On the Journey pt3...

by **Valdoran** on June 11th, 2014, 9:09 am

Valdoran walked for around 3 days, repeating his sleeping habits as the previous night, not sleeping, thinking about his family, why he was cast out. What could he have done all of this time to make people hate him so? Still walking on and sipping at his ever dwindling Bruka flask, he looked at it and saw that he was running out. He needed food, and badly, so he decided that his best option would be to scout for it. Seeing how clear and unclouded the day was, he saw that the path curled around a small mountain, and thought that since the tallest point is where you can see more. Valdoran debated the possibility of this for a long while, he had limited resources, food and water now, he could probably just cover more ground searching the road, but he would run the risk of seeing nothing, both were hard decisions to make, but then he came to one.

He decided to climb up the mountainside, much higher than his usual path. Occasionally it went smoothly, a few meters of not so steep a gradient of maybe ten degrees, but then he was back to all fours, clambering up the walls with his Symenestran hairs on his hands and feet. He kept going, seemingly forever, on and on, and as he did so it became slowly harder to climb, as he had to dig out large fist sized chunks of snow before being able to get a good stick to the rock beneath it, even so, it became slower, more tiring and harder work, but he couldn’t stop now. His other problem was running out of energy to the stage of fainting, because he himself wasn’t sure that Symenestra could remain stuck to a surface when unconscious, even so, if he lost consciousness up here and didn’t keep moving hed die of the cold anyways.

His other ever increasing problem was while climbing, he would have been very, VERY susceptible to the Zith if they were around, but for some reason the skies seemed sparce, as not even a bird flew over him, it was just empty. ‘What time is it?’ he asked himself as the sun was clearly in the air, shining off the snow and often blinding him by how bright it was, but seriously, all the birds and the Zith weren’t anywhere to be seen. ‘As if they had somewhere better to be’ Valdoran uneasily laughed, and although quiet could be heard about three times at ever increasing distances, it was at that point he realised that he should shut up and keep low, even if he couldn’t see anything did not mean nothing couldn’t see or hear him, after all, he wasn’t trained in being perceptive, just in being able to hide somewhat well, and so he kept to that for the rest of the ascent, silent, quiet, methodical, but always looking around for the issue at hand, food and enemies.

by **Valdoran** on June 11th, 2014, 9:19 am

Climbing was tiring, his hands were now and had been for a long time numb from the snow and cold rock beneath, he didn’t know how long he’d been climbing, at all, but he did know he had to keep going, he looked at the sky and the sun had hardly seemed to move at all, meaning he couldn’t have spent that long climbing, it was then he remembered back that when he climbed he often used cracks weathered into the side of the mountain and leapt up some distances or when he was on a flatter part, he’d wallrun up the first few feet before climbing once more, he could see that he was running out of mountain, this was a strange feeling because he felt both relief and unease in equal measure. Nevertheless he eventually reached the top of the mountain, heaving and just lying there in the snow, where he had to spend a much longer time regaining his energy due to there being less oxygen up here. After around 20 minutes he drank some Bruka and looked into the flask.

'Damn, only a few mouthfuls left' he thought to himself, he hoped that he could spot some kind of food while he was up here, if not then his journey was all for nothing. He spent an hour packing snow into a kind of dome on the top of the mountain, he needed something to insulate him up here if he was staying here overnight, he didn’t know what he was doing yet, so he didn’t set up camp just yet, instead he began wandering the perimeter of the kind of plateau that made up the top of this mountain. And inevitably saw the grand scheme of nothing, just snow, rock and Sultros some weeks travel away as a spec of light, he knew that was his goal, as he felt like some seafarer who was on a rowboat headed for a lighthouse, he then remembered about food.

He spent hours searching for something to eat, looking over the edges, this was after when he circled the plateau and found that on the other side there was a near perfect thirty degree slope down to the path on the other side of the mountain, where he watched it snake around to keep on the same altitude as best it could, hugging the mountains like a snake hugs a tree branch, he notied the sun setting and cursed as he knew that due to that thevision of the pass he had would disappear, he was deeply saddened by the prospect of dying in these gods forsaken lands. But that’s when he heard it, the unmistakable and mocking bleat of a goat. He looked around madly, as it was close by, he could hear it as if it was only meters away, he circled the plateau and then turned to head in for bed, thinking he was going mad.

by **Valdoran** on June 11th, 2014, 9:45 am

That’s when he saw it, clear as day, a solitary mountain goat using his makeshift igloo as a shelter, stood shivering in the snow cave, Valdoran’s hunger at first drove him to run at the goat to scare it out, but then he caught himself. Why would he chase away a good bit of food like that, he had to kill it, simply had to.

