Timewalkers Odyssey

Chapter 15: Tastes Like Chicken

Time for a Bath

Water pooled between the rocks, clear and cold, shimmering with an unnatural depth, as if it belonged to a timeline more pristine than this one. Ryke knelt at its edge, staring at his reflection, not in horror, but in something close to resignation.

The man who looked back at him was more beast than human, streaked in dried blood, dust, and the sweat of survival.

He had been reforged in combat, tempered by the void, but he was still flesh and blood, a man bound to the needs of a body that demanded care. He had never experienced a clear mountain stream before. His entire life had been the Scrapyard, its filth, its hunger, its unyielding chaos. Even if fresh water had been available in this amount, a proper bath was a luxury no one could afford.

Without hesitation, he pulled off what remained of his tattered clothes and stepped into the water.

The shock of cold hit him like a physical blow, searing away exhaustion, forcing him into the present. He exhaled, feeling the weight of grime dissolve, watching as swirls of blood and dust unfurled into the stream, ghosts of the battles behind him, washing away.

For a moment, he simply existed.

No temporal distortions. No echoes of fractured realities clawed at his mind. Just clear water, skin, sensation.

If someone had been there to witness the sight, it would have seemed an illusion. In a fractured, decaying timeline, a world that was literally falling apart, he was taking a bath.

Ryke laughed out loud.

His will had been stripped, he had been unmade, only to be reforged by time itself. He had arrived in a corrupted world where survival was far from guaranteed. He was becoming a force of nature. A being reforged by time itself. A predator, unstoppable…

“Yet here he was, naked as the day he was born, enjoying a refreshing swim in a clear mountain stream.”

It was beyond imagination. Beyond comprehension. And yet, it was happening. A brief moment of humanity among chaos. Maybe that was why the bath felt so significant. It was an act of defiance, a refusal to be only a hunter, only a weapon. A statement to the infinite threads of time that he was the author of his own story and fate had no claim on him.

He scrubbed away the filth with rough, deliberate hands, feeling the soreness in his muscles, the ache of wounds still mending.

**"Pain means you are still alive."

The Old Man’s words carried a different weight now. And for the first time in what felt like an eternity, that felt like enough.

When he finally stepped from the water, his body clean, his mind sharper than ever, he glanced at his ragged clothes, washed clean of filth but still little more than rags. They were worthless, but walking around naked, even in an empty world, felt wrong.

As he pulled them on, a sudden growl tore through the stillness, low, primal, inescapable.

Like a voidhound hunting for prey, his stomach ripped him back to reality.

He was hungry.

Better than Rat Stew

Ryke had eaten some questionable things in his early years in the Scrapyard.

The Gear Mothers who had kept him as a child fed him, but never enough. They expected labor in return, and what little free time the children had was spent foraging for scraps. That was how he learned to trap, kill, clean, and cook a rat.

Among the children, rat stew was a favorite.

When the Gear Mothers cast him out, those skills kept him alive. He had survived on rat meat, stolen scraps, and the occasional lucky catch, a dog, a cat, but rat was the staple. That, and ration packs, when he had something of value to trade.

Then, the Old Man found him.

The taste of rat faded overnight. The Old Man’s food wasn’t luxurious, but it was enough, and sometimes, there was even extra.

At first, Ryke ate like a starved animal. He hoarded food, shoveling it down as if it might disappear at any moment. The Old Man never said a word, just watched from across the table, waiting. It took weeks before Ryke realized something strange: there would always be another meal.

The meals were simple: stews and ration packs, but sometimes, they were special.

On the day they had decided was his birthday, the day the Old Man saved his life, they had chicken. Ryke had never heard of chicken before, let alone eaten it. It was the best thing he had ever tasted.

When Ryke asked where it came from, the Old Man had said:

**"Some things are more important than money."

After that, whenever they had to eat something, less desirable, Ryke would always say:

“Hmm. Tastes like chicken.”

The Old Man always laughed.

It became their thing, an inside joke between them.

Feed the Beast

The hungry beast in his stomach snapped him back to reality.

With his thirst satisfied, Ryke shifted his attention to another nearby temporal anomaly, activating Predator’s Sight.

Through its chaotic surface, he glimpsed a landscape rich with vegetation, plants unlike anything from his fractured memories, yet which his enhanced senses identified as edible.

Reaching through, he extracted several small fruits, their surface iridescent, shimmering with alien adaptation. His system immediately analyzed their molecular composition, no toxins, plenty of nutrients.

The first bite exploded with flavor, so intense it was almost overwhelming, sweetness and acidity, perfectly balanced, triggering a rush of satisfaction through his body.

As he continued to harvest resources from the anomalies, a profound realization settled into his mind. This world was not dead. It was a nexus point, a fractured reality that connected to countless adjacent timelines. The very disruptions that made this place so hostile also provided access to resources that would otherwise be beyond reach.

The temporal storms weren’t just hazards to be avoided, they were opportunities. A beautiful dance of lights and shadows, hiding doors to survival.

Ryke didn't find chicken, but he did find a small hopping creature he had never seen before. It was fast like a rat but more pleasant to look at.

