9. Awaken

The first thing Gareth noticed when he regained consciousness was a some pain on some parts of his body. The torment inside the different dimension made his body more numb to pain, Gareth recalled what he had been doing before he passed out and remembered the fight with that sandstone crab. He then guessed that some organisms were eating him, since they were eating him he would do the same to them.

Adjusting his body and tensing all body muscles to confirm everything was there and in order, Gareth immediately burst out of the sand sending the countless opportunists flying through the air. Shakily climbing to his feet he surveyed his surroundings quickly but momentarily paused when he saw a big lizard that had approached suddenly started skipping and frolicking. He saw it open its mouth and swallow the insects falling from the sky ignoring the other creatures.

After assuring that the big lizard had no intention of eating him he began catching the buggers that were feasting on him. It became a comical sight as one man and one beast began chasing after a bunch of small creatures.

The big lizard had more than ate its fill and only now realised that a strange creature on two legs a bit smaller than itself was next to him. Panic immediately filled its mind and it tried to flee, Gareth had long finished collecting food as well as find his water and food bags and was currently munching on a fruit watching the lizard gobbling all those insects.

When it tried to flee, Gareth hopped onto its back and sat on it, this had displeased the big guy. It tried to shake Gareth off but he easily managed to stay on and after a while it felt a tap on its head as if Gareth was trying to say "you done yet"?

Knowing that it couldn't shake him off the lizard which was called a desert scuttling lizard, showed a look of defeat and plopped its body onto the ground.

The desert scuttling lizard lived in sandy deserts and fed exclusively on insects, with a long tongue that could detect scents in the air and used to wrap around prey as well as hard teeth that could break through tough exoskeleton. Any insect big or small wasn't an issue to this lizard. It ran through the desert at very fast speed with a top speed of 80km/h it wasn't a problem to travel 1500 km in a day (20 hours of day light). It's main weakness was it was very timid, as long as it wasn't an insect it would avoid it like a plague even as something as small as a chicken would give it the willies.

Gareth had identified it as the big lizard was still in bliss chomping away at the raining insects, he decided to use it as a temporary mount as it wasn't dangerous, could last a month (5 weeks or 50 days) without food should it conserve itself and that it could travel fast.

Having caught a ride and collected both bags and his bone spear, Gareth finally took time to observe the state of his body. He knew that he was still very weak and upon seeing the strength of his horribly disfigured body, with blood oozing out of numerous wounds, broken bones as well as exposed bones that had all the flesh eaten off it and herniated organs. He probably had a few creatures drilled in his body and contracted quite a few harmful bacteria.

Any normal person would have been at deaths door but Gareth had much better health and physique so although he wasn't close to death he wasn't to far from it either. The elemental was currently wrapped around his wrist acting as a wrist band was currently dormant as it getting used to the new environment,

Gareth decided to leave as soon as possible because the scent of blood would definitely attract more aggressive creatures out there. So with much difficulty he climbed back onto the lizard.

Gareth double checked that he had everything and was secured onto the lizard and tied a simple noose onto the neck of the lizard before they set off.

Daylight was almost over and Gareth almost about to fall off from weakness. Slowly climbing down he made a fire and quickly roasted some critters that he had caught before eating and having a drink of water.

Gareth finally got down to fixing up his damaged body, he rinsed himself clean before digging out as many of the buried insects in his body as much as 47 were removed which he fed to the lizard. Then he began setting his bones, nasty cracking sounds were heard as he set them as best he could. Then he shifted back the herniated organs and sewed up any perforated ones with a needle he forged out of a small bone. Lastly he sewed up the rest of the wounds before wrapping them up with cloth he tore from his clothes. He could constantly renew his clothes using his powers allowing him to wrap himself up as a mummy.

Exhausted he made sure to hold the lizards leash and bury himself under the sand before sleeping.