RLCraft Fanfiction! (Is that even a thing? Well, it is now, I guess.) - SnowLinx (2024)

Chapter 1: Chapter I: the (very painful) beginning.

Chapter Text

Contains: Gore, Violence, and Adult language.

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"sh*t!!! sh*t!!! sh*t!!!! sh*t!!!!"

Alex ducked as an arrow flew past her head, maintaining her sprint as she ran desperately for the shelter of a small house across the plains. The moon was full, casting ample light on the grassy plains and the many monsters scattered throughout it. She saw zombies lurching towards her, several huge spiders crawling through the grass, and even a winged hippogriff flying around in the sky above her as she ran.

Another arrow struck the ground in front of her with a thud, and her foot caught on the shaft, sending her face-first into the firm ground.
Wasting no time, she pushed herself back up onto her feet and took another step forward. So close! Just a few more-

Thwack!

She gasped as another arrow stabbed into her leg, causing her vision to blur momentarily from the pain. Eyes wide, she pitched forward again, wincing as tears quickly began to collect in her eyes.

Thwack!

She cried out in pain as yet another flint-tipped shaft stabbed through her shoulder, pinning her arm to the dirt. Alex gritted her teeth and tried to force it out of the ground, but the wood scraped against her raw muscle and sent a wave of agony up into her head. She screamed, and pulled herself forward with her one functioning arm, breaking the bloodied shaft of the arrow off just an inch from the end. She struggled to her feet just at the sound of a bow being drawn came from behind her. She whirled around, staring into the hollow sockets of a skeleton as it raised it's bow.

Thwack!

The arrow struck her in the chest, the impact knocking her back against the wooden wall of the house she had been trying to reach.
She looked down, slowly, to the feathered stick protruding from her shirt, her eyes wide.
She coughed, tasting blood, and slowly slid down the wall, leaving a messy smear of crimson on the planked siding.

Thwack!

This one stabbed into her stomach, drawing a wave of fresh agony. She would've screamed if there hadn't been an arrow blocking her trachea.
She slumped forward, her mind growing numb, and a cold sense of dread befalling her senses.
The grass faded to black, and the night went silent."Gah!!!"Alex cried out as she sat upright, her hands going to her chest and abdomen. She panted, the memories of the burning agony still fresh in her mind. She looked down at herself, feeling the pain quickly fade away.
She...she was fine? She lifted the hem of her shirt. No sound, no blood. Same for her shoulder, and her leg as well.
Was that just a dream? She wondered. No, it had felt real. She knew it had happened. Somehow.

"Ugh…" she groaned and sat up, holding her hand against her forehead. It hurt.

She looked around at the surrounding forest. It was dark, and cool. She could hear running water nearby, but the dappled sunlight that pierced through the dense canopy didn't provide enough light to see it from where she was.
Alex got to her feet and took a few shaky steps forward, towards the sound of the river.
Ten yards later, she was standing on the gravel bed of a large stream, with algae and fish scattered throughout the bottom. The water seemed clear, and fresh, so she knelt down and scooped some up in her hands, drinking it. It was refreshing, but it left her throat strangely dry. She decided not to drink any more. She wasn't particularly thirsty anyway.
She stood back up, and looked around. The river took a sharp bend a good bit down the stream, and looking the other direction, she could see that it flowed down from a steep hill that she couldn't quite see over the top of.
However, something caught her eye. A few feet up the opposite bank, the ground seemed to be burned. She frowned. A fire?
Curious, Alex walked over to a shallower spot in the stream and waded across, her simple leather footwraps getting soaked in the cold water. She shivered, but had quickly soothed all the way across.
She climbed the steep bank on the other side, clambering up the slope until she stood at the edge of another plains. For a moment, she took in the view of the peaceful meadow, with a row of trees in the distance, a huge mountain looking off on the horizon…

Then she looked to the left, and her heart stopped.

Burned trees. Scorched ground. Piles of golden nuggets. Singed chests littering the
ashy, blackened ground. And worst of all? the big, red-scaled dragon sitting in the middle of it, staring right at her.

The huge head raised up, swiveling towards her as it opened its mouth with a roar. Alex felt a chill run down her spine, and she fell backwards as she held arms up in a desperate hope that it would do something to deflect the incoming attack.

Surprisingly, it didn't.

The searing flames washed around her body, boiling her flesh instantly. She was stripped to her bones, and then even that was disintegrated in moments. When the flames halted, all that was left was a small scattering of ash that was quickly scattered on the wind.
Satisfied, the dragon huffed and laid back down, closing its eyes for a nap.

Alex's eyes snapped open, every nerve in her body screaming.
Her back arched at the sudden pain, but, slowly, it faded, leaving her gasping for breath on the grass.
She rolled over and clamped her eyes shut, grating her teeth as it fell to a dull burning.

"God...dammit." she grunted as she pushed herself off of the ground. "Well, at least I'm not dead."

"..."

"Or… am I?"

Was this hell? Did she die and go to purgatory or something?
She sat back up and once again took in her surroundings. Another forest. This one seemed to be brighter. Some of the trees weren't as thick, and the canopy above wasn't nearly as dense. She looked at her hands, and flexed her fingers. It occurred to her that she didn't really know...anything.
She knew her name. Alex. And that she was a human. And that was a tree. And that was grass. And those were leaves. But, exactly how she ended up here? Nope. How to fight? Nada. It was like the first time she had woken up, in that field, was when her life had started. There was absolutely nothing before that.

She stood, looking down at herself. A green shirt, brown pants, strips of thin leather wrapped around her feet. Her arms were weak. Hardly any muscle on them at all, and it was the same for the rest of her. She sighed. What now? What was she supposed to do? How was she supposed to survive?
The memories of the skeleton and it's arrows resurfaced, bringing with it a pained grimace. She definitely didn't want that to happen again.

So, how? She needed to find someplace to stay. Somewhere to hide.
She looked around, turning in a circle. Trees. Just trees.
Well, trees were wood, right? And wood could be used for building… things, right?
She stepped up to the closest one, a thick oak. She didn't have anything to cut it down with, she realized. She frowned, the gears turning in her head.
The simplicity of the answer surprised her.
An axe. Duh.
But...How to make one?

She tried to think. But, she knew nothing. Strange how she knew what an axe was, but not how to make one.
She absent-mindedly picked at the bark, bit of it flaking off in her hand. No axe, so what else? A sharp rock? She walked around a bit, but all the stones on the ground were rounded and smooth. After maybe ten minutes she gave up on that, but not before she had accumulated a decent amount of rocks. Just in case.
She tried digging out from under the tree, but there were too many roots in the way, and attempting to push some of the smaller trees over proved to be equally ineffective.
Maybe half an hour later, she had pretty much completely abandoned the idea of getting wood. Nothing she had tried worked.

Exhausted and irritated, she sat down with her back to the large oak and crossed her arms, scowling.
She considered her options. A: Keep trying to find a way to cut down a tree, B: Try and find some other way to build a shelter, or C: Set off on foot for something that would help her, like a cave, or maybe an old abandoned shack. Or like the house that she'd...died at.
The trees were pretty much a lost cause at this point. She'd tried everything she could think of. And for building a shelter without wood? It would take days to gather enough stones to even make a short wall, and she didn't have that much time to waste. She sighed.

"Well, exploring it is then." She said as she stood. She looked around again, picking a direction to walk in. Her instincts told her to go towards the sun, which was busy getting lower in the sky. She picked up a few more stones- never knew when those would come in handy- and set off.

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Some time later…
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Hours passed, and still she walked. Her legs ached. Her lungs were burning. Her mind was foggy from fatigue and dehydration. She breathed through chapped lips, the air stinging the bleeding cracks.
She stopped, surprised, and blinked, the setting sun glaring into her eyes. Was…
Was that water?

She took a few more dogged steps forward and collapsed at the bank of the river.
She bent forwards and scooped up the clear water in her hands, drinking it as quickly as she possibly could. It tasted bad, sure, but she couldn't care less. It was water.
She drank and drank until she couldn't drink anymore, and then slowly stood, the haze slowly clearing away from her eyes as she finally was able to take in her surroundings.

She was out of the forest. Looking behind her, she could see the edge of the trees some distance away. Ahead of her was the river, and beyond that was a grassy plain with wavering grass and several small packs of wild animals.
However, when she happened to glance to the right, she froze, her eyes slowly rising up higher and higher.

"Woah…" she whispered.

It was a massive castle, made of cobbled stones, each easily as big as her head.
Just by looking at it, she could tell it wasn't inhabited. An entire tower had fallen out, and lay sideways on the ground outside the walls. The ivy that had grown up the sides told her it had fallen quite some time ago, and there were still mounds of dirt that had been pushed up when it had landed.

Completely awestruck, Alex walked over to the huge building and craned her head up. It was huge, to say the least.
However, she grew more interested in the fallen tower the more she looked at it. In a few moments, she was staring into the dark with wide eyes.
The only light came through the window, casting a shaft of sunbeams into the room before her.
There had been a floor, but it looked as if it had been destroyed in the fall, then the remains had decayed over time. Only a few, moss-covered supports jutted an inch or two out of the walls.
She stepped inside, running her hands over the walls with wonder all over her face as she looked around the tower interior. Rusted metal barrel rings lay scattered within the loose piles of stones, an old chest sat half-buried in the dirt, an empty rack sat broken against the wall…
Wait, a chest?

Curious, she stepped over and knelt down. Surely anything inside would've rotted or rusted away, right?
She tried to flip up the latch, but broke it instead. She blinked, then shrugged and lifted the lid.
She frowned as she saw what lay inside. A few arrows, somehow intact, some loaves of bread that weren't even the slightest bit stale, and, most interestingly, a sword.
She grabbed the bread and arrows, then she gingerly picked up the sword by the handle. It was heavy. Really heavy. But, she lifted it out and into what little sunlight there was.
The surface of the blade shimmered with a pulsating purple glow, and shone as it had just been polished the other day. No, as if it had been forged just the other day. There wasn't even so much as a scratch on it!
As utter bewildered as she was, she was still glad to have some kind of weapon. Why, with this, she could fight back against the terrors of the night!
Except...well, she didn't really know how to use a sword. Well, sure, you hit something with it and it goes "ow", but that was it. And besides, she didn't even feel like she could swing it with how heavy it was.

And speaking of the terrors of the night…
The sun had just dipped below the horizon, casting a shadow on the side of the planet that just so happened to have her on it.
She looked up just as the last remaining light faded into nothingness, and a sense of urgency and panic immediately set in. She had to get somewhere safer than this. In the castle!
Sticking the blade of the sword through a loop on her belt, she crept to the opening in the tower and looked out into the plains and sparse birch forest on the castle's west side. Already there were figures dotting the darkened landscape, wandering the land in search of their next victim. One of the closer zombies turned to look at her, seemingly staring her right in the eyes.

Alex ducked back, her growing panic causing her breathing to accelerate rapidly.
What was she going to do? What was she going to do?!?
Then she saw the wall across from her.
Cobbled...stones. like the ones she had picked up on her trek.
Of course.

She pulled handfuls of stones out of her inventory bag, a small leather pouch attached to her belt, and began piling them across the opening of the tower's broken base, which now was serving as a very large (and very vulnerable) door.
She heard the footsteps growing closer, rustling through the grass. She increased her pace. The wall was almost to head level now.
She reached back into her bag, but her hand held only dirt.

"sh*t." She muttered. She shoved it back into the bag and stepped back. Was that going to work? Could that thing climb?
A few minutes later, she relaxed. She could hear the rotting husk snarling idly on the other side of the stone wall, but it didn't seem to know how to get through. Or over. Both of those facts were good.

She exhaled shakily and slid down against the wall, a nervous smile breaking her worried expression. She laughed and put a hand to her forehead, stretching her legs out in front of her. She was safe. Well, she hoped she was.

Hours passed, and slowly her eyelids began to grow heavy. The zombie still hadn't left, but she had made the conclusion that it wasn't going to get in. She sighed and crawled to the middle of the "room", laying down on the layer of Earth that had accumulated over the past however many years. She groaned and then closed her eyes, letting her body's tension release as she started to drift off to dreamland. Maybe tomorrow would be a better day?
Ah, who was she kidding. It was gonna be hell, for sure. But hey, she wasn't gonna give up just yet. Maybe later, but she was too tired at the moment to really care.
She smiled, and then was asleep.

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End of chapter one.

Chapter 2: Chapter Two: The Blight

Chapter Text

It was morning when Alex awoke.

The sun was shining through the window of her tower, creating a slightly slanted rectangle of light on the opposite wall. She looked at this spot for a few moments, her mind still groggy and tired.
Rubbing her eyes, she sat up and looked around her at the dark room. She saw the stone wall she had constructed in a panic last night, and smiled.

"Not dead. Nice." She said, slowly, painfully, standing up on her feet. "Ugh. Note to self: rocks and dirt don't make a very good bed." She groaned, holding her sore back.

A grown, long and low, came from behind the wall. Alex sighed.

"You're still there?" She asked. The zombie responded with a growl, and she could hear its rotten hands scrabbling against the cobblestone.

Not good. she thought to herself. How was she going to get out?
Her hand went to the sword at her side, and she glanced at it momentarily before shaking her head.
No, it was too heavy for her to use effectively. And she'd seen the zombies movements that first time in the field. They didn't stagger or shamble, they walked. And quickly, at that, so she could only assume their arms were as strong and able as their legs. Good for them, maybe, but that meant she might not be able to win against one if she had to fight.

But...what were her other options? Wait for it to leave? It had stayed there all night! She didn't have any other exits, so… the only way she could get out was to try and get past the zombie.

She sighed, and stepped up to the wall. She put a hand on the side and pushed, hoping to make it collapse on the monster to buy herself some time.

It didn't even budge.

"Okay, I'm good at wall-building." She groaned. After a moment, she reached up and grabbed the top of the cobblestone wall, and with great difficulty, managed to pull herself up.

She sat on the top of the wall, looking down at the zombie as it glared at her. It let out a hoarse growl and tried to reach her, but the wall was too wide for it to get its arms across.

"Yeah, yeah, f*ck you too." She said as she looked out into the plains. There was something else coming towards her. Something with... no arms. Well, none that she could see.
As it grew closer, she saw that it was basically a head, with a long torso and four teeny-tiny legs that moved like a spider. Huh. It didn't seem very dangerous. The least it seemed it could do was bite her or headbutt her, and she was out of reach for both.

"It's no use. Just go away, you can't get me." She called. It was about five yards away now. She watched it with a curious expression as it walked right up to the wall.

Alex's eyes widened as the thing suddenly started hissing like a fuse, and its body began to swell up like a balloon.

"What the fu-"

Alex felt her foot slip, and she fell backwards off of the wall she'd built just as that thing exploded, shattering the cobblestone and knocking her back into the opposite wall.

She sat, dazed, her ears ringing and her vision blurred. In the fuzzy picture she saw a dark silhouette passed in front of the light. It moved towards her.

Alex blinked a few times, then looked up to see the zombie, with almost half of his entire body blown away, reaching out to grab her.
She instantly reacted, lashing out with a foot into the zombie's midsection. It fell back, stumbling on a nearly flesh-stripped leg. Instantly she was up, and she charged forwards, slamming a fist into the rotten face of her opponent.

The force of the blow launched the creature clear out of the tower section, and into the sunlight beyond. It struck the ground, and Alex watched as it evaporated, turning into a cloud of white smoke that quickly disappeared altogether.

Still dazed, and now somewhat confused, she staggered out into the light to see what had happened. There, where the zombie had fallen, lay a single chunk of its flesh and several glowing green and yellow orbs. She took a step back when they started moving towards her, and yelped when they then jumped into the air and flew into her chest. She paused, waiting for something to happen.

. . .

. . .

Nope. Nothing.

