—Orion—

  Even if the village—or whatever remained of it—was nearby, it would still take an hour or two to reach it, and we were currently only halfway there. I had been tempted to try talking to Sally more, but a persistent anxiety about saying the wrong thing dissuaded me. Also, he could only understand every second word, the extra barrier adding to my hesitation.

  Though, while I was walking over a small stream—using half-submerged stones as steps—a loud screech suddenly shocked me. I flinched as my boot slipped into the river, and I was luckily shallow enough to avoid an unnecessary injury, but it soaked my boot up to the ankle.

  However, as I looked around for the source of the inhuman scream, Sally's head popped into my line of sight. I glanced up at him, eventually connecting the clues.

  The closeness and loudness of the noise, and the… hesitance I saw on her face, also the awkwardness I felt from h-his general direction. Yet again I was thankful for [Animal Companionship], its magic allowing me to better understand Sally without having to ask questions. And for it telling me that it was him who'd shocked me so badly.

  "Was that you?" I asked hesitantly, to which he nodded. I had to spend a few moments trying to figure out why he did so—and then felt a bit silly for thinking about it with my foot still submerged in the water.

  But once I got out of the water, Sally had to have picked up on my confusion. As I stood on the other side of the riverbank, shaking the excess water off of my foot, he stuck his head in front of my face again. He slowly opened and closed his mouth, like an awkward old animatronic.

  "Were you trying to talk?" I eventually concluded, and Sally nodded, raising his lips and flashing his sharp teeth at me. It was an expression that I was beginning to think was a grin, as much as my experience with animals told me otherwise.

  "Anything I can do to help?" I continued, to which Sally failed to understand.

  "Help, repair… fix? Your speech?" I tried to explain while copying how he mimed 'talking'.

  And that seemed to be enough for him to understand the words, a small squeak of understanding escaped his mouth as he narrowed his eyes. Eventually he pointed at a number of random objects all around us, trees and their exposed roots, rocks, the stream, and even the sky, and mimed talking again while he did so.

  "Oh!" I accidentally verbalised, realising that he wanted me to point out and name the objects around us. That would be one of the fastest ways to teach him the language.

  "Tree?" I said while pointing at a nearby redwood. I did my best to mimic the questioning tone the members of the Party sometimes used.

  When he nodded in response and showed a high amount of enthusiasm, I felt satisfied that I'd managed to replicate the delivery of a question without having to literally ask.

  "River." I said more confidently, gesturing towards the stream we'd just walked over. I began to walk again, ignoring the loud squelch I made with every other step.

  "Sky." I said with a finger pointing upwards. I'd wait until the village before taking it off and drying it. We couldn't be far now.

  ***

  I spent the next hour trudging through the forest, moving with a comfortable rhythm that occupied just enough of my brain to dissuade thinking. But wasn't demanding or stressful enough for it to fatigue me down mentally.

  I had split my attention between pointing out new things to define for Sally, and finding good places to step without slipping or getting my foot caught in a tree's roots. And trying not to overreact whenever Sally experimented with making a new sound. His attempts to imitate the vowels of the new language were awkward at best, and uncomfortably loud. Every. Time.

  But my concentration was abruptly broken when I suddenly spotted what looked like stone slabs in the distance. It was close—close enough that I thought I'd mistaken a cracked boulder for a building, but a closer look proved that assumption incorrect.

  I took another few steps, and the village we'd been walking towards came fully into view. Only a few dozen metres away the forest ended, and in the middle of the glade was the village. It the closest buildings were less than a kilometre away.

  I stopped walking, overcome with a bout of confusion as I struggled to comprehend that I'd almost missed the group of houses. Even if I was slightly distracted, how did I miss the obvious gap in trees until I was less than a hundred metres from it?

  The transition from the forest and dense vegetation to the clearly maintained clearing was abrupt. The trees and shrubbery were replaced with flattened, compacted dirt. Judging by its large size—and from the aerial view I had been given of the clearing—there must've been an equal amount of people living nearby. Recently as well.

  While some small grasses and roots had persisted under what I can see was ceaseless trampling, nothing taller than my shoe had survived the human traffic. I glanced at the town again, and noticed that it was different from what [The Hunter's Anathema] showed me. The homes before my eyes were clearly still lived in, and at that very moment.

