Ruho stood on the beach, his legs still shaking from the healing potion's aftermath, and stared at the forest line like it was a death sentence. Which, given his current situation, it might actually be. Rain in two hours. No shelter. No food. No water that wasn't a massive lake he'd already died in once. And apparently the magical power of a ten-year-old boy, which seemed like the kind of detail that should've been mentioned before he got dropped from orbit.
"Okay," he said out loud, trying to force his panic-addled brain to think logically. "Okay. Shelter first. That's basic survival shit, right? Find shelter before the rain comes. I can do this. I'm a human being with opposable thumbs and a functioning brain. How hard can it be?"
The answer, as it turned out, was very hard.
Ruho's first attempt at shelter was what he generously called a lean-to, though anyone with actual survival skills would've called it a pile of sticks waiting to collapse. He'd seen this kind of thing in movies, right? You find a tree, prop some branches against it, cover it with leaves, and boom—instant shelter. Simple. Foolproof.
He spent twenty minutes gathering branches from the forest edge, dragging them back to a likely-looking tree that had a decent angle to its trunk. The branches were heavier than he expected, and his still-recovering muscles protested every step of the way, but he managed to accumulate what he thought was a reasonable pile. Some of the branches had leaves still attached. That was good, right? More coverage.
He selected the longest, sturdiest-looking branch—a thick piece of wood about as long as he was tall—and carefully positioned it against the tree trunk, trying to create that classic triangular shelter shape he'd seen in survival videos he'd never actually paid attention to. The branch settled into place. He stepped back to admire his work.
The branch immediately slid sideways and clattered to the ground.
"Okay," Ruho muttered. "Okay, that's fine. Just need to angle it better."
He tried again. And again. And again. Each time, the branch would hold for maybe five seconds before gravity remembered it existed and sent everything tumbling down. He tried wedging it into a fork in the tree roots. He tried leaning it at a steeper angle. He tried using smaller branches to prop up the bigger branch, creating an increasingly complex and unstable structure that looked less like shelter and more like abstract art.
On his seventh attempt, he finally got the main support branch to stay in place long enough that he could start adding the other branches. He worked quickly, his hands clumsy and unpracticed, leaning stick after stick against the main support. It was actually starting to look like something. Not good, but something. He could see the shape of it now, the way the branches overlapped to create a crude barrier against the elements.
He grabbed the last branch from his pile, a particularly thick piece of wood with a nice cluster of leaves at one end, and moved to add it to his construction. As he leaned it into place, his elbow bumped against one of the support branches. Just a light tap. Barely any force at all.
The entire structure shuddered.
"No," Ruho said. "No, no, no, don't you fucking—"
The main support branch slipped. The other branches, suddenly without their anchor point, began sliding in different directions. Ruho lunged forward, trying to catch them, trying to hold the whole thing together through sheer force of will, but his hands closed on air as the carefully balanced structure decided to become an unbalanced structure instead.
The collapse was almost graceful. The branches fell in a cascading sequence, each one knocking into the next, the whole thing coming apart like a reverse Jenga tower. Ruho watched in horror as his twenty minutes of work disintegrated in about three seconds. The final insult came when the main support branch, in its death throes, swung around and cracked him directly in the shin.
"FUCK!" he howled, hopping on one leg and clutching his shin. The branch rolled away innocently, as if it hadn't just committed assault. "Fuck this! Fuck sticks! Fuck lean-tos! Fuck everything!"
He looked up at the sky. The clouds were definitely darker now. Closer. He maybe had an hour and a half before the rain hit. He needed a new plan.
"Okay," he said, forcing himself to calm down. "Okay. Lean-to didn't work. Fine. What about... what about a hole? Like a burrow. Animals do it all the time. Can't be that hard, right? Just dig a hole, cover it with something, wait out the rain. Simple."
He moved away from the tree and its treacherous branches, scanning the ground for a good spot to dig. The sand near the beach would be too loose, too unstable. But further into the forest, where the ground transitioned to soil, that might work. He found a spot between two large roots that looked promising—soft earth, relatively clear of rocks, close enough to the tree that he could maybe use the roots as part of the structure.
Ruho dropped to his knees and started digging with his bare hands.