Maybe it was some kind of magic? Like...part of the zombie's soul? Or maybe just Mana? Hm. Well, there was no way she could know for sure.

A noise caught her attention, and when she looked up she gasped, immediately forgetting about the orbs.

All of the zombies and skeletons that were scattered about the meadow were literally burning to death before her very eyes. She watched as a skeleton took a step, then collapsed into a pile of smoldering bones, which then disappeared in a cloud of smoke.

They don't come out in the daytime...because the sun kills them... she thought to herself as she turned in a full circle, monsters dropping left and right.

But then she noticed the one that wasn't being engulfed in flames. The same creature that had blown up her wall and nearly killed her. It just stood, watching a skeleton stagger towards a tree before disintegrating into ashes. Luckily, it was still too far away to notice her, so she was safe.

Alex turned, looking back at the entrance to the fallen tower. It had been effectively destroyed, and the stones had been scattered, some as far away as the birch forest on the other side of the castle's entrance.

"Holy sh*t, you pack a punch." She said, feeling a bit of respect for the kamikaze creature. "It's definitely not safe out here." She said as she gave a quick glance around the meadow. She sighed, looked up at the massive stone wall, then turned and headed for the gates of the castle.

The walls were actually much larger than she had thought. Apparently they stretched some distance into the forest, and what she thought was a castle was only the small towers that sat behind the gates.
She stood in the entrance to a small village, with broken-down doors and empty, desolate-looking houses. She noticed a lot of the houses had large, burned holes in them, and some of them had been torn apart. She took another hesitant step in, and looked more closely at the buildings.

There was a large shop, the front of which read "Nurm's Armory and Smithery", that had appeared to have had the roof lifted off and thrown to the side, where it lay in a heap of burned wooden framing and very burned, very old-looking thatching.

"Armory, eh?" She said, reading the rusted iron sign. "Maybe there's still something left…"

Alex stepped through the doorway, and looked around the slightly singed interior of the shop. There was a counter towards the back, with several empty weapon racks on the wall behind it, and a small dummy made from leather and cloth sat in a corner, covered it cuts and gashes. A table lay smashed, crushed by a fallen beam from the ceiling, and a section of the floor was burned out, revealing a stone basem*nt underneath.
Through the hole in the floor, she spotted numerous chests, a few smashed, sitting in the basem*nt. She smiled. That other chest in the tower had had food, and a shiny sword, so what would be in here?

She walked around the hole, and then behind the counter. After a quick check for any loot, she pushed open the door to the back room.

It was, as forges went, quite cozy. Three furnaces sat against the back wall, and next to them a crucible full of water. Against the other wall was an anvil, as well as a chest and another pot of water. The stone roof was still intact, and the only light came from a warm orange torch that sat on the wall. She glanced at the flaming stick, wondering both why and how it was still burning, then shrugged and decided not to question it.

She lifted the lid to the chest, and peeked inside. She smiled as three gleaming bars of metal looked back at her, and grabbed them all. Metal was extremely useful if she wanted to keep going with that not dying thing. However, something struck her as odd. When she put the metal into her bag, it didn't get any heavier. Nor did it lose any weight when she emptied everything out. Another weird quirk about this world, she decided, and one that would be very useful to her.

She found the door to the basem*nt, and went through, descending the stone stairs carefully. Another lit torch sat on the wall about halfway down.

The basem*nt was some sort of storage room, with several chest and another weapon rack in the corner. Minus two chests that had been crushed by falling rubble, everything down here seemed relatively unharmed.

She knelt down in front of the first chest and lifted the lid: some more bread, a weird bottle of dark red liquid, and a few chunks of coal. All went into the bag.
The second and third chests held similar loot, but the fourth, and final chest, was locked, and she noticed it was also reinforced with metal plates on the edges and front. However, Alex just ripped the lock out of the ancient wood and pushed it open.

"Oh? What's this?" She said as she lifted out a large piece of chainmail. She had to use both hands to lift it up to eye level, the thing was heavy.

It appeared to be a shirt, with leather shoulder pads, and a strip of leather along the bottom hem, to cover up the exposed links. Curious, she pulled the shirt over her shoulders and stood. It was heavy, but it fit. And if it was armor, it was armor. She grabbed the book, and the metal from the chest, and took her leave.

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Some time later
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By the time night had fallen, Alex had explored most of the town. All of the houses were completely empty, and all but a few of the shops had been ransacked completely.

She looked into her bag to review her findings: another loaf of bread, an apple, and a few small nuggets of iron. She sighed. Well, at least she had something.
She looked up at the edge of the wall. The sun had already set below it, so it was only a matter of time before it got completely dark.
She pulled out a torch from her bag, and it sprang alive in her hand, bursting into flames. She started walking towards the shops again. They seemed the most secure, usually only having one door.

It was a much scarier place in the dark, so she picked up her pace.
She pushed open the thankfully-intact door to the leatherworker's shop and stepped inside, closing it behind her.

She set the torch into a wall bracket and then started moving the two tables so that they blocked the door. The windows were unsecured, but she didn't have anything to cover them with, so she just decided to sleep behind the counter and out of sight. All that walking while wearing chainmail had tired her out, and so she wanted to sleep as soon as she could. She took off the armor, and laid it out on the counter for the night, then dragged the rug behind the counter to lay on. It was significantly more comfortable than the dirt and stones she'd used as a bed before, and soon she was, again, fast asleep.

Alex was running. The plains, the full moon, all of it, over again.

The arrow struck the ground in front of her foot, and again she tripped.

Again the stabbing pain of another through her shoulder.

Again she pulled herself up, only to face the bow-wielding skeleton.

Again she felt the arrow in her chest.

Again she felt her life slipping away from her.

Again, she died.

Alex shot upright on the rug, sweat dripping from her forehead as she clutched at her chest, panting as she looked around. The shop. The torch. The rug, her sword. All here. She was safe.

A nightmare. It was only a nightmare, she told herself, trying to calm her racing heart. It worked slightly, and she was as to achieve only a mild panic.
Looking up, she saw light coming in from the windows, and relaxed. Daytime.

The images of burning zombie and flaming skeletons reassured her a little bit, and so she stood up and peeked over the edge of the counter.

Windows intact, tables still blocking the door… yep, she was safe. For the moment, at least.

Alex put on her chainmail shirt, grabbed the sword from where she'd set it under the counter, and walked up to one of the windows. The glass was foggy from age, but she could see that the street outside was empty.
She walked over, pulled the tables out from in front of the door, and stepped outside into the sunlight. She looked out into the roads, and then up at the large mansion on top of the hill towards the rear of the town. Maybe that was the king's palace? Well, probably governor, in a place this small. She'd have to check that out.

She took another glance around at the streets, just to make sure there weren't any critters hiding in the shadows, and caught sight of an odd, purple, flickering glow coming from a small alleyway down the street.

The hell is that? she wondered, walking towards it. Was it a fire? Were fires purple? Something in the back of her mind told her that maybe going to see what the ominous glowing alley was all about wasn't a very smart idea, but she didn't care about that.

As she got closer, she suddenly heard a familiar growling. A zombie. Startled, she put a hand on the handle of her sword and froze. She felt her heart stop when she saw what walked out of the alleyway, though.

Grrrrrrrrrrr…

A zombie, taller than any she'd seen, and clad head to toe in shining golden armor. Its entire body was wreathed in purple flames, and its eyes were just twin pools of purple light. And worst of all?

It had a sword.

Slowly, it swiveled its head towards her, the muscles in its neck bulging. The glowing eyes narrowed, and with a roar, it suddenly launched itself towards her.

Holy sh*t!

She barely brought up the sword in time to deflect the attack that the zombie swung at her, and the shock of the blades connecting nearly made her drop her sword.
The zombie's momentum carried it past her and into the wall of the house opposite the street. The stones cracked, but the zombie just got right back up, then turned and faced her again, baring its teeth.

Dammit….I can't lose...not after I've come this far….

She glared at the beast and planted her feet in place, holding her sword up with difficulty. She just managed to get out of the way before the sword came stabbing towards her, although it still grazed her arm. Again, the zombie just blew right past, and its sword stabbed into the wall of the building behind her and stuck there.

Agh! sh*t, he's fast! she thought as she stumbled, the tip of her sword clanging against the stone road as she pressed a hand to the stinging cut on her arm. She gritted her teeth, and turned around to face him.

Don't lose focus! Keep fighting! a voice in the back of her head urged her on.

Alex's arms were numb, and she could barely lift the sword to face the monster, but she did. And she stared him down with the steely determination she felt rising inside of her. She couldn't outrun him, so she had to fight. Even if it meant dying. But hey, she'd just come right back. He wouldn't. At least, she hoped not.

The zombie yanked its sword from the wall and took a step forward, growling menacingly.

The memories of her running, scared, feeling helpless came rushing back.

Alex exhaled and gripped her blade tighter. Maybe she couldn't win, but God dammit, she was going to fight. She wasn't going to let this world push her around anymore.

"Come on, you son of bitch!" She taunted, taking a step forwards. "Try and get me!"

CLANG

Again, she barely had time to move her blade before he shot forward again, but this time her fear was replaced by a searing anger that burned inside of her mind. She staggered to the side, then whirled around.

CLANG

Their swords met with a crash, and again she struggled to retain her balance as the force of the blow pushed her aside.

Suddenly, she felt something grab the back of her chainmail armor, and the next thing she knew, she was flying through the air down the street.

Crash!

She cried out as she collided with the street, and she slid along the rough stones for a good twenty feet before she slowed to a halt. She coughed. Her chest hurt, and her ankle was most likely sprained, but she hardly felt the pain.

Wincing, she pushed herself off the ground as the thudding footsteps grew closer. She looked up at the approaching beast.

She grabbed her sword, which lay on the ground next to her, and readied it again as she got back up.

I… Won't… lose! she told herself as she gripped her sword tighter.

For a moment, the first beast seemed to study her, looking her up and down. It was possible it was just gauging its next attack, but she didn't have time to think about it before a sword was swinging at her head.

There! she saw he flash of steel, and quickly judged where the blade was headed.

This time, she ducked, and swung her own weapon at her opponent's armored midsection. It connected, and though the gold wasn't very hard, but it still rendered her attack close to ineffective. She only managed to make a small cut on the monsters side, one he didn't even seem to feel. And the heat from the flames emanating off of his body made her instinctively her step back.

Ah! Hot fire! Ow!

However, her unexpected movement threw the zombie off balance and he fell, giving her time to retreat a few steps before he got back up.

When he did, he just stood for a moment, and watched her back away. Was he sizing her up again? Just how smart was this hunk of old meat?

Again his blade flashed, this time lower, and she was just barely able to keep it from penetrating her side by whacking it away with her own.

Crunch!

She didn't, however, see the big golden fist until it had slammed into her sternum.
She reeled back, stunned, but managed to stay upright. She could taste blood in her mouth, and she was pretty sure a few of her ribs were broken, but she didn't care.
She attacked this time, taking a step forward and swung her blade at the zombie's head with all her might.

Clank!

Alex reeled as her sword simply bounced off of his armored hand, which he had put up in an instant to protect himself. She stepped back as he stood up from his knees, the purple inferno suddenly growing larger.

GRAAAAAAH!!!

With a mighty roar, the blade came crashing down onto hers. She didn't know how she was able to keep blocking his attacks, but it was working. She moved her blade around and braced it against her forearm to deflect his next strike. And then the next. And the next.

CLANG

She was pushed back by the force of the blow, but she kept her stance.

CLANG

She was almost pounded into the road, but she remained standing.

CLANG

She threw all of her weight into pushing his blade away, creating an opening. She attack, but only grazed his armored thigh.

CLANG

CLANG

CLANG

He rained blow after blow upon her, but whether it was by luck or skill she didn't know she had, she defelcted every single attack. She ducked under the punch that he threw at her, then retaliated with a fist of her own aimed at the zombie's unprotected face. She felt something crack, and the purple flames singed her hand, causing her to recoil.

Dammit! she cursed inwardly, clenching her fist tighter as she stumbled over a raised stone in the road.

Another hand grabbed a fistful of her chest piece.

Oh sh*t.

Again she was thrown through the air, but by some miracle, she managed to land on her feet and slide safely to a stop. Not-so-luckily, however, was her sword, that clattered to the ground several meters away.

RAAAH!

She dodged to the side as the zombie pounced, somehow managing to grab his wrist as it passed. The hot metal burned her hands, but she ignored the pain, using all her might to push the zombie over. Surprised, he relaxed the grip on his sword slightly, and with a furious cry Alex slammed an open palm into the underside of his wrist. She must've hit something, because the sword fell from his hand the next moment.

She snatched it, and landed a kick to the zombie's face, burning the tags on her feet, then took off towards the other sword on the ground.

GRAAAH!!!

She heard another roar from behind her just as she had grabbed the handle of her weapon, and she whirled around just as the zombie launched off of the ground with enough force to leave a crater in the road where he had been standing.

Boom! a sound like a cannon rent the air as the zombie launched himself forwards. Alex turned, a sword in each hand, just as the zombie came flying towards her faster than an arrow from a longbow.

Time ground to a crawl as she made her final decision:

She wasn't going to let this world push her around anymore.

"DIE, YOU MOTHERf*ckER!!!"

She swung the swords, both at once, and they struck the beast on the shoulder and waist. The sword she had stolen shattered into pieces, but hers cut through the armor and into the flesh below. She staggered one way, and he flew past, crashing into the road with a clatter of metal.

She fell to her hands and knees, clutching the broken sword in her hand. She looked at it for a second, then with a cry of anger she threw it at the zombie as he was getting up.

The broken blade stabbed into a weakened spot of his armor, but if he noticed, he didn't care. He stood and again threw himself at his adversary, roaring with rage.

Die, you motherf*cker!!!

Alex's vision was tinted red with rage, sheer hatred, and a bitter need for revenge. With both hands on the handle of her sword, she dove forwards, screaming a fearsome cry of battle. Her blade sank up to the hilt into the zombie's neck, breaking through the armor on the other side. His fist collided with her shoulder, and she felt something snap, but she didn't care. She pushed the sword harder, bracing her feet against the road. If this hadn't killed it, then she was going to do it again.

However, with the severing of its spinal cord, the zombie went limp, and with a whoosh, it had disappeared. The empty armor clattered to the ground as the smoke dissipated, leaving only the spoils of her victory.

"Ugh…"

Alex fell to her knees, weak and shaking. Her entire body was in pain, her arms felt like lead, and the sword fell uselessly to the ground next to her. Panting heavily from both exhaustion and exhilaration, she looked up at the pile of armor on the ground.

There was a small red shard of some kind of crystal, a roll of bandages laying among the battered golden plates, and a plethora of the little green and yellow orbs.

The orbs slid across the ground, and then flew up into her chest, brining with them a wave of energy that coursed throughout her entire body, revitalising her. The pain was reduced to a much more manageable level, and the feeling crept back into her limbs. She coughed twice, then wiped her mouth, leaving a smear of blood on her arm, and smiled.

She stood slowly, grabbing her sword from the ground and shoving the blade into it's loop.

"I...won." she said, looking down at the pile of loot, as if rubbing in her victory to the dead zombie. "You lost. From now on, you'll always lose. All of you."

And that was a promise.

She coughed again, then bent over and gathered up everything on the ground, including the armor. She stuffed it all into her inventory bag, and then staggered slowly and painfully back to her shop.

============================================================
End of Chapter Two.

Chapter 3: The Mansion

Chapter Text

Alex awoke to the sound of something banging on her door. She opened her eyes and sat up, shaking the grogginess from her head. Her shoulder still hurt, and the movement of crawling forward to peek over the counter sent waves of agony through the entire left side of her body. She did her best to ignore it, and poked her head around the corner of the bar.

"Dammit." she cursed under her breath. When she saw the tables laying a few feet from the door. She'd forgotten to barricade it!

