Chapter 31: 101 Instincts That End With You Dead

Not every single Apocalypse Beast is outright evil. It would almost be better if they were, because the mere fact that you might someday have to murder a T-Rex who would have been pretty good lunch company is the kind of thing that encourages hesitation. Unfortunately, waiting to act is often fatal in a world that rewards killing first and asking questions later.

The main thing to keep in mind is this: Whatever the rules of society were in your time, they don’t apply anymore. Back then, carrying a sword on a bus was a social faux pas in anywhere but Phoenix. Now, though, dudes walk around dragging battleaxes through the market, and nobody blinks.

Why? Because it’s understandable. A good guy, the kind you might have a chance of trusting, won’t try to disarm you unless he has a very good reason. Don’t point your guns at anyone else, sure. But the burden of building trust is on the person who wants your confidence. Anyone who pretends to not understand that is not to be trusted.

The Guide, 101 Instincts That End With You Dead, page 15

—

The more Sean managed to abandon the notion that trying to run or fight was mostly hopeless, the more Cedarhelm was revealed to be a pretty good dude overall. His planet didn’t really have money, but they did have jobs. As upset as he was about being away from his forest, he was almost more fundamentally confused and offended at the concept of nepotism. Sean spent the better part of 20 minutes trying to explain it to him.

“I understand the desire to be strong. But to spend anything to become strong? I made it costly to capture me, Sean Lawrence.” After learning Sean’s name, the dragon refused to use anything but his full name, even after Sean explained that just his first name was fine. Apparently, it was a respect thing for him, despite him claiming that he didn’t need to be called anything but plain Cedarhelm. “There are relatively few who can afford the cost. Why not agree to just let Apocalypse worlds be? Those families would still be the strongest.”

“Tragedy of the commons, I guess.”

“Of the what? I’m sorry, I’m not familiar with the commons, or its history.”

“Oof, sorry.” Sean scrunched his head, trying to think of how to explain it to Cedarhelm. While the dragon was not at all stupid, he had spent most of his time on a planet that had few features beyond very healthy trees. “Okay, imagine three warriors who are fighting over control of a grove of trees. And at the beginning, they had all agreed to fight unarmed. Does that make sense?”

“It does.”

“Now imagine that one day, one of them picked up a stick and started using it as a club. He broke their rule. And the first thing he did was to kill one of the other warriors with the club.”

“Dishonorable behavior.”

“Agreed, but what do you think the third warrior is going to do? He has a choice between losing, or breaking the rule himself. Which way do you think he goes?”

“If he’s honorable…”

“You don’t know that,” Sean shook his head. “Just imagine the average being, what they’d do.”

Cedarhelm puffed a big breath of air out, frustrated. “He’d get a stick of his own.”

“Right. The first person has forced the third warrior into a hard decision, and most people don’t stick to their principles when things get hard. Hell, it’s arguable that most people don’t even have principles to begin with. You might get lucky and find three honorable people if that's everyone who was involved in the fight, but imagine there were a thousand people fighting over the woods.”

“Many would chase the advantage.” Cedarhelm’s giant head moved in a way Sean took to be a nod.

“Yup. And people with advantages tend to win. There’s no way to coordinate that many people to do the right thing, unless you have some force stronger than them that can force them to do it.”

“Hmm.” Cedarhelm sat quiet for a moment, apparently thinking. “You’ve given me new knowledge. I thank you.”

Sean was a bit relieved to see the dragon was satisfied, not only because it moved him a step further from being eaten, but because he had a few questions of his own. Even though Cedarhelm seemed to spend most of his life isolated, it seemed like he had a long life that wasn’t completely devoid of outside contact. He almost certainly knew things Sean didn’t.

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Of course, Sean Lawrence.”

“Why are you still alive? I’m assuming that at least some of the offworlders know you are here. I’m surprised they haven’t hunted you.”

“Hmm. I suppose you could say I’m not quite what they expected.” Cedarhelm’s voice took on a warmth Sean identified with being amused.

“In what way?”

“Too much of a question, little one. Simply know it’s a bit harder to bind a dragon than you’d imagine, and that their ‘high levels’ weren’t quite as high as they needed to be.”

“Well, I’m glad,” Sean said. “It’s really honestly been a pleasure, and thank you for not eating me.”

“You are leaving? I should warn you that you likely won’t be able to leave yet. It seems these woods hold adventurers based on time, not distance.”

“Meaning?”

“You likely have several cycles of the sun before it will let you leave.”

