Zone E -- Highlands

[Strazio Rockwell]

By the end of the first night Strazio’s wounds had largely stopped hurting. The burn cream had done well enough as a pain reliever and he was able to catch a decent night’s sleep. He chose not to start a campfire, the island was warm enough and he had nothing to cook. Not that he wasn’t used to it, the amount of times he spent sleeping in the dark probably outweighed the nights spent in a comfortable home. Rocks were a sturdy pillow and the cold ground served as a makeshift bed. The night sky, full of stars oblivious to mortal plight, made a decent blanket. Stiff muscles and a dry mouth greeted him when he finally stirred. He stretched, gathered his belongings, and kept trudging forth.

About an hour into his trek he had polished off the last of his rations and a good bit of his waterskin. Hunger was as much a competitor as any of the others, and perhaps the most insidious. His first foray into the Abyss began with being thrown halfway across the island and all of his gear getting trashed. Well it’s pretty hard to have your gear get trashed if you don’t have any left.

At any rate Strazio continued forward, occasionally checking his Syntech tablet for updates. A digital map displayed the location of several unclaimed item drops throughout the island with most of them an ocean’s worth of distance away. Strazio groaned and turned the tablet off. What an absolute pain.

“Knowing Karl half the item drops are probably dick all anyways,” Strazio said.

And yet despite this acknowledgment he continued North for it wasn’t the promise of items that drove him, but rather what the items attracted. He knew the Abyss well enough to know that blood was the name of the game and those that shied away from bloodshed would soon find it in horrifying degrees.

moving e6 to e4