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10101

Chapter 11: I Knew That Would Happen...

10101

The Shivering Sea was far below the glacier's edge. Hundreds of meters below, the sea's icy waves crashed into the wall of frozen waste. Looking down over the edge made me wonder if this is how the crows feel high up on the wall. Looking down, even a whale would be a minuscule little thing.

The air seemed to contain a bitter chill. I stayed wrapped up in the under-furs of Vera after the first two weeks of travel north of the Thenn lands. I kept my body tight to her lower back, our flesh sharing warmth.

There was nothing like satisfying myself by slipping a little lower than her lower back and using her tight hole to pass the tedious time of travel.

The sun stopped setting after a month of travel. It stayed circling the horizon, as it bathed the white snow in that twilight between day and night. It lasted for a month of the coldest travel I have ever endured.

I stayed inside the furs, tight to Vera's flesh for fear of freezing solid in moments. I butchered the 40 untamed mammoths and skinned them. They were used to give the rest of my beasts another layer of protection against the cold.

Even the thick hides of the mammoths struggled to fight the bitter cold of the lands of always winter.

The coast of the Shivering Sea guided me on my journey through the frozen land. Even breathing was difficult at times. The very air wanted to freeze in your lungs. It took constant attention to keep all of my skins breathing in slow deep breaths to keep them alive. I lost 5 Snow-bears and 10 mammoths to the cold. The furs of the fallen skins provided warmth for the others to survive.

Aside from the cold, the weather wasn't like a real winter. There was no cutting wind or blizzard storms. The temperature was bad enough. I continued mapping the wicked coast of the Shivering Sea for the next month through the brutal cold.

Eventually, the high glacier gave way to a land I had never heard of. Every time I closed my eyes, I could still see the sun begin to set for the first time in months of hard travel. Fields of grass and low hills stretched as far as the eye could see. At night, the weather turned as cold as it was in the 'Twilight Lands'.

I called it the Fowl Grass Sea. The lands were populated by small herds of giant birds, massive snakes, and small flying lizards who filled the sky like the bats of the south. I continued to follow the shore of the not-so-Shivering Sea. A great deal of the time was spent drawing pictures of the animals and preserving parts of them to show the Free-folk when I returned to the cold south.

The large birds were as tall as two men and traveled in packs of 10-20. They were flightless, yet had small wings, like the birds I was used to. They had long thin legs and massive and cruel curved beaks. They feasted on the abundant eggs of the massive snakes and flying lizards.

The snakes never roamed far from the sea. They were dozens of feet long, with no teeth, and had a wide, flat tail. They slithered through the sea, hunting anything they liked. I saw one returning to it's recently dug burrow with a lump in it's middle the size of a whale. It spent a full day tiring itself out widening it's burrow in the soft soil at the edge of the beach. After it tiered itself to exhaustion, I had the mammoths charge it with their sharpened tusks ready to impale.

I lost another mammoth as the serpent coiled around the skin as quick as I could blink. I felt the mammoth's neck break and bones crack to splinters within the first seconds of the assault. It took minutes of relentless gouging and bloody goring for the snake to release it's death-grip on the massive skin.

I kept it's scaled skin rolled up on a sled.

At first I'd thought the flying lizards were dragons. I'd been utterly shaken to look up into the sky and see the silhouette of a real dragon, like in the stories, flying through the sky. And then I saw another. And another. Countless dragons circled in the sky, like crows circling carrion.

And then one landed. The size of a small raven. It was a harmless carrion feeder. The giant birds were far more dangerous. The little dragons had tiny little hair-like feathers covering their veined membrane wings. Their minds were simple and easy to control. It was similar to the flying birds of the south.

A few weeks of following the Shivering Sea's shore had me crossing countless little rivers that fed into the sea. They were full of colorful frogs and lizards of different types. There were even slime coated fish with little stubby leg-like fins that they used to crawl around in the mud.

There were no animals with fur, as far as I could tell. There was also a complete lack of legged insects. Worms were abundant, in all kinds of shapes and sizes. There were no flies however, nor ants or spiders.

I passed through the grassland, into a forest.

The trees were sparse and small for the first week or so. Dog-sized lizards made their homes in the little round shrubs. They dug around in the dirt for food, I observed. The flying lizards watched from above as the ground lizards fed on burrowed mud walking fish and giant rainbow colored worms.

The weather began to get warm. As if I were traveling south instead of north. The sun was different. It gave the illusion that I was traveling south. It rose in the west, and set in the east, just like the old sun. But the Shivering Sea's coast couldn't lie.

I concluded that this must be a different sun. It was the only real explanation I could come up with that made sense.

The trees became larger. Thick and straight, they grew high into the sky. The forest on the edge of the Shivering sea grew thick. I had to start clearing trees at times. The mammoths had difficulty traveling in the dense forest with their large size.

I found a massive valley with a little river running through it, leading into the sea. I had My skins build a wall across the far end of the valley, creating a very large enclosure. There, I left my 14 surviving mammoths to wait for my return. They were too large and lumbering for the dense forest.

It became unbearably hot. I had to shave the fur off my bears to keep them from sweating to death. Vera lumbered through the forest utterly naked. I simply rode Fang in nothing but my steel coat of mail.

The weather was wet. It rained almost every day. The trees grew denser as they grew more colorful. The lizards and birds were in all shapes and sizes. They were colored in shades I never knew existed. Frogs were the main food I ate soon enough. The frogs were the size of goats, and fed on colorful tree-worms and little flying lizards.

After months, I encountered something I did not expect.

People...

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It was nearly a year of traveling from when I encountered the Thenn army. I spent my days hunting for colorful animal parts to add to my collection and breeding the bears for greater speed and strength. Vera was my constant shadow, ever watchful for giant snakes or a wandering tall-bird herd.

I was riding Fang back to the quickly made hut I called home this week. I smelled the flowers and tasted the air as I warged into the baby serpent wrapped around my torso. I'd only managed to claim one live young as my own, and keep it alive.

I slipped my tongue into the air, and tasted. A new scent hit me. One that had my animal instincts crying out in alarm. I opened my human eyes with a jerk and sat up from where I laid on Fang's back. I didn't know what caused such a reaction in the massive serpent, but, but it was the first time I'd felt fear in such a fearless skin.

Vera responded to my alarm by gripping her spear tightly and looking around wildly. Her belly was starting to swell with pregnancy, and I always wanted her as close as she wanted me. I had half my bears with me as the other half rested around my hut a few miles away. They woke and began rushing in my direction as I sensed minds I did not control draw near.

The wet forest went silent around me as I felt a surge of fear crawl down my spine. I'd not felt real fear in a long time. Nine bear skins and a pregnant giantess circled around me.

The rain started to patter lightly on the lush greenery around us. The lack of howler-lizard calls and giant frog croaks was eerie.

And then I saw him.

Well, Fang saw him. Fang had very sharp eyes compared to my own. Green, brown, and black splattered together in a blend of colorful skin that made him almost invisible. The shape of his body was undeniable however. It was a little man.

Tiny, he could only be 3 1/2 feet tall at the most. But he had matted facial hair like a full grown man. Long black nails were dug into the tree's bark as he hung upside down in the canopy's branches.

Now that I spotted one, I soon saw another. And another... and another. Tiny green skinned tree-men. Black beady eyes and without a bit of clothing, or a discernible weapon.

Dozens of them surrounded us, hanging in the trees, utterly silent.

And then they fell...