Where The Wild Things Are Pt. 2

[wrecking_yard]

The eerie silence continues as we’re scrounging around the forest; there’s more edible than I’d been expecting - by the time we settle down under an overhang just off the road, we’ve both done pretty well for a short time. I’ve managed cudweed, a few ears of corn, and a handful of potatoes; she’s found potatoes and sweet potatoes, several slightly bruised pears, an unfamiliar melon, and a couple of strange husked fruit that look like unusually oblong coconuts. I can’t find them in what’s downloaded of the plant database, of course.

I’m making a ring of rocks, tinder, and dry fallen wood. “You shouldn’t be grabbing plants you don’t know - if one of those is poisonous we’ve got no way to get help.”

She rolls her eyes. “Melons are melons, I’ve never heard of a poisonous melon.”

“And that?” I gesture at the oblong husks with one of the smaller sticks I’m arranging.

“Something was eating them - I found some empty shells that’d been cleaned out around the tree.”

I’m working on getting the tinder lit. “You know animals can eat things we can’t, right?”

She folds her arms. “Have you seen any sign of animals here?”

I did see a few odd faded tracks but I couldn’t figure out what they were…. And there’s still no sound of birds or insects. “Well if we are in the other world, then gods and spirits can definitely eat things we can’t.”

I know there’s stories where eating the food in other realms is dangerous, but I’m trying to ignore that because we’re pretty short on options.

“You don’t know that!” She sticks her tongue out at me and starts working on cracking one of the husks with a rock.

It comes open easier than I’d expected; she pulls it apart and the insides are….

Red, with some white marbling, and it looks and smells like fresh raw beef.

It’s weird enough to almost distract me from the first little flickers of a campfire.

We both stare at it for a minute, then she’s got my knife and is working on digging a chunk out.

“MIU don’t just grab that!” She grumbles something and ignores me, levering a chunk out and shoving it in her mouth before I can grab anything to stop her. “Don’t put that in your - we don’t know what that is-“

She chews, and swallows, squinting funny. “It’s meat.”

“Meat doesn’t grow on trees!”

“Maybe here it does! We’re in a kami world right?”

She holds it over at me, my knife still embedded in the raw meat in the husk.

This place is going to drive me nuts. “At least let me cook it first!” I grab it, and reach over to grab the other one before she can try to eat that raw. She sulks, eating a couple of the pears while I’m trying to roast what I can.

The melon remains an unidentified melon even after we’ve scooped seeds out and eaten it; the meat and potatoes are a little bland without any salt or anything, but it’s a more solid meal than I’d expected getting dropped into a foreign world.

We end up following the road for a while; I made one half-hearted attempt at arguing in favor of staying put with a campfire for a search party, and she just looked up from part of the other meat-fruit and gave me an idiot stare while saying she was eating meat from a tree until I conceded a search party was unlikely, then pointed out that if someone of them were looking for sacrifices it’d be stupid.

She wanted to find the Kemonogami, I wanted to avoid just walking up to them, either way keeping moving was probably safer. Everything was still eerily quiet with only occasional distant sounds that could’ve been voices or some kind of creature; every once in a while I could’ve sworn I saw something moving in the brush, but nothing came where we could see it.

We ended up further in the mountains by sunset, gathering another meal of meat fruit and random forage, with still no sign of anyone else. With no camping gear, the best we managed to sleep in was leaf piles in secluded spots; she had the hoodie she’d swiped from me months ago, at least, I hadn’t grabbed anything on my way out.

A few days went by going back and forth along that mountain road, foraging and camping without much sign of anything. The weather was holding clear, at least.

I started following the road back down; it looked like it probably would end up somewhere closer to where we’d arrived in this world.

“Kaito, where are we going?” Miu was trudging along behind me; the novelty was wearing off and she’d been getting testy every time I told her to not wander off.

“Looking for the others. One of them might have found something.”

She made a face. “Can’t we just go explore and not go back into the rock monsters?”

