And Yet It's Still So Bright

There it is. There's that fear that was stewing inside of me for oh so fucking long. The same feeling that I swore to God that I'd try to just get rid of. Needless to say, it didn't go away. Fair enough, fear is an aspect of humanity that stays for reason, either good, bad, or outright stupid.

The fucking deer was bowing to me. I, I'm not some fucking druid for shit's sake!

"Alright, listen to me very well little one. I don't know what's going on. But don't go all that near it."

She looked at me with confusion while I gulped and slowly went to it. She tugged at one of my pant legs as I turned around and saw her look guilty.

"Let me do it. You know what I can do. It's gonna be fine, I think?"

That, was essentially a lie mixed with a dash of truth. I was supposed to be a "monitor" and yet here I am, about to touch a seemingly darkness infused magical deer that was bowing to me.

I can't even try to make it up at this point. I kept walking and tried to calm myself down as best as I could.

'Alright then, let's not get ahead of ourselves. Everyone knows that deer are more scared of you than you're scared of them. Except this deer is fucking magical and could probably rip my guts in a fucking split second, so no pressure.'

There wasn't any merit in trying to lie to myself. Calming myself was a different story, but neither would work anyways as I was an old man with some degree of powers simple enough for me to try and work with approaching magical bullshit.

And mind you, the powers only ever worked in fucking cold areas. I don't have the cold to help me. I was fighting the will to fucking run with the kid on my back, and I won.

I touched the bloody thing on its head as it stood up again and licked my face. It's tongue was actually completely white. Glowy? Yes, very so. Useful as a pack animal? I severely doubt that it might allow us to do that. That is until it turned around and presented it's back to me.

".....I doubt you can understand me, but thank you for not trying to kill us."

I took off my haversack as I tightened it just enough for it to not go flying off if the beast ever went fast, and just loose enough for said creature to not want to gore me for making it uncomfortable.

I went back over to the kid as I groaned and carried her onto the back of the deer. As for me, I was way too fucking old to try and get prostate issues from riding a fucking deer without a saddle, or as people that actually ride animals call it, bareback.

I can only sigh at the fact that people are stupid and horny enough to corrupt the meaning of something that should be rather normal back in the old days, into a sexual terminology.

It's a real shame, but it's not like they can do the same thing in this reality, after all, they're not here.

Or not going to be here for a very long time. I was genuinely curious about how would I actually live through the fucking caveman era of the various races in this world, when I'm not even sure I can live for that long.

Sure, I may be a lot more energetic whenever it was winter, but unless I can live in the fucking poles and somehow bring their frost to the equator fast enough, there ain't much options for me aside from abusing the daily suicide thing that I could do.

And that's the dumb way of saying it.

In any case, that was thought process for later, I was walking with the deer alongside me as most of our gear was on it's back with the kid.

I couldn't tell where the thing was going, but I hoped to God that it was going to wherever the closest watering hole was. Because if we don't get water that isn't from this world, I might not have a good idea as to how good my survival chances are here.

The world was supposedly very young, with "primordial" bullshit all around me. This deer is a very good little example of what sort of madness you could get up to in this place.

I groaned from the dull pain in my back as I could only smile painfully. Yes my body may revert from time to time, but unless I can literally revert all the way back to my youth, there ain't no fucking way I'm getting rid of this ache.

I soldiered on anyways. The kid was about to fall asleep, and for what was absolutely a very long fucking winter, I got to see the first sunset again. Well, bits and pieces of it, since the foliage all around covered most of it up.

I clicked my tongue as I patted the deer to pick up the pace. It surely fucking did, since I was the one who lagging behind it. That was fine on my end, I can handle a little scrap and probably survive long enough, but I didn't want the kid to get fucking mauled by god knows what.

The forest was slowly clearing away as I finally saw it. A nice little pond with fireflies all around. Which made me very concerned, since if the fucking deer was a shroud of fucking darkness, what the fuck were fireflies going to fucking do at that point?

Become fucking explosives? Nohohohohoho sirree, I'm not dealing with that. The kid was more than fucking welcome to test that shit at that point. Their world has a fucking system in place of it, and I was an outsider, something that doesn't have it.

A creature that consumed one of their own, and yet didn't get its strength via the conventional method. A fucking interloper in their cycle. I actually had a bounty from this world itself to hunt me down.

And all I got from it was minor ice regeneration, claws and sharp teeth, and a hunger for human fucking meat. Hindsight, it always makes me want to bash my head on a tree for my stupidity.

Anyways, I gave the kid some jugs to try and fill, until I realized we didn't have anything to filter out the contents of the water, or more specifically, the fucking bacteria and microorganisms that could kill us.

I still had a free life to use, so I handed her one empty jug, and told her to fill it a little bit first so I could test it. She ran right over to the water and started as I looked up into the night sky.

The pond wasn't covered up, so it allowed some of the stars above to shine through, and I was actually bloody astonished. Well, I could've been wrong, but there's no fucking moon.

Now it could have been the new moon phase, or probably on the other side of the bloody planet, but who knows? In any scenario, I let her take a little and grabbed it once she offered it to me.

"Alright, kid, if this kills me, don't and I mean this with every single bone in my body, don't eat the meat. This won't bode well for the both of us, and it might end up with me having to bury you as well."

She nodded as I closed my eyes and took a quick swig. It felt completely fine. I opened my eyes again and sighed from the quenching liquid going down my gullet. "It's fine. Hahahaha, it's fine! Bloody shite! It's fine. Go ahead kid, drink more. I'm surprised that the water didn't-"

But my words were cut a little short as I just realized that there were more ripples in the pond behind her. So I quickly grabbed her and took out the bone axe. We took a couple steps back as I glanced at her for a second as she got the hint that we needed to fucking go.

