Found here
Upon opening her eyes, she looked at the ground she was faced with, and after a few moments of laying down, she brought herself from a laying position to her knees, and the first thing she noticed was the itchy rock implanted in her lower left arm. She looked at the peculiar thing and scratched at it instinctively. The second thing she noticed was the freezing cold, she looked around and found herself surrounded by snow from all sides, first then did she realize, that water was calmly splashing at her feet, she was on a beach and what looked like close to a forest, at about 10-15 meters off the beach, where the grass slightly poked through the seemingly perfect layer of snow, was the start of a tight treeline.
Where am I?? she thought to herself.
And, wait who am I even?
What is going on? She questioned this, then a noise came from the treeline, it sounded like leaves rustling and twings snapping with the soft crackle of steps in snow, she immediately snapped her attention to it. She watched as two giant horse-sized pig-like creatures emerged from the treeline, except they had teeth -- long sharp carnivore teeth.
She was desperately hoping the creatures wouldn't notice her, though her hoping was short-lived, as they noticed her pretty much instantly after she did them.
The weird pig creatures started charging at her, tails erect in the air, she was frozen for a second before getting up and what now?? What am I supposed to do now? She won't be able to outrun the charging hogs. Suddenly, what looked like giant wolves that were almost the size of the hogs came out of the woodworks, quickly making their way inbetween her and the pig creatures. one of the giant wolves had a rider, and oh my good gay goddamn she was pretty, was dressed in hardy fur clothing and was wielding a crossbow and had long curly black hair poking out from underneath the fur cap.
The hog creatures were seemingly scared off by the wolves as they stopped charging at her and quickly backed away into the jagged forest edge. She looked at the wolf-riding woman, who returned her gaze.
"Who are you?" she found herself asking the woman.
"I’m Cyrus, you?" Cyrus answerd back.
Wait shit, I dont know who I am! she thought before she realized.
"Im Vivian"
Vivians vision suddenly went black, as something resembling cloth was thrown in her face. “It’s leather clothes, put them on, you'll freeze if you don’t.” Cyrus said, now patiently waiting for Vivian to do as told.
Huh. who is she to tell me what to do? arent my existing clothes just fine- OH. i dont have any goddamn clothes on. shit.
Vivian then quickly and quietly began putting the full set of leather clothes on, a little embarrassed that she was almost entirely naked in front of this woman that she just now met, the only cloth dressing her being white underwear. The clothes were almost a perfect fit, the only discrepancy was that the pants and sleeves were a little too short, leaving the ankles and wrists exposed.
While Vivian was putting on the gloves, she caught from the corner of her eye, what she thought was animal pelt wrapped around Cyrus' neck, it moved. Vivian watched as the not-so-dead pelt moved from Cyrus' shoulders to the head of the wolf she was on, before looking over at Vivian, who was at this point staring at it. Vivian saw that the pelt was very much not a pelt, but an otter.
Cyrus acknowledged Vivian staring and got off of her mount, then took the otter into her arms. Cyrus was a little shorter than Vivian, which was probably why the clothes were a tad too short. Cyrus took a couple steps towards Vivian, and held out her arms.
"Here take this" Cyrus said as she handed Vivian the otter.
"Can i ask why?" Vivian replied and took the otter into her arms, holding it by the armpits, like a bad cat put in air jail.
"Otters here are great help with insulating you from both heat and cold, with it and the clothes you shouldn’t freeze." Cyrus explained.
Vivian just kinda stood there for a good 6 seconds before looking up from the otter and making eye contact with Cyrus.
"...sooo what exactly do i do with it?" Vivian finally asked since she had absolutely no clue how an otter was supposed to keep her warm.
"Oh right! You let him climb up onto your shoulders, he'll help keep your shoulders and neck warm that way." Was the reply Cyrus gave almost immediately.
Vivian moved from holding the little critter in outstretched arms to holding it pressed to her chest, from where it promptly crawled up onto her shoulders as if meant to be there. Vivian then watched as Cyrus walked the few steps back to her mount and got onto the giant wolf again.
"We need to get you back to my camp, i will let you know all i am aware of concerning this place on the way there" Cyrus stated while petting the giant wolf between its ears. "You can ride Sulfur, one of the ones that are over there" Cyrus added, pointing at one of the 3 other wolves. "shes the dune one with the big scars on her sides" Cyrus remarked, the wolf in question perked her ears up and looked expectantly at Cyrus. Cyrus then whistled at the wolf and pointed at Vivian, to which the wolf responded by walking over to her. Sulfur was a lot bigger close up and Vivian hesitated a little before rather fumblingly getting onto the wolf.
"Does the otter also have a name?" Vivian questioned, as she was steadying herself on the large wolf.
"His name is Barley" Cyrus answered.