“We’re gonna go around the shrine area - I doubt anybody else stuck around there anyway.” It also looked like the creepy fog had lifted; maybe the rock monsters wouldn’t be there.

“I thought I saw something up on that hill though…”.

“We’re not going climbing.” It looked like a radio tower, but there was a sharp valley and some sheer rock faces between us and it.

“Maybe we won’t have to climb! Maybe there’s stairs or something! People had to get up there somehow right?” She’s jogging up to argue from next to me.

“Did you see that val-“

There’s some kind of impact sound, and the ground shakes slightly - it’s something I’ve been hearing for a while, but more distant, and it’s coming closer, another loud thud every couple seconds.

We both freeze.

“Miu - hide just off the road, and stay put - I’m going to see what that is.”

She has her mouth open to argue but I’m already turning to head for where we passed some taller and larger trees; I see her slinking into some of the bushes before I really dash for it.

I’m not sure what the big tree is, but it’s tall and the branches slope and twist so that it’s easy to get up into the top. It’s not hard to find the source of the noise; there’s a broad switchback that goes down into the valley, and something massive is moving up the slope toward the road, loping on three legs with one massive oversized foreclaw hitting the ground between strides, a short tail waving behind it for balance, jagged teeth visible under some kind of helmet fused to its head. The thing’s easily eight to ten meters long and hulking, looking either way scanning the area as it moves; I’m not really well hidden and counting my blessings that it’s not looking up.

I slink back down the tree as quietly as I can and hurry back to where I’d left Miu.

“Miu, we need to-“

There’s no sign of her around the brush she’d been hiding in, and no answer or response.

“Miu?” I don’t dare yell, not when that thing might hear. There’s no response. “Miu, this isn’t funny - something’s coming and it looks dangerous.”

Nothing.

“We need to hide - can you even hear me?!”

The only sound is the periodic thump of the thing’s giant claw.

I spend a panicked couple minutes scouring the brush for clues, and find one familiar shoe print in a muddy patch headed off toward the northwest.

“Damnit Miu….”

At least heading the direction of the footprint means going deeper into the forest and away from the road the monster’s headed towards.

There’s little to no other signs that I can be sure are her, and the one consolation I’ve got is that I’d probably hear it if something did happen to her…

Probably.

I’m not paying attention to where I am or time beyond the angle of the sun, but I had to’ve been searching for a few hours by the time I heard voices - not Miu’s, not human.

“-traitors with the humans took out Fangmon.”

I pulled myself up into the nearest tree with decent foliage, hunkering down quietly in a crook where some other branches gave me more cover.

“He got ganged up on - I heard he had two of them cornered and then the rest showed up.”

The others are moving and sounds like they found help.

The two creatures aren’t that big - a little under a meter tall, with grey fur, long ears draping back, sharp teeth, and claws on their hands that are a bit over half the size of my dagger.

“So what now, we report to Arukenimon?” That one doesn’t sound happy about that at all - like they’re afraid of whoever that is.

The second one snorts. “Not empty handed, we’re not. Sounds like there’s been a couple humans wandering around here - by themselves.”

They’re hunting Miu and I.

I could take one of them, I’m sure of it, I’m not so sure about two at once even from ambush - I’ve never actually tried to go for blood in a fight before and I don’t know how resilient these are or how fast I could take one out.

They’ve passed under me and gotten a couple feet when there’s rustling in the branches above me and then something drops down hanging from them in front of me.

The first thing I see is a mouth full of sharp teeth and some kind of dark hood kept tight covering most of the face, with crude eyes drawn on it, then a couple of small black wings spread out behind it and clawed hands with an eye in each palm, both looking at me, as the creature’s hanging upside down from a branch.

“Aha! Finally found you!”

It doesn’t sound or feel threatening and I’m not sure how the little demon thing who could shame a shark for teeth doesn’t feel threatening.