She stood, wincing from the pain in her chest and the cut on her arm, and staggered over to the wooden barrier. Through the broken window, she saw another zombie as he repeatedly bashed his fists into the door. Already there were cracks forming in the wood. Now rushed, she shoved the table in front of the door with her good arm. She was turning to grab ahold of the second one when he banging stopped.

She turned, and looked back over her shoulder as the zombie glared at her through the broken window slots, then turned and shambled away. She leaned forward and watched it go, following the shade created by the houses, off down the street in search of am easier victim.

"Huh… Okay then, maybe you guys aren't as dumb as you look." She muttered. Of course, the big one she'd fought yesterday seemed pretty intelligent, so why couldn't the rest be?

Well, doesn't matter. They still want to murder me, so I'm still gonna murder them. She told herself. That reminded her. She needed to get stronger. Learn how to fight effectively, get some armor. At least something better than the chainmail. For all its worth, many of the links had broken during her fight, and so had created numerous small holes in the protective layer of metal.

And speaking of armor...

Walking back to the counter, she pulled out the drops from the fight.
Golden chestplate, golden leggings, a shiny golden helmet…
She set each one out on the counter with a grunt. What kind of idiot would make gold armor? It was heavy, the metal was far too soft to offer protection from arrows, and it was just...not the best.

Then, a spike of pain in her shoulder caused her to wince and hiss in a quick breath. She needed something to take care of that.

Wait, didn't she get some bandages?
Reaching into her sack, she drew out the roll of cloth and looked at it, frowning. It wouldn't help for a fracture.

Well, it'll keep this cut clean, at least. she said silently. She pulled out a four-foot length of the bandages and lifted up her sleeve, revealing the slice the zombie had given her with his sword. The cut had just began to scab over, so she took a section of the bandage and wiped the wound clean, gritting her teeth through the sting it brought with it. Then, she wound the strip around her arm and pressed the end into he dressing. Something in the cloth caused it to stick, so she didn't have to tie it to keep it in place.

Just as she was getting ready to put the roll back into her bag, the area where she'd just applied the dressing started to tingle. Like when your leg falls asleep after you've sat down too long. Confused, she looked back at the cloth. She didn't wrap it that tightly, did she?
Curious, she pulled up her sleeve to look.

"What…?"

The entire bandage had just... dissapeared, along with the cut she'd laid it over. She looked down. Nope, it hadn't gone on the floor. Did she somehow push it farther up her arm? No, there was nothing under her shirt. Interesting.

"Huh...well, that's handy, I guess." She said, running a finger over the area where the cut had been. Another pang of agony arose from her shoulder as the bone scraped against itself. She cursed, slowly moved her arm down to her side, and then looked back at the roll of bandages. Maybe…?

A few seconds later, she had struggled painfully out of her shirt and was wrapping another layer of cloth around her shoulder. She pushed the hempen strap of her crude bra closer to her neck, and then tore off the strip of bandage. The roll was almost gone now.

As she watched, the tingling sensation radiated from her shoulder, and a sharp crack followed by an overwhelming amount of pain caused her to drop to the floor as the bone realigned itself and healed.

"Gah!" she cried out as she hit the other rug that lay on the other side of the counter.

She dug her fingers into the bar as the agony slowly faded, soothed by whatever medicines were in the cloth. She panted, and pushed herself off the floor.

She sat back against the bar and tested her shoulder. It worked. It moved. It was healed. Despite the burning ache, she smiled.

"This...is so much better."

But her elation was short-lived. She quickly remembered just how much trouble she was in. Very little food, no plan, no decent armor…

She blinked, remembering the golden plates she'd laid out on the counter. Standing, she turned and examined the set. She could wear this...but it'd be really heavy. She was just getting used to the weight of the chainmail as it was. And, it was gold, too. Her sword had cut through it with relative ease, so what would an arrow do to it? Or if she met another sword-wielding zombie?

"It's certainly not the best…" she muttered, running her fingers over the metal.

"But-...urgh..."she grunted as she struggled to lift the chestplate off the bar. "It's...better than…nothing!" She said as she lifted it over her head and put it on.

As with the chainmail, the oversized armor suddenly shrunk to fit her size, fitting snugly on her body. Although, the sheer weight of it caused her legs to give out, and was just able to cautch herself on the edge of the counter and pull herself up.

"Holy sh*t!" She said as she wanted onto the bar. "How did that bastard even move in this?" She panted as she leaned over the side of the counter. It did fit over her chainmail, though, so that was a plus. She looked down at it, and sighed. She wasn't strong anough for this.

"Ugh...well, there's only one way to get strong." She said, sounding a bit more depressed than the would've liked. Struggling she reached out and grabbed the shining leggings, pulling them towards her.

Three minutes later, she was fully dressed in golden armor.
The boots were more of foot-coverings, metal plates that went around her feet, leaving room for shoes or boots in between them. Altogether, she felt like she was wearing a truck. She had to support herself with both arms on the counter as she took slow, clunking steps along it.

Clunk.

"Hooooly f*ck, this sh*t weighs a ton."

Clunk

"Oh, jeez, this is gonna suck."

Clunk

"Why...do I do this to myself? Oh, right."

There was only one way to get strong; to work for it. And that was exactly what she was planning to do.

====================================
Some time later that day…
====================================

Alex was thristy.

Walking back and forth along the counter had made her sweat so much, there was a long wet splotch on the floorboards in front of the bar. She had walked until she literally couldn't go anymore, and she had collapsed in a big, shiny, metal heap. It wasn't until almost half an hour later that she found the energy to take off the armor and put it back into her bag.

Her entire body was on fire. Her muscles burned, and it took a momumental effort to do so much as lift a loaf of bread to her mouth. It didn't help with the dryness in her throat, but she had worked up a bit of an appetite.

Water...was there any nearby? The river, of course, but...she didn't know if she could make it that far. Maybe there was a working fountain, or a pot with rainwater sitting outside or…

The cauldrons. In the blacksmith's. She remembered, they'd been full of water. That wasn't very far from here at all, just up the street a block or two.

She stood, slowly, and looked out the windows.

"Oh. Crap. It'll have to wait till tomorrow." She muttered through a dry throat as she saw the darkening street through the dirty windows.

She flopped down onto her little rug-bed, set her bag under her head, and closed her eyes. By the time the skeletons had emerged and the zombies had awoken, she was sleeping, safe and sound.

==============================================
The next morning...
==============================================

Alex opened the door to the leatherworker's shop, carefully peering out into the street.

Clear.

She stepped out of the door, closing it softly behind her. She didn't see anything nearby, but she didn't want to alert any critters that might be hiding out of sight.
Slowly, stiffly, she crossed the road. She was rested, sure, but she still felt like her body was trying to murder her. But, as they say, sore today, stronger tommorow.

She licked her dry lips as she painfully walked up the sidewalk towards the shattered and burned blacksmith's. Once inside, she went straight to the forge and shoved her face into the cauldron full of crystal clear water.
Once she had drunken her fill, she felt much better.

She sat back against the wall next to the cauldron, wanting to rest her tired muscles for a bit. She leaned against the cool side of the cauldron and sighed. Well, she had water. At least, a good amount of it. It would last maybe a week, which was good.

She opened her eyes only after she realized she had closed them. God, she was tired.
Alex stood up and headed for the door, still slowly, still painfully. She'd rest for today. No more walking back and forth in full armor untill at least tomorrow.

Back at the leatherworker's, Alex laid down on her rug, staring up at the ceiling. She was going to hide away in here for a while, excersise, go get water when she needed it. Her only problem was food. She only had a few more loaves of bread, and an apple. Where was she going to get more? The market had been completely empty, all of the houses she'd been able to search had only been able to give her what she now had, and there wasn't any sort of farm or grainery that she could find anywhere in the city. She took a glance at the sword that lay next to her, still shining and glowing ever-so faintly. That was something else she needed to do. Train with her sword. Wasn't there a training dummy at the blacksmith's? Yeah, she'd seen it the first time she went in. She reminded herself to bring it back to her base at some point.

He stomach growled. She was getting hungry again. Sighing, she pulled out the apple and looked at it. Fruit was healthy, at least. She bit into it, the crisp sweetness bringing a smile to her face. Yummy.

After she'd eaten that, she had some bread, leaving her with five whole loaves left. Not good. She estimated she'd get one more day on this, and then she'd have to go scavenging, or find-

Wait.

What about the big house on the hill? She handy checked that out yet. Something that big would surely have a pantry or cellar or something, right?

She frowned, picturing the distance she'd have to traverse. The town sat at the base of a large hill, and then the side of the hill was a birch forest, and a single, brick road that led up to the big mansion. She'd go there tommorow. Since her food was almost out, anyway.
For now, though, I should just rest. I hurt. It sucks. she thought silently as she closed her eyes and rolled into her side.

Despite being full of armor, some dirt, bread, coal, and metal, her inventory bag made a very comfy pillow, she noticed. She smiled. Someday, she'd make a proper bed. With a mattress and everything. That would be nice.

===========================================
Early the next morning…
===========================================

Alex stepped outside, her sword at the ready. Tense, she scanned the streets for any sign of hostile activity, but found none.
She didn't relax though. She'd seen a skeleton burn up in the sunlight through the window when she'd woken up, and she cautiously walked over to where it had gone poof only moments before. On the ground lay two long bones, and a singular arrow. She glanced around, then bent over to pick them up.

If the skeleton on itself burned in the daylight, why don't these? She asked herself as she held up the leg bones. Odd… Probably better off not questioning it. I'm sure I can use these for something.

She stuck the bones and the arrow in her bag, and turned to face the mansion. It was big. A forest lay on the side of the hill closest to her, with a path cut down the middle and a large, wide road going up to the front of the big building. The rooftop, she could see over the tops of the trees, and with that she could tell it was very large.

Taking in a deep breath, she started walking. Fortunately, the workout she'd given herself two days prior had really made a difference in her physical strength. She could now lift her sword without putting all her weight into it!

She made her way down the street, over the wreck of a shop that seemed to have been blown out onto the road, and around the small, dried out fountain that sat in the middle of the market. A statue of a pair of dolphins stood in the center, riding on a cresting wave. However, the statues had weathered over time, and now the head of one of the dolphins lay on the ground several meters away from the base of the fountain. It was a beautiful statue, but she didn't have time to admire it. She needed to get a move on.

She hurried out of the market, and soon she found herself standing at the bottom of the hill.

On both sides of the road that snaked up the hill was a dark but forest. She scowled nervously. If there was anything hiding in there, she'd be exposed. She exhaled, and started walking, one hand on her sword, up the hill.

The road was rather steep, and she struggled to keep a steady pace. But, fortunately for her, nothing jumped out to murder her quite yet.

As she reached slightly flat spot on the side of the hill, she saw what looked like a large wooden crate that had been dropped onto a pile of firewood. Upon closer inspection, she saw that it was actually a wagon. The axle had snapped, and then one entire side of it had been burned and blackened. She gave a nervous glance into the sky. The more she looked at the destruction, she more she worried that it could've been caused by a very, very large dragon.

Inside the wagon was a small barrel, and when she looked inside she found three more apples sitting in the bottom. She smiled. Food!

She grabbed them and shoved them into her bag, then climbed down from the cart and kept walking. She glanced to her sides every few seconds, scanning the trees for any sign of an enemy. A feeling of unease began to grow in her chest as she drew nearer to the manor.

As she created the top of the hill, and saw what lay in the courtyard, her heart nearly stopped.

The skeleton of a huge dragon lay sprawled across the stones, surrounded by scorch marks and charred craters in the ground, as well as shattered swords, broken arrows, and blackened armor scattered all around.

She stepped back, her head darting from side to side as she looked from the gaping maw, easily big enough for her to walk through, to the impossibly long tail, that sat amid a pile of rubble it had brought down from the side of the manor.

That... that's huge!!! she thought, suddenly very, very relieved that it was dead.

Her curiosity got the better of her, and she slowly stepped through the piles of human bones and slightly melted armor. Once she got closer, her level of amazment only increased. The ribcade was easily four meters tall, and the ribs themselves were almost as thick as her midsection was wide.

The skull of the thing was even more terrifying. It lay sideways on the stones, with its mouth hanging open like a gateway to death. Its teeth were as big as her forearm, and she could step through the underside of the jaw without so much as ducking.

She chuckled in spite of herself. I'm in a dragon's mouth!
She shook her head, and looked back along the spinal cord. The body looked like a cavern, just made of ribs, and the pelvis was an interesting shape, although she saw how it worked pretty well. She started to wonder what exactly had happened to the city. The town had destroyed and burned, so that's probably where the dragon had started its rampage. Then it probably came up here to destroy the manor and was killed.

She looked out at the nearly countless shattered skeletons, most of them charred, clad in armor with either bows or swords. Well, they weren't alive and trying to kill her, so yay. She walked over and looked down at one of them. She sighed, took the sword that lay beside him, as well as the bow, and put them in her bag.

"Did it really take your entire army to kill this thing?" She asked, looking back at the dragon. "Well, more like troop, given how few of you there are."

She counted. Twenty-seven dead soldiers lay in a semicircle around the oversized lizard's corpse. That didn't seem like nearly enough to protect a whole city, but she assumed that a lot of people were able to flee. However, these unfortunate few were probably the governor(or whatever)'s personal guard.

She stepped out of the dragon's mouth and turned, looking up at the two-story building before her. Well, maybe they had some good food stored away somewhere. Whoever they were, they certainly had had plenty of money.

She walked under a skeletal wing, pausing briefly to examine the huge claws that jutted out of one of the joints.

So they have hands...in their wings. Huh. she noted, then continued up towards the main entrance.

On the front patio, she turned the handle of the door and pushed. It didn't budge. Something was blocking it on the other side, probably deadbolts.

She sighed, then looked around, certain that there'd be another way in.

Her face brightened when she saw the big, tall, delicate looking, most likely smashable stained glass windows that sat on either side of the porch.

She stopped down the front stairs and picked up a loose brick that was by the dead dragon's foot. She weighed it in her hands, then walked through the overgrown flowerbed up to the window on the right of the porch.

"Rest in peices" She said as she lobbed the brick at it with all her strength.

The was an ear-splitting crash, and the entire widow shattered.
Alex took a surprised step back and raised her arm to shield her face from the fragments of glass that peppered her as the window smashed down onto the stone windowsill.

"f*ck! Ow!" She said as a few of the sharp shards cut her exposed arms.

She winced and gently brushed the rest of the glass off of her arms, frowning at the small, stinging cuts.
"Probably should've seen that coming." She said, pulling a small, orange-stained shard out of her arm. She flicked it away and looked up at the broken window. "Well, at least that worked."

She brought out the extra sword she taken from the guard's body, and used it to sweep away the rest of the glass at the bottom of the windowsill, creating a mostly safe way in and out. She stuck the other sword in the belt loop opposite of her other, shinier sword, and started to clamber up. She strained and struggled, but she just couldn't manage to get up onto the windowsill. She sighed and dropped back down. glancing over at the pile of large, loose bricks by the dragon's tail.

"Yeah…" she said to herself, walking towards the wreckage.

Five minutes later, she had constructed a set of crude steps up to the window by stacking the large blocks of stone (the ones she could lift, at least) on top of one another. Testing it with her foot, she smiled with satisfaction when it didn't even wobble. She was good at building things, apparently.

Then she stepped up into the window, sword at the ready to fight anything that tried to kill her. She wasn't necessarily confident that she could win, but at least she had a slight chance.

The fist thing she saw was a zombie, standing in the shadows a little ways down the hallway to her right. She stepped down into the dark room and crouched, looking behind her to make sure she was safe from that way. Fortunately, the other way was clear of baddies.

