1 A strange new place

As the world around me distorts, I feel my weight leave me, it feels like it's still there but in another form jumbled up slowly forming together. A range of vertigo assaulted me, I feel like I'm upside down underwater but can't find my way up. Then suddenly I'm swung in some direction, my consciousness trying to make sense of the feeling as I tousled around in this space of some sort, then all thoughts ceased and everything went black.

Suddenly coming back to life are my surroundings after an unknown amount of time, so vibrant in colour they are my eyes strained and give me a sense of nausea. fearing I may lose consciousness with the overload, I press my eye's shut. With my eye's closed a new huge sense of weight assaulted me, it didn't feel like weight I couldn't control, however right now there are too many new feelings in my body, I can't make heads or tails of what is what.

Once the nausea subsided, I tried to keep my body in the same position, so I could make sense of these new sensations one at a time. With my adrenaline pumping through me, my heart felt like it could burst out of my chest. I slowly moved what felt like my arm only to be assaulted by a huge shift in weight. In a tumble of myself, I could only imagine that I somehow swung myself to the ground with my clumsy arm movement.

Now on the ground, I manage to slowly calm myself. Opening my eyes again to look at my surroundings, the colours aren't so painful this time. I begin to see the outline of some clouds. A sharp bright yellow with a hint of orange enters my vision, I assume this is the star of the planet I'm on.

I seem to be in a meadow of some sort, I can just feel grass brushing up against my skin. With my surroundings somewhat figured out, I begin to acknowledge how uncomfortable I am. I tilt my head down to get a better look at myself, and to find out why I'm so uncomfortable. As I look down, I am met with an extremely toned and muscled upper body with a blood red colour and scaly like skin. With massive pectoral muscles and two dark erect nipples standing atop them.

Further down, an extremely muscled stomach 12 pack leading to two massively sized thighs. Nestled between them, an equally as large penis with testicles hung straight down together, a black fuzzy mess of hair just above the penis, which seems to be the only hair on my body.

As I continue looking down my legs, my thighs rise upwards at an angle from my hips, until my knees, then my shins angle back towards the ground making an upside down 'v' on the underside of my knees, my ankle faces slightly forward and begins to transitions from skin to nail, turning into hooves which widen and grow at an angle downwards until they are at eye level with my knees. I can somewhat tense each toenail, which moves the muscle from inside slightly.

Still not finding the reason for being uncomfortable, I shift my waist slightly, along with my movement I find another appendage, starting just above my ass crack on the tailbone is a thick reptilian-like tail, currently twisted in on itself stabbing my back.

Knowing now what is causing my discomfort, I slowly disentangle my tail. Having that out of the way, I am getting used to the ways of using my body, figuring out how to move my limbs.

I move my eyesight back up my body to my arms. Matching my overly muscled chest, my enormous arms strut out either side of me, with claw-like hands, the latter half of each finger turning into a black sharp nail.

I bring my hands close to my face for inspection, I can see that they have a rough scaly but flexible hybrid type skin. My fingers end around the hallway mark on each, then they turn into straight, sharp and black nails with the longest on my middle finger.

I continue to investigate by clenching and unclenching, as I increase my strength I wince slightly as I feel a small sharp sting of pain. As I un-clench my hand to get a better look at it, I see 4 clean cuts into my tough skin with an even darker colour than my skin blood seeping out of me. Shortly after, my skin begins to come back together and the sensation disappears.

I finished examining my hand, now for the first time I see what is in my blind spot. Between my eyes I can make out a snout with large open nostrils at the end. I begin to bring my hand to my face, stopping halfway as I remember the pain when my nails cut my skin, deciding to leave inspection until I can do it safely.

I decide to put my focus somewhere else, pushing myself off the ground with my hands slowly. As I rise I use my tail to further prop myself up. I note that my tail is basically all muscle which could be useful.

Rising to my feet, I wobble a bit struggling to balance myself with all the weight. I slowly steady myself, resting the latter half of my tail limply on the ground for support. Now standing I have a better look at my surroundings.

