I awoke from the dream that I had. I, I didn't even know who that kid even was. Why did I know his name and why did he sound like he was son the verge of giving up?
Oh no, absolutely not, I am not going to deal with that for now. The sweat on my neck and back made me groan a little in disgust as I knew for a fact that I still have to find a way to get some fire here.
The wendigo did it's duty while I was asleep, which normally made me wake up from the pain once more.
It was sharp as always, and it had a lasting effect, as expected.
I don't even know what to try and say to alleviate the situation, but I am more than sure that alleviation is the least of my issues. So I got up, looked at the frost that left my mouth and thought about the information that it dug up. Lo and behold, more information about what a wendigo's abilities normally are.
It's supposed to be a paragon of greed and hunger for manpork, due to the sorts of things and rituals that a person goes through to become one.
Do I know what sort of rituals are needed to be one? No, no I don't, but what I do know now is that they hunt best within the cold, when people are at their direst, food at scarcest and morale and morals at their weakest.
Stunning descriptions as always but I feel as if it could be a bit better. Nonetheless, I looked around at any trees that I could fell and try to strip for some relatively dry enough wood.
I doubt that we'll get much, but since the tree can handle the front coming down from the heavens itself I can parallelize my thoughts and assume that it can handle a little bit of charcoal on the bough.
Grabbing my old serrated axe and sighing at the memories of the madness that I did when I was younger I looked around for trees that looked old enough, and knocked on a couple. If they were hollow they would have burned somewhat easier, sadly no dice in that aspect.
They're essentially carbon copies of each other and I do not intend to waste any more of anyone's time. So I spat on my hands, let them get calloused from the powers of technical cannibalism, and started to hack at the tree from an angle.
There are a couple "mainstream" methods of woodcutting that I was familiar with, but cartoons in my childhood usually gave me some modicum of an idea.
Make the area look like a sharpened pencil and then knock it down on one side. When that's done, I let my body grow larger as I could hear the wendigo humming to a classical song that I used to listen to for so long when I was a free man.
Shame that I did the things that I did, I grabbed the log and put it over my shoulder as the cold seemed to recede from my body and was replaced with a rather odd warmth, as if I was meant to be in the cold whenever I turned into the wendigo.
I hauled the singular log back to the skeleton tree where the siblings were still tucked in, that is until I slammed the log down horizontally and realized that I didn't even strip off the branches or leaves yet.
"The fact that we can handle a log of this size is truly just, amazing to me. So much we could do with this body and yet the consequences are possibly horrifying, mainly due to the fact that I don't know what all of them are in the first place."
'Oh but you need not worry about that my dear alter ego, it is no sin for you to answer to the call of nature itself.'
"Ah yes, more mysterious and annoying information that I need to break down to try and understand, thank you, you bloody curse."
'Tut tut, shame on you alter! Such a sour mood will get you nowhere with the children!'
"A sour mood is what they lived through you daft bastard, they're fine with seeing another person feel the same way."
'Hah~ You truly are but an ignoramus, are you not? We could do so many things and yet you stand here, playing father to creatures that aren't even part of your species.'
"Okay, now that's just plain racism out of you."
'Which simultaneously counts as plain racism from you too, check.'
"While those may be the subconscious, I am a lot more realistic about things and have something know as morality, which I can only assume that you have barely any from the ways that you speak to and about me, checkmate."
The voice scoffed in my head as I got to work removing the bark and hoping that it could actually prove to be something useful. Now see, I want to try and keep things casual for the time being.
Taking care of these children is most likely going to be the thing that keeps me sane, or possibly make me go down even further the rabbit hole of raving insanity, I care not what happens.
What I do care about, is following my instinct and my intellect, and they're both saying that these kids will be useful. A debt is a rather hard thing to pay when it's related to one's life, and taking care of them for most of their life is only ever going to accentuate that.
So for now, be a parental figure, make sure they don't die of unnatural causes, and see to it that we can do good on our side of the contract. Those are the concerns that are most on my mind right now, anything new will be secondary until I would finally deem it urgent.
I grabbed the parts of the tree that weren't supposed to be immediately useful and ripped them off with the help of my axe, which proved more than good since it doubled as a saw. And once I was done, I just had a big stripped log that I now needed to cut down to more manageable and burnable pieces of wood.
Not quite Bear Grylls, but, I suppose it's a start to finally getting something out of this hellhole. Getting to work again, I raised the axe high and swung down, sectioning off the wood for a decent enough stump that I could use to chop other pieces on.
Once that was all dealt with, I looked to the parts that I wanted to start with. Normally I would leave the thinnest and easiest parts last since they were only going to rot away in the end, but I didn't have that much luxury right now. We needed a fire, and the thinner parts were going to be a crux thanks to being the tinder.
I still had the children leave some of my fat on some of the meat, so that helps with initial stuff that could hold the fuel. Human fat may not be whale fat, but hey, it's fat in the end, and fat is always more or less useful when starting a flame.
So I skimmed a little bit off and looked at the firewood that was more than small enough to get a proper flame going on. I could only help but let a puff of vapor come out of my mouth as I regretted not having a proper start.