“Well, hell. I guess I’m hunting for a bit, then.” Sean valued his life, but he had also vowed to hunt dragons. Not the one in front of him, but the forest was full of other opportunities. So far, the enemies he had fought with had been, if not quite manageable, at least very rewarding. He wasn’t sure if he’d leave the woods unscathed, but if he did, he’d be leaving with a big level buff just by virtue of surviving.

“Yes. And, Sean?”

“Yeah?”

“Feel free to come back here to sleep if you like. I understand that I’m a threat to you, but I’m also a threat to everything else. If I haven’t missed my mark, you aren’t quite at the point where you can go a week without sleep yet.”

—

Cedarhelm had let him leave. That fact alone meant a lot. Sean had to remind himself that the dragon could probably still find him in the forest, and that he wasn’t exactly safe from it by most definitions of the word. But if all Cedarhelm had wanted was to toy with Sean before ending him, it seemed like the Wyrm would have done it before he walked off.

Sean did his best to keep track of landmarks as he walked back the direction he had come the night before. He had plenty of daylight left, and if it was at all possible, he wanted to recover his tent and bedroll. The bears and other animals would have no real use for it, so chances were good that it would be unharmed.

His hopes were dashed when he walked up to a completely destroyed camp site. The tent, such as it was a tent anymore, was flattened on the ground. The campfire had apparently been dug up once it cooled off, and the canvas was covered with soot, ash, and small pieces of charcoal. As he drew closer, he saw that wasn’t the only thing that had happened to the tent.

Picking up the fabric sheet, he shook it off and, in doing so, revealed several large tears and a few broken posts. It was as if whatever animal had got to it first had been actively angry about the structure’s intrusion into the forest and set about to right it. Or maybe it just really liked the flavor of canvas. It wasn’t really possible to know for sure.

The bedroll was ripped and torn as well, but not as badly. Sean taped up the tears as best he could after recovering and repacking as much of the stuffing as he could. He’d still have to replace it, but for now, it would be a lot better than nothing. Packing both carefully into his bag, he prepared to head out and find prey.

The prey, however, had different ideas on what space it occupied in the predator and prey relationship. It also disagreed, strongly, on what it meant to hunt. Only the slightest rustle in the bushes alerted Sean to the who-eats-who argument he had been unknowingly drawn into. As he jerked his head up, he saw some kind of large, brutal-looking cat launch itself out of the bushes at him. It was sharp on all immediately relevant edges, heavily muscled, and moving far, far too fast to escape as its padded footfalls ate up the distance between them.

Sean was, for all his growth, still weak. Most of his victories in battle had come from avoiding hits and chipping away at the fact that even the high VIT didn’t seem to mitigate injuries entirely for his foes. Capon the rabbit had, by nature of being a high-DEX build, revealed a real weakness in that plan. When an enemy was faster than him, he had to win decisively.

With Capon, he had been able to do that because every attack the rabbit could make was a full-commitment, predictable thing, the product of an all-STR-and-DEX build. If this cat's movement was any indication, it was all DEX and SAV, the same as him, and equipped with natural weapons that looked every bit as sharp as his jerry-rigged dagger.

I’m in trouble.

Rather than pounce, the cat opened the battle by bending down and swiping at Sean’s legs, opening his pants up in four bloody swipes. Sean got back fast enough that the claws at least didn’t get through his muscle, but the extra SAV that the cat meant that it still got a bit of leg. The pain was substantial enough that he almost let the cat get him again with a new follow-up swipe to his second leg. Stepping back, he brought the dagger forward at the cat’s head, but it was already gone, having sprung backwards out of range like it was the simplest thing in the world.

As the cat made range, Sean felt Stitch Up go to work on his leg, bringing the pain from the scratches down to a manageable level just as the cat slunk to his non-dagger side, searching for a blind spot. He managed to turn slightly before the cat rebounded off the ground in a high-altitude pounce aimed at his head. Before Sean could get his knife-side turned to a useful angle, the cat was on him, bowling him over onto the ground.

For a few moments, everything was sharp. Sean felt the claws of the cat shredding into him as they tumbled across the ground as he desperately tried to avoid letting the thing sink its teeth into his neck. By unfortunate instinct, he had dropped the Mystereamer to try to defend his head. After a few seconds, he realized how dumb that was.

Pushing back his foe with his left hand, he took a chance on his chrono-powers to slow down time around him, and darted his right hand to where he hoped it was on the ground.

As his hand hit his weapon, the cat had muscled its way past the resistance of his left hand and headed for his neck. Gripping the Mystereamer, he struck toward the cat’s side.

It won’t matter. I’m going to die anyway. He could get the knife into the cat, sure. But the animal’s teeth were still coming, and his leather armor had shown a distressing lack of ability to stop the cat’s attacks.