However, the zombie must've spotted her, because it began walking towards her with a familiar clink clinking sound. As it stepped into the multicolored light from an unbroken window, she saw the sparkle of chainmail glinting like a prismatic rainbow from the stained glass.

"Well, sh*t." She muttered. So much more being sneaky. "Hey! Back off!" She called out.

Either he didn't hear, or don't care, because he kept approaching with outstretched arms ready to grab her. Alex cursed and pulled the golden helmet out of her bag and slipped it on before putting away the guard's sword and drawing her own.

She waited, watching him as he drew nearer. She glanced back behind her again to make sure nothing was sneaking up on her, then adjusted her stance a bit, holding the blade down and behind her to eliminate the need to wind up for a swing. If she couldn't kill it, she could at least give herself a better chance to get away by knocking it down.

When it came into range, she stepped forward and threw all her weight into swinging the heavy blade at her foe.

The zombie didn't even try to dodge, and the blow struck him just below the arm, right on his ribcage. Alex stepped back as he stumbled to the side, a decently-sized gash in his armor. She swung again, hitting him on his chained head. She felt something break, probably the zombie's skull, and he was knocked flat onto his back by the force of the attack.

Alex felt a surge of energy as she saw him fall. Maybe she could beat him!

She retreated a few steps, and waited for him to get back up. He did, although slowly, and again started walking towards her.

"Don't you ever give up?" She asked. The only reply was a growl, which she took as a 'no'.

She struck again, tearing a hole in the front of his armor before the links stopped her sword. She retreated further and looked at the hole. Another hit in the same spot should hurt pretty good, she thought. Although, he probably didn't feel pain, being a zombie and all, it was still nice to think about.

She swung again, hitting the same flight location and breaking a whole bunch of ribs, then, using her sword's momentum, she swung the blade back down, and then up over her head.

It came crashing down with enough force to split the mailed helmet, and the head beneath it as well. Alex's eyes widened in mild surprise at the effectiveness of the blow, and stepped out of the way as the now twice-dead body fell forwards onto the carpeted floor. As all bodies did, (excluding dragons, apparently) it evaporated into a cloud of white smoke, leaving behind only of the green orbs and another roll of bandages, which she snatched up excitedly.

"Yes! Thank you!" She said as she stuck the roll in her bag as the orbs flew into her chest. Still not used to the sensation, she shuddered and stepped back. But hey, the numbness in her arms faded noticeably afterwards. She rubbed the area where they'd dissapeared with her palm, then shouldered her blade and walked off down the hall.

"Nothing. Again." She said, closing another hallway door behind her. She sighed. Was there anything in this house? All the drawers, the cabinets, the closets, everything had been empty thus far.

Alex found herself walking through the hallway that the dragon had demolished, opposite to the one she'd entered in. She raised her brows as she examined the collapsed wall, and the large, spiked club that sat at the end of the dragon's tail among a the fragmented remains of a table.

"That...would certainly hurt…" she mused, leaning down and knocking on the smooth plate of bone. It sounded hollow, but the bone was extremely thick. It'd have to be, if dragons used their tail to smash things.

By looking at this side of the house, you could tell they indeed did. Bricks and windows were scattered, smashed, cracked, and utterly destroyed, and there were even several large holes in the other wall, one of them with a brick still lodged halfway through it.

She stood and continued, opening another doorway. She expected to face yet another barren room, but instead she was greeted with a sharp stone stairway that went down into complete darkness.

She stood and gazed down the passageway, wondering what could be down there.

Monsters? Probably. Food? Hopefully. It did look like a wine cellar, after all.

After a moment, she backed off, turning to pick up a rock. She went back to the door and better it down the stairway. A moment after it passed into the inky blackness, she heard it shatter, and a surprised growl echoed up the stairwell. She took a step back. Was that a zombie? It sounded...off.

She drew her sword, and faced the doorway, ready to kick it closed if she needed to.

However, she wasn't prepared for what bounded up the stairs next.

It was some sort of cross between a lizard and some kind of dog, or wolf, with long, sharp claws that scraped the stone stairs as it charged at her. It was easily three feet tall, and looked altogether like something out of a nightmare.

Gasping, she lunged out and slammed the wooden door closed with her leg. The door was light enough for her to close it in time, but she had a feeling that it wouldn't hold for very long. Maybe the claws that stabbed through the bottom panel like it was paper were a hint.

"sh*t." Alex cursed under her breath as it began to tear a hole in the door, shredding the wood with its razor-like claws. She readied her blade, and waited for the beast to stick its head through.

It did, probably to see if it could get through yet. She yelled, and the edge of her blade slashed over the creature's right eye as she swung at it.

It made a sound halfway between a hiss, and a snarl, then shoved it's bulky body through the door and charged at her, leaping with outstretched claws.

Oh, sh*t he's pissed! She thought as she made a panicked dodge to the right. Even though she didn't plan it, she left the creature's field of vision due to it's injured eye, and it spent a moment trying to locate her, giving her time to retreat a few steps back.

However, when it spotted her, it once more leapt at the human with uncontrollable fury. Alex paused, then snarled herself and actually stepped toward the Chupacabra, bringing her knee up to smash into it's jaw.

The force of the two attacks colliding sent a spike of pain up Alex's leg, but by the way the beast was knocked onto it's side and lay there for a moment told her it had hurt it more than it did her.

Chupacabra. She said silently, retreating further so as to give herself a chance to avoid the next attack. She didn't know where the information came from, but she didn't have time to think about it at the moment, as her enemy was already back on her feet, and growling at her furiously.

It seemed a bit hesitant to attack, know that it knew she was a threat instead of easy prey. However, Alex readied herself and her sword as it came bounding at her again.

This time, she knew what to expect, and sidestepped whilst aiming a swing low to her side. Despite the manuever, the monster reached out and raked its claws across her thigh just as the blade bit into its neck. If it weren't for the tough scales under it's fur, the blow would've surely severed it's head clean off. Instead, however, the sword cut instead almost down the the spine, leaving a nasty, heavily bleeding gash on the Chupacabra as it went tumbling past.

Alex hissed in pain, and quickly put a hand down over the cuts, which only made it hurt worse. Whatever. She didn't have time to get distracted by pain. She whirled around to see the monster struggling to get up from the ground. She winced as her leg threatened to give out from under her, but she steadied herself and glared at her adversary as it faced her again.

It stepped forward, then leapt right at her head.

She didn't have time to counterattack with her sword, so she released the handle. In a desperate attempt to deflect the monster, she quickly brought a fist up in a sloppy uppercut, nailing the Chupacabra right in the chin. Its head jerked up, and the rest of its body collided with her forearm. In a split-second decision, she threw her weight to the side and shoved the creature away, causing it to land on the dead dragon's spiked club tail. Her sword clattered to the floor, and she quickly glanced over at the creature. One of the tail spikes had speared right through it's left hind leg, temporarily immobilizing it as it struggled to free itself.

Wasting no time, Alex snatched up her sword and swung it up over her head.

Chop!

Alex watched as the now-severed head of the Chupacabra rolled to a stop against her foot, and then evaporated. She watched as the familiar orbs appeared and jumped into her, soothing her muscles slightly. She then lowered her blade, wincing as a shooting pain lanced up her arm. When she looked at it, she discovered that the Chupacabra's claws had gouged her arm when she had punched it.

"Ow. Damm, that hurts." She muttered. "Oh, yeah, bandages."

Sheathing her sword, she pulled the partial roll out of her bag, and used the rest of it to heal the injuries on her arm and leg. When that was done, she glanced over at the spot where the body of the slain Chupacabra was, and saw that it had left behind three large, bloody, scaly chunks of meat. Stooping to pick them up, she made a face at how the warm flesh oozed with thick blood and squished weirdly in her hand, but she stowed them in her bag anyway. Food was food.

If it didn't kill her, which... this meat looked like it might.

She wiped her hands on the carpet, then rose and looked back at the door.

"What's down there, i wonder?" She asked herself out loud. Curious, she opened it and peered back into the darkness.

"Helloooo?" She called. "Any more creepy crawlies down there?"

She waited for a reply, but none came. She shrugged and pulled a torch from her bag. She only had four, she she'd have to make them last.

Speaking of which, did they ever burn out? I mean, how long had the sat on the walls in the city? Decades? Centuries? And if someone had been there more recently and put them there themselves, wouldn't they have taken the loot from the shops she'd found them at?

She shook off the questions and started down the steps, torch held high to illuminate the darkness.

To her surprise, the room was quite small, but lined with shelves that held many large barrels.

Huh...food, or booze? She wondered. Curious, she opened the lid of one of the barrels that were sitting upright and peered inside.

"What the fuuuuuuck?" She said as she saw the assortment of dimly glowing liquids that were in the many bottles at the bottom.ofnthe barrel. She reached in and pulled one out, looking at it closely. It had the same shimmer as her sword, and she saw that the glow was on the bottle itself, and not the contents inside.

"I'm gonna go with booze. Magic booze." She said. She sloshed the bright red liquid around, and then, still curious, she pulled the cork out and took a tiny sip.

It tasted like fruit, mixed with the burning bitterness of alcohol. She found it at once soothing and pleasant. The draught seemed to envigorate her, and she felt the slight ache in her bones, an ache she hadn't even noticed before, dissapear. She smiled, feeling much better after just that little taste, and decided to save the rest for later.

The rest of the bottles were an assortment of colors. One light blue, that seemed to be interestingly heavy, two of a vile green color that she didn't really trust, one of a darkish red, almost like blood, one orange, which was warm in her hand, and then one a bright, vibrant green. All of these went into her bag, which was growing somewhat heavy on her shoulder. Maybe it was getting full? That disheartened her slightly. If that was the case, then there was a limit to the amount of stuff she could carry around.

She pried the lip off the next barrel, and was happy to see another apple and a couple of loaves of bread sitting at the bottom. She nabbed these too, eating one loaf of bread just to tide her over until the evening. The next barrel, dissapointingly, was empty, so she turned to the ones that had been set up on the shelves.

At first, she was worried that they were full of liquid, and opening them would end up getting her drenched, but she found out the lid was actually on a hinge, making it a door that swung open to reveal the shelves that had been put inside.

"Oh! That's nifty." She said, spying the empty bottles laying on the shelves. She didn't want (or need) them, however, so she shut it and moved onto the next.

This one, however surprised her.

The entire inside of the barrel had been lined with an insulating sheet of some kind, and there were numerous thick slices of different types of meat laying on the shelves. Confused, she reached in and grabbed the closest one, which looked like a pork chop.

"How I this still good?" She said. Did meat even spoil? Did food even spoil? She shook her head, not wanting to waste energy trying to make sense of this world.

She paused. Why did she think of it like that? This world. It wasn't like she was doing it on purpose, it was more of a subconscious thought. Were there other worlds? One that she knew of in the past? She never really thought about it until now.

She sighed, looking at the piece of meat in her hand.

"It seems every answer I try to find only brings up more questions." She told it. "Probably better not to think about it too hard, huh?"

She put the meat into her bag, which was definitely getting heavier, and then grabbed the rest. Some steak, a few pieces of what she assumed was mutton, and a few more pork chops. She stood up, and checked the barrel above it, only to find more empty bottles.

In fact, most of the other barrels proved to house either nothing, or more empty glass jars and bottles. But just as she was losing hope, the very last barrel she opened contained another bottle of liquid, this one the same vibrant red as the first bottle she'd found, and the strangest apple she'd ever seen. It appeared to be made of gold, or at least covered in it. She didnt want to eat it, for fear that it might be some kind of treasure, and instead put it, as well as the bottle of red fruit-ale, as she was now calling it, into her bag.

With that, the cellar had been successfully looted, and she climbed back up the stairs.

She didn't, however, expect to find the hallway outside the door getting dark. Fast.

"Oh, sh*t!" She exclaimed, looking at the setting sun through a broke windowframe. How long had she been down in that cellar? Not more than a few minutes, surely?

Panic gripped at her chest. It was too late to get back to the shop. She would have to try and find somewhere to hide, and quickly.

Apparently, something outside had seen her, because an arrow came speeding from nowhere and thudsee into the doorframe next to her head.

She cursed and ducked, spotting the skeletal archer in the trees, another arrow already on his string. She took off running down the hallway as fast as she could.

The next arrow shattered the window beside her and smacked sideways into her arm. The collision with the glass had messed up its trajectory, and it fell to the floor with a clatter, but she didn't stop.

There was a bedroom, on the first floor, with a heavy door and only one window. That was where she was headed.

A zombie appeared on the grand stairway as she ran through the main entrance room, and it immediately spotted her and gave chase. She ignored it, however, throwing open the door to the room and dashing inside.

Slamming the door closed, Alex shoved the dresser next to the doorframe over in front of it. Since the door opened into the room, that should keep anything nasty from getting in. At least, she hoped it would. She exhaled, and looked back at the window behind her. It was clear, plain glass, and so when she peeked out she could see that there was a ten-foot drop to the ground on the back of the manor.

Just to be safe, she closed the thick curtains in Hope of concealing her presence from any skeletons that felt like shooting through windows just because they have light in them.

And speaking of that…

She found a small bracket on the wall, and stuck a torch into it, casting ample light on the room. Only the corners were still dim, but that didn't bother her. She stepped back, looking around her to make sure there wasn't anything she'd missed.

…

Nope. All good.

The zombie that had been chasing her was soon banging his rotten fists at the door, but since it was so solid and thick, they were reduced to faint thumps. After a time, she barely even heard them at all. Once she was sure she was safe, she decided to sleep in the grand, king-sized bed that sat with its head against the south wall of the room.

Alex realized that she'd never actually slept in a bed, and yet she somehow knew it was much better than a singed rug on a hardwood floor. She exhaled, then took off her chainmail and inventory bag, setting them on the nightstand. After a moment's pause, she decided to remove her dirty clothes as well. She rolled up her shirt and pants, and set them on top of her armor onnthe nightstand, then sat down on the edge of the bed in nothing but her cloth undergarments. She laid back and sighed. This was already amazing.

Climbing under the blankets, she huddled up in the warmth and smiled as she was gently lulled off into sleep despite the constant noise of the zombie at the door.

Keep knocking, asshole. You're not getting in. Were her last conscious thoughts before the world shut off with a click.

Chapter 4: The Shadow Games have Begun

Chapter Text

Alex slammed the door to her shop with a bang, eyes wide and breathing hard. Outside, chaos was raging in the form of a massive swarm of creatures made of shadow that had appeared out of nowhere, and a group of huge horned monsters that had chased her down the hill as soon as she'd left the manor, with a shadow blotting out the sun as she ran.

She staggered to the counter, holding her arm as fresh blood dripped down her hand and fell to the floor, leaving a trail of red spots on the wood. It was from a huge bite wound she'd gotten from one of the demon-things that'd been chasing her, and she could tell that her bone had been shattered by the way her arm was bending in ways it definitely should not.

Panting with both pain, and exhaustion, she pulled bandages out of her bag, and covered the wound in them as fast as she could. She gasped, and her vision whited out as the crushed bone forcefully reassembled itself and then healed with a snap. She barely caught herself on the counter, again, and pulled herself up as the burning, screaming agony faded away into nothing within the next few seconds.

She cursed, and glanced out the window as the monsters roared and screeched outside, heavy, thudding footsteps shaking the ground. At least she could hurt them. She'd managed a slash at one of the flying creatures, that seemed to be all mouth, and she'd felt her blade sink into Its shadowy flesh. It had retreated with a loud screech, but that was when the demon had leapt out of the trees and grabbed her by the arm, attempting to drag her into the dark forest.

She gripped the handle of her sword as something huge crashed into the front door. She was trapped, and those things knew she was inside.

Cursing under her breath, she frantically looked around for any sort of exit. The windows were all towards the front, where she most certainly did not want to go, and as far as she could tell, that was the only exit to the building. There was the small, empty workshop in the back, but that had no other door in it.

