Chapter 12
The lush emerald foliage was a mirage of green and brown, blending with the bright oceanic blue of the surrounding sky. The call of birds and chirps of woodland creatures surrounded Donny as if nature’s symphony was playing its most exclusive song for only him. This was the definition of peace. This was calling of nature that so many sought, and yet few found. It was the subtle creaking of branches swaying in the wind. It was the denotation of serenity. It was the whispered conversation between nature and man.
Donny couldn’t help but feel that this is what the earth he’d left behind was missing. What so many men and women wished for, but the rural conglomerates had stricken from their planet. Donny reminisced on the time he’d visited Colorado in 2115, He was seventeen years old. The once pristine and organic mountains had been transformed into a magnet rain runway for the rich and powerful. He remembered his father lecturing him about the history of Colorado.
“Years ago the forests around here were destroyed by pine beetles. For years they lay dormant beneath the blanket of winter, until the early two thousands, when global warming heated the atmosphere and drew them out as they propagated and spread, feeding on the natural armor of the trees and preventing fungi that was the natural defense of the local flora. Pay attention junior!”
Thwack!
Donny’s father had smacked him on the back of his head, as he’d zoned out, bored by the slow progression of the sky train they rode.
“Come on, dad, you talk about all this hippy bullshit now, but tomorrow we’ll be discussing our next jo-”
Thwack!
“Ouch, fuck, pops, come on, I’m just speaking facts y’heard?” Donny rubbed the back of his head as he winced, his dad never held back with anything, not even correcting his son.
“You. Will. Respect. This planet.” He said, articulating each word with the emphasis of a college professor lecturing an unorderly student.
“Naw, I get that, but this shit? It’s all bogus pops. You know as well as I do that the scientific community has been breeding these trees in a controlled biodome for years, within the next decade or so these forests will be thriving stronger than they had been before global warming” Donny retorted, meeting his pops gaze and not backing down.
Don Sr. quirked a smile at Donny, ruffling his hair as he sighed and leaned back. Pressing a button on the side of his chair, the sound of a vacuum whirred through their enclosed seating as the sound of the compression tubes that lined their chamber eliminated the chance of someone eavesdropping on them.
“Look, son, I know you study hard and train even harder. But you’ve got to learn the nuances of political conference. These people do not care whether we agree with their economic stance. What they do care about is whether we have the gumption to support their political views within the gaze of the majority. It’s all about public perception. And when the public sees my son able to quote the economic crisis of the 21<sup>st</sup> century while simultaneously mocking it in his boredom… It doesn’t look good, junior.” Don said, not giving Donny the chance to interrupt his speech.
“I want you to lead the next rally for economic sustainability in Washington”
“What!? But dad, I-”
“No excuses. Larry can lead that job, and don’t you dare say another fucking word or you’ll be training with me in the gym for the next month!” Don Sr. glared at his son, daring him to talk back.
Donny shrunk down into his seat. He knew he wasn’t a push over, but his dad… he couldn’t do another month in the gym with his father, it had taken him two just for the bruises to heal the last time he’d spent a month in the gym with his pops, and that was less than a year ago.
“Attention passengers. We are now descending over Turquoise lake, the only lake left in the great state of Colorado that has been untouched by pollution. The lake was made in the nineteenth century by damning fort creek, and experts say the high elevation…”
Donny zoned out the sound of the intercom above. Staring at his dad, but unwilling to speak first, he took the silent beating, not wanting to come off as weaker than he was. From outside it would appear as a father reprimanding his unruly teenager, but those people hadn’t seen-hadn’t been there when his father got truly angry. When he’d…
Dadunh, dadunh, dadunh...
Donny was ripped out of his musings by the sound of a pounding gait against the dirt path as something charged him in a furious ambush. Turning around, he barely had enough time to cross his arms in front of himself in a desperate attempt to defend himself.
He was slammed back, arms going limp from the impact of the large boar that had rammed him. A spray of blood painted the air from the where one of the large, jagged tusks had managed to gore him across the forearm. Hitting the ground, Donny slid backwards, riding out the slide to gain some distance before flipping backwards, pulling both repeaters from his waist as he fired in mid-air.