Well, as properly prepared as I could have ever been. There's not a whole lot for me to try and say about this situation that wasn't shit, so once I grabbed the small enough bits and hauled them to the bough of the tree where me and the kids were occupying, I tried my damnedest to properly get them to burn, and slowly but surely, it was sparking.
The wood wasn't perfect, it was more than wet and yet when the flames and fat touched, it grew and grew until we had what was a genuine fantasy fireplace. Grandiose, finally, we can start to cook our food.
I smiled at the fire as the two little elves looked at what I just made. "This, is fire. This, makes cold go away." I gave them the basic words as I warmed up my calloused hands and smiled at the warmth, before I realized that it wasn't feeling cozy. It felt hot, extremely hot.
I quickly put my hands back as I looked at them to see something that wasn't exactly very useful in the situation. They were already covered in boils from the most simplest levels of heat, and I was shocked that it did that much damage in such little time.
It was only a few seconds of me getting close to the blaze and yet it already made me slowly grow another layer of calluses on my hand. 'Oh now this is just, I get that we prefer the cold, but to be affected by the opposite this much? Ludicrous, absolutely ludicrous.'
My thoughts were light as the pain slowly creeped in as I remembered how I used to accidentally touch hot pots in my old kitchen, forgetting that they were on the stove for a while. I grunted a little and jumped off the tree into the snow and dug my hands in.
The pain got worse as I mentally slapped myself for thinking to pick the opposite thing to go into. But the odder occurrence was that when I pulled them out, my hands were looking even rougher, but they didn't hurt anymore.
"Okay, this is just stupid. Ice heals me? Cold things strengthen me? Then what about human blood?! There's such a degree of heat to the human body that even when I bite into them, they, you know what? It's probably just a threshold. There's a good reason for why a wendigo body gets affected by heat this much.
Wendigos are notorious for getting harmed by fire and anything that's hot. There's probably other things that could kill me that require chants and fucking rituals, but the basics is that I can handle the summer, but not the summer in a desert. Okay, okay that's fair enough."
I talked to myself again, yes, what absolutely normal behavior for an individual such as I. Sighing, I got up the tree again and stepped into the proper grooves to get up. The children were staying near the fire as I handed them something relatively good.
I gave them some of my flesh that we butchered up and stuck it to a stick that I got from stripping the tree that I felled. Yeah, complicated when said, not so much when performed. I salted it and kept it rather close to the fire for it to cook nicely.
The glistening juices of my flesh fell into the fire, providing a smell that was akin to burning rubber.
Yes it's human flesh being cooked on a fire in the winter, this is in no way what you would call normal activities when you're in a fantasy world, but here I am, sitting down with some elves missing some fingers, as we waited for the meat to properly cook.
This, wasn't as terrible as it may seemed, it could be a lot worse, like the thought that I may have to butcher my own body so that the children could properly smoke some of the meat. Well, we'll cross that bridge whenever we see it.
It was on the fire for about ten or so minutes as I pulled it off and gave it a good sniff. Smells horrifying delicious, dear God I need a psychiatrist.
I felt my teeth sharpen within my own mouth as I could only help but bite into it, and when I did, I genuinely orgasmed. There were no words to say, not the million plus words within the English lexicon were enough to describe the euphoria that my body was feeling with a bite of my own cooked and salted manpork.
I cut off some sizable chunks and handed it to the other kids as they themselves slowly ate the meat, their eating speed increasing by the second as they savored it. It was sweet, savory, salty and rich from all the fats within me. And as I tried to take another bite, I only felt the feeling of wood in my mouth as I realized that I was already done with the cut.
I, I just, I needed more. I couldn't help but rummage in my haversack for some of my liver when I realized what was happening. The human meat, it was like a drug to me. Addiction is not a good answer to many things, and I remember well what happened to some of my old "acquaintances" within the prison when they couldn't get their fixes.
I calmed myself down and just stared into the fire instead, watching it crackle and ember into the sky, as the world slowly darkened for another night in the winter.
The best way to enjoy this time was within a cabin for me to live in, but I know for a fact that there is no cabin for me to work in.
And if I was correct, I don't think I can stay here. I think I need to follow the winter wherever I can, trying to reach a pole in this world seemed to be ludicrous, but I know for a fact that it's a surefire safe place for me to work my magic in, just like a very specific event in a very specific book series that was also a tv series.
But the question remains, where exactly was this forest? Where was I left in to be allowed to take care of elven xenophagics? I can't quite put my finger on where we are, but I am very sure that eventually we'll get to that point. That is, until I bore witness to something rather odd.
I saw the children's eyes flicker to darkness for a quick moment before they returned to normal. That's, probably not all that good. I lazily gave them a glance at how they were eating like pigs as I stretched out and sighed. I needed sleep, and I was going to get some.
Eventually, I'll have to make a proper little hovel for me to live in for the time being, and the children could just stay here in this tree.
That should be more than enough to keep them satiated. The tree won't try to kill me, the kids won't try to kill me, and I truly, wholeheartedly, kindly wish that this world doesn't try to kill me.
That being said, I'm more than certain that this world has a way to try and slit my throat at any given moment, and I will absolutely do my best to not be affected by it.