CHAPTER SEVEN

“LOADING... LOADED.”

The message disappeared. Stars twinkled on tile. The dwarf awoke to himself gasping frantically, though he then ceased with no great physical effort. He stared at the constellations around him spinning circles ceaselessly. He felt another round of bile come up in his throat but managed it all back down. The dwarf had died. The dwarf lived again--not an experience much of his kind could relate to. He shifted his gaze to the book on the altar and roused himself up to investigate. The pages revealed not one line of ink, and the tome itself bore no identity on either end. But it did ask him a familiar question:

“WOULD YOU LIKE TO SAVE YOUR PROGRESS?”

The dwarf spun around as the church’s double doors sprang to life. Yanking the same candelabra off the ground he had held before death, the dwarf dashed and slid it through the doors’ handles. The fortification held, and silence hung after. The dwarf’s movement had arrived mechanically, little input allowed override. His thoughts instead drifted toward the unforgotten memories that had and hadn’t followed, and he resolved to defend against the former. Silence continued. The dwarf conjured up the vile form of what he knew buzzed on the other side of the wood. Hooves, tusk, antennae: the dwarf held it down. The pig is a creature of God, the dwarf had been taught. And the wasp that of the devil, reminded welts collected through childhood. For a beast to be both meant surely a lack of either, or a pure concentration of Satan, his father may have suggested. The dwarf glanced back around him, at the pews and glass and carpet rolled red, at the crater in the ceiling and through the ground. Such a state of disrepair darkened the dwarf’s spirits: he’d learned of a God only after His following had failed. And then, he spied His failed creature, or that of His enemy: an insectoid bovine buzzing. Failing to gain entry through the front, it wisely slipped inside the steeple through the only other means possible. Upon spotting the dwarf it began its second assault.

He, the dwarf, spun and fumbled with the imprisoned candelabra, unable to free it from its bars before the swine crashed down on him. Its stinger glinted above with a menace that intensified his beating heart, the intense memory of impaled flesh fresh and unshakeable. But the dwarf managed to compose himself and snake out from beneath the boar bug, diving for another pitchfork. He wielded the thing with an emotionless grip: the dwarf only then affirmed the feeling of adrenaline, and he steadied his footing in preparation of fight. The beast spun round, stars melting off its stinger. The dwarf dropped the tool and dashed out from the altar and into a hall, his stalker not far behind. ATHLETICS skill updates obstructed the dwarf’s view as he awkwardly rounded a corner. His legs frustrated him, his ability to escape feeling handicapped, a ghost-like sensation of longer length poisoning command of himself. He tripped and stumbled down a door and into a kitchen. The bug came behind. The dwarf had but one option left and chose to turn its knob revealing a poorly stocked pantry. He dove under its shelves and found himself surprised at the sudden appreciation of his new figure squeezed compact between bags of stew fodder. The dwarf’s assailant forced its stinger as deep into the closet as physically possible--to no gain.

But the beast jabbed further. Whether air, shelf or stock, its rampage continued unabated. At this the dwarf felt fear further. But the assailant’s sheer hardheadedness struck the dwarf reminding him of his own swine. Stubbornness was common. The boar side seemed no different even attached to such vile parts. He glanced around at the sparsity until noticing the food sacked near. The beast huffing and snorting in frustration, it slowly ceased such sounds and strikes as a potato rolled over the floor. It investigated; attacked and swallowed. The creature huffed for more.

This time, the dwarf held his offering out by hand. Its antennae twitched strangely as the bug beast undertook another case. He looked into its mirror eyes and frowned at the dozens of reflections that met him back. The beard surpassed his imagination--the rest reminded him only of the curse he bore in a Godless world. Perhaps this animal, too, had become cursed. He gave his sympathy away in the form of a carrot, then another. The dwarf, courage gained, crawled himself closer out from the nook. His stubby arm could only reach so far, but exchanging had him emboldened, as if he had only been hiding within his own barn.

The dwarf reached out with both limited limbs, one hand grasped around a carrot’s upper stem; the other grazed against the creature’s fur. It froze, and the dwarf thought to brace, but he instead continued a relaxed posture practiced over a lifetime--the one the beast had taken away in another. But it instead shot another round of air out and continued its consuming of the carrot, the dwarf given grace to stroke such wild hair. The close proximity to enlarged insectoid parts nearly summoned another round of bile, and it was its failure to form that suddenly reminded the dwarf of his own hunger. The pig wasp seated itself. The dwarf sampled a carrot. He decided on ‘Waspig’.

“ANIMAL HUSBANDRY SKILL XP GAINED”

“ANIMAL HUSBANDRY INCREASED TO 2”...

The church had sat in ruin for some time, the dwarf reconfirmed trodding down its dilapidated halls, Waspig alternating between hoof and hover. Dust clung to near every corner of every hall, contents ranging from furniture in decay to burnt black floors and walls. No signs of life made themselves known aside from huffs and snorts trailing behind. The dwarf judged the shelf stability of the carrots he’d feasted on, opting not to consume raw potatoes all of which bolstered roots spiraling out. None of the kitchen faculties worked, the coal stove cold to a crisp. Nothing here remained but vegetables and a blank book of some sort of sorcery, or witchcraft his father may have clarified.

The dwarf’s investigation of life shifted to a focus on safety. Identifying no other possible exit, he returned to the candelabra jammed through the double doors’ handles and began to slide in a second with some considerable effort. Waspig watched with a strange curiosity. Satisfied in his work--or resigned to perform none further--the dwarf caught his breath, the labor of days endured weighing his head down to the ground. He curled up, and the pigwasp buzzed over offering its warmth. The cool collection of syncopated breaths peacefully disturbed the steeple’s dusty air. The stars danced on the sleeping.