“Aye I’ll fekin tell ya, it all went to shit when that metal tub shipwreck started showing on the arbor. Suddenly there are fakers bigger than ma grandpa boat eating folks and shitting bones left and right, or at least that’s what they tell ya. I ain’t seein anything of the sort lads, or else I would not be there, but the tuna we got yesterday had three rows of teeth, so who the fuck knows.”

  Interview with Captain "Old Nail" McGillis, of the Wet Dreamer.

  The first thing Omri felt was sand, raw in his mouth. Gritty, coarse sand tasting of salt and rotten fishiness. He coughed, his throat raw as fire, and rolled onto his side. Sunlight stabbed at his eyes, blinding, relentless, and he threw an arm over his face, waiting for the world to stop spinning, his head to stop hurting.

  He spent a few interminable seconds just basking in all his pains, a single thought cutting through the haze of his mind.

  “I’m alive”.

  A primal sound, a mixture of a choked laugh and a strangled cry left his lips, alongside a mouthful of the sand that was still coating his face, and, taking a couple of minutes to let his eyes adjust, he moved the arm away from his face, his gaze wandering alongside the alien landscape.

  He saw a crescent white beach curving away in both directions, flanked by jagged black rocks that clawed at the deep blue sea. Beyond the shoreline, a lush stretch of jungle rose like a fortress, its canopy a wall of emerald, browns, blues, and yellows, the cawing of birds an omnipresent song in his ears.

  His body screamed as he sat up. Every muscle felt flayed, the skin on his back burned from both sun and salt.

  His…minimalist attire, courtesy of his master's last orders, consisted of a single pair of training pants, and the comfortable weight of his sword and knife still hung at his waist, the shining metal implements miraculously surviving the trip while still attached to him.

  He unsheathed both, relieved to find the blades unrusted, his mind thinking of the man who raised him just to sell him and then save him, all in a trip that should have decided his destiny. And it certainly did, at least for the foreseeable future.

  Shelving off the bittersweet memories for a time in which they could matter, the youngster took better stock of his surroundings, and this time, with an actual groan of pain, he got up from his seated position.

  The tide had spit him onto the island’s western edge. To the north, he spotted a few land masses dotting the horizon, green stains on a deep blue canvas, some smaller, some bigger.

  ”An Archipelago,” the boy thought, “ No smoke, no reflections from steel or glass, probably untamed land” his gaze fell to his vicinity, on the beach and the not-so-far shore sprawled in front of him “No wreckage, no bodies… nothing to salvage for me” a sigh escaped his lips, “Just ocean in the front and forest in the back”.

  Omri looked up at the sky, a bit lost in his musings. No particular recognizable landscapes, nothing to distinguish between each island, and nothing that would let him know how far from any human outpost he was.

  He still tried to dig into his memories a bit more, but as far as he was able to tell, this cluster of islands had not been mentioned in any of his lessons before, and, without an actual vantage point, he could not know if he saw any map in which they were displayed.

  His current location notwithstanding, he however had other problems, “Wondering where I am will certainly not find anything to drink,” he dryly thought as he massaged his parched throat.

  Master Aron's words came to his mind, clear as the lessons he imparted. He could almost hear him speak in that gruff voice of his “A man dies in three days without water. By day two, you start to hallucinate, and the bile in your body turns toxic. By the third day, you may no longer be able to move to find any. Water, shelter, food, those are the things you need in the wilds.”

  Omri had lost track of how long he'd floated in the sea, but the sun's position told him it was midmorning. Considering the heat, the sun, and the weather, he didn’t have long until his situation turned from seriously concerning to lethal.

  He staggered towards the greenery, scanning for more practical signs of life than the omnipresent cacophony of the lush forest wildlife.

  The jungle loomed ahead, its shadows cool and inviting, but the tree line bristled with vines as thick as his wrist, fruits the colors of death and a general… maliciousness.

  He drew his sturdy knife hacking a path in the undergrowth. The air thickened with the stench of rotting vegetation and something sweet, almost cloying… flowers? The fruits he saw earlier?

  A couple hundred yards in, he suddenly froze. A low gurgle cut amid the buzz of insects and the calls of birds. He followed the sound, knees buckling as he pushed through a curtain of ferns.

  There, in a mossy clearing, a stream carved a silver thread across the polished rocks.

  Omri rushed to the small river, falling to his hands and knees, and he plunged his head into the current, letting the cold embrace of the creek wash away his tiredness alongside his sweat.

  He was about to greedily gulp down this new lifeline before his training took over, and cupping his hands, he carefully sipped at the azure spring.

  The water tasted of minerals and moss, but it was cold, glorious, and alive just like him.

  Clearing his thirst, Meal found himself thinking more clearly.

  He chastised himself, as driven by a desire to appease his inflamed throat, he had been careless.

  “Whatever inhabits these woods is sure to make use of such streams, be they prey or predator”.

  He looked around, quickly analyzing the surrounding jungle, instinctively lowering his body, almost flush with the ground to limit the size of his figure.

  If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  He stayed like this for a handful of minutes until he was sure he was alone.

  The creek, or at least the area he had chosen for watering, seemed devoid of animal passage.

  “I'm lucky it seems,” he mused, considering the situation he was in, and then sighed, ”But I won't always be. I cannot afford to make more mistakes”.

  With renewed determination, Omri returned to his current tasks “Water is no longer a problem, now before it gets dark I need to find shelter for the night, a secure place that I can easily defend or ditch”.

  And right on cue, as she wanted to add herself to the conversation, his belly also made herself heard with a dull groan.

  “And yes, of course, something to put under my teeth wouldn't be bad either”.

