Still not satisfied he was safe Gar kept moving he wanted to be well away from that place. His pace was slowed but following the markings meant he was actually able to leave the forest of stalagmites much quicker than he had crossed it earlier. He was glad he had noted down the carvings on his way in otherwise he wasn’t sure he would have found the right path.

  By the time he was out of the cavern with the stalagmite forest he could no longer hear the zombies and death dogs he still wasn’t willing to relax, he forced himself to move as fast as he could he was still getting slower as the pain in his leg was growing. He had to pull himself through the final small tunnel with his arm the bite in his thigh making him unable to crouch.

  He got outside and it was dark he had been slowed so much it was well into the night his dark vision compensated for it easily. At some point the storm had broken leaving clear skies for the first time in a while. Gar had the badgers help as he blocked the cave entrance with stones for the first time in a while, he was hopeful he had lost the death dogs but he wasn’t taking chances. He stationed B3 right outside the cave to watch and to get him if there was any sound or movement or anything really, no chances taken.

  Stumbling over to his camp he started a fire and put some water in a pot to boil. He then ate and drank until he was full. Unable to put it off any longer he pulled down his trousers and looked at his leg. The wound had picked up dirt, fibres from his trousers and crusted blood as he ran. There was also disturbing bits of flaking black flesh in it. He started by pouring water over it trying to rinse as much of the mess off as he could. When it seemed no more would come off with just pouring water he took the shirt he had found and cut it into strips, the strips then went into the pot of boiling water. After a couple of minutes boiling he fished them out all but one where hung near the fire to dry, the one he hadn’t was used as a cloth to keep cleaning. He started further out cleaning the dried blood from his leg then worked in towards the wound, rinsing the cloth in the boiling water regularly.

  As he got closer he found out why the pain had been getting worse there was an area of black dead skin around the wound that defiantly hadn’t been there earlier. The job of cleaning got harder as the black skin would flake under the cloth, Gar kept going despite the pain crying out regally whenever he pulled the wound or accidentally scrubbed to hard. Covering the actual wound was a disgusting scab that was caked in dirt and other crap, it had opened up and closed itself several times as he tried to run. He removed the lot he needed to see the wound and check if it was spreading this necrosis deeper into his leg. removing the scab was almost more painful than the initial bite. He was fortunate in that the wound wasn’t too deep the death dog had only caught him with its front few teeth the problem was the spreading necrosis, it needed to be removed.

  Gars knife was dipped into the boiling water, then still not happy with that he held the blade into the fire. Using just the tip of the blade he started investigating the wound, it was slow going he didn’t want to make things worse and the pain was making his leg flail as he poked it . When the knife slipped under the necrotic skin, which he couldn’t say whether that was intentional or by accident, he found that the necrosis didn’t extend that deep at least not yet but he had already seen it was spreading. He could tell the area had even grown a bit since he had started cleaning. Gar hadn’t liked what needed to be done, he was going to have to basically flay the skin off a large patch on the back of his leg and cut even deeper on the actual bite.

  Waiting was only going to make the area larger so Gar wiped his knife clean, and held it in the fire. Pulling it out of the fire he gave it a minute to cool then he put the blade to his leg starting above the wound in the living skin he needed to make sure he left nothing necrotic. The sharp knife helped as Gar slid the blade into his leg, he barely got anywhere before he had to stop the pain and simply the thought of what he was dong to himself had caused him to kick and flail there was no way he could continue like that. Sheaving his knife he grabbed some rope then hobbled over to the tree trunk on his platform. He went to the top most section of what was left where it was thinner, lying down next to the log he tied his leg to it, wrapping it round tight so the leg was held straight and he couldn’t move it.

  He had then pulled his knife and started to try again trying to remove the necrotic parts. He couldn’t do it both physically where it was on his leg and how he was tied down he couldn’t get to it or even see it properly and mentally the thought of cutting in to his own leg even if it was necessary was just wrong. Gar looked at his health it was down to 124/167 and as he watched it lost another point. He had to do something. Gar had then looked up and seen the badgers, he realised what he was going to do. It would hurt more and be messy but if he couldn’t do it himself it was his only choice.

