Donovan woke up to the smell of something putrid. The pit of the fire crackled with the fumes became even stronger, forcing him to pinch his nose. "Ugh! What's that smell??"
He held his nose, finally getting up. He scanned the small cave dwelling until he found Kalika squatting by the firepit. Her long thin demon tail swayed from side to side, as she seemingly stared into the fire. She glanced down at an unidentifiable meat that was almost finished cooking.
Upon approaching Kalika, Donovan realized that there were strange creatures with pointy ears, burning in the fire to a black crisp. The stench was clearly coming from the smoke of the fire, prompting him to pinch his nose tighter in disgust.
"Err… Kalika?"
Kalika slowly turned her gaze to Donovan, she held a strange piece of meat pierced with a stick. By the looks of it, it was almost done cooking some of the corners burnt up.
Kalika waited silently to see what Donovan wanted.
"Uhh… What… are you cooking?"
She looked back at the piece of meat on the stick. "This?"
She stared back at the fire with the strange creatures burning. "These strange monsters attacked me, and they just so happened to have this on them."
"They had… that on them?" he asked, pointing to the stick.
"It was a rabbit… I think… But now it's this. Right now, I'm seeing how it tastes cooked…"
Kalika pulled the stick of meat from the fire and saw that it was now a golden brown. without hesitation she chomped into it.
"BLEGH!"
"Is it bad?"
The face on Kalika's face said otherwise. "Itsh hot."
He sighed. "Just give it a moment to let it cool off." he glanced back at the pile of burn corpses burning like firewood, narrowing his eyes. After a moments hesitation, he sat himself next to Kalika. "Anyways we should probably get going soon. It probably won't be safe here for long."
Kalika peeked back at Donovan, slightly confused. "Why not?"
"I just have a feeling that there are more of those things" he turned his attention to Bjorn. "Then again, that also means we have to move that huge demon again."
Donovan gave a more exhaustive sigh.
"Even if we do go somewhere else, we'll still be attacked. for all we know monsters can come from the walls." Kalika said, nonchalantly. "Besides, It probably better to wait for him to wake up… If he ever will…"
She looked back at the meat. she felt at it and blew away the excess steam and biting into it once more, this time the results were more favorable as some the juices of the cooked meat filled her mouth. "Mmm~..." Although she found it a little too chewy and more bland than expected.
Donovan simply pondered her statement, realizing the truth in what she was saying. "She has a point…" He thought. "Even if we do leave, there's a bunch of dangerous monsters out there that can even kill demons."
Donovan thoughts turned to the time where he witnessed demon soldiers getting killed or maimed by the wild beasts of the pit. "This is the Pit after all… The very place where these monsters are born..."
"Perhaps you're right. We probably should fish for some information about this place from the big demon first. Then again there's no guarantee that he won't try to kill us either."
"Nmm… Yeah. He doesn't really like humans. He'll probably try to escape and kill us." She quickly took another bit from her meat on a stick, now ignoring its gaminess and blandness.
"T-that doesn't bring me any confidence." Donovan leaned back unsure what to do.
Eventually after a little while Kalika finished her meal. She threw the stick in finality and hugged her legs and stared back into the fire.
Donovan's stomach then grumbled. Left with no other choice he turned to Kalika with a question he knew the answer to. "Is... There any more food?"
Kalika cocked her head, with a bewildered expression. "What do you mean?"
"I'll take that as a 'no'."
Donovan tossed himself on the hard rocky ground and stared at the ceiling of the cave. He laid quietly for a little while, formulating a plan in mind. All the while, Kalika continued staring at the burning corpses of the goblins.
Donovan noticed this. how she was just observing, like she was lost without a path in mind. He remembered when he was lost just like her at one time. But that was before joining the Celestine army and before he was disowned by his family.
Donovan sat back up. "Alright, since we don't have any food, that means we need to go hunting. But we'll need to make and some tools and makes some traps."
Kalika glanced at Donovan and pointed over to pile of poorly crafted stone weapons. "Like those?"
It was abundantly obvious that those weapons wouldn't be able to serve Donovan, with their sizes being too small for him to hand.
"No. we'd need something like a bow or a sharp dagger." He brought his hand to his chin, pondering silently.