I regard a few standout things around me. To my left a tall treeline that stretches much further forward, far in the distance the treeline breaks for a bit, a fast flowing river squeezing through the break of trees. The river stretches much further in the distance to my right, until I can no longer make it out between the hills. Across the river, I can somewhat make out a truly massive, misty mountain range in the far distance.

I continue observing the surroundings only to be assaulted, an erratic, jittery feeling bursts into me. Overwhelmed by this new sensation, I barely detect a high pitched shuffling noise to my left. I Immediately turn my head towards the sound, I get a glimpse of something much darker than the surrounding greenery.

The sensation fades somewhat, I can feel it coming to me from the direction of the noise. I unsteadily walk towards the trees, each step becomes easier as I get used to the movements of my legs. As I get closer, the trees start to tower over me, they look about the height of four of me stacked on top of each other. Each tree has a black, purplish colour to them, some of the tree trunks are wider than me, they rise up until splitting off into branches with dark green foliage.

I reach the trees, slowing myself slightly as I enter their embrace. Inside the forest is much darker, the light barely makes it through the canopies creating a dark environment inside. I trip over a tree root, realising I'm going too fast while still getting used to movement, so I slow down.

Trudging unsteadily through the forest, I follow the flimsy link to the sensation. I focus more on the sensation as I walk, inside me it congregates, while walking, I can't make out exactly where it stays. While focusing on the sensation inside of me, I feel it reaching out to me, I think I can use it somehow, but for now I focus on following the trail.

After following the trail for some time, I catch the sensation becoming stronger, but there is less of it. I see something different than the constant trees up In front of me, a small opening, as I approach, I spot movement.

Standing on all fours, black, purplish in colour and tall enough to reach my knees is a being of some sort. They have a slim, muscled body, short black hair covering them, a small tail, a muzzle like face with a nose sitting on the end and two upwards pointing ears. As I walk closer to the resting beings, they begin to perk up and face towards me.

They bark low guttural sounds while facing me, I can see two rows of sharp teeth in their mouths. I stop my movement, the sensation hitting me again, however this time it is much stronger. I feel the jittery sensation again, but this time there is another one, this one feels like focused raging fire. Being assaulted by these two sensations, I get overwhelmed again, as they swirl inside of me, I'm barely able to make out the barking sounds again.

Looking back up, I see all 7 of them begin to surround me. Forcing myself to focus, I see one of the left ones rush towards me. Keeping low to the ground, it aims towards my left leg, opening its mouth wide and biting into my large ankle.

"Uagrh" I involuntarily roar. I feel pain again, this time however it is much worse, the pain is much stronger and I jerk my leg in an attempt to dislodge its grip.

With my movement being too much for it to handle, the being on my ankle is thrown backwards into a tree and I hear a loud crunch. I think about looking back to see how it fared but stop myself, keeping my focus on the six In front I see two from the right rush towards me.

I remember my sharp claws, bring my hands up and ready myself to intercept them. They rush towards me, one on the right thrusts itself into the air towards my thigh, the left one goes low in an attempt to mimic the one I dealt with before. I open my right hand up, wait for the right moment and swing, my claws tear through the face of the being, ripping four gashes into it and it drops limply.

With the one on the right dealt with, I raise my left hoof just as the left one reaches beneath me. Being too quick for it to adjust I slam down my foot, I hear a loud thump and crunch as my hoof completely crushes the being on the floor, splattering it's insides.

I raise my foot, look up to the rest and see them quiet down while whimpering slightly. I raise my right foot and ready myself to charge, as I do so, I see the being furthest from me on the left twist and bolt away into the forest.

Along with one the rest turn around and rush away. Once I'm sure they are gone, I look down at my left ankle and check where I was bitten. The area where I was bitten has dark red blood all round it, the wound being mostly healed.

I flare my nostrils and exhale loudly as I calm myself. Looking back, I see the one that I launched backwards, or what was left of it. An indent the size of the being on the tree looks to be where it hit, all around the impact is a mangled mess of the being in pieces.

