Lin was roused by a warm, wet sensation on his face. His mind was still foggy, but the internal chronometer hardwired into his body told him clearly enough: he had been unconscious for three hours.
Given that waking up at all meant the worst hadn't happened while he was out, Lin wasn't in any particular hurry to get up.
He would have liked to linger a little longer in that pleasant half-conscious haze — but the wet sensation on his face kept growing heavier, and it forced him to open his eyes and return to the clear, aching reality of the waking world.
The moment his eyes opened, something small seemed to startle and dart away from his side. When his vision settled, what greeted him was the rocky wall of a cave.
Blacking out in mid-air and then somehow ending up lying peacefully inside a sheltered cave was far too convenient to be a coincidence. Lin was certain some creature had carried him here.
His body showed no obvious wounds or damage, which meant whoever had moved him had handled him gently. That ruled out large predators — and pointed to something with at least a degree of intelligence.
Lin touched his face and came away with a palmful of liquid. His system identified it without difficulty: saliva. Whatever had dragged him into this cave had apparently been licking his face.
He looked toward the light at the cave entrance — and found a creature that looked remarkably like a Siamese cat crouched at the mouth of the cave, watching him with wide, anxious eyes.
Lin blinked. It looked like a cat, yes — but the way it stood upright already marked it as something far from ordinary. And then there was the distinctly human gesture of it gripping the cave entrance with its front paws and craning its neck to peer inside at him. Every sign pointed to an identity Lin knew perfectly well.
"A Felyne?" Lin couldn't quite contain his surprise. "So… did I just get cat-carted?"
The most loyal allies and beloved animal companions of hunters everywhere, Felynes were a beast-folk race capable of coexisting with humans. In appearance they were nearly identical to ordinary cats, except that their average body length had been stretched to around a metre, and most possessed intelligence on par with a normal human being. They had evolved the ability to walk upright, their forepaws capable of gripping objects much like human hands — though when running at speed they could still drop to all fours like true cats.
In the world of Monster Hunter, Felynes who had integrated into human society could turn their paws to virtually any trade humans required of them. They were, in every sense, the true mascots of the hunter's life.
Ever since landing on this planet — which seemed to reference Monster Hunter at every turn — Lin had encountered the great monsters that formed the true soul of that world. But these little ones had been nowhere to be found.
He had assumed it was because there was no human civilisation on this planet, and that without human society to integrate into, the Felynes simply hadn't developed here either. Looking at things now, though, the Felynes clearly did exist — and they had wasted no time delivering the full cat-cart experience.
Realising that these little legends had literally dragged him to safety on a cat cart, Lin's expression softened considerably. He also noticed that he wasn't the only one who had been brought to the cave — the Astartes who had been sent flying by the Bazelgeuse earlier was lying right beside him.
The Felynes had evidently rescued more than just Lin. But having not yet been civilised by contact with humanity, they clearly had no idea how to remove an Astartes's powered armour. They had simply laid him out next to Lin as flat as they could manage.
Lin ran a quick assessment of the Astartes's condition. Multiple internal haemorrhages throughout the body. Of his two hearts and three lungs, one heart and two lungs had been ruptured by the impact force. The surviving heart and lung were in poor shape.
His Sus-an Membrane had done its best, pushing him into a sus-an state and minimising his metabolic demands — but prolonged oxygen deprivation and blood loss had left his limbs the ghastly white colour of a corpse.
If he went untreated, death was no longer a distant prospect. Lin reluctantly set aside his curiosity about the Felynes and turned his full attention to emergency intervention.
He considered his options briefly, then administered a nutrient injection. After that, he prepared to open the man's chest cavity with his Solar-Powered Warblade.
The Astartes's body, however, proved far more resilient than a typical Space Marine. Even using one of the premium-grade blades issued by the Honour Guard — and without activating the Disintegration Field — it took Lin a considerable amount of effort to cut through.
That level of toughness had a flavour to it he recognised — the protagonist of Monster Hunter, built like a humanoid Deviljho. Could this be the effect of their Gene Absorption ability stacking on top of everything else?
Lin turned the thought over in his mind as he worked, picking out fragments of tissue piece by piece from beneath the black carapace. It took time to sort through the mess of compressed and fused organs — but eventually he was able to apply direct pressure to the bleeding sites and tie them off by hand.
Fortunately, the Second Legion's gene-seed appeared to carry not only exceptional toughness but also remarkable regenerative capacity. Fed by the nutrients from the injection, the energised genetic material squirmed and knit itself together under Lin's manual guidance, sealing the bleeding wounds and stopping further blood loss.
Halting the loss, however, was not the same as replacing what had been lost. With his blood volume critically low and only a single functioning heart, the Astartes's body lacked the pumping power to push blood all the way to his legs. His life was still in danger.
Lin didn't hesitate. He amputated both legs cleanly. The negligible blood flow from the stumps confirmed what he had already suspected.
Minimal bleeding didn't mean the wounds needed no treatment, though — and the scarcity of proper medical supplies on hand was giving Lin a genuine headache.
His plan had been to fire a single low-power graze from his Plasma Pistol across the wound surfaces, using the plasma's heat to carbonise and seal the amputation stumps. He reached behind him — and found the Plasma Pistol was gone.
Without the pistol, Lin had to think of another way to close the wounds. At that moment, the Felyne that had been watching from the cave entrance padded silently back to his side.
It called out to him and nodded toward something behind him. Lin turned — and found an elderly Felyne, grey-muzzled and moving with the slow gravity of great age, making her way toward him through a cluster of attending Felynes.
She gave Lin a solemn nod, then extended a small stone bowl toward him. Lin took it and looked inside: a thick paste made from crushed herbs, still releasing a surprisingly inviting fragrance.
"You brought this specifically for me?" Lin pointed at himself.
The elder Felyne nodded. Language was a barrier between them, but she had clearly understood his meaning from the gesture alone. After nodding, she moved over to the freshly-amputated Astartes and pointed one forepaw at his wounds.
Lin understood immediately. The paste was the Felynes' own folk remedy. Setting aside his original plan to use the plasma pistol, he spread the herb paste evenly across the Astartes's wounds.
He had no idea what the herbs were made from — but the efficacy was, unexpectedly, quite impressive. The wounds showed signs of closing within a short time, and with the dead weight of the legs removed, colour slowly began to return to the Astartes's face. Lin finally set down his hands and turned his attention to the Felynes.
He noticed they hadn't been idle during all of this. They had cleaned up the blood on the cave floor and disposed of the organ fragments Lin had extracted, leaving the cave tidy once more.
Seeing that Lin had finished, they gathered again behind the elder, watching him with a look that mixed curiosity and something very close to reverence.
Lin scratched his head. He knew perfectly well that Felynes were a gentle and good-natured people — but their attitude toward him was still leaving him at a loss.
Just as he was about to get to the bottom of it, he noticed that the elder Felyne had produced, from somewhere or other, a Plasma Pistol. There were cat-paw prints on the trigger guard — but Lin identified it at a glance as his own.
The elder Felyne placed the Plasma Pistol in Lin's hands. Along with it came a single Bazelgeuse scale. Lin stared at his pistol and at the scale, and a very unusual possibility began to take shape in his mind.
His eyes went wide. He looked at the Felynes — who had just returned his weapon and were presenting a scale as proof of a hunt completed.
"You didn't… use my pistol to take down the Bazelgeuse, did you?"
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