Gold, Jewels, and Other Shiny Things

There she was, like nothing had happened… The same old woman who left two weeks prior to go treasure hunting and never returned… Just standing there.

“Hilami… you're…”

“Alive?” she answered with a chuckle. “If this is what you call living, then sure. I am alive.”

Out of instinct, I ran over to Hilami to give her an enormous hug. The words began to fly out, “You have no idea how much I missed you! The whole village missed you. What happened to you? Are you -”

But something felt wrong…

Sticky…

I looked down at my arms, tried to pull them off of her, but the parts of her that were attached to me stretched and bent as I tried to do so. The whole thing felt like glue had been applied to Hilami’s entire body.

Then came the laugh, a horrific laugh, inhuman in its tone and wicked in its purpose.

Hilami, or what I thought was her, started to melt before my eyes.

“What's the matter, Halliyah? Don't tell me you're afraid of me…”

I looked down at my feet, partially buried under gold plates and silver slices and cups of all sorts. Hilami had no feet; rather, her legs melded together into a black blob living inside a treasure box. The blob itself had a single large eye and a mouth filled with dozens of razor-sharp teeth.

“You fool!” Ipas shouted. “That's a mimibox!”

Of course! How could I have been so foolish as to fall for such a simple trap! What I had thought was Hilami had finished melting away, revealing only a large blobby void. I tried to wrestle myself off the arm, even as it was lifting me into the air.

Surely, I thought to myself, if I could apply enough pressure, I could rip myself off the arm. By digging a boot into the fleshy tendril and pushing with all the might this old body of mine could muster, I managed to free my dominant arm from the mimibox's grasp. I was not about to become a late night meal for a box!

Only one answer remained. I readied my sword and sliced right through the arm!

The mimibox roared in pain as I managed to free myself. What I had not considered, however, was that part of the arm was still glued onto me and the floor was made of treasure. One rough, sticky landing later, that bit of arm had ripped clean off of me. In the process, though, I had gathered up an impressive collection of gold and jewels.

I clearly made the creature angry, as it continued crying out, sprouting even more fleshy tendrils in the process. Expecting them to be covered in glue as well, I readied my sword. I planned to cut away as many of those horrifying things as possible until it gave up and let us go. One of the arms came hurtling towards me, and I launched my counterattack.

I missed it!

The arm was not sticky at all; rather, getting smacked with that arm felt like getting struck with a boulder. It no longer saw me as food. Ipas, on the other hand…

“Help me!”

She was the creature's target now, and she had the necklace in her hand.

I ran over to free her from the grasp of the mimibox, but…

“Ramming Speed!”

Something struck me in my right side, metal clanging against metal, crumpling together in the collision. The force of the impact knocked me farther away from my target. One of the arms, to my surprise, molded itself to form… me…

“Oh, Seven Heavens!” I shouted at the damned thing.

It swung at me once, twice, thrice, with me barely dodging each time. Trying to outthink this stupid box would hardly get me anywhere. I needed to move quickly and fight even faster. Well, about as fast as a man approaching sixty years of age could achieve…

No matter what I tried to do, however, it moved and fought much faster than I. This beast could see inside my mind and use my own past against me. It knew techniques I had long forgotten and swung a sword with the elegance and grace I could only dream of.

The beast tried to strike me down, and I responded by making an attempt to block him. I was too slow, and only a golden cup glued to my clothes prevented it from landing a hit. The impact nonetheless sent me down to the floor.

“You are weak,” the beast taunted me. “When the world needed you to rise up, you failed.”

Stupid box was right… I allowed the Demon Lord to get the better of me.

“How could the kingdom ever select a coward such as yourself to save them?”

I was unsure if the box said that… or me…

But it was true… Instead of getting back up to try again, I hid myself in my own shame.

“Perhaps the Age of Men should end…”

No… We were both saying it at the same time. Was it reading me? Or was it trying to control me? No. Mimiboxes cannot do that. It read my deepest thoughts, thoughts I had no idea belonged to me.

“The whole place reeks of cowardice,” the voice of Hilami called out once again. Another of the beast’s arms molded itself into the form of the old woman. “Smells worse than rotting wood.” Why had the beast decided to taunt me so?

“Let's just get this over with,” the copycat me said as it prepared to drive its sword into me. “No mercy. It is so.”