Being sure the bodies wouldn't move now, I turned my sights back to the one with an unrecognisable head. I kneel in front of it, slowly I push my middle finger nail into the body of it, with a tiny amount of resistance, my nail slices straight through the skin of the being. Content with the experimentation of my claws I raise myself up.

"Uggrrrghh" Suddenly from behind me I hear a growl. I turn around quickly, slightly losing my balance as I underestimate the weight of my tail being swung around. I see one of the beings from before, however this time it is bigger, around half as taller while slightly longer and has a white stripe going down from its forehead to its nose.

Not being given any time to prepare myself, it bolts towards me. I bring my hands up in front of me, observing the being as it sprints towards me, I think quickly to what would be the best course of action and choose to swipe at it like I did with one before.

It closes in on me, I ready my arm for a swing as it looks to be going straight for my stomach.

Once close enough I swing my arm, just as I'm about to slice through it, the being recoils, digging into the dirt and stopping itself it opens its maw wide.

A sharp stinging sensation comes from my right hand, I see a white mist being blasted out the mouth of the being. I bring my arm as fast as I can away from the mist, not knowing what might happen if I let it stay within too long.

With my hand out of the way, I see the being jump toward me. I use all my strength and swing my left hand to intercept its attack, connecting with its neck my hand decapitates it, both upper and lower parts being flung away as I am thrown off balance underestimating my strength.

I quickly regain my balance, look to the body parts and see them lying broken to my right. I raise my right hand to see its state, what I see is a thin layer of hard frost covering my whole hand to the wrist, a constant stinging pain pulses from it. I attempt to move my finger which causes the pain to heighten, I decide to leave it as i could make it worse.

This time I cautiously check my surroundings, I focus on my hearing to make sure I don't get surprised again. While checking my surroundings, I once again try to feel the sensation inside of me, same as it was before, it congregates into a single position, being still now I can better locate it. Near my beating heart I can feel it, as the sensations come together they seem to calm down and smoothly flow around each other.

Now that I have an idea of where it is, I attempt to interact with it, to see if I can manipulate it. I reach out to it like I would a muscle, try to pull or push it. After trying a few times I still get no reaction, I still have the feeling from it, to release it in some way I don't know.

I don't think I'm able to manipulate it with my current knowledge, so I decide to leave it for now and go to explore more of the forest. I look around, to see if there is any distinct direction different from the other but end up seeing the same all around me, so I choose a random direction and walk.

After a while, I note the light coming from the canopies has dimmed a little. While walking through the forest, I strain my senses in search of anything out of the ordinary. Most of the things I see are too fast in a forest environment for me to catch up to with my large body.

Suddenly I feel something in the air, similar to the sensation which rushes inside of me, however this time it wafts through the air like a miasma. I can feel similarities to the sensations I felt previously but they seem to have lost some of their vigour. I can feel it getting stronger as I keep walking, the miasma gets thicker and regains some of its lost vigour.

I reach the centre of the miasma and cautiously look around, in front of me I can see a mangled body next to a tree, around the body claw marks and other signs of battle littered around it. I walk slowly over to the body, so that I can get a better look at it but also focus on my surroundings.

The body seems to have a similar body type to me, except its legs are drastically different with no hooves and they don't bend backwards at the knees. It has a thick chest with an arm on either side at the shoulders, its left arm seems to have been ripped off past its elbow, its right arm still intact with scratch marks, I can barely see its hand which clutches something not sharing my claw-like characteristics and instead having five callused fingers. The neck stops suddenly, it seems like the head of the being was torn off.

I step closer to the body. I can see a weird second skin on the being above the normal pale white skin, it seems to be wearing a brown rough material all over its body, the material is thicker in more open areas and thinner in areas next to joints. Underneath the rough material, a soft, extremely thin dirtied beige material is on the chest area of the body, a similar type material on the groin of the body but brown in colour.

As I inspect the body, I detect the miasma is the strongest around it, it seems like the miasma and the sensations originate from the being. I attempt to reach out to the sensations within the miasma again, the same as before the miasma shifts away from my hand when I reach for it.

