Space Wizard
or
Yer a Space Wizard, Harry!
01
"Shit! Fuck! Oh god! Fuck, fuck fuck, fuck, fuuuuuck~!"
Dodging around a ghostly but solid tree, something snapped behind me and I heard a growl. I swore I felt hot breath on the back of my neck as I desperately pushed myself to go just a little faster.
"You fuck off!" I yelled back behind me as something yowled and footsteps thumped and splashed.
Holding up one hand to ward the rain away, I flailed back with the other and the limb turned spear as I heard the giant cat leap, dodging to the side as I did. I turned my head and caught sight of the thing getting smacked across the nose.
"Bad kitty!"
Time out!
Imagine if you will, a man running through a blasted out, ghostly hellscape in the middle of the night as acid rain capable of dissolving flesh from bones pours down in sheets and is held at bay only by a dome of force somehow being projected from the man's hand. Behind him, a tiger-like cat that makes the sabertooth look small by comparison gives chase, in search of its next meal.
That meal is me.
My name is Harry Porter and I'm an almost forty year old hikki neet who makes his living working from home as a stock trader and have since before 'working from home' became a thing. Go ahead, laugh. I'll wait. Trust me, I've heard every joke there is. Swear to God, the next person who tells me "Yer a wizard, Harry!" is getting punched in the throat.
Well, I should say, I was a hikki neet stock trader, before this morning… but I'm getting off track.
That tiger? It stands shoulder height to me on all -fours- sixes. It looks like five hundred or more pounds of pure muscle. It's all black and gray fur, the pattern looking more like an ocelot with splotches, dots, and stripes. Its eyes glow golden and are filled with not just hunger, but amusement and malice. It's having fun chasing me and it's enjoying my terror.
And me? Well, I just bonked it on the nose.
About that moment, a look of confusion crosses its face as it rears its head back. A befuckled look that, if it were in a thought bubble, might read, 'Did this motherfucker really just bonk me on the nose?'
Alright, time in.
It flinched, and that was all I needed to launch myself away and further up the mountain trail, running with speed that shouldn't really be possible as the scenery blurred around me. It resumed the chase and I scrambled into a village composed of pitted, worn stone huts that looked a lot like igloos. I rushed into the largest one and slammed my bamboo door shut behind me. Levitating the boulder I'd brought inside as a door stop over, I shoved it against the bamboo door, then collapsed against the boulder and heaved in panting breaths.
"Fuck, that was close. Never again!"
Something scratched at the bamboo outside. Gently at first, then more insistent. And then, with contemptuous ease, it sliced right through the left side of the door, knocking it to the floor. It stopped, only to lean its head against the newly made opening and peer inside with one burning gold eye.
Heeeere's Johnny! I thought with a panicked giggle.
"Fuck!"
I grabbed my spear and braced myself against the boulder. As I did, my mind flashed back to the events of that morning…
"What… in the world?"
Imagine that you're sitting in front of your monitor playing a video game. All of a sudden, there's a bright flash from outside—so bright it hurts your eyes through the blackout curtains over your window. And then, in between blinks, you find yourself standing among some ruins set on a mountain, overlooking a lush, green valley and more mountains in the near distance. Oh, and there are huge hunks of rock covered in moss, vines, and even trees just… just floating through the sky like that's a thing that mountain-sized boulders can do.
"Is this… heaven?" I hadn't been a believer, but… I'd gone from 'bright flash' to 'standing in a new location,' so I wasn't entirely ruling out having been nuked.
The only problem with that theory was that I was still breathing. I could still feel. Biting the inside of my cheek hard enough to feel pain confirmed I was probably still a squishy meat sack and not a disembodied spirit transported to some afterlife, unless the afterlife was very different from how we had imagined it.
Reaching up, I rubbed at my eyes. Everything felt… not wrong, but strange. There were a multitude of things all clamoring for my attention at once, really. The first was the closest to home.
