"Ugh, where am I?" I rub my head and notice that I have a cold steel Helmet, breastplate and plate-legs on "Huh... Why do I have these things on me... wait, who am I again? Huh."
A scream can be heard from a ways away
"I wonder who that could be"
"Kyaaa, someone Save me, please!"
I jump to my feet from a laying position and begin running to where the voice was heard "I'll save you!” I rush into a clearing and happen upon a young Fox girl lying on the ground. Standing over her was a hulking ogre about to land a devastating blow on her with a bulky tree limb. I lumber out and unlucky enough I am RIGHT under the ogre's blow, and I get knocked out, but somehow manage to scare the ogre into running off.
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A nice cold dampness makes itself known upon my forehead "Ugh...w-what happened?"
"You just saved my life, that's what happened" A young Fox girl says to me, looking down at me
"HOLY CRAP!" I blurt out before jumping to my feet "so, who are you....well, the better question is, what are you, if I may be so blunt?"
"Oh, I thought you knew...well, ya see, ima fox girl" she says beaming happily, tail wagging excitedly
"Oh, well come to think of it, that makes sense given your fur pattern, well, it’s nice to meet you....I didn't get your name."
"Heh, that's ‘cause I didn't give it to you yet. Hi, my names Casandra, what’s yours?" She says smiling happily
"I...I do not know."
"Well, that’s not good. Huh, well, id best be going, gotta get back to my family...say...you wouldn't by any chance have anywhere to go, would you?"
"Not that I know of, no. Why do you ask?"
Casandra "oooh, I was just wondering if you wanted to come with me to see my family, so I could show off the man that just saved my life." Casandra says grinning, and trying to hide the ever so slightest hints of a blush
I look confused before agreeing to go along
"Yay! " Casandra says before jumping on me in a hug
"Ooph" I exhale, falling backward under her, "hey now, not so rough, I did just get knocked out after all"
Casandra pretends to pout "aww, your no fun"
"Aww, come on, I didn't mean it like that!"
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later that day, I find myself hiking upon the sites of rather gnarled mountainsides. Unbeknownst to myself at the time, however, I notice a rather strange structure that would later prove to be unusually beneficial to our survival. Of course it didn't Dawn on me just how beneficial what I was gawking at would actually prove to be, neither of us knew to be honest.
"Hey Cassie, what is that over there I'm looking at? "
"Oh that? aah it’s just an old fallen tree. The funny thing is that the way it fell, is actually kind of like a cave underneath, because it fell over a little Chasm. so, in a way, it's kinda a small cave. "
Just then Cassie stops dead in her tracks and begins tentatively sniffing the air at hand. Little did I know just how valuable my innate instincts and reaction time were capable of responding.
Moments later I tackle Cassie to the ground, barely managing to keep her from getting struck with an arrow. Yet somehow her cheek was grazed by the arrow head sending a slight trickle of fresh blood running down her face!
"Cassie, are you OK?!"
"Oww oww oww oww oww! What the hell just happened? Ooh, no! Oh no Oh no Oh no Oh no... RUN FOR IT!" she screams before grabbing my hand and ripping me up the side of the rugged terrain of the Mountain side. I did not realize it quite yet, but the area that we were actually running for was that fallen tree that we had seen earlier in the day. We made it of course, but not without difficulty. The next thing I knew we were in that chasm under the tree. We then decided on going through that winding tunnel we ended up seeing upon entering the chasm, after all, we had nowhere else to go.
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Cassandra – “I’m hungry, do we have anything to eat?”
“I’m sorry cassie, but we ate the last of the food I had in my pack yesterday...”
Cassandra – “oh……that’s disappointing. How long have we been in this tunnel now?”
“it seems like its been 5 days now. I am not honestly sure if that’s right or not though, what with not being able to see the sun or the moon. That’s just what it feels like its been. OOH, look cassie, its edible mushrooms! We have something we can eat now! Isnt this great?!”
cassie looks at the mushrooms with disdain, not having eaten mushrooms before, and not particularly liking how they looked.
