(tentative) Play It

I had no way of knowing if Emma had awoken before me or after be, but i knew because of the transition from reality to the game that my sudden cries and ensuing groans of alarm and agony were not what actually awoke her in the game as i came to and found myself in a world of fire from the midriff down. It was like everything my actual nervous system had been ignoring suddenly crashing into me like a brick wall of firing nerve endings within the stressed and somewhat swollen area of my upper thigh and hip. Sleeping on my back and at an angle with the crumbling bed of sand, along with the so called resetting of my leg, was what was causing my currently agony as i rolled over onto my stomach and away from the hillock and fire pit to let my body even out. "Jesus," i could just vaguely hear emma saying from nearby, "you can't fight like that. There is something seriously wrong with your leg."

"It's a game..." i argue through clenched teeth, slowly working my knee forward and up underneath me until my hip pops and some of the pressure is relieved from my leg. "If i die, i come back with a full heal. Quit whining, it's not helping me get off the ground any faster." Before i knew it, she was at my side making things worse by trying to pick me up and i did not have the heart to stop her as i winced and grunted with the pain of being lifted to my feet.

"You are way heavier than you look," Emma complains as she supports my weight on the shoulder i was leaning on while i tried to make my way around the fire to somewhere that i could sit down comfortably. "Here we go, slowly on down," she murmurs more to herself than to me as she lowers herself to something of a kneel to help me sit down before finally freeing herself of my weight. "Just sit tight, I'll get you a coconut to work on while i check on the meat."

It took forever for me to get back to coherency while holding a shucked coconut in my lap and staring down at the ground between my feet, only slightly listening to Emma talk to herself about the condition of the food and the warmth that still permeated the fire bed. Finally, as she was cutting a test piece from her own boar shoulder after pushing the meat to the dipping center where it netted itself in the weaving while she worked the heavy rack down from the stands on her own and i only just managed to open my coconut. My mouth was dry and bitter from the remains of all of the different sugars that i had been drinking recently, but the only thing that i had to wet my parched tongue and tissues was more coconut milk that i drank both greedily and happily.

"Here, maybe this will help," Emma offers hopefully, bearing a long cut of boar shoulder staked on her knife in one hand and another coconut in the other. "How are you feeling?"

Taking the coconut first and shucking it impatiently, i clear my throat once or twice and spit away from Emma with the wind before saying, "Like an elephant stepped on me in my sleep. The leg is reset and working, but i can already tell i have torn muscle tissue and probably damaged ligaments as well around my hip- the infection risk Professor Harlen mentioned. Can you get me that coconut of gunk from the nut crate? I need to eat some."

My second coconut was already empty and i was gnawing ravenously on the strip of meat she had left on her knife with me by the time she got back with the sickly sweet smelling coconut of slightly darkened salve. "It's going bad... we will have to search your island for flower vines to make more. Get some for your leg and go over there or something, I need to get down a mouthful of this and treat my hands again before we get started for the day. Don't worry, I'm not physically capable of turning around to peek at you right now," i add when she smirks and opens her mouth to say something after scooping a small handful of mash from my coconut.

The slightly acidic smell i encountered after my first mouthful that exposed the bottom contents of the coconut told me that the sugars were already starting to ferment in the exotic heat and humidt of the islands which made me stop from swallowing and question what i was doing. I blinked and swallowed it all in the same instant, trying hard not to think of the rum and mead combination that had begun to develop from the nectar and coconut contents as i scraped mash from the tope insides to squish about my wrapped hands.

Emma was back before i finished unwrapping and turning the inner layers inside out before wrapping it back up with the original dirty outer layers facing the outside, limping ever so slightly after aggravating her injury but keeping it together in light of my own injury that i had started awkwardly massaging under the waist band of my pants with the little bits of salve i could scrape together that did not carry the scent of hooch. "This is also to work the muscles and build up of fluids around my leg right now," i explain as she watches me knead my outer and upper thigh areas with the thinning salve in my pant leg. "Please stop staring, i probably won't be able to walk if i don't do this."

"No, it's not weird or anything, it's just..." she starts to say only to trail off. Then, a moment later as i was finishing up, "I've been hurt before, it... hurts! But you just took your mangled leg to the freaking spa like it's an every day thing. It's not an every day thing! What the hell have you been through?"

"Have you ever watched a meat processing documentery or been behind the scenes of a slaughterhouse and watched people grind up meat?" i ask playfully, winking befire picking up my seven-foot long citrine spear that i use to pull myself unsteadily to my feet in the sand, the strip of shoulder half-eaten and hanging from my mouth. Standing upright and somewhat more steadily, i start making my way up to the rim of the clay bowl and say, "I need to stretch my leg a bit... find four cane poles with at least three full segments that you can just barely fit your hand around. We will need them to make bows with when i get back. And... thanks... i would still be chilling on the ground if not for you."

"It's what friends are for," she reassures me, cutting another strip of meay from around her pork shoulder that was already stripping down around the top from both of her previous cuts.

I only walked maybe fifty feet back and forth along the immense curvature of the nearly perfect bowl only a foot or two above our camp, but it took me long enough that i not only finished my breakfast but Emma was already back to work on her boar spear styled head when i got back to camp to cut a piece from my own shoulder for seconds. "Here," i say after tossing my quartz dagger into the sand nearby her feet, nomming away at a thick slab of shoulder while prodding hot coals toward the center of the fire bed. "Split those canes you put on the boarskin in the best halves that you can manage, then work on hollowing the segment divisions with your regular knife. I need to take my pants off and go chill in the water to see if the cold will help the swelling go down. When you're done on the canes, go ahead and finish that spearhead, i am going to finish my amethyst knife and relax."

"It's still early morning," Emma says after a quick check out to sea. "We need to wait until noon for full light in the bowl, so you have plenty of time. Just don't fall asleep out there! I don't want you sneaking an easy heal on me."

"I wish i could, but it's tutorial," i say more than a little wistfully as i collected my tools aand materials to make complete the amethyst dagger and start walking down to the beach. "After i get that rating boost, however, i could risk an easy heal."

Using the short length of cane i planned to make both the handle and holster for my second dagger from to dig out a sort of trench in shin-deep waves, i settle into the shallow pool and lean back against the byproduct pile of sand to set about finishing the finier points of my amethyst blade and notches. The cold water brought with it an almost immediate relief from the pain and even some of the stiffness in my hip as i soaked in the tepid salt, cutting the handle segment free of the larger larger two segments of the cane that i had brought with me before setting to the task of fixing the blade in place. The early morning sun's warmth coming in from the opposite side of the world from me was a stark contrast to the cold water, soothing the rest of my body against the creeping cold circulating in the blood coming from my lower body, but it was not long before i could feel pinpricks of icy pain in my leg from the contracting tissues and fluids withing growing a little too tight.

I fought the pain long enough to wrap my dagger handle in braided cordage for better grip with enough excess to loop around either wrist, making my return trip to camp a slow one by completing the amethyst dagger's holster as i came back to camp. I never actually looked up as i returned to camp, so it was not until i reached the sharpening incline of the bow and was forced to check my footing that i actually looked around and saw Emma a few dozen yards along the rim of the bowl from camp going through what looked like actual martial forms with her completed poleaxe weapon. She looked to be enjoying herself more than seriously practicing, and her shifting from one somewhat familiar stance to another was sloppy more from her leg injury than from any lack of skill- simply to recall the forms and perform them alone is intermediate skill level if nothing else.

She noticed me watching her before i even got back to camp, smiling nervously and actually holding the spear in both hands behind her back as if trying to hide it in embarrassment, but i simply grinned and called out to her, "You looked great, like you know what you're doing, nothing to be shy about!"

"Coming from a master like you, that must really mean something," Emma calls back with evident sarcasm as she starts limp-trotting back to camp. "Honestly makes me wish you were in better health, so i could really see what you can do."

