Chapter 6: Chapter 6: Scavenging for Beginners

In the morning, Jadis felt the worst she had ever felt in her life, multiplied by two. As it turned out, her perception of pain was present across both bodies, so every stiff muscle and sore bruise was felt across the sum total of two sets of limbs. Having two bodies had in all likelihood saved her life, but she was not enjoying the experience so far.

On the bright side, she had discovered that she could keep one self awake while the other self slept, in a fashion. When one of her bodies slipped into full unconsciousness, the other was able to stay somewhat vigilant, eyes open and ears listening. She couldn’t say she was completely, fully alert, it was more like she semi-conscious and day-dreaming, however knowing she wasn’t being snuck up on in the night my more bone demons did wonders for her peace of mind.

“I am so thirsty right now…” Jadis murmured, stretching out her aching muscles as she tried to work a painful kink out of her shoulders. “And hungry, too. When was the last time I ate?”

“Never, technically,” she answered herself, “I mean, if I’m talking about this body, er, two bodies, I’ve technically never eaten anything.”

“That can’t be good for my health,” she said, “even if I’m not human. I doubt Nephilim, whatever those are, can go without water for long. Speaking of health, I should check my health pool, I guess.”

Doing so, she found her health had gone up by a single point, making the total one hundred and seventy-two.

“I guess sleeping doesn’t restore health, huh?”

“Or maybe it does but sleeping in a bare cave offers next to no recovery.”

Discussing her thoughts about the RPG-style mechanics of Oros between her twin forms was starting to feel a little more natural. It was nice to have someone to talk to, even if that person was her.

Exiting the alcove, Jadis made her way back in the direction of the demon she’d killed, wanting to check it out in the morning light. On arrival, she found that the broken remains were just where she had left them and were just as wretched smelling.

Kneeling to take a closer look at the dark insides of the bone shell, she found that the blackness she’d seen before was actually a floppy mass of branching tentacles, not unlike a nerve cell’s dendrites. The squished orange eyeball in the middle made the demon goo look a lot like a cell nucleus in overall structure.

Interesting to see, but she wasn’t sure how useful the information was. At the very least she now knew she needed to destroy the core inside the middle of a bone thief in order to kill it, if she ever ran into another. An encounter she hoped to avoid for the foreseeable future.

At least until she got some weapons and armor. Once she was armed, she wouldn’t mind a second go at one of the bony monsters. In all honestly, as awful as the fight had been in moment, the exhilaration of victory was exactly the thrill she’d been hoping for when she chose to go to a fantasy world at D’s suggestion. She wanted to feel that excitement again.  

First things first, though. She needed to find some food and water.

Examination done and parched throats demanding attention, Jadis left the remains where they were and headed back towards the base of the cliff. The brook on top and spilled over the edge, which meant it had to continue somewhere down below. On the way back, she kept two pairs of wary eyes on the lookout for anything skeletal stalking the trees around her.

Nothing but birds flitted about around her, which was starting to bother Jadis. She’d seen birds ever since she arrived on Oros, and some insects, but she hadn’t scene much else in terms of wildlife. No deer or wolves, not even a squirrel. She was beginning to wonder if such animals existed or not.

No, they had to exist, she reasoned, if for no other reason than she had scene the bones of such animals in the remains of the bone thief demon. Though, the demon might be the answer as to why she hadn’t seen any landbound animals running about the forest. That one monster certainly couldn’t account for an entire forest’s worth of deer, but if there were more of those demons…

As Jadis searched the escarpment for signs of water, she picked up two large branches to use as clubs, one for each of her bodies. The clubs were large and hefty enough that she felt she would be able to put some bone-crushing force into any swing she made with it, which made her feel a little more secure in her lone wandering.

Eventually, Jadis did find water streaming down the cliff face. She wasn’t exactly sure it was the same source of water as she’d seen above, and she was even less sure it was safe to be drinking water from an unfiltered source, but she couldn’t see much of a choice.

She drank from the water with one body while the other stood careful watch. Thirst slaked, she noted with displeasure that her body standing guard was still thirsty. It seemed she did, in fact, have to feed and water both of her twin forms, even though they shared a health pool. Still, only a minor drawback she supposed considering she now had what many, many people over the course of history had wish for: a second pair of hands.

After both bodies had drank their fill, Jadis decided she had to go back to the abandoned dwarf village. She didn’t have any idea how to forage for food in a wilderness, much less hunt a wild animal, even if there were any animals around to hunt. The chance of there being more bone thieves in the village seemed high to Jadis, but the likelihood of starvation if she just wandered through the woods aimlessly seemed even more certain.

“Even if there isn’t any food, maybe I can find some tools or weapons. Hell, just a kitchen knife would be pretty freaking useful right now.”

