Issues Still Deciding to Arise

You simply cannot begin to understand how much of a contrivance it is to make sure these kids don't try to kill me. I am not joking, they have tried to rip my fucking limbs off after cutting the rope with their teeth.

How did they get it off with their teeth? I don't even know. One minute I was dozing off, trying to get some sleep to alleviate the pain in my head from having to make a simple saw and some clothes, and the next second I see them have a stone in hand again.

So my obvious reaction was to grab my knife and cut at their arm, and that did the trick. The little shit stumbled and nearly fell as it's sibling was cowering away from the two of us.

Now, I could have let the kid fall off and break a bone, but that's not my plan. My plan, is to try and get subordinates. Safety first, then we have a mental breakdown. I'm hanging on some loose threads.

The strain from having to hold the kid's uncut arm was just, gods that hurt. It didn't help that despite my body originally getting fixed up it's still piss weak. To be fair, I'm pretty damn close to being a geriatric. And yet I pulled the kid up as I threw the stone away and put the knife at their throat.

I stare my red and really really pained eyes at the little shit as I drew blood by pushing the bone knife ever so slightly closer. I don't know chokeholds, I don't know about any damn thing. I'm a fucking criminal, that's quite literally one of the few things that I knew.

That's why I read a good amount of times. Books were nice in my cell. But back to present, the burns on my hands from having to tie them up, the fatigue and headaches that were waxing and waning as I kept an eye on them, and the fact that it hasn't even been a day yet.

Gods, why did I choose more suffering again? Oh yes, survival. This is absolutely nowhere close to that. This is just stupidity. I was thinking about jumping right off the damned tree branch when the other one came up to me and punched me right in the gut.

That shit hurt, simple enough. Another pain to have to deal with. And yet there was a look in the kid's eyes that said "Please don't struggle! We just want to live!". So I groaned and grunted while nursing the new injury.

Amazing, truly, this is just stellar. I pointed at the two of them with the knife, as I slowly opened my haversack that I had on me. There were basic rations, barebones stuff. And I opened a pack of crackers at them as I pulled one out and put it in my mouth.

Yes, I was teaching them that it was edible. No, I have no clue if it was gonna kill them or not. This is a fantasy world, I assume that my body is completely free of any dangerous materials that could put this world into jeopardy, but food? Allergies are still a major thing, and the conditions for starving children to have better bowels to have to deal with that are pretty much rare.

But then again, they literally ate me. So I threw them half of the pack as I scarfed down the rest of the crackers. They looked at me as I looked back. Was there an agreement occurring?

Well, the more aggressive one threw it back at me as it shielded it's sibling. Yeah, that's what I would have thought.

So I looked at my arm, and looked at the time of day.

'No no no no no no no. We are not thinking about actually doing this. We may be crazy, but this, this is just ludicrous. Hell, that goddess could have been bullshitting us for all we know and made it so that we ONLY had one extra life.

I don't think playing this game is going to be rather beneficial for us? Auto-cannibalism does not look like a good thing no matter how you put it.'

'Oh pipe down will you? Their stomachs are hardy, and they don't trust the crackers. Plus, dying and coming back means we're basically pulling that thing in that one show we saw all those years ago. Gods, how old were we then? Six? Ten?'

'Better them than us, we both know that. We're not doing this.'

'Yes. We. Are. There's no better possible plan for what we need to do. The powers are a pain, and dying quickly is not half-bad. Besides, it's not like we're going anywhere anytime soon. We decided that these would be subordinates, and so we're gonna have to build them up. And it's protein, they could use some protein in their bodies seeing how skinny they are.'

'I cannot believe that I have to listen to myself argue with myself.'

'Oh yeah well shut the fuck up, being like this means we'll handle situations not as shittily as a normal person would. Now wait for what seems to be midnight and get chopping lover boy. We got recruitment to do.'

Yes, I argued myself in my own head. That is a thing that I did do. No, I don't think it's gonna go away anytime soon. So I watched them as they watched me back. My head was throbbing, my gut was bruised when I checked it, and there wasn't much other way to heal meself without having to off myself and get a fresh body.

Fuck I knew that I was going to do some drastic things in this world, but this, this is ludicrous. By all accounts, this is more retarded that I'd normally anticipate. The two elves in front of me were just staring back at me, well, one of them was, they cycled between getting some shuteye and keeping eye on me.

