The morning arrived with a damp cold seeping through the gaps in the shelter's roof. Every bone in my body ached. The wound in my chest burned as if someone had poured boiling oil into it. When I reached out to grab the axe, I saw my fingers trembling. I wasn't a hero; I was just an exhausted runaway who had managed not to die yet.
Eliz was in the corner of the shelter, checking her bowstring. I realized she was watching me. There was no admiration in her gaze; only the cold realism of a professional looking at a useless apprentice.
"If you keep holding that axe like that," Eliz said, her voice as harsh as the morning frost, "you'll chop your own leg off instead of the log. Those fences you built last night... a stiff breeze would knock them over. Aethelgard raised you as a noble ornament, kid, not a survivor."
I didn't answer. She was right. I took the axe and staggered toward a pine tree outside the shelter. I swung, but the angle was wrong. The steel bit into the wood so awkwardly that I struggled for minutes just to pry it loose. A sharp pang shot through my wound, and I collapsed to my knees. I sat there in the snow, breathless, face-to-face with my own incompetence.
"Drop it," Eliz said, walking over to me. She snatched the axe from my hand in one swift motion. "Strength isn't enough here. You need technique and patience. Learn how to stay alive first, kid."
Until late afternoon, Eliz showed me how to strike at the right angle and how to conserve my energy. While she took large chunks out of the trees with every blow, I could barely manage to produce wood dust. Hunger, meanwhile, gripped our stomachs like a vise. Eliz disappeared into the woods for a while but returned empty-handed; winter was approaching, and the animals had gone into hiding. As we sat by the fire chewing on the bitter, earthy roots that Essence had cleaned, we both remained silent. There was no bond between us, only our mutual necessity.
Right then, the ground beneath the shelter shook strangely.
At first, I thought it was an earthquake. The Red Slime thrashed restlessly in its cage, and Essence huddled into the furthest corner of the wall. A muffled, rhythmic vibration came from deep within the earth... as if a massive heart were beating right beneath us.
"What is that?" Eliz whispered, nocking an arrow to her bow.
The ground just a few meters from the shelter suddenly caved in. A small hole opened, and out crawled a massive, pitch-black ant with a metallic sheen and strange, ear-like protrusions on the sides of its head. An Echo Ant.
Eliz tightened her bowstring, but I grabbed her arm. "Wait," I panted. "Don't shoot."
The ant scanned the area, its long antennae vibrating. Every time its legs touched the ground, we could feel the earth tremble slightly. These creatures were the masters of underground tunnels; they could create tremors powerful enough to swallow entire settlements by vibrating the soil.
In that moment, a spark lit up in my hunger-muddled mind. If we wanted water, if we wanted to bring the stream here, we had to dig. But we were weak. This creature, however, was born to dig.
"If we don't kill it," I said to Eliz, my eyes fixed on the ant's vibrating legs, "it can help us. We can connect the stream to this place. It can dig tunnels for us."
Eliz looked at me as if I had lost my mind. "That's a monster, kid. It'll bury both of us under the earth."
"But it's our only chance right now," I said, dropping my axe to the ground. "Aethelgard has already buried us. What do we have left to lose?"
The ant turned toward us. Its antennae flickered. Between terror and hope, we were taking our first truly massive gamble.