Onward to Adventure: Chapter 11

Brinvok was left alone with his thoughts as the beast slept.  He watched as the sun’s journey through the sky, the sea of blue getting more blue with each hour that passed.  Birds began chirping and various animals awoke from their burrows in the forest.  Boars, wooly rhinoceros and mountain bison began  grazing in the field by the outcrop that had quickly become Brinvok’s prison.  Sometimes Brinvok dreamed of becoming an animal like those before him, they have no burdens, no cares and no concept of hatred.

“If I had to pick an animal, I would want to be a rhinoceros,” Brinvok said to himself, eyeballing the small herd of them in the field. “They are so big and strong, but they always seem so calm, well unless they get attacked”

Brinvok then began to think about the memories that the monster made him relive,

“Was it just to get a reaction? Or was there something more there?” A thousand questions like those flooded his mind. “I never think about those events, after a while I just stopped thinking about them.”  He then began thinking further “Maybe I have some unresolved emotions about those events, but what?”  Brinvok pondered this question for what felt like hours, thinking about what emotions he felt through both memories, guilt, anger, uselessness stood before him in his mind like stone monoliths.

Hours must have went by as it was now late afternoon and the sun was on the verge of setting, the herbivores that he had previously watched earlier were now gone and what was now in the field made him shake with rage, hunters.  Brinvok believed that hunting animals that had done nothing wrong for sport was wrong.  Brinvok only hunted monsters that intentionally harmed mankind such as Trolls and Uluruggs that were common in the mountainous areas.  These hunters had their bows drawn and were ready to shoot into the woods, Brinvok was about to call out for help when suddenly he heard the distinct “shooom” of the arrow flying through the air and the “shunk” of it hitting the meaty target.  A wooly rhinoceros charged through the bushes and into the clearing at its attackers who dodged its charge and shot a few more arrows into it until it fell to the ground.  One of the hunters withdrew his sword and carved its head off.  They left the body there for the flies.

“Such a waste,” Brinvok thought “They left so much more they could use rather than taking that head for a trophy.”  Brinvok now knew that he never wanted to be an animal, for while he faces monsters like the one holding him captive, he felt that man was worse sometimes.