  The village I saw from a bird's eye view was not the same one before me, leaving me to wonder if there were multiple settlements in this area. Did I accidentally stumble across a different location?

  But a quick reference to my memory assured me that this was the same place, the buildings and landmarks I’d seen from above identical to the ones before me.

  Which led to the question of why?

  Was this a quirk of [The Hunter's Anathema]? Showing you what you wanted, but with some details changed?

  A sharp tap on my scalp reminded me that I had stopped walking, and that Sally was waiting for me to continue. While I wanted to investigate further, Sally did not know what about the village had distracted me, and I couldn't explain [The Hunter's Anathema] now.

  I took the last few steps to the clearing, feeling unsafe without the trees and greenery to hide my bulk. A breeze chilling the skin around my midsection reminded me that I was also literally exposed.

  As I walked towards the town, my hearing picked up on a very quiet, human gasp. I didn't stop moving as my eyes flitted towards the noise, and I saw a small human form running away from us. Their form slipped between the buildings and ran down a path towards the centre of the town.

  I almost called out after the stranger, but decided to follow them instead. I didn't want to cause any unnecessary panic.

  I moved closer to the town over the next minute, and when I crossed the clearing, I began to feel more gazes on me. The eyes appearing from behind shutters and the shadows of the houses, staring at us with a disturbing intensity.

  When I eventually reached the village, and first stepped onto the stone pavers that lined the paths between houses, an emaciated man appeared. He was thin, starved and uncomfortable to look at. His legs and arms were brittle and thin, such that—even with his complete lack of muscle or fat—it looked as if the bones had begun to wither as well. In comparison his wrists and joints seemed fat and knobbly.

  I wasn't familiar with his ethnicity to put a finger on it, but it definitely wasn't anything I'd seen in Solis before. He did vaguely remind me of the native North-Americans, but only the rough details lined up, like skin colour and some other more cultural features, like their clothes.

  But in his hand was an iron knife, the kitchen implement held with a clear lack of familiarity. It was held like a chef ready to begin chopping, and the man was struggling to hold it between us with any comfort. However his clothes were surprisingly well made, the leather pants adorned with pockets and patterns, and an animal-hide vest held together with buttons and colourful tassels of cord.

  I froze as his gaunt eyes locked onto mine, and I tried my best to not be distracted by his sunken cheeks.

  "W-who are you? How did you find us?" He questioned, raising his knife higher, acting like it would work as a barrier between us. He almost raised his other hand to add to holding the knife, but dropped it back down to his side when he failed to make it work.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  "Orion, and I followed a trail here." I said, continuing with the lie I'd declared to Sally earlier.

  "Wha-? Never-mind, t-there's no food or money for you to s-steal, bandit!" He attempted to threaten me, but before I could assure him that I was not here to steal, two others stepped out of nearby buildings, forming a loose ring and surrounding me.

  Interestingly, they all seemed to have the same racial features, the opposite of the diversity in Solis. Though Solis was a large city with many different peoples migrating through it, and this town was small enough to be left off a map. It was only natural that one was more mono-ethnic than the other.

  The new combatants were just as starved and unfamiliar with wielding their weapons as the first man, but the young woman and gangly grandmother were even more pitiful than him. Both held extremely inadequate weapons, a frying pan and a rolling pin. While I was tempted to recommend better ones in case they needed suitable protection one day, I answered the man's question first.

  "I'm not here to steal, because of some bad luck, I lost most of my gear and tools." I attempted to explain, the man frowning before giving me a closer look from head to toe.

  "That shirt was 'accidentally' torn like that?" I heard the younger lady whisper to the older woman behind me. I resisted the urge to look down at my clothes to try to understand the odd comment—I didn't want to make them uncomfortable by revealing my enhanced hearing. I'd learnt my lesson from doing that.

  "I'm not a thief, I didn't even know that there was anyone in the area. I just need supplies." I repeated. The man gritted his teeth before letting out an exhausted sigh, waving me towards the centre of the town.

  "Old Chief can figure you out. Come on." He decided, the tension in his muscles and stance fading to a simmer as we began to walk down the main street of this town.