“I’m sorry cassie, I know they don’t look really great, but in our current situation, we can’t really be picky, else we run the large risk of starving!” I tell her with a bit of angst in my voice.
Cassie shrugs “well, if you say they are edible, I’ll trust your judgement on that, I…I honestly have not ever eaten anything that looks….soo……unusual….ya know, being a fox and all, I don’t typically eat things like that that are not, well…yea know……..meat.” she says smirking a tad.
“well, hey, look at it this way, at least we have something that we can eat right now, ya know, instead of the latter option.” I trail off not wanting to think about the fact that without finding something like this we had the very real possibility of starving, nor did I want to acknowledge that that possibility is still very real to both of us given that we were traversing the corradors of an unknown cave as far as we were aware, that cave could have lead nowhere and we could have been in what would have become our burial grounds. Thankfully for both of us that didn’t end up being the case. However, you could not have told us that in a way that we would have believed it at that point in time. Heck, even to this day, I wouldn’t have guessed that things would have turned out the way that they ended up playing out either.
What seemed like weeks had passed at that point, we had ended up eating everything edible in sight that we came across in that cave, and unfortunately for us, on one occasion those edibles ended up being not so safe to eat mushrooms, things that some folks happen to call “magic mushrooms”…..i don’t understand why they call them that, because the results that those things end up causing for you are anything but magical, in fact they are rather frightening if you’ve no idea whats going on at the time…heh….that was entertaining to think about after the fact, but in that point in time when things are going on as they were for us and you have no idea whats going wrong, its rather terrifying.
“ooh, look cassie, more mushrooms, god I’m hungry…this couldn’t have come at a better time frame right now honestly… I’m sure your hungry as well, lets eat!” I shout as I see some more mushrooms growing on the side of a fallen log that happens to be in the cave near us as we continue to traverse the cavernous ruins that we were bestranged to now. “huh…they look a bit….off…..oh well, I’m hungry and we aint got nothing else here to eat…so, beggers cant be choosers I guess.” I say as I carve some of them off the side of the log. We bot heat some, they tasted a bit funny every bit as much as they looked a bit funny, but hey, it was food, or so I thought, and I was under the impression that it was edible as well….booy was I wrong there haha.
About 10 minutes pass since we ate those mushrooms, and it was bout this point in time that things started to get…..a bit odd…
“hey cassie??”
“yea?”
“is it just me, or are things……seeming to become a tad…odd” I say as I look at her and her face begins to warp as I look at it, trying not to freak out as I see her face literally warp as I’m gazing at it
“huh…..y-yea, now that you mention it, I think they are…..getting…..wierd” she says as her eyes go wide much to the same degree that my own eyes are.
“y-you ok cassie?? Or….are things getting weird for you too……” I trail off as I keep staring at her now green swirling face
“uhm….y-yea, unless your turning into a dragon……..uhm….things are definitely getting weird in deed”….a long pause as we both come to the realization that those mushrooms might indeed have been funny mushrooms from both how they looked and how they tasted
“figures the first food that we would come across would be not so normal food, given it’s the first food we’ve seen in days” we both sat there for a moment, just dazed out of our minds at how strange things were beginning to look around us, just completely enthralled in the amusement and bewilderment of the sights we were beholding that were not of this normal earth…. We sat there bewildered at the sights we were both seeing for what seemed like a good 6 hours or more, however, at that point in our jorney, time had rather lost meaning without something to use as a comparison statistic….so, it may have actually been that long, or it may not have….we never really found out at that point, at least not at that point in time we hadn’t at least….we would have found that out later, but that is for later in this story.
A day or so later, we ended up coming to an area in that cavern that actually had some light, and also, FRESH WATER! Oh god how long had it been since we had fresh water! Too long, far too long by my own adventurer standards…the body can go without food for a while, but you don’t give the body water, and enough of it in decent timing, then the body begins to shut down, and that’s never a good thing when your not in an area that you can gather decent levels of supplies to survive with…so the fact that we stumbled upon fresh water that we could boil to sanitize was a legitimate god send for us.
