Loki woke up to a buzzing sound. A fly, or something like it, hovering around the wound on his arm. He tried to shoo it away, the wound moved under the loose bandage, and he felt a pain that made him gasp.
He didn’t remember sleeping. He must have passed out, or fallen asleep from exhaustion, the difference between the two no longer mattered to him at that moment.
The sun had risen, and threads of light were seeping between the branches. The goblin corpses were still around him, and their smell had started to change a little, heavier than the smell of fresh blood.
He tried to get up. He failed on the first try, falling onto his right side.
"Okay." He said in a hoarse voice. "It’s fine."
On the second try he succeeded, but his head spun, so he leaned against a tree trunk and waited for it to calm down.
His thirst was worse than his pain. He felt for his waterskin, found it almost empty. He remembered the pool the goblins had been drinking from before he attacked them, and wasn’t sure if it was in the right direction.
He walked, stumbling more than once, until he finally found the pool. He knelt at its edge, scooped with his intact hand, drank, then stopped suddenly.
He looked at the water.
There was something floating in it, green skin, maybe for a sixth goblin he hadn’t seen last night, or another animal, it wasn’t clear to him exactly. He stopped drinking for a moment, looked at the half-filled waterskin in his hand, then at the water again.
He drank anyway.
He filled the waterskin and sat on a nearby rock watching the wound in his arm. The bandage was stained, but at least the bleeding had stopped. He tried to untie it to see the wound, then suddenly changed his mind, afraid of opening something that had started to heal.
He sat there for a long time, staring at the water without thinking of anything specific. He thought that the Caretaker had been right about medium-rank monsters, and felt a small anger toward this admission.
His stomach finally got hungry. He remembered that his bag had stayed at the fighting spot, with the rest of his little food.
He went back to it, avoiding direct looks at the corpses this time. He opened the bag, found half a piece of dry cheese, and some nuts. He ate them slowly, sitting next to the corpses as if they weren’t there.
In the middle of eating, he stopped suddenly.
He had forgotten something.
The knife.
He searched the area and finally found it stuck in nearby dirt, where he left it after the last strike. He cleaned it with a piece of cloth, without looking directly at the blade.
He sat again and looked at the five creatures in front of him. A fleeting idea occurred to him, to take something from them, fangs perhaps, proof of what happened. He reached his hand toward one of the jaws, then stopped.
"Why?" He asked himself out loud. He didn’t find a clear answer, so he abandoned the idea.
He summoned the window again, not because he expected a change, but because he didn’t know what else to do.
[Host Status: Loki]
Level: Beginner
Hit Points: 40/100
Strength: E
Endurance: E
He looked at the two numbers that hadn’t changed. He didn’t feel clear disappointment, just silent questioning. He expected something bigger after all this.
He walked away from the fighting place, for no specific reason other than he no longer wanted to look at it. He stopped after a short distance at a large-trunked tree, sat at its base, and decided to stay there until he regained some strength.
A long time passed, maybe an hour, maybe more. He heard distant rustling twice, tensed each time, then nothing happened.
Sometime in the afternoon, he saw a small plant with red leaves at his feet. He didn’t know what it was, but it looked fresh and soft, and his hunger was greater than his caution at that moment. He picked a leaf, smelled it, then ate it.
Its taste was strangely bitter, and nothing happened for a few minutes, then his stomach began to hurt.
"Damn it." He muttered, having just realized this was a bad decision, perhaps the worst decision he had made since waking up in this world. He spent the next hour bent behind a tree, cursing himself for his stupidity more than cursing the plant.
When his pain finally subsided, he sat exhausted and laughed a faint laugh at his situation.
"A side character dies poisoned by a plant." He said in a tired voice. "This won’t even appear in a decent farewell scene."
He lay on his back, looking at the pieces of sky scattered between the branches, and let himself rest without thinking of anything specific.
At dusk, he heard a different sound this time. Not an animal, nor wind. A faint metallic sound, as if something was being dragged on the ground far away.
He got up slowly, grabbed the knife, and stood waiting.
Nothing appeared.
He waited longer minutes, then decided he might have imagined it, or that exhaustion was beginning to play with his senses. He wasn’t completely convinced by this explanation, but he had no other choice but to continue waiting in the dark or try to sleep anyway.
He chose sleep.