In the Forests of New France

The surprisingly realistic feeling of warm blood running down an aching leg causes your eyes to snap open. Without looking at your situation, you try to struggle quickly to your feet, but find pain and resistance. You glance down in surprise, and the sight sickens you.

Your leg is caught in a rather large trap that had apparently been abandoned after the winter trapping season. You had never had the interest in learning to trap to tell you what this trap was meant to be used for, but whatever it was, it would have been more powerful than yourself. Bear or maybe wolf, you think, looking at the nauseatingly large teeth that cut into your flesh. You have no doubt that the bone is snapped, and have very little sense of the lower half of your leg, below the calf the trap clasps.

You half-heartedly try to pull your leg free, knowing it useless and likely more damaging than helpful. Groaning in pain, you try to maneuver your body into a position that would allow you to free the trap from your leg, but in the darkness you cannot see clearly enough to manipulate the mechanism that controls it, and your pain is blinding you, preventing you from thinking clearly. The realization of your situation hitting you, tears begin to come to the corners of your eyes.

Always the more religious of your family's sons, you utter another brief prayer. The staunch Catholicism your mother had tried to instill in you and your brother alike had helped you, psychologically at least, before in your life. But you are finding it decidedly unhelpful when caught in a trap.