“WATER!!!!” cassie cried out as she saw the water…it pained me to have to stop her right there and keep her from just running up there and drinking gallons of it right then and there knowing just how thirsty we both were, but it had to be done
“CASSIE, DON’T DRINK THAT RAW WATER!” I shout grabbing her arm to keep her from possibly drinking contaminated water that was never meant for drinking straight out of that pool it was in. I have to explain to her that although yes it was fresh water and we needed to both drink as much of it as we could, that we first had to sanitize it to make sure it didn’t contain some horrible bacteria that could easily kill us in both our weakened states, and that for that she would have to wait another five to ten mintues for me to bring some of that water to a boil using some of the fire wood that I had procured form some of the fallen dry trees that we kept passing along the way.
Cassie sighed and nodded, agreeing that the last thing we both need right now in our situation was for one of us to end up sick, especially since she already had an open wound that I had tended to the best that I could under our circumstances, that also was not looking too well as of right now…
“cassie, by the way, I’m going to need to look at that wound of yours, its…….its not looking too good honestly…and the last thing we need is for you to be getting an infected wound when were nowhere near any knid of civilization to be able to get you the medical help you’d need if you have an infected wound…especially given we have no idea where this leads to, if anywhere, or how long it will take to get there…..” I trail off, not wanting to give that thought process any more resources than it already garnered, that would not end well for either of us or our motivation or sanity.
She cringes thinking about that, and the fact that for all we knew, it could be infected already, and neither of us would know any better, her given her much stronger immune system than mine per being a fox-anthro that lives out here and deals with this stuff more than me, and myself because of my infamiliarity with her species and thigns relating to her species.
She sighs, and nods agreeance, and sits down, letting me inspect her wound and its bandaging. I discover, to my horror, that it is indeed infected, but I don’t tell her, and don’t let it known that it is indeed infected, and instead I do my best to rebandage the wound with fresh materials, and do my damndest to clean the wound of its infection…. She winces in pain as I do my best to disinfect it, using some of the hot water from the water I was trying to boil to try and sanitize the wound as best I can without burning her, explaining before hand that this is going to be hot and possibly burn, but that it is needed to sanitize the wound, trying not to let on that theres infection in it. She nods agreeing and preparing herself for the hot water’s pain.
What seemed to be later that night, we had plenty of drinking water, sanitized and packed away in my adventuring gear and water skins, of which, I had an unusual knack for overpacking, due to my strength that seemed to be higher than that of my fellow adventuresmen, so, I usually had more gear than needed because I always liked to overprepair, thus, I was lucky and had 4 waterskins. That was a godsend. We filled the waterskins with fresh drinking water and we continued on our way….I felt bad for cassie though after that day, because after that point, her infection began causing her more pain than it had before that day per trying to kill the infection. That burn on her leg from the hot water didn’t help either, so I offered to carry her from then on till her leg began to stop bugging her as much….thankfully, she let me, and she appreciated that more than I estimated that she would, and honestly, it was kinda nice. We both got some benefit from it, she got to let up on her leg and let up on the pain of walking on an infection, and I got to have a bit of companionship, closer than we had prior to then, because she was on my back as I carried her, and it was nice. Ooh, I forgot to mention….that infection in her leg I’m talking about right now? She sliced herself while we were traveling through the cave, that is different than the one that she had when we first fell, or, rather dived into this cavern…her other wound healed just fine thankfully, cause, those arrows could have easily been dipped in god only knows what, but luckily for us, they weren’t. it was bout this point in time that we started to realize that we could both hear running water, and we noticed a difference in temperature the further we traveled down that cavern….it took us a few more hours till we found out why that was. GLORIOUS ENDING AND LGIHT!!! We had reached the end of that cavern, and we found out why there was the sounds of running water and differing temperatures…its because the cavern came to an opened end, one that was a glorious sight to behold, and also rather