his arms and legs, they were still not covered with skin past the shoulders yet. It seems like the regeneration of skin starts from the most essential areas first and then spreads out the the extremities.

 

As for his muscles, they were still damaged but now that he was out of the river, his body was able to fight off all potential infections and get work healing, and the only way Grud knew to quickly recover from muscle damage was to eat meat, which happened to be quite hard to get.

 

All the food that Mita had been getting was fruits, berries, and roots, not exactly the high-protein diet he needed, but he was not going to complain about anything after Mita had spent the past three days taking care of him like she was doing now as she was on her way to gather more food for him.

 

While he was waiting, the only thing Grud could think of was to just conserve energy and sleep.

 

—

 

Deeper in the woods, there were two women with baskets on their backs walking toward the river while chatting.

 

“Tala, should we really be out here on our own? It is really dangerous.” one of the women said.

 

“Don’t worry so much Kaya, you heard what the head warrior said, for some reason most of the big beasts are heading north, this is a good opportunity to get our hands on some clay to make pottery to barter.” the other woman replied.

 

Kaya: “But big sis, most beasts do not mean no beast, and besides, the smaller ones may be still around. And it does not take much for them to kill easily.”

 

Tala: “That also means this is our chance to get as much clay as we can before everyone else so we can restock our wares to last us for some time. You and I know the Chief’s son Thak has his eye on us, he already has two wives and can barely take care of them, it is mainly his father who is taking care of them. I am sure you don’t want to be married to that incompetent excuse for a warrior.”

 

Kaya: “*Sigh* I know what you mean. He keeps bugging us to be his wives saying that we will never go hungry. The shameless simpleton, the food he is offering is not even hunted by himself, recently he has become more daring and started throwing his father’s name around to make our life hard. I honestly do now know why the chief keeps him around.”

 

Tala: “Mainly because that is his only living son, the chief had two other sons, but one died to beasts and the other in a war with Clan Wildwood, and he is too old to make any more children, if his son dies, the bloodline ends with him, and Thak’s children are too young to lead… wait, stop… is that a shelter?” Tala said as she pointed to a bunch of propped-up leaves.

 

“I think so. What do we do? Do we check it out? There are not supposed to be any other tribes near our area.” Kaya replied as they both took cover behind a shrub while keeping their voices down.

 

As the two sisters quietened down, they picked up the soft sound of snoring coming from the shelter, “He is sleeping, I think we should at least check if his markings belong to our tribe, if it is an enemy tribe, we will run away and inform the Chief.” Kaya suggested.

 

Tala turned on her sister and reprimanded her using hushed whisper-shouting, “Are you mad? If that is an enemy warrior, we will be dead or wors-.”

 

But before she could finish her sentence or catch her sister, Kaya had already rounded the shrub and was tiptoeing her way to the shelter. Tala watched Kaya creep up to the shelter and when Kaya, reached the shelter and went around to the opening, she saw her sister freeze as she was staring at something with her mouth hanging open.

 

After many worrying seconds, Tala could not hold back her curiosity about what had kept her sister’s attention with such shock and went up to join Kaya, but when she came next to her sister and looked at where she was looking, her jaw followed her sister’s and hung loose.

 

The only thing question the two sisters had on their minds was ‘Is this a man or beast?’