Free The Descent to Madness by Gareth K Pengelly Page A

welcoming, giving Stone the chance to relax and think as he ambled along, following the course of the river, his mood light and stomach verging on hungry as the day approached noon.
                  It had been a week now, since his altercation at the slaver camp and during that time he’d been pondering the events. His first contact with humans in his living memory, and it had turned out violent. He’d been lucky to escape with his life. Well, luck had some part to play; he still remembered the indomitable strength that had flowed through him as he’d lain helpless on the ground with a dagger at his throat, the ease with which he’d kicked the man away.
                  The strength had left him quickly, during his flight from the pursuing barbarians, but the minerally aftertaste remained in his mouth even to this day, the ghost of that brief, empowering contact with the spirit of the earth. How he’d managed that feat was beyond his ken, but he was sure he could figure it out eventually, same as he had with his speed.
                  His stomach gave a gentle rumble, just as a keening cry pieced the sky above. Without so much as a second glance, he bent down to the water’s edge, picked up a suitable stone, smooth and flat, turned and threw with all his might.
                  The stone cracked the bird hard on the head, having intercepted its flight perfectly, and it plummeted to the ground in a flurry of feathers, rolling to a stop in the grass. Walking over, Stone picked up the still-twitching bird and snapped its neck to end its suffering. Holding the creature swaying by its feet, he made his way over to a large rock by the stream and sat down, absent-mindedly plucking out its feathers as he continued thinking.
    So much had changed about him during the last few weeks, quickly too, and he was confused, beginning to lose track of what it was to be a normal human being, if he’d ever known it to begin with. The men back at the slaver camp had seemed surprised, even frightened by his speed, just as he was beginning to accept it as something normal, something that maybe came with living wherever he had found himself. Obviously that was not the case; the ability to slow the pace of time – or one’s perception of it, whichever was the case – was certainly not commonplace, even here. Other things, too, had struck him as being out of the ordinary; not just the obvious, that is, the seeming ability (at least once) to suck the strength out of the very earth itself, but other, more subtle things. For one, injuries seemed to heal almost overnight; more than once he’d gone to sleep with a fresh scrape or cut, only for it to vanish without trace by next light. He instinctively thought of the jagged cuts down each cheek that he’d sustained during his fight with the barbarian leader, both now long gone, the skin as smooth and fresh as the day he was born.
                  Another thought struck him, as the pile of feathers from the stripped falcon gently rustled in the breeze at his feet; he’d been eating fare of late that no human stomach had any right to. Raw meat straight off the animal was not fit for consumption by man, surely? Rabbits, fish, stoats, snakes, birds – all had been fair game, all had been devoured with no consequence. He should have been ill, by all rights, but he’d been fine, surviving, nay, thriving on such food.
                  Staring at the bird that lay nude and limp in his hands, his mind wandered back to the cooked meats denied him back at the camp of the barbarian traders, his eyes closing with the memory of the sweet, savoury aromas, his mouth all but watering even at the thought. Even functioning as well as it was on raw, unprocessed meats, something told him that his body would make even better use of cooked food, that the already impressive use to which it was putting the food would be nothing in comparison to the