Forks In the Road

By now my feet were aching, I was exhausted, and absolutely famished. If I were to hazard a guess, my -Relentless Endurance Racial trait was the only thing keeping me going. A guesstimation had me wandering around for three or four hours, but I had no idea how accurate that was. There was nothing to measure time, not even the sound of dripping water.

When I tried to rest by finding a small hole to just sit in for a few moments, a gremlin would come sniffing around for easy meat. It felt as though this shithole refused to let me peacefully rest, so I'd given up on even a brief respite, and figured that I could only rest behind a solid locked door. The possibility of needing to consume one of those gremlins to survive made me all the more certain that I would not do anything to survive. I had limits and standards, and that limit was not eating one of those gremlins. I would rather die a man, or I guess in this case a human? No, technically I was a bear-girl-humanoid. Whatever. I had standards, and I would rather die than eat one of those.

As if on cue, I saw another gremlin creeping towards me. LIke all the others, it seemed to have heard me before seeing or smelling me, and went straight to ground. A couple gremlins ago I’d realized that they thought I was blind by how my pace and gait resembled that of someone on their last legs, driving blindly forward. Granted, that was an accurate description of how I felt, but that’s not the point. I wasn’t in the mood to wait for it to slowly creep towards me. My patience had been eroded by hunger and exhaustion. My plan was to simply kill it and move on.

I stomped forwards, sword in a low guard, ready to strike. It sensed my aggression, and it rose up, caught between deciding whether to fight or fly. Somewhere in its dull mind it made the call to fight, and lunged at me the moment I drew close. I’d been ready for that choice, and as it flew towards me, I stepped aside and drew my blade upwards with all my strength. Its claws reached out towards me, but the blade came through and bisected it horizontally through the torso. It fell dead moments later, struggling to understand what had happened.

Even though I’d just killed another living creature, my pulse was steady and strong. The fear that I’d started with hours ago had turned to certainty. I couldn’t understand why that woman was so cautious of the gremlin. They were easy to kill. Unless this thing was not what she was wary of. The possibility unnerved me, but I fished the jewel out of its still flailing upper torso and moved on. Just as it stopped breathing, I’d expected the level-up pop-up to appear, only for nothing to happen.

Whatever was the criteria for leveling up continued to evade me. 11 kills got me 3 levels. Going from 1st to 2nd had taken 1 death, 2nd to the 3rd had taken 4. 3rd to the 4th needed 7. Maybe I would need to kill 10 of these to hit level 5. I still wasn’t certain what exactly leveling got me. Experience points and levels were supposed to be an abstraction of becoming more practiced at whatever craft the class was focused on, and levels represented milestones in that growing skill. I hadn’t gotten hit yet, so I wasn’t even sure what HP meant for me. Most likely my higher level was why killing these things had become increasingly easy, but it was subtle in how exactly it was changing me.

Regardless, I moved on.

In the humid quiet of these old halls, I’d become accustomed to noticing the smallest noise and faint details. My mind kept trying to turn to what had inexplicably brought me here, to these insane circumstances. Maybe I was in purgatory, or even hell. There was plenty for me to be guilty of, in what I had done, what I had failed to do, and by simply being a participating citizen in the most powerful empire on Earth that committed horrendous atrocities daily. All of us had sins to answer for, if only because we helped run the machine that made the planes run on time.

Each time there was some faint stirring in the distant dark, beyond where my eyes could see, my mind refocused on the moment. I was thankful for those small hints of danger to keep me sharp, but fatigue was making it hard to keep going. I wanted to rest, and I’m now certain I’d need the security of a locked door to make that happen.

More time passed, and I met yet another fork in the road. Since I’d lost the torch at the beginning of my quest, I’d taken to putting small piles of rocks to mark my progress, but this time there was a stenciled mark of a triangle and a square, as well as an arrow pointing to the left path. Since the way rightwards was blocked, and there was nothing else compelling me to go forward, I decided to stay the course and continue to go left.

Then I heard a scream. An echoing scream of a child, followed by the echoes of something solid being bashed. The noise came from the left path, where I’d already intended to go. I willed my aching body to run, but all I could manage was a quick jog. I wanted to move faster, but I was already so tired, and I knew that if I got there completely out of breath, I’d just be killing myself. The screaming had stopped, but the echoes of pounding grew louder. Caught up in the echoes was a faint, gurgling moan, accompanied with the scent of rot.

Another fork in the path, and another guiding mark on the wall. This one pointed right, the same direction as the frightening noises. Turning the corner, I was immediately confronted by its source. There stood a man, pounding at a closed door. From what I could tell, it did not yet notice me, and I took the opportunity to catch my breath and study the situation. He moved slowly, and his balance seemed unsteady, like he was drunk, his clothing torn and tattered. He pounded away at the door lethargically, without much strength or conviction. There were severe injuries all over his body, deep gashes and bite marks that were not bleeding, but oozed black ichor. Then I saw his face and realized that he was an undead creature, a zombie by my guess, for his face was severely mauled, missing an eye, nose and the upper lip. It appeared forever contorted into a snarl.

Under the sound of its pounding and groaning, I could also hear something else. Scared whimpers, the sort that someone crying would make when they didn’t want to be noticed. There was definitely someone else on the other side of that door. As much as I would’ve liked to have ignored it and gone the other way, I needed to get into that room. If I could just make it through that monster, I could get inside and rest in relative safety. There was the occupant to be concerned with, but I imagined that they would be thankful for my intervention. At worst, I could probably take them. My confidence was unjustified, but I was fairly certain that I could kill that zombie.