Round after round was fired toward the boar, but the lead shot just ricocheted off the boards thick skull as it pounded toward him, aiming for another ram. Donny jumped to the side at the last second, using the momentum of the boar to his advantage as it blew past him and into a tree. Taking advantage of the boar’s momentarily stunned state, Donny made to fire at its flank, hoping its rear wasn’t as impenetrable as its tough skull, dink, dink, dink... his rounds were simply deflected, rebounding without doing any damage.
Click. Click.
Both pistols gave the hollow report of an empty chamber.
“Shit!” Donny hissed, bracing himself as the boar turned around and lowered its head to ready another deadly charge.
Donny’s arm throbbed, blood leaking down from the gash on his left arm. He needed to do something, and quickly. Running through his options, Donny’s mind raced along with his heart. Throwing down both pistols, Donny pulled his gladius from its sheath.
Stolen story; please report.
Holding the sword out in front of him with both hands, and bringing his legs into a horse stance, Donny braced his knees. Feet planted firmly; Donny stood completely still as the boar charged again. Donny waited, knowing that if he was off on his timing even a little he would most likely die here.
Right when the boar was just outside the reach of Donny’s sword, he brought it up and angled it down, the point of the double-edged blade aiming directly at the boar''s head. The boar turned its head to try and parry the blade with one tusk, but that was exactly what Donny had been hoping for. Twisting his body and leaning into a lunge, Donny’s blade pierced the boar’s right eye, unable to stop its momentous charge, the blade pierced deep into the boars brain, before coming to a halt on something hard, presumably the back of its skull.
Wrrrreeeeeee!
The boar squealed loudly at first, blood spattering Donny with a sickening squelch as the sound slowly fading to silence, its life came to an end. Donny fell back onto his ass at the same time the boar fell to one side, the gladius still lodged in its brain. Panting hard, Donny stared at the boar in shock, heart pounding in his chest from the excitement of the whole ordeal.
As Donny sat there, staring at the dead boar with a gladius protruding from its skull, he began to laugh. He laughed long and hard, tears pouring down his face as he roared his triumph to the sky. For all his stats and newfound strength he knew beyond any doubt that he would not have been able to pierce the tough hide of the boar no matter how hard he struck, his victory had been a combination of quick thinking and luck.
Finally, Donny stood and walked over to the boar, grabbing the hilt of his sword and tugging. It held firm, not even budging from its resting place within the skull of the large boar. Hissing his defiance, Donny placed one foot on the boars head and tugged with both hands in a vain attempt to remove the sword. Realizing that the sword must have been imbedded into the thick skull of the animal, he gave up, stepping back and observing the boar with both hands on his hips.
The gladius had only been a couple hundred credits, but he did not want to waste a perfectly good sword if he didn’t have to. An idea struck Donny, and he walked up and placed his hand on the hilt of his gladius, sending a mental command to his ring. The entire boar, sword and all, disappeared from sight, and he sighed, shaking his head at the absurdity of the entire situation.
Suddenly, Donny swayed where he stood, becoming suddenly dizzy as his arm throbbed, and he remembered the long gash on his arm that continued to leak blood. Donny pulled a first aid kit he’d purchased from the shop and sat cross legged on the dirt path, pulling out a curved needle with a length of catgut suture thread and began stitching the wound closed as best he could. Wincing in pain, Donny tied off the final stitch and snipped the thread before applying a pulped mash of herbs that served as both an antibiotic and a numbing agent.
As Donny wrapped his forearm in a sterile poultice, he stood, flexing his arm back and forth to assess his range of motion. It wasn’t optimal, but it would have to do.
The deep chuff of exhalation sounded from behind Donny, the sound cutting through the otherwise silent forest like steam being expelled through the smokestack of a train. Donny went completely still, the blood draining from his face as a cold sweat chilled his back. He slowly turned his head, trying not to make any sudden movements as a terrifying sight entered his gaze.
