August grimaced at the prospect of lugging something so weighty out of frigid water, much less eating it. Still used to his old life, kitchen, and ample food, he felt disgusted and sick again.
"Never mind if I can swim; you're telling me the best option is to struggle to haul a slimy cavefish out of freezing water and eat it raw? You're insane."
"I'm not telling you to eat it raw; I'm telling you to bring it up. I'll cook it once you get it up here."
"You make it sound so simple, so why don't you do it? Or, you could help, at least. Getting it up isn't going to be easy if it's as big as you make it sound like it is."
August stood before falling again, dizzy. After multiple attempts, he stood upright, unveiling his impressive height of 2.2 meters. He started moving to where he had heard the voice, along the edge of the water, which became an arduous task in the dark.
He had to find his way over old bones and bodies, more than once stepping on what he thought was solid ground, only for it to squish as he put his weight down. Stumbling over weapons and armor wasn't a trivial thing, either. Falling, he cut his elbow on an erect pike.
It cut the flesh open easily, ripping open without resistance, resembling paper more than biological material. August roared out of both pain and surprise because he hadn't seen the pike.
"What are you doing? You were closer to the fish before."
"What, you don't like me coming close?" He smiled, victorious and glad at having pulled one over on somebody. "I'm here to drag you over and make you help me." If he had been calmer, then he might have noticed an inconsistency. What had the other August been eating all this time, and why couldn't he eat the same? Of course, both questions had the same answer.
The first August rose again and looked around for any sign of the second August. "Where are you?" he inquired.
"I'm right below your foot," he said. "Don't reach down; I might cut you."
"What? Why would you cut me, and where'd you get a knife?"
"We're on a battlefield, August; where could I possibly get a knife? They couldn't possibly be tripping hazards here, could they be?"
"Get up, smartass."
"You see, August, this is the difference between us: my vessel is far inferior to yours. Ironically, being inside the corpse of a different species was a lucky break for you. You have a biological body to inhabit; I have a lifeless lump of metal, a sword."
"Hehe. Heheheheahaha." He laughed mockingly. "You're in a sword, a spirit in a sword? It serves you right for your insufferability. You're only a tool now, aren't you?" he grinned widely, though not so wide that his mouth split again. "And, as a tool, I can do whatever I want with you, can't I?"
"Correct. You can do what you want with me." His response stunned August into silence. He hadn't expected him to capitulate so readily. He had expected Damon to be like him, still immature, petty, and directed by pure emotion. But, unexpectedly, he hadn't even shot anything back.
Damon broke his stupor, saying, "As soon as I arrived and figured out the basics, I noticed something was off. It took me a long while to find out what it was, but I finally know what it is."
"I can't feel anything anymore. I don't have anything in the way of emotions. I'm aware of the concept and the fact that I should feel them, but I don't. And now, I don't know what to do. I don't care anymore. Do whatever you want."
"Take me. Do something to me; make me feel something. Please. Or kill me, at least. Destroy me if you'll do nothing else."
August remained silent before starting forward. "I'm not going to destroy you. Not yet. You're still useful."
The first August sighed before saying, "What should I call you? Only one of us will be called August from here on."
"I don't see why we can't both be August."
"We can't both be August because we are now separate people. We may have been the same at one point, but from the point that we split into two, the point of divergence, minor happenings began to result in different thoughts, and what different thoughts result in is separate development paths, making us separate people that will differ from one another more as time goes on. We can't pretend to be the same, and if we don't acknowledge that, then it might lead to problems later on."
"Fine. You might be right," the second August capitulated readily once again.
The first August paused, thinking. "I've made up my mind. You'll be Damon from now on because I called you a demon earlier."
"Your naming skills suck."
"Our naming skills are the same! We may be slightly different, but we're not that different yet!"
"Are you going to get to work at any point?"
"Well, I don't know. I might just leave it there."
"Really? You're willing to starve to spite a copy of yourself? What does that say about you?"
