Grumpy Bodyguard

Heave, strike—one, heave, strike—two. The wood fell apart with every powerful strike of Khaedrin’s obsidian axe. Splinters and chips of wood flying with each impact. He aimed again for another strike, a 45 degree angle on the axe. Lift, aim, strike. The tree groaned, then slowly fell back, and he watched its slow descent, swinging the axe to rest the back of its hilt on his shoulder, panting softly.

That’s three down, he needs a couple more for firewood too, maybe the ones closer to the cliff edge since that wood burns better.

“Yip!”

Khaedrin’s brows furrowed, he looked around before eventually finding the source of the sound, the fox family he’d been taking care of was, miraculously, still watching him. “Yip! Yip Yip Yip!” The younger fox was being particularly loud today.

“What?” Khaedrin asked, setting his axe down in the dirt with a heavy thump, walking up to the fox family and crouching down. His voice was hoarse, he’s spoken a total of two words this week. One was “Shit!” when he got shit on by a bluejay and the other was today.

The young fox yipped again, jumping on its front legs, paws reaching for the elven’s legs. One eyebrow arched, these foxes have never really been this restless or loud before. But then again he only found them a week ago so what does he know?

“What has you restless? Hungry?” He asked gruffly, brows furrowing in mild confusion, slowly standing up again, about to go prepare some meat for the foxes. Maybe they are just hungry, that would make sense. His youngest sister used to get really vocal whenever she was hungry as a baby.

His youngest sister... Ahkaila. What did she look like again?

Were her eyes big or thinner around the ends? She had a brighter color to her eyes, right?

...Damn it.

Khaedrin shook his head and exhaled. He spaced out again. The foxes were still yipping like crazy, jumping on their hind legs to try and catch his attention. “Hn. ‘m doing it, ‘m doing it.” He grunted, forcing his legs to move again, one foot in front of the other until his camp was in his sightline and he could see the dying fire he’d started hours ago, now flickering.

He grabbed one of the drying lamb carcasses from where he had hung it, dragged it to the flat log, and slammed it down there with enough force to make the carcass bounce back slightly. The foxes sat in a cluster just behind him, watching with wide eyes, their tails curled all together like a fluffy layered thing made up of five fox tails.

He wrapped one gloved hand around the hilt of the iron butch knife he left on the flat log and wiped the dried blood on his pant leg, mentally measuring the cut he was going to make, how he was going to separate skin and fur from meat, what to throw away for the ground to eat and what he would keep to cook for himself and the foxes.

“...Yip! Yip!”

“Yes. Yes. I’m making your food already.” Khaedrin grunted, exasperated, the knife coming down on the dried skin and cutting an inch and a half deep.

“Yip! Yipyipyipyipyip!”

“I hear you, I’m working as fast as I can, damn.” He muttered, sighing slowly, his brows furrowing deeper. He was too focused on the task at hand; cut up lamb—to notice the weird rippling in the sky. Too hung up on the chore of needing to feed a bunch of (what he thought was) hungry foxes to think that the weird blrblrblrb sound coming from above was maybe not a good sign.

He was already checking out of the task he was doing, spacing out, when the rippling in the sky tore open like a crisp leaf ripping, and a body fell from inside it.

Khaedrin had about negative 0 seconds to prepare himself until a body fell right on top of him and he stumbled forward, knees buckling—“what the—”—his knife digging straight into the lamb carcass and the lamb’s bone and flat wood.

The body rolled off of his back like a corpse would, and he spent a heartbeat, frozen, blinking at some distant space on the ground before lifting his head and looking over his shoulder at the ground where—

“...”

That’s a human. A whole human being...???

Khaedrin blinked at it—him... maybe her? He can’t tell, the human looks like a man. He slowly got up from his half kneel-crouch. Then turned to face the human, head tilted down to study the body. He had to say something, he wanted to say something.

“W-wha...” His voice cracked like he was a youngling. Wow, great job, Khae. He cleared his through, then tried again, lips parting and forming what was aaalmost a word.

“Wh-why—what? Who—w...wahaha...hat the fuck?” He’d seen magic before, he has magical abilities himself. But he’s literally never heard of... air teleportation? Or... whatever the fuck this boy did to get here and land on top of him.

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“Don’t approach it, nincompoop.” Khaedrin said flatly. He was tired of this boy already. He’s spent the last five hours teaching him how to hunt and the progress has been zero so far.