Making it to camp where i immediately set about opening a coconut to chug after soaking in saltwater for almost half of an hour, i wait until the coconut is empty and Emma is much closer to camp before responding with, "I don't doubt we will all get plenty of chances to see one another fight as the tutorial goes on. If it's me you want to see fight, just stick with me in work details and you'll get your chance once we visit another island. I'll be out there on the hunt every time, i need more hides to make a suit of armor from so i don't get hurt every time i get in a fight."

This actually made Emma stop abruptly at the edge of camp as if something very important or absurd had occurred to her, then a few moments later as i started peeling a citrus fruit, she says, "This means we have to share the crocodile in more than just meat, doesn't it? Fifty-fifty sounds great to me."

"I honestly never intended on taking your tutorial target's skin," i inform her before taking a bite out of my fruit and squeezing the juices out with my tongue. "If you weren't injured then i wouldn't be here and that means you would have killed it on your own regardless. The fact that i am here just means you get to be a little lazy about it. But that's during the fight, now's the perfect time to make our bows and not be lazy."

"There needs to be as little resistance in the hollows as possible," i say as i finally go over split lengths of cane that Emma had rpepared for us, taking out my knife to whittle down some of the inner divisions between segments of cane. "These closes or dividers are where all the stress from the bow flexing will collect, which is where they will be most prone to snapping or breaking, any of the actual segment left inside will have an intersect grain that will concentrate the stress as well as sap strength from the flex of the bow. A fresh bow like this should last like two days of heavy practice firing, a week of casual hunting if you take good care of it. If we were making really nice toys i would suggest we oil them with some of the fat tubes back on the raft, but we don't really need to care about these like that."

Finding the four broadest sides to fit together, i very slowly and carefully trim little more than a few fibers worth of cane from all four halves so that they fit flush with one another before saying, "Try to do the same thing i am doing with the other four halves. Don't worry about cutting too much off down the sides, just keep it all straight and uniform, it will just be a spare hunting bow that probably won't turn out as strong as this one to begin with. Then, Just like I'm about to do, start braiding another really long belt just like we did for the drying rack. Shouldn't take long at all," i reassure myself more than her, taking a brief break to work my leg by adding wood to the dying fire in the middle of the bed before setting to work stripping rope to braid many feet of six-strand belt from.

Even though Emma started to work on the ropes around the time i had finished stripping one down, she proved to be a far better braider than i by finishing her twine belt just a minute or two after me to wordlessly follow my actions of tightly spiraling the belt around the three-plus feet of cane halves starting from just a belt-width under the top to just a belt-width from the bottom with overlaps covering half of each previus spiral. "Now you pull and press the belt up along the inside flat to a full belt-width over the top of the middle segment if you remember where it was and once again spiral down to the same measurement below the bottom segment and right back up again," i encourage Emma who was doing surprisingly well, probably someone in reality who had an eye for detail and very dextrous hands naturally. "From the top of that second pass, we will complete the handles of our bows by tying whatever decent sized knot you like on the inside of your dominant hand. You're a lefty, right? You look like a lefty right now, so i am tying the knot your arrows will rest on to the right side of the bow at the top of the handle area. I'm a righty, so you should tie your knot on the top left," i add as i start my rising spiral back up the handle portion of her bow.

Tying the somewhat thick belt off with a simple double-knot and cutting it with a couple of inches of excess to rest over the thumb or hand of whoever used it, i set down the completed body of the bow after a brief inspection of the belt wrapping before carving small notches in the sides of the exposed tops and bottoms of the bow. "Notches just need to be big enough for the bowstring to sit in, nothing special, i'm doing a quick v by just pressing the knife in at a very slight angle about my thumbnail apart before pulling the cut areas away by hand if neccessary," i explain as i go about my own work, keeping track to make sure that Emma was only a step or two behind me so that i did not lose her. "Next comes the bowstring."

Taking a length of tightly braided three-strand cordage that i fold over the notched area of the bow, holding either end of the cordage in either hand to start twisting tightly around each other and the top notch of my bow. "Just keep twisting the string, slow and patient, keeping it tight all the way down until you reach the bottom of the bow where you simply wrap either end once around the bottom notch either way and tie off in whatever manner you find easiest to untie. That being with a bow you actually want to take care of, such as the spare, yours i am going to tie permanently so that it can be worn at all times. I'm sure we'll find a way to make some kind of quiver for you, but i only have so many large portions of cane that would fit all of your arrows..." i trail off as i consider the next phases of our operations.

The arrows themselves would be easy enough to make without need for fletching since our distances were not likely to be more than one hundred feet give or take, but the arrows would be decently long to match the bows and just a quiver for Emma would require the two largest portions of cane in camp. If the issue with carrying a second bow is using up the largest portions of cane we would probably need to carry the croc with, i could opt for another type of range that would require a much longer but still more plentiful skinnier lengths of cane, i muse while twisting up the bow string, surveying the cane supplies we had gathered at the camp and what was still at the raft quite a distance away. Tying up the bottom of the string on itself at the bottom notch after bringing the bow just to the point of bending and flexing, i draw the string slowly back and then slowly ease it forward again to find its strength at around thirty pounds of resistance.

Getting up from my seat to set Emma's completed bow on the boarskin, i say, "I need to fetch more cane from the raft to make arrows and stuff with. If you need something to do, you can always work on your forms again," i add with a grin before adding a few more pieces of branch on the fire and heading off slowly down the beach. My trip to the raft did not take as long as last night's last trips for wood and cane supplies, which was a pretty good sign, but already the numbness from the cold water was starting to wear off and the dull ache of my leg was waxing as i gathered up a load of lengthy canes. Back at camp, however, sitting down finally brought with it some relief instead of tight pains as Emma much more confidently went through her staff and polearm forms until she noticed i was back at camp working on cutting the ends of cane trees down into arrow shafts.

The sun was still an hour or so off from noon when i finished making the slate heads from last night into whole arrows, the slender arrowheads getting matching skinny shafts less than half an inch at the tops and just over two thirds of an inch in diameter at the bottoms where light notches waited for the opportunity to meet bowstring. Next it was time to make a quiver for her three-foot long arrows, which was somewhat simply done by taking the two fattest segments of cane in camp and cutting them free of their bodies with one segment open at both ends. Fitting the larger open end of the second segment over the smaller open end of the first segment to make one tube that was just over two feet long, i start winding some simple braided cordage tightly around the overlap of the two segments to tighten them together before finally carving two opposing notches in either side of the cane quiver near the top opening and bottom segment to tie on yet another long, slack length of cordage with which to wear the quiver.

Carefully fitting the three broad headed arrows in the middle of the quiver, i place the other three arrows in above and under the larger headed arrows before finally getting up and presenting the quiver to Emma who was hard at work making what looked like her third spearhead today from the arrangement of two other hand-length, slender heads on the boarskin before her grinding boulder. "Already loaded and ready to go," i say with a proud smile as she stands up to take off her bow in exchange for the quiver before putting her bow back on around the cane quiver. "You're starting to look dangerous," i note with obvious pride and awe in my voice.

"Are we ready to go, then?" She asks curiously, striking a pose and cheaking herself out. "Its almost midday and the crocodile is still alive."

"Just a few more minutes," i reassure her as i sit back down next to the pile of cane materials that i had brought from the raft. "If you pay attention, you just might learn how i make my dart tips," i add with mock enthusiasm, picking out several lengths of cane with segments of the right sizes for my spears to start cutting down to size. Setting aside the actual spear lengths to start working on a quiver, i cut the fattest segments from each of the poles that i had cut my spear shafts from and fit two open-ended tubes over a segment-and-a-third length of cane whose top division i could only just barely reach with my metal knife to cut away.