Then, by chance, or by fate, she happened to glance up at the ceiling. There, nestled half in shadow, was a hatch, with a rusted iron ring hanging down by an inch.

"Were you there this whole time?!?" She shouted, clambering up on the counter and reaching up to grab the ring.

She hooked her finger through the circle and pulled on the hatch. It was old, and stuck slightly, but she managed to pull the door down with a shower of dust and ash. The early morning light streamed down through a hole that had been burned in the roof, and lit up the attic she had just discovered with a dim light. She managed, after a few seconds of struggle, to pull herself up into the second level of the building. She then reached down and closed the hatch behind her, hastily sliding the rusty deadbolt into place to keep it closed.

She fell back and went silent, listening closely to the sounds of the dark creatures slamming into the door over and over. Soon, there was a sound of splintering wood, and directly after that, she heard stone striking the floor, as well as breaking glass. The entire building trembled, and she held her breath as thatch dust fell from the ceiling above her. They'd broken down the door. Now what?

She looked around at the attic.

There was a small chest at the end of the room, with a small, broken window above it. She crawled over as silently as she could while the creatures searched the shop below her. She glanced back down at the hatch, and then opened the lid of the chest, hoping to find something to fend off or distract the creatures.

Instead, when she opened the lid, there was a click, and the next instant an arrow struck the wall directly next to her head. She gasped and dove to the side. Frantically cursing as she scrambled over to the wall, expecting so see a skeleton step out into the light.

She looked over at the other side of the attic, and in the faint glow of the sunlight, she saw a stone-carved face that had smoke trailing from the mouth that was open in an "O" shape. She froze as the sounds of monsters shuffling around down on the main floor all stopped, and let out a grateful breath when she heard them continue.

Her gaze shifted back to the arrow. A trap? Whatever was in the chest must be very valuable if the owner would go this far to protect it. She breathed a sigh of relief. If her head had been just a few inches to the right...

Now wary of the stone face, she leaned over and peered into the trap. On the edge of the lid, there was a small metal piece that had snapped out when the lid had opened. That was what made the click. Assuming she was safe, she dragged the chest into the light to see what was inside, glancing over at the trap at the far wall, lest it should turn to aim at her or something.

There sat two gemstones, one small and an odd bluish-white, and the other a large, black, roughly cut ball that was about the size of her fist. She picked up the smaller one first, and it's name popped into her mind right away.

Diamond

She studied it for a second, amazed by its crystalline beauty, then set it gingerly in her bag. The other, however, was weirdly heavy, and she had to grip it in both hands to lift it from the cloth it was nestled in. She stared into its depths, awed by the way it seemed to draw in the light, rather than reflect it, and the slightly lighter, swirling center inside.

"What are you?" She asked when it's name didn't occur to her like the diamond's had.

She reached in and plucked the cloth from the chest, wrapping the dark stone up before she put it in her bag. She adjusted the strap as she stood. It was growing quite heavy.

She looked up at the hole in the thatched roof, then back down at the floor. The shadow-devil-things weren't leaving, she could still hear them, so she'd have to see if she could escape up through the hole. She reached up and grabbed at the edge of the straw, but it came away in her hand. It was just straw, after all.

However, this gave her a new idea. She pulled her spare, shorter sword out from her belt and stabbed it into the roofing. Sure enough, it went straight through with ease.

She spent the next minute hacking away at the straw, creating an opening large enough for her to squeeze through. She got dust in her eyes, and hay was sticking into her clothes and making her itch, but she got through and sat on the roof, looking out into the sky. The darkness had gone. The shadow had moved away from the sun, and she could see the dark forms littering the skies clearer than ever. She shuddered as they flew lazily about, occasionally screeching. She held her shortsword up, and inched down the roof. She eyed the drop down. It was very far, and she didn't want to make enough noise to attract the monsters. So, she climbed back up and looked around her.

To the rear of the building was another, wooden roof that jutted out by a few feet. The workshop!

She slid down, climbed onto it, and then looked out at the alleyway. If she jumped down, she'd surely break a leg, and the fall would most certainly make enough noise to attract something that wanted her for breakfast.

But if she could jump to that opposing roof…

She looked back. She didn't have all that much room for a running start, but it was really her only choice. She stepped back, crouched down, and then ran.

She leapt out into space, reaching for the other edge.

Thump!

She just barely was able to catch herself with her arms on the wooden gutter, and the impact against the stone wall had knocked the wind out of her.

There was a screeching roar, and she glanced to the left to see one of the shades sprinting at her.

"Wait, shade? So that's what you guys are… Huh."

She wiggled and thrashed her way onto the edge of the roof just as she shade reached the alleyway, and she yanked her feet up as it's pointed teeth snapped shut in the space they had previously been.

"Hey, no biting!" She scolded, a lot less panicked now that she was (kind of) safe.

Well, then there were those flying things. She still didn't see any of them trying to eat her, but they had before, so she still didn't want to be spotted.

She scrambled up to the apex of the roof and then slid down the other side. She stopped herself just before she fell off the other edge, and looked up to see a metal street lamp a few feet out. She glanced up and down the street. Empty, minus one shade that was tearing apart a house several blocks away. She took a deep breath, and then leapt off the edge, slamming into lamppost a little bit too hard.

She started to fall backwards, but she managed to catch ahold of the metal just in time to keep her from slamming onto the sidewalk and most likely breaking something important. She slid down the post, shook her head to clear the daze, and then took off running down the street, towards the gate. Drawing her shortsword, she spotted one of the flying shadows at the same time it spotted her, and she kept running.

It gave a loud screech, and dove through the air at the human as she sprinted off down the road.

Alex waited until she could hear its raspy growling right behind her, and then stopped, spinning in a half-circle as she swung her sword

But nothing was there.

"Wha-" was all she had time to say before the crushing jaws descended on her shoulder. She cried out, and reached up at the monster. She grabbed it by it's thin, T-rex-like arm, and then pulled it off, smacking it into the cobbled street. Her chainmail fell loose from the shoulder: the teeth had cut right through, making a large hole.

Her sword flashed, and the thing screeched in pain once before levitating off of the ground and retreating a few feet, a shallow cut on its face.

Alex winced as her shoulder burned, and wispy tendrils of smoke curled up from the wound. Not good. It felt like her arm was going numb.

She swapped her sword into her other hand, and started stepping backwards as the shadow advanced.

Then, it was gone. Alex's eyes darted around for a moment before she heard a rattling screech from behind her, and she turned around just in time to put up her injured arm to block a bite aimed at her head. The shadow clamped down onto her flesh and thrashed it's head violently, tearing the skin and sinew apart extraordinarily painfully.

Alex choked on agony as it suddenly wrenched her limb off at the elbow, tossing the arm on the ground. She fell back, unable to speak. She grabbed at her stump, grimacing, then glared up at the shadow at it closed the distance between them.

She got shakily to her feet, and pulled her other sword from its sheath. With only one arm, she couldn't swing it, but she could lift it.

And so, she lifted the point right at the shadow as it charged.

But, again, it suddenly vanished from sight, and Alex realized too late that it was behind her again. The jaws closed on her other shoulder, and the sword clattered to the ground.

Alex reached up again, and this time kept holding onto the shadow as she wrenched it off. She pushed it down to the street again, and pounded it's ugly face in as she held it there, cursing. After five or six blows, it suddenly went limp, and then evaporated, leaving behind a small, green sphere on the ground.

But Alex didn't have the life left in her to rejoice. The streets were smeared with her blood. Too much of it. She fell, lightheaded, to the street, and lay there, panting. She raised her good arm and watched as it dissapeared in a familiar cloud of smoke that soon spread up her entire body, and all went dark.

Oh, well. She thought as her mind faded away. I'll just have to try again…

Chapter 5: The Escape

Chapter Text

Alex opened her eyes, tired and confused. There was a ceiling above her, and she was laying on something soft, and comfortable.

A bed?

The memories rushed upon her like a speeding train, and hit her just as hard. The shadow, her arm. She'd died again.

But, why was she here? In the bed she'd woken up in the previous morning? The first few times, she'd woken up somewhere completely random.

Maybe it had all been a dream?

She glanced down at her arm, and her eyes widened as she saw the jagged scar just below her elbow, in the exact spot her arm had been brutally amputated by the shadow. Yeah, no, that happened all right.

She sat up, looking around. She first noticed she didn't have her chainmail, and it wasn't on the nightstand. The next thing she saw was that her clothes were clean, and all in one piece. That was nice, at least.

And then, she realized her inventory bag was completely empty.

She reached in, but felt nothing. Everything she had was gone, and for a moment she felt a sorrowful panic start to rise up inside of her.

But wait. She had died down in the city, and if the big zombie dropped the armor it was wearing, would her body have done the same? It was certainly possible.

She had to go and find out. At least, she wouldn't have to look at her own dead body, since apparently she evaporated when she died, too. That, at least, was somewhat relieving.

She jumped out of bed, and bolted out the door. At least her legs weren't sore anymore, and they had seemed to retain the strength they'd had before she died. That was also good, she wouldn't have train herself half to death everytime she started a new life.

The hallway was dark. The sun was either just starting to rise, or just starting to set, and she really hoped it was that first one. She climbed out the window and set her sights down on the street at the base of the hill.

Alex raced out past the skeletal dragon, and suddenly got an idea as she nearly tripped on one of the guard's corpses. She glanced at the hill, and the smoothly cobbled stones that surfaced the steep road down it.

She grabbed another sword, the only other one that was intact, as well as an absurdly heavy, round wooden shield, and she put a dented, scorched iron cap over her head before moving on.

She set the shield, front side down, on the smooth cobbled road, and grabbed the leather handles as she sat down on top of it.

Sure enough, the wooden circle began sliding down the hill, gaining speed remarkably fast. Alex held on tighter as the shield skimmed over the stones, racing down towards the courtyard below.

Up ahead, at the edge of the city, she saw one of the shades digging through the remains of one of the shattered market stalls, and she drew her sword, leaning slightly to the right to angle her trajectory. She'd have to be precise here, or she'd either crash into it, or have it end up chasing her.

The shade noticed her just as she neared the base of the hill, shield scraping violently against the stone, and roared as it began stomping towards her.

"Okay." She said to herself, taking a deep breath. "Here we go."

The shield blasted right underneath the shade, straight through it's legs, and she swung her new sword at one of the its ankles as she zipped past.

The impact nearly took her arm off, again, and shattered the metal blade as it cleaved through flesh and bone. She heard it roar and fall with a crash as she blew past.

Then, a few yards later, her shield began to lose momentum, and she jumped off as soon as it was safe to do so, looking back to make sure the shade was staying down. She grabbed the wooden circle from the ground, and was surprised to find it was noticeably lighter. She looked at the front, and saw that the stones had shaved nearly half the thickness of the shield off, leaving it ridiculously thin. She raised her eyebrows, silently thanking fate that it didn't wear all the way through mid-slide. She'd have had quite the sore ass if it did.

She lugged the shield, now light enough for her to carry (kind of), and headed in the direction of the main road, still clutching the broken sword hilt in her hand. Although, It was more of a knife at this point, really.

She followed the edge of the houses, keeping to the rapidly increasing shadows in the hope that she wouldn't be seen. Yeah, it was getting dark. That wasn't good.

She redoubled her pace towards the road she'd died in. Passing by the leatherworker's shop, she saw the shade-sized hole where the front door had been, and shuddered. She did not want to have to square up against one of those, if she had a choice.

She bustled on by, reaching the area of her defeat just as the sun dipped below the horizon. She stopped, and stared with wide eyes.

Even in the dark, it was a grim spectacle. A great swath of now-dried blood decorated the road, with numerous other splatters and splotches aeound it. Laying close by was her severed arm, that had for some reason remained who the rest of her had evaporated. And in the middle of it all, was a scattered pile of all of her things. Her chainmail lay battered and torn exactly where she had fallen, and the other, golden armor appeared to have been tossed in random directions, along with everything else that had been in her bag.

She raced forward. If night was coming, she didn't have much time. She opened her bag and frantically began shoveling everything into it, from the extra stones, to the bottles of multicolored liquid, to the bones, and the arrows, everything went in. She grabbed her sword from where it lay and hurriedly put it in it's loop, then grabbed her tattered chainmail and slipped it on.

A zombie growled from somewhere nearby, and the darkness quickly began to surround her as she lifted the shield from the ground. She grabbed a torch from her bag and held it over her head as she ran towards the gate, paying no heed to the skeletons that shot at her, nor the shade that charged past, missing her by little more than a few inches.

Then, she heard a familiar screech.

She cursed and ran faster, the gate within sight. She hated this place. What she once had seen as a sanctuary was now a death maze, full of creatures of darkness, and plenty of places for monsters to hide from the sun.

She heard a thwack from behind her, and the shadow that had been almost upon her screeched in pain. Alex glanced back to see it direct it's attention on the skeleton that had accidentally struck it with an arrow. She silently thanked him, and then ran straight through the open gates to the city and out into the dark world beyond.

==================================
Later that night...
==================================

Alex held her torch aloft, scanning the darkness around her. How long had she been running? Maybe a few hours? She sighed wearily and continued on, her hand on her sword hilt. She lost her other one, which was a shame, side it was lighter and raised to swing, but she still had the broken stump, and she'd managed to kill a zombie with that not even thirty minutes ago. Granted, it had just fallen off a cliff and was within an inch of its life, but still.

She'd left the plain soon after she fled the city, heading to the forest that bordered the plains instead. Her plan was, at the moment, to get to the mountain that she'd seen looking off in the clouds. It would take a while, and hopefully she wouldn't die before she got there, but she was determined.

She carried the shield on her back, the arm straps around her shoulders. It was a little tight, but it protected her from arrows to the back of the head.

She walked on, a little tired and a little thristy, but not too worried.

It was maybe a few minutes later that she came across a small, abandoned brick house in the middle of the forest. She nearly walked into it before she noticed it, she was so tired. She blinked, and looked up at the windows as she held her torch up a little higher.

"Hello…" she said. "What have we here?"

She walked around the corner of the house, and saw the front door, a simple wooden panel with four square holes in the upper half. She walked up to it, lifted the latch, and stepped inside the dark room.

It was a homey place, with a small kitchen, and a chest at one end of the main room. It had carpet, and a single spiral staircase that went both up to the second level, and down to what she assumed was a basem*nt. She found a bracket on the wall, and set her torch into it. If nobody else was around, she could totally live here. But, somebody might be around. She decided to go upstairs and check.

The upstairs was just a large bedroom, completely dark and devoid of people.

She looked around, shrugged, stuck the other torch on the wall, and then walked over to the bed. It wasn't nearly as soft and plush as the one in the manor, but it was still a bed. She smiled.

"Yeah, this is nice." She said, looking around. "I think I'll stay here for a bit."

Three minutes later she was laying down, looking up at the ceiling. She had put her bag, with her sword and tattered mail, on the floor just under her bed before flopping down onto the matress. She adjusted her pillow and closed her eyes, settling down for the remainder of he night. Soon, she was snoozing away, complete unaware of the bright purple glow emanating from her inventory bag under the bed.

The next morning was bright, and sunny. Alex awoke to the sounds of birds chirping and zombies burning outside. The forest was shady, yes, but here were still plenty of bright patches for things to wander into. She exhaled and rubbed her eyes.

Another day, another not being dead. Nice.

She slowly sat up, looking around at the bright room. Before, her torch had just lit up a small area of it, near the bed and one wall, but now that the sun was shining through the window and her matress, she could see everything in the room.

For example, she noticed that there was a small chest, on the other side of the room, that she hadn't seen last night. She got up, and walked over to it. Still a little tired.

After a quick look around the room for any stone faces that might shoot arrows at her, she opened the lid to the chest, and brushed away a few of the cobwebs.

