Rewind: A Grimdark LitRPG Series (Pyresouls Apocalypse, Book 1) by James Callum (reading tree .txt) 📕

that he could prop up against one of the massive tree trunks and tuck up beneath the brown material.

His second night was less miserable than the first. Though he had nothing to eat for two days, and little to drink, he was dry and relatively warm.

Blissful, dreamless sleep claimed him that night, and the following morning he awoke to the distant baying of hounds. It would seem they were going to give up after all.

In his groggy, half-asleep state Hal thought it was another nightmare and he tried to go back to sleep. But when the baying came again, this time even closer, he recognized the danger he was in.

His eyes shot open with the burst of fear-laden adrenaline. Rather than leaping to his feet and continuing his panicked flight from the day before, Hal stared down three feet of gleaming steel pointed at his face.

Trailing his gaze down the subtle curve of the blade to the young woman that held it, Hal wondered just how he could get away.

A quick glance at the woman’s piercing blue-gray eyes told him she wasn’t about to fall for any tricks.

He kicked himself for ignoring the earlier warning. But he had been so exhausted. Nobody expects to randomly find themselves alone in a savage world. Not any normal modern-day adult.

This was his third day without food and the constant exertion was taking a heavy toll on his unfit body.

Being tired, afraid, with a dozen aches in places he didn’t know he could ache in, not to mention starving and severely dehydrated, played a massive impact on his ability to think clearly and muster any strength to keep going.

The woman was still holding the blade, its tip a clear threat, but she made no move to use it. She eyed him with those sharp, intelligent eyes that took in the filthy, disheveled mud-caked man before her.

As she looked over him, her eyes inevitably fell to his left arm. The cloak’s roughspun fibers let out just enough light from the mark to draw attention to it. Under the shade of the forest canopy, it was fairly conspicuous.

She barked a command in a foreign language, melodic and lilting. Even her rough tone could do nothing to strip the music from her words.

Seeing his obvious confusion, she spoke again in a different language. Every syllable was filled with a guttural sound. Seeing the lack of Hal’s comprehension, she spoke in a third language, this time in clipped sentences.

Of all the languages, the last one sounded closest to English. The utterly foreign words, however, made it impossible for him to grasp what she was trying to get across.

Hal spread his arms out wide, shrugged his shoulders, and shook his head. “What say.”

He cringed.

The way her face screwed up at his idiotic, foreign words told him enough. Though if she did speak his language, he imagined her reaction would be no different.

There would be no overcoming this language barrier. He had to admit, this was about as good as he probably could expect. She wasn’t hurting him or locking him up. Nor had she run away in fear.

Attempting to communicate was never a bad sign.

Eventually, like every other person, she focused on his mark. Hal watched her inch the blade toward his left arm. He kept very still indeed, aware that the slightest twitch might set the girl off.

Sharp eyes flicked toward Hal as she fell into an easy - and impossibly deep, to Hal’s limited mobility – squat and moved toward his outstretched arm. She paused halfway there to regard his brown eyes.

“Heljei,” she breathed in awe.

“Hairgel?” Hal asked.

The girl looked at him and with her free hand pointed to her eyes with her index and middle finger. She pointed to the dirt, then to Hal. The closest Hal could get out of the miming was that he had… dirty eyes? Rude.

Brown, answered his awakening brain. Heljei means brown eyes? Why would that matter? While Hal wasn’t the most observant at all times, especially not in his present state, but looking back he couldn’t recall a single dark-eyed person in either village.

Every other human he’d seen, including the one in front of him, possessed bright and colorful eyes. He even recalled a few with impossible colors like lavender and rose.

Bent over his arm, her free hand pulled up the rough cloth of the brown cloak and her reaction was the same as every other. The gold light from the mark dazzled her eyes and she stared with great awe at it.

If he had any hope of escaping, now would be it. While she was distracted.

Hal tensed, readying himself to slip out of her grip and spring away as fast as he could. He certainly wasn’t going to wait around for her to skewer him with that sword, or worse, wait until those baying hounds found him.

The slight twitch of his muscles alerted the girl and she tightened her grip. It wasn’t painful but it might as well have been an iron manacle about his wrist. At the same time, she angled her blade toward his heart, resting the flat of it on her raised forearm.

All it would take was a casual lean from his captor, a few inches, to kill him. Embarrassed at being so thoroughly foiled before he ever got the chance, Hal relaxed and leaned sullenly against the tree at his back.

With a nod that told him she expected no less of a sensible reaction, the woman withdrew the threatening blade. Even without it aimed at him, Hal was certain she could cut him down before he rose to his feet.

Hal watched her as she became enamored with the mark once more. The light seemed to fill her bright, wide eyes. She looked around the same age at him, mid-twenties, but that was where the similarities stopped.

She wore an outfit that, at first glance, looked like a thousand leaves sewn together. But upon further inspection, he found they were cunningly worked leather plates. They overlapped