With nothing working, I decide to stop trying to influence the miasma. Looking down I can see the body's hand clutching an item of some sort, it has a 'T' shape that the hand is grasping, there seems to be a material similar to what the body has on it underneath the hand. Above the hand is a long, sharp and shiny material, the material seems to have been worn and dulled across its width in some places. I yank the item out of the hand and push the sharpest part I can find into my arm, it takes some force but I finally make a small cut into my forearm.

Finishing my experimentation of the material, I leave it with the corpse. I search the rest of the body, nothing else seems to be on the body except a small skin storage item on its hip. Inside I find a thin sheet with markings on it and some thin, square shaped pieces of material with engravings on them.

There are a few pieces of square shaped material, some are grey, some are brown and one of them is gold. I put the pieces to the ground, I can't recognize any of the engravings on them so I investigate the other thing I found. Raising the sheet to my face, I discern small lines of markings on it, they don't mean anything to me but I might be able to find out at some point, I put it back where I found it and strap the skin around my wrist to keep it on me.

I find nothing else in the area except the markings from earlier, with nothing else to interest me here I decide to move on. As I get up, I detect a very faint disturbance between the natural sounds of the forest, locating which direction it is, I decide to take myself to the disturbance.

Nearing the origin of the sounds, I notice the trees becoming sparser, the disturbance seems to be coming from outside of the forest. From the edge of the treeline, I can see a large uniformed structure sitting not too far from the treeline. Between me and the structure are numerous beings like the one I found just before, these ones however have a head on them and are wearing a large variation of materials.

Looking more closely, I discern the skin wearer's are in groups from three to twelve. They have different types of items like the one in the forest, some have sharp long edges, some have blunt large objects at the end of a wood pole and some have weird arched sticks with a material attached at each end point. The groups of skin wearers seem to be travelling to and from the large structure.

Taking my sights away from the skin wearers briefly, I decide to check the surroundings. The same river flows in the distance as before but slightly closer, to my right are tall hills that continue towards the structure in the distance, the ground is still the same light green grass.

The structure looks to be made out of stone among other materials. There is a large wall, as tall as the trees of the forest that covers much of my view until it curves and I can no longer see it. The top of the wall has small openings about the width of the skin wearers periodically placed, this design continues all the way, I can briefly spot skin wearers in the openings walking across the wall. Just over the wall I can make out a wide variety of different shapes jutting up, some of them have smoke pluming from the top, among the weird shapes, I spot three rod-like structures close to each other strutting up into the sky further in the distance. Looking back down to the wall, closer to me is a large archway opening in the wall, the skin wearers come from this.

I see a large gathering of skin wearers around the archway, they seem to be communicating in some way. Standing out from the other skin wearers, a large group of similarly looking uniformed ones seem to be standing guard, they have much more shiny material on them with some slight blue tint.

Thinking back to the skin wearer I found in the forest, I try to focus on the sensations to see if these ones also have a miasma-like aura surrounding them. Once I start thinking about it, my vision is filled with many different colours, each colour has a different feel to it, with the overload I can just barely make out a similar one that I felt earlier wafting about the corpse.

Each skin wearer has their own aura surroundings them, some seem to be larger and more intensive than others. New colours seem to appear, while other colours disappear in the auras surrounding the skin wearers.

I move along the treeline, further away from the structure to the right, I don't want to be found right now by the skin wearers as they could potentially attack me. As I trudge through the forest, I begin to feel drowsy, realising that I start looking for a place to rest.

I find a large rock formation in the forest close to the treeline and decide to investigate it. On closer inspection I find a large archway leading further into the ground. It doesn't have the same uniform look as the places the skin wearers inhabit so I decide to enter.

The entrance is just taller than me and roughly four of me wide, a rough rocky ground leads further into a darker environment. While walking down, I hear sharp scraping sounds above me, looking up I see two small indents trailing back through where I came. Realising it came from my movements, I carefully raise my hand above my head and feel two long protrusions, they seem to be made of the same as my nails, they start thicker on either side of my head and then get thinner until a sharp tip.