  I tried to make sure my confusion didn't show as I took in the intact buildings and the people living in almost every one of them. The small settlement was only big enough to have a single path wide enough to barely be used as a road for a cart. But it and all of the small slips branching off of it were clearly still in use. While most of the people were unwell, they were still living here and… alive, contrary to what the vision showed me.

  But after a very short walk, we arrived at what must be the rough centre of the town, where a building slightly larger than most sat. Instead of the two or three room huts that most buildings here were, the house in front of me was large enough to be a roomy cottage. At least half a dozen rooms, with a chimney belching smoke out its top.

  Out the front of the house was an old man on a rocking chair, and a young child, both on the house's wooden veranda.

  The old man reminded me of an old piece of extremely weathered and degraded leather. His skin stretched and sagged heavily, and two flaps of the flesh from his cheeks were drooping past his chin. The dark and sun-damaged skin had so many wrinkles that I couldn't see a single piece that was uncreased.

  The child was young, but it was hard to tell the age with how starved they were. Both the person I’d assumed was the Old Chief and their grandchild were extremely thin. I could not scrutinise the age or gender of the child, but they were tall enough to have at least started puberty. With an ambiguous hairstyle and no extra fat, there weren't any distinguishing features I usually used to separate the genders and age brackets from each other.

  "Old Chief! There's a strange man here!" The first villager I'd met called out as we approached. I saw that the child was whispering something into the old man's ear, too quietly for even my skill to make out.

  The Old Chief looked up at us, squinting hard in our direction, his eyes partially opened but mostly unfocused. His eyes were so discoloured and slathered with a milky-white glaze, that I was surprised that he could see at all. It reminded me of something that made me extremely uncomfortable, but I could not remember what.

  "Hmm? C-Chester did say that he saw a-a stranger." The elderly man muttered.

  "Do you plan on waiting for me to die of old age? Come, come closer." The Chief suddenly said. His loud comment reminded me to continue walking.

  A few steps later I was standing at the base of the veranda, stopping just before the wooden steps.

  "Well? State your business you… half-naked bandit!" The Chief demanded, and a second later I realised he was talking to me.

  "I'm not a bandit, and I lost my supplies in the forest. I need to replace them." I explained. But the throaty snort the Chief made was not an encouraging response.

  "Sure. But are you a beast tamer? Not many are stupid enough to carry an infant Dreki on their head. Especially those who still have hair to lose," The Chief commented. "Drools too much acid." He added with a whisper

  "I'm a Ranger, and Sally is not a Dreki." I corrected him.

  "Oh? So what is it then?" The Chief asked while raising a bushy white eyebrow.

  "He is a dragon." I answered. Sally did want to be one eventually, so might as well say that's what he is.

  But after stating that, the old man's mouth dropped open, and the other people around me gasped loudly.

  Just as I started to wonder what I could've said wrong, the old lady who'd threatened me with a rolling pin laughed loudly.

  "At least you have a good sense of humour kid." She cackled, her words causing everyone else to break out into loud laughter.

  I raised a hand to correct her, but Sally's claws dug into my skull before I could speak. I didn't understand what was going on, but I decided to follow Sally's silent instructions.

  "I'm not too sure which rock you must've crawled out from underneath child, but those sorts of jokes can be dangerous. Especially where the Sun's light can reach you." The Chief warned, his voice quietening to a forced hush when mentioning the 'Sun's light'.

  "… Okay." I acknowledged, letting the matter go instead of accidentally revealing how little I understood.

  "But a Ranger, eh? I didn't know your type still walked Brekun?" The old man asked, to which I answered by giving him a stare. He eventually huffed and spat some phlegm out of his mouth, accepting my silent answer of confusion.

  "On to more important matters, how did you get here?" The Chief asked, his eyes locking onto mine with a surprising intensity.

  "I walked."

  "Nothing stopped you?" He questioned, and I almost shook my head before answering verbally instead.

  "No."

  "Bah!" The Old Chief scoffed, waving his hand at me. We both stood there silently, until I remembered why I was here in the first place.

  "Did you have a spare bow, or bowstring about? I need either to be able to hunt." I asked, and almost flinched with the intensity of the renewed interest of the people around me.