I held no illusions that I was anything other than what I was—a shut-in and borderline sociophobe. Not because I was afraid of people, just because I didn't like dealing with them and would rather spend my time playing video games, reading, watching anime, or any one of a hundred other things. People, I had found, were assholes—and I was no exception. I knew who and what I was and I looked exactly how you'd expect someone who spent all their time at a desk and none of their time at a gym to look. And yet…
My body felt different and a look down showed I looked very little how I had prior to the flash of light. From everything I could see, I might look like an idealized version of myself—fit and relatively muscular, athletic even, but with nothing in the way of a mirror I couldn't confirm that from the neck up. Speaking of, my glasses just weren't there and my eyesight was better than 20/20. I could make out fine details in the distance that I didn't think I'd be able to with binoculars.
I wasn't wearing my normal clothes, nor was I carrying any of my usual accouterments—no phone, wallet, keys, or pocket knife, though I did have a large, curved knife on my belt in a leather sheath. My clothes consisted of a set of brown boots, black pants, a gray shirt, and a dark brown coat that went down to my thighs—the material feeling like nothing I'd ever felt before, but it was very comfortable and smooth.
Beyond the new look, there were new sensations, too. It may sound cheesy, but it was like seeing in monochrome all your life, only to suddenly one day see color. The world was a damn technicolor rainbow to my eyes. Everything was all… puppies and kittens and rainbow-shitting unicorns and poptart cats as far as the eye could see. But it wasn't just sight, it was smell, taste, sound, even the touch of the air on my skin carried with it a new depth of sensory perception.
The air smelled like a clean, spring day—just the right right temperature and humidity, with a bit of a cool breeze blowing. Light filled the place from no discernible source, tingling on my skin and while I was already feeling better than I ever had in my life, I felt even better soaking it in—which, for me, was strange. I hated sunlight. Not because I burned, which I did, but because enough light left me light blind and with a mild to major headache if I went out in it without a hat and sun glasses (and sometimes even then). I didn't have any of that at the moment. Turning my face up to the sky, I closed my eyes and smiled as I took a moment to just appreciate not feeling like shit in the light for a change.
There was another sensation filling me now, too. A sense of growing urgency. I felt like… everything would be alright, but I needed to hurry and prepare. There were things I needed to do and somewhere I needed to be, and just beyond that sense of urgency was a feeling of approaching danger—not here yet, maybe not even soon by some definition of the word, but eventually.
Sudden relocation. Upgrade in looks. Definite powers. I knew what had happened.
"I've been ROB'd." Except… if I had been isekai'd by some bored ROB for whatever reason, they hadn't taken the time to consult me about it—or even taken like five seconds to scratch out a note to leave in my pocket. 'Sorry you got nuked. I've isekai'd you to another world and given you powers and perfect health. Have fun! Hugs and kisses, your ROB!' Wouldn't take more than a few seconds worth of effort. Really, what kind of slacker…?
Fuck it. Either I fell asleep at my desk and I'm dreaming, which this didn't feel at all like, or it's all real and my gut is telling me I need to move my ass. So, follow my gut. Thing is, what should I do?
I paused, then sat down and thought. "How did it go again…? Right. STOP."
Stop. You've realized you're lost. Stay calm. Stay put.
Think. Go over how you got where you are. What landmarks should you be able to see? Don't go anywhere without a specific reason.
Observe. Determine directions based on where you're standing. Don't wander aimlessly. If you're on a trail, stay on it. As a last resort, follow drainage or streams downhill.
Plan. Based on observations and thoughts, come up with a plan.
Well, looking around, I had no idea where I was. The entire place was alien to me. I may as well have been dropped onto another world—and if I really was ROB'd, that might just be the case. The floating mountains kind of made that the only valid option, other than it being a dream.
There were landmarks aplenty around me, but none I recognized as familiar.
Looking around, I took in the trail, the mountain or hill I was on, and the surrounding trees. I felt pretty confident I could find my way back here if need be.
And then came the last part. Planning.
The basics for survival are: water, food, shelter, and warmth. I need to secure those first, before anything else.