I stroll down further, with my head slanted slightly lower now. Eventually I reach the ending of the cavern. Before me is a wide dome like room with a tall ceiling, most of the floor is empty except a small portion of liquid in the right side corner.

I walk over to the liquid in the corner, I kneel down awkwardly in front of the liquid and bring my face over it. The first thing I see is my large snout, obscuring the view of my neck, it comes forward from the rest of my head. Two large nostrils sit at the end of my snout above my mouth. Further up my snout, my two large eyes sitting in their sockets stare back at me, with a deep black sclera encircling my bright red iris. On either side of my head, below my horns, long ears start and point upwards slightly with a pointed end, my black horns sit above my ears, they point slightly forward at the start then curve upwards till the end. My blood red coloured skin continues to my face until my snout, my skin transitions to black near my nose.

I open my mouth slightly, inside I have two rows of long, white, sharp teeth lining my upper and lower jaw, in between my rows of teeth is a large red tongue, I stretch my tongue out of my mouth and it stops around double the length of my snout.

I finish looking at my head, move it slightly to get a better look at my neck. My neck has hardly any length to it, the muscles come all the way up to the back of my jaw. With my inspection done of my upper body, I look around the cave to find a place to rest.

I move towards the right side of the cavern. There are a few rocks that I smash together to make a place to sit on and rest my back against the wall. Sitting against the wall I curl my tail next to me. My right arm still has a small layer of frost on it, but I feel ill be able to use it again soon. After feeling content I close my eyes and rest.

After an unknown amount of time, suddenly I'm awoken by an echoing sound bouncing down the cavern entrance. I quickly push myself up from my makeshift resting place, look towards the entranceway and look for anything out of the ordinary. I search for a few seconds and find nothing, slowly I move myself towards the entranceway, my hooves making light clopping on the hard rocky surface.

Slowly I walk up the entranceway, doing my best to stay as quiet as possible as I don't want to alert the thing making noise of my existence, I learnt the power of surprise from the large quadruped earlier. I also check my right hand, finally I can use it again, the frost effects seem to have gone away.

As I start to get closer to the entrance, the cavern brightens slightly. At the top of the cavern I see a skin wearer, I stop to better observe it. Standing at the top of the entranceway, it looks like it could just about reach my knee. It wears another beige skin on its chest and legs but nothing else. It seems to lack any sort of muscle, with its skeleton easily viewable through its skin. It has a lanky figure, a small head and some black, frilly hair that cascades down to its neck.

""?????" the skin wearer opens its mouth and shouts into the entrance, it doesn't seem to be looking at me, instead it eyes across from one side of the entrance to the other. "?????" it shouts again, this time a different sound comes out of its mouth.

As I continue observing it, I theorise it can't see me after I move my hands up and down a bit and it doesn't look towards me when I do. Slowly, I raise my foot to take a step towards the skin wearer, as my foot presses into the floor, it makes a slight crunching sound crushing a rock underneath and alerts the skin wearer to my presence.

"????" the skin wearer shouts again in the same tone as the first time, it looks in my general direction as it shouts. After a few seconds of silence it raises its leg slowly, it looks like the skin wearer makes an effort to take a step forward but stops midway and brings itself back. The skin wearer looks back briefly, then turns back around and stares back into the entranceway.

I decide the skin wearer seems to act differently than the other beings I have met so far, it doesn't seem to pose a threat to me, however I do remember much white mist and make sure to keep my guard up just in case.

Readying myself, I start walking up the slope towards the skin wearer. With each sound my hooves make, I begin to feel the jittery, erratic sensation again, a small stream surging out of the skin wearer towards the gathering inside me.

Finally, I see a drastic change in the skin wearers stance. It seems to see my full body now, suddenly it recoils, its left leg lifts backwards like it's readying to run away, its face muscles change drastically and its eye's become much larger as it slowly raises its head to look further up my body from my chest.

I now stand in front of it, almost within claws length. "AAAAHHH" it opens its mouth to let out a loud high pitched scream, it trips on itself in an attempt to turn around. As it screams, the previously small stream surging towards me becomes a fast flowing river and I'm stunned by its suddenness.

