Frontier Chef: My Cooking Skills Are Broken-Chapter 13: Signal Lost

One step Ezra had water around his ankles.

The next step, dry earth—cracked and pale like old cement.

He stood there holding the girl’s wrist and stared at the ground where the river should have been.

The river bed continued east with the same width and gravel banks but had no water in it. Under his feet, he could hear the flow, faint and hollow, rushing through whatever gap had swallowed it.

’Well shit, there goes my GPS.’

Water lapped at the edge behind him where the bed dropped. Ahead there was dry gravel for as far as the terrain let him see, which on flat ground was a long way and none of it helpful.

The trees on either bank had already started dying a half mile back. He hadn’t paid attention. Hard to do so when dragging a naked woman and swatting away mosquitos the size of his ears.

The trunks had gotten thinner, bark flaking, leaves gone brown and curled, and the last two standing had no leaves at all.

Ezra didn’t care to say the least. He threw a berry in the air and caught it with his tongue.

The char cracked between his teeth and the inside burst warm and tart. Twenty-five minutes back on the clock.

He’d been eating one every time the buff ticked down, and by now the rhythm was automatic.

Good thing he snagged a dozen or so before the river ran out for good.

Even then, it had been at least two hours now.

[ Meal Consumed: Charred Dwarf Bloodberry ]

[ Effects Applied ]

> +25 Max SP

> Passive: Sated (Provides momentary fullness)

> Duration: 25 minutes

Still, he had four berries left. And there was no more turning back.

The dead grass came first, yellow stalks up to his shins, brittle enough to snap underfoot.

The ground went from gravel to packed dirt to something sandy and loose that his feet sank into. It wasn’t quicksand though, that much he was thankful for.

Behind him, the bird girl was half-awake now, daydreaming and muttering to herself. Her grip on his arm stayed taut.

Not like he could complain.

It just meant she did the holding and he could rest his muscles once in a while.

’Laziness knows no bounds, that I can guarantee. Don’t you agree?’

[ Bzzt ]

After another long hike, the grass died too. 𝓯𝙧𝓮𝓮𝒘𝓮𝙗𝙣𝒐𝒗𝒆𝓵.𝓬𝓸𝒎

There was nothing but low scrub and dust for every direction he could turn his head. The sky sat enormous and pale above it all, the sun past its peak but still brutal.

Harken’s walls were still on the horizon. He’d first seen them as a grey-brown smudge and they had not gotten meaningfully closer.

The flat terrain did that, made the destination seem feasible.

Trick of the fucking heat, no less.

’It was too good to be true anyway.’

On the riverbank the air moved with purpose. Out here it sat on him and lingered. His skin had gone from damp to dry to tight in the span of a mile, lips cracking, the balls of his feet burning on the hot ground.

The bird girl was no luckier. Her skin was once pale as paper and the desert sun was eating her alive. Made sense since she’d been in armor even before he met her.

Her skin was turning pink now, her face and shoulders just about raw at the surface. The groove she left behind had turned from gravel trail to a line in the dust.

Ezra ate another berry and had three left.

He stopped to plop one into her mouth. She was chewing now without his help. Another relief, because she had nearly bitten his finger off an hour ago.

It still ached where her teeth cut through skin.

"You’re getting heavy, bird girl. I know you’re half-awake in there so stop pretending you can’t use your legs."

She muttered something. He leaned in and cupped his ear.

"Keep... going." The words came out in slow pants. "Or we die at nightfall."

"What happens at..." Ezra’s question trailed off.

He was hearing strange noises, from nowhere and everywhere.

Tok-tok-tok.

Tok-tok-tok. Tok-tok-tok.

Something was hitting rocks on bark, too even for wind or animals knocking something loose. It came from somewhere in the scrub to his left. No, his right actually.

A sound ran underneath it, low and guttural that overlapped with the banging.

"Ossa, ossa, ossa," followed by the tok-tok-tok.

The scrub was knee-high and there was nothing tall enough to hide behind. That is, if it accounted for any regular beast or human.

The first one stepped out from behind a rock two feet tall and locked onto the naked man.

It barely came up to his shin, standing on two legs, fur the color of dust and vanilla patchy. It had big pointed ears that swiveled forward like satellite dishes scanning for life, a snout lined with teeth too big for the skull holding them, and yellow moon eyes.

To top it all off, it even held a dagger made from a bone.

"What the fuck are you?" Ezra said, shifting between the girl and whatever the hell that was.

"Ossa!" It growled.

The rest poured from the scrub like mice finding cheese, protruding from behind rocks, popping out of dry bushes, and even out from shallow dents in the ground he hadn’t noticed were there.

Every one of them carried something—bone daggers and shivs carved from femurs and spears tipped with teeth, or whatever they deemed sharp enough to draw blood.

He counted twenty-five, then thirty, then gave up because they kept adding up in numbers.

"Ossa! Ossa! Ossa!"

Their chanting got louder as more chimed in, rocks banging against sticks with the same tok-tok noise.

The ears said canine. The way they moved, ritualistic and with rhythm, said otherwise. The bone weapons didn’t help either.

Ezra pointed a finger at the ugliest one. "Appraisal."

[ Ossalaka — ★★★ ]

> Profile: Semi-sapient. Edible albeit ethically questionable. Lean, gamey meat with high sinew content. Scavenger-dominant diet supplemented by opportunistic predation. Bone marrow may be salvageable depending on tool contamination.

’What the hell does that even mean? Are these things people?’

All thirty pairs of yellow eyes and thirty bone weapons pointed at his kneecaps now. Their snout mouths were foaming and salivating.

"Ossa!"

’Nah.’

The ugly one screamed a war cry and charged with spear aimed at Ezra’s pelvis.

.