Binding the segments together into a holster that was probably over a foot longer than quiver i had made for Emma in the same fashion that i had made her quiver, i adorn the holster on my belt just behind the sheath and holster for my metal and amethyst blades before setting to work on my dart-tipped javelin. "Trimming the spear shaft down to a couple inches above the closest section after cutting the head off in a v just under its lower segment helps keep the entire shaft from splitting and lodging the tip within," i explain as i worh\k on whittling hollow the first of four tips that i had cut from their shafts. "When you ram these into something, you do it pretty hard, so that little wooden plate helps keep the tip from coming back out.

"If this were a larger version of itself or just a more mobile creature of its size, i would be making you arrows like these, but i don't think you'll get enough access to its vulnerables from above for those types of arrows to help in this fight," i go on as i keep hollowing the tips and then start fitting them tightly into notches that i cut the same way i had explained as i go. "But it's good for as many of us as possible to know how to make this stuff, either while together or on our own we are sure to come across enemies that tactics like these will be necessary for. Especially if you can hit somewhere deep or somewhere vital, their very ability to fight ebbs away as they fight because they fight."

"That's... efficient, i guess," Emma says in a less than positive way, watching me craft my hollow-point javelin and stow them away in their holster at my hip. "In a ruthlessly cold-blooded sort of way."

"Our enemy is a cold-blooded reptile about as long as i am tall with more than enough crushing force in snapping its jaws to break any of the bones in our body and about as much whipping power in its tail," i inform her in a purposefully cold and hollow sort of way. "As much as i probably should have waited or just let somebody else come save the damsel in distress, both of us are currently injured and cannot afford not to use every advantage available to us. If this was any other game, i honestly wouldn't care, but this is the closed beta testing of the world's most anticipated VRMMO- which is the only virtual reality simulator open to the public that simulates pain. I hurt enough already, i dont want to hurt even more when this is done- or find out what dying is like in this game."

Emma did not say anything for a long time as i went about checking my gear, so long in fact that it was not until i was almost done adding wood to the fire that she simply says, "I like animals."

We may not be the best pair, then, i find myself thinking somewhat sadly. "I'm sorry if you don't like these methods, i know a lot of people are big about the whole animal issue with so many on the endangered list right now, but this game... it's like a dream come true for a nerd like me. Not just because of its premiere qualities, but because this is its premiere. We are the first actual players to make their marks on this game and i am going to make sure i stay ahead of the rest of the world... but, i can promise i will keep things clean and karmic once i am healed up and-or when we have iron weapons. Does that help?"

Emma once again remained quiet for a few moments, getting up to check her own equipment, but then she says, "A promise only helps if you keep it. You get one more time to bleed out an animal until you're healed or have iron tools and weapons. Okay?"

Things may work out, until we face a creature of magic, i think idly as i bow with a haggard flourish before saying, "Your wish is my command. In the event that nobody else knows how to make them or thinks of it, i will leave the spears and the tips lost forever in the mud of the bowl. Now, let's get some coconuts together for the road and start looking for that big ugly lizard. You ready?"

"Yeah, let me get the coconuts though," she says quickly, taking up my shorts satchel to load with coconuts and several handfuls of regular nuts for the road before heading over to the cooking rack on the ground nearby. "We'll have to package this meat somehow when we're done," she says as she cuts a slice of meat from either of our boar shoulders. "I can make small containers from coconut and other palm fronds if you can make a chest like yours to put them in. We'll be needing quite a few of them, huh?"

"We'll be needing several big boxes full of it just for the initial tool molds," i agree, considering our current stock of canes that could easily be used to make one long and tall chest to be lined with fronds for a few hundred pounds of clay. "We will definitely have to do some gathering in the center of the island, not only for flower vines to make salve from but more cane to make containers from as well as firewood and food supplies to add to whatever the group manages to bring together. The croc should last long enough after field dressing it to transport to iron island in its skin if not whole- the thing probably weighs a few hundred pounds- to be cooked with the group. Don't worry, though, once Harold shows up we can use him as a beast of burden."

"Wouldn't that be amazing," she sighs wistfuly while holding out a slice of meat for me before she starts eating her own. "Quit stalling, dull knight, it's time to go fight."

Since i had arrived more than a little noisily the previous night along what we decided was the inner side of the island, our first attempt at locating the crocodile was to walk along the rim of the bowl on the outer side of the island while scanning inward for movement of any kind. It was not long after leaving camp walking with my citrine spear in hand that i got my first look at the gelpy creatures, the first one an amphibious creature with only two long, thick back legs and a short serpertine tail vaguely finned along the top and bottom for appendages on its long, awkward body that ended in a head that was nearly all gulping mouth that closed around some high-flying insect. The entire event only lasted for a few seconds, but the creature was a little over a foot long with a mouth big enough to close over my fist despite having no noticeable teeth that left me wondering exactly how big these creatures got.

"It's got a long, broad snout more like a gator than a crocodile," Emma was explaining as we walked, now a couple hundred yards from camp while watching the shallow, murky pools around a thin, deeper stream around the center bottom of the bowl. "I'm pretty sure its actual coloring is a greenish brown but when its muddy it looks like a lighter brown than the silt in the bottom of the ring. It doesn't have an exceptionally big body, but its tail is absurdly huge and its entire back from neck to midway down the tail is covered in these blocky ridges like Godzilla or something. It's probably in an awkward stage of puberty, from the disproportions of its body. Professor said something about its amphibian diet being unhealthy so there's that as well."

"How are the gelpies unhealthy?" i ask as i watch more for them than for the gator, hoping to come across an area of high enough gelpy activity to attract a gelpy predator. "Can't we eat them as well?"

"We wouldn't eat the skin," she counters simply, "for one. The skin has a really slimy coating, like i told you before, with obvious density, and for two, females have a poison stinger under their tails that gets longer as they gestate babies- the professor said they are actually like mantids and black widows in that they kill their mates while mating because of the stinger's full extension. The croc eats gelpies whole, slime and venom and all. It's not deadly, and only has a little affect on us, but constant consumption of a paralyzing toxin would do serious damage to any body until it developed a proper immunity if that were applicable."

"I wouldn't be allowed to use gelpy venom as a weapon, would i?" i ask with hopeful humor. "I could use hollow-tipped arrows for hunting large and small game that would allow for more humane deaths."

"Actually, killing something incapacitated with gelpy venom could be considered humane..." she goes on conversationally, happy to have a subject of her own to discuss and share. "It's a local anesthetic, like novacain, in controlled use on humans, one sting in the calf is enough to put your leg to sleep from the knee down more or less, so an animal paralyzed by it would never feel death. In fact, if you want, we could look for some female gelpies and use their venom to take the pain from your leg. But, i don't want to be around when you start collecting gelpies to harvest their venom."

"Snakes can be milked, why not gelpies?" i ask pleasantly, offering a more humane alternative. "Since the stingers are extendable, that will probably have something to do with the release of venom. It's not like i want to put a spear through everything, i just want to put a spear through everything stronger than me and use everything at my disposal to bring them down. Is that so wrong? It's a game thats advertised as having no actual main storyline but nearly limitless possibilities and opportunities."

"And you want to be the top player, i get it," Emma teases with a laugh. "That's why it's good for someone like you to have access to something like gelpy venom. It's best for all the animals in the world if you numb them up when you kill them. Genocide with a velvet glove," she adds over her shoulder with a wicked smirk.

The search continued for most of the way around the rim of the island, often Emma would stop suddenly and just stare at a single point out in the water for nearly a minute at a time, but finally she came to a stop and seemed to actually follow something at the bottom of the bowl with her head. Following her gaze, it did not take me long to notice she was watching a slow but steady stream of trapped air bubbles finding release at the surface of the murky stream below. Early on in our search i had often studied similar sightings of air hoping it was the crocodile somewhere below, but now after having started to ignore the release of exposed air pockets in the muck i realized why this one was so important. Something was streaming air bubbles either from itself or in its wake as it seemed to crawl along the bottom of the bowl.