"It shows that I'm willing to stick to my guns so that I don't have to put up with those I don't want to put up with."
"You're such an insufferable individual that you're not even willing to put up with yourself? Well, color me impressed. Not many people will admit that."
August steamed, frustrated, and irritated.
Following further direction and more fumbling around, he located Damon's vessel. It was a great sword and it had a good bit of heft, too. With a bit of effort, he managed to drag Damon over to where the large cavefish was supposed to be and planted him down in the gravel beneath his feet.
Begrudgingly, August entered the water while only barely managing to keep his head level due to the cold. The further he went in, the deeper it got until he felt something touch his shin.
As most do when something touches them underwater, he panicked, yelping and cussing until he realized that it was the fish he had been looking for. The water was now up to his chest, submerging him in a metaphorical ice bath. He could still see absolutely nothing, so he closed his eyes. There was no difference between closed eyes and otherwise, so he might as well keep them closed.
Sucking in a breath, he submerged the rest of his body, trying to pull the fish up, or at least get a feel for its size and shape. As Damon had said, it was massive. He wouldn't be able to get it up onto the shore entirely, but he had to try to at least get it closer to the bank.
Out of breath and light-headed, he surfaced again, sucking in as much air as he could before his exhaustion assaulted him again. Slowly and bedraggledly, he hauled the fish as far as he could, though it likely weighed at least several hundred kilograms. When it finally began to surface, he was forced to resort to rolling it up the incline.
This body of his was far stronger than his previous one, but even it struggled against hundreds of kilograms of dead fish. It resembled an unusually large goliath grouper in size but physically resembled a cross between a hagfish and a guppy.
Although his hands kept breaking through its mushy and rotted exterior, he managed to get it into an area shallow enough to work with it.
It was laying on its side, but it still came up to August's waist.
"I know you can't see it, but near your knee, there are still scales. Anything underneath hasn't been exposed to the air yet, so far as I can see. The meat underneath may still be spoiled, but it won't be as bad as the rest. Use me to cut it open."
In August's hands, Damon was unwieldy and took some getting used to, but after a good bit of time, he had managed to unveil the hopefully white meat underneath.
August took only a small amount and tried to quit, thinking that that was more than enough work for even an entire day, but Damon reprimanded him until he went back and resolved to take as much as he could. He managed to reap a few tens of kilograms of allegedly unsoiled meat before unintentionally puncturing the intestines and dirtying the rest beyond salvation.
Damon finally let him go and stopped pestering him about finishing the job. August had long since puked up the water he had previously ingested.
"Ok, I got the meat. You said you'd cook it, right? How do you intend to do that?" August grimaced and shakily kept retching.
"There's another corpse behind you. It's a relatively thin humanoid that has actual skin. Go, put me into it, and step back."
"I draw the line at cannibalism."
"I'm not asking you to eat it."
"Then give me a good reason to go over there. I'm so tired and sick that I can barely stand after what you made me do, so I'm not doing it until you tell me why."
They argued back and forth until August decided that it would be easier to do it than to argue and found the corpse before weakly managing to plunge Damon into it and the gravel underneath on account of his weight.
August sat in contemplative silence as a small white spark appeared before another in the same area joined it. More sparks appeared until he could see embers smoldering. What he could now see to be a cloth tunic began to burn in earnest. Then, the skin and fat began to catch fire before the first light in this world appeared.
A black great sword with ruby inlays sprouted from the chest of a burning Elvish corpse. The flames licked the blood, puss, and flesh on its blade before eventually devouring them, too, and being reflected in its ruby inlays that ran from its hilt to where the sword disappeared, the elf's chest.
Smoke engulfed the sword, giving Damon's namesake more meaning, mimicking a common sight in hell. August dragged the meat over and cooked the fetid harvest on a dead man's breastplate in the heat of a smoldering corpse, saving most of his questions for when he had a clearer mind.
He cooked carefully and ate selectively, choosing only what was in the best condition first before surrendering and losing consciousness.