Inside was just some string, an empty bowl, and a pair of worn leather boots that looked way too big for her. Not that that was a problem.

She grabbed them, and looked them all over. The soles were somewhat flat, but the material was sturdy and slightly firm. They would be much better than the footwraps she was wearing. After they'd worn off during her time in the city, they'd reappeared on her feet when she'd died and woken up in the bed, only to fall off again during her escape.

She put on the boots, smiling when the leather shrank to the right size. She stood, taking a few test steps. It certainly wasn't a feeling she was used to, having more than a millimeter of material between her foot and the ground, but she expected to get used to it. She'd probably find some socks, too. Those would be nice.

Alex decided to go down to the basem*nt, just to see what was down there, and then see about cooking all of her meat in that furnace she'd seen in the kitchen. She pulled out her things from under the bed, got dressed, and then went back downstairs.

In the kitchen, she searched through the two large chests to find another loaf of bread, and few more bowls. She left the bowls in there, including the one she'd found upstairs, and then paused. Her bag was still pretty heavy. Could she store some of her things, and come back for them when she needed to? That might be a good idea.

She hurried back upstairs, and opened the smaller chest by her bed. She deposited her extra stones, most of the bottles of alcohol (they were really potions, but she didn't know that yet), save for a bottle of fruit-ale, as well as her golden armor that she still couldn't really wear. She decided to put all of the raw meat (including the gross stuff from the Chupacabra) in the kitchen chest, the one next to the furnace, until she could cook it.

She kept the two gemstones, the red crystal shard, the metal bars, her sword (obviously), the last three of her torches, the roll of bandages, and her last seven loaves of bread, as well as four apples.

Now, for the basem*nt. Part of the reason she'd put away some of her things was so that in case there was a sh*t-ton of loot down there, she wouldn't have to make a whole bunch of trips. She held another torch aloft, and started down into the darkness.

The stairs went on for a whole lot longer than she thought they would, and when she did finally see something other than that damp, mossy brick walls around her, she was at once confused, intruiged, and a little afraid.

Instead of a basem*nt, Alex was standing on the staircase as it went down into a small, very tall room. The walls were large stone bricks, like the ones she'd seen at the castle, only smoother, and there were four big entryways to long hallways on every side of the room. Three of them were barricaded with thick bars of iron, and the other's seemed to have been broken outwards, the metal tubing bent and twisted.

She swallowed nervously, he mind turning to the big, firey zombie she'd fought. It was luck that'd won her that fight. Would she be able to don't be same again, if he hadn't been the only one?

She took a deep breath. Whatever, this was probably just a fancy wince cellar or something.

She descended the rest of the stairs, and then looked around at the barred hallways. They seemed to go off into the darkness for a good ways, and she thought she could see shelves in the gloom.

However, the doorway that had been broken open had a chest not much farther down. She paused, then took a few steps in with her torch. She passed by a lever on the wall, then stopped to see what it was. Curious, she reached out and pulled it down.

Suddenly, a light turned on above her head. She looked up, and saw three or four glass circles built into the ceiling along the hallway, with some darker lines running through the surface in a fancy design.

"Electric lights?" She asked out loud. "How does that work?"

She pulled the lever back up, and they turned off. She decided that maybe leaving the passage lit up was a better idea, and so she quickly turned then back on.

The light wasn't quite as bright as her torch, but it did help. She walked up to the chest and knelt down in front of it. She glanced over her shoulder at the opposing wall, checking for any traps before lifting the lid.

Inside was a small sword, made of wood, and a pair of leather trousers with a brass button on the front, as well as some cobwebs and yet another bowl. She lifted the pants out, and held them up. They were nice. They didn't look all too comfortable, but hey, armor was armor. She slipped them on, and the waistband contracted to a snug tightness. Nice.

Then, she took out the sword. It was incredibly light, barely more than two or three pounds, and just a little bit longer than her forearm. She gave it a few test swings, and then slipped it into the loop that had previously held her iron shortsword. A blade she could swing quickly, even it it was just wood, was all the more useful to her.

She rose, and then looked down the hallway. The lights had turned on all the way down, revealing a T-shaped intersection a little bit further on. For a moment, she considered going back to the stairs, but she realized she didn't have much else to do at the moment. She ate one loaf of bread as she walked down the hallway, one hand on her new wooden sword. It was dark, and darkness meant baddies, but she had some more protection, so she wasn't as scared as she had been.

She came to the intersection, and then looked both ways. The lights hadn't turned on down here, so she pulled out her torch, the fire springing to life as soon as it came out of her bag.

She decided to go down the right-hand passageway first, since it appeared to go into a small room, and she could see little twinklings of fires in the darkness.

When she arrived in the room, she saw that the fires were coming from two small cages bolted to the ground, with a ball of dim flame wrapping around a small spinning figure inside. She stepped closer to one, and peered through the thick wire mesh.

Inside was a tiny little zombie, or a figure of one, wearing mismatched armor and a shield. She had trouble recognizing it at first, but she saw the familiar greenish face.

For a moment, she pondered what it could be. Maybe an offering of some sort? Or just a plaything she didn't understand?

However, her questions were answered when the cage began to vibrate, and the flames grew more intense.

Now cautious, she stepped back and drew her wooden blade. Sure, it might not mean anything, but she didn't want to take any chances.

Sure enough, when the cages seemed to be close to rattling themselves to pieces, there was a jet of smoke, and the air was filled with a choir of groans.

Zombies.

"f*cking seriously?" She asked as four, no, five armored, armed, shield-carrying zombies lurched out of the smoke. She retreated, weighing her options. She could run away, but then they might follow her up into the house she'd stolen, and she definitely didn't want to fight them there. Not enough space.

On the other hand, she could stay here and try to fight a group of zombies with better gear than her. Did she have that much if a choice?

She groaned out loud, and ran back into the lit passageway. It was more narrow, making them come at her one or two at a time.

"Okay, you guys." She said as the zombies shuffled into the light. "Take turns, there's enough death for all of you."

The first one that came was wearing a chain shirt, like hers, but his cap was made of leather. His leather pants appeared to have been dyed green, and in his hand he held a battered, beaten metal pickaxe, as well as his tall shield in his opposite. She regretted not bringing along the shield from the city, but she didn't know if it'd be of much use with how damaged it was.

She stepped forwards, and landed a sidelong blow to the first zombie's head. The wooden blade made a sharp thunk, and he staggered to the side.

However, another quickly came up in his place, this one wearing mostly chain, and wielding a sword. She ducked down under the lazy swing, and slammed her shoulder into his chest as she stood up. She took a few steps back as the zombie tottered, then fell backwards with a crash, his shield falling from his arm.

She looked at the edge of her wooden sword. Damm, it was already dull. She cursed, and then chucked the blade point-first at one of the other zombies as they marched up from behind. It went thunk against his shield, and stuck there like a throwing knife.

She drew her longsword, and then assumed the same stance she'd used to fight the Chupacabra. She stared the zombies down as they slowly got to their feet, waiting for a chance to strike.

As soon as she knew she could hit one, she dashed forwards, building up extra momentum for her swing, and slashed at her opponent.

The zombie raised its shield, but Alex's blade cut straight through the half-inch wooden panel, and when the whole thing crashed to the floor Alex saw that she'd nearly taken off the zombie's arm as well.

As before, she used the momentum of her sword, and spun in a complete circle, aiming low. The hardened blade passed right through both legs at the knee, and then struck a wooden support pillar and stuck there as the zombie collapsed and then went poof.

Alex cursed and tried to yank her sword free, but it wouldn't budge. Panicking as the other zombies grew nearer, she released her blade and snatched up the pickaxe that the zombie had dropped, stabbing it through the chainmail cap of the one nearest her. This zombie, too, fell and died, but the pickaxe was stuck in his skull and was pulled from her grasp.

Whack!

Alex was suddenly struck in the chest by a large metal hammer. The blow wasn't hard enough to break any bones, but the weight of it sent her reeling backwards a few steps.

She watched as another zombie, next to the hammer-wielding one, dropped his shovel and yanked Alex's sword out of the pillar. It lifted it with one hand and then advanced.

"Hey, that's mine!" She said, her chest already beginning to hurt. "Thief!"

She bent down and grabbed one of the shields from the floor, and slipped it over her arm. Damm, it was heavy. Almost as tall as she was, as well. But hey, that gave her an idea.

She held it in front of her, like a wall, and then rushed forwards, slamming the shield into the hammer-zombie's chest. The blow shoved him back a step, and Alex's new boots gave her enough traction to keep pushing him backwards.

Then her own sword, in the other zombie's hand, came flying at her from the side and landed with a thunk in the side of her shield, sinking a few inches into the wood. She dug her feet in and heaved the shield, shoving the first one back, and then lashed out with a punch to the other zombie's sword arm. The rotted bones snapped, and then zombie reeled back, releasing the blade.

She retreated again. The combined weight of her sword and her shield was too much for one arm to bear, and so she dragged the combined weapons back with her. She dropped the shield, and then wrenched her blade free, quickly swinging it up to deflect a shovel being aimed at her head.

Clang! went the blades, and the shovel was knocked off-couse and whizzed past her scalp, although the zombie managed to hold onto it.

She took another step back, the zombie already reaching out to grab her. She was running out of room.

With a grunt, she shoved the shield she'd dropped under the zombie's feet, and he stumbled over it, his shovel clattering to the stone floor. She took the opportunity to stab her blade into his head, killing him.

As he went poof, the one with the hammer came dangerously close to caving in her skull with a downwards swing, Alex ducking back just in time to avoid it.

She snatched up the shovel, retreated (again) a few more steps, and then threw the digging tool like a spear at him.

The pointed blade punched through the leather tunic and sank four or five inches into his ribcage, making a sickening crunch that even Alex winced at.

Then, the handle of the shovel dipped down and caught on a raised stone as he lurched forward again, and the shovel suddenly sank the rest the way through, exploding out his back with a small splattering of dark green blood. He collapsed.

Another cloud, and all her enemies were gone. She looked down at the small pile of equipment on the floor. A hammer, a shovel, a pickaxe, two dyed pairs of leather pants, a chain helmet, a destroyed shield, another chain chestplate, and a pair of ragged chain leggings.

She exhaled, then rembered the cages. They'd thrown out five of them, and she didn't expect them not to do so again. She quickly gathered up everything the zombies had dropped and then hurried upstairs. She needed to recuperate, and better prepare herself for the next time.

After she had emerged back into her house, she rushed upstairs to get her stones.

Piling them in the doorway to the basem*nt, she made another wall. And now that she had a pickaxe, she would probably be able to take it down if she wanted to.

For now, though, she just wanted to rest, eat some food, and ponder but what to do about those cages.

Alex sat at the small table by the front window, eating some bread and thinking hard about her current situation. It wasn't like the city, where she'd have to live in fear of something breaking down her door, but then again, she didn't know quite how to feel about having a giant maze of death and monster spawn-cages under her feet. She glanced over at the stone wall. She was safe, for now, and if she ever wanted to, she could gather enough stones to completely fill in the staircase, and seal the underground off forever.

But, what kind of treasures would be down there? She'd already found a chest with some sturdy pants, and you never put your most valuable possessions in the easiest places to get to. So, assuming she could explore enough of the hallways to gather enough good items, weapons, and armor, she'd be pretty well off. Of course, she might get lost, or die, or something like that, but that wasn't too big of a deal. Presuming that she would wake back up in her bed here, and not in the city, she could always go back. She might want to leave a weapon or something in her chest so that she could grab it if she died again.

She rubbed the sore spot on her chest. That hammer had hurt, but she didn't want to waste her bandages on a couple of bruised ribs. She'd just have to let it heal over time.

And what about water? Surely there was some way she could make some sort of waterskin, or canteen? There weren't any water sources nearby, at least ones she knew of.

Then, her eyes happened to fall on a somewhat familiar-looking table, at one end of the counter. She'd seen it a few times before, in several houses in the city, but she never had time to figure out what it was.

Well, she didn't have much else to do now.

Alex rose from her seat and walked over to the strange device, looking down at the top. It had a grid of squares, three by three, and then another off to the side for a total of nine spaces on the top. The sides had pegs to hang small tools on, but they were empty.

She squinted at it, willing her brain to give her some informtation.

...

Nothing.

She sighed, and then leaned onto it, trying to figure out it's use. Maybe it was a cutting board? No, that didn't make any sense. Perhaps it was a workbench for something? Like maybe-

It suddenly occured to her where she'd seen one of these before. In the back room of the leatherworker's shop. So maybe that was it. A workbench.

But...she didn't have any leather, other than the clothes she'd looted from the 'basem*nt'. But, maybe that wasn't its only use. Perhaps she could make something from the string she'd found, like maybe a pair of socks!

She decided to try it, and then took the small, tangled lump of white strings from her bag. She set the whole bundle down on the table, and then started untangling them.

Eventually, after many frustrating minutes of undoing knots, she managed to get all of the string apart.

She arrayed them on the table, racking her brain for any knowledge of knitting or sewing she might have, but came up dry. She tried making a longer string out ofn the ones she had, but she couldn't do anything with that, except maybe-

… A bow.

Bows had strings, right?

Alex reached into her bag. To make a bow, she'd probably need sticks, but she only had one. If she tied them together well enough, she might be able to make a crude, primitive one.

She glanced out the window at the forest. Trees had sticks, didn't they?

… Why was she asking herself all these stupid questions?

She went outside, sword in hand, and searched around until she found a tree small enough for her to reach its leaves. She swung her blade into the leaves again and again, hacking them apart, until finally a few sticks were laying in the ground around her, and her sword blade was stained with green tree-blood.

She gathered them up, quickly glanced around her for any baddies, then hurried inside.

Back at the workbench, she puzzled over how to get her idea to work. She tried tying the sticks together, but it always fell apart in her hands, and a single sitck wasn't long enough or bendy enough to make even a shortbow. After many long minutes, she set down the materials and sighed. She thought maybe doing this at this workbench would allow her to make these things, but it looked like she was wrong.

Then, her elbow happened to nudge one of the sticks to the side, putting it in one of the squares in the bottom row. She looked at it. Maybe the grid had something to do with it?

She laid down a price of string in the square next to it, and in the lone tile to the side of the grid, something appeared, floating, and strangely transparent, as if it wasn't really there.

"Oh, woah!" She said, leaning back. "That did something."

She studied it, suddenly overjoyed at her progress, and incredibly happy at her achievement. It appeared to be some kind of handle, a straight dowel with cloth wrapped around it. She reached out, an as she put her hand around it it suddenly became corporeal, and the string and stick vanished from the grid. In her hand, she held a handle for a sword. It was sturdy, and strong. She smiled.

So it was about patterns, huh? Well, that was easy.

It wasn't easy.

Alex spent the next few hours trying to figure out how to create a bow. During her experiments, she'd found how to make a large mass of wool using string, and how to make a whole block of stones using the ones she'd picked up. Handy for quick building, but not so much for shooting things.

"Ugh." She groaned, looking out the window at the noonday sun. "I need a recipe book or something."

But wait. She did have a recipe book!

She frowned, and then reached down into her bag, pulling out the small book she didn't know how she got, or where it came from. When she opened it, there were sketched diagrams of how to 'craft' different items, like, for example, an iron-strengthened longbow.

"WHAT THE f*ck, WORLD!?!" she yelled at the ceiling. "WHY IS THIS HERE NOW?!?"

She stopped herself from throwing the entire book across the room, took a long, deep breath, and then sighed. "Okay. No, okay, this is good. I should be happy."

Alex calmly grabbed the correct materials, two sticks, two iron, a handle, and three string, and put them on the grid in the correct order.

She gently took the floating, holographic bow, and then looked at it as it formed in her hands, growing in size remarkably.

"Woah, okay, big." She said, struggling to keep the thing upright.