The first problem he encountered was that digging with your bare hands sucks. Like, really sucks. The soil was harder than it looked, packed down by years of weather and root growth, and his fingers could only scrape away tiny amounts at a time. He clawed at the earth, his nails filling with dirt, his palms getting scraped raw against hidden pebbles and root fibers.
He dug for ten minutes and managed to create a depression maybe six inches deep and a foot wide. At this rate, he'd have a proper hole sometime next week.
"Come on," he grunted, digging faster, throwing dirt behind him like a dog burying a bone. "Come on, you piece of shit ground, just cooperate for once."
His fingernail caught on something hard. A rock, maybe, or a particularly stubborn root. He pulled, trying to dislodge it, and felt a sharp spike of pain as his nail bent backward, the tip cracking and separating from the nail bed.
Ruho jerked his hand back with a yelp. His index finger was bleeding, the nail cracked vertically down the middle, a thin line of red welling up from underneath. It wasn't a serious injury—not compared to the forty-two broken bones from earlier—but it hurt like hell and it was the final straw on what was rapidly becoming the worst day of his afterlife.
"Nope," he said, standing up and backing away from his pathetic six-inch hole. "Nope. Not doing this. Fuck digging. Moving on."
He looked around desperately. The clouds were even darker now. He could smell rain in the air, that distinct petrichor scent that meant the storm was close. He had maybe an hour. Maybe less.
His eyes landed on a tree with low-hanging branches. Strong branches, thick enough to support weight. And there, about ten feet up, a natural fork in the trunk that could serve as a platform.
"Tree house," Ruho said. "That's it. I'll make a tree house. Or at least a tree platform. Just need to get up there, find somewhere flat to sit, wait out the rain from above. Can't be that hard."
He approached the tree, sizing it up. The lowest branch was maybe seven feet off the ground—high, but not impossibly high. He could jump, grab it, pull himself up. He'd done pull-ups before. Well, he'd attempted pull-ups before. In gym class. When he was fourteen. And he'd failed miserably. But that was then. This was now. Different situation. Life or death. Adrenaline. He could do this.
Ruho bent his knees, took a deep breath, and jumped.
His fingers brushed the branch. Didn't grab it. Just brushed it. He landed back on the ground with a thud.
"Okay," he panted. "Okay. Just need to jump higher."
He tried again. This time his fingers actually closed around the branch for maybe half a second before his grip failed and he fell back down, landing hard on his ass.
Third attempt. He jumped with everything he had, his arms stretched overhead, his fingers desperately grasping. He caught the branch. Actually caught it. His hands closed around the rough bark and he hung there for a glorious moment, suspended in the air, his feet dangling.
"Yes!" he shouted. "Yes! I got it! I fucking got it!"
Now he just needed to pull himself up. Simple physics. Arms, shoulders, back muscles. Pull. Just pull yourself up.
Ruho pulled.
His arms shook. His shoulders burned. His grip started slipping almost immediately. He tried to swing his legs up, tried to hook his foot over the branch, but he just ended up spinning in place like a piece of meat on a rotisserie.
"Come on," he gasped. "Come on, you useless fucking noodle arms, do something!"
His left hand slipped.
"No, no, no—"
His right hand slipped.
Ruho fell backward, his back hitting the ground with enough force to knock the wind out of his lungs for the second time that day. He lay there, staring up at the branch he'd failed to conquer, wheezing and defeated.
Pain radiated from his spine. Not broken-bone pain. Just regular fell-on-your-back-like-an-idiot pain. The kind that would leave a bruise the size of a dinner plate and make sitting uncomfortable for a week.
The first drops of rain hit his face.
"No," Ruho said to the sky. "No, come on. I still have time. You said two hours. It hasn't been two hours!"
The sky didn't care about his protests. The drizzle intensified, fat drops of water splattering against his face, soaking into his nice blue cargo pants, turning the ground around him into mud. Within thirty seconds, the drizzle became a downpour. Within a minute, Ruho was completely drenched.
He scrambled to his feet, his back screaming in protest, and looked around frantically. No shelter. Three failed attempts. Rain coming down so hard he could barely see twenty feet in front of him. The forest was just dark shapes and the sound of water hitting leaves and his own panicked breathing.
He ran.