That sensation of needing to go, to move, returned—seemingly pointing me downhill. Now, at least, I had a clear goal in mind. If I was going to be here for any length of time, I needed to see to basic needs first before anything else. Standing up, I followed that feeling and began moving quickly, but quietly, down the path—keeping an eye out on the trail and to either side for potential threats.
The 'gut feeling' grew more insistent as I moved. More insistent and more specific. Reaching down as I went, I picked up a rock from the ground and slipped it into my pocket—not sure why, but certain I'd need it in the immediate future. The gut feeling was at least appeased at the act.
Following that feeling, I made my way down what looked like a game trail. Eventually, I walked down into the valley. The sounds of running water could be faintly heard through the trees as I moved closer towards it. Suddenly, I felt the need to stop and wondered why. Pausing in the middle of the trail, I looked around. Through the trees and brush, I could make out a glow some distance away. It was all life and looked and felt kind of like a deer.
Is that why I stopped?
The gut feeling returned and I moved as it directed. I turned slightly, lifted the rock in my hand, then flung it as hard as I could. I raised an eyebrow when the rock cut through the trees, flying much faster than I'd thought it would.
Somewhere in the middle distance, I heard an impact, followed by a quiet bleat and a thump. And then, I was running through the forest—much faster than I had ever run in my life. Running was like moving through a dream. I was almost completely silent, even my footfalls coming quieter. I ducked under low hanging branches, hopped over obstacles, and even vaulted some vines in my way all without ever slowing down. Drawing my knife as I ran, I leapt up into the lower branches of a tree, before using the branch to spring off and down in a feat of acrobatics I had never been capable of in my life.
I fell upon something that looked vaguely deer-like, knife leading. It had striped fur, alternating between dark, almost red brown and a much lighter brown, four eyes, and six legs (four back and two front). As I'd seen through the trees, the animal gave off a rainbow of colors that felt like pure life, like nature. But at the moment it felt… confused, scared, and hurt.
It was just now trying to get to its feet—the rock I had thrown laying on the ground nearby, having apparently stunned it. My left hand grabbed it by one of its outwardly curved horns and the knife came in and slammed into the back of its neck—where neck and skull joined. There was a brief second of pain and fear, before there was nothing. The animal dropped to the ground, dead. The glow around it faded some, but not entirely.
"Okay… that happened," I muttered. But… that was one need taken care of, at least. Water nearby, so I just need to find somewhere to camp. Either find or make shelter. Come on alien powers, don't steer me wrong!
I had hunted before, so I knew what came next. Still, that strange sense of what to do returned.
I made my way back along my trail and used the knife to cut loose some of the vines and tied their ends together to make a rope. Rolling them up, I carried the vines to a tree and looped them around a branch. I cut down a small branch and cut off a small length of vine with a loop in the middle and one on each end, which I slipped over ends of the branch after quickly sharpening them. One end of the rope, I tied through the center loop of the rope on the branch while I set the other end near another tree. Then, I dragged my kill over and, after slicing a hole in each of its back legs beneath the tendons, ran the branch through the holes and secured the shorter rope to the branch. Then, I pulled the animal up the tree to a comfortable height, tied the vine rope off, and set about the dirty work of cleaning it.
When the blood was drained and the carcass was cleaned, save for the fur on it, I followed that feeling again and hopped, not climbed, up a nearby tree. Only a couple of branches up, I found a sturdy looking limb with a Y in it that had been damaged at some point by wind. I sheathed my knife and grabbed the limb, and with a flex of strength I didn't think I was capable of, I broke it the rest of the way off before tossing it down to the ground. I stripped off the excess limbs, leaving me with a Y-frame litter. I used the vines to secure the carcass, washed it out with clean river water in addition to washing the blood off my hands, and made my way back up the mountain.
Okay, how am I doing this? I wondered as I walked, easily carrying what had to be a buck-fifty worth of alien space deer—at least, I assume it was alien, given the number of eyes and legs.
