Maria scanned the dark outside and cursed. She wrapped her heavy cloak around her tiny shoulders. She snatched up her bow and sword before throwing her pack onto her back. With a quick look she found that the acolyte’s gear was missing. She hissed into the dark, “Oser?”
After several beats with no response she growled, “Goddamn idiot.”
She quickly stoked the fire to rouse its embers and pulled her hood over her head before moving out into the darkness. The surrounding forest was a haze of glossy green leaves and ivy. Almost all sound was blotted out by the constant fall of the rain.
Scanning the ground around the camp she found a set of fading muddy boot prints headed back toward the ice shelf camp. She sneered and waved a dismissive hand in that direction, “Looks like I’m on my own.”
There was a violent snap to her right and as she turned toward it. Something came hurtling out of the forest and slammed into her. She slid through the mud and water for ten feet. Her attacker snarled above her and she looked up to see something glossy and black. Bone was exposed on its neck and face, especially its massive jaws that came snapping down toward her.
She rolled aside and let out a cry of pain and terror, “Fuck! What… what the.. What in the fuck is…”
The beast snarled and churned up chunks of mud as it bounded on four spindly legs toward her. It was like a wolf save its four vacant eye sockets and its emaciated appearance. It snapped toward her and she only managed to avoid it by tumbling backward with a lack of grace. She managed to reach down and yank her shortblade off her belt.
The wolf beast bounded toward her and she ducked low using all the weight she could manage to bring the blade to bear on the monster’s front left leg. To her surprise there was a squelching sound followed by the explosion of fresh decay in her nostrils as the beast let out a yelp. Its entire leg came off with ease and tumbled into the undergrowth.
She fumbled to pull her shield free and put it on her arm. The hound-like beast was wounded but the injury didn’t seem to distract it. It hobbled on its three remaining legs toward her snapping its exposed jaws in a series of clicks. She managed to slip the shield free and pull it onto her arm while the beast struggled.
With dawning horror she noted several other similar figures, other larger beasts with the same glossy black liquid covering their hides, emerging from the surrounding forest and advancing toward her.
“Fuck!”
She turned and sprinted into the woods. Going to all fours when needed to avoid branches and vines. Behind her the forest was alive with the sound of vegetation being torn apart by the pursuing creatures. There were no howls or other sounds, just the fumbling sound of hooves and paws on wet ground.
She hurried under a fallen tree trunk, squeezing through a gap that would have been impossible in her human body. Glancing back she saw a pair of bone white jaws the size and shape of a deer snap through the gap snapping inches from her leg. Turning to run she felt the ground fall out from under her foot.
Cursing she tumbled forward down a steep slope that had been hidden by the torrential rain and greenery. She felt a sharp stone dig into her side and let out a gasp of pain. The world spun around her as she continued to fall. She managed to right herself and try to slow her slide grabbing at vines as she passed. When she finally came to a halt she was soaking wet, covered in mud, and sure that she was badly cut on her side. She looked back up the slope for signs of her pursuers.
She thought she saw movement but then felt the ground shift beneath her. Cursing and reaching out to try and grab anything she nearly had a hand on a nearby root before the ground crumbled beneath her and she fell into darkness.
She awoke in pain, her eyes filled with stars. She blinked them away and looked up toward an ovoid tear in the roof above her where rain was pouring through and over her. Groaning, she shifted away from the water and tried to stand panting and trying to catch her breath. In considerable pain she stumbled but managed to keep to her feet. Her shield still hung from her left arm but the fall had taken a chunk of wood from its edge. She could feel her pack on her back and suspected that it may have blunted some of the fall. Reaching to her waist she found her sword gone.
After several long painful moments a discussion with Oser at the camp came back to her and she started cursing repeatedly. The fire! She had gone back to the fucking fire! What a damn idiot!
A sharp pain shot through her body radiating from her side. She stumbled and leaned against a wall to avoid collapsing once again. Scanning the chamber around her she could barely make out details from the faint light. There were eight columns decorated with elaborate floral decorations running the length of the room. There was a flash of light in the hole that she had fallen through but no sign of the creatures that had pursued her.
She pulled her pack from her back and dug inside it, pulling out her flints and one of her torches. After several shaky strikes the head of it burst alight and bathed the room in flickering light. The room was made from a yellowish brown stone with strange blue painted murals circling the walls.
Piles of rubble were strewn across the chamber and there appeared to be exits from both ends of the rectangular room, but one was choked with massive rocks. Gulping for breath and wincing at the pain in her side she felt in between the laces of the armor and her hand came away without signs of blood.
Still breathing sharply she muttered, “Hopefully I don’t have internal injuries.”
She thrust the torch toward the murals. There was a procession of strange figures. She recognized features similar but far more exaggerated than the D’Vyre she had seen during the ‘tutorial’. Their ears were far longer and their bodies gangly and hunched. Each of them had skin painted blue and wore green robes. She assumed they were the Vyre progenitors. They made a procession around the walls. She followed them, noting that there appeared to be six individuals who were repeated in between the columns in individual scenes. It reminded her a great deal of the Mayan stelae she had seen in her time on digs in Belize and Guatemala.
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There were even pictograms in some kind of language she didn’t feel she had the time to try and translate. She shuffled around the room studying the images. It seemed the strange hunched Vyre priests were gathering materials for something. An herb from a mountaintop. A glowing stone from a volcano. Blood from some kind of strange serpent. A dragon?
