Chapter Text
When you wake up, it’s to the sight of a beautifully blue sky and the bitter taste of ash on your tongue.
Rolling over turns out to be more of a chore than expected because, apparently, you slept weirdly and now you have an incredibly painful crick in the back of your neck. However, you solider on regardless and find your way back to your feet. A few cursory stretches later and your body is more or less back in normal working order again.
Except for the lingering fingertip of pain behind your wind-pipe, but it’ll fade with time.
Glancing at the tattered mess of an area you called a ‘campsite’ before you passed out last night, you’re struck by the sudden realization that you never ended up eating anything yesterday and, as if summoned by your brain’s processing of that information, your stomach chooses that very same moment to vocalize its frustration with you.
*GROWL*
You’d offer up an apology, but you’d been a little busy doing your best to NOT get eviscerated and devoured by the hostile groups of mask-wearing monsters that seemingly haunt any and every corner of this continent’s coastline. Spending nearly every waking hour you aren’t trudging along on tired feet in search of some semblance of friendly civilization fending these jerks off has put your immediate priorities a little bit out of order.
However, since it seems like the general vicinity is currently devoid of threats to your life and limb, you resolve to get something to quiet your obnoxiously rumbling belly.
You opt to leave most of your campsite’s infrastructure behind (which really just consisted of a makeshift fire pit, a large tree and a blanket you’d stolen from the last monster settlement out of sheer desperation to remedy the bizarrely cold nights here) and search for something edible nearby. Other than the blanket, which may or may not end up giving you some kind of masked monster disease, the rest can’t exactly come with you.
Thankfully, whatever higher beings watch over this particular chunk of land didn’t have the heart to force you into yet another breakfast of just mushrooms and berries. In a stroke of good fortune, you discover a boar stuck in what appears to be an old, slightly rusted trap less than an hour’s walk from your campsite.
This is a wonderful discovery for two reasons:
First and foremost, you’ll finally be able to get more than a mouthful of meat instead of the pitiful bites the occasional squirrel you catch can offer up. ‘Catch’ being a bit of a generous term, considering your only successful attempts have been thanks to luck rather than effective planning.
Second, and arguably more importantly, the trap indicates that some form of civilization must be nearby. You have yet to observe the masked monsters engaging in any form of planned hunting, much less constructing something out of metal like this particular trap appears to be. They’ve only ever carried tools made out of wood and, on annoying occasion, stone.
(The next time you run into one of their archers, you’ve sworn to shove one of their stone tipped arrows right up its insufferable ass. It’s only fair, since they’re the main reason why your clothing has seen better days. Three ambushes via projectiles and you’re now showing off more skin than even the professional escorts of your old world.)
The boar squeals painfully, both its front legs caught fast and still bleeding sluggishly. The noise breaks your train of thought and brings your focus away from future plans of revenge and back to the present.
You take great care to quietly approach the boar from behind, slowly sliding your blade from its place on your hip. The last time you attempted to tackle one of these things head-on you woke up with bruises all over and the vague impression of a concussion ringing in your ears.
Yet another embarrassing reminder that your strength is still a far cry from what it was a mere two weeks ago, which you bear with grit teeth and clenched hands. Ever since waking up here it’s been a struggle to scrape together even a fraction of what you’d been capable of before. You’ve been getting steadily worried that you might not ever fully recover, despite still being able to tear through the masked creatures with only occasional difficulties.
Soon enough you get within striking range of the boar and you waste no time in plunging your blade into its back, right above where you presume its heart should sit. Your aim winds up being a tad off, if the way the animal begins screaming and thrashing like a flag caught in a storm is any indication. However, it was already on its last legs before you even found it and the light soon fades from its uncomprehending eyes.
With a relieved sigh, you pull your blade from its, now motionless, corpse and get to work preparing it the best you can.
A small part of you says that you shouldn’t be doing this in the same spot you found it because the one who set the trap might find you, but you shake it off. If anything, you’re sort of hoping that the mystery trapper DOES make an appearance. You’ve been on your own for what feels like an eternity and it’s… affecting you a lot more intensely than you’d expected.
It makes sense though, in a twisted sort of way. After all, you haven’t ever truly been alone before you got to this strange world. You’ve always walked beside someone else, always had them to rely on and talk to. You’ve never once, in your entire life, ever imagined a situation in which you weren’t with them.
Your sibling had been the one reliable constant in your life and now they’re gone, plucked from your outstretched hands like they’d never been there to begin with.
The roiling bout of nausea that thought leaves you with really isn’t helping things, so you shove it right back into the dark corners of your mind and continue letting your hands do their work.
Cut open the belly. Let out the blood. Remove the organs you recognize and set the rest aside. You can only carry so much without a proper pack or cart, so most of this will end up going to waste and there’s nothing you can do about it save offer up a silent apology to whoever placed the trap.
