The Fall of the Keepers

Chapter 32 Into the Wild

It was decided that we would wear the containers that the parachutes had been kept in as backpacks to carry out supplies in, not that we had hardly anything for supplies at the moment. We cut the straps to the parachutes and Ranen melted a hole in the snow to bury them in, leaving only mine intact, since it hadn't opened.

"Worst comes to worst, we could spread it between the trees and use it as a makeshift tent for shelter."
Idris suggested.

That really would be the worst, considering the large as life Amir sigil on it. If we were trying not to draw too much attention to ourselves that wouldn't be the way to do it.

"Now that village we spotted from the air is to the south. We won't make it in one night, it had to be a hundred miles back, but I say we head in that direction as we look for shelter."

No one had any objections to Idris's plan so the five us began the dull hike across the frozen country as the sun slipped lower and lower in the western sky. We came to the edge of the field and climbed our way down a slick slope that led into a forested region where the sunlight was minimal and walking in a straight line was impossible. Idris lead the way through, using her compass to keep us on course, which she had located in the emergency supplies of the plane. The snowfall wasn't as deep under the great evergreen boughs and a carpet of orange pine needles covered the forest floor and twigs snapped beneath our feet. The ground seemed to be ever sloping downhill and the trees looked all the same to us making it hard to guess how much progress we were actually making. My mouth felt like it had been swabbed out with cotton and there was an uncomfortable itch in my throat that told me we needed to find a source of water soon.

"Idris the light has nearly faded, maybe we should make camp here?"
Ranen suggested after a good long while.

She halted and swiveled her head.

"Well, it's not ideal, I was hoping to find us a cave or something but we may not be so lucky tonight."

"We can spread Astrid's parachute between the trees after all and there's plenty of firewood for me to light a fire."

"Very well, let make camp. Ghost, can you and Navia collect firewood? Ranen, why don't you and Astrid get our makeshift tent up. I'm going to hunt us down some dinner."

How she was going to manage that I wasn't entirely certain, but I supposed her Animal Wielding ability might give her an added edge as a huntress.

I shrugged my backpack off my shoulders, undoing the buckles and straps to haul the defunct parachute out of its container. Ranen had a small ornamental blade on him that he used to slice through the paracords. We found three trees that formed a triangle of sorts and spread out the parachute between them, tying it off with lengths of the paracord. It was quite an odd-looking shelter but it would do for the night. By the time we had wrestled it into place, our robotic friend and the Princess had returned with armfuls of wood and Ranen made himself busy getting us a proper fire started.

"Here, I swiped these off the ship. Why don't you fill them with snow so we can melt it over the fire."
Ghost handed me two metal water bottles.

Though the snowfall wasn't as deep in the forest as it had been in the open field it didn't take me very long to locate a clean drift of the fluffy white flakes with which to fill our bottles. In that respect we were lucky it was winter, seeing as there didn't appear to be another source of water nearby.

Ranen had some difficultly lighting the fire as much of the wood was wet and while it was rather comical to watch, I kept any sarcastic commentary to myself. After a few false starts, however, he had us a roaring blaze which brought feeling back to my frozen fingertips and finally stopping my shivering. We set the water bottles close to the flames guzzling down the snowmelt a short while later.