"What about this?" Kalika conjured her red-stained blood blade dagger in hand. Seeing her summon her dagger in hand, Donovan was taken aback. He still wasn't used to seeing a blade appear in someone's hands.
he looked at the blade, scrutinizing it. "I almost forgot she had one of those demon blades. Even if I wanted to, I can't even use it since it's attached to Kalika..."
Donovan glance back to his small little bed of yellow grass where a white cloth and his broken pipe laid. "If that pipe wasn't broken, Maybe I could've gone hunting. But as things are now, we'll starve."
Donovan suddenly got, leaving Kalika to watch on in curiosity and Donovan approached Bjorn. He quickly gestures for Kalika to join, peeking her curiosity.
"What is it?" she asked.
He pointed to the leather on Bjorn's waist. "Can you cut some thin pieces of these"
"What for?"
"I'm gonna teach you to hunt."
"Hunt...?" Kalika cocked her head and raised a brow, dumbstruck by Donovan's answer.
********
Sometime later, both Donovan and Kalika venture deep inside the strange forest.
Kalika looked on blankly, at the strange nature and fauna around them. She watched on as some escaped from sight and others kept a caution distance from them. She even saw some strange black sludge-like creatures roaming around aimlessly, which she kept a clear distance from.
Donovan hearing something quickly leaned on a tree and peeked around the corner of a black barked tree. Everything was still aside from the occasional black and purple leaf that fell to the ground. He tightened his grip on his broken pipe, but quickly loosened once it seemed safer.
"I could've sworn I saw a wolf for a second... But it looks like it's fine..." Donovan let out a quiet sigh of relief. "Alright lets keep going."
Kalika for the most part, stayed quiet and watched as Donovan scanned the area thoroughly as if looking for something. She glances at the bound leather rope they made, still curious of what he planned to do with them
After a while of scanning and hiding, she finally spoke up. "What are you doing?"
"I'm looking for a good place to put these traps down…" He answered quietly.
"Trap?"
He suddenly stopped Kalika. He bent to the ground examining the yellow grassy terrain.
"Right here," he said. " Can you grab some sturdy branches? Something that's hard to break."
"F...Fine." Kalika reluctantly agreed. She rolled her eyes still unsure what he was doing.
It didn't take long to collect and giving him what he wanted, he proceeded to work on the trap in question. He tied a knot to the top of a nearby tall tree sapling, dug a small thin hole and hammered some of the branches into the ground with his pipe.
"There we go. And now..." He placed the final touches bending the sapling down and used some spare branches to set down what looked to be something somewhat complicated. "finished."
"Uh… What's this." Kalika asked.
Donovan glanced back with a smirk, proud of his trap. "Oh this. This is a snare. There's a couple of variations I know but this one should work well here."
"A snare?"
"It's a trap, my father and uncle taught me when I was young. My father wasn't as much of a hunter as my uncle, but they taught me what I know."
"Uncle? What's that?" Kalika asked.
"Y-you're kidding right?"
She instantly shot him a look, indicating the seriousness of her question.
"U-uhh… Well, He's my father's brother."
"Oh."
"H-how did you not know that? Don't you have any aunts or uncles?"
"Aunt's?"
"You can't be serious?" Donovan sighed.
Kalika gave a subtle frowned , remembering the past. "As far as I remember, the only family I had was my father and sister… But that was before the demons invaded."
Donovan's eyes soften a little seeing Kalika's reaction. "I…I'm sorry for your loss."
"Thanks… I guess... By the way, are aunts sisters of a father?"
"Yeah, but let's talk about that later." he praised.
Donovan quickly turned his attention back to the trap at hand. "Alright, so before we go, we typically need some bait for this to work," Donovan carefully placed some strange looking berries he found earlier within the trap. "Hopefully this is enough to work."
With the work done with the trap, he stood up, ready to leave. "Alright, Let's keep going. we'll set a couple more of these and we'll head back."
They both continued their venture through the forest for any and all the perfect location to place their trap. Along the way, Donovan had Kalika help, show a varied ways of setting up some of the snares.
"And then we wait?" Kalika suddenly asked.
"Yup. Lets set up a couple more and then we'll head back to the cave."