No direction. No plan. Just ran into the forest, dodging trees, tripping over roots, his boots splashing through rapidly forming puddles. The rain was cold, shockingly cold, and within minutes he was shivering violently. His teeth chattered. His hair plastered to his skull. His clothes clung to his body like a second skin.
He needed shelter. Anything. A cave, an overhang, a—
There. Through the rain, barely visible. A massive tree, its trunk so wide it would take three people holding hands to circle it. And at the base, a dark hollow. An opening.
Ruho ran toward it, his feet sliding in the mud, and practically dove into the hollow. It was small—barely big enough for him to curl up inside—but it was dry. Or at least drier than outside. The opening faced away from the wind, protected by the curve of the tree, and while he could still hear the rain hammering down outside, almost none of it was reaching him.
He pulled his knees to his chest, wrapped his arms around himself, and shivered in his tiny sanctuary. His back throbbed. His cracked fingernail pulsed. His shin, where the branch had hit him, was probably bruised. He was soaked to the bone, exhausted, and trapped in a hollowed-out tree in a fantasy world the size of the sun.
"This is fine," he muttered through chattering teeth. "This is totally fine. Everything is fine."
He closed his eyes and tried to sleep, listening to the rain and wondering how his life had come to this.
12:00 AM
Ruho woke to his stomach trying to eat itself from the inside out. The rain had stopped at some point while he'd been sleeping, leaving the forest dripping and humid and filled with the sounds of nocturnal creatures he couldn't identify and didn't want to meet. He was still curled up in his tree hollow, his clothes damp and uncomfortable, his body stiff from sleeping in a position that no chiropractor would approve of.
But none of that mattered because he was hungry. Not regular hungry. Starving. The kind of hungry that made your stomach cramp and your head spin and your whole body feel weak and shaky. He tried to remember the last time he'd eaten. Before he died, probably. Which meant it had been... what, a full day? More? Did time even work the same way here?
"Azirel," he croaked into the darkness. "Azirel, I'm hungry."
The trainee god's voice appeared in his head, sounding way too cheerful for midnight. "Well yeah, you haven't eaten since you got here. Actually, you haven't eaten since before you died. Your body's probably running on empty."
"Can you spawn me some food?" Ruho asked hopefully. "Like you did with the healing potion?"
"Nope," Azirel said. "Potions are one thing. Actual food is different. That would count as direct intervention in your survival, which is against the rules I'm already bending by helping you at all. You're gonna have to hunt."
Ruho stared out of his tree hollow at the dark forest. "Hunt what?"
"I don't know, animals? There's plenty of wildlife around. Small game, fish in the lake, deer in the forest. You've got options. Just go kill something and eat it."
"I don't know how to hunt," Ruho said flatly.
"Then learn," Azirel said. "Look, I've got other stuff to do. You're a smart guy—well, smart-ish. You'll figure it out. Good luck!"
And then his presence was gone, leaving Ruho alone in the dark with his growling stomach.
"Bastard," Ruho muttered, crawling out of his tree hollow. His back protested immediately, the bruise from his earlier fall making itself known. He stood up slowly, his joints creaking, and looked around.
The forest at night was a completely different place than it had been during the day. The moonlight—and there were two moons, he noticed, which was disorienting as hell—filtered through the canopy in pale beams, creating shadows that moved and shifted with every breeze. Strange sounds echoed through the trees. Chirping that wasn't quite like crickets. Howling that wasn't quite like wolves. The rustling of things moving through underbrush that could be anything from rabbits to monsters.
Ruho took a deep breath and started walking. Quietly. Or as quietly as he could manage while stumbling through an unfamiliar forest in the dark. He needed to find an animal. A small one. Something he could actually catch and kill without getting himself killed in the process.
He spotted movement near a cluster of bushes. Something small and furry, about the size of a cat, with what looked like oversized ears. It was nibbling on something, completely unaware of his presence.
Perfect.
Ruho crouched down, moving as silently as possible. Closer. Closer. The creature kept eating, its little ears twitching but not turning toward him. Just a few more feet and he could grab it. He tensed his muscles, ready to pounce.
He lunged.
The creature vanished. Just disappeared in a blur of motion that Ruho's eyes couldn't even track. One second it was there, the next it was gone, and he was face-first in the dirt with a mouthful of leaves.
