Delvers LLC- Surviving Ludus

by Blaise Corvin (ed)

  I was actually starting to feel more confident right up until some root decided it liked the way my boot looked, and invited it to stay a while. With my foot firmly stuck in that lecherous root and my body continuing to move away from the murderous animal, physics took over and delivered my backside right into the ground.

  I think Fuzzy smiled. Well, her mouth gaped open a bit wider and I imagined she was smiling. I was about to die a really, really painful death, so no one would judge me for becoming just a little bit hysterical. The beast sort of sauntered over, just barely favoring her wounded left side. It was obvious that the strike I had been so proud of moments before really was just a flesh wound to her. In moments, she was looming over me and my whole body tensed in anticipation of turning into Riggs sushi.

  Then Fuzzy screamed. I’d never heard a sound quite like it. It was high pitched and ululating and somehow full of pain and hate, directed towards the wooden spear that had just sprouted in her back.

  Holy shit! I thought. I don’t know if it was instinct or what, but I saw my chance and I took it. My faithful e-tool, somehow still in my right hand, came up in a flash and slammed deep into Fuzzy’s neck. The howl cut off instantly as the hardened edge of the tool cut through muscles and tendons. I must have rolled the luckiest metaphorical dice ever, because I was pretty sure I’d somehow crushed her airway.

  If I had been fighting an intelligent foe, Fuzzy probably would have killed me out of spite, took her murderer down with her, and all that. Thankfully, mole-ape-bats didn’t think that way and Fuzzy leapt back, shaking and trying to get away from the pain that kept her from breathing. This action also happened to yank my shovel out of her neck in a truly spectacular fountain of arterial blood. While I wasn’t quite soaked, my shirt getting a good wash and me getting a shower immediately jumped onto my to-do list.

  As Fuzzy’s death throes subsided and my foot said its final farewell to its root friend, I stood and took a few moments to look around. Someone had