Fugitive Status Part 2: First Hunt

Ever wondered where the Tidbit nickname came from?

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Ilian Barking Deer might have experienced any number of hazards while living in this war-torn, monster-riddled wilderness. However, a spear-wielding, mostly-naked Korean man hurtling out of the sky, wearing a baby dragon like a backpack, was probably not one of them.

A dozen cervine heads reared up in alarm, a fraction of a second too late as I landed with deadly accuracy on the back of a fleeing buck. The barking deer, true to its name, let out a hoarse coughing sound as the pitted blade of the Spear of Nine Spheres took it in the side of the neck. Other deer honked and barked with terror as the buck stumbled to its knees, pitching me and Karalti over its head to the ground.

"Woah woah WOAH SHIT!" I held the spear out so I didn't accidentally impale myself or my dragon as I tumbled to a bloody stop. The once-peaceful meadow now looked like a slaughterhouse. Behind us, I saw the deer's eyes roll back as it flopped to the ground, tongue lolling.

"WHEEEE!" Karalti scrabbled up over my bare shoulders, bouncing over me in excitement. "Again! Again!"

"Uhh…maybe later." I pushed up to my feet, then took a moment to reequip my armor. The time for stealth had passed... but there was one problem. "Karalti, can you PLEASE get your really sharp claws out of my actual skin?"

"Food! Yay!" Karalti replied by digging them in harder, just before she launched herself clumsily into the air. She squawked like a parrot as her wings refused to obey her for a second, and I nearly lunged forward to catch her before she righted herself and glided heavily down toward the twitching deer carcass, landing with a 'thump' on the soft ground. Oblivious to any injury she'd caused me or herself, Karalti wobbled over to the buck and clamped her little jaws on the back of its neck, growling as she lashed her head from side to side.

"Good job." I wandered over and looked down, smiling despite myself. "You got it."

"Yeah! I got it!" Karalti's wings unfurled again, flapping as she tried energetically - but unsuccessfully - to rip the carcass open. "Karalti... uhhhn!... is the best and strongest! Will… URRRGH!... feed mama AND Hector!"

"That's not your job. You're still little. It's my job to feed YOU tidbits." Finally, I laughed. I'd been trying not to laugh at her, but fucking hell.

"Tidbits? What’s a tidbit?" Karalti paused in confusion. There was the odd sensation of an alien mind searching mine, and then my dragon’s big violet eyes widened with understanding. She let go of the buck's neck and bounced over me, opening her mouth like a baby bird. "Tidbits! Gimme! I want tidbit!"

Turns out, it's hard to carry a full-grown deer carcass when you're laughing your ass off. Cutthroat looked extremely confused as I staggered back to her with the buck slung over my shoulders, Karalti bouncing along behind me with her mouth still gaping wide open.

One minigame and ten minutes later, one of the deer’s legs was roasting over a small smokeless fire. I gave the head and the front of the carcass to Cutthroat, who roused for long enough to bury her face in it, growling and snarfing half-heartedly into its guts. I fed Karalti while my own food cooked, because despite her best efforts, she had no actual idea how to feed herself.

“Eeep! Eeeep!” Karalti's skinny neck strained towards me. Her eyes were huge, jaws gaping to show a brightly colored purple-and-scarlet striped throat. Her wings vibrated against her flanks as she peeped loudly - peeps that turned to a garbled 'OOAUM-NAUM-NAUM' as I poked another piece of venison into her mouth.

"You know, I never knew that something could be this cute and this gross at the same time. But here we are." Squatting in front of her, I reached for another sliver of meat. I'd left it bloody at her insistence, and my fingers were stained red. “Say ahh!”

"Ahhhh!" Karalti began peeping as soon as she'd swallowed, begging like a baby bird from the ground. "More tidbit!"

"I'm gonna start calling YOU Tidbit." I flipped the shred of meat into her gaping maw, lips quirking as the cheeping once more disintegrated into garbled snarfing. "Tidbit the Butterball Queen. Because you sure as hell love to eat."

"Yeah! Food is the best!" Karalti, completely unoffended, chomped the meat right down and opened her mouth to wheeze for more. "Hector is the best too!"

Once again, a wave of raw, unadulterated affection washed from her to me, and my cheeks flushed before I could help myself. "Well... you're pretty great too, Tidbit."

"Better than food?"  She gazed up at me with huge, adoring purple eyes.

"WAY better than food." On impulse, I reached out to scratch under the hatchling's chin. "I would skip at least two meals for you."

Karalti gasped, pulling her head back on her neck with disbelief. "TWO meals!? That’s a lot!"

"Yep. Breakfast AND lunch." I used a knife to carve another strip from the deer, keeping half an eye on my portion. It was nearly done - and safe from Cutthroat, for once. I was used to the hookwing slinking toward the campfire at night, eager to try and steal any meat I cooked. But right now, Cutthroat was so tired that she'd fallen asleep with her head inside of the deer.

“Is Hector gonna eat?” Karalti paused begging, her expression anxious. “I don’t want Hector to skip meals! Is hurts!”

"Don’t worry about me. I’ll eat soon." I laughed, and ruffled her head before flipping the next piece of venison to her. “Here, catch!”

It was pretty astounding how much a creature of Karalti's size could eat. She’d downed at least two pounds of meat by the time she finally had enough and went to sleep, curled against my chest and around my arm like a scaly beachball. But even with that and the warmth of Cutthroat's body behind us, I found myself unable to settle down. Instead of that, I lay on my side on my bedroll with my HUD open, obsessively studying every detail of mine and Karalti's character sheets.

Karalti was Level 0 right now. To reach Level 1, she needed 336 EXP. She’d only gotten ten points from the deer hunt, so I either needed to kill a lot more deer, or we needed to find a quest. I knew there HAD to be quests we could pick up... but where?

"C'mon, man. This is a game. Wander down any road, and you'll find someone who needs an adventurer to collect a dozen herbs, or catch their missing cow or some shit." Restlessly, I scratched at my hair as my brain chattered away. I had the attention span of a squirrel at the best of times. After a big stressful week like this one, my brain felt like a bag of ferrets, each one writhing around and screeching about a different thing. But as I lay there, my thoughts kept coming back to one thing: Baldr, Lucien, and the bizarre sequence of events that had led us here.

In all honesty…I had no idea what had happened, or why the crystal lady had been frozen, then unfrozen, or why she’d exploded. Twice. I’d gotten a weird vision just before Lucien had knifed me in the back, too. A bunch of bird people chanting around some kind of big-ass portal. There had been another person there, carrying the Spear of Nine Spheres – not broken and rusted like it was now, but whole. But who had it been? I’d assumed human, but now I thought about it… had he been? It had been hard to tell in the blazing light.

None of it made much sense. The woman in the crystal hadn’t looked like the bird-people in the vision. And the pearl she’d been holding… it looked like it would fit in one of the slots on the Spear. But it hadn’t gone to the Spear when Baldr had released it. It had embedded itself in his forehead.

“So fucking weird.” I groaned, and sighed.

Karalti murmured in reply, and pushed her back in against my chest. She had my arm gripped in hers, hugging it to her belly. I smiled, and – after a moment’s hesitation – pressed a chaste kiss to the top of her head. The little dragon chirped softly, radiating affection even while asleep.

“We’ll figure it out.” I lay my head down on the rolled up cloth I was using for a pillow, and willed my eyes to close. “For your sake, Tidbit. And mine.”