It was huge and heavy, almost as tall as she was, and had several iron parts where it had been strengthened, but when she tried to draw the string, she was able to pull it back only three inches before she couldn't move it further.

She sighed. All that effort, and she couldn't even use the thing. Wonderful.

Well, how about a regular bow? She'd seen the recipe for that, and it was pretty simple. In fact, she'd been pretty close during her experiments, and that fact annoyed her a little bit.

She arranged the components on the grid and then grabbed the bow from the air, again watching as it materialized in her hands.

She smiled when she discovered that she could, indeed, draw back the string on this one, although it was a little hard, and her hand shook from the strain.

"Okay, new weapon!" She said, slinging the bow over her shoulder. She'd test it out later, probably on a tree or something.

With that on of the way, she decided to try and figure out how to cook her food.

She settled over to the furnace and knelt down, resting one hand on the top as she peered in. There was a large hole in the bottom, for putting in the burnables, another above it where she assumed she would slide in the food, and a third, even smaller, next to that one. There was a stone slate on the floor of the top section, woth grooves cut into it to allow liquids to run off. There was a large tray that she could pull out, and when she did, it was partially full of ashes and a small hunk of charcoal.

She stuck the charcoal back in the lower hole, which already had a decent amount piled up inside, and then got her meat.

She pulled out the slate, and then laid three pork chops down on it. She slid it back in, almost instantly realizing she didn't have a way to light the furnace.

However, she soon found that wouldn't be nessesary, as smoke started wafting up out of the lower hole. She stared at it for a few seconds, then shrugged.

"I shouldn't be surprised." She said.

Soon, the mouth-watering scent of sizzling pork filled the room, and she felt her stomach gurgle.

She found that, when it was done, it teleported (somehow) to the other hole next to the cooking one, and then sat there. Alex gingerly reached out and poked the light brown, perfectly cooked meat with a finger, expecting it to be hot.

Instead, it was just rather warm. Cool enough to hold in her hands, but not hot enough to burn them. She eyed the chop hungrily, then took a bite.

It was wonderful. Savory, a little bit of salt, and overall perfect. She made a loud, long moan of satisfaction and sat back, closing her eyes.

"Mmmmmmm. So good."

She then wolfed down the rest of the meat in her hands, and burped. Well, she wasn't hungry anymore. Meat was so much more filling than bread.

Then, her mind suddenly turned to the oozing, scaly flesh that the Chupacabra had dropped. She considered getting rid of it for a moment, then decided against it. In fact, she decided to cook it, and the result was a tasty-smelling, yummy looking steak that seemed perfectly fine to eat.

She didn't eat it though, instead she put it back into the chest where the rest of her food was.

Twenty minutes later, all of her meat was cooked amd properly stored. As an experiment, she'd toasted a loaf of bread, cut it open with her broken sword (after cleaning it, of course) and then laid a long peice of steak across the inside, making a sandwich. She hadn't eaten it, though. She put it in the chest with the rest of her food. She hoped that the meat wouldn't spoil now, just because she'd cooked it.

It was mid-afternoon by that time, and she took her bow, along with her four arrows, outside to try them out.

She nocked a shaft to the string, and then looked around for something to shoot. About twenty yards off a zombie was burning, but before she could decide if she wanted to attemp a shot that far, it collapsed and died.

She sighed and then continued her search, walking around the house.

Then, as she rounded the corner, she happened to see a big, brown animal munching on some grass.

A cow.

She remembered how good the smell of beef cooking had been, and then smiled. Raising the bow, she drew back the string, with arrow, and took aim. She lined up the shot as best as she could, but when she released the string, and the bow jolted in her hands, the arrow thunked into the ground at the cow's feet.

"Too low." She said, a little confused as to why the cow hadn't noticed or cared about the arrow that had landed a few inches from it's hoof.

She took another arrow from the hand she held her bow in, and then repeated the process of putting it on the string and drawing it back.

She aimed a little higher than last time, and then exhaled, releasing the string.

Again, the bow jerked in her hands as the string snapped tight, amd the arrow sped forwards.

It hit the cow in its ribcage with a loud crunch, and the animal jumped up and started running. Alex watched as it slowed, then stumbled, then fell, and went up in a cloud of smoke.

Walking over to where her prey had fallen, she found three hunks of meat and two small peices of leather. All of these she took, now happy that she knew she could get leather from cows, and returned home after taking her first arrow from the ground.

The arrow that had struck the cow had just up and vanished, and Alex assumed that it had evaporated with the rest of it. Whatever the cause, she was down to three arrows now, and with her aim (or lack thereof) she wanted to conserve them as much as possible. At least she knew the bow worked, though.

So, she went to bed. It wasn't nighttime yet, so she just stayed up reading her book of recipes, learning many things. That handle she learned how to make could be used to craft a lot of cool weapons, from polearms, to longswords (like the one she already had), and, of course, the longbow.

Along with that, a variety of tools could be made just using sticks and things like the cobbled stone she had, or iron, which she also had some of. She planned out the next day. She would use some of her iron and craft an axe, and then use that axe to go and cut down the trees closest to her house. She would then use that wood for fires in her furnace, among other things. She might even build a shed for all the wood, with the wood.

And then, she might even go back down to the basem*nt and try and destroy those spawner cages, to get rid of the zombie problem.

Then, she noticed there were also notes next to some of the recipes. For example, scribbled underneath a drawing of the pattern for a longsword was:

"Two-handed weapon, unwieldy and hard to use with a shield."

And, underneath the recipe for something called a "summoning staff" was:

"Enderpearls are dropped by endermen, most commonly. Don't look them in the eyes!"

Judging by the diagram, enderpearls were a big, glass-looking ball. But what was an enderman?

Eh, she'd find out later, she was sure.

She continued to flip through the book, studying the different recipes, until her room began to grow dark. It was then that she set her book back into her bag, stripped off her armor and clothes, and then laid down to sleep.

Chapter 6: Into the dungeon

Chapter Text

Alex was woken up in the middle of the night by a soft, low humming, and a bright, purple glow.

She opend her eyes slowly, blinking a few times, and then looked around the room. Where was that light coming from?

She sat up in her bed, still undressed, and then realized that the glow was coming from under her bed.

She grabbed the wooden blade from her nightstand, and then got out of bed, holding the sword up as she stepped back to see what was under there.

That was when she saw that the light was radiating from something inside her inventory bag, most of it blocked by the leather flap. She stepped closer, and knelt down on the floor, setting down the sword as she pulled out her bag.

She lifted the flap and looked with awe at the gemstone, the one that had previously been pitch black, as it shone with a pulsating, Royal purple light that seemed to be generating from its core. She reached into the bag and took it out, feeling the energy radiating from it.

"What… are you?" She asked it again, half-expecting it to answer. It just sat there and shone onto her face, the inside a marbled,spiderweb texture, with the light fluctuating constantly.

Then, as she watched, it dimmed as the moon gradually appeared from behind some clouds, and when the rays shone onto it from the window, it stopped its shine altogether.

darkness? Alex wondered, looking out at the moon. She sat down on the floor, the wood cold against her bare skin, and held the stone in both hands as she returned her gaze to it. Her mind was racing. There weren't any recipes in her book for it, and she knew absolutely nothing about what it was or what it could do.

Was it some sort of magic gem, enchanted to give light in the dark? If so, that was pretty neat.

The moon dissapeared again, and the stone began to light up once more, starting off weak, and then growing stronger.

Alex stood, and then turned and sat on her bed with the stone in her hands. She should give it a name, since she didn't know what it was exactly. She thought long and hard, finally settling on "shadowstone".

It had a nice ring to it.

Eventually, she put the stone back in her bag, and laid back down. Of course, she wasn't able to go back to sleep, since it was already getting close to early morning, and the stone was glowing constantly until the sun peeked over the horizon.

She groaned and rolled out of bed, still tired and groggy. Every time she closed her eyes, she could almost hear the shadowstone humming, and it was driving her insane.
For a moment, she considered leaving it in the chest, but she might want to have it on her if she got caught in darkness again, for a light source.

Well, it didn't seem to be active now that dawn had broken. Just a cold, dark, slightly transparent rock that sat in her inventory bag.

As she went downstairs, she readied herself to go back down to the underground. While she'd been laying awake in bed, she'd hatched a plan to get rid of the spawn-cages down there. With the blocks of cobblestone she had crafted, she would be able to quickly build a wall in front of the room, and then she would break through it with her pickaxe, place down another block, and so forth, moving the wall slowly inwards, until she could destroy the cages. Flawless, right?

She quickly went outside, and grabbed ahold of the block of stones from her inventory. If the notes in that book were correct, then this thing should…

She tossed the cube down onto the ground, and it suddenly expanded to fill an entire square meter of space, making a sturdy, stony block. She smiled.

Then, taking out her pickaxe, she lifted it with both hands, and then brought it crashing down onto the block. Bits of stone flew off to the sides, and Alex saw as a small crack appeared on all sides of the cube.

She pursed her lips and looked at it, walking around to inspect the cracks. They were all perfectly symmetrical to each other. After a minute, she just shrugged. That was just how these things worked, apparently.

She raised the tool again, and then smashed the block over and over, until the cracks reached the edges of the surface, and then the whole thing just broke apart, laeving shattered fragments of stone all over the ground.

At first, she thought that she'd just wasted a block of cobblestone, but then the broken fragments started to fade away, and she picked out a familiar, tiny cube in the midst of it all. She bent down, and picked up the cube. Yep, it was the same thing she'd started with. So, her theory had proved correct.

Satisfied, she went back inside to prepare.

Alex rounded the corner into the darker hallway, expecting more zombies to leap out at her. She peered into the darkness as the flickering light from the spawner cages, and then made her move.

She rushed into the room, and threw out block after block, until there was a tall, cobblestone blockade that went from floor to ceiling. Inside, she heard the cages begin to rattle, amd let out a sigh of relief. Just in time.

Now, she could two two things. Either put her first plan into action, to destroy the cages, or, just walk away, leave it blocked up, and not risk dying again.

But hey, what's life without a few risks?

She took her pickaxe, and smashed a hole in the wall, at face level. She stepped back as the groans of zombies filled the air, and several assorted weapons and other shiny bits became visible in the light from her torch. She stepped back, and then pulled her bow from her shoulder.

Nocking an arrow on the string, and pulled it back and hen waited until she saw an undead face appear in the hole.

She let the arrow fly, and it landed with a loud thunk in the zombie's forehead. There was a muted crash, and then another poof of smoke. She took another arrow, and then again, waited.

There was a movement, and she released the arrow into the darkness. It struck something with a clang, and she frowned.

She was about to take her third arrow out of her bag when the spawner cages vented their smoke again, and she felt her confidence slipping. This wasn't working. There were too many of them.

And then she saw the fire.

The purple fire.

Alex's eyes widened as a huge, thick-necked face leaned down into the light, it's eyes glowing as it's face smoldered, flames and ash flickering upwards. She took a surprised step back, and the lipless teeth separated slightly, as if hungry.

"f*ck." Alex cursed, and then ran.

From behind her, an all-too-familiar roar resounded through the tunnel, and the sound of shattering stone assaulted her ears. She ran faster, even as the massive zombie power-slid into the corner on its side. She pulled out the shield she'd gotten from the city, and slipped it over one arm. Halfway there. She drew her sword from it's sheath and kept running.

There was a sudden change in the air currents around her neck, and by pure instinct she twisted around, bringing the wooden shield just in time for a big, green fist to slam into it.

The wood shattered, and the force of the blow carried through to her arm. It didn't break, but she was still thrown onto her back. She slid a few feet before stopping, too dazed to get up quickly enough.

The zombie stood above her, one fist pinning her to the ground. Even without lips to widen, it somehow managed to grin victoriously. Alex reached up with her free hand and tried to pry his off, but it was useless. She beat at it, but she couldn't even leave a bruise. The zombie, much to her surprise, laughed.

"f*ck! You!" Alex yelled, and then reached across her waist into her bag. What did she have? What did she have?

She closed her fist on something hard, amd smooth. The stone.

Riding entirely on hope, she yanked out the stone and smacked him across the face with it.

There was a crack. Not like stone or glass breaking, but something… else.

The light that followed was piercingly bright, and she had to close her eyes and turn her face away to keep from being blinded.

Bang!

Alex was thrown back, again, and lay stunned on the stone floor.

Her arm hurt, but her other arm, the one she'd been holding the stone in, felt like it was on fire. And being stabbed. And crushed. And then stabbed some more.

Her head was ringing. She lifted it up, and though teary, blurred eyes saw a dark form in front of her, and through the ringing screaming in her ears, she heard faraway screeching and roars, muffled by the noise in her head.

Her neck gave out, and her skull fell to the floor as her vision went dark.

She closed her eyes, and went still.

Chapter 7: A new friend

Chapter Text

. . .

Wake…

Alex opened her eyes. She was laying down on her side on something cold, hard, and uncomfortable. Had she died again?

She groaned, and moved her arm. A flaring pain attacked her brain, and she gasped as her eyes shot open. Nope. Not dead yet.

Sitting up, she cursed and winced as she looked down at her hand, the sight words than the actual pain. The flesh had been burned, marred, melted, and there were chunks missing where it looked like it had been hit hard, with something rough. Several large, shiny fragments of rock were lodged into the muscles in her palm, and her pinky finger was missing completely. Bone showed through in several places, namely the tips of all her fingers that were still there. In her other hand, she still clutched her sword, and although it was burned and red, it was nothing compared to the other one.

She stood as fast as she could, her head whipping around for any sign of the zombie as she tried to lift her sword one-handed.

It… was gone. And instead, there was something else, something… dark, and glowing in a few places.

She didn't quite know what to make of it. It was a large form, seemingly scaled, with two glowing eyes on it's dark, vaguely reptilian face. Below that, was a wide body, that narrowed as it went down. It had numerous black claws, with vibrant purple tips, attached to the sides of it, and those were curled around a glowing circle of lines on the lowest part of it's body. It had no arms, only longer claws where she would expect arms to be, if this were a human. It made no move, save for a slight up-and-down waver as it hovered off of the ground, and just looked at her.

She stared at it for at least a full minute, but it just levitated there, unmoving and seemingly passive.

Finally she slowly reached for her sack, and she saw the brighter slits in it's eyes follow her hand as she took out the roll of bandages.

It still didn't move as she wrapped her injured hand up in the healing gauze, and when she pulled the last bit off the roll for her bruised arm, the thing's eyes flicked to it, then at the floor a few feet away.

Alex watched, doing her best to ignore the feeling of her finger being regrown from only the stub that had been left, as it turned and floated over to a pile of items she had just noticed, and the claws in front of the circle of light reached out and lifted another bandage roll from the pile. It hovered back over towards her, and she flattened herself against the wall as it came close, the bandages held out towards her.

She looked from its face, to the badges, then slowly reached out and gently took them.

It released the roll into her hand, and made a soft noise somewhat similar to a short purr, if whatever was doing the purring was shut in a metal box, underwater, with a loudspeaker hooked up to its voice box. Echoey, and distorted. She stared at it for a few moments, then down at the bandages in her hand.

"Uh… thanks?"

Alex looked down at the pile of items. A red shard of crystal, the roll of bandages… the loot matched that of the first big, flaming zombie she'd fought, and she could see the signs of a large struggle around the hallway. Pillars were broken, lights were shattered, and several large, scorched holes decorated the walls, most likely from giant, burning fists.

Had this thing… killed the zombie? It would make sense, given what she was seeing, but…

why?

She looked back up at it. It seemed patient. As if waiting for something. She reached out her hand again, and gently touched one of the claws. It was cool, and hard.

The other claws all moved slightly at the touch, and Alex took her hand away. The creature looked up at her, silent.

"What are you?" She asked. It made another warbling noise in response.

