Discordant Note | TBATE

Chapter 12: Budget Bushcraft

When the next sphere of wind came, I hurled the sound grenade into the canopy with enforced strength in the direction the attack came from. I jumped to avoid the wind sphere, but not in time. It collided with the ground, blowing me into a nearby tree painfully.

The grohd fared far worse. With an echoing boom, my sound grenade detonated in the air. My ears were shielded by mana, expecting the sound. The lizard beast, unfortunately, was not. It tumbled out of the trees, screeching as it hurtled to the ground below. I watched it tumble through the air, orange spines flashing weakly. Then it impacted the ground with a painful crack.

I waited a moment, the blood still pumping in my ears. The forest had seemingly gone silent with the exceptional boom of my sound grenade, the wind itself deciding to quiet. My side ached slightly from impact with the tree, likely bruised. But nothing was broken.

The grohd was a painful tangle of limbs. I could see bone jutting from a few of its bark-skinned legs where they had impacted the ground. Its eyes were still open, but the predatory glint had vanished in death. Blood pooled around the body, the coppery smell especially potent due to my enhanced smell.

I was safe.

Then I heard a snarl, somewhere in the far distance. I realized in horror that my sound grenade must have alerted everything within half a mile of my location. I would have to get out fast. I was willing to face down two barkskin grohds in their home territory, but not a dozen.

I darted into the trees once more, beelining for where I knew the stream to be. I extinguished my will-o'-wisp spell, leaving me in darkness, but I felt confident in at least navigating the trees to the creek. The sound of rushing water beckoned me forward; I was even more thirsty than before that short scuffle.

I left the treeline after a minute, finally able to see the water. The stream wasn't too big, maybe five feet across and only as going up to my shins, but it might've been the most welcoming thing I had ever seen.

I carefully scanned the treeline, watching for mana beasts. When none made themselves known, I carefully stalked to the water.

I knelt down, filling my water skin first, before taking heaping gulps of the clear liquid. It was refreshing and cool, soothing my parched throat like a balm. I opened my eyes, gazing up into the sky in some relief.

I was immediately taken aback by what I saw. A million stars glittered across the sky in a beautiful display of cosmic wonder, unnamed constellations and suns far in the cosmos grinning back at me. A dozen different hues illuminated the night from on high, small blues and purples dancing with oranges and reds. They seemed to waltz in the black of night, streaming their light on my small stretch of land here on a distant planet. And standing proud amidst it all was a moon, familiarly pockmarked and dotted with craters.

I gasped in awe, momentarily overwhelmed by the stellar beauty before me. I had never seen such an aurora of stars before; in my previous life, smog and pollution had blocked out the stars in all but the least populated areas. In Fiachra, light pollution from all the street lamps and city life dimmed what would otherwise be a wonderful display. Out here in this forest, I could truly appreciate the unfiltered sky.

As I gazed into the depth of space, my body relaxed just the slightest bit. I realized how tired I really was. I had been up for about sixteen hours now and had been training strenuously for the past ten of those. As the stars winked down on my earthbound body, I felt how distant I was from my previous life.

None of the constellations on high matched with those from Earth. No Big Dipper, no Sagittarius, no Aries, and no North Star. I was in a different world.