Dododex
ARK: Survival Evolved & Ascended Companion
The Arks: Over Heaven
Chapter 6: Game is Game
Original Post Date: Nov 23, 2023
Note: Story starts in Wyvern, Aerial ABC backwards filter and has a Prologue. Last chapter in Tapejara, next chapter in Snow Owl.
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Ruby dived deep into the depths of the forest in search of firewood for a campfire. Her quiver slung over her shoulder and her bow hung over her neck, her eyes darted around the dark forest in an attempt to find any stray logs that may have fallen down.
“It’s so hard to see out here,” Neddy said aloud as she walked through the grass. Ruby let out a shriek and jumped around, taking her bow out and aiming at Neddy.
“Woah woah woah!” Neddy said, raising his hands in surrender, “Sorry for startling you. It’s just me, Neddy.”
“Oh,” Ruby let out a sigh of relief, “It’s just the weird guy.”
Neddy frowned at her words.
“Hey, what the heck man!”
“Can you blame me? You’re running around like a mad man with only your underwear on. And you smell too, by the way.”
Neddy grumbled and kicked at the dirt.
“Look I-I don’t know, okay? I was just so tired of having that graduation gown on. The past four years we had to just sit our butts down at a seat and learn some boring stuff. I wanted to just get outta there, maybe go live out in the countryside. Have a ranch. But now here we are, stuck on an island filled with dinosaurs.”
The moment was silent some more, and Ruby turned away guiltily.
“Maybe I should just make you a set of clothes like mine,” Ruby sighed.
“Well that’d definitely be appreciated,” Neddy chuckled. Ruby put her bow back in place, reached into a pouch on her pants’ belt, and pulled out a few dozen threads of plant fiber. She began to mash them together, intertwining and locking them together, and after a few seconds she made a pair of pants. Neddy’s jaw dropped as Ruby gave the pants to him.
“What the- How did you do that?” Neddy asked, dumbfounded. Ruby showed her left wrist and tapped the strange diamond-gem implanted in it. It glowed green for a second, then went away.
“The gem. That’s my power,” Ruby explained, “After Aurora and I found each other, we discovered the gems give us unique abilities. Aurora can chart the area by using the sky and stars, I was given the knowledge to craft whatever I needed to survive.”
“That explains a lot…” Neddy said.
“What do you mean?”
“The gem guided me to Samuel, and then you guys,” Neddy told her, “The gem glowed every time I was getting closer to one of you guys.”
“So that’s your ability?” Ruby noted, “That’s going to be useful.”
“For finding people?”
“No, for staying away.”
“But why would we want to stay away from people?” Neddy wondered, “We need as many allies as we can get. United we are stronger, right?”
“That was what I was thinking at first,” Ruby said, “But Aurora said we shouldn’t. We don’t know who to trust out there.”
“You can trust me though, right?” Neddy said with a grin. Ruby scowled at him.
“I don’t know about that, Neddy.”
Just then, they heard a really scratchy growl. Then a shriek, and a weird hairy four-legged creature jumped on Neddy! Neddy let out a scream of fear as it scratched Neddy, reached one of its ‘arms’ into his hand, and snatched a handful of purple berries. The four-legged creature began to run, and Neddy cursed at it.
“Damn it… A pegomastax?! Damn pest!” Neddy yelled at it as it ran. Ruby hushed him.
“Shh. We don’t want to alert any creatures that might even be more dangerous,” Ruby warned him.
“Right, right,” Neddy said. Ruby took her bow off, readied an arrow, and aimed at the pegomastax. She closed one of her eyes, and with the release of the string of the bow the stone arrow went soaring through the air, hitting the thief right in the torso. It let out a shriek of pain and collapsed to the ground.
“Yes!” Ruby pumped her fist in the air. Neddy began to clap.
“Uhh, woooo you did it!” Neddy congratulated her. Ruby ran up to the dead thing, and Neddy followed closely behind. Ruby crouched down and pulled the arrow out of the body, putting it back into her quiver.
“Woah. That was a nice shot,” Neddy gasped.
“I know right? It feels like I’m getting better at shooting my bow.”
The two just stared at the corpse for a bit. Neddy looked at Ruby, asking,
“So what are we going to do with the body?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Ruby giggled, “We’re going to eat it.”
“WHAT?!”
“Well, not raw, dummy,” Ruby said, pulling out a crude pickaxe with a stone head. She began to whack at it, splitting the pegomastax in half. It was a gruesome task, but the next minute Ruby spent separating its body into slabs of meat. There was a little bit of its skin left over, which Ruby decided to keep for some reason. Ruby took the slabs of meat and then put them in her pouch. Then she picked the purple berries the pegomastax had robbed of Neddy and handed them to him.
“Here, have your berries back.”
Neddy carefully reached his hand out and scraped the berries off the palm of her hand. As he did he felt a tingle in his heart, but it quickly went away.
“Well, I guess we can go now,” Neddy said, taking a few pieces of wood off the ground and getting up.
“Yeah, let’s go,” Ruby softly replied. The two marched back to camp, the stars shining brightly above the forest top.