"That's a nice name" Vivian stated as she pet the otter under its chin. Cyrus just smiled in return.
Gee, Cyrus wasn’t kidding when she said huge claw marks, these are the broadness of my lower arm Vivian thought to herself.
She looked over at the other wolves, they were all wearing travel saddles of some kind, the one Cyrus was riding was black and white almost in the classic pattern, though its legs were also black and it's eyes looked like they were constantly closed. Another one of them had a bright yellow coat it almost looked golden, it's eyes were golden pretty much exactly like its coat. the last one was mostly dark brown with bronze accents though it did have what looked like a sloppily drawn pair of wings on its chest in white fur. Vivian also hadn't really taken a good look at Barley, he was a mostly brown otter with black paws, ears, point mask and tail.
"What about the wolves? what are their names?" Vivian asked, growing more curious.
"This one here is named Saga." Cyrus said as she pet the wolf she was mounted on again.
"The one with the winged chest over there is named Eagle," Cyrus said as she pointed to said wolf, who was in the middle of scratching himself behind the ear.
"And the golden one over there is named Gold." Cyrus said "...I was running out of names." Cyrus added hesitantly.
"He seems to like it though" Vivian replied. The wolf in question was actively beaming at his name being mentioned.
"We should get going." Cyrus said, whistling the wolves to follow her.
They were walking along the beach for a bit before diverting into the forest where they seemed to be spending most of their time talking.
"Soooooo what you're telling me is that, this is an island full of dinosaurs?" Vivian asked.
"More or less. I mean, I think it's more just extinct creatures, rather than just dinosaurs." Cyrus replied as she pushed a branch out of her face.
"Same thing."
"It's really not."
"How do you know that these wolves are called 'Direwolves', and aren't just really oversized wolves?" Vivian questions.
"Around the island, there are old ruins that usually have these chests on or around them. I've found some and they have notes on that kind of stuff." Cyrus explains.
"What exactly is written on the notes?" Vivian asks, looking for more information.
"I can show you, actually-" Cyrus answers, reaching into the bag she had on her mount, and pulls out a little folded yellow piece of paper that she then hands to Vivian, as they were riding next to each other with the two other Direwolves following closely behind. The paper had a tiny note attached to it with the name 'Ankylosaurus' written on it. Ankylosaurus? That must be the name, huh? Vivian thought as she looked at the paper.
The page looked like it had been part of a book, and had a couple small holes in the middle where the thread would have been in the book bind. The paper had a big coloured drawing in the middle, of a medium size creature with spikes pretty much all over its flat, fat little body. There were also some smaller drawings around the big one, one was of the Ankylosaur slamming its tail into two bipedal dinosaurs who were flying back from the impact of the tail. Another of the uncoloured drawings was of the dinosaurs head, and its measurements. The last one of the drawings was of the Ankylosaur smashing metal nodes. Sprinkled between the drawings was text; summed up, it said that they lived in mountains, what their measurements were, and that they had extremely thick skin, as well as a tail that was dense enough to smash minerals out of their encasing rock without destroying them.
"Where exactly did you find this?" Vivian asks once she's done reading the page.
"I found that one on one of the glaciers, about a day’s land travel west from here." Cyrus confirmed, pointing west slightly as she spoke of that direction.
"What about the Direwolves, do you have the note for them?" Vivian asks, probably not aware that she was now staring at Cyrus for a little too long.
"I don't, but I did hear from one of the other scavengers that they were called that" Cyrus answered.
What in all hell is a scavenger? Vivian thought to herself while slowly starting to stare into space.
"Scavenger?" Vivian questioned, confusion evident in her voice.
"That's what we call the tribeless people. That includes me, and probably you too, depending on if you want to go join a tribe or not." Cyrus told. "There are a few tribes actually. One is the 'Hunter' tribe, I heard that they're generally friendly and pretty strong too," Cyrus said, before continuing to speak. "Another one i remember is the 'Spine' tribe, they're supposedly also strong. Well, that's more of a given since they live in the tundra, on the mountain west from here, and if you learn anything from this place its that everything is always killing everything in the tundra." Cyrus said it so casually that Vivian almost didn't believe that she just said that they're pretty much always in danger as long as they're still in the tundra. "OH! And then there's the 'Helos' tribe. I have actually interacted with them, they are very much not nice.." Cyrus paused before continuing "They live around the swamp area, just south east of it actually, when i saw them some of their people were traveling into the redwoods to gather metal, and it looked like they were forcing captives to do slave labor" Cyrus said, less casually and more seriously this time.
"what?" Vivian voiced.
"the redwoods are pretty much in the middle of everything, and its the same there as it is here with everything killing everything at all times" Cyrus added without acknowledging Vivians question, in the same serious tone. "I witnessed one of the captives be sacrificed to a tree tiger because he was making too much of a fuss over being used as a slave." Cyrus sounded less than pleased with this topic as she spoke.