  With this last thought, the boy cautiously set off again, not too close to the waterway to run into unwanted encounters, thinking about the gleaming fruits he saw dotting the trees of the forest.

  The creek’s banks narrowed into a ravine upstream, the walls steep and slick with the same deeply green-colored moss. Omri climbed, fingers digging into crevices, until he found what he was looking for: a recess in the rocks, half-hidden by a circle of ferns.

  A cave, barely tall enough to crouch in, but dry and shielded from the wind. He crawled inside, assessing the place. No animal bones, no rank odor of rotting meat or carcasses, just the faint drip of water echoing from deeper in the stone.

  It was good enough for the youth's current needs, and so, he started to gather materials for a bed: palm fronds, some stubborn dried moss that took entirely too much time to pry from the rocks, and dry sticks to make a provisionary door for the entrance of his refuge.

  He then piled the materials near the alcove’s entrance, before heading out into the wilds.

  He followed the stream back, studying the forest floor with methodical attention. The trees here were giants, their trunks studded with parasitic orchids, the sunlight coming from above almost losing itself before reaching the ground, illuminating colorful rotting fruits and some bushes of red berries.

  Omri gave a small thought about eating the fruits, before shaking his head. Poison was a quieter killer than thirst, but it was a killer nonetheless.

  A shrill chittering erupted overhead, and he looked up just as a creature leaped between branches, a furry, cat-sized thing with a banded tail.

  It paused, sniffing the air, then scurried higher, lost in the sprawling branches of the intertwining giants, completely ignoring the fallen fruits and the red berries. “A tree dweller, probably harmless judging from the size”.

  His gaze fell on the crops.

  “Definitely not eating those though”.

  He moved on, following the stream inland. The jungle grew denser, the light fading to a murky green. He was about to turn back when he spotted something known, something edible: a cluster of palm trees, standing in the middle of a rare clearing in the surrounding greenery.

  The coconuts making up their crown almost too heavy for the slender trunks to bear, bending their top and promising a rich bounty to any primate smart enough to reach the top of the canopy.

  “Well, let’s see if this particular primate is the one that will get them,“ he thought.

  His first instinct was to rush towards the trees, but once again, his master's words went off in his mind like an ever-watchful presence.

  “The phrase animal cunning exists for a reason, my Boy. They may not be as intelligent as you or me, but remember, a hunter is a hunter, whatever its species may be.“

  Omri decided to take a more careful approach and started to circle the clearing, before stopping himself near a particularly gnarly tree, with a grunt of effort, he started to hoist himself towards the top, his hands and feet easily finding purchase in the many vines, branches, and knots of the woods.

  He hadn’t managed to climb even half the length of the tree when he sensed them, a tugging instinct before the sound reached him.

  A low growl, more vibration than sound, hummed amid the undergrowth. Omri embraced the trunk, trying to shrink and camouflage himself as best as he could.

  Six shadows slunk into the clearing, their practiced, predatory pace almost lazy in its grace, and a shudder went through the boy’s body at the strange sight in front of him as the wolf-sized creatures made themselves seen.

  Built like otters, with sleek, muscular bodies covered in oily black fur, their snouts tapered and lined with needle-like teeth as their webbed paws gave way to sharp claws digging into the soft earth. The one in the middle gave a short rasp, and they fanned out in a semicircle.

  Omri held his breath “Pack hunters, seemingly intelligent or at least capable of following an internal hierarchy. Fuck“.

  The creatures hadn’t spotted him yet, the cover of the tree enough to shield him from the sights of the predators, and as they got closer to the coconut grove, the centerpiece of the pack, a scarred male with one milky eye, sniffed the air as its ears twitched toward the hard-shelled fruits.

  “They’re tracking them,” Omri realized. “Either that or the thing that ate it “.

  The pack moved with eerie grace, their synchronized steps circling the clearing without making a single sound.

  One of the smaller ones, probably a juvenile, strayed too close to Omri’s hiding spot, its muzzle brushing the undergrowth where he’d stood minutes earlier. He tightened his grip on his knife, wondering if they could climb, hoping they would not.

  His adrenaline-filled brain started to formulate a plan of action in case of discovery.

  “I’d need to take down the alpha first. Their fur seems dense and thick, and if they truly are some sort of freak mustelid it will also probably be oily and sleek. I’ll need to aim for their weak points. Joints, eyes, snout, ears…probably anus”.

  As the youth's mind wandered to the best killing methods available to him, his eyes scanned the canopy around him for an escape route, in case things truly turned dire.

  The juvenile beast below sneezed, shook its head, and trotted back to the group, to the relief of its unwitting prey hidden above. The alpha yipped once, this time the sound like a whip of cracking bone, and the pack melted into the trees.

  Omri waited until the jungle fell silent again, then exhaled. His hands trembled not from fear, but from the rush of instincts he had not employed to the fullest since his Ordalia.

  “This is what you were trained for,” he taught. “The thrill. The rush. To survive, live, and then thrive no matter what or where, no matter what I’m up against”.

  The boy understood his situation.

  He was in untamed lands, with probably not a single human in range of a hundred miles, with no way to escape his situation, surrounded by hostile creatures he had never seen before, nor heard of.

  He had no immediate supplies, his living situation was a hole in a cliff, and the only edible thing he knew for sure of was guarded by said creatures.

  He was, in a single word, fucked.

  And yet… and yet the kid smiled. Compared to the shipwreck, to the certainty of death he felt when he was in the deep blue sea, this was nothing. This was manageable. This was easy.

  “ Well, maybe not easy, but at least I have resources, and my opponents are a quantifiable danger”.

  With those thoughts in mind, the boy’s smile turned into a feral grin, and, much like the predators that appeared before him, he slank back into the shadows of the forest, a new hunter unleashed on the unknowing island.