Following that gut feeling since it hadn't led me astray yet, I made my way up the mountain until eventually, I found a series of stone ruins that looked like they had once been dwellings. Well, I say ruins, but they looked largely intact. Just very, very worn. I made my way towards the center of what was obviously a village of some sort, to the largest dwelling. It was shaped like an igloo, with an entrance large enough for me to walk into without crouching. Checking the inside, I found it was empty of anything but dust, leaves, cobwebs, and the remains of what looked like wooden furniture. There was a fire pit in the center with an actual, metal pot resting beside it that looked strangely devoid of rust. I'd take what I could get, however.
The deer, I dragged over to a nearby smaller building and leaned the Y-frame against the wall, letting the deer stand. Then, still following that gut feeling, I went outside and began working.
Time passed… strangely as I worked. I never seemed to really get tired as I went about what needed to be done. Part of me knew the day would end eventually, but another part felt like that was far off from now and I had plenty of time to get everything done, as long as I worked quickly.
I picked up the pot and carried it back down to the stream, where I cleaned it out using sand before filling it and carrying it back up… on my head, perfectly balanced as I made my way through the forest, collecting things. More vines, I rolled into a long rope coiled around my chest. I wandered a bit towards the… east? I wasn't sure. It was impossible to tell, so I mentally marked the village as north, the valley as south, which made it east. I wandered east and came across a bamboo forest. I cut down several poles, tied them together, and carried them—leaves and all—back to the village.
My next trip was spent gathering up fallen limbs—all old, dry stuff for firewood—and stuffing what I believed to be edible plants, herbs, and what looked like a chunk of rock salt into the pockets of my coat. Finally, after one last trip spent gathering more bamboo and vines, I felt like that was enough. I made my way back to the village and set to work. The first thing I did was clean out the buildings I'd be using. The end of a bamboo pole, trimmed and covered in small branches and leaves made for a halfway decent broom that I could use the sweep up both buildings. All of the old, dry wood from old furniture was moved outside temporarily while I swept, before being moved into the building where I'd left the meat. Then, I got to work on preparing food.
I used some branches and made a big hanging rack, then used the knife to first skin the deer and cut off the parts I wouldn't be using (the head and lower legs), then start sectioning off the deer. Some of it was placed onto a rack directly over the fire in thinly sliced cuts. Other parts were sliced even thinner to make jerky. The rib sections were put on their own racks directly over the soon to be fire as well. A smaller rack was used to slice the vegetables, fruit I think, some kind of pepper, and what looked like mushroom thinly and was placed near the fire pit. After that, I filled the pit with enough wood and the old, dry stuff from the furniture, then used a rock I'd found outside and my knife to spark a fire using dried leaves as tinder.
As soon as the fire was going, I went outside and started cutting bamboo poles into sections and tying them together using the thinner vines, pulled apart into strips. Soon enough, I had two doors. One went on the entrance to the new smoke house, the other went over the entry to the big building.
Time passed, maybe, as I constructed a few other things. Namely, a bed frame to lay on and elevate myself off the floor, a small table to eat on, a rack to hang the deer skin on outside (after making another trip down to the river just to wash it off and make sure there were no parasites), three two foot long jugs of hollowed out bamboo with caps on the end to store water, and a small hard frame 'backpack' made of bamboo and vines.
I made another trip down to the river and collected water using the new jugs. I was getting thirsty and hungry by now and while I wanted to boil the water first, that gut feeling that had been guiding my actions this whole time told me the water was safe, so I shrugged and went ahead and drank my fill. On the way back, I headed west, further into the valley, and came across several trees producing what looked like fruit. I picked enough to fill the bottom of the backpack and then made my way southwest, up the side of a new mountain, eating fruit along the way. The ones I chose tasted something like an apple—tart and sweet, and entirely full of juice.
Coming to a cliff, I whistled as I looked up at one of the floating mountains. It had been hidden from the ground, but from here it was clear one of the trees up there had grown out sideways at some point. Nature did as nature does and vines had grown down from the tree to the cliff. It wasn't thick enough to make a path for animals, but they looked sturdy enough to climb.
