CHAPTER ELEVEN

The dwarf awoke alone. The sun had performed its job of drying, his skin and hair only wet with the dew pooled around him. It all splashed off from him and their leaves straight to the soil, the stout frame smashing their corpses as he bent himself up out from the glare above, scanning his surroundings for his pet. The river rushed to his right. Behind, bricks of nature stacked themselves high to support the wall of trees that continued their rustle, all forming a horseshoe to round the dwarf. Directly ahead mist had not yet burned, and the church, egg, and hole he’d escaped menaced from the west. This last direction crunched and snorted. Too the dwarf’s stomach growled. In a handful of days he’d eaten a handful of potatoes, his palms empty else. He bounced the conflicting ideas of a pet search party and berry foraging against each other until finding himself unable any longer to ignore the continued western noise. Easing himself up, the dwarf investigated.

Drawing close, the dwarf realized the sound’s source to be an echoing out from yesterday’s battlefield. He drew his breath and hoisted his frame over cracked eggshell, carefully steadying himself to avoid slipping back into the viscera. There he found Waspig tearing at the exposed flesh of the fallen. The dwarf’s eyebrows pressed themselves against each other as he turned his gaze gut-wards. With one more glance towards the beast, the dwarf was back over onto the grass, hobbling then into a slow walk.

Butterflies rested themselves on stumps and logs, the latter of which with ecosystems of shroom and moss draped atop. Upon closer inspection, the dwarf realized, each butterfly sprouted mushrooms from head to spine. He watched one break off from its group and flutter over to rest near the river, at which a nearly Waspig weighted frog crept from cover and shot its tongue. A fish bounced out from the nearby water and too became its prey. The dwarf wandered away.

The sun hung. The dwarf wished then for the hat he’d once worn working under warm weather. Its round brim cast shields of shadows that always kept his head cool, the dwarf’s bald dome now particularly unignorable. He retreated soon to the wall of earth and dirt, the burning star’s trajectory still constant as it descended down to town. He placed his hands against the cliff face and held his head down, beads of sweat dripping into a pond of itself. His stomach cried out in protest of the conditions endured, but the dwarf could do little else than sympathize. He’d found no berries.

He then found berries, a bush sprinkled onto by bald the dwarf realized. He studied the things intently, not yet pulling any from their stems. Each’s color gleamed red, a saturation he’d seen much of in recent days to his distaste. But he plucked a berry from the bush and gently tore the fruit in two, fingering a dribbling of its juice into the pocket of his lips. An announcement of some levels gained in SURVIVAL appeared before him. However...

Bitter.

He spat the thing and kicked at its siblings in anger. The dwarf’s teeth clenched. He marched forward with the wall to his side while juggling not a thought at all. His hair worn feet splashed straight through the river past toads of all sizes. Soon, he inadvertently completed his crescent pathed walk and found he could again see fully the settlement he’d spied before, a bountiful collection of buildings nestled on a faraway shore that wore its blues well. His lips salivated as he considered the cooks that concealed themselves within, far off as they were, the vegetables they harvested, alien as they may be. The dwarf thought of the cakes. He thought of his mother’s. His gut roared.

A frog heftier than any previously observed crept from the bank, fungus dotting its head. With hardly any hesitation the thing blasted its pink munition out onto the dwarf’s back. His feet left the ground as wind whooshed past both sides, his hands flailing useless. And then the cave closed in around him.

Resting on wet flesh, the dwarf regained his composure enough to understand the digestion that’d soon follow. He attempted to scramble to his feet only to slide and plop face first back onto the tongue beneath. Before realizing, he rolled, bumping up against the thing’s sealed lips. The dwarf began pounding his fists against the door causing the creature to retaliate and shake itself, the dwarf violently flung around within. Amidst the chaos the beast gaped its maw allowing light to illuminate an engorged uvula, the dwarf compelled to action following recovery. He rolled himself against the lips for a second time, next using leverage provided by the seal to prop his legs up which, with great effort, they did in straight bends. As the creature traveled, so did the dwarf’s desired angle change. Moments passed and he seized his chance, leaping off the frog’s flesh and onto that which hung from its roof. It in turn stirred into a frenzy, desperate to rid itself of the clinging parasite. The dwarf refused the calls to release his hands commanded, listening only to his own pangs of unbelievable hunger. Persistence paid off as he exited in spilled vomit, the frog disturbed, deflated, and unable to will its own flee. The dwarf leapt then atop the creature, pounding his bruised fists onto its head bashing a concussion into the predator until it toppled dead. The dwarf fell beside the corpse, his growling stomach rising and deflating with as then yet unseen acceleration.

“MELEE INCREASED TO 5”

“MELEE INCREASED TO 6”

“MELEE INCREASED TO 7”...

Night arrived as too a fire born from wood and XP, the dwarf’s SURVIVAL stat soaring past many others. Waspig had arrived from across the river, filth from the egg once more washed away in its wake, the two then cooperating in cooking the defeated’s limbs from detachment to dinner. The dwarf maneuvered through these processes in a dejected dour, allowing his body to act autonomously in avoidance of death. The first bite he ate following the frog’s roast loosened a store more of tears. His pet looked on unable to earn any enlightening, and so it returned to its second feast. Energy began restoring itself within the dwarf’s body as the last of the flames snuffed, he then laying his frame down next to fire dried fur. Together they drifted off to a sleep the sun would not see.