  "Are you a skilled hunter?" The younger man demanded, almost stabbing me his knife as he rushed up to me.

  "I would say I’m sufficient by most standards." I answered, but my words were met with a grunt from the Chief.

  "Truly? Why not test your skills then? A test for the Ranger." The Chief declared, gesturing to the boy by his side as he did so.

  "Chester, go fetch your father's spare bow and quiver." The Chief commanded, the boy running off into the house behind them.

  "Do you see that man over there? Hit his hat without injuring him." The Chief said while pointing at someone behind me.

  I turned and saw that more villagers had appeared, all just as starved and thin. But about fifty metres away, I spotted the man the Chief was referring to. He was wearing a once colourful, pointy cloth hat about twenty centimetres tall, the dyed patterns carefully stitched into it had faded with time.

  Chester had returned by the time I looked back, and in his hands were a well-made and maintained bow and quiver. The matching pair had similar symbols etched into both, the faded writing was most likely someone's name.

  [Using [Appraisal – Lvl 1] on: Paired Bow and Quiver]

  [Paired Bow and Quiver – Level 22 Mundane Weapon]

  [A tool for hunting, well-loved, well-used, and well past its use-by date.]

  [Everything has a story, this item in particular has a well-engrained one, etched through decades of use. But that doesn't mean it's an interesting one. The item is not quite an heirloom, but still has a tale. It's not strong, but it has been used well.

  The hunting bow is not made for any sort of warfare, and its arrow do not fly far, or reach the top of castle walls. It might be able to pierce metal, but it cuts through hide far better. It is paired with a quiver, filled with heavy broad-headed arrows, and one has never been used without the other.]

  I took the items out of the boy's hands as I used [Appraisal] on them, and discovered nothing new. I set the quiver on the ground and slipped two of the heavy arrows out of it as I stood back up.

  I was fairly confident that I could hit the target on my first try, but it is a good habit to test the equipment first. While I was shooting with people downrange, I no longer cared about that rule. I held the bow and the second arrow in my left hand as the right placed the arrow onto the string and pulled it taut.

  I picked a building with no one near it, and decided to test my accuracy by targeting a vertical wooden log being used as a support beam.

  I breathed out, and sent the arrow flying, the projectile almost flying as fast as it did from my previous bow, an expensive carbon-fibre compound bow. I watched carefully as it hit the wooden pole off-centre, sending chunks and large splinters of wood flying. It had almost eviscerated the third of the pole between the arrow and the edge of the trunk.

  I frowned for a moment, surprised by how powerful it was. It still had slightly less draw power than modern Earth inventions, but a wooden recurve bow shouldn't even be close in stopping power to its modern equivalent.

  "C-come now, t-that wasn't e-even close. Even my grandson-" The Chief chortled, laughing at my practice shot. I dismissed both the peculiarity of the weapon and the Chief's words as I grabbed the second arrow and set it onto the bow's string.

  With a motion so well-practised I could do it half-asleep, I drew the bow back and released it, not hesitating on any of the steps. I moved much faster the second time, the arrow touching the string for less than a second before I sent it flying through the air.

  I felt satisfied as it pierced the man's hat, the force and weight behind the arrow's metal tip allowed it to puncture the hat without knocking it off of the man's head. It was only tilted slightly askew from the feather fletching, and had left behind two neat holes in the cloth. The only evidence of how they had appeared was the arrow still quivering in the wooden wall a few metres behind him.

  "-Could shoot… Better… than…" The Chief said, his words trailing off to a full stop a couple seconds after the impact.

  Most of the villagers had gone silent by that point, but the man who'd gotten a new hole in his hat was acting very lively for a victim of starvation. He was shouting new obscenities I hadn't ever heard before while shaking his hat with a tight fist.

  "If that has satisfied your curiosity, would some game be a suitable trade for it?" I asked while holding up the bow.

  The old man absentmindedly waved his hand at me while he nodded, not taking his eyes off the panicking man for a moment.

  "Sure, sure. Help yourself to, to any one of the empty houses. Plenty of, plenty of those nowadays." The Chief muttered to himself, and I took the statement to mean that we'd been given lodging for the night.

  "Thank you." I replied in an attempt to be polite, before I walked off, with my new tool in hand.