"That's awfully boring." she complained.
"We can't do much right now. As much as we need supplies and we still don't know much about this place… it's better to be safe than sorry."
"I guess you're right… anything could happen in this dream…"
Unknown to either Kalika or Donovan however, They've been watched from afar in the shadows. A beast with pure red eyes watched them closely. Even more beady red eyes peeked from the same shadows, all with a single plan in mind.
Seeing this as their prime opportunity, they leapt from the shadows and attacked!
Sensing their presence, Kalika turned, and in an instant she killed the first with a slice to the neck. Blood splattered on her face and her newly conjured blood blade dagger.
"Wolves!?" Donovan blurted. "They're huge!"
Huge demonic looking horned wolves with fur of black and gray surrounded the two. Seeing their ally die in an instant, they all became more cautious. They all circled around the two, gauging their strength.
Donovan quickly dropped the makeshift rope to wield his broken pipe. "They're so much bigger than the normal wolves, and they have horns too. No doubt that they're demon wolves." he noted, with concern laced in his voice.
Kalika, seeing the pack of wolves circling around them, cracked a smile. Her once dull yellow eyes lit up.
"Hey Donovan, you were hungry, right?"
He glanced back at Kalika finding that she was making a scary face. It was eerily similar to when she went berserk. Donovan was unable to answer seeing this side of her resurface so quickly.
Not waiting, she went on the attack!
The first wolf faced her head on, and leaped straight at her with his jaws agape. She stabbed it within the mouth without a second thought.
The others, seeing Donovan as vulnerable prey, dashed at him with a blind frenzy. Donovan noticed this movement. Moving quickly, he dodged the first, smacking the second.
"Don't underestimate me, you bastards!!"
Another circled from behind, but Donovan swung his pipe like a club, breaking its jaw!
He quickly turned back to the second wolf and slammed his pipe at its head again and again. Killing it.
The other wolves around him leapt in to attack But were intervened by Kalika. She threw her dagger into the neck of the first. She summoned her dagger, stabbing and slicing through several more that attack her and Donovan in unison.
They fought through the attacking beast, with Donovan swinging his pipe and Kalika cutting with her dagger. they covered each other's backs as the large demon wolfs bit and scratched at them.
After a long hard fought battle, there was only a few more left in the group. It was shocking how much these last wolves wanted to keep fighting.
Donovan wondered if the wolves before them was growing tire too.
Two of the wolves then came straight at him. He brought his pipe back up ready to defend himself, But Kalika easily intervened, killing one of them, and letting Donovan handle the second.
With all his strength, Donovan smacked the wolf back into the ground. Bending and cracking the handle of his pipe more.
With brutal efficiency, Kalika stood over the smacked down wolf, and sliced is neck. The newly stabbed wolf struggled and whimpered, blood continuing to pour from its neck.
The last one, that held a deep cut on its side, instantly fled, not wanting to die like its fellow kin.
"That was close…" Donovan sighted, exhaustively.
"That was fun." Kalika stared straight into the sky with a satisfied crazed smile, as they were surrounded by pools of blood and dead wolves.
Donovan's concern grew seeing her personality seemingly shift. But Like a switch inside her head, she calmed down, reverting back to her previous monotone-like state.
She turned to Donovan, pointing at all the dead wolves. "So how are we going to bring all this back?"
To Donovan became stupefied. "Uhh... O-oh." He quickly cleared his throat and scanned around until he found their leftover rope. "There's a lot of them, but maybe we could use this?"
Moments later, both Kalika and Donovan were pulling a stash of wolves behind them. He glanced back at Kalika seeing that she went back to quiet. She looked more focused on bringing their spoils of war back to their temporary base of operations, than actually conversing about what happened.
It felt like she was on autopilot. like a body without a mind.
He then remembered when she said that 'anything could happen in this dream'. It made him feel a little uneasy like she still couldn't accept this new reality that she had become a demon.
he couldn't blame her. If he became a demon, he wouldn't know how to accept it either. It was the literal equivalent of becoming a being that God Cassell hated.
Donovan couldn't help but glance back at Kalika a little more pitifully.
"What a strange world we live in..." he quietly noted.