I skipped climbing entirely.
Somehow, I jumped, landed on a vine, balanced on the vine as it wobbled, and then jumped again, right up to the tree, then one more time up to the surface. Once more, I felt kind of like I was in a dream as I did it. Everything was all slow-mo and felt larger than life, and yet… so simple and mundane that it felt about as hard as walking up a set of stairs.
Feeling like I was getting close to something, I ascended the floating mountain at a jog that didn't even leave me winded. After a few minutes of this, I made my way out from between the trees to a cave in the face of the mountain. It was barely a slit in the stone face, but a riot of colors radiated out from it.
What in the world?
Slipping off my bag, I made my way inside. The path in went down at a gentle slope and was just barely wide enough for me to squeeze through sideways. I couldn't see shit as the inside was completely dark, but at the same time, those colors painted the walls, ceiling, floor, and air outlining everything even better than if I had been outside. Shaking off the strangeness, I made my way down, until the bottom opened up into a larger cave. I whistled at what I found there.
The entire cave was lit up by a multitude of crystal formations set into the walls, ceiling, floor, growing from stalagmites and stalactites, and filling a pool of water in the center of the room. Additionally, a single crystal in almost the dead center of the ceiling poured in the same light from outside—seemingly extending up through the cavern to the outside—and the air around it seemed to… waver a bit, looking like a heat haze, though the crystal itself gave off no real visible light. The entire place glowed with a multitude of colors both in that new sense and to my physical eyes, the light combining in a way that resembled Christmas lights. Taking it all in, combined with what I had been experiencing so far, I came to an outlandish, impossible conclusion. And yet, one supported by the evidence I had seen and felt for myself.
I had somehow been transported to an alien world. In a galaxy far, far away.
I didn't dare put voice to the thought. Not yet. No, I wanted to test something first.
The ground below me flattened and opened up and I realized that it had actually been carved into steps at some point. People had been here in the past.
Finding a flat spot, I sat down. Closing my eyes, I focused on my breathing, and that new feeling permeating the world around me… and myself. Seeming to radiate up from deep inside me.
It felt… like me, honestly—colored with my emotions and thoughts, but at its core neither inherently good nor evil. Balanced, one would say.
Taking hold of it, I tried to reach out into the world around me. It was a bit sluggish to respond at first, like a limb that had fallen asleep. But after some time, I was able to reach out with it and touch the glowing crystals all around me. They all felt absolutely steeped in light. Maybe, if I was right, the light—that is, the light side of the Force.
Trying to figure out what felt right, I pushed and pulled at things, laying metaphysical hands over every crystal, until one in particular stood out… and then another, and another. Three resonated within the room, calling out to me. Carefully, I tried to pull on them, to bring them to me—taking only as much as would come off without breaking off some boulder sized chunk.
There was a series of cracks, before three sources of light came flying at my head. Willing them to stop in a bit of a panic, they did just that, coming to a stop right in front of me and hovering in the air before me. Opening my eyes, I raised an eyebrow at what I found—one green crystal, one violet, and one transparent like glass; all three roughly the size of a softball each.
"Okay then," I murmured. Reaching out, I collected the crystals. The moment each touched my hand, something just seemed to click—like finding something important I hadn't realized I'd lost or even been missing. They were warm to the touch, feeling me with feelings of peace. I wanted to hold them and do nothing more than watch the beautiful colors radiating off of them, to listen to the symphony of music they made at the edge of my audible range, but I managed to resist the allure. Tucking them into my coat pockets and the fold of the robe-like shirt I now wore, I made my way back outside, once more feeling the need to urgently be somewhere else.
Gathering my backpack once I was outside, I slipped the crystals into it and made my way back off the floating mountain. This time, instead of taking the vines, I hesitated just a second before taking the leap of faith and jumping from the floating mountain, trusting in whatever this was, the Force or not, to see me safely to the bottom. My body moved almost on its own, again in that dreamlike state, as I curled my legs, hit the steep side of the other mountain, and began sliding down.