“Or maybe there’s a map somewhere in that place?” She nodded her head in agreement with her own statement. “That bible or whatever it was in the temple to D was pretty much pristine. Maybe there’s more stuff like that in other buildings?”

Jadis hummed thoughtfully. She was making a good point; she needed to check for supplies in the village. But what if she ran into another demon? Or more than one?

“If I see a lone demon, I give it a good smack with these,” she said, hefting up her makeshift clubs. “If there’s more than one demon, I run like hell.”

“That’s a terrible idea,” Jadis immediately rejected the notion of running. “That demon ran me down without breaking a sweat, literally. I can’t bet on something that doesn't have lungs to run out of breath.”

Jadis nodded in acknowledgement. “Sure, but what else can I do? I’m pretty sure the only reason why I was able to fuck that last one up was because there was two of me. If more than one of those things comes at me, I lose the numbers advantage.”

Thinking on the problem as she walked, Jadis was reminded of an old action movie she’d seen some years ago. “I could pull a Leonidas? Defend from a single direction and numbers don’t make as big a difference, right?”

“That could work,” Jadis shrugged. She wasn’t sure about the logistics of replicating what the Spartans had done against the Persians with just two of her, no shields, and no military training, but she figured having some kind of plan was better than no plan at all.

First step, she needed her Thermopylae. The alcove in the cliff wall wouldn’t work, she immediately decided. It was too far away from the village—she’d be exhausted by the time she ran all the way back to it. Plus, the entrance was too wide to effectively block off, even with two bodies.

One of the dwarf huts might do, she considered. The buildings were small and cramped for her, but most she had scene were largely intact and only had single entrances, not counting the windows. If she could block the windows off and make room inside one, she could use the building’s front door as a funnel.

With an idea of what she wanted to do becoming more and more solid in her mind, Jadis strode purposefully to the west side of the valley, looking for the stone buildings she’d seen the day before.

Jadis did spot one of the dwarf homes after a while of walking, but instantly dismissed it as a rally point. The roof had partly caved in on one side, leaving that part of the hut open to the world.

“No way bone demons can’t climb in through there,” she mumbled, belatedly realizing that maybe she should be trying to keep quiet now that she was close to the outskirts of the village. Doing her best to be stealthy, Jadis stayed low and entered the broken building with one body while the other stayed outside, keeping watch. The house wouldn’t do for defense in a fight, but it could still potentially hold some useful supplies.

Inside, she found various pieces of broken furniture and some moldy old rags, too moth eaten to be of any use. She did find a pair of leather boots underneath a broken wardrobe, though they were far too small for her feet. She took them anyway, figuring she might be able to make some use out of the leather and laces.

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 With nothing else promising inside, Jadis moved on, circling what she thought to be the main location of the village, heading a bit north towards the cliff and mountains she’d spawned on when D had put her on Oros. There, still outside the village proper, she found a second, more promising building.

The stone house was a bit larger than the others and the roof was fully intact. The door was still on the hinges, too, though the simple wooden slide lock on it was broken. Checking inside, Jadis found the furniture was more intact than the last place. Unlike the last house or the first one she’d entered, this home had interior walls that split the space up into a main area with a kitchen and two bedrooms.

The main room had shelves that must have once held foodstuffs and other supplies, but were sadly empty, much to the displeasure of Jadis’ grumbling stomachs. She found several iron knifes, rusted and flaking. They looked too far gone to use, so she left them where they lay. There were a few clay jars, empty, that she set aside. She had no use for them at the moment, but if should figure out how to start a fire, she could use them to boil water she was sure.

The first bedroom she checked had a bed with a moldy straw mattress and a worn-looking dresser. The dresser drawers were open and empty. As she turned to exit the bedroom, a thought struck her and she turned back, got on her hands and knees, and checked under the bed. To her delight, a wooden box greeted her and she eagerly pulled it out.

“Starting to feel like treasure hunter here,” Jadis smiled to herself as she went to open the lid, but frowned moments later. The wood box had a lock on it, a bit rusty but still solid. Tugging on the lid, she could hear the wood creaking under the strain of her prying hands, but it still held solid. Jadis carried the box outside and handed it to her second self who was standing guard to hang onto for later.

In the second bedroom, she much the same furniture as the first, but with two differences. First, the dresser did not look like it had been rifled through, all the drawers shut. Second, and more disturbingly, there was a pile of torn up leather and metal scraps on the floor. A brown stain marked the wooden floor all around the ravaged materials.

“I’m no crime scene investigator, but I feel like this might have been someone’s final resting place…”

Jadis tentatively picked up a few of the leather scraps as she stared at the stain. Best she could tell, there was enough material to have been an outfit at one time, maybe even leather armor? There were no rotting bits of flesh, but that didn’t entirely surprise her. Any flesh could have been eaten long ago by scavengers and insects. With the windows glassless and shutterless, the building wasn’t exactly airtight.