“Name’s Dracmon! You look like you’re in a bit of a spot.”

“Dracmon. Why were you looking for me?” Just because they don’t feel threatening doesn’t mean they’re safe; I’ve got the one hand I can spare on the dagger.

There’s a blank pause and both hand-eyes blink a couple times.

“Well, it’s always felt like something was missing and I was looking for that? Then you woke me up climbing up here, and things just clicked.” Dracmon gives me an upside down shrug.

“And my sister?”

Another blank pause. “Uh. If there’s another human here you’re worried about, we should find’em fast - this place’s crawling with creeps like the two you were just watching.” One hand gestures down at …..some of the underbrush just off the road ahead of me, and Dracmon’s motioning to keep quiet - they must’ve heard us and hid to try and get the drop on us.

“That’s exactly what I was trying to do.”

“Well, let’s get going then!”

He drops out of the tree, little wings flapping to help him land on his feet; I slip down, dusting bits of bark off and clicking the clip off the dagger.

As soon as I'm on the ground, he's lobbing some kind of weird pulsing shadow orb into the bush they hid in. There's yelping and yowling as they scramble out of it; one of them looks weirdly corroded, spatters across its hide leaking a strange, flickering red mist as it lunges at Dracmon.

The other one tries to tackle me; I sidestep, grabbing one of its wrists, and twist the arm around, driving it to the ground with a knee in the middle of its back and my dagger's blade next to its face. From the yowling and odd static sounds, Dracmon's managing just fine on his own.

"Where's my sister?!"

It's squirming and panicked. "Like I know?! I wouldn't be here if-" It yelps as I twist its arm more. "I don't know! You're the first human I've ever seen!"


"Why are you hunting us?"

It squirms. "I uh - no idea?" I shift its arm and the dagger both and it squawks. "They told us to if they don't sacrifice human children then everything's gonna get eaten!"

"I don't think these flunkies would know anything." Dracmon's just come into my peripheral vision, one hand raised to keep an eye on me and the grey thing. "They're bottom feeders."

He'd know better than I would. I narrow my eyes at the grey thing, and put the dagger point through the side of its ear, then let it up; it scrambles away from me with a yelp.

"Tell your buddies I'll kill them if they even look at my sister!"

There's a hasty nod as it's running into the woods, disappearing fast.

"...You think they know what your sister looks like even?"

I go to clean the knife, but there's nothing on it; I shove it back in its sheath and clip the band back over to keep it there. "Does it matter?"

He's got an eye on me and tilts his head oddly, then starts chuckling. "Man, that one's gonna be looking over his shoulder no matter what human he sees."

My nerves are too frazzled to care, but if it scares a few of them off of hunting humans period, that's fine by me. "So what is your deal anyway?"

"Like I said, felt like something was missing 'till I ran into you."

I'm getting my bearings some, but still keeping an eye on him - he did help, and doesn't feel like a threat, but I don't want to rely on just that. "And you're just gonna go with that with no other explanation."

"Got nothing better to do." He shrugs, stretching in a way that also lets him scan most of the area with his hand-eyes.

"And I'm supposed to buy that? How do I know this isn't some kind of trick?"

He clicks a few of his teeth - it looks like they're moving independently of each other and I'm not sure his jaw moved - and makes some kind of weird whistle noise. "Are all human children this paranoid?"

I roll my eyes and give him a pointed look.

"Fine, fine, but I don't really know that much - there's some kind of story about human kids showing up when things're really bad here, and some of us getting tagged as Fated to work with'em - some kinda weird two-way tie where we can get really powerful from it but if anything happens to them, we're done for. There's a few that were damn sure I was Destined or whatever, I just never really paid attention to it until whatever clicked back there."

That sounds like all I'm gonna get from him for now, but it doesn't feel like he's lying, and I don't know how or why that makes sense, but it does track with Baasan's stories if they were told from the other side. "Right. We need to find Miu anyway - how're you at tracking?"