I slid down, loose dirt and rocks spraying out under my feet as I watched the terrain fly by, wide-eyed. When I came to a sheer cliff, I jumped and held out my hand. An entirely too long drop after, it caught around a vine dangling from a limb in one of the upper branches of one of the valley's trees. I slid down to the ground and came to a stop, panting. Not from the exertion, but from the sheer rush of it.
"Oh my fuck!" I laughed, giddy as I looked back up at the mountain I'd just descended like some sort of… well, Jedi or something. It was honestly the most exciting thing I'd done in my entire life, and my face hurt from grinning as my heart hammered a mile a minute.
When I got myself under control, I hurried through the forest back towards the village. There was still much to do before nightfall, after all.
As the day progressed, in the strange, dreamlike way it did, gradually that sense of urgency grew. Until finally, I just started ignoring it. I wanted to get things done so I wouldn't have to do them later. That meant gathering a few extra supplies here and there so I could smoke or store them. Collecting more vines, because you can never have too much rope. Making myself a better weapon than the knife. I'd taken a sturdy limb, sharpened the end, then burned it in the fire to strengthen it and make a workable spear. Exploring the mountain and finding big rocks, for use in later simple construction. Exploring the valley so I knew all the landmarks and where I could find things that might be useful.
Too late, I realized I shouldn't have ignored it.
Night came on instantly.
One moment, it was a quiet, peaceful late afternoon. The sky was the beautiful colors of sunset, even though I still couldn't make out a visible sun. The animals, I noticed, had begun disappearing—hiding away.
The next moment, it was full on dark. Middle of a moonless night.
Everything had changed. Everything had changed. Impossibly.
From the trees, to the scenery, to the relative locations of things, to the atmosphere of the place in the 'Force.' The night scenery was completely different from the daylight. The trees were gone, but… not entirely. In their place were pale, ghostly apparitions. Rain began to fall and where it touched, everything smoked—clearly acid of some kind. And just as with the daylight, the night was a riot of colors—though this time, they were darker. Reds of various shades, black, grays, purple, violet, orange—or at least what looked that way to my eyes. It was kind of like… all of the goth and edgy shit from the 90s crammed into one vista—all Hot Topic and Spencer's, Linkin Park and Papa Roach, chokers, collars, chains, and too much eyeliner.
The first drop of rain hit my arm and I hissed, before holding my hand up and creating an umbrella of Force to keep it off. Using the water from my bamboo canteen, I washed my arm off and the stinging abated. "Well, now I see what it was trying to warn me about," I muttered with a sigh. Turning towards where I believed the mountain I was staying on to be, I hurried through the dark, carefully avoiding puddles.
Never again. Never ignoring my gut, or the Force, or what the fuck ever again, I decided.
It wasn't a feeling in the Force that warned me that something was wrong. Later, I wouldn't be able to tell you if asked. Not with any certainty.
Gripping my spear, I turned and looked into the dark behind me. Two large, glowing golden orbs stood out in the dark, about head height. I couldn't see them in the Force. For a moment, I wasn't even sure what I was seeing.
Then… they blinked.
Human instinct is a hell of a thing. It's been sharpened over tens of thousands of years to recognize certain things in the dark and to react without thought.
I turned and ran, sprinting at my fastest pace back for the mountain. Something splashed behind me. I risked a look back and saw it, then. It was huge, and a void in the force. It was shaped roughly like a tiger, but with six legs—two front legs, four back legs, just like the deer. And it was sprinting at me exactly the same way a tiger runs down prey.
Which brings us back to the frantic chase through the rain, then barricading myself in my hut.
It backed away from the entrance and for a moment, I thought it might have given up. That is, until what felt like a car slammed into the bamboo wall and shattered it to flinders. The boulder I was leaning against shoved me back and away from the door, saving my life from the first swipe of its claws.
