Trouvaille | Technoblade x Reader

Chapter 4 - The Forest

You awakened with a pounding headache that seemed ready to split open your skull like a watermelon. Your hands instinctively came up to your eyes to block out the blinding midday sun.

With eyes searching the leaves above you, you wondered if you had somehow managed to fall asleep while collecting wild plants again. Your joints creaked and your body ached as you managed to sit up.

Blood.

Your heart hammered in your chest as you stared at your rolled up pant leg and saw the slow pool of blood that had accumulated on the ground beside the wound in your calf. The recent events caught up to you quickly, and panic welled up in your throat.

The King's hunt for you and others like you. The iron of your blade as it sliced through a Butcher. Cursing the world for its terrible irony. Blood in your mouth as pain overtook your senses.

Someone had healed you. Someone in this godforsaken forest had looked at your dying body and helped.

"Thank you," you whispered.

You would not forget their kindness. You promised yourself that, and you held that burning gratitude close to your heart.

For now, though, you realized as you scanned the area, you would have to worry about yourself before repaying them for their kindness. Your leg wasn't bleeding anymore, but it was missing a considerable chunk of skin and possibly muscle. Now that you were conscious of it, you could feel twinges of pain in the wound whenever the wind blew.

You wouldn't be walking any great distances, you supposed. You also noted that you had no blade to fight off monsters and attackers, but the real problem was your bag. The little food and water you had brought were long gone.

Wracking your brain, you realized that you could remember leaving the bag behind in your somewhat pathetic escape from the temple, but you didn't know where you left the blade.

You rose to your feet and circled the area slowly, looking for any sign of your blade, but found none. You did manage to find a trail of your blood leading back up the slope, though.

There wasn't much of a choice, really. You had to go back to that temple and get your bag. Hopefully, whatever had come out of the temple's inner sanctum hadn't looted any of the Butchers' bodies. You doubted that they had made it too far, and you could always take a sword or axe from them. They sure weren't going to be using them anytime soon.

Part of you was paranoid about any remaining members of the Butcher Army, but you sincerely doubted that any of them were still alive. If they were, you knew that they wouldn't try to approach the temple again. Hell, you were a fool to even approach it again, but what other choice did you have? Either you would die from dehydration, or you might die at the temple.

You decided to take your chances.

You were somewhat glad that you had been bleeding so much when you fled the area because there was now a convenient trail leading you back in that direction. The irony did not escape you: a trail of blood leading directly to the Blood God's temple.

Briefly, you remembered the stones you followed to reach the temple. Perhaps they too had been marked by someone's wound. You hoped that, if that were the case, they were alive as you were.

The journey back to the temple was a slow one. Probably as slow as your escape from it had been. The pain in your leg slowed you considerably, but it was nothing near what it had been when you were fleeing the temple.

You reached the temple as the sun was beginning to sink below the treetops. There was probably only another hour or two of daylight left, so this would have to be quick.