It’s my third day down in the dungeons. I’m starting to miss the sunlight, and the sky. These magic fires are great for providing enough light to see, but they are not the same. Aurora seems content down here though. I’ve talked to her a few times out of desperation, and she rubs against me and purrs. She is strangely quiet, no meowing.
I got up from my nap and stretched. There’s a pile of coins in the corner that I gather up, and a delicious looking egg on the floor that I immediately wolf down.
I pick one of the doors at random, and go out exploring. I’m immediately confronted by another dead end, but I’m getting better at finding the secret passage behind it. The first door I come to is locked. I kick it a few times before it crashes open. I hope nothing heard that and comes running.
Something did hear. I enter the room and there’s a grid bug waiting for me. Aurora runs over to take care of it while I walk over to a potion I see on the floor. It’s a thick yellow liquid, I carefully put it in my bag.
A bat come flying in through the open door. Without thinking I zap it with magic and it falls to the floor, dead. I look at the tiny corpse and wonder how filling it would be. Aurora answers my question by eating it for me. When she’s finished, I see a scroll laying on the ground, where the corpse had been. I grab it, and move to the door at the other end of the room.
There’s a wide hallway going south, and a regular one branching off to the east. I chose the wide one while Aurora takes the other. I quickly come to a dead end, and before I start searching I hear the sound of fighting in the distance. I quickly retrace my steps and run down the tunnel Aurora had picked. I see her coming toward me, looking unharmed.
“You had me worried,” I admonish.
Predictably, she purrs and drops a yellow mold corpse at my feet. I decide that if she doesn’t want to eat it, I probably shouldn’t eat it either.
I continue looking around, and find a few empty rooms. Eventually I come to the other side of the wide passage I was at earlier. I look around and find the way to open it, connecting both sides.
A goblin slowly comes down the passage. Without thinking, I throw a dart at him, and miss. I’m about to blast him with magic when I reconsider. I wait until he’s close and then stab him with my dagger. I will need to get better at using weapons as well as magic if I want to survive. Even now I can only cast a few spells before getting tired.
I continue looking around, heading down new passageways. Aurora is off somewhere doing her own thing. Every now and then I hear fighting, but I figure she can take care of herself for now.
I come across a small room with another fountain. It looks identical to the other one I saw. I walk over to it to take a look, but determined not to touch it.
Something enters the room from another direction. I look over and see a three foot tall creature. It’s face reminds me of a dog, with a large snout that grabs my attention. It’s a mix of brown and grey skin. Patches of skin and flesh are loosely hanging off, and one falls to the ground with a muffled splat. Despite being dead, or undead, it’s eyes still have a red glow to them.
“It’s a goddamn zombie,” I say before I can stop myself.
It shambles closer to me, and strikes out with a rotting arm. It’s claws tear through my cloak, leaving deep gouges across my chest.
I immediately slash at it with my dagger. I have no idea if I hurt it. Can you hurt a zombie? I jab my dagger at it again just in case, and it falls to the ground and vanishes.
I slump down, and feel something under my butt. I leap up from the edge of the fountain and run to the wall. Nothing seems to have happened, so I lean against the wall panting.
Eventually Aurora comes in to see if I’m okay. I straighten up, and smile at her.
“We’re going to make it through this,” I say. She purrs, and waits with me while I get my strength back.
I look down to make sure my breast has healed, and to see if it left a scar. I can’t see it, my cloak has fixed itself. I open it, and see that my sweatshirt is also repaired. This is handy.
I thought I had explored this entire floor, but something isn’t right. I have not found any stairs leading down. It also feels smaller than the previous two floors. I go back and start searching the walls in rooms I think may be hiding something.
It doesn’t take long for me to find a secret door. I go through, and at the end of the passage is a dark room. I enter it, and there’s enough light for me to see directly beside me, but not any further than that. I slowly walk from one end to the other, then move over a bit and repeat. I don’t want to miss anything.
It’s a good thing I took the time. I found the stairs, and a rather large pile of gold. Well, larger than I’ve seen so far, but I suspect that it’s still not very much.
I also decide to search along the walls, and find another secret door. This is getting annoying.
At the end of a twisting corridor I find a closed door. I open it and am almost blinded by the bright lights. A tall, muscular man is standing off to the side. He looks huge, and I really hope he’s friendly. His eyes don’t have the red glow I’ve come to expect from monsters. He’s wearing a pair of grey khakis, a deep black shirt with a matching black tie. His bald head shines in the light.
“Hello, Faylen! Welcome to Sablja’s liquor emporium,” He says, waving his arm to indicate his wares.
“Hi Sablja,” I say. “I didn’t expect to see any kind of stores down here. How do you manage it?”
He doesn’t seem to hear my question, and instead goes off on a rant about shoplifters. I idly wonder who would be stupid enough to try and steal from a mammoth like him. I make a mental note not to piss this guy off.
I close the door to keep Aurora out, and look through his wares. I recognize a potion of restore ability, but the rest are foreign to me. The price tags vary, he has potions from 7 gold (clear potion, I suspect is nothing more than water) to 533 gold for thin looking orange brew.
I decide to buy the cheapest potion. I have to support the local markets. When I pick it up I feel burdened. I drop one of the many skull caps I’ve collected from goblins. Sablja seems uninterested in it, so I hand over the price of the potion and get ready to leave.
I open the door and Aurora is patiently waiting for me. I step over her, and she runs into the shop.
“Stop, come back,” I yell after her with no effect. I chase her into the store, but it’s too late. She already has a potion in her mouth, and is casually walking around.
“Put that down right now!” I yell at her. In true feline fashion, she continues to ignore me. I try to apologize to Sablja, but he just drones on about shoplifter some more. In pure frustration I leave the shop.
A pair of grid bugs are waiting for me outside. I quickly dispatch them with my handy dagger, and I experience that feeling again. I must have become more experienced again.
Aurora comes over, and I see that she’s dropped a potion in the hall.
“Bad cat.” I tell her, and go over to pick it up. I bring it back over to Sablja and offer to pay for it, but he doesn’t seem to recognize it. I even point out the price sticker on it, but all he can do is talk about those bloody shoplifters. Maybe if he kept an eye on pets he wouldn’t be in such a bad mood.
I walk over to the stairs, and something catches my eye. It’s a small piece of metal. I bend down to pick it up, but as soon as I touch it, something happens.
The world around me flickers for a moment, then it’s like a movie being played out in front of me. I see a tourist, complete with a Hawaiian shirt and an expensive camera hanging from his neck. He’s fighting a kitten. The cat is pure white, with a small black patch over one eye.
I can already tell that he’s going to lose. He doesn’t have any weapons, and is covered in deep scratches, most of which are bleeding heavily. The kitten nimbly avoids his attacks, and bites down hard on his leg. A few more scratches, and the large man falls to the floor, then disappears.
The world flickers again, and I feel like I’m back to my own world.
“What the fuck was that?” I wonder aloud. I didn’t get much time to think about it, at that moment the same kitten walks through the door.
Food. I must have something I can feed that poor little guy. I rummage through my bag while the kitten is frozen in time. When I realize I have nothing, the kitten comes at me. It leaps on my back, gouging out my flesh several vertical lines. As it hits the floor I swipe at it with my dagger. It swipes back, carving out a chunk of my leg.
I’m going to be killed by a kitten. No, I refuse. Weak with the loss of blood I manage to fire off a spell, and the blast of magic obliterates the kitten.
Aurora chooses this moment to join me, and without thinking, I stumble downstairs.
No comments:
Post a Comment