"That's it, isn't it?" I ask as Emma remains silent for a long time, looking about the surrounding area for the silhouettes of gelpies that i could stir up to attract attention. "There are three of those frog freaks on that soggy boulder just a little ways off from below us, if it's the croc do you think it will go after one if we scare them into the water?"

"It's the croc... i don't think gelpies can actually reach the bottom because of the bouyancy of their slime," she seems to confirm to herself softly, kneeling down near the edge of the rim where she could clump together a large wad of sandy clay. "But, the water is at least four feet deep four about as many feet across the bottom of the middle of the bowl. Spears and arrows won't be worth a damn with that much buffer between us, so drawing it out with the gelpies is our best bet because if it knows we are here after it we will be sitting here tracking its bubbles until it surfaces for air."

She had definitely spent more time thinking about and studying the crocodile than i had, predicting its behavior with very likely accuracy as she prepares to slam her ball of claw down among the trio of gelpies below. "Here, you take my spear and get ready," she goes on after several moments of biting her lip in deep thought, planting her spear in the ground between us, "It's big and heavy enough that if the croc surfaces you'll be able to land it deep enough we can follow the shaft if it goes under again. Are you ready? I don't think we'll be getting a better chance than this to make a good first strike."

Picking up her spear at the balance point closer to the huge head than the middle of the shaft, i heft it up over my shoulder in preparation for the throw and for the first time realize how heavy the spear actually was with a head made of somewhere around five pounds of slate. It was perfect. "Ready when you are," i acknowledge, turning out to be the signal for Emma to slam the tightly wound ball of clay down on the gelpies below.

As expected of the smaller amphibian creatures, the second the ball of clay struck the back of their soggy clay boulder and exploded into a shower of small and large pieces around them the gelpies took to the air in giant leaps that brought them all diving into the water of the stream. They resurfaced almost instantly, kicking beneath their bodies to keep their heads and some of their bodies bobbing up in the air away from the predator they knew was beneath them as they seemed to skip themselves across the surface of the water with surprisingly powerful back legs. The air bubbles grew larger and more plentiful for a moment as the three gelpy took off in different directions along the surface, then the water itself exploded upward as a reptiliad head more befitting a ten-foot aligator than a stunted saltwater crocodile breaches the surface with jaws upen wide underneath the body of the gelpy trying to swim straight across the stream to the opposite side of us.

Our shadows were cast back toward the beach by the sun high overhead and slight in front of us, so the crocodile had no way of knowing we were here through light and motion sensitive eyes while i watched it snap its jaws close on the trapped gelpy. The crocodile did not immediately dive back under, instead it was serpentine swimming along the surface of the thick stream toward the next gelpy and leaving us behind where it could not see me draw back Emma's slate spear in preparation of launch. Because the crocodile was swimming away from us faster than either of us could run, i aimed high to arc the spear from far overhead and step forward to lean into my throw as the crocodile nearys fifty yards away and keeps going.

Almost two feet of massive jaws met the gelpy a split second before the spear met the crocodile, embedding itself deep between two ridges low on its back just a couple of inches above one back leg and away from its spine. A sound like a hissing roar caused the water and air to shake, maybe even the ground if i was not running to better feel it, but all that mattered in those few moments of the crocodile vocalizing its pain and surprise while thrashing about wildly was that the grayish brown murch of the water around the reptile was darking rusty red and gray from its blood mixing with the surface. An arrow flew by just a few feet off to my left as it made its way down into and across the bowl, landing somewhere among the splashing of the thrashing and rolling croc to find some kind of mark as another, somewhat lesser, roar is loosed into the air.

A second arrow was arcing down into the bowl when i finally came in line with the crocodile that had neared the inner wall of the bowl only twelve feet below and less than twenty yards out, but this arrow did not find a place on the crocodile's body as it dove straight down into the water just a few yards down the stream. From here i could see that the slender second arrow had run half of its length through the side of the croc's tail just a foot or so down from its base, but Emma's second slender arrow as she alternated shots found its mark angling down into the croc's side from behind its front shoulder where there were no protective keratin plates. If i was in full health i could have run at the edge and leapt to clear the distance between the crocodile and I where i would land spear-first somewhere about its body, but all that i could do now was wait for it to slowly but steadily thrash and roll its way closer and closer to me as the second heavy arrow arcs down much more accurately into the thrashing itself even though the crocodile never made a sound to say that it had been struck.

I wanted to do something to help damage the beast as i watched Emma nock and draw her second to last arrow, releasing her pinch-grip on the arrow to let it fly directly at the crocodile where it makes a stellar impact right on the top of the crocodile's head where the arrowhead splinters into several large pieces. "Today was magic day, because that was downright magical," i find myself saying aloud with a smile as the crocodile roars once again and dives down into the water heading in my direction. The croc settled at the very bottom of the thickest muck some ten yards ahead of me at the edge of the middle stream, but the shaft of Emma's spear stood almost straight up out of the water to tell us where the beast lurked still and silent as a statue with several inches of arrow shafter telling me where its front portions were facing somewher away from me to the side.

Emma was already nocking her final arrow but looking at me instead of drawing and aiming, waiting to see if i wanted this opportunity or if she should take it,so i simply took two small steps back from my position at the edge and give her a big thumb's-up. It's her tutorial, I'm just here for support, I remind myself a little sadly as i line myself up with my memory of the crocodile's position and slowly lower myself to the ground with my citrine spear in hand. The arrow falling through the air ahead of me in perfect line with my memory was my signal to take one lunginging step forward with my bad leg, bearing in mind images of success and willing my body to act accordingly as the crocodile loosed a new roar as terrifyingly loud as the first during my next leaping step on my bad leg that allows me to plant my good foot down into the very edge of the rim of the bowl.

I could not take the time to see what damage had been as i lean out over the edge pof the bowl and bring my spear to bear ahead of me, only take in the fact that the crocodile had thrashed itself all the way around and was trying to make an escape into deeper water. In the brief instant as i realized it was running away, i had just enough time to think the single word, more, before i propelled myself forward on my good leg. More, i couldn't help but beg as i seemed to leave the bowl too soon and sail forward through the air, but it seemed that i had actually had plenty of strength to run on as i crossed the excess of fifteen yards between us with my spear pointing down below me, landing almost perfectly in the middle of the crocodile's back on top of my guillotine-like spear that drove straight down through one thick, meaty keratine plated ridge and down beside the beast's spine as it passed completely through its body before my feet ever touched down and my weight drove the croc sideways under water.

Keeping my grip on the spear even as i find myself slammed bodily into the muck at the bottom of the brackish stream on my bad side, i feel the crocodile trying to pull itself over despite its injuries and my weight and pull myself down the shaft of my spear as easily as i had pulled myself along ropes out at sea while searching about my belt until i finally fit my hand through a wristwrap and draw my quartz dagger. Pressing myself to the crocodile's back allowed it to manipulate our weight well enough to right itself and start dragging toward deeper water, but being stomach-down only made it easier to push off of Emma's spear with my good leg and wrap my armed arm around the neck of the beast so that i could let go of my own spear and figure-four lock my good leg around my own spear. Drawing my amethyst dagger in my newly freed hand as the croco tries to bolt across the streambed with its injured tail some thirty seconds after i had gone under, i wrap both arms about the crocodile's thick neck and start wildly stabbing up from underneath into its throat and head.