And go we absolutely did, except for me. The fucking ground beneath my feet latched onto one of my legs and ripped that shit clean through. I held back my screams and the bit of tears I felt like giving up as I turned around and swore even further out loud.

"AN ALLIGATOR?! A BLOODY ALLIGATOR IN THE BEGINNING OF BLOODY SPRING?! HOW ARE YOU BASTARDS EVEN ACTIVE THIS EARLY?!"

I didn't even get a fucking answer as it slowly but surely emerged from the pond and showed that it was fucking huge. There were cases of crocodiles being fucking humongous, but this bitch looked like it's fucking ancestors.

And then it clicked. This was supposed to be the prehistoric era or some bullshit. But I severely doubt we're in the Cretaceous Period, mainly due to the fact that these bastards aren't extinct yet.

And so I grit my teeth and just fucking ran with my hands for the thing as my claws formed quickly to give me a better chance to get to the creature.

It was a real fucking beastie it was, and it showed how damn good it could be by rushing out of the water to meet me, with spikes of rock coming right out of the ground trying to impale me.

I was cutting this shit way too close, and I was on all fours, well, threes considering that I didn't have a leg from it ripping it off. And I had an idea, I circled the bastard to give it a little challenge, as I immediately went up to one of the trees and went on that shit like a fucking monkey.

Where did I place my bone knife? In my mouth. I never got how people didn't fucking slobber up whenever they placed shit in their mouths sideways, and knives only made me have even more questions.

The giant bastard actually growled at me as it swished it's tail and made the water murky from conjuring from its sediment bed.

'FUCK ME! THE FUCKING WATERING HOLE YOU LITTLE CUNT!'

I kept leaping through the trees, the adrenaline in my veins making things slightly less of a pain than they normally would. And I kept trying my best to look for a good enough opening, with the gator still conjuring attacks.

The sediment balls it threw at me were seemingly normal at first, until the water slowly diffused into the air for some reason and turned them into fucking bullets that went through the branches.

I was running out of possible spots for me to try and take it out with. The bone knife was from my own body, but knowing how I would spar with the kid, and the numerous broken bones that I had to dig out from my corpses whenever we did spar, I was more than certain that the bastard had scales and skin as hard as fucking stone.

And so I resigned myself, I wasn't smart, lean, or strong enough to pull off some maddening bullshit, but I was relatively ballsy enough. All those years avoiding the law did give me a good insight on how to get creative.

Creativity wasn't my best card in this moment, but I would count it as flashy, since I literally jumped out and tried to get my blood into its fucking eyes, using my leg stump.

It should have worked, until it had a gaping fucking mouth and my dumb fuckin brain went into overdrive trying to figure out how to live.

Saltwater crocs have a third "eyelid" that they use whenever they're underwater. That's for the crocs, and I assume that these fuckers have relatively the same sorta biological bullshit since they're fucking related in a generational sense.

Lo and behold, I was absolutely not going to enjoy having my intestines getting consumed. But I was going to make it fucking hurt, so I kept my claws sharp and tried to go under it as best as I could, and it damn worked.

My initial jump was shit, so I just barely missed it's mouth, but now I was under it, and I intended to fucking use that. The bastard couldn't see me, but it felt me near it's belly as I held my breath and kept trying to cut into its gut.

The knife did decently, but my claws were even better, so I just abandoned the knife entirely as I clawed and wrenched through its stomach to kill it from either blood loss or extreme pain.

It was still fucking death spinning on me as I latched my hand onto it as best as I could and even got inside of the bastard.

The heart was so fuckin close, until I felt a pain in the base of my back.

I thought it was a free-floating rib that I broke off, but it kept getting worse. When I had enough will to get a good look, there was a rock spike poking right through me fucking pelvis.

This little fuck went and self-harmed to try and kill me.

'TWO CAN PLAY IT THAT WAY FUCKASS!'

My anger was getting higher as I grabbed onto the spike and broke it off quickly. My air was running out as I did as much damage as I could, and I felt something relatively round in the damned beastie.

I formed my hand into a spear shape and threw as much power as I could muster up into the last hit, and when I punctured right in the middle of it, I opened out my hand and pulled on the obscure organ as best as I could, and yanked it from whatever it was possibly connected to.

The body of the beast was extremely fucking hot for whatever reason, and they're supposed to be cold-blooded creatures. Fuck this, just fuck.

The blood was literally steaming my ass alive as I cut and cut my way out again, and slowly emerged from the now extremely tainted watering hole. And heaving from all of the pain of having to deal with most of this bullshit makes just want to drop dead.

I mean, I would have, if not for the stupid stupid fact that the kid and the deer came back looking eager for a fight, until they saw me mostly broken apart in the water.

I don't even remember most of the shit that happened afterwards, only that I tossed the heart to the kid before I hobbled my extremely painful body back to the gator, right up to its head, lifted it open, placed my own head right along it's teeth, closed my eyes, and let go.

After about what seemed like an eternity back in the endless fucking void, I opened my eyes to see my dead battered body with one of my hands actually getting caught in between the bastard's teeth.

"Finally, proper fucking meat!"

I just couldn't help it. There was actual food right in front of me as I used as much of the strength that I had to drag the bastard to me as close to the shore and treeline as possible, and goddamn it, it was glorious.

I secured food for us, that tail was a delicacy in its own right, well, mostly good for the sake of meat in a crockpot, which I don't have, but it's still meat! And that just with the tail, this entire bitch is edible as hell!

I may have had to risk life and limb, and simultaneously lost both life and limb, but this, ohohohohoho, this almost feels like it was worth it!