All right, Chapter 3.
This chapter is going to be the first one that shows the gradual maturing of the Chosen One, as he begins to realize just what life is like outside of his secluded village.
My –real- writing style is also going to show through a bit, seeing as the last chapter may have seemed to be somewhat light-hearted, or, even 'Campy' at some points.
Oh, yes, this one will be a bit more violent, featuring some of the 'infamous' weapon descriptions that seem to go hand-in-hand with most decent Fallout fiction. What good is knowing a weapon is being used in a fight, when you don't know anything about it?
Enjoy.
(And, I've noticed that I have quite a few hits. I'm always welcome to reviews and criticism from any willing to give it. Just make it -constructive- criticism, okay?)
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Walking through the mountains leading from the village turned out to be rather uneventful, the burning sun aside.
There were the occasional packs of ants or scorpions, nothing that we hadn't already seen and hunted in our time.
When Klint and I hit the desert however, we realized just how different the world was from what we had known all of our lives.
All that we could see for miles was barren, sun scorched desert.
I looked on my PIP-Boy 2000, the small piece of magical 'Teknologie' that the Vault Dweller us, and scanned the map on it's face.
The place called 'Klamath' seemed to only be about three or four days away.
Squaring our shoulders, and figuring out how to best cover ourselves from the sun's harsh light, we slowly made our way to this 'Klamath'.
Two days went by, with the most excitement coming from small scorpions scuttling under rocks when the sun's light heated the desert floor.
It wasn't until our third day, when we were heading through a small canyon, that something happened. And, I have to say… It scared the –hell- out of me.
We'd only been walking for a bit after entering the canyon, when two figures stepped from an outcropping of shattered rocks.
We didn't think much of it, seeing as we were still rather naïve, given our limited exposure to the world. I tried calling out, and got a response: They both turned, a man and woman, stared for a moment, and came running, howling wildly as they did.
I thought they were just people who had gotten too close to the spirits when they used herbs, but, then, I got a closer look.
They were both wearing strange hides for clothing, and their faces were twisted maliciously.
What caught my breath, was the sharp teeth, and what they screamed… "MEAT!"
They were going to try and kill us, and eat us.
They were cannibals, the people with poisoned knives my uncle, the trader, Slik, told us about.
It took all of our will to bring our spears up in both hands, instead of the normal overhand stabbing position, and ready ourselves for their charge.
We didn't wait long.
The man came screaming maddeningly, rushing as quickly as he could, to what he though would be his next meal. All he ended up eating was my spear tip, when I stabbed it into his jaw.
Our spears are hard to make, chunks of steel ripped from pre-war 'teknologie', bent and cut into a sharp, jagged edge, tied to a stout aspen pole with heavy brahmin sinew, and decorated with personal markings, and trophies of our battles.
The hard steel didn't have any trouble piercing his jaw, and slowly gouging into his backbone, mainly from the momentum of his charge. He was dead before I had even ripped my spear free, which completely destroyed his face when the serrated edge ripped away flesh and chunks of bone.
I looked over to Klint, and saw that he too had just finished impaling his opponent, and was already cleaning his spear on her clothing, that I know knew wasn't leather from any brahmin or gecko. It was human.
After cleaning our weapons, and trying to regain our composure after seeing something so chilling, we grabbed what little we could find from the bodies: two poisoned knives, made much in the same way our spears were, with longer, edged blades, normally used for anything from hunting, to cutting poles for a tent, though, these also had the poison of a scorpion, mixed by an evil shaman with other materials, coating it. We also came upon a handful of the small disks the Elder called 'munney', that the outsiders traded for other things.
The faces of the dead cannibals haunting us, we moved on, seeing more of the same, desert, some scrub weed, the occasional cactus, things one would expect in a desolate wasteland.
Two more days of travel went by, and we saw many strange huts in the distance, most of them looked half-destroyed, but, some were whole, and had people around them.
I looked at my PIP-Boy, and saw that we had made it to the village called 'Klamath'.
Hopeful, we made our way towards the village, expecting the end of our journey to be just ahead.
We didn't realize that this was just the beginning.
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A slight change in story progression, and, overall, I am more satisfied with this than the mildly 'kiddy-ish' previous chapter.
As I said, reviews and constructive criticism is –quite- welcome.
I'll hopefully have the next chapter up today or tomorrow.