Chapter Text
The last thing Baldric remembered was falling limply into his bed after a long day of classes. Wanting to rest above all else before he had to complete his finals the next day, he had been so tired he had forgotten to change his clothes.
When he had woken up it had been to wet feet and a mattress in the middle of the ocean. It wasn’t a dream, he had already tried the age old thing of ‘pinch your arm to wake up’ it had failed. If it was a dream, it was an odd one, nothing like his usual monotone grey ones that at least made some sort of sense. He had never had a dream that started in the middle of the ocean. But he hoped it was a dream.
Regardless of all of that, he was still stuck on a mattress floating on a body of water that he couldn’t see the bottom of. Looking around gave him better answers to where he might have been, the tops of buildings poked out of the water. Not traditional roofs but ones that matched the ones of the city he was in, one he recognized as the top of the office building near his apartment.
Yet there was something odd, it wasn’t as if everything had been magically flooded. Windows were broken revealing trashed insides with crumbling floors and ceilings, a variety of plants grew from everything. The buildings were aged, changed by time, as if he had been asleep for hundreds of years just to wake up after an apocalypse.
His mattress floated close enough that he could pull himself into the building, not quite well balanced enough to stand on the floating bed. He let it drift away as he got his bearings, if this was in fact a real place he was in then it raised a lot of problems.
The first was food, he needed to find something to shoot down birds to catch fish, a bow or a spear if not a fishing rod. Bathroom wasn’t a problem, he could probably just go wherever he wanted until he figured out something permanent Then there was what he was wearing, swimming in a trench coat was a stupid decision, not to mention his clunky boots. Lastly he needed a better base of operations then a run down office building. Something close to the water level but not something easy to get into, if there were other people there was no telling what they were like.
With that in mind, he set about searching for any supplies nearby, though what he found was maybe better then supplies. A large backpack was tucked under one of the desks, the thick fabric held nothing but was at least in good shape. Good enough to take with him as extra storage because he quite literally had nothing to lose and everything to gain.
It fit over his trench coat well, after he brushed some of the moss off of it, it looked almost like something at a store. But he was in an apocalypse, not in a store shopping for hiking gear, though he had never done that. Hiking took up too much time and energy that he could be using for other more important things.
Other then the backpack, the dilapidated office didn’t hold much other then simple office supplies. Pencils and papers long rotten or printers that looked as though someone had taken a bat to them. Materials eroded by time left in place as though everyone had just disappeared, yet he doubted that was it.
He had to put that aside, constantly attempting to puzzle out whatever had happened would drive him to madness. A need for knowledge and information was something that he was used to, but also something he knew could kill him. And in this new world he refused to die without true answers, even if he couldn’t get them himself he would find a way.
He had to keep moving, between the rooms of the office back to the blue sky and sea, revealing a new obstacle. How to move between buildings? His mattress was gone, drifting off… somewhere maybe.
In the end he found a suitably large chunk of wood to act as a raft, perhaps a door at one point and now no more then a slab. A broken sign worked well as a paddle, pushing him towards other buildings to be looted and picked through. Other offices, at some point a museum, apartments, and a number of other things that he didn’t know the names of. Context clues were all he had but even those were lacking, aside from the occasional environmental-storytelling skeleton.
At least he found supplies, none of it was food but he would take care of that when it came to it. A fishing rod had been hung up in one of the apartments, a metal bat was stuck in a display in the museum. Rope, glass vials, bottles, packaged water, a variety of things he was somewhat surprised were in good shape.
Before he had woken up somewhere else, he had been studying to be a college professor for alchemy. If he retained the things he had studied well enough, who was to say that he couldn’t attempt the impossible? Who was to say that alchemy wasn’t something one could use in the apocalypse? The philosophers stone was looking more and more achievable, though it was a made up object for alchemists of the medieval times. So maybe it wasn’t achievable, but it was a funny thought.
Regardless it would be smart to keep his eyes peeled for any alchemical supplies for him to use. On that note his stomach rumbled, finally awake enough after the hour or two he had been there to feel hungry.
He settled in a tall concrete building, part of the floor of the level he was on was broken open. Revealing the water stretching out beneath him, and the schools of fish swimming about among the plants and corals. All of it felt too vibrant, like an animal with bright colors to signify poison or venom, either way it was dangerous. Though some of the species of fish he recognized, the familiar shapes catching his eyes only a short way down.
Bait was a problem, it wasn’t as if he had fresh soil to dig for worms in, instead he stuck a bit of plant on his hook. He had seen some of the fish nibbling at it where it reached the water, with some luck maybe it would catch something for him to eat.
It did, after a lengthy test of his patience he managed to collect a small number of fish. Which he had put in a small pile as he gathered further vegetation to make a fire with, alongside some sticks to skewer them on. Without any seasoning they didn’t taste very good, just like cooked fish with a bit of an ashy taste.
As he decided what he wanted to be as he worked through college paperwork, he had chosen some unusual classes. Not that he would tell anyone other then his roommates Victrix and Ketin, they were always happy to benefit off his knowledge. Regardless he supposed those classes, cooking and baking classes, would come in handy.
If nothing else they helped him pick out the bones of the fish before he stabbed open his cheeks. Herbs and edible plants would go on the list of things he needed to hunt down.