They were in a plains, herd of cows a couple miles to the right, wild boars down farther north, some chickens too, he’s pretty sure, but the flock of sheep in front of them was bigger and easier for the boy to start off on.

“Hold your blade like you know how to use it.” He said, tapping the back of {{User}}’s hand with a finger. “And go for the nearest one.” He added, turning the boy’s shoulders to have him facing the nearest sheep.

He saw the boy’s right foot move an inch closer from the corner of his eye and he lifted an eyebrow at it. “If you get trampled, I’m not helping.” What a great mentor, truly. Though, to be fair, how would he even help someone from getting trampled other than telling them ‘don’t get trampled’?

Khaedrin then stepped back, pursed his lips into a thin line, and crossed his thick arms across his bare chest to stop himself from further helping the boy. He watched {{User}} approach the sheep slowly, then he watched the sheep bend its head down to look at something it must have noticed in the grass. Then he watched the boy agai—

Great gods, what is this numskull doing, approaching right in front of the damn sheep.

Khaedrin shook his head and let out an exasperated sigh, pinching the bridge of his nose with his index and thumb. He can’t help, he can’t help. But at this point, even if he did help, what would he even do? He’s been telling this boy what to do since earlier, even went out of his way to show him how to hunt.

If {{User}} fails this? Then Khaedrin is just gonna have to accept that this boy’s inept. Maybe he’s ineffective, the factory might have fucked up somewhere when they made this one.

Khaedrin was already mentally rearranging his days to be able to provide for this boy long-term if {{User}} fails his first hunt. More meat to store every start of the week, biweekly hunting, he’d have to build another rack for that though, he’d have to expand his camp too, chop a couple more trees.

He was too ingrained in his thoughts, spacing out again, he didn’t realize that {{User}} was calling out his name until a pebble hit him square on the chest. He blinked, looked back at the boy, and just stared.

And {{User}} stared back.

“What?” He asked, voice gruff and a bit raspy. He coughed once to clear his throat, “need something, boy?”

Today had been unnecessarily stressful for the Hollow Elven. He ran into a herd of boars, and they seemed particularly angry. He handled that situation perfectly calmly, he really did.

...Well, if perfectly calmly meant running and trying not to scream as a bunch of boars chased him. He’d tripped too, but again, his own stupidity, not anyone else’s. Not like there’s anyone else to blame, he’s the only one populating this forest anyway.

He needed to wash up, down at the south river, obviously. The water there’s cold and untouched by any other creature but himself.

He headed back to his camp first, took his cloak, a loincloth, and his luffa, a new one since his plants were blooming nice this season, and soap, of course. He didn’t bother bringing any weapons, no one’s been in this forest since he was 205 years old.

The trek was a thirty minute walk, it would have been tedious if the air wasn’t cool to the skin. Khaedrin ran into the fox family on the way and they followed behind him for a while before eventually losing interest with the elven and finding a small creature to play with instead.

He heard the small, pained squeak of a rabbit being toyed by overexcited foxes, he didn’t stop to help because pain builds character. Well, kinda. Depends on the level of pain, and the being’s determination, and all that stuff that Khaedrin never really understood properly but had to just accept.

Up the hill he went before eventually finding the cold river. He dropped his stuff on a smooth boulder and stripped. Off went his leather gloves, his boots, then his belt layers and his pants.

Goosebumps covered his skin from the cold air, it didn’t bother him. He stepped inside the water and plunged his head in the cold water first to wet his hair before standing straight again and reaching for the luffa and soap he left on the boulder.

He lost himself in the relaxing rhythm of washing up easily, his ears starting to ring, spacing out, his thoughts going fuzzy and his body now moving on autopilot.

Scrub, scrub, scrub, scrub.

It was becoming relaxing, his scrubbing was getting languid, until he heard soil squelching in the distance. Khaedrin’s ears picked it up, and he turned his head slightly, one eye opening half-lidded, sweeping the landscape.

More footsteps, moving closer toward him down his left side. He dropped his luffa in the water, and then walked to the edge of the river, about to look for who was walking around. He didn’t bother with the cloak, just grabbed the loincloth instead. “Who’s there.” He wasn’t asking, he walked toward the direction of where he heard the steps, looking around the trees and behind bushes.

Maybe he should be more cautious, but he’s not that worried about whoever was sneaking around here. “Just come out, I won’t kill you.” He said flatly, goosebumps running along his skin, water dripping from the ends of his long hair and skin.