Pausing at the last mural the priests were gathered around a dias of some kind and performing a ritual using the various elements they had gathered in the panels. There was a celestial feminine body made of stone above them that appeared to be shackled in chains.
She was close to the mural and scanning for small details when she heard something skitter in the direction of the open doorway. She looked toward the arch and saw nothing but darkness. Catching sight of her flicking tail just over her shoulder she sighed and passed the torch to her tail. It still felt strange. She pulled her bow from her shoulder and ran her fingers over the feathers to try and get a count.
Maybe ten left? For the hundredth time since she woke up in the ruins of her old hospital she questioned how she had gone from the safety of that place to being in this insane fantasy world. Was it fantasy though? It sure seemed like reality. She played a lot of games like this with Layla when they were younger. It was really the only time that the two of them had gotten along back then. Hopefully that experience would help. Steeling herself she slowed to a halt as she reached the archway.
The glow of her torch shone down a steep stairwell illuminating an open floor forty feet below. She started down the stairwell weaving her tail over her shoulder to extend the light. There was an echoing clank from somewhere in the darkness below.
She tested the string of her bow and muttered another affirmation to try and banish her terror, “You can do this Mare.” She reached the bottom of the stairs to find halls stretching to the left and right strewn with fallen rocks and debris. Immediately across from her was another flight of stairs heading down.
She caught sight of something moving around a corner to her right. She huddled down next to the stairs using the wall as cover and let out a soft whistle. The skitter of the unknown creature moved to investigate and finally emerged into the light. The creature was gleaming bronze and badly dented. It had eight bronze legs and looked like a flattened sphere. There appeared to be an aperture on one side of the thing with a glinting quartz or other gemstone in it.
She gaped at the sight of the strange creature. It wheeled around on its sharp looking bronze legs and stopped when ‘facing’ her direction. The machine started and stabbed its legs into the stone in what might pass for excitement. There was a whistling and grinding sound from inside it as it started to bound over the stones toward her.
She snapped an arrow out of the quiver and leveled the bow aiming at it. She tried to breathe like her father had taught her, keeping her tail steady to keep the light even. She heard her father’s voice in her ear, “Don’t hurry the shot Peanut. Keep your breathing even. Aim small, miss small.”
She exhaled evenly as she fired and let the arrow fly. It zipped across the five remaining feet between her and the mechanical creature and sunk half way into the gemstone eye. It did a surprisingly accurate impersonation of an actual spider as it tumbled over onto its top and rattled as its legs flailed in the air.
Careful not to celebrate too loudly she exhaled sharply and tried to still the rapid beating of her heart. Studying the weaving limbs of the dying machine a nearby sound caught her attention. She looked down the tunnel that the machine had come from and winced as three more of the scuttlers came into the glow of the torch. All of them appeared damaged, two with broken limbs that seemed to slow it down.
She considered her options. Back up the stairs to the blocked chamber she had fallen into, down the stairs across from her or escape down the tunnel to the left.
“Fuck!”
She bounded down the hall to the left. The machines pursued her but only one of them was really able to keep pace. Rounding a corner she skidded to a halt when she noted the same grinding machine call coming from the darkness ahead.
Scanning the hall ahead she noted a doorway on the left hand wall. Hearing the pursuit of the machines coming from both directions she tossed the torch to the ground as a distraction and hurried as quietly as she could to the opening. She had to duck low to squeeze between two fallen stone slabs. Her feet pulled through and into the pitch dark chamber just as the sound of the pursuing automatons filled the hallway.
She huddled against the wall and controlled her breathing. The sound of the machine’s bladed legs hitting the stone continued up and down the hall rapidly. As she slowly made her way further into the darkened chamber she saw the light of the torch flicker about with the sound of one falling leg and then it went out.
She waited there in the pitch darkness huddled down, choosing to remain still as possible for what seemed an eternity. The machines patrolled the hall outside for some time. One of them even ducked low to try and peer through the fallen slabs and into her room. It did not seem to spot her and a short time later the sounds of her pursuers faded away save what sounded like a single creature pacing the hall outside.
She tried to survey her surroundings but there was little light, likely from the faltering remnants of the torch outside, in the chamber.
Internally she asked, “Maybe I could kill the one outside without it raising the alarm? In the dark? That first shot was lucky, idiot.”
Her fifth time frantically scanning the darkness she caught sight of an extremely faint blue glow further into the room. With a quick glance back toward the slow and steady clicking of the machine’s legs she shuffled slowly and quietly as she could manage toward where she had seen the glow,which had now faded.
A memory sparked as she paused and clutched at the symbol hanging around her neck. She wondered to herself, “How do I even do this?”
Focusing on the ‘stoneflesh’ spell that she had seen on her character sheet she tried to activate it. After several long moments there was a soft golden glow between her fingers. She felt a chill run up her legs and arms but the darkness hid the result from her.
If it was accurate she had a minute of protection. Keeping her rapid breathing under control she moved toward the blue light, which had reappeared, and threaded her way around debris that was faintly illuminated by it before it faded again.
She climbed over several large stones and found that she was passing through a hole in the wall and into another chamber. The glow returned again and she stifled a scream. The glow shone from within a rib cage casting the leering skull above it in cerulean pallor. Growling to chastise herself for nearly giving away her position she moved closer. The skeletal figure was reclining on what must have been a bed or a sofa, its mattress completely rotted away. It appeared to be wearing robes that had nearly fallen completely apart.
