we thought we had it all

Languishing in a slave's rank had initially felt like a sleight against the newly instated regime, but lately it felt more like a personal failing. The jilted princeling had set himself to the task of improving his skills in battle. Quietly, in private. Should the crown-thief be aware of the progress he was making, he may lose the element of surprise. Today, he had set himself up with a chunk of obsidian dredged up from the acrid heart of the tar pits, where the heat of the subterranean vents had pushed the glassy stone to the surface over the aeons. It wasn't quite the same quality as the flash-broiled volcanic glass of his home, but it was better than nothing.

(crafting starts here)

With a chunk of bone carefully gripped in his talons, the slate marked brute chipped away at the raw obsidian. Slowly, methodically, he cracked the two pieces together to free another razor-sharp flake of stone away from the core. He'd practiced back home, but it hadn't been quite so important back then. There was no pressure to get it just right or avoid wasting the precious source material. There was an abundance of it around Mount Volkan, but here? He'd worked for days to free this from the sludge and clear the cooled tar from the outside. So he had to be careful, adjust his grip cautiously. Take breaks to stretch his joints and take a breath.

By the time the core was prepared, Morticia had returned from a hunt around the outskirts of the tar pits to check up on her canine master. The long haired feline deposited a skinny hare at his paws, but the Klein male waved it off with a grunt. Not one to waste time arguing, the cat meandered off with the hare to enjoy on her own. With a sigh from deep in his chest, he shifted his weight to stretch his hind legs out to the side. Resting on his elbows, he pulled the prepared core closer to himself and carefully clasped the sharp chunk of rock with rough, callused pawpads. The click of his long talons against the glassy surface was a steady rhythm as he struck the bone more gently against the core. Closer to the edges, breaking off thin flakes one by one. He kept working until a thin blade, narrower than his forelimb, had been born from his labours.

Viscera turned the bone around to its pointed end, worn to a dulled point through careful grinding against the rough stone of the tar pits. Pressure flaking was difficult work, and tedious to boot. He was going to lose daylight before he finished, that much was obvious. That was what a fire pit was for, and he'd managed to assemble a rough approximation of one outside his pathetic den. With the dried, scraggly brush that managed to grow around this wretched place, he could keep a fire going for a short while to finish his work if necessary. Press down and through, down and through, down and through. Breaking off tiny chunks of obsidian to create a deadly serrated edge, perfect for shredding deep into meat. This could easily maim an opponent with a well placed strike, severing tendon and muscle down to the bone. At the very least, this would leave someone with a nasty scar to remember him by.

A few weeks of hunting had brought in enough rabbit hides for him to work into strips of leather, though it was hardly the highest quality. It would have to do, there were no better options laying about. There was no need to worry about adhesives with the bubbling pools of tar all around him. He wrapped a strip of rabbit hide around the base of his blade, creating a foundation to build upon when he secured the handle later on. A careful application of steaming, reeking tar with a rabbit femur to the end of his wrapping would keep everything in place. The pallid male had managed to construct a loose X-shape from the strip of hide, leaving some of the blade's base uncovered.

Scrounging around the border between the tar pits and the plains a few days prior had yielded the remains from someone else's dinner. He'd managed to snag a small meal and the sturdy humerus of a deer. Its relatively flat end, combined with the roundness of its cross-section, made it an excellent option as a handle for his new creation. The previous day he'd spent a good deal of time scoring it around the middle with his talons, until it could be easily broken in a clean line around the middle. All that marrow in the middle had been a tasty reward for all of that hard work, too. Then it had just been a matter of painstakingly chipping a pair of notches into the cut end for his blade to sit in. Of course, his talon-clad toes weren't ideal for creating those thick notches. No, the brute had spent an inordinate amount of time cracking a thin stone against the edges of his newly-minted handle. It had gotten done, but not easily. The flat end of the humerus would create a smooth end to the handle, and its hollow weight wouldn't be too unwieldy in combat.

As some kind of blessing from forces unseen, the blade fit into the paired notches in the bone with only a little wiggle room. Easily remedied. More tar. It would seal the blade in place once it cooled. The rest of the rabbit hide was slowly wrapped around the joint of the handle and blade, daubed with fresh tar, and repeat. When all was said and done, the dagger wasn't bad to look at. A little rough, but considering what he'd had to work with... it was worth the effort. A weapon forged from hardship and trauma- rough around the edges and lethal.

(crafting ends here- WC: 875)

The mounting tension that had been keeping him awake at night wasn't just tied to his abduction, to the loss of his home. No. Not really. There were only a few of his siblings trapped here with him, and none of them were Ichor. His mother hadn't surfaced yet, and he was concerned. There was a deep, dark pit in his gut where the complete radio silence from his beloved mother clawed at the insides of his ribs at all hours of the day. She'd been grievously wounded in battle, forced to flee to protect her youngest litter, and now she was just. Gone. Something had happened, he just knew it. But ignorance was bliss, or something like that.

The sun was starting to set, already halfway below the horizon. Viscera let out a long breath. He'd earned a little campfire time. Vladimir the bat was stirring, chittering away somewhere at the back of the underground den. He'd leave soon to hunt for his own meal. Hunched over his meagre pile of sticks and dried foliage, the giant struck his scavenged flint against one of the stones that lined the pit. Once, twice- come on! Three, four, and on the fifth time a spark landed in the pile of tinder and kindling. He nursed it with careful breaths and the guard of one massive foreleg wrapped around the budding embers. Once the flames were starting to singe his pads, he turned it over to the pit to devour the remains of a scrub tree. And then he collapsed on his belly, blade loosely clasped between his paws. He was exhausted. His feline companion curled against his side, cuddled up in the crook of his loosely curled form to soak up the heat from the fire alongside Viscera's body heat.

"I hope Ick and mum are alright," he sighed, unable to loosen the furrow between his brows.