Every fiber of my being both virtual and physical screamed at me to keep stabbing and ripping at the crocodile that was probably still capabple of deathrolling a limb away in deep enough water, but the exertion of stabbing and hanging on to the croc as it swam and thrashed made my lungs ache and my legs start to go lax with oxygen deprivation that forced me to rip out both knives and pushed away. I had known earlier that the water here was not exceptionally deep, but in the lightless murk at the bottom it had felt like i was out at sea and actually standing up a couple of yards away from the surfacing crocodile was more than a little anticlimactic despite being a godsend for me to be able to defend myself and breathe at the same time. The crocodile must have felt the same way because it remained a distance away as the surface around it was flooded with reddening silt in all directions, kicking vague with most of its legs to drift backward away from me for a moment until all motion actually stopped.

My hip hurt, my ribs hurt, and i was dog tired from fighting under water with the crocodile, but i was still alive. Looking up the wall behind me and down the beach as i hear whoops and cheers of joy from above, i see Emma sprinting as best as she could along the rim of the bowl with her bow raised triumphantly overhead. "You were amazing!" I call up to her after i finally start to catch my breath, washing my crystalline daggers clean in the streambefore sheathing them and drawing my only remaining javelin from the underwater thrashing to cautiously poke and prod the crocodile. Once i was sure that the beast was safe to approach, i wade out to the drifting corpse and start dragging it back to the beachside wall of the bowl toward Emma's approach.

Throwing out some of the rope that she had brought with her about her waist, Emma says, "Tie up the crocodile and that use the rope to climb up. I'm pretty sure i can hold you," she adds as she starts backing out of view down toward the beach with her rope when i finally reach it. Making a crude harness around the reptile's shredded neck and front shoulders- one of which was ripped halfway off by Emma's final heavy arrow that had arced right down into the collar bones- i call up, "About to start climbing!" Giving the rope a couple of tugs to let her know to brace herself as well as test her strength a little, i climb up from the bucky bed of the bowl to the sheer wall where i use my now headless javelin in one hand and the rope in the other to start scaling the wall one slow thrust at a time.

It took me almost three minutes to climb the twelve or so feet of wall, alternating between supporting my weight on the rope to thrust the javelin shaft deep into the silty clay wall before pulling myself up the rope, but i was able to put almost all of my climbing weight on my one good leg while giving Emma short breaks from sustaining my weight that was at least fifty pounds greater than hers. Next came the staggering task of dragging the stunted behemoth up out of the bowl, which was not so hard between the two of us alternating between my pulling up the crocodile to make slack while Emma kept backing away until she bore the weight of the reptile and i could pull it back up another couple of feet. When most of the crocodile's upper body was over the edge and at my feet i started backing away from the edge to drag its two-hundred-plus pounds of weight the rest of the way up with every step that i fight to take.

"Why are you not as freaking psyched as i am?" Emma asks breathlessly after the hauling of and running over to get her first close-up of the crocodile. "We just... we just did that! And you! You were incredible! There was no vertical... so all the power was forward energy, but you caught that croc... at almost twenty yards out from three... or four yards above. That's..." She trails off breathlessly, unable to find words.

"I was already shocked and amazed earlier," i tell her a little tiredly myself, gently rubbing at my hip through my pants and pulling my pants up to cinch around my navel again. "I don't know if you saw it, but you shot that thing right in the top of the head so hard it shattered the arrowhead, that's about when it stopped thrashing and ran for the mud so you could make that final arc. It was a perfect unintentional combo, and if you did it on purpose then it was a thousand times more impressive."

Kneeling down over the body lying on its side propped by the sprears and arrows in its back, i start retrieving our weapons to find that both remaining slender arrows were recyclable and the heavy arrow had broken much of its head on one side but could be worked as it was on its functional arrow shaft into a heavy slender arrow- Emma's spear, however, had a split going up one side of the head all of the way to the deep, tightly bound root of the head while my spearhead was in perfect guillotine condition despite the shaft having splintered inside the body. Laying the body on its stomach to examine the head, i quickly find a patch of spider-web cracks in the central keratin plate on the top of its head that actually gives a little to say the skull was damaged underneath. "Fractured cranial plate and broken scale, no remainins of the arrowhead though," i inform Emma who was busy playing with the crocodile's giant tail.

"You make a nice bow," she says, dropping the limp tail with a ground-jarring thud. "Do you think the two of us can carry this thing back to camp? Or, are we going to part it out like you did your boar?"

"No, we're going to drag it as is," i inform her calmly after wiggling the body around to test the strength of the large ridges on the reptile's back in the silty sand outside the bowl. "The crests on its neck and back should act like struts to keep it on its back, and it has already lost like fifteen pounds in blood. Once we take the organs out and it drains properly, it will be a lot lighter. If you don't like this part, you should take a step back," i say as i unsheathe my quartz dagger that had easily torn through the beast's soft underside.

"No, let me do it," she says quickly, coming around to the opposite side of the body from me. "I know how to do it, and it's easier for me to get up and down because my injury isn't as bad as yours. Especially after that cream stuff last night. The little ones are almost already healed and the big one is halfway gone now. Yours... that will take a long time if you keep abusing it- no matter how strong the other leg is."

Watching Emma use her iron knife to saw the croc open from its tattered throat down to its cloaca, i let my mind wander back to those moments when i was taking off toward the rim of the bowl and the moment of actually lunging to was easily noticeable just a few yards away. A deep rut dug on by my boot around the actual rim that was deep enough couver over the ankles of my boots if i stood on it again, which would be pretty hard considering the foot or so of cracked hill that had been pushed up from the displacement of my lunge. It was not all that much, not something huge like a crater in the ground, but it was definitely more than i was actually capable of in reality no matter the terrain.

"How long was i underwater?" I ask suddenly as Emma was dragging out the crocodile's respiratory system.

"Oh, wow," she says, shocked by the question and probably shocked by the answer as well."No less than a minute, for sure, you never surfaced but there was a moment or two where the croc's tails was flapping the surfaced like it was trying to roll, then nothing, then a streamline of you head heading toward the islet, and a moment or two later you just stood up and the croc floated up a second later and i was so scared i stopped running. It was still kind of moving, i know you saw it because you had your knives up, but then... it just stopped twitching and finally died.

"One lung is gashed on the inner side and you chopped its esaphagus almost apart with your spear," she goes on, gesturing with her knife to rim of the bowl where she had been throwing the entrails to the gelpies. "It probably never got to take a breathe before you guys went under and with no lung it was already oxygen starving by the time you eviscerated its throat. There were so many chunks of pipes and arteries and everything in there I'm almost pissed at you, but... it's a big croc. If i had been down there, i would have done whatever it took to get the chance to take another breath again. How did you do it?"

"Had to be adrenaline," i conclude my own thoughts as well, trying not to draw attention to my little impact rut by looking at it again. "No other explanation for why any of that worked out and i am still standing. I'm strong, exceptionally so because i used to be fat and had that base strength-to-weight ratio to build from, but... that's a big lizard and my entire thigh is still kind of swollen. Not to mention the impact of my actual landing, no matter how much leading with my spear may has softened it, had to have done some serious damage to its back. I did think to take a breath before going under, but it didn't even feel like i spent a minute down there."

"You did, for sure," she argues, tossing loops of intestines out into the bowl. "You guys were down there thrashing and fighting for at least one full minute... one full minute of 'oh my god it got him' and then... there you were. Visibly unscathed and ready to finish the fight even though it was already over. You looked like a total badass down there!"

"It was a long, hard road, but i made it," i say with just a little excitement and pride, taking up the rope harnessing the dead crocodile in preparation for our return to camp. "I came, i saw, and I'm still standing! I can't believe i survived that, i thought for sure i was going to miss the landing and eat shit from its tail, but oh my god if i didn't get the damn thing!"

"Calm down, cave man, i haven't even finished dressing it," she teases, giving the rope a quick tug against me that actually threatens the balance in my bad leg for a moment. "Do we keep the hear and kidneys or no?"

