That Which Devours

My heart pounded in my chest as my fingers tightened on the knife and an arrow shot out of the treetops toward the moving bushes. The movement stopped, but only for a second before several small dinosaurs appeared. They were barely up to my knee, standing on two feet with narrow tails and heads. Short arms with flexible talons that were very dangerous, despite their size, flicked at their sides. They also had devilishly sharp teeth that contained a type of venom that would make their victim dizzy, and in extreme cases pass out. Compys were small, but they were deadly in a pack.

A second arrow took out another, and I readied myself, extending my spear. One launched itself at me.

Len joined me with his knife ready as the small creature flew through the air towards us.

I swung the glowing crystal around and its superheated edge, like one of those laser swords from a movie, sliced through the creature with no resistance. The biggest benefit of my crystal attunement was that edge, though it left a burnt smell drifting through the air. The Compy’s head went flying into the underbrush as the rest of it crashed to the ground and a few of the other creatures darted off.

[Your experience has been banked.]

The notification made me smile as the feeling of being good at this rushed over me.

Len took out another Compy that launched itself into the air. A fifth dropped from yet another arrow.

One more leaped at me, and I easily stabbed it with the spear, catching the small body on the tip of my weapon. It hung there for a moment before I tossed it off into the bushes.

[Your experience has been banked.]

The remaining creatures paused, one glancing at the others and hissing. It was almost like they were talking with one another, then they all vanished back into the jungle toward the dead Compys that the archers had downed. They would eat well tonight, even if it was their own dead and not us.

I almost ran after them to continue the fight, but Len held up his hand and motioned backward. He stepped back, one step at a time, and I followed. Both of us continued to face forward, not wanting to be ambushed from behind.

It took several moments of slowly walking backward before Len relaxed his shoulders and his spear.

“We’re ready, Len,” said Jas in a low tone from behind us.

The only ones left in the clearing were Len, Jas, Mary, and me. The two people in the trees would make their way back using different paths. Since the two archers had stealth skills and good perches, they would keep watch longer, helping ensure we weren’t followed back by anything bit or dangerous.

“I’ll cover up the trail,” added Mary. “It’s just slow going.”

Len nodded.

I resisted asking questions, but I wanted to know what skill allowed her to do that. My curiosity had gotten me in trouble before, though, and I knew now was not the time. It wasn’t safe.

“We can cover you,” said Len.

Mary nodded as Len and I went first down the trail, making sure nothing had changed in that direction. Jas kept off to one side, his eyes flickering all around. The air around Mary shifted, and it almost glowed as she touched each of us, and then the ground.

[You have been affected by Invisible Passage.]

Mary walked by each of us, taking the lead.

A strange feeling covered my skin, but I ignored it. Invisible Passage, what a skill. I wished I could pull more info on it. I knew people could do that once they had their sheet unlocked, but mine was still locked down. I couldn’t even query other people’s skills until I had a class of my own.

The trail in front of us was barely a trail. Only the passage of the sleds had made an impact on the underbrush. Len and I both kept glancing behind us to see if the Compys were following. It didn’t seem like it. We must have done enough damage to make them hesitate, at least for now. The dead Compys would hopefully distract them even longer. We’d done a pretty good job of burying the bones in the pit, though the Compys could probably get at them if they wanted. Everything edible had been hauled back to the settlement by those with the sleds.

After what seemed like forever, we hit one of the actual trails through the jungle. The path was dirt and slightly wider. Hunters patrolled this trail regularly, since it led to the valley. They kept it clear of fallen branches, weeds, and roots, though there were a few spots where you could hide if something chased you. We marked them with blue strips of cloth. The same went for good climbing trees, to flee out of reach.

Blue was the color of safety for us.

Mary crept in front of us, still doing her strange magic. Despite that, Jas and Len both relaxed as we hit the main trail.

“So did you unlock it?” asked Jas, coming up next to me.

“The class? No…” I answered reluctantly.

He frowned, shaking his head. “But you are so good with your spear. Like, you chopped that head off without a problem. Not to mention, you caught one of the small things on your spear.” He let out a sigh. “I don’t think we will ever understand the system.”

“I think Alex is going to do great things,” said Len. “We just need to find the correct class for her. Right now, we replicate the things we’ve learned, but who knows what other classes are available.” He shook his head. “We don’t want to limit the colony's growth by thinking short term.”

“You sound like you do when you argue with the Council,” said Jas.

I didn’t know what the two were talking about. I didn’t know of any arguments within the leadership group, which we called the Council. There were three of them: Len, a hunter, Sasha, a farmer, and Alexander, one of the last of the command crew, at least with our group. As far as I knew, everyone got along. They also took input from my father, though he didn’t talk about his class and refused to be a formal member of the Council.

“I just become worried when we push people to choose between the relatively few classes we know of. When you think about professions, the same thing goes. We need to survive as a colony, true, but long term, how is it going to limit all of us?” grumbled Len. He gave off the appearance of a grumpy old man chasing kids off his lawn.

My mouth dropped at the rant, and Jas caught my eye.

“So, Len here is hoping you unlock something different.”

“I’d be happy with something at all,” I mumbled.

“Don’t rush it,” said Len. “Plus, maybe you can learn something from one of the other settlements. Some of them have gone in different directions from us.”

I hadn’t even thought of that. Our colony was in contact with two others, and at this point, no one really believed there were more survivors than those two. Heck, my brother was our only pilot to survive, and he was one of the few people that moved between settlements. So far though, he hadn’t run across other humans on the planet.