Landing on my back, I brought up my spear as it stormed into the room and fell on me like a bolt from the black. Something heavy hit the end of the spear and the wood jerked in my hands under the weight and force. The spear struck off-center, burying itself in the tiger's lung. A fatal wound, yes, but not immediately lethal.
And even now, it was a complete blank in the Force.
The spear was ripped from my hands as it roared, falling on me with both paws and its open mouth. Now the Force flared to life, warning me entirely too late.
I brought up my arm, guarding my head against those jaws while both its front paws caught me. Its right paw caught my chest, raking across my body and leaving behind lines of agony. The left paw caught my face, slashing almost straight down, and it felt like it ripped off half my face as my right eye went dark. The mouth, however, was more of a problem. It clamped down on my forearm with a snap of crunching bone and absolute agony filled my world. Of course, it got better.
By which I mean it got worse. The tiger shook its head and pulled back with its hind legs. Those gut instincts, or the Force, or whatever it was guided my actions as I leapt after it, my free hand reaching for my belt and the knife on it. Pulling the knife, I answered its roar with one of my own as I crashed into it and brought the knife up, slamming it into the side of the tiger's neck. The tiger's body went limp, but its jaws didn't go slack.
What must have been close to six hundred pounds of animal fell to the ground with my abused arm clutched in its jaws. Something tore and then gave way, and the agony of broken bones was replaced by the shock of realization as I saw my left arm from just below the elbow was fucking gone and spurting blood with every beat of my heart.
The Force had me moving, my right hand dropping the knife and undoing my belt. I looped it around the injury and pulled it tight, holding it in place with my teeth until I could get it tied off so I wouldn't bleed out immediately. I wanted nothing more than to collapse on the ground and scream, but if there were more of those things out there, I was fucked. So, I moved to check outside and make sure I was secure.
Giving the tiger a kick as I passed, I risked a look outside. I couldn't make out any more gaps in the Force nearby, so I grabbed the spare bamboo door I'd made for a third hut, to use as storage, and put it up then pushed the boulder back in front of it. I made a mental note to go get a much larger boulder to barricade the outside tomorrow. Making my way over to my backpack, I pulled out the green crystal to see by. Then, grabbing one of my bamboo canteens, I opened it and carefully cleaned my wounds using the water to wet a corner of my shirt, starting with the arm.
There was some good news and some bad news.
Good news: the wounds were clean, not jagged. Clean cuts like they'd been made with a blade. Even the bite was almost unnaturally even.
Bad news: the arm wouldn't be going back on, given that it went down the tiger's gullet and I was beginning to suspect I wasn't going to find a hospital on this godforsaken planet. Also, it wasn't blood from the face cut that had blinded my right eye. No, if only it were that simple. The gruesome truth was readily apparent when I inspected the fucker's paws. My right eyeball had been caught by the claw and yanked straight out of the socket. There was now a gaping hole where my eye used to be.
I spent some time making bandages out of my shirt with one hand and my knife. The first went around my head, securing an eye patch over the empty socket. The next, I tied around my chest. Finally, saving the worst for last, I clenched my jaw and undid the belt tourniquet on my arm. The pain that had faded with shock returned and I rushed to pack the wound with a bandage and cover it, then used the belt to secure it in place, tight but not quite as tight as the tourniquet had been. I had to get a bit creative with some leftover bamboo sticks and my feet to tie everything since I was doing it all one-handed, but it worked.
Finally, my body shivering, I pulled my jacket back on and collapsed with my back against the boulder, feeling woozy. Watching my arm to make sure I wasn't bleeding out, I wanted nothing more than to just sleep.
"Stay awake. Stay the fuck awake." My voice sounded alien in my ears, strange and shaky. Faint.
To keep my mind occupied, and maybe try to do at least something to help, I focused on the Force within me. The power came more easily this time. My attention turned to my wounds and I tried to direct the Force into them, willing it to close them up, to heal them, to encourage my body to heal naturally as quickly as possible. All while I kept an ear and my senses tuned to the darkness just outside the rock and thin bamboo barrier hiding me from the rest of this dangerous hell world.