"I'm not that hungry," i admit, jerking my thumb toward the bowl where she continues discarding organs. "Injuries or not, we need to get some gathering in before Harold shows up and the campfire is probably dead by now. We only have a couple of hours before Harold is due to show up and i wouldn't be surprised if he's early because he found out that i am injured. Doc set things up nicely, but still... he made it sound just a little bit worse than it really is."

"I don't think you know how bad it really is," Emma argues almost immediately after the words had left my mouth. "Sometimes you don't walk like it is a problem but whenever it does make an issue of itself it's obvious by watching you that you should be crippled. Tolerance or not, there's little reason but luck why that landing didn't dislocate your leg from the hip on impact."

"Adrenaline," i state simply, literally waving the near accusation away. "Plus, i landed good leg first on the croc's outer side while it was at the surface, tipping it sideways with my weight in the same motion that i came down on my bad leg. The changing dimensions and addition of water softened impact so much that i barely even noticed it. Again, adrenaline, but my leg is hurting which means it's going and we have a lot of hauling to do. If we take turns, we will make decent time, splitting the weight will make us stop completely to rest so one can rest while the other drags. I'll just stand here and wait oh so patiently to take the first stretch."

"Good, just stand there and look pretty for a minute, unless you don't mind taking out this big boy's reproductives," she laughs at me as she pulls out a long stretch of spongey mass with tubes and sacs. "Oh, god, this is disgusting in ways i can't describe. The worst part is how realistic it is... sure other games have blood, but it takes an expensive horror game for a corpse to keep bleeding and it's all still kind of warm and i can actually feel the gore in my hands and how tough it is to cut at and i can't believe i'm actually doing this!" She rambled almost hysterically as she pulls out and tosses aside the last of the digestive and reproductive 'gore' to slide sickly over the crest of the rim and slowly down the already bloody, offal smeared track and wall to the bowl below. "Okay, done, get it away from me."

Nodding my respectful approval as she struggles to find a way to clean her knife, i start lumbering off along the rim back toward camp at a pitifully slow pace as i drag the crocodile only a few feet at a time with every labored step forward. I counted my steps like workout repititions to keep myself both focused on and distracted from the task at hand, but by the time i reached fifty- only twenty-five steps per leg- my hip was on fire and more than starting to slow my process. By one hundred long-stretched strides, i was ready to stop, but i knew from my efforts in reality that i was capable of better and switched to sidesteps with one leg pushing at a time for ten reps before switching legs.

When each leg had finally dragged the crocodile for one hundred strides apiece, i just stopped and stooped over with my hands on by knees to catch my breath as Emma seemed to suddenly just appear at my side for the first time since i had started dragging the body. "We're, like, a third of the way there, Zai," she reassures me as she takes the rope from my cramped hands. "Let me see how far i can drag it, now, and you can get it the rest of the way there whenever you're ready." I was only just vaguely aware of her dragging the equivalent of either an overwight human adult or a body-building adult into the distance of my awareness untill all that was left was the sound of the rope and body scraping through the silty sand.

When the body of the croc finally caught up to me after almost thirty feet of rope, i push myself upright and start walking off after Emma at a calm but quick walking pace while fighting to maintain slow and steady and deep breaths. I felt like complete shit not just physically but even a little morally as i watched Emma fight with the corpse to take every step forward, silently berating myself for having been dumb enough to fall from the cliff in the first place and then ruin everything again while fighting with the boar so that right now i would be forced to watch my workout be stolen from me. "Even the strongest people in the world need spotters," i tell myself as i follow along just a few paces behind Emma, counting what steps i could now that i was able to pay attention.

Emma made eighty-three counted strides before letting the rope fall and stopping to rest in almost the same way i had except that she ended up lying out on the ground and laughing raggedly at herself, probably having the proper count of somewhere well over a hundred in her head and enjoying the satisfaction of her personal accomplishment. "You're incredible, you know that?" I ask loudly as i bend down to pick up the rope beside me and hold it over my shoulder to start dragging the crocodile in closer for the final leg of the journey. "Never do you cease to amaze."

"Coming... from..." she starts to say as i start dragging the body onward and forward to camp passed her. "That's... nice." She finishes lamely, making me stop to actually look at her and examine her prone form to find her face and arms flushed a bright red from overexertion and exhaustion.

Dropping the rope and sitting beside her so that my body cast a shadow over most of her, i reach into my shorts satchel that she wore spilling out its contents on the ground to take out a shucked coconut that i quickly open with a single stab and twst of my iron knife. "I'm... alive..." she says reassuringly despite her labored breathing, aware of my actions by listening because her eyes were lazily shut as though she were on the verge of falling asleep. With her mouth open.

"Don't swallow, just hold the milk in your mouth for a little while unless it gets harder to breath," i warn her as i bring the coconut to her chin to let her know i was about to pour before tipping what i thought was roughly half an ounce of fluid carefully into her mouth. "Spit it out whenever you want, but let it get under your tongue until then. I'm going to sit with you for a while and enjoy the view while i drink a coconut, you probably won't be ready to walk by then but I'm still going to leave you here with this coconut anyway while i get this crocodile the rest of the way to camp."

Emma took several long, careful breathes before leaning her head over to spit out the coconut milk and asking, "Got any... water?"

"Just what you brought with us..." i tell her sadly as i set about opening my own coconut.

"Screw... it," she mumbles as she reaches out one hand blindly between unsteadying breaths. "Give me... my... coconut... and enjoy... the view." Once i placed her coconut upright in her hand, she proceeded to set it low on her stomach and start unbuttoning her her leather cargo jacket to reveal the original thin cloth clothing that we had been wearing during the shipwreck.

Quickly talking and looking out over the beach as if she were not unbuttoning her shirt to start emptying cool coconut milk on her torso, i say, "If we were at camp, i could go down to the stream in the bowl and use some cloth tied over the top of a cane segment to filter fill it with water and drop a hot rock from the fire in it to boil it clean. It wasn't all that salty when i was underwater, so it should be pretty safe to drink, cook, or even bathe with."

"All the rocks... at camp... in a pit... hot tub?" She struggles to ask in between sips from her coconut.

"The water in the stream goes inward from both sides it was seem, making the area not far from where you made your camp the deepest water," i muse aloud just to give her something to focus on while she continues her breathing exercises. "But the stream just down from camp should be perfect for something like that. We can just keep throwing hot rocks and burning wood a little downstream of us- i can do that part maybe- and you can go down and wharf-off an area downstream of there with some branches and the cane bits we won't be using to further slow the flow of water. Between those two areas should warm up well enough for a nice relaxing soak. How long and how hot depends on how well the wharf is made and how many rocks we can use. Of course, we could do the same thing at the beach further away from the fire, but the setting would be way more controlled."

"You talk... a lot," she says tiredly with the faintest of smiles despite her words, taking larger gulps of coconut milk every now and then as she continued to recover. "Beach bath sounds... so good... after Harold gets... here. I'll dig the... pit and trench... on the beach... and collect a bunch... of rocks... while you go farm... some wood. Hope you got... a good long look... I'll be fine here while you... go on ahead."

"I honestly never looked after you started opening your shirt," i say honestly as i climb to my feet and pull up the croc once again. "But i appreciate the thought."

Making my way back to camp with the crocodile was not as hard as i had originally anticipated, stopping to take ten slow, deep breaths after twenty overall strides and then breaking for sixty breaths in which i started to grow light and fuzzy in a meditative sort of way. I was most of the way back to camp after three hundred strides and sidesteps and half of an hour of overall effort, but Emma had rejoined me by then to give my leg a break by rolling the crocodile on its stomach in the grass nearby. Sitting down on either side of the four-inch armored crest that ran from the base of the reptile's skull to less than a foot past its front shoulders, Emma and i drink another coconut and eat handfuls of nuts in companionable silence for a few minutes before i finally have to get up with the sun only a few hours from above the top of the volcano.