Smart, I can understand that they're sentient, and sapience I'd very much within the ballpark, but this is a level that I would just straight up attribute to them being elves. Huh, I guess Sir Tolkien gave a pretty good baseline for what to expect, but as math had taught me so many times, doubt is going to either be your best friend or your archnemesis.

"Om nom." yes, I tried to actually tell them to eat by making sounds and gestures. But as the internal me's said, this was gonna need some meat in the plan. So I waited, and waited and waited some more up until the time was close to midnight.

Or so I thought since there wasn't a whole lot to help me get a good idea for the time in this world. I didn't even keep count of the possible hours that this world was going through.

Never mind that, I think it's better that way. If anything seems to be just too hard to try and understand, chalk it up as fantasy world logic and throw it in a binder for another time.

Anyways, I was there again, and I supposed that it was actually time to kill myself. Well, this is by far one of the more idiotic things I've done in my lifetime, but whatever occurs is whatever occurs.

I held the knife near to my throat, and then subsequently backed down since blood loss was a bad thing to try and use to kill myself with. And if I cut into my throat, well, drowning in my own blood wasn't exactly very appealing for obvious reasons.

'I genuinely cannot believe that I was thinking this would be a good idea. Well, tally ho.'

And as that final thought went through my head, I placed the knife on the branch of the tree that I was on, and slammed my head as hard into it as possible.

I met the darkness again after a short and still very much great jolt of pain as I opened my eyes again to see that I was at the bottom of the tree.

'Ah yeah, no access to it for a week. Beautiful. Just beautiful. Well, at the very least I could make time pass faster whenever I'm in there. But everything else aside, I had to climb a fucking tree again.

I could still feel the damned bone knife go through my skull, God fuck that hurt. Grabbing onto the trunk again, I made a poor example of how a person should climb a tree and slowly drudged and groaned my ass all the way up there again.

Beautiful, they were still there, and the ballsier one was using my bone knife as a butchering tool. Yep, that's stellar alright, absolutely nothing morally reprehensible there.

"Ooga booga." were my words when I finally got a grip onto the branch that they were on and slowly but surely got back onto it as I saw my dead corpse in front of me.

At that point I just felt, god shit, I felt awful. So many people saying that life is precious and yet here I was sticking a knife in my skull as a way to try and make subordinates out of children.

Well, knowing how old they could be chronologically, I doubt they're children by the comparison to ours. But as for a more social sense? Hah! As if they had a society before that was old enough to try and make a good enough comparison between their biological and their chronological.

I mean, considering that they're here, in a tree that has a skeleton in it, I doubt that. They were wary when I came back as the ballsier one grabbed their sling and got to spinning as I put my hands up and tried to get them to calm down.

It was hard, obviously enough. I couldn't tell if that was a girl or a guy, but in this situation that doesn't really fucking matter does it?

I made shushing sounds and tried to get them to chill the fuck down, but they were still ready to scrap with me. Goddamn it, this is harder than I thought. But the one behind the ballsier one grabbed the other's arm and looked at them.

Were they thinking about stepping down, or were they thinking about which part of me did they want to cut into next? Ooh what questions I sure as hell shouldn't be thinking when my actual life is on the line here.

But something odd happened, the two of them froze up as they looked down at the bottom of the tree. I immediately ran forward as best as I could and stole the knife back from the ballsier one as I looked down as well.

There was something that was there. It was grayish, had heterochromic yet glowing eyes, and had a figure that I didn't quite understand. The thing screeched as what I assumed to be claws were trying it's best to grip into the wood but something really really odd, which is stupid for me to say since I was in a fantasy world and trying not to lose my mind in it, was that the tree was glowing.

The skeleton in the tree, had these runes etched into them, and they glowed bright yellow as I could help but shield my eyes with. Both of the elves' hairs were glowing alongside the skeleton as the tree rumbled, a root came out of the ground and skewered the beast below.

Amazing, there's even more shit that I don't understand. Beautiful, just, beautiful. The beast below bellowed a howl as it slowly died out, and the light from the tree was just good enough for me to see what it looked like.

Claws, skull for a head, and antlers. It was designed to be more quadrupedal than what I would have anticipated, but it seemed like it was slowly becoming something different.

I only really knew one old creature that could fit this description on the literal nose.

I think this is a wendigo. Yeah, seeing as how it looked that way, it really was looking like one. And I guess it makes sense for it to be like that, it was hunting. But why in every possible bloody scenario did it only occur now of all the times?

And why didn't it start hunting earlier? God even more questions, what a fucking blessing that is.