Your motions are practiced, but unsure at the same time.
You’ve repeated the same sort of task an innumerable amount of times before, but you always had your sibling with you back then. They held the knowledge of how to do it properly, how to make the most out of every kill. Their soft words and gentle hands would help guide your own, making sure you got used to how it felt before leaving you to finish; confident that you would do a good job without them. If only each world were the same, with beasts that didn’t require re-learning their unique biology every time.
You aren’t like your sibling, as much as you might want to be.
Where their eyes can somehow see the big picture, the world as a whole instead of just tiny pieces that all move of their own accord like mindless insects, yours can only look directly ahead at the problems in front of you. While they spend time laying in fading sunlight with books and notes scattered around their feet, you sweat and toil in the dark with bloodied dirt caked under your nails.
They are the one with a vision of the future and you are just the one with the strength to carry them there.
Without them, it’s almost as if you’ve lost one of your most important senses. Sure, you can still see, taste, touch, hear and smell, but the world around you feels strangely lacking. There’s no light in the wind, no true warmth from flames and no joy to be had in the cool embrace of water.
There’s an ever-present emptiness that surrounds and suffocates you without them around to keep it at bay.
Without warning, a tear snakes down your cheek and drops onto the bit of boar clenched in your hands. Your eyes widen in surprise, but there’s no stopping it now. Heat pools behind your eyes and your throat closes up, but you don’t make any noise. You're not really sure why, but you’re loathe to voice your sorrows aloud.
...Maybe it's because there’s always a chance that the God who did this to both of you is somehow listening and you’d honestly rather tear out your own guts with your bare hands than give them the satisfaction of knowing just how badly they’ve hurt you.
Instead, you wipe at your, now wet, face with the back of your hand and try to ignore the bits of gore that stay behind when you pull away. There will be plenty of time for crying later, once you’ve found your sibling and sliced that scumbag God open from nose to navel. For now though, you do your best to just... focus on the task at hand and keep yourself too busy to think about anything else.
You’re about halfway through processing as much of the boar as you can carry, when a voice echoes out from somewhere behind you.
“Hey, stop right there!”
Your body proceeds to do several very contrasting things in response to the sudden noise.
Adrenaline dumps itself into your veins as your reflexive survival instincts, sharpened to a razor’s edge thanks to the constant threat of attack from the masked creatures, kick in. Your eyes narrow as they set to work trying to pick out exactly where the voice came from. Your hands fly to the handle of your weapon, each and every muscle instantly taut in preparation for a fight.
Your heart, on the other hand, is rapidly pounding for a completely different reason.
Unlike the masked monsters, who only seems to communicate in the form of whooping and shrieking, you actually understood what this person said. Whoever they are, they’re capable of proper language. They spoke, with words and intent. This means you are no longer alone. There really are others here and you aren’t truly trapped in a never-ending landscape of decayed ruins and hostile monsters.
Maybe they’ve seen your sibling.
You hold your breath and wait.
A second passes.
Another.
And then-
A flurry of rushing footsteps heralds the arrival of something that very nearly sends you to your knees in exhausted relief.
It’s a girl.
It’s not another masked thing that somehow gained the ability to talk in order to trick you and it isn’t just a pathetically desperate figment of your imagination either. It’s a girl wearing red, brown and white, with a big ribbon in her long, brown hair. She looks clean and well-fed, with a glimmer of playfulness in her eyes that reminds you terribly of your sibling.
The girl, after locking eyes with you, abruptly levels a bow in your direction with a very serious expression quickly clouding her otherwise delicate features.
And to make matters worse, the tip of the arrow she’s docked is now wreathed in crimson flames that flicker ominously in the afternoon breeze.
Your heart seizes up painfully at the sight because it means, for one reason or another, she currently sees you as a threat.
You’re then forced to wrestle down the impossibly conflicting urges to simultaneously throw down your blade to show you mean no harm and ready yourself to dodge her first shot before rushing her position to cut her down before she can ready another.
You know that, unless she miraculously hits you square between the eyes, you’ll be able to reach her. You know that you won’t need a second chance once you get there. You know that there’s still time to talk. You know that, if your sibling were here, they would know what to do.
So, you hesitate, beads of sweat rolling down your face and back.
The girl blinks, taking in your haggard appearance and pained expression, blood and tears still streaking your face in ugly lines.
“...You’re not from around here, are you?”
Her voice is like honey poured into the throat of someone dying of thirst. Blissfully sweet, but far too much to take in all at once and it leaves you forcing out a choked laugh as it overwhelms you. She gives you an odd look, concern and confusion melding together in equal parts.
Against your better judgment, your blade wavers as you manage to scrounge up an answer that won’t immediately make you sound insane.
“You… You have no idea.”