frightening at the same time haha… ooh what a beautiful sight that was, and terrifying as well, did I mention that yet?? It was QUITE terrifying indeed. Haha. That exit to the cavern, or, shall we say that entrance to our new beginning was something indeed. It turns out that we somehow had entered a cavern that not only went underground from where we began, but it also tunneled through that land mass that we were once on, and somehow burrowed its way through the ground we were on, and came out on the side of the giant cliff that everyone had always talked about and said never to go towards per the winds being strong enough to literally blow you of f the side of the mountain side that the cliff was on. Yet, here we were, standing face to face with a sheer wall of terrifying and gorgeous wonder. We were standing, face first, with the sheer wonder that was the scenic sight of what lie under that sheer mountain cliff. We were standing face to face with the glorious lush dense forests that lay below that sheer mountain cliff, and we had nowhere else to go, thus the terror that that sceen provided us both. We knew we couldn’t go back, and we knew there was only one way to go, and that one way to go was down and into that forest below us. That thought terrified us both, because cassie knew that if she slipped off my back, she would fall to her death, and I knew that if either that happened, or if I myself slipped while we made our immense decent, that the end result was the same for both of us. I honestly think I was more terrified than she was because I had double the duty, and that, quite honestly, nearly made me wet myself with sheer terror haha.
“welp….only one way to go from here cassie….down….make sure you don’t let go, ok?”
She shook her head to shake away any feelings of fear, slapped her cheeks, and shouted to me “lets do this, we have made it this far, no going back now, onward HO!” she shouted and pointed out towards the forest smiling happily. Honestly, were it not for her confidence in me, I’m not sure if I would have made it out of that with her like we did…but we most definitely did, because here I am right now telling you all of this.
Well, all that climbing out of the way, we found ourselves in a new world that neither of us knew anything about….we both ended up exploring that forest, and we had a blast doing so haha…we found some amusing plant life, and some even more amusing animals as well….those were some entertaining times at that point….problem was, her infected leg got so much worse so damn fast that netiher of us knew what was going on until it was nearly too late…. After all, that ended up turning out to be what we later found out to be refered to as a rain forest, and that means that it is really hot and humid in there, well….you do the math, it doesn’t take a person of immense intellect to realize that heat and humidity make an infection go rampant really fast does it? Yea, her legs infection that I happened to get under control in that cave took a turn for the worse, really fast too…my knowledge of herbology didn’t help here either given that this area was completely foreign to us both and that netiher of us knew anything about the plant life here or the animal life here either…I ended up looking a huge fool trying to figure thigns out as she lay there in pain, crying out…..it wasn’t till the third night there, as she lay there in pain, crying, that we ended up getting any kind of luck going our way….i’m standing there guarding her as various creatures begin stalking around us, ones that I can only presume were predators, and low and behold….we had a stroke of luck come our way…a native of the area it seems ended up having been watching us from a ways away in what I presume to be a safety perch for them, and ended up seeing that we were not just idiots, I hope at least haha, and ended up lending a hand…. It was only after then that we ended up finding what we needed to completely heal and disinfect her infected leg….and by this point ,It was rather obvious that I had hidden the fact that her leg was infected….hooooo she was not happy about that with me haha…let me tell ya, she wouldn’t talk to me for the rest of that week haha….but, for me, it was totally worth it, because, well, ya know….she lived *rubs the back of my neck laughing* anywho….we ended up being shown that we were closer to a village than we had first thought we were, and that we were actually rather lucky to have made it down that Cliffside in one piece per the locals saying that most people that even find that cavern, don’t make it down the cliff, per being over packed and or too weak to make it down the cliff, let alone anyone carrying anyone..they were all rather impressed to say the least…I’m just glad to have made it down safely with cassie honestly, I didn’t much care for their praising and boasting that I was amazing to them for it, I was just happy we were both safe now.
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