And it tasted… Better than rat stew.

He only caught what he could eat, unwilling to waste food. The Old Man would never have approved of that, and even now, it felt wrong.

Sitting in his improvised shelter, full for the first time in weeks, Ryke let his mind settle. For now, the world wasn’t trying to kill him. For now, he had warmth, shelter, and food.

He had never been so content to just exist.

Above him, the distant storm rumbled, crackling with energy, watching over him in silence, as if a fragile truce had been agreed to.

An additional benefit from Predators Sight was that it was almost like the night vision he had seen the gangs use. It highlighted all the beasts in his view for quite some distance. For some reason, there weren't any large predators in his general area. It was a rare moment of respite.

Tomorrow, they would try and kill each other again, but for tonight, all was well.

Sleeping On the Edge

After weeks of wandering the ruins, Ryke had grown accustomed to the cold, suffocating darkness. So he simply found a place to protect himself from the wind, out of sight from any beasts that may wander by…

And he fell asleep.

Miraculously, nothing had come for him in the night. He had slept straight through, his shoulder sore from lying in the same place for so long. He didn’t remember dreaming but was certain if he had, they would have been nothing short of perfection.

He sat up, looked out into the distance, cold reality staring back at him, and sighed.

“Who would have thought this place held such beauty?” the words lingering in the wind.

The storm in the distance crackled with light, the rumbling sound arriving shortly after. As if to say…

“Good morning, friend. Hope you slept well.”

Ryke visited a few fissures around him, finding more water, the delicious berries, and hoppers. He had decided to call them hoppers as he had no idea what else to call them. He felt a little bad eating so many, but not bad enough to stop. Finishing his morning meal, he rose to his feet and said.

“I will not be a prisoner. I will become what I choose to be.*"

No Time Like the Present

As he headed out towards the faint blue light in the distance, an understanding came, a fundamental shift in Ryke's perception of his situation.

He was not trapped in a wasteland but positioned at a nexus of infinite potential, each temporal anomaly a door to sustenance, each distortion a possibility for survival.

His hunger and thirst were gone, replaced by a satisfaction that bordered on euphoria. Ryke contemplated the limitations of this newfound ability. The temporal boundaries seemed to resist him the farther he strayed from the fissure, as if reality itself objected to his presence.

To be honest, the thought had crossed his mind to just stay there, next to that cold mountain stream, and fade into oblivion. But even if that were possible, which he was certain wasn't, that's not who he was anymore. It wasn't enough; he had a place to be, and it wasn't there.

The blue beacon still pulsed in the distance, its rhythmic radiance a promise, or perhaps a challenge, to be addressed. But his journey toward it need no longer be a desperate flight from starvation and predation. With the ability to harvest resources from temporal anomalies and the capacity to defend himself against threats, he could progress with purpose rather than panic.

And yet, questions lingered. The vast shadow that moved across the distant horizon, the entity that unmade reality itself, continued its inexorable advance. Was it aware of him? Did his growing power register in whatever sensory apparatus it possessed? Would his continued evolution eventually draw its attention?

More immediately, what other entities might inhabit this fractured reality? The voidhounds had been formidable, but surely they represented only one category of the corrupted beings that had adapted to this broken timeline. What more powerful adversaries awaited him on the path to the beacon?

And what would he become in the process of overcoming them?

Yet, the alternative was extinction. In this reality, stasis meant death.

"Evolution," he whispered, the word carrying both promise and warning. His voice resonated with subtle temporal harmonics as if speaking across multiple planes of existence simultaneously. Even his speech was transforming, adapting to the fractured nature of this reality.

His gaze returned to the distant beacon, its pulsation somehow encouraging, a lighthouse guiding him through the chaotic sea of broken time. Whatever waited there represented his best hope for understanding, for answers to questions he was only beginning to formulate.

His strength had returned, different than before, not just physical capacity but something more fundamental. His awareness of the temporal distortions had sharpened, the patterns within chaos more readily apparent. The Predator's Sight had changed him, integrating aspects of the voidhounds' perception into his own consciousness.

With newfound clarity, he assessed the landscape before him, plotting the most efficient route toward the beacon. The terrain remained treacherous, fractured plains giving way to impossible geometries, regions where gravity itself seemed uncertain, anomalies that defied classification even with his enhanced perception.

But now, these obstacles represented opportunities as much as hazards, potential sources of sustenance and discovery rather than mere impediments to progress. The world hadn't changed, but his relationship to it had transformed completely.

The temporal energy in his veins pulsing in rhythm with his determination had burned away the hesitation. The determination that remained had been refined in the crucible of combat and revelation, doubt being replaced by purpose and understanding.

Whatever he had been before awakening in this broken world was increasingly irrelevant; what mattered was what he was becoming. Not just a survivor, but an entity capable of thriving in conditions that should have rendered life impossible.

The blue beacon in the distance waited patiently, inevitable. Ryke walked toward it, each step carrying him further from humanity and closer to whatever awaited him at the heart of this fractured world.

The transformation had begun. There was no time for doubt, only determination.