I could only make a half-hearted attempt at blocking. The sword had become too heavy for me.

“Help!”

Ipas…

I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and let go.

All I heard was the sound of bronze clashing against bronze. No matter what the beast threw at me, my body wanted to keep fighting. I… I wanted to live! The copycat hovered over me, sneering, relishing in what it thought would have been an inevitable victory. That provided me with an opportunity.

The creature attempted to swing at me even more times. Instead of trying to jump out of the way, I had now decided to parry its attacks with my trusted blade. The stupid thing was still much heavier in my hands than I could handle, but after a while, I started getting the hang of fighting again. Barely. Aiming for where the copy's heart would have been, I tried to get one good swing in. Just one, please…! One obstacle down.

I struggled to get up after that. The age, the weight of the sword, the weight of the world, all of that conspired to drag me down.

“Damn it all…”

I had no idea why, but it all made sense now. Deep down, I wanted to live. Maybe… maybe I thought I could earn a second chance. Had I earned one? Only the gods knew, but the gods were not here.

I decided that was a bridge to cross another time.

The Hilami copy tried to attack me next, thinking it could cast her magic. It failed, allowing me the chance to try to throw this heavy thing at the creature's arm. This fight took nearly everything out of me, but I was not about to lose to a glorified treasure chest! Finding strength I hadn't known for years, I slammed my blade into the target. Both obstacles down.

As much as I hated to admit it, the only way to defeat the mimibox, rescue Ipas, and retrieve the necklace was to slay the beast. How I achieved it, I knew not. Perhaps I summoned some last little mote of willpower and endurance. Regardless of how, I made my way to the center of the beast, parrying away whatever it tossed at me. With but one chance to land this critical hit, I thrust my sword into its giant singular eye.

With one last roar of pain, the beast perished. One by one, its arms slumped over, slamming into the treasure-coated floor in a loud, heavy landing.

“Even at my age, it would appear defeating a mimibox is still all too easy,” I said to myself as I stood over the corpse.

“Easy?!” Ipas protested, having become trapped underneath one of the arms of the dead beast. Only a makeshift shield made of various discarded treasures and hastily thrown together with magic protected her from the mess. As she crawled out from below, she continued, “It would have been much easier to defeat if you used magic!”

I shook my head in response, reminding her in the same way everyone in the village reminded each other, “All magic beckons a cost.”

“What does that even mean?” Ipas asked. “Your people always say this, and yet I almost never hear this phrase back home.”

“Ask a dozen people what that means, and you'll get thirteen different answers,” I explained to her. “Probably not the sparkly answer you wanted, but it is so.”

“Do you even know any magic?” By now, she also stood over the mimibox.

“I dabbled in it once, long ago,” I answered, keeping my answer brief so as to not trigger any memories I'd rather have forgotten. But it was too late…

Whether by some sort of magic, whether mine or his, or by sheer willpower alone, I knew not. But we had made our way to the top of the city walls overlooking the river… I had long forgotten its name; it dried out many years ago anyways. He and I stood opposite each other, one at each end of the wall.

I tried to cast the memory out of my mind. None of that nonsense anymore.

“Well, we got what we came here for,” Ipas told me. She wanted to say more, but was interrupted by a deep, immense roar, one much louder and ferocious than any mimibox could muster. Whatever made that sound, neither of us wanted to know. She continued, “We should probably get out of here before something else decides it wants us for tomorrow's breakfast.”

“I could not agree more. We should head back to the village before the Watcher's eye opens.”

She handed the necklace to me and led the way out of the cave.

As we made our way out of the cave, I passed by a large crystal, showing me… myself in all of its entirety. I stared at the old face, the lack of hair on my head, the fact that said hair seemed to have migrated to my face and turned white, and back up to the wrinkles. Oh, the wrinkles… so many of them… The nose that had gotten removed on my first day in the army. If I had remembered correctly, I lost my nose by crossing the wrong side of a high-ranking swordsman. I couldn't remember what I did to upset him, but he thought himself capable of teaching me a lesson. Neither could I recall what lesson he taught me, just that he sliced my nose clean off my face.

I said to myself, “Is this me? Is this what has become of me?”

A brief thought of smashing the crystal crossed my mind, but instead…

I kept on walking.