"What the—" he sputtered, spitting out plant matter. "How did it move that fast?"
He tried again with a different creature. This one looked like a rabbit, except it had six legs and glowing red eyes that were deeply unsettling. It was slower than the first one. He managed to get within arm's reach before it noticed him.
It made a sound like a car alarm and took off running on its six legs, moving in a zigzag pattern that defied physics. Ruho chased it for maybe ten seconds before tripping over a root and slamming into a tree trunk hard enough to see stars.
Third attempt. A bird. A big one, perched on a low branch, apparently sleeping. Birds were slow when they were sleeping, right? He could just reach up and grab it.
He reached up.
The bird's eyes snapped open—all four of them, because of course it had four eyes—and it let out a screech that sounded like a rusty gate being scraped across concrete. Then it dive-bombed his head, talons extended, and he barely managed to duck before it would've taken his eye out.
"FUCK!" Ruho screamed, running away from the homicidal bird. "Okay! Okay! No birds! Got it!"
He gave up on land animals and headed back toward the lake. Fish. Fish were stupid. Fish couldn't run away on six legs or dive-bomb your face. He'd catch a fish, cook it somehow—he'd figure that part out later—and finally eat something.
The lake was calm at night, the surface reflecting the two moons in a way that would've been beautiful if Ruho wasn't starving and desperate. He could see shapes moving under the water. Fish. Definitely fish. Big ones too.
He waded into the shallows, the cold water soaking into his boots. The fish scattered immediately, but he could still see them in the moonlight. He just needed to be fast. Faster than he'd been with the land animals.
He waited. Stayed perfectly still. A fish drifted closer. Closer. Almost within reach.
Ruho's hand shot into the water.
The fish dodged effortlessly and his hand closed on nothing but water and possibly some algae. He tried again. Same result. Again. Again. He spent twenty minutes trying to catch a single fish and failed every single time, getting progressively more wet and more cold and more frustrated.
"This is bullshit!" he shouted at the lake. "You're fish! You're supposed to be easy!"
The fish, unimpressed by his argument, continued swimming just out of reach.
He gave up on fish and headed back into the forest, dripping and miserable. There had to be something he could catch. Something slow. Something that wouldn't run or fly or disappear into thin air.
He found a deer.
Not a normal deer. This thing was massive, easily twice the size of any deer from Earth, with antlers that looked like they could gore a car. But it was just standing there, grazing peacefully, completely unaware of him. And deer were herbivores, right? Not dangerous. He could take it.
Ruho's starving, sleep-deprived brain decided this was a good idea.
He charged at the deer with a yell, planning to... what? Tackle it? Wrestle it to the ground? He hadn't really thought this through. He just knew he was hungry and the deer was food and therefore the deer needed to become his food right now.
The deer looked up as he approached. For a moment, they made eye contact. Ruho saw his reflection in its large, dark eyes and realized he might have made a mistake.
The deer lowered its head.
"Oh shi—"
The antlers caught him square in the chest. The impact lifted him off his feet and sent him flying backward through the air in a graceful arc that ended with him slamming into the ground so hard his teeth rattled. The deer, apparently satisfied with its defense, went back to grazing like nothing had happened.
Ruho lay on his back, staring up at the two moons, unable to breathe, unable to move, unable to do anything except contemplate the series of terrible decisions that had led him to this exact moment. His chest felt like someone had hit it with a battering ram. His back, already bruised from the tree incident, now had a matching bruise on his front. He was pretty sure he'd bitten his tongue at some point because his mouth tasted like blood.
He rolled over onto his stomach with a groan and just lay there, his face pressed into the dirt, his body a symphony of pain and exhaustion and hunger.
Somewhere in his head, he felt Azirel's presence return, checking in on him. There was a long pause as the trainee god assessed the situation.
"You know what," Azirel said slowly, "I'm just gonna... I'm gonna leave you to figure this out on your own. Yeah. You clearly need some time to think about your life choices. Good luck with that."
And then he was gone again.
Ruho stayed where he was, face-down in the dirt, listening to the deer chewing grass somewhere nearby, and wondered if it was too late to just accept the ghost option instead.