Maybe I wasn’t as screwed as I thought if other settlements were discovering different classes. I didn’t know what else to say as we continued. A whistle through the trees caused Len to wave toward one of the high points. That tree trunk had a blue arrow tied to it. It was one of the places the colony had someone constantly. There was a small platform to stand on part way up the tree, along with a pillow to sit on. The archers loved it.

I’d only manned it once with a buddy, and I’d hated it. Lots of keeping watch and staying still.

The next landmark was the fallen tree. It tilted over the path at an angle above our heads. The thick trunk stayed put, thankfully. We wouldn’t move it, since it might limit bigger creatures from using the trail. We hoped it would, anyway. So far, the colony itself had been lucky.

All of us picked up our pace as we headed toward the rocks that rose in the distance. The canyon that led to our valley loomed ahead. Metal poles were sunk into the ground between the towering rocks, the start of a fence. A single crystal topped the middle one, sparkling in the light.

I could barely hear the hum as we passed by.

As we had discovered earlier, the Crystals, quartz-like material unknown to anyone from the ship, were incredibly important. A few people could attune them, making them work in different ways. A few, like the head of my spear, were weapons or cutting tools. Some were power sources, like the ones running the sleds. A couple of the biggest crystals powered the one working shuttle we had. Only my brother, John, had been able to make that work. But even without attunement, you could set a crystal somewhere and, as long as it didn’t move, it would slowly start to hum. The creatures in the jungle seemed to hate the noise and actively avoid it. That was about the only real safety we had found so far on this strange planet. And despite their usefulness, or because of it, there weren’t very many crystals around. So far, we had enough, barely, but we didn’t really have any spares.e

As we approached, the valley opened before us on one side. In the distance, small beasts were in a corral. The creatures were about the size of cows and had horns and short tails, but we only had three fenced in an enormous paddock. It was the future of ranching on this planet, or so we hoped. From how my brother spoke, they were hoping to figure out when the creatures laid eggs so they could grow the herd, and eventually reduce the need to hunt in the jungle.

The waterfall sparkled in the distance at the very tip of the valley; it spilled into a large lake that drained into some underground aquifer from what the engineers said. Either way, the safe source of water was king. Even if the valley hadn’t provided natural defenses, we’d have had to be here, because safe water was so hard to find. The stagnant pools in the jungle were a recipe for getting sick or being eaten.

To the left in the trees stood our colony. The largest wooden building was the community hall. We had a few other structures, too, but not many. Plenty of reinforced tents still stood, but everyone was working to transition out of them as soon as possible. The only other standout place was the crash site, near the edge of the lake. Part of the wreck had filled with water, but most of it was dry. The ship’s front was destroyed from where it had fallen from the top of the cliffs after our ‘landing.’ Everything usable had been salvaged after people had regrouped, and that had been the beginning of our Colony.

Now it sat there, with discussions ongoing about scraping the leftovers. So much equipment had been lost, destroyed, or didn’t work because of the batteries exploding. The back half of the dropship still sat somewhere above in the trees. Most people had survived from that section of the dropship, and had come to the valley. We hadn’t ranged above since, with so much to do to keep ourselves alive.

Last was the working shuttle, the only connection to the other settlements that we had.

“You coming?” asked Jas.

He stood several steps in front of me, heading toward the big fire already going in front of the community hall.

“Yeah,” I said, moving down the trail. The sleds were still stacked with meat and several giant pots bubbled, with long metal poles draped with meat chunks roasting. The smells of roasted meat grew stronger as we approached.

My stomach growled.

Metal grates over small heaps of coals held strips of Paras that one of the cooks had cut up. These were smoking and off-limits to everyone. More jerky, which was just great. I missed pasta, fresh vegetables, and cake. The leaders had each mentioned more than once that some baking supplies were recovered, but they were waiting until we had been here a year to break them out.

I could drool thinking about cake, so I didn’t.

People waved as we entered the area. Everyone knew everyone, which was awesome, and also such a pain. Even the folks who had been rescued from the mining settlement knew everyone.

Another cheer went up as the last sled came to a halt. The hunt had been successful, and everyone had survived. The mood was almost festive, as everyone got to work processing and cooking the results. I headed toward the cooks. I normally helped with dinner prep if we were having something other than rations. The assignment was based on the fact that I needed so much food. I thought it was a normal amount compared to a regular person, but as everyone made it to level 10, that wasn’t the case anymore.

Now, I was the last without a level in the Colony, since Cass got her class.

Abby smiled at me as I approached the large wooden stump people used as a table. She had a pile of potatoes she’d cut up. “Grab a knife, we have proper veggies tonight!”

I still couldn’t believe we would have actual food tonight. “I can’t wait!” My stomach growled on cue and she laughed.

“I heard you did good out there, even getting a stab in.”

I blushed. “I also killed a few Compys, so I’m feeling pretty good.”

Her eyebrows rose, and she nodded. “That's worth celebrating.” She leaned closer to me. “Guess what?”

“What?” I asked while grabbing a knife and a clean potato.

“We also have carrots, and some greens.”

Now we were talking.

She leaned back, dicing up the potato. “All the veggies are going into a stew. Should be enough for everyone to have a taste or two.”

I hoped for a whole bowl, but we’d need to see. My eldest brother, Benny, approached carrying a cloth bag. His overalls were only slightly covered in dirt. For a second he reminded me of dad, with his brown eyes, short hair, and muscled build, though Benny’s muscles were from farming, not soldiering. Then he spoke and he was all Benny. “Hey, Sprout, heard you did great.” He clapped me on the shoulder with a smile.

Man, did I hate that nickname.