I push my focus on the surge, look back up, only to see the skin wearer attempting to run away from me. Not knowing what might happen if I let it get away, I ready myself and run after it. With my much larger fame, I reach it before it can make it out of the small opening around the cavern entrance.

I ready myself to stop the skin wearer, now being right behind it, the skin wearer looks back at me and screams again "HA-", thinking back to the white mist, I swiftly slam my left hand straight into the back of it, cutting its scream off. My nails slice straight for the skin it is wearing right into the body, coming out the other side.

"Urghh" it lets out a small grunt and goes limp. Now on my wrist, my arm pierced straight through the body. Using my right hand I rip the body off my left wrist. I look down on the corpse, now in two pieces split from the middle. It was a shame it ran away as I could have attempted to learn something from it about the rest of its kind, or its way of communication.

With the skin wearer dead, I quickly check the surrounding area of the cavern entrance. It seems that nothing heard the skin wearer scream its odd way of communication, knowing that my current resting place is safe, I run back to the edge of the forest, to see if there is anything abnormal going on.

I near the treeline slowing my pace, the sky has become much darker since earlier, two moons hang there now. The largest moon sits just on the horizon to my left and is grey in colour, the much smaller moon is directly above, different from its larger companion this one is red in colour. Together they light up the night sky along with countless stars.

Standing on the treeline, I place myself slightly behind a tree as I notice I'm much easier to see in the illumination of the moons. Not too far form me, I spot a familiar style structure, however this time it seems to be much smaller in overall size.

The walls of this structure have much less detail, they are around two of me in height and are not a lot more than something I could make by smashing rocks together and stacking them. There are burning sticks placed periodically across the wall, they seem to be used to illuminate the area around them, which I find interesting. It seems to me, that these skin wearers have confidence in fending off the dangers as they set themselves apart like a beacon in the night.

Unlike the much larger structure, this one doesn't have any weird shapes pointing into the sky from over the walls. I can see an opening in the wall, five skin wearers stand around it with more burning sticks in their hands, they have the same look as the ones I saw around the large archway to the other structure.

As I'm observing, I see a commotion at the opening. Joining the five there previously, another three skin wearers along with a moving wood contraption, it seems to move with the help of the four circular wood pieces attached to it. Saving the contraption for later, the three new skin wearers seem to be communicating with the other five, along with many different sounds, the three finally set off with the wood contraption away from the structure.

I follow the group as they move further away from the structure, they seem to be following a path on the floor made of dirt that goes toward the direction of the larger structure. As I watch them, I catch one of them has a similar item that I found on the corpse in the forest, it also has some shiny material covering its chest and legs. The other two skin wearers don't have any shiny material or items on them, however there seems to be objects on the wood contraption they are travelling with.

I question myself after a while on what to do, I can't see the smaller structure in the distance anymore, there also doesn't seem to be any other skin wearers in the area. With nothing in the vicinity, I decided to stride over to them. These ones might have a different reaction then the one I met earlier and teach me their method of communication.

It seems to me as I walk over to them, these skin wearers can't see that far in the distance, that may have been why they used burning sticks around their structure. I try to move as loud as possible to alert the skin wearers of my presence, the one earlier had a bad reaction when it saw me earlier suddenly, maybe being able to prepare themselves will help.

I know when they realise my presence as the one with shiny materials on him pulls his similarly shiny but sharp item from its waist and gets into a weird stance. "?????!" I can just hear the one in a stance shout something incoherent, the other two come to a stop as it shouts. With the group still I continue making my way over the same as before.

They continue to communicate with each other while I parade over, the one with the sharp item doesn't say much but continues to scour the direction I'm in. Finally, I see the one at the front show signs similar to the skin wearer from earlier when it saw me, its eyes open wider, it jerks its hand which causes the sharp item to drop to the floor, the two others exhibit similar reactions.

"HAAAAA!" The two at the back scream just like the one in the forest, one of them suddenly jerks backwards and falls off the wooden contraption they were standing on, the other falls backwards onto its backside. The only one not screaming is the one in front of me, its face constantly contorting into different shapes as it stares at me.

