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Ashwin stayed in his crouched position behind a bush growing out of a fragmented femur.
His eyes were wide and there was a blank expression on his face.
“Those two were incredible.”
He replayed everything he saw in his mind, going through the events in order.
Marla’s empowered bow, Boris’s ”attack stones” how the fiend stood frozen in time, then shattered into glass and left nothing of itself, save its crystal, which Marla picked up.
Deciding to trek out here had been a huge gain for Ashwin, but now he had more questions than answers.
The thought to follow Marla and Boris had crossed his mind.
But Ashwin had other priorities at the moment, like watching over his camp.
He would just have to scout out this ”settlement” on his own time, when he became more powerful.
Ashwin felt a rush of excitement, at the danger, at the potential knowledge and power to be gained from his rite of passage.
He was no longer surviving.
He was living.
Ashwin had big plans.
For big game.
Watching Boris and Marla take down a nightmare like that fiend had given Ashwin new hope and inspiration.
Maybe he could beat the Death Gigas.
By himself.
Ashwin grinned as he ran.
forty minutes later Ashwin safely returned to the Baobab tree.
He checked on the tensioned fish gut and found it still intact. This chapter was copied from g.com without permission.
A sharp hiss escaped his teeth.
“Damnit, I forgot to stretch out the backstrap tendons!”
He faced palmed himself, “Annnd I need to make a rack to stretch the sword pike skin on”
Ashwin sighed, “So this is the price I pay in exchange.”
Instead of getting to go to bed he would have to work into the morning.
Grunting, he got to work.
Ashwin decided that he would repeat the same simple two stake process for the sword pike’s back tendons.
He climbed the Baobab tree and retrieved his curved obsidian clever and chopped off two stout Y shaped branches.
He sharpened the straight ends into sharp stakes and secured one end of tendon to the first stake.
Ashwin pounded the stake into the sandy bank with a large stone that he afterwards leaned against it.
Ashwin repeated the process one more time and he was done.
“Well, that was mostly painless”
Turning attention he focused on the sword pike skins.
It was two separate pieces, from each side of the fish.
“Damn it all.
I’ll need to make two separate racks.”
Ashwin looked around.
Even though the landscape was fossilized, plant life always found a way to grow, even though rock and bone.
Ashwin began stripping limbs from the bush plants and peeling off the outer skin of the limbs.
He would use this fiber to secure the four corners of the rack together.
The sword pike was big, so he would need to make the racks long.
Using his curved obsidian clever Ashwin carved male and female sockets into all the proper ends so that the sticks fit together, then using the plant fiber he wrapped and tied the corners for added strength.
He now had two nine foot long by two-foot-wide drying racks.
He would need more plant fiber to stretch the skin.
But this time he would need fine cordage.
Ashwin skinned the limbs of more small bushes until he had fifteen bundles of raw fiber.
He skinned one bundle of plant fiber against a jagged boulder until he had reduced it into fine plant fibers.
Ashwin gathered up these ultra fine fibers and began to twist them together in his palms until the fibers transformed into loose thread strings.
Ashwin repeated this process until he had used up all the bundles.
He now had fifteen pieces of loose thread string that he would weave together into tight string.
Ashwin selected three of the fifteen loose thread strings and walked over to a big rock.
laying the ends of the three loose thread strings on the big rock Ashwin pinned them there with another large rock, weaving the threads together would be faster and easier in this manner.
He did this by wrapping the left and right loose thread string around the middle thread.
Getting into the rhythm of the braiding was easy and wrapped the left and right thread around the middle or core thread, letting his fingers trade and jungle the threads, tightening the braid as he went.
Ashwin repeated this whole process until he had four tight braided strings, that were each nine meters long.
It was now morning; the sun was rising higher and soon it would be too hot to work.
“Let’s speed this up Ashwin.”
Retrieving the Chitin needle’s from earlier and also the sword pike skins, Ashwin laid out the left and right side of the sword pike skin in each rack and working diligently pierced all sides of the still fresh sword pike skins.
Threading the first rack, took up two of his four braided strings.
Ashwin threaded the second rack stretching the skin of the fish as he used up his final two braided cords.
Fatigue finally crept in, Ashwin caught himself yawning.
“Okay, time for bed.”
Placing the racks by the campfire Ashwin retreated back up the Baobab tree for the final time, he found a comfortable spot and collapsed, quickly falling asleep.