Pond-ering his fate

A few days later after the beginning of the Ambushes Luca was out again, hunting on his own. Fortunately their ambushes seemed to have forced to Karaskir to move in larger packs, and thus killing less animals in their territory as a result.

He hadn't been hunting for long today but already managed to kill a hare and a squirrel. Not to mention he'd found a recently killed, half eaten fox. At this point he wasn't a fussy eater, especially when a good meal was placed in-front of him like a gift from the heavens. However now he found himself wondering what to do for the rest of the day... Should he keep hunting and dry to meats for a rainy day? Should he get some more prey for the tribe?

Luca ends up shaking his head after taking a few moments to contemplate his tasks for today. He decided to just find a good spot and chill out for the first time in a long time. He begins to walk towards a place he'd seen a small pond earlier in the day, as he gets closer he gradually begins to hear the sounds of frogs and other amphibians croaking or even the occasional trademark "Ribbit".

He comes out of the tree line and spots the algae covered pond, the huge dragon flies bother him a lot more than he'd like to admit but a few panicked swats scare them away for now...

He leans his spear on a nearby tree and takes a seat on the bank of the pond, obviously making sure to keep his caught prey hanging from his spear off the ground to prevent bugs from starting on it. While the other Tribesman insist that the bugs complete the meal Luca wasn't having it.

Luca watches the pond as rays of the morning sun barely pierce the tree line, he tosses a couple pebbles into the green water causing the algae atop it to separate and reveal the creatures underneath it, and within the pond. He curiously peers inside and finds a pair of oversized bulbous eyes that each seem to be the size of his fist staring back at him. He falls over himself backwards as he scrambles to get as far as from the pond as he can manage, this eventually has his back hitting the tree he'd left his spear.

"What the fuck was that!" he heaves through heavy breathes...

...

No response is given, aside from a few more croaks from the surrounding frogs... Eventually his heart-rate returns to normal, he scans the area for any threats and relaxes when he sees none.

"Must've been a trick of the water." he states to himself anxiously, not believing that a creature so huge could be living in such a small and shallow pond, the size of which only being a dozen metres across. However, the panic he'd experienced had made him unable to stay here and rest with even small glances at the body of water giving him chills.

"First squirrels, then Wolves, and now freakishly huge eyes? I must be going mad." he states, his voice carrying through the area as if to scan for anyone watching.

Luca eventually decides to leave this creepy area and places his hand on the floor to push himself off of the floor. Only to find it squelching something into mulch, he feels sick to his stomach as he looks down at the squashed remains of a previously colourful frog. He scrapes it's corpse off of his hand by running it across a tree, however just as he'd almost gotten rid of all of it he begins to lose all feeling in his arm. It flops to his side lifelessly and he begins to panic as memories of being poisoned to death resurface in his mind, the roiling negative emotions in his guy making his forget his scare earlier. He sits down and waits for his end but finds nothing happening even after an hour or so. Not only that but feeling eventually returns to his arm.

"Some kind of paralytic poison them?" he murmurs to himself. "Ah, that's right! The Tribesman spoke of frogs that were inedible due to how poisonous they were...

After that realisation he begins to think up plans for the future and uses for these creatures. First of all scanning the pond for more amphibians that may be useful, however he found it incredibly difficult to even get close to one of the multi-coloured frogs without it jumping into the water. Even when he did catch one he realised that he had to quickly scrape and wash his hands clean before they're paralysed again.

Shaking his head in irritation he eyes the escaping frog with indignation, "Hm, I need a net or something for these bastards... Maybe I could fashion one from plant fibre? I'll have to try and make one when I get back."

Luca ended up calling this place "Poison Pond" due to how many poisonous critters he'd found, and while he hadn't managed to catch any of the frogs that didn't mean he was completely empty handed... Tightly held in his hands is a relatively large toad with what seem like holes or glands on it's back. It's dark green in colour with vivid yellow eyes and gives off a croak Luca'd describe as a "Amphibian Roar" due to how loud it is.

Luckily for him it wasn't poisonous in his hands, well, as long as he didn't touch anything on it's back. At first he was wary to go near it but as it felt threatened by his presence it's back started inflating, the pressure pushing out some kind of white puss from the holes on it's back.

Luca decided to test out the potency of whatever it had just excreted on some kind of rat-like mammal he'd caught while looking around the pond. He looks over the unfortunate creature for a moment and thinks over what kind of way would best be suited for it, he wasn't likely to use this Toad's excretions to poison food to he elected to sharpen a stick, poison it and jab it into the mammal to test it's effect.

Needless to say, it was "Super-Effective!"... Setting aside the Pocket Monster meme for a moment Luca watched as the rodent starts spasming a few seconds after he'd introduced the poison, or venom to be accurate with how he's using it. Not long after the spasming began the creatures eye's turned red and expanded, growing so much that he was sure they'd escape it's skull, though this never happened. It started foaming at the mouth too but as soon as they started the spasms stopped, Luca assuming it'd had a heart attack or something similar.

"Nasty stuff, I'm sure this'll kill a person, or atleast make them very sick. If shit hits the fan I'll be using this no-matter the tribes stance on it." he mutters to himself after finding something that would hopefully help in in the future.

The sky begins to darken and Luca leans the toad and rat-thing as it'd probably be dangerous to eat and he didn't have anything to carry the toad in safely. Regardless he didn't think the pond would move so just left after memorising it's location.