"..that.. um, thats not the best no" Vivian waited a couple seconds before replying, whether or not it was intentional she didn’t really know.
"there are also a handful of smaller tribes that are just around but those are the main ones, the others are so small that they're negligible" Cyrus said, losing a bit of the serious tone as she spoke.
They were now headed into a clearing by a river where Vivian could see a campfire along with a sleeping bag on the ground as well as a second otter laying curled up on the ground. the fire was on and had an absolutely preposterous amount of meat on several stick-made drying racks over the fire.
"Is that your camp?" Vivian asked with intrigue.
"yes" Cyrus said as she got off of her mount and went over to the fire, Vivian did the same though more hesitaintly.
"we are going to stay here for the night, and then travel more south in the morning" Cyrus said. "you can go sit by the fire while i go get you a sleeping-bag" Cyrus said, and pointed at the fire that was still overflowing with meat.
"alright" Vivian said hesitantly. Vivian walked over to the fire and plopped herself down beside the curled up otter which seemed to be sleeping, why does that otter look so fat, thats a fat little otter she thought to herself and looked around. The river had a wide part that made a turn right about where the camp was, with a lot of smaller rocks poking out of the water, it seemed to have a strong current going. the trees that were around on the other side from the river were pine trees, they looked completely white from snow and frost. Above the trees she saw a mountaintop peek out, well more like two peaks with a small dip in between, it had a giant flying rock above it, now that she looked at it, it kind of looked akin to the rock that was implanted in her arm. Speaking of, i havent asked about the rock in my arm, and why does it slightly resemble that giant flying one over there?? The mountain had more than just a flying rock though, it also had what looked like a protective wall and a bunch of house-looking buildings beyond it.
right about now Cyrus came back with a sleeping bag in her hands and placed it biside the fire, oposite of her own.
"hey why is there a giant floating rock atop that mountain?" Vivian asked just as Cyrus sat down beside her.
"oh those, we call those obelisks, there are three of them on this island" Cyrus said, rather casually in Vivians opinion, considering that they’re talking about rocks that don't abide to the laws of gravity.
"oh" Vivian paused for a second before continuing "alright, does it have anything to do with the rock thats implanted in my arm?"
"i actually dont know what the rock is yet" Cyrus said, rubbing the back of her head "thats part of the reason we are going south, the snow is great and all but the one other scavenger i met up here told me that there aren’t really that many people up here and if i want more information i’d have to seek someone else out."
"huh" Vivian said "how long have you been in the tundra?" She questioned.
"I’ve been here about two months" Cyrus replied "the other scavenger only found me about 3 weeks into me being here" she continued "im pretty sure he was up here to stay away from people, and here i came" Cyrus got up and walked over to Eagle, the brown direwolf, and grabbed some firewood out of one of its many saddlebags, then came back to the fire and sat down again. "i stayed with him for about 2 weeks, i left him right after i got my first mount and made some weapons for myself"
"why didn’t he just give you the mount and weapons? Not that he should have, i mean he could have been attached to his creatures and he may also only have had one weapon?" Vivian said, sounding intrigued.
"He told me i should have some survival skill before he would let me get myself killed" as she spoke, Cyrus put the firewood she had just fetched into the fire.
"Why did you help me? not that im not thankful, i just want to know" Vivian asked, she had been wondering that since the start of the ride here.
"Is culture the right way to describe it?" Cyrus started, "thats just what scavengers do, or so i’ve been told".
Vivian smiled. "Thats nice, i somehow thought different" Vivian continued, "I don’t know the flavor of different though"
the sun was starting to set, both of them noticed but said nothing. The first one to move was Cyrus, she got up after about 3.5 minutes of awkward silence. "it’s about time we sleep" Cyrus said after standing and brushing off of her pants "The wolves will keep watch, let us know if anything happens tonight" she said before looking over at the black and white wolf, Saga "well maybe Saga wont keep watch since, well she cant see"
"is that why her eyes are closed all the time? she’s blind?" Vivian questioned, she had been doing that a lot today.
"She doesn’t have any eyes to close" Cyrus said with a slight laugh.
oh Vivian thought that makes sense actually
Cyrus reached out a hand to help up Vivian, who took her hand promptly so that Cyrus could help her stand. Cyrus then walked over to the one of the sleeping bags that had already been there when they arrived and began getting into it, Vivian did the same to the other sleeping bag. Vivian watched as Cyrus fell asleep with ease, while she was too disturbed by being in this new place. Why have i just gone along with all this without as much as a thought about it? I mean i did question things but i feel like i was too trusting of this person Vivian thought as she lay in the sleeping bag, the fire still crackling and the sun giving the last of its light to the island as it faded for the night. Soon enough though, she felt the blanket of sleep consume her.