  He quickly washed Bodgers skull with the rag then had it dunk its entire skull in the pot of boiling water and hold it there. He would have liked to have had Bodger put its head directly in the fire but that would most likely have been too much damage for the skeletal puppet. With Bodger as sanitised as he was able Gar put his leather sheath between his teeth and wrapped rope around the tree trunk to grab onto. He then gave Bodger the command to begin.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  Bodger took a few moments almost as if considering what it had to do, long enough Gar relaxed a little from how he braced thinking the skeletal puppet hadn’t understood what he wanted it to do. That was when Bodger brought its head down against the wound in Gars leg then using the side of its mouth bite down. Dropping the chunk it removed Bodger then took several more quick bites before it went back to the pot of boiling water and rinsed its head again. Returning to the wound Bodger took more nips at it with its front teeth, and on it went. Gar was aware of none of it, after the first bite he was in a world of pain. His teeth ground into the leather, his fists clenched the rope so tight he was close to drawing blood. He wanted to kick, to flail, to run anything to escape the pain. He couldn’t though, he was tied down and he needed it to happen. The worst of it was when Bodger had to go deeper where the actual bite mark was that was no longer just skin that was more.

  Gar had passed out from the pain, he awoke when a damp cloth was dropped on his face. Bodger was in front of Gar his leg was still agony but the skeletal puppet must have thought it was done. The damp cloth was one of the strips of shirt he had left to dry by the fire, Gar had instructed Bodger to get it once the job was done. His leg was bleeding freely after being worked on by badger teeth. He untied the rope holding him down then inspected the job. He had to flush it with water to clear blood so he could see. It was a mess, badgers teeth do not do clean cuts. Fortunately only a small area had any depth and he could see no more necrosis which was good because he had no desire to go through that again. He used several strips to bandage the much larger wound then hopped himself into bed.

  Gar did not sleep well despite how tired he was the pain in his leg kept him from getting a good night’s rest. He lay in bed until sunrise staring at the roof trying to think of anything except the pain. Crawling out he started his day by lighting a fire. Despite skipping it the previous day it felt wrong to not do his morning climb but he didn’t even consider it.

  As some water boiled he un-bandaged his leg to look at the wound. The bandage was soaked through with blood but the wound underneath was fairly dry. He dipped a clean strip in the boiling water then dropped the used bandage in. Using the cloth he cleaned up round the wound leaving the injury itself not wanting to open it up again. Overall the wound looked good much better than an injury like that had any right to be, and even after a more thorough inspection there was no sign of any necrosis. He re-bandaged the wound after thoroughly washing the bandage and several water changes. He was in much better condition than he had any right to be and the only reason he could think off was that in video games attribute point’s affected healing rate. He pulled up his status page, keeping it short.

  Race: Gargoyle

  Name: Gar

  Level: 4

  Experience to next level: 65/338

  Health: 146/167

  Stamina: 167/167

  Mana: 82/82

  Constitution: 14    Endurance: 13

  Strength: 16    Agility: 6

  Dexterity: 6   Willpower: 11(10)

  Wisdom: 7   Intelligence: 8

  Charisma: 3   Perception: 8

  Luck: 5

  Free attribute points: 9

  He had already gained 22 health points back since the previous night he was curious as to whether it would continue going up at that rate, as that would mean his health would be full by the end of the day and if so would the injury be gone by then as well? He sorely hoped so as the pain was bad. Looking at the attributes he had, constitution seemed the most likely to affect health and healing. He looked at his free attribute points he had 9 of them he had been saving them because he didn’t know where was best to use them from what he could tell pretty much any stat would be useful. With the potential benefits to his healing and figuring it would always be useful even if he chose not to add more points there later he allocated 4 points to constitution leaving him with 5 free attribute points to play with but he figured he would save them for another time. He checked his health after adding the points.

  “186/207”

  It seemed adding the points had already increased his health and if he was honest the pain did feel slightly better. Feeling tired he crawled back into his shelter to try and get some sleep. He must have managed to fall asleep as he woke up at some point in the middle of the afternoon. His leg was throbbing, Gar was just glad it was no longer the stinging pain from the previous day.

  He crawled out and stirred the coals of his fire back to flames; he boiled some more water and set about changing bandages again. When he got them off the wound defiantly seemed better than earlier in the day, the jagged edges seemed more uniform and the skin was coming together. As the wound was no longer bleeding he left the bandage off for a bit to let it get some air. It was only then that he realised he was sat there completely naked, he had taken his trousers off when he had got back and gone to bed without even thinking about putting them on. He wasn’t too concerned about his nakedness he knew there was no one about and he really wasn’t going to bother with the movement required to put them on.