galaxy storm

4. ambush

The sun shined down as it heralded a new day, Gareth who was tired didnt get up till midday where the sun was the fiercest. When he got up he instantly felt his muscles particularly his arms and legs screaming in pain. It made his movements stiff and awkward and it took at least 10 minutes to get used to the pain enough to move around almost normally. If it were a regular person let alone walk being able to stand would be very difficult.

Inspecting his condition, he discovered that he had a few areas on his body that were infected, he also noticed that he had some holes in his body evidence that parasites had invaded his body. He would have to wait for the parasites to move closer to the surface before he could remove them until then he had to keep an eye out. Most of his wounds had clotted and stopped bleeding and now he just had a few herniated organs and broken bones to fix.

He had used some ribs of some creature as a stint and tied it with some torn cloth, he then tried to fix the fractures that he could fix and wrapped the rest in bandages.

He ate a bit of the uncooked meat and kept the rest before gathering his stuff and continuing his journey.

He didn't know how far the sandstorm have deviated his course but he still continued his South relying on the sun in the sky as a compass.

The journey continued for a few hours until he saw a small alien palm tree, it was a few meters tall and had dark red fleshy leaves. This plant was moving slowly across the desert using its roots to move, the plant would pretend to be a tree and when a smaller animal came to investigate it would stab its roots into the animal and drain its blood. The leaves tasted a bit like meat due to the high consumption of blood and the rest of this alien plant could be used as fire wood.

Deciding on his plan, he went towards the alien tree pretending to be a hungry oblivious organism. The alien tree seeing his approach quickly covered its roots under the sand and straightened its body. 

Gareth knew it was a trick and pretended to fall for it so he could get close, soon he was within range of the roots and Gareth acted cautious and began surveying the surroundings to keep up the act. The plant waited patiently and Gareth crept closer and closer. When it was less than a meter away from the tree it unearthed its roots and tried to stab Gareth on his back.

 Gareth noticed he sand movement and sprung into action, he whipped out his bone spear and cut the attacking roots. the roots immediately fell to the floor with liquid oozing out of them. The tree was surprised by the retaliation before realizing it was being attacked and attacked with more of its roots. Gareth clearing the first wave of roots slashed his spear at the bottom of the tree leaving a deep meter cut, he only needed to cut two more times and it would be his. 

The tree felt the attack and shook its body in pain and pressed its attack further seemingly infuriated by the attack. Gareth turned around and began snipping the roots attacking him while being wary for surprise attacks. 

Soon an opening was revealed and Gareth turned around and slashed as the tree again, this time the tree was visibly wobbling and started to panic, it sent the rest of the roots in all directions to attack gareth and Gareth swung in a wide arc cutting the roots around him then jumping forward dodging the aerial and underground roots. Then he swung his spear once more at the tree causing it to shiver wobble then fall. the roots that were about to stab him fell to the ground as well.

Gareth finding victory again, was massaging his arms and legs, the fight had caused pain to flare up a bit so he stretched and massaged the muscles to ease the pain. After he began disassembling the plant and after an hour he finished.

There were about 10 large surfboard sized leaves a quarter a meter thick, there was also the wood of the tree and the multitude of roots he had gotten. The roots were edible after a clean so he was quite happy about his harvest.

Looking at the sky he saw that it was still more than 6 hours before sunset so he gathered his materials and continued.

Gareth didn't manage to get very far as when he was halfway down the dune, he saw the sand less than a meter move slightly. He mightn't pay heed if it was the wind however the wind wasn't blowing at the moment so he immediately tensed his legs and dodged.

One second later the sand that had moved slightly exploded and a snakes head bit at the area where Gareth would have been if he hadn't dodged. The snake having only bitten a mouthful of sand stared at Gareth as the sand began leaking from his mouth.

Gareth had turned to face the attacker and a bad feeling emerged from his gut when he noticed that the snake only had less half its body exposed from the sand.

Gareth immediately put down his gear and readied his spear full knowing that a tough battle awaited him next.