Alex was distracted by another sound. At the far end of the corridor, a group of armored zombies was shuffling down the hallway. She counted them: ten. She knew she couldn't fight that many, so she took her sword and quickly sheathed it.

"sh*t. Okay, look, thanks for the help, but I gotta go." She said as the zombies noticed her, and the growls became less idle and more aggressive.

She turned and jogged down the hallway, glancing over her shoulder at the horde. There were more of them now, and the dark thing seemed to have disappeared.

She skidded to a stop, pulled out her bow, and then loosed the last of her arrows at them. One hit a shield, one struck a leg, and then other buried itself in the wooden support beam on the side of the hallway.

She cursed again and then resumed running. She still had some cobblestone left, maybe she could block off the entryway to the entire hallway. Then she'd be safe.

She reached the broken bars at the beginning of the hall as she took the remainder of her stone from her satchel. She spun around and threw out a wall, filling in all the gaps. The iron bars bent back into place, seemingly on their own, to connect with the blocks of cobblestone, and if she wasn't so busy panicking she might've remarked on it.

But, now she was safe. She leaned back against the staircase and took deep breaths, both replenishing her oxygen and calming her racing nerves. She opened her eyes just in time to see the creature from the shadow-stone phase through the wall that she'd built, as if it wasn't even there.

Her eyes widened as it floated over towards her, and then stopped a little more than two foot away. She watched as it turned in a slow circle, scanning the room for something.

Then, it turned back to her and made another long, echoing warble. It meant something, she was sure, she just didn't know what. Maybe 'no baddies here, good to go'?

So far, this creature had made no move against her, and she was pretty sure it had come, or was summoned, from the shadow-stone.

Did that mean it was friendly?

Alex stood up straight and took another step over and put out her hand, palm down, slowly reached up towards it's head. Curiosity overcame her apprehension, and she was quickly becoming intrigued. Maybe by touching it, she might find it's name, or at least whether it wanted to kill her or not.

She was startled when the creature actually ducked it's head under her hand, and pushed upwards, like a cat wanting attention. Spectre. The name rang in her mind as clear as day, just as it had with all the other things she'd found. She stepped back, as it did the same, and continued to stare at her.

She got the sudden urge to check her handbook, like some external force was saying "hey, you, go check your handbook.".

At first, she was confused as to why, but then she decided not to try and question it, and pulled out the small leatherbound tome from her bag.

It was slightly thicker than before.

She opened it up, and read the tabs at the top of the pages. The green one that said 'crafting', the purple one said 'bestairy' and then the new, orange one read 'pets & mounts' in fresh ink. She frowned and narrowed her eyes. She didn't put that there, nor the extra ten or so pages.

Magic book?

Magic book, she decided.

She turned to the 'pets & mounts' section, and read the first passage, which had a large picture of a shadowed figure and a wolf beneath it.

Pets are tamed animals or creatures that will fight for you, hunt for you, or even just keep you company in a time of stress. Most creatures are tamed using food. Usually something along the lines of raw meat, although wolves actually prefer bones. A tamed creature will follow you around, and can also be told to stay in one location.

She turned the page.

In the rare case should you obtain a soulstone, breaking it will result in one of two things. 1) a large explosion that will most likely kill you and the creature you summon. This only happens when there is too much energy in the stone to release safely. Or, most times, it will 2) summon a creature of the stone's element, and bind it's soul to yours. As long as you live and breathe, it cannot die permanently. If your bound elemental happens to be slain, you will suffer no consequences aside from maybe grief, and losing the upper hand in a fight. Don't worry, The elemental will return to the world of the living in approximately 12-24 hours.

Alex raised her eyebrows at the Spectre as it hovered nearby, closely examining the stone wall. An elemental? Of what? Darkness? Was that even an element?

She returned her attention to the page, and continued reading.

An elemental pet or mount requires no sustenance aside from energy from your soul. Because of this, they could be qualified as parasites, but it is better not to think of them that way. All elementals are different. One may crave physical contact, while another prefers not to be touched. One may enjoy a fight, while another will try to focus more on helping the owner escape a tough or unwanted battle.

Only a minority of elementals are sufficiently intelligent to understand commands, but some are better at it than others, even within a species. A few examples of species with a higher level of intelligence are the Shade, the Spectre, The Lobber, the Afrit, and the Belph. The Spectre, although elusive and rare to obtain from a stone, is quite smart. It has shown, in many cases, to be at least somewhat comprehensive of the English and Demonic languages, and has been observed communicating with others of it's kind in some sort of conversation.

Alex blinked a few times, absorbing what she'd just read. Intelligent?

She glanced over at the elemental, and watched as it hovered over to her.

"Hey." She said, and it's posture straightened. Her eyebrows raised in surprise at the change.

...but she wasn't convinced quite yet.

"If you can understand me…"

She hesitated, trying to think of a good example. She reached into her bag and pulled out an empty bottle, from the basem*nt in the manor, and held it out to the Spectre.

"...then take this bottle and break it." She said.

The small head tilted, then four claws reached out and grasped the bottle. It lifted it, retreated a few feet, and then crushed the glass like it was paper. The shards fell, tinkling, to the floor, and then disappeared.

Alex pursed her lips and nodded. "Okay, good to know." She said. "Can you talk?"

The elemental hesitated, then moved forwards and reached out with four claws, making a slight chittering sound as it did so.

Alex went rigid as the four claws slowly moved up to her face, and she raised a questioning eyebrow.

The claws pressed into the sides of her head, but not so hard as to hurt, and Alex heard a voice from nowhere suddenly speak.

"Only like this." It said, sounding distinctly feminine. "But it is hard."

The claws lifted, and the voice stopped.

Alex blinked a few times. Telepathy. Okay, cool. She should really stop expecting normal things. Nothing was normal anymore.

For a moment she wondered what that meant what was normal was there something she was missing-

"Wow, neat. So, um… do you have a name?" She asked, shaking off the strange feeling she'd just gotten. "Mine's Alex."

The Spectre seemed to think for a moment, then again reached up with its claws.

Alex didn't like the feeling of having four sharp, ivory daggers being held to the sides of her skull, but she forced down a shudder and pushed through.

"No. But I believe you are supposed to give me one?" It said. Alex nodded, the mystique quickly wearing off.

"Okay… um… how about…." She glanced down at the book in her hands. "Spectre?"

It blinked.

"no."

"Alright… specty?"

The Spectre made a noise that was somewhere between a huff and a growl. "I'm not very good with names, it seems." Alex mused.

"How about Vanya?" the Specter said. "It means 'opal' in demonic, and it… it is my favorite gem. That is a name I have always considered."

Alex blinked twice, then nodded.

"Yeah, that sounds nice." She said.

"Say it with me." the Spectre told her. "Vanya"

"What- Vanya?" Alex said quickly.

All of a sudden, Alex felt something… entirely new. She would describe it as something similar to a… a cognitive expansion of some sort. There was another presence there, just outside her mind. She could feel it, although faintly, as it brushed against her thoughts. It was strange.

The claws were lifted, and the newly named Vanya floated back a few feet.

"I thought it would do better to show the bond than try to explain it. Do you understand a little better now?" They said. Alex heard the voice even without having the claws on her skin. She could feel… emotions, and ones that weren't her own. Calm, yet wary. A new figure. Cautious.

"Um… I think so." She said. "Yeah, this is… kinda weird." She said, and closed her eyes as she put a hand to her temple.

They immediately shot back open again. "Holy sh*t, I can see… me?" She asked, bewildered. There was a nod.

"One of the effects of a bond with a void elemental." Vanya said. "I can use your eyes, and you can use mine."

Alex closed her eyes again, then opened them.

"That's… weird."

Vanya gave a small nod, even though almost their entire body dipped, and Alex could feel a sort of 'yes' float up from their link to each other.

A silent moment passed, and Alex tried to fill it with more questions.

"So… uh, are a… boy or a girl?" Alex asked.

"I am… a female. I think. Sometimes, I am not very sure." Came the reply after a moment of silence. "But you may think of me as whichever you'd like. I do not have an opinion either way."

"Oh, okay. Will do."

Alex glanced towards the wall she'd put up. Apparently, the zombies had lost interest, and had taken to shuffling aimlessly about the corridor. "Hey, uh, let's go upstairs before something decides it wants to eat me. Or you." She said.

"...Yes, that does sound like a good idea."

Alex sat at the table in her house. Well, it wasn't technically her house, but she didn't have brainpower to waste caring about it. What she wanted was answers.

"So… are there like… a bunch of you guys?" She asked Vanya, who was floating in front of the counter and curiously inspecting the dark red potion-slash-booze from the chest upstairs. "And, where do you live?"

Vanya set the bottle down gently with her claws, and turned to face the human.

"There are many spectres. We are a relatively common creature." She said. "And as for our habitat, we reside in a place called the void. You wouldn't be able to go there. You would die. But for us, it is somewhat ideal. We often venture up through the bottom of the world to hunt, as there isn't much in the void, especially to eat.

Alex blinked.

"Bottom… of the world? Isn't it a sphere?" She asked. Vanya made an odd chittering noise, and a few moments later Alex realized it was a sigh.

"It's more of an expression than a reality. The void is separate from your world, for the most part. I don't know much about it, but there is a layer that we must pass through to get here." she explained. "And, I must say, it is a much more… pleasant place, aesthetically. There's just… too many predators for use to survive."

Alex raised an eyebrow as she took a sip of water from a bottle.

"I dunno, you beat the sh*t out of that giant zombie." She said. "Better than I could do."

Vanya blinked, then floated a bit closer.

"That was because I had our bond. Between the energy from your soul, and the energy released from the soulstone's explosion, I was very much stronger than I used to be. You were not able to move, so… I did drain a bit more from you than usual, just to make sure you would be safe. It is the reason you passed out like you did."

Alex felt a guilt from Vanya's mind, and smiled.

"Hey, don't feel bad about it. You saved me! And, if I had died, I would've just come back, anyway." She said before taking another drink of water.

Vanya paused. Even the gentle rise-and-fall motion that was otherwise always present stopped.

"Come….back? I… don't understand." She said, looking down at the floor. "How is that possible?

Alex gave Vanya a sideways glance, then shrugged.

"I'm not too sure myself. I figured it out about a week ago when I got turned into a pincushion by a skeleton, then I woke up in the middle of a forest, God knows where." She said. "And then, I immediately got roasted by a dragon, that was fun. Then I found an abandoned town, and hunkered down there for a bit….fought a big zombie and barely won… then left, and ended up here." Alex drained the rest of her glass, made a pained face, then set her bottle down. "Certainly doesn't make it any more enjoyable."

Vanya pressed her mind up to Alex's as she came a little closer.

"I have never heard of a human being able to do that" she said, and Alex once again shrugged.

"Yeah, well, I would like to avoid getting killed in the future." She said. "But, uh, if you don't mind, I do have a couple more questions to ask you." She said, giving her new companion a playful prod with their psychic link, mostly just to see what would happen. Vanya didn't even react.

A moment later, the Spectre dipped her head.

"Ask away."

Alex propped her chin up on a fist and looked the Spectre up and down.

"So, about you. How do you fly? Like, I walk with my feet, I grab stuff with my fingers, how does that sort of thing work for you? I mean, aside from the obvious." She asked.

Vanya considered her answer for a considerable amount of time, turning partly away from Alex for a few seconds.

"Well… I am unsure of just how I float. It is something we are able to do at birth. And… are you just interested in other things we can do? I do not know enough about my anatomy to tell you much about that."

Alex nodded, and Vanya glanced down to the glowing lines that were centered on the lower part of her body.

"If you're willing. I'm always open to learning."

"Ah. Well… levitation isn't the extent of our control over gravity. We can generate a… I suppose a 'controlled vortex' of gravity from our core that can draw in things like food, small objects, and such. We also can remove gravity's control over some things momentarily by touching them." she said, and Alex's eyebrows raised in surprise.

"Well, that's cool. So, you guys are… omnivores? You mentioned hunting." She said.

Vanya nodded, and Alex pursed her lips. "So, if you weren't bonded with me, and we just stumbled across each other, what would you have done?" She asked.

Another feeling of guilt.

"Well… I would not be hunting. That is the males' duty. But… if we had met under other circ*mstances I would have probably fled. Now, a hunter would have most assuredly attacked you, and they still will if they can. To them, you would be small, and edible-looking." she said. Alex nodded.

"Well, then I'm glad we met like this, Vanya." She said. "So far, you're the only thing on this goddammed planet that hasn't tried to kill me."

Vanya smiled, showing sharp, white teeth.

"I am glad, too." she said. "but, that battle has left me weary, and I would like to rest, if you wouldn't mind." She said. Alex glanced out the window. It was getting dark.

"Yeah, I'm pretty beat too. Whaddya say we go to bed?" She asked, standing up.

For a moment, Vanya sat there, confused.

"What is bed?" She asked Alex, and the human's smile faded.

"Uh, it's a big, comfy thing you sleep on. Never seen one?" She asked. Vanya sent an abstract 'no' to her mind, and Alex started towards the stairs.

"Well, come with me and I'll show you."

"I am unaware of how one sleeps horizontally." Vanya said as Alex sat on the edge of the red blankets and took off her shoes. Alex stared at her for a moment, then gave her an apologetic smile.

"Oh, sorry. Uh, how do you sleep, usually?" She asked. Vanya folded up her claws and went still, eyes still open.

"like this." She said. "But in the void, there is no gravity, so we can just float. I… do not think that will work in this world. Could you... show me how to sleep here, perhaps?"

Alex laid back and then pulled them blankets over her, up to her chest.

"Just do this. It's really warm and cozy." She said.

Vanya floated over and slowly lowered herself flat onto the bed. Alex lifted the blanket up and set it over her, watching carefully as Vanya stiffened, then gradually relaxed.

"This is… Nice " She said. Alex could feel a growing sense of fatigue coming from her mind as she closed her luminous eyes. "you were… right… it is… warm…"

And then she was asleep. Alex was a little surprised, but she just smiled and lay her head down on the pillow.

"Goodnight, Vanya." She said, and closed her eyes.

Chapter 8: What's going to happen with this RLCraft Fanfiction

Chapter Text

Hi.

First and foremost, I wanna apologize for uploading a chapter that's not an actual chapter. I kinda dislike it when authors do this kind of thing, but there's really no other way for me to say this directly.

I began writing this RLCraft Fanfiction thinking it would be fun, a thrilling adventure, and a great way for me to share some of my work with the internet.

And you know what? I was right. It was. These first seven chapters have been a great pride of mine to make, and I'll probably never forget them, at the risk of sounding overly dramatic.

However, I did make a very, very fatal mistake:

I had no plan.

Farther than Alex escaping the city, and meeting her new friend, I had no idea what to do. I've been rewriting chapter 8 a ridiculous amount of times, trying to work out a way to further the story, or to open up a path for the plot, but it just wasn't working. Nothing felt right.

I haven't given up. I still want to write this story, but I'm stuck with no visible way out.

Because of that, I am going to take some time to figure out what I want to do, and where I want to go with this.

My plan is to make a full outline of the main story, and then build off of that, adding more and more details. From there, I will start by re-writing chapters 1-7, publishing them, and then working on the rest.

And to you beautiful people who left their appreciation, I want to thank you. (Insert names here), you guys told me that I wasn't wasting my breath telling a story that no one wanted to hear. So, thanks guys. It means a lot to me.

I will return to this story in time. It might be a while, but the longer the wait, you can rest assured the better it will be when it does come back.

On another note:

I have also pondered about putting up some of my other works on here. I've written portions of stories with Undertale, Five night's at Freddy's, Vanilla Minecraft, and about seven original ideas of my own. (Including a runaway Android badass and two high-schoolers who end up sharing a body with each other.)

So, if that sounds interesting lemme know.

With love and appreciation,

-SnowLinx