Mak's Story

Mak was standing straight. For a mile in each direction, he was the only irregularity rising above the flatness of pale yellow desert. Far ahead, was a group of three moderately sized phyn. Blucky ones, heavily armoured in mild beige gray bone plates, standing on four feet. They were idly sunbathing.
Mak reckoned they were around 40 feet in height, but over such far distance, and having nothing to compare their size too, his gaze could hardly generate accurate values.
Mak was standing idle too. The phyn lost his attention and he tilted his head skyward and sniffed repeatedly, smelling for scents.
The sky was relentlessly blue the clouds nonexistent, the sun intensely radiant. The scent he had picked up on this morning was now more distinct. A carcass. He continued his march, lead by his nose. Sand was slipping into his boots, how annoying.

Mak hadn’t eaten in 9 days. This had him starving, but thats not right. He should’ve be more than starving, he should’ve been collapsed in hunger, being a former biologist Mak knew this. On top of the hunger abnormality, he had not drank anything for two days. In the scorching deserts he’d treated, that shoud be enough to kill a man, but Mak was merely extremely thirsty.
Something was obviously up.
Consume the brains of beasts to absorb their traits. What's up with this…
Ever since waking up in the desert nine days ago, this thought had been haunting Mak. It had come from nowhere and, despite Mak being a justly sceptical person, he could not question it. Somehow, he just knew it to be true. This along with the thirst and hunger, What's up with this… But where had this thought come from? Not knowing annoyed him.

Mak was the lone figure treading the desert plane. Wearing a circular black hat, with a moderately flat tip and a broad disc, and ragged dark gray brown trenchcoat that had a high collar and was from under the hip half missing, torn off in a halfoval shape. The shape of a jaw.
It troubled him, the coat. Should he really wear it? It shielded him from the suns rays, but it was damn hot and sweaty.
What ever. It’s an heirloom.

He was getting closer to the Phyn. The closer he got, the more he realized how wrong his estimation of their size had been. From this distance they looked more 70 feet then 40. A quite common size, nothing to behold. Perhaps he should change his course not to cross them in his path? Nah not necessary yet.
A slight gust. The sweat on his face blown upon by the gust generated a cooling sensation, pleasurable enough to make Mak abruptly stop in his track and be amazed. Some of the wind found it’s way into his coat and clothes, it was refreshing fresh.

Too bad it didn’t last. A subsequent gust of wind lashed out powerfully, casting sand into Maks face. Some of it stuck onto the sweaty skin, some found it’s way into his mouth, some into his nose and some poured down in under his clothes.
FUCK! Was Maks immediate reaction.
The winds gradually picked up in speed. The little gust, had been the periphery of a tornado, a very broad and massive, landscape spanning tornado. As soon as he saw the things bulkier, visible sand carrying winds rise above the horizon he began looking for someplace to shelter himself. But it was useless, the plane was dead flat.
Soon the phyn up ahead were no longer visible, swallowed by the incoming sandstorm. But they were fine, mere winds would mean nothing to them. Mak on the other hand…
But there was nowhere to run, and the tornado was closing in fast, raging across the plain.
He was going to have to sit this one out it seemed. Mak grabbed his hat, tilted it forward and buttoned the collar of his trenchcoat. His face was now more or less protected.

In came the sand carrying winds. The initial contact almost blew Mak off his feet, but he managed to brace himself and adjust position to stabilize. Sand was being flung at him in enormous amounts, weighing down his clothes, scraping and cutting into any exposed skin. Everything in sight was yellow and grey.
Except for a split second. When the winds were at their strongest and Mak was positioned right next to the very centre of the tornado, in the corner of his eye, he saw a huge, no, an absolutely enormous, black silhouette. Aside from the violent noise of the wind, he could hear thumps followed by the sound of swelling and scraping of sand, as though huge amounts of sand, like avalanches, was being shifted. The thumps had a set rhythm to them, they sounded like some sort of... footsteps?!
But the black silhouet was gone in the blink of an eye, and the sounds were soon indistinguishable in the noise of the wind.