Mustering up the last of my strength, I rounded the corner into a full sprint. The plan was simple: Bring it down, chop off the head. As expected, it didn’t notice my approach until I was basically upon it. I was so small that I only really reached up to its mid torso, and so that made cutting its knees easy. I’d intended to only cut at the hamstring and whatever sinews were attached there, but completely cutting off its legs was a success I wasn’t going to argue with.

Still blankly coming to terms with what was happening, it fell backwards, landing on the stone with a resounding crack. Using the same momentum I’d used to cut it down, I brought the blade across its now exposed neck, decapitating it cleanly. Here was the moment of truth: What kind of zombie was it?

Was it one of those sorts of technically alive zombies that could die with the appropriate bodily trauma? Or was it one of those zombies that could never really be stopped because even if you hacked off pieces, each individual component was enchanted to life and desperate to cause murder?

The body immediately went limp, but the head continued to move. Now recognizing me as prey, the decapitated head was now snarling and biting wildly. This was despite being completely helpless, as the best it could do was use its tongue to push itself around, pointlessly. With an unintended snarl I brought the broken sword down through its eye socket, and it finally died. I spent a few more long minutes studying the body, the head, and my surroundings. It would’ve been troublesome if it was the sort of creature that could get back up if given enough time, or worse, our scuffle had attracted something else in the dark.

When nothing happened, I let out a deep sigh as all my fatigue came flooding into my limbs, and I collapsed next to the door. There was the person it was pursuing to deal with as well. I noticed yet again that there were several bite marks across its body, frighteningly human bite marks. Please, dark god that brought me to this shithole, don’t let this be one of those zombies that reproduce by biting. What if whoever was in there had been bitten? I already had enough to deal with.

“Hey, are you alright in there?“ I asked after catching my breath.

There was no response.

“Hey, I killed the thing, zombie, monster, whatever it was. Are you hurt?“

“Is it really dead?“ A voice squeaked out from behind the door. Muffled as it was, it was definitely the voice of a kid, or, a really high pitched woman.

“Yeah, I cut off its head and killed it.“

“You don’t sound much older than me. How did you do it?“

“I have a sword, I ran up from behind and cut off its legs, and then I cut off its head.“

“You have a sword? Do you have a swordsman class?“ She asked, and I couldn’t help but notice the hope rising in her voice.

“Yeah, I found this sword. And…“ I paused to think about my answer for a second. No matter how you cut it, Lord of Tyranny was an ominous sounding class. Slave Knight didn’t sound much better. Let’s go with a half truth. “Yes, my class is knight.“

“Really? I’ll open the door in a moment.“

I could hear some scuffle and clattering behind the door. While she was working on that, a dark fear snuck up on me. What if whoever was behind this door was not a friend? It sounded like a girl, but what if it wasn’t? In these four or five hours I’d been in this world, I’d run into a gremlin, a zombie, and some creature that literally went bump in the night that would drive a swordswoman to caution. a mimic or some similar monster that pretended to be a human was a real possibility. A possibility I was too tired to entertain, but entertain I must.

I got up and kicked the corpse enough out of the way to give me some freedom to maneuver, and readied myself. A low fool’s guard, probably, but not in a full stance. I didn’t want to be overtly aggressive, but I needed to be ready to defend myself. Or more likely, run.

The fumbling went on for much longer than I expected, until finally I heard them say, ‘I’m opening the door.’

Warm light spilled out from the crack, and I was nearly blinded by it. From there a green eye began scrutinizing me. Then came a shriek, and they immediately closed the door.

“Hey, what was that about?“ I asked, unable to hide my exhaustion. I now felt foolish for feeling so tense.

“You look like a monster!“

That’s when I realized that I was most likely covered in blood, gore, bile, shit, and whatever else had the misfortune of splashing onto me as I killed my way here. Using my sleeve and the corners of my sack, I tried to wipe away as much of the grime as I could from my face. ‘Sorry, I didn’t realize I looked like a mess. It’s dark and I’ve been fighting… Things down here.’

“Don’t you have a torch? How can you see?“

“I’m a therian, I can see a little bit in the dark, and I can hear and smell well. I’ve been fighting these strange gangly creatures down here. They’re not much bigger than me, and they’re pretty weak, so cutting them down isn’t a problem.“ I said, uncertain as to how clean I could even get with just wiping grime onto my own clothes.

“How old are you? What level are you?“

“I’m ten years old.“ I guessed. My character sheet didn’t tell me that. How the hell was I supposed to know how old I am? “And I’m level 4.“

“Ten, and level 4? That’s a lie, you can’t possibly be younger and able to kill a zombie, or any of those other monsters lurking in the dark.“

Well, it was a small comfort to know that the people around these parts also called it a zombie. Still, I needed to find an explanation. “As far as I can tell, they’re not used to fighting. They’re only good at ambushing. In a straight fight they die easily.“

“I guess that’s possible if you weren’t human. I’d heard that therians can be more dangerous and ferocious than any human.“

“Please, just let me in. I’m tired, I just need to rest for a little bit. Every time I tried to sit down, one of those monsters would come out and attack me. That room you’re in is the only safe place I’ve seen so far.“

A long silence dragged on, and I began to notice the sounds of things coming this way. I was just about to give up and wander off when I heard them say, “Alright, if you have manners, you can’t be that bad.“

Again they opened the door a crack, and once again they studied my face, and they said “Without all the blood, you don’t look so bad.“