The last hundred yards or so went by rather quickly in a in just over one hundred lunging drags of the crocodile that finally jellied my good quad and pretty much crippled me bad leg just a few yards away from our work area at the furthest end of the fire bed from the raft. I just laid out on my stomach in similar fashion to Emma's sprawl while she sat down nearby and started opening coconuts like i had done for her, saying, "Does this somehow seem familiar to you? I am downright overcome with deja vu right now, but i at least had the curtesy to lie on my back so that i could still accept help. Can you even roll over on your own?"

"Your bedside manner sucks..." i groan as i roll carefully away on my good side to lide lightly on my bad. "Not another coconut... peel me a grapefuit, please? I need something... with just a little... more substance."

"Way to play dirty," she mock congratulates me, getting up to fetch a citrus in camp after opening only one coconut for herself. "I won't lie, i kind of hoped you would just forget all about the croc and carry me back to camp to recover, but i knew you couldn't have managed that with your leg even if you wanted to. I really could have- oh my, are you blushing?" She stops and asks when she starts making her way back with several citrus fruit.

"You're a hell of a lot... lighter than that croc," i reply with a casual shrug that painfully pulls at my lower body. "If you could have... ridden on... my back... i could have definitely... carried you until you recovered. But... that would have been pointless... for the croc."

"Shrewd, but mean," Emma remarks with noteable approval in her voice as she sits down behind me and lightly pulls at my hair until i scoot back enough to lay my head in her lap. "How is this for bedside manner? I'm the pillow. You better consider yourself lucky i even got the grapefruit, this might as well be a blessing from God."

"My presece here... is a blessing and a curse," i joke tiredly. " A blessing that you... have somebody to do... the heavy lifting. A curse that you... have to nurse them back... to health every time... they do some heavy lifting. Just a few more minutes... i will be back... on my feet soon enough."

"Take your time," she reassures me quickly, setting a peeled citrus fruit on my chest. "If i was by myself, i would probably have just gotton the croc out of the bowl by the time i collapsed or i would be dragging it around to the back of the island to float it around to the beach outside the bowl where i would just be dragging it back around front toward camp. We have plenty of time to rest right now, considering."

Eating my citrus like an apple, careful not to drip any of the sticky citrus juices on Emma, i say. "When you put it that way... i never want to get up, just lie here... and eat fruit until Harold shows up. But, he will probably... get mad if we did not... have any materials or clay gathered. Probably on his... way over as we speak, the sun is pretty... close to the volcano and... That's about the time he should be... here."

"Then i guess you have until you finish that fruit," Emma says with a playful tap of a large piece of citrus peel on my forehead. "Eat it slow and rest up while you can, you're going to be chopping down a lot of canes to make chests from for clay and food. If you can lean them against the inside of the wall with the ends sticking up where i can see them, i can come by and pull them up to camp whenever i check on the fire to take a break from digging. I don't know what you're going to be able to do about food stuffs and fire wood, maybe we can make like a little five-by-five platform or two with some canes stacked around the edges as a border that you can put the wood and fruit on to keep it from getting muddy. Then You and Harold, one or both of you, can pull the plaforms up somehow."

"A couple of canes... run into the top of the wall," i muse as i take the next bite of my grapefruit, bringing it down to less than half of a fruit remaining. "Throw a rope over them... Harold can raise either lift... high enough for you to unload... while i ferry supplies across the stream... from the middle islet. I can just stockpile everything... on the islet while... we wait for Harold to show up for... transport." I hated this feeling, like every breath i took in was thinned from the heat of my still flushed red body and every word i spoke seemed to take an entire breath, but i was fairly used to overheating by now and it was already fading away even if my legs still felt like gelatin.

"I will probably be done digging by then," Emma agrees as she finishes peeling the second citrus and starts eating it the same way that i was. "I can go ahead and make the platforms myself, i can use the time to move the rocks around the fire closer in and get the fire going nice and hot for my soak later. I can't even begin to tell you how excited i am to get this avatar in some hot water, even if i don't have any soap it's still going to be amazing! I'll even help you dig a tub on iron island tomorrow to help you heal," she offers cheerfully, unaware that she was dripping citrus in my hair and i did not care to inform her.

The rest of the citrus did not seem very appealing to me after having drank so much coconut milk over the past couple of days, so i simply chucked it aside after a few moments and said, "I'll be up in just a sec'. Just need to do a little... meditation." My meditation was just controlled breathing exercises with my eyelids relaxed nearly closed, but after counting to ten breaths and restarting a few times i could really feel myself starting to recover as breathing itself came more naturally and the heat almost seemed to steam away.

After only a minute or two of breathing exercises, i was finally recovered from the lightheadedness and weak limbs of overheating enough to sit-up from Emma's lap and roll over onto my hands and knees where i could push myself up at last. Taking a moment to let my body settle in its upright position, i find myself stretching my arms out over my head and leaning back into a mighty yawn as my legs tremble a little under my own weight. "I feel like shit," i say as i straighten up from my yawn, wishing i could just go to sleep and log out to take a nap on my operating table while waiting for the others to wake up.

"I believe it because you look like shit," Emma agrees with a smirk, chucking the remnants of her citrus out into the bowl where its splash is followed by several other large splashes from unsettled gelpies. "Now, get down there and get to work. You already have an ax, but you can take my old clay ax i ground down this morning for when yours breaks. After that, i can risk tossing my slate ax down if you need it, but you also have a bunch of knives you can use for cutting canes down," she adds quite shrewdly, setting about gathering the longest remains of the cane supplies brought in from the raft.

Gathering both the slate ax that i had brought from my island and Emma's bulkier clay ax that had been ground down to a more even edge than its original sheer face, i sheathe them both in the back of my belt outside of my pants facing each other before picking out three large portions of cane not being used. Gathering several lengths of rope to walk roughly a dozen yards down the rim from camp, i find a nice spot several feet back from the edge to plant my canes deep until the sandy clay until they were rooted in just clay and two fingers more than the final segment of each cane was showing. Winding thr rope back and forth through the exposed canes, i work enough slack in the rope to tie it off to the rest of the winding rope at the front of the middle where the rest of the rope can lead straight away to and over the edge of the bowl.

Fetching my spear to stuff down the back of my leather cargo jacket, i take up the rope near the edge and use my iron knife to both steady and slow my fall alongsinde the rope and my good foot leaning into the wall as i slide in short bursts. Reaching the bottom after three stops on top of clumping mud under my foot, i hang onto the rope as my feet sink into the slushy much at the bottom of the wall where the stream was closest and pick out my next steps carefully before releasing the rope and sploshing off through the mud and into the water before i have time to sink deeper than my ankles. Wading across the streem was not so bad, it was not as deep as where i fought with the crocodile but the stream itself was much wider here closer to where the water fed in from and i could feel the swirls from gelpies flinging themselfs through the water away from or around me in pursuit of smaller fish or bugs in the water.

"This looks like as good a spot as any," Professor Harlen's voice says suddenly from somewhere behind and off the the side from me, turning out to be coming from where the man's avatar stood on the water a few yards away looking down and about as though he could actually see everything within the clouded brack. "I can't help but remember a conversation between you and your distressed damsel, something about female gelpies and milking them? Well, how about it? Want to get some gelpies?"

I was in the shallows at the other side of the stream from the beach where the water was only a little bit above my knees, but the ground i stood on was slick and gave no less than an inch in any direction i leaned. Taking the professor's hint by stepping back out to thigh deep water where the ground was worn smooth and somewhat harder with the deeper clay, i say, "Are you saying what i think you're saying? That i am about to have to tag a bunch of frog-things?"

