Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 80829 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 404(@200wpm)___ 323(@250wpm)___ 269(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 80829 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 404(@200wpm)___ 323(@250wpm)___ 269(@300wpm)
Here goes nothing. I swung the cleaver and brought it down onto the cord. The blade cut through the five-millimeter thickness, severing the metal in a single clean strike. The cord fell to the ground.
The fox dashed past Bear into the passage and vanished from sight, dragging the metal cord with it.
Bear tilted her head and let out a puzzled noise.
“I know, right? Not even a thank you.”
I looked around. Nothing left here.
“We’ve done our good deed for the day. Let’s see if it goes unpunished. Come on, girl.”
We were halfway across the stone bridge when I saw a clump of dark fur up ahead. The fox had made it about a hundred yards before the exhaustion and starvation brought it down. It fell and dropped my canteen on the stone bridge.
I crouched by it. It was still breathing. Bear sniffed it and looked at me.
“No, not food.”
I stood over it for a moment. I could just leave it. But it was hurt and alone, trapped in the breach. Just like me and Bear.
I sighed, made my sword into a knife, and sliced through the collar on the fox’s neck. The strange half-plastic, half-metal band fell apart. I retrieved my canteen, picked the fox up, and headed forward, back to our original route.
10
“I know you’re awake.”
The fox kept its eyes closed.
“I heard the change in your breathing.”
No reaction.
“Suit yourself.”
We sat in a shallow depression in the rock, not that different from the little cave that had been the fox’s prison. After picking the fox up, I’d carried it to the stone bridge crossing. Getting him and Bear back onto the top bridge with only one rope took some maneuvering, but in the end we made it, and I picked the fox back up. We walked for a few hours - I wasn’t sure how long - until eventually Bear and I had gotten hungry. It took us another hour or so to find prey and water, and then we’d bedded down in this hiding spot.
Past the cave opening a large cavern stretched into the distance. Far below a narrow stream ran through a chain of shallow ponds ringed in mauve flowers. A young lake dragon lived in the central pond. It was submerged now but we watched it nab one of the goat-like herbivores earlier, when a small herd wandered out of a side passage to the water to take a drink.
A narrow ledge led to the right, hugging the wall, before diving down and connecting to another tunnel leading into the rock, the only way to access this cave. I had blocked the tunnel with the dial barrier. The irregular shape of the opening didn’t matter. The force barrier conveniently expanded until it met solid rock. I’d tested it in different tunnels. As long as the opening was less than twenty-six feet wide, the barrier asserted itself. For the moment we were safe from everything that didn’t have wings or couldn’t climb sheer walls. If the DDC ever got their hands on this tech, the scientists would faint.
I sliced a sliver from a stalker ham and held it out to our guest on the tip of my sword. “Hungry?”
The fox opened one eye to a narrow slit, looked at the meat, then at me. Its hand shot out, and then my sword was empty. The creature held the meat up, sniffed it, and put it on a rock next to it. Bear stopped eating and watched it.
The fox rolled onto all fours. Its back arched. It strained and hacked. Its body shuddered, gripped by spasms. It hacked again, louder. A small metal object fell from its mouth.
“Lovely.” I took a bite from my own stalker tartare.
The fox tipped an imaginary cup to its lips and held its paw out to me. I passed one of the canteens to it. The creature gently unscrewed the lid and poured a little bit of water onto the thing it had regurgitated. It rubbed the object on its fur, inspected it, nodded, sipped from the canteen, and offered it back to me.
“Oh no, that’s yours now.” I shook my head.
The creature drank from the canteen, hugged it to itself, and put the metal object by its feet. It looked like a large marble with bumps on its surface. The fox must have swallowed it to keep it from being taken.
The former prisoner snatched the meat from the rock and stuffed it into its mouth.
“More?”
The fox nodded. It was so amazingly human-like. I cut another slice from the ham.
About a pound of meat later, the little beast sat back and rubbed its belly.
“Better?”
The fox eyed me, then looked at Bear gnawing on her bone.
“She won’t hurt you unless you try to hurt us first. She’s my dog and she’s a good girl.”
The fox’s eyes narrowed to slits. It leaned back and giggled. The sound was startling.