I focus on the one in front of me, it has a much different look to the one at the cave. The face of the skin wearer at the cave had a much smoother looking skin, whereas this one in front of me has a dirty and slightly wrinkled face. Its sclera is white with a brown iris, it has a sharp jawline, a small thin nose, thick black hair on its eyebrows along with short unkempt black hair on its head. It stands roughly up to my waist. It wears a similar second skin to the one in the forest, the thick, rough, brown skin is all over its body except its neck up, it has thinner shiny material on its chest, knees, wrists and shoulders.

Slowly, the skin wearer kneels down and picks back up the sharp item it dropped before. Now standing up, it holds the items' sharp end angled towards me in front of it, slowly spreads its feet apart, digs them into the ground and stares at me with its eyes narrowed.

I look to the left, the one on the ground is lying there limp, I haven't seen or heard from the other one after it fell off the wooden board, seeing as they aren't doing anything I look back towards the one in front of me and take a step towards it.

As I move forwards, it brings its sword down to its bottom right, lowers its upper half close to the ground in a crouch like position. I watch it run towards me, much faster than anything I've seen so far which alerts me. I ready myself, bring my hands up to intercept if it plans to attack me and wait.

It swings the sharp item, I barely make it out as it slices straight into my wrist, it stops halfway through at my bone. I feel the sharp sensation from the wound, still surprised at how quick it was, I miss the skin wearer releasing the item from the wound. I bring my focus back to the skin wearer, its item now free, it uses that speed again to slice towards my waist, I try to keep up with it as I bring my right hand nails to stop it. As the item strikes my nails, the item makes a sharp cracking noise and snaps in half.

With its item snapped in half, the skin wearer stares at it, ignoring me stupidly as I take this chance to attack. My nails come into contact with the shiny material on its chest, a similar noise to when its sharp item broke happens as my nails pierce straight through the material, through the rough brown second skin and out the other side of the chest, this time I quickly bring my hand back just in case I have to attack again.

The skin wearer in front of me falls forward as my hand rips out from its chest, it drops limply to the ground and I smash its head with my hoof. I presume it can't come back from those injuries. Looking down at the corpse below me, I'm intrigued as to how it managed to put so much power behind its attack, however thinking of the other two I save a closer look for later. Raising my head back up, I move over to the one lying on the dirt path.

Looking down at the body lying limply in front of me, I can see the skin wearers have a very similar skeletal body, however their facial skin structure seems to differ vastly between them. This one has a much smoother, less dirtier skin on its face than the one before, its jawline is much less defined with more fat, along with its cheeks, a small amount of brown hair is above its eyes and on its head. I can tell straight away, this one has much less muscle mass than the one i just dealt with, it was using a much thicker skin to cover itself but dropped it after it saw me. The second skin this one wears is a much different material to the one I just dealt with, this one is wearing something with fur on it, it also lacks the rough parts or the shiny material.

I lean down, raise my hand above its face to check for a reaction, I feel a small brush of air coming from the nose, but no reaction. With it being unconscious, I leave it there for now to go check on the final skin wearer. As I approach, I hear a slight whimpering sound. The last one seems to have injured itself when it fell off the wooden contraption, clutching its left leg which has a large gash on it.

I watch it turn towards me, liquid originating from its eye has been smeared all over its face, It opens its mouth wide, breathes in sharply and then abruptly lies limply onto the ground. They both had the same reaction of falling unconscious, which I find to be extremely odd as a defensive or offensive manoeuvre, being completely open to any of my attacks.

With the last two skin wearers alive lying unconscious, I check the surroundings briefly, not knowing if more of them might show up. Seeing nothing moving in my field of view, I make the decision to take the two unconscious ones back to the cavern right away. Not being able to observe the wooden contraption is unfortunate, but I'm more concerned about possibly encountering one similar in strength to the dead one, or stronger.

I hold one under each arm, careful not to break them as I swiftly sprint back to the cavern. When I make it back, I lay them both down on the cavern floor and wait for them to awake from their unconsciousness, making sure to be vigilant of sounds coming from the entranceway.