Hall of Infinite Doors
You feel it tug on your heart a little as you move away from the creature and squat behind a tangle of deadfall near the small clear space where you have slain the creature. Sounds of clear animal pain echo from the thing, high-pitched and awful, and it just gets worse and worse and more ragged as time goes on. You can see the thing's labored breathing and the warm blood on the moss and fallen leaves, and every part of you that was once civilized is begging to end its torment. But your belly protests. Your stomach knows a predator will come. And the sharpened flints in your left hand and cudgel in your right attests to what you will do to that predator. What you must do.
Even pain cannot last forever, though, and before too long the rodent expires. Its blood pumps more sluggishly onto the ground, and its breathing ceases in a burst of gasping and whimpering. You squat for a little while longer, worried the thing's suffering might not have bought you any advantage. At least you got ONE kill, you reason... but then you hear the sniffling and the sound of crunching leaves, and a wide brown bulk enters the clearing opposite you, sending a thrill through your stomach.
It's a bear. Though sluggish with oncoming winter and thin with the lack of food, the bear is large for its species and thick with rolls of stored fat and thick fur. It wobbles on legs tipped with heavy, mauling paws, and nudges the carcass with a snout filled with horrible teeth. It's larger than you, and as it approaches the dead creature seems to gain a scent it doesn't approve of, and stops, whining and sniffing the air.
But then your flint strikes it in the side, causing it to flinch back and let out a roar of surprise. You crash from the deadfall and strike the bear across the snout before rolling away from its retaliation. You haven't actually hurt the thing, of course, just surprised it, but the bear is angered and smells you, and rolls after you with a heady roar and steady swipes of its powerful claws.
You feel the air whooshing at each empty swipe of those paws. Each one is as large as your head, and can easily crush your bones. Conversely, its body is covered with thick fur and rolls of fat, a natural armor you doubt you could get through even if you had conventional weapons, let along a studded club and hunger. You can see the anger in its eyes, though, and you know it won't just let you leave. It lumbers after you with all the force of angry nature roused, and you tumble back at every opportunity, dodging around trees and striking out when you can, often losing spikes in the thing's thick fur, though one striking it in the face and blinding it in one eye.
As the fight continues, you begin to lose hope. It's not tiring, and you are. Furthermore, the more tired you get, the closer it gets to smacking you with its powerful paws. Just one hit would knock you down to doom. You begin to get more daring, rushing it to batter at its back and the back of its head, dodging away before it can roll over and crush you, but all it takes is one time for things to be over, and one time you don't react fast enough, you can't duck far enough, and the bear backhands you across the ribs with a swat of a lazy paw.
You're knocked back, prone, with a numb and burning pain working its way all through your abdomen. You can barely breathe, and feel things loose inside you. You know something's broken. The bear snarls over you and raises itself onto its hind legs, swinging its arms out beside it and roaring as if to remind you of the furious thing that will kill you.
And desperate, instinctive, as it lunges down to bite off your face, you swing your cudgel up and deliver a blow to the side of its head. Several shards of black stone are knocked away in the bear's face and you see it recoil in pain. WHen you blink your eyes open, you can see that you hit its other eye. The bear is blinded, stunned, and howling in pain. You react the only way you can, with a swiftness that your injuries protest against, surging upward and striking the bear square in the nose with the flat of your club. You hear something crunch, feel a terrible weight on top of you, and then life becomes a distant thing in blackness, dwindling, remote, then gone.
The next morning your mate emerges, driven on by a sense of loyalty or fear to search for you. They are a competent hunter as well, though they remain behind often to look after your child. It is them who find you beneath the bear, both of you cold and dead. It is them who pieces together the story of what happened to you, and drags both your carcass and the bear's back to the tribe. They carve your story in the rock, and instruct your son of your heroism, and devour the flesh of the bear and of yourself both, so that your strength may be absorbed by the living.
In spring, your bones are given to the mountain. You are placed in the arms of the great gray god, and in the future many speak of you in their religion.
Even pain cannot last forever, though, and before too long the rodent expires. Its blood pumps more sluggishly onto the ground, and its breathing ceases in a burst of gasping and whimpering. You squat for a little while longer, worried the thing's suffering might not have bought you any advantage. At least you got ONE kill, you reason... but then you hear the sniffling and the sound of crunching leaves, and a wide brown bulk enters the clearing opposite you, sending a thrill through your stomach.
It's a bear. Though sluggish with oncoming winter and thin with the lack of food, the bear is large for its species and thick with rolls of stored fat and thick fur. It wobbles on legs tipped with heavy, mauling paws, and nudges the carcass with a snout filled with horrible teeth. It's larger than you, and as it approaches the dead creature seems to gain a scent it doesn't approve of, and stops, whining and sniffing the air.
But then your flint strikes it in the side, causing it to flinch back and let out a roar of surprise. You crash from the deadfall and strike the bear across the snout before rolling away from its retaliation. You haven't actually hurt the thing, of course, just surprised it, but the bear is angered and smells you, and rolls after you with a heady roar and steady swipes of its powerful claws.
You feel the air whooshing at each empty swipe of those paws. Each one is as large as your head, and can easily crush your bones. Conversely, its body is covered with thick fur and rolls of fat, a natural armor you doubt you could get through even if you had conventional weapons, let along a studded club and hunger. You can see the anger in its eyes, though, and you know it won't just let you leave. It lumbers after you with all the force of angry nature roused, and you tumble back at every opportunity, dodging around trees and striking out when you can, often losing spikes in the thing's thick fur, though one striking it in the face and blinding it in one eye.
As the fight continues, you begin to lose hope. It's not tiring, and you are. Furthermore, the more tired you get, the closer it gets to smacking you with its powerful paws. Just one hit would knock you down to doom. You begin to get more daring, rushing it to batter at its back and the back of its head, dodging away before it can roll over and crush you, but all it takes is one time for things to be over, and one time you don't react fast enough, you can't duck far enough, and the bear backhands you across the ribs with a swat of a lazy paw.
You're knocked back, prone, with a numb and burning pain working its way all through your abdomen. You can barely breathe, and feel things loose inside you. You know something's broken. The bear snarls over you and raises itself onto its hind legs, swinging its arms out beside it and roaring as if to remind you of the furious thing that will kill you.
And desperate, instinctive, as it lunges down to bite off your face, you swing your cudgel up and deliver a blow to the side of its head. Several shards of black stone are knocked away in the bear's face and you see it recoil in pain. WHen you blink your eyes open, you can see that you hit its other eye. The bear is blinded, stunned, and howling in pain. You react the only way you can, with a swiftness that your injuries protest against, surging upward and striking the bear square in the nose with the flat of your club. You hear something crunch, feel a terrible weight on top of you, and then life becomes a distant thing in blackness, dwindling, remote, then gone.
The next morning your mate emerges, driven on by a sense of loyalty or fear to search for you. They are a competent hunter as well, though they remain behind often to look after your child. It is them who find you beneath the bear, both of you cold and dead. It is them who pieces together the story of what happened to you, and drags both your carcass and the bear's back to the tribe. They carve your story in the rock, and instruct your son of your heroism, and devour the flesh of the bear and of yourself both, so that your strength may be absorbed by the living.
In spring, your bones are given to the mountain. You are placed in the arms of the great gray god, and in the future many speak of you in their religion.