If I broke down and cried like a bitch, bawling my eye out and clutching my new stump to my chest, no one was around to see it or tell anyone about it. No one could prove anything.
Just as it had during the day, time passed, but I couldn't really keep track of it. It felt like days must have gone by and not mere hours, and yet, at the same time it felt like barely half an hour. I couldn't tell if that was a Force thing or a shock thing, and I didn't care to know.
Eventually, the night faded and daylight came. I got up and stretched. My wounds actually felt better, and a quick inspection of the one on my chest showed puckered and pink flesh—like days, maybe even weeks, worth of time had passed since getting the wound. It was still tender to the touch, but it didn't really hurt to move. Carefully checking my stump showed much the same. It had closed up with new, pink skin and no longer bled.
Feeling absolutely ravenous, I made my way to the smokehouse and took out some meat and vegetables, seasoned everything with a bit of salt, and ate what felt like a meal for four by myself before washing it down with an entire canteen worth of water—what must have been nearly a gallon. I had no idea where most of it went, because I didn't feel over full at all. It just seemed to defy physics.
Shaking that off as one more weird thing to just accept given that I was on an alien planet, could use the Force or something like it, and had been mauled by a fucking tiger I gave up on trying to make sense of it and moved on.
Speaking of the tiger, I made my way into the hut and used my one good arm to drag the heavy fucker out. Except… it wasn't actually that heavy or difficult, so I assumed the Force was doing some of the lifting there. Before I left, I added wood to the smokehouse and built a small fire outside in a fire pit and set the pot of water on it to heat.
When that was done, I loaded him up on my litter and carted his ass down to the river. Taking out my knife, I began skinning the asshole, intending to make myself a tiger skin rug or something. He took my arm, I took his skin. Not a fair trade, but as close as I was going to get.
I went after the claws too, from all six of his feet, since they were so good at cutting. Once I had the skin off, oddly enough, the critter was still a void to my senses so… I went digging and did some trophy collecting. It was probably a bit vindictive of me, but I didn't give a fuck. I gutted it, carefully examining its insides one organ at a time.
There, mixed in with its organs, I found something interesting—a small, pearl-like structure that radiated a void in the Force around it. When I pushed some Force into it, the void it projected grew—large enough that it encompassed me entirely, leaving me in a bubble for several minutes. I could still see the Force around me, but the Force I was putting out didn't escape the bubble unless I used what felt like enough. For instance, I could reach out and lift a rock, but it felt a lot harder than it had been to pull the lightsaber crystals to me.
That, I washed off and pocketed. It was just too damn useful not to keep. Then, I began stripping its flesh from its bones and washing them off as much as I could. The head was a bit much work with one hand and my fledgling Force telekinesis, so I just cut that off wholesale and decided to let the acid take care of it. The rest, I cleaned up as much as I could. Considering the torso, and the way the bones were all also a void to my senses, I left the torso laying on the bank beside the river.
Finally, I shoved the pile of his carcass meat, minus the torso, into the river where it washed slowly downstream before heading over the cliff. Tossing the skin and bones, and head, back on my litter after washing everything thoroughly, I made my way back to the village, stopping only to collect fresh fruits and vegetables along the way.
"How am I even going to cure this stuff?" I wondered aloud as the village came into sight. Remembering the acid rain the night before, and the deer hide I'd left out in it, I winced as I expected to find it reduced to slurry or something. But when I checked it, I found that somehow, the acid had taken care of the curing process and what I had was, while a little stiff, felt right to that instinct or Force sense. Shrugging, I pulled it off the rack and tossed the tiger skin on for tonight. The bones and head, I set out some distance away, hopefully so they wouldn't attract predators—or stink and make a mess if the acid rain didn't finish the job.
Grabbing my bed, I dragged it outside into the light. Throwing the big deer skin over the top of it, I laid down, covered my one good eye with the remains of my shirt, kicked off my boots, and used my jacket as a pillow. I passed out like that, asleep under the revitalizing light, hoping against hope that when I woke up it would all have been a fever dream.