He took out his rope dart and stood some 5 meters from this shivering goat, spinning the rope dart while holding the rope. He was aiming for the neck, planning on swinging it around horizontally and give the rope enough momentum and distance to drag its way across, soing a pirouette to gather the sufficient momentum, he slipped on the snow but managed to maintain his footing, but he released the rope dart! The goat bleated again as a thud was heard, Valdoran looked up to see this goat lying on the floor, but struggling, he stood and walked over to it and was astounded that although he let go of the rope dart, the rope wrapped itself around the goat’s legs.

Valdoran wasn’t going to pass up this opportunity and ran over to the goat, he placed a knee on the flank of its neck to hold it still and the goat stopped struggling. Valdoran took the blade of the rope dart and moved it up to the goat’s throat, aiming to hit both jugular vein and main artery. He placed it on the neck of the goat and shared a glance with it. Staring into its square pupiled amber eyes, Valdoran got up and walked away into the igloo for a moment to fetch his flask and waterskin and placed them at the goat’s neck, he grabbed the goat and with great difficulty stood it up and untangled the rope dart.

He didn’t let it get away though, instead he had one arm all the way around it’s head and gripping it by it’s horn and slit the goat’s throat quickly to cause it as little pain as possible, propping it’s head up with his knee, he held the flask and waterskin under the gushing red fountain that was the goat’s neck and filled both with the warm, ruby nutritious liquid.

He then spent a long time trying to flay off the skin of this dead creature with his rope dart, both with the rope and without it, but the best he could do was cut out chunks of the meat, he took as much as he could from wind milling his rope dart to take chunks of meat away and managed to get it inside the igloo and pack the pieces he cut with snow before returning to the still quite intact carcass and pushing it off the edge of the mountain.

However his paranoia was setting it as he began to mix the bloodied snow he left with the clean white stuff, making sure that it couldn’t be seen on the plateau anywhere, his igloo was already made of snow so was hard to see but blood would attract attention, so he covered it.

by **Valdoran** on June 11th, 2014, 10:08 am

He then after having a bellyful of warm goat blood turned in for bed, rolling out his bedroll under the insulating igloo and slept. But once more dreams of his father surged into his head, and dreams of his house. Remembering furniture in his house that some days before didn’t exist, but Valdoran never took furniture, he took what he could sell mostly. So why would that happen? Seeing as it was just him and his father he didn’t understand how it got there, he refused to believe it was his father, ever. So unless his father could afford it all then it was an anomaly. Valdoran repeatedly had these yes, no dreams, but it couldn’t be true, his father was a businessman. He couldn’t be like Valdoran, or more importantly, Valdoran like him.

Valdoran spent several hours awake that night, thinking about the past and scenarios but also since he heard the squeals of delight from the Zith who had found the goat corpse at the bottom of the mountain. It was quite serene but also rather harrowing as he heard them, foever tormenting the long dead goat, laughing and tearing like some sick children. He prayed that no Zith would find him. And to his relief, they flew on and he got a few more hours rest bofore morning, where he packed everything up, took the now chilled and clean goat mean and put it in his backpack, before having a few minutes of fun before continuing on his arduous journey. By jumping and sliding down the side of the mountain that was covered in snow and at a good angle almost all of the way down, so with a huge run up and an almighty leap he landed on the slope and began to slide.

Only on his way down however did he notice that it wasn’t completely flat, and he spend the next 2 minutes of sliding having to rotate to relocate himself to avoid needle like outcroppings of rock and camouflaged trees growing out of the slope, until finally he reached where the gradient lessened, he stood up and dusted himself off, then set off walking to find where he could climb and hide himself once more.

by **Catastrophe** on June 21st, 2014, 6:33 pm

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Valdoran :

Notes :

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Flashback On the Journey pt3...