Nodding with the slightest of smiles, Professor Harlen says, "I am going to bring in a bunch of beetle and dragonfly type insects that the gelpies like the most, this will stir up the gelpies to amounts that i can manipulate in your favor. Consolation-slash-combo prize, all of the gelpies you 'tag' will be females and you will get a or multiple cane containers of their collective venom. Ten gelpies gives you ten one-liter cane segments of filtered water from the stream here as well as plus-point-five of the collective venome. If you can tag fifteen gelpies, i will extend the durability of your axes by five cane trees apiece once they break- you will know when this weapon revive takes affect- and if you happen to tag twenty gelpies in under one minutemi will give you as many liters of water and double the collective venom haul. A tag, as i would like to view it, is any strike that draws blood."

He holds up a hand after that, silencing any questions or actions i was about to take as all a myriad of differently collored shiny and matte insects just randomly appear out of thin air flying at about waist height over the water. The responses were few and far between for the first minute but they were immediate with a gelpie jumping a full foot out of the water in an attempt to catch some insects as soon as they appeared, slowly giving others the signal to jump and catch some food as well, but it was not long before the stream around me was alive with moderated gelpie activity with multiple jumps every second. Finally, the professor lowers his hand and says, "You may now choose your weapons, whatever you don't use will be sent to the shore of the islet ahead of you. Because of your injury, i will allow that your first attempt will start the timer."

I drew a crystalline dagger in either hand and my axes and spear were immediately gone from about my body to fall lightly on the dry silt of the islet nearby, then the professor was gone so that i could fight more freely as the ten-yard radius of gelpie activity tightens to even faster numbers at six yards of space around me. If the water was just a little bit deeper, i could have used it to bear my weight, but as it was i had to pick a wide stance leading with my bad leg so that i could could push for shifting with my good leg and wait for the best opportunity i could. Plenty of amphibians were leaping between one and two feet out of the water at roughly my chest height within my one-eighty-degrees of reach, but i had to make sure that at least my first attempt counted because if i miss and start lashing out wildly i would just be wearing down the clock between points.

Bringing my hands close to the center of my body over my solar plexus between my navel and sternum with my daggers held upside down and outward, i measure time in breaths and wait like an awkward mantis for a sure thing before one fat, foot-and-a-half long gelpy leaps up out of the water right in front of me and i reflexive backhand thrust my righthand quartz knife straight out to plunge through the gelpie's stomach ahead of its back legs. Pivoting on my injured leg with a wide and wild swing of my left amethyst knife as i draw my right hand back, slicing cleanly through nothing but empty air until i pivot back to my original stance with a mirror slash of my quartz dagger while drawing amethyst back in and part a chunk of tail from the rest of its body with quartz. A thrust of amethyst catches the haunch of a third gelpie when it starts to dive back down into the water off to my left, but the following slash of my quartz dagger met nothing just like the first slash except that my return to starting position with both knives cutting through the air at different levels both cut through two more gelpies.

Five tags in under ten seconds allowed me two breaths to search for an opening before i began my wild whirls of slashing crystals, but my initiating strike of amethyst almost directly ahead of me stabbed only air despite the two gelpies to be tagged by the following shift from and return to stance slashes. Twelve gelpies were darkening the gray murk around me by the time i reached my thirty-second count, bringing me so close to my fifteen-point mark that i start steppinging into the range of bounding gelpies with my a slash of both quartz and amethyst closing in from around me and shifting stance with a slash of either before returning from shift and following with a lunge in the next compass direction. I just stopped after i counted twenty-seven bodies brushing against my daggers, letting the seconds tick by uncounted as i dropped to my hands and knees in the water and then let my bad leg just go lax in the cold.

"You're in rougher shape than you think," Professor Harlen says as i suddenly float to the surface and actually sprawl out on top of the water. "Last session you were physically capable of far more transport of much more weight, and even though you were pulling the raft you spent enough time in the cold water to help the healing process. But your sand bed gave out last night and misaligned your reset join and you have been functioning at reduced capacity on top of the stressed muscless lactic acid developing the early stages of an infection. Since you exceeded my expectations, which i set believeing you would not even hit fifteen, i can provide you with some local herbs that you can brew into a tea that will boost yours and Emma's regeneration speeds as well as help your body kill off the infection before it fully develops.

"On top of all that," he goes on, reaching down to pick me up by the back of my jacket with seemingly no effort at all before lightly placing me on my feet in the water. "An adult female gelpie's venom sacs can contain as much as an ounce of venom, although only about one-fifth of that is loaded in the stinger, so you have not just twenty-three- even though you had more hits only that many actually bled- ounces of venom but forty-six ounces of venom in ten-ounce segment flasks waiting for you back at camp alongside twenty-three one-liter cane segments of drinking water. There are four different herbs besides the suckles you use for your coconut cream, only the berries will function in the cream but all of them can be found on the islands around iron island so be sure to remember what they look like- yellow leaves and berries, purple stalk to find the sphagetti roots, small tube plant full of proteinaceous slime, and sprigs of orange daisies. The leaves and berries, roots, slime, and daisy heads all make the tea, but the berries can also be added to your cream if you still feel the need to make it."

"I don't even think i can farm anymore..." i say after several long, ragged breaths. "The leg is killing even me and after all that dancing i swear i felt something pop. Any chance i could trade the extended durability for something else like a healing boost in general?"

Considering his options while rubbing his chin thoughtfully, Professor Harlen seems to come to a decision of sorts before nodding his head and flicking his wrist. The horrific result of such a simplistic gesture was that my leg was snatched straight so hard that my foot went ankle-deep in the water with a much louder pop than i had thought i heard while tagging amphibians before coming back up into place with several smaller pops. "I just relocated your hip and pushed the fracturing pieces of your pelvis together before any of it could finally break away entirely," he explains calmly with a hand on my should, supporting my weight as i lean against him and off of my leg, "you won't get a healing buff of any kind besides the herbal tea, but the tea will double your healing for six hours at five-ounce servings- this does not stack as you keep drinking tea but two servings before sleep will extend with sleeping's natural regeration boost for two-and-a-half fold while you sleep. More in the morning and throughought the day of your next session should have you right as rain within a week."

"Anything you can tell me about magic day?" I ask quickly before he has a chance to disappear on me.

"It's the day of every player's tutorial where their magic is forcibly activated by some form of outside intervention- whether it be the system spawning a high-magic area like a shrine or grove of sorts or some natural phenomena like what will happen tomorrow. The only hint i can give you is that, when you get out of the bowl, look out at the waters. Once your magic is forcibly awakened, you can pretty much do whatever you can come up with, as long as it... remains feasible and has due process. I will give everybody a brief lesson in magic and other things at breakfast tomorrow, if that helps distract you from magic day itself."

"This pain is enough to keep me distracted, now," i reassure him as i look at my tools on the islet. "I'm going to cut down a couple of trees for Harold and Emma to work her platforms by, then i am going back to camp to stuff my face and make tea. Would it be too much to ask you to just poof my extra gear back to camp?"

"Done," he shrugs. "Just this once. Do be careful... as much as we actual need all of the injury data we can get, your injuries are potentially holding back other important informations we could be gathering during the early phase of playing. Right now, we can consider this something of a beta priority, i want nothing but healing information in your character's readouts. If your rating worries you, find other ways to spend your time while recovering to support the team and gain bonus points in that regard- your team is bringing together a lot of surprising and useful materials like flint and obsidian for crafting tools from. Harold himself will be arriving very soon, he is preparing to take his new barge out on the water as we speak, with some odds and ends he needs your assistance with."

"Doc's orders are hard to argue with," i say with a smirk, knowing the professor did not fully approve of the shorthand title despite actually having several degrees in the medical field. "Three tree, I'll hang over the edge wrapped in the climbing rope, and plant them like a foot or so down. Will probably be done and relaxing back at camp by the time Harold sets out."

"See to it that you are," Doc says dryly before disappearing from view.