All night long, Daniel watched his surroundings and thought about what to do next. He had travelled far into the forest alone before, but this was the first time he had spent a whole night in it, and he had to protect a girl who was only a year younger than he was. The difficulty of the situation did not bother Daniel as he had spent a lot of time in the forest and knew what went on there and how to eat. Only one thought remained in his mind. Where was any movement in their direction from the camp?
He had run here without looking back, so he didn't know what had happened right after they left. His running speed was praised by all the mercenaries, so the distance they had covered would have taken a normal person six hours or more, and because of the trees he couldn't see what was happening in the camp, only the sand obelisk of the Deep Worm towered in the sky, spewing flames periodically. So Daniel thought their group was finished in the camp. There was a restlessness in his soul, for now his 'family' was essentially dying, and he was powerless. These men had given him hope after the tragedy of ten years ago. Herold had personally taken him under his wing and raised him as his own son, teaching him worldly wisdom from time to time and demanding nothing in return. Even Daniel had become a mercenary after countless arguments and escapes from mercenaries. And now it all turned to ashes.
Once again. The fire. The escape.
All that was missing was the smell of burnt flesh and screams, growls, squeaks that sounded more like animal than human. It was relatively quiet around him, but the man's mind was only a mixture of longing, pain and not knowing what to do next. To calm himself, he began to look around more carefully.
The silence of the forest was different. There was the chatter of dusky grasshoppers and dusky cicadas all around. In the distance, there was the screaming and stamping of animals as they continued their seemingly endless cycle of fighting for territory, for survival, for herds and flocks. But all around them, there were no animals that wanted to eat them. Except spiders. But spiders of all kinds didn't usually fight outside their territory, preferring to collect smaller but more constant prey. The spiders just stared with their myriad eyes in their direction, occasionally moving along the threads of the web to immobilise their prey, because catching the prey was half the battle, the prey could get out on its own in time, so the spiders needed to release the toxin into them as quickly as possible.
It wasn't a pleasant sight to have so many eyes on you. It was a good thing that Melissa had gone to bed, as her squealing would probably have attracted every animal in the forest. But Daniel wasn't afraid of any particular kind of animal, although there were some, but that was usually because of the danger the animal posed, not because of its appearance.
"Tz, what on earth are you doing?" Daniel exclaimed quietly in disgust.
What on earth was he doing?
Yes, he had decided, out of boredom of observation and as an escape from his gloomy thoughts, to simply count the number of eyes of ALL the spiders that were looking at them with the desire to let their venom into them during his inspection. But there were obvious problems with such an amusement:
Daniel counted about 12,000 eyes, but it wasn't the first time he'd been thwarted, and he'd only been able to survey about a third of the area.
The spiders were constantly moving, which confused him.
But Daniel wasn't particularly embarrassed, rather smug about their immunity to so many creatures. He had already forgotten that he wanted to escape the obsessions in his head with an endless cycle of counting. Yes, he didn't really want to know the final number either.
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Good morning.
Melissa had just opened her eyes when she smelled the smell of fried meat. She couldn't even see where it was coming from if she was lying down, so she had to get up and go lower, where she could see what was happening on the ground: there was a boy with a bloody knife and a piece of meat from a meat rabbit, which even after being cut up could feed a family of three for two or three days. Meat rabbits were nicknamed this way immediately after the advent of hunting because they gave more meat than other animals of the same size. They were often bred in villages, so their population grew rapidly. One day some merchants were passing through the town of Karol with a caravan, and little Melissa asked them to buy her a similar cute wonder. The meat rabbits were really cute, and their winking noses as they sniffed and ate various vegetables won the little lady over. Soon it grew up, but it didn't get any less cute, it became her favourite pillow, where she would lie down and imagine she was floating on a cloud and fall asleep.
But now this butcher had slaughtered such a cute creature.....
Melissa stood in a daze as she remembered her cloud and tears began to form at the corners of her eyes. She couldn't hold back her emotions:
"What are you doing... why would you do such a thing to such a pretty girl! Are you human or not?" Saying that, Melissa couldn't hold back her tears and cried softly after saying it out loud.
"Oh, you're awake, well, I was just hungry." Daniel replied to such strange questions and continued, "I have already made a stew of local wild vegetables and rabbit meat, I have also chopped some vegetables raw. Don't worry and eat as much as you like, I caught two rabbits and left the fatter one for the road," Daniel pointed to where another rabbit carcass lay, but larger and tied up with some kind of rope-like vines.
Melissa looked over and saw another dead rabbit body now standing off to the side on a makeshift wooden cart, the carcass tied tightly with vines and attached to the cart. It didn't look very stable, no matter how you looked at it, but the wheels weren't very flat and the carcass was as big as the cart itself.
The girl continued to cry very slowly as she looked at this sight.
"You monster..."
Daniel just shook his head and continued to cut. He wasn't cruel and bloodthirsty, but overnight he had thought of only one way to make Melissa more obedient. Yes, a drastic solution, perhaps, but nothing else had occurred to him as he had never been close to people and didn't know how to influence someone quickly. He knew better than anyone what fear did to people.....
Even as a child he had only interacted with the children of the mercenary group, who were all orphans from different places or children of dead brothers of the group. They all stuck together and did not talk much, they even trained to cut meat, hunt and fight instead of playing in sandboxes. Because of this, Daniel's emotional development was low.
Melissa, ignoring his depressed state, never said anything and finally decided that he was an emotionless fool and a butcher. She saw a cauldron by the fire, emitting the same odour she had smelled from the top of the tree, but now her appetite was greatly diminished, so she took only chopped vegetables and began to eat.
Daniel noticed that she wasn't eating and was now satisfied with her work. He didn't know what he would do if she started eating the stew, after all he was only cooking for one, and he had only said "eat as much as you want" to reinforce her fear of cruelty. In fact, he was only going to take the one carcass that was on the wagon, and use the rest as bait, so that the animals would come out of hibernation and go for the meat, rather than to their dens.
Now that the carcass was ready, the boy made his way to the fire in the same way. He looked at the dish he had made and involuntarily swallowed saliva. Sitting comfortably on the floor with a wooden jug he had carved from the remains of a fallen tree to make a wagon, he was about to take a wooden spoon to the stew when he realised that he should show some manners in front of the high society lady and at least wish her a pleasant appetite.
"Bon appetit!" Daniel realised he had forgotten something and added, "Oh, good morning, by the way!"