“Bone thieves…” she murmured, considering the lack of skeletal remains. “One guess as to how they got that name…”

Disregarding the scraps, Jadis checked the dresser and grinned at what she found. There were clothes inside most of the drawers, some of them intact. She pulled out several shirts and trousers made from a rough brown material she wasn’t familiar with. There were signs of moths having taken a toll on some of the pieces, but most were intact. Unfortunately, all of them were too small to fit her, but she was certain she could improvise some kind of coverings from the cloth. The bottom drawer also held a series of wound up strips of leather, a ball of twine, and a spool of thread with a wooden needle. No scissors, sadly.

Jadis hadn’t used a needle since she was a little girl, forced to sloppily patch a few cloth squares together when her grandmother had tried to show her how to make a quilt. With her experience so limited, trying to use the needle would be a struggle. Necessity was a good teacher, though, so she had confidence she could figure something out.

Checking under the bed, she chuckled to find another box, smaller than the first. It, too, was locked, but that didn’t bother Jadis so much anymore. She never would have guessed finding a bunch of old clothes and scraps would have made her so happy in her previous life, but here she was.

Having looked through the building, Jadis exited, passing her loot to herself as she went to check on something she’d seen through one of the windows.

Behind the house was a small wooden shed, door hanging slightly ajar.

Eagerly Jadis swung open the shed door, hoping for a collection of tools or maybe even stored and preserved food. What she found was a wooden bench with a hole in the middle, a dark pit looming below.

It took the modern girl a few seconds to realize what she had found. Lip curling in distaste, she closed the door and went back around front.

Her twin, waiting for her arms full, grinned, and said, “Hey, at least I’ve got somewhere to go when nature calls from now on.”

“Yeah, true. Which, speaking of, I totally want to try standing while taking a whiz! Guys are so damn lucky they don’t have to deal with taking a seat every time. Lucky bastards.”

Jadis nodded in agreement with herself. She didn’t dwell on the natural necessities for long, though. She was fairly certain she was going to use this building as her basecamp, but she wanted to check out at least a couple more spots. Taking her loot with her, Jadis kept circling northwest.

The third building found was far too ruined to have any use at all, with walls collapsed and roof missing. Judging by the charred remains, she guessed the hut had caught fire. She didn’t bother sifting through the remains and moved on.

Her fourth stop looked much like the first. A small hut with a caved in roof, she doubted there was anything of use inside. Sighing in resignation, Jadis almost left right away, but hesitated. She hadn’t done more than a quick look from the outside, which was foolish on her part. She was in a real survival situation, she reminded herself. She needed to be more thorough.

“Don’t be a lazy looter, Jadis,” she chided herself.

Stepping inside, Jadis moved broken wood around, checking for anything of use. After a few minutes, Jadis moved to go, disappointed in her lack of success. As she reached the door, a creaking floorboard cracked under her weight and her foot went straight through, far further than what she had expected.

“Ow, fucking splinters,” she complained distractedly. Once she had pulled her leg out, Jadis peered into the hole she’d made. It took a minute for her eyes to adjust, but eventually they did and her expression changed from curiosity to excitement.

“There’s a cellar!”

Hurrying out of the building, Jadis checked the perimeter. On one side, partially hidden by an overgrown bush, was a cellar door leading straight into the earth. Eagerly, Jadis pulled it open and descended the creaking wood stairs. The cellar had barely any light filtering in from above, but there was enough for her to spot several rows of shelves, lined with earthenware jars.

Fingers trembling with excitement, Jadis pride the lid off one of the jars, breaking a seal made from sap or something like it. Inside was a yellowish jelly, semi-transparent, with little gold berries floating inside. She had no idea what the berry was, but it was the most beautiful berry she’d ever seen.

Dipping a finger in, she brought a dollop of the preserve to her tongue and took a taste.

“Mmm, that’s so good…” she moaned, relishing the sweet yet tart flavor. The taste reminded her of a kiwi mixed with a raspberry.

In minutes, half the jar disappeared into Jadis’ stomach. She only stopped when she realized she needed to share with her second body. Passing the jar up to let her second self eat, happy that she could continue to enjoy the delicious flavor while she worked, Jadis checked through the rest of the jars in the cellar.

Many of them had broken seals, the food within spoiled, but about a quarter of the jars had seals intact. Jadis counted two-dozen jars that looked usable.

“Okay, so here’s the plan,” the Jadis on the surface said, licking her lips as she finished off the sweet preserve. “I go back to that intact house and start blocking the windows. Secure the place as best I can with the furniture there.”

“In the meantime, I start carrying these jars back to the house, along with any wood pieces that look like they’ll be of use in boarding the place up,” Jadis in the cellar continued, already shifting the good jars towards the stairs.

With a plan in place, Jadis set to work.

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