At least a dozen boars stood about a hundred feet away, staring a deep blend of anger and hatred towards Donny. The beasts were massive, standing well over four meters tall, with a behemoth of a boar at the back of the herd, towering over the rest. Smaller swine the size of the one Donny had just killed ran in circles around the legs of the mature mammals, a few suckling at the teat of sows that stood behind the group of boar, smaller and slimmer than the larger males but equally furious.
“That was a fucking piglet?” Donny gulped as he mentally questioned what he was seeing, having a hard time processing exactly what was going on.
He slowly took one step back, then another, maintaining eye contact as he backed away from the clearly pissed of group of wild pigs. The massive boar in the middle chuffed another load snort, a cloud of dust billowing up as it’s powerful breath disturbed the dirt on the path. It had one massive tusk jutting up from the right side of its snout, the left side a short, jagged stump of broken ivory and enamel. Old wounds decorated its head, and one eye was welded shut by scar tissue.
Its one remaining eye, on the other hand, was locked on to Donny with the gleaming understanding of a sentient creature. While Donny had noticed that the first boar to attack him had seemed to be intelligent, this was a being that was completely cognizant of world around.
“You know that I was defending myself, right?” Donny shouted, hoping the shed sized boar could understand him.
The boar narrowed its one eye, piercing him a gaze that could freeze water. It bared its flat herbivorous teeth in a low growl before giving the most subtle of nods in what Donny could only recognize as acknowledgement. Donny breathed a sigh of relief as he began to walk away in earnest. It seemed this herd did not intend to pursue this matter any further.
And then Donny heard a stomp, and a loud chorus of snorts and chuffs followed as the earth began to shake. Donny started running away at full speed as he looked over his shoulder, the group of swine surprisingly fast as they began quickly catching up to him.
“Raaaaaaaaaagh, I hate this place!” Donny shouted at the top of his lungs as he ran away as fast as his legs and stats could carry him.
…
Donny stood on the limb of a massive tree, chest heaving with deep breaths and sweat soaking him from head to toe, making clothes stick to skin in a very uncomfortable manner. He had ran from the crazy murderous pig hoard for hours before coming to this tree that towered far taller than any tree he had ever seen, more like a palace of lumber and leaves than the ancient pine that it was. The hefty herd of hooved heathens refused to get to close to the tree, choosing instead to circle in a roughly quarter mile radius around the tree, periodically looking up, searching for Donny, snorting and chuffing in agitation.
As Donny rested and looked down from the road wide branch that he could barely remember scaling in his adrenaline-fueled race against certain death, he got the feeling that his pursuers… worshipped, the tree. It was hard to explain but, they seemed to show reverence and respect to the massive pine. He was pretty sure he had seen the largest boar bow to the tree at some point but couldn’t be sure if he’d imagined it or not.
The sky began to dim as the sun faded over the horizon, a fact that hurt Donny’s brain because he wasn’t entirely sure how this place had a son or moon in the first place but decided not to dwell on that fact too much. He went to the thickest part of the massive branch, where it joined together with the absurdly large tree, and attempted to summon his tent right there. Surprisingly it worked!
“Well at least there’s no placement requirements, like ‘This item can only be summoned on ground level surfaces’ or anything like that” he muttered to himself as he stripped off his still damp clothes, tossing them into a barrel of water and washing the sweat out before clipping them to one of the tent cords that extended out to a stake that was imbedded in the bark of the branch in an unnatural way, as if it simply existed in the same spot as the tree without doing any actual harm to the tree. Donny knew instinctively that when he returned this tent to his spatial ring there would be no hole or disturbance left behind to denote the stakes that had once been.
Donny then drew water and filled the tub, not even bothering to heat up stones and warm the water as he quickly bathed before anything else. After pulling on a pair of soft pajama pants and cotton shirt, Donny ate some dried rations purchased from the tower shop before redressing the wound on his left arm and crawling beneath the thick comforter that lay over his bed.
He quickly fell asleep, exhausted from the sheer amount of physical stress he’d experienced today. As he drifted asleep on his bed, within the land of dreams he woke with a start, finding himself in a dark chamber, rubbing his eyes and looking around in confusion.