Eventually the tornado had passed and Mak was left standing. His clothes were stuffed with sand, his hands burning from being razed and cut, but all this was rather insignificant in comparison to the sight that was before him. The three phyn that had been swallowed by their sandstorm, where on the ground bleeding from their necks. Because they were missing their heads.

Mak had seen something in the storm, heard something in the storm, but damn.
He turned and gazed at the passed sandstorm. It was landscape encompassing, and moving away at an astonishing speed. In a storm of that size, what was it he had seen?
Winds didn’t do this to the phyn, something is following that sandstorm...no... no perhaps that’s not it. That sandstorm, it’s following something?

In the wake of the tornado, the desert was flat. This did not surprise Mak since the desert had been flat before the tornado as well. Mak was unscaved, but uncomfortable. Sand had blown inside his clothes and was now scraping and razing his skin whenever he moved. It was weighing him down too, filling his pockets.
Taking his eyes of the tornado he’d been gazing at in some amount of amazement, Mak undressed his trenchcoat and took it in a steady grip, proceeding to flapp it around some. Sand sprinkled and spread, the trenchcoat was now effectively lighter, however, Mak’s skin was still tormented by a layer of sand, clinging onto his sweat.
But cursing the sand would have to wait, there was no time for such. Ahead were the dead phyn and they were bound to attract scavenging predators.
Such as myself
The three phyn were nice and big carcasses, indeed, an elephant would be dwarfed in their presence. Armored, dead creatures, the kind of dead creature one might find difficult to scavenge, though, fortunately, their heads were torn off, so flesh and blood was easily accessible.

Mak approached one of the dead phyn. It had been standing on four feet over 20 meters tall, now it wasn’t standing since it was dead, but it was still big. The diameter of the severed neck was larger than Mak was tall.
The flesh was red, and blood was gushing out of the wound, sinking into the sand. But it was pouring at a rate higher than sand could absorbe, and spread ever further outward, shaping in the sand a red half circle.
Mak treaded across the red sand. Later his boots would leave red footsteps, but he didn’t care. Well, initially.
Wait, what if they, smell?...fuck!
Predators do not regularly have a keen sense of smell, but among predators when concerning anything, there are exceptions for everything. Having stepped onto the red sand, Mak would now smell of phyn blood. However!
Oh riiight, right. Mmmh yeah. No matter.
He was going to cut a large piece of flesh out of the Phyn neck and fill his bottle with phyn blood anyway.
He got too it.
When finished gathering red materia, Mak walked through a path in between the bodies of two of the three dead phyn.
Mak couldn’t help smiling during this experience, after all, he had become a field scientist out of passion, and seeing any creature this large, this close was rare. But he’d have to settle with seeing, inevitable predators would swarm the dead phyn.
I can’t stay here though. It can’t be helped.
He would not risk time for examining the creatures.
After having walked in between the phyn for a minute or so, Mak emerged on the tail side of the one he’d taken meat from.
Hmm? The tail!
Mak spotted strands of hair, thick and long as tree branches, sprouting in line along the spine of down the lower sections of the phyn tail. He stared at the hair with intensely tired eyes, evaluating, thinking.
Hm. Hair bruns does it not? Yes, im pretty sure it does. It is settled then.
He took out a long shiny knife with a single, for the most part straight, edge, being curved, increasingly so, at about ⅔ of its length till the tip.
He cut the hair with the knife, curiously investigating its texture. It was hard, similar to wood, but a little less flexible and more crumbling. It would sever with enough effort.

Done cutting, Mak strapped the hair under a belt around his waist. He had the blood in a bottle and the meat in a pale beige yellow textile bag, hanging beyond sight under his trenchcoat

Four strands of hair, a liter blood and… He wiggled his shoulder, feeling the bag weight. 7 kilos of meat? Successes.

Now all mak needed was shelter. Before he had been following his nose, heading toward the wherever the smell of dead meat lead him, but shelter he did not know how to find.
Unsure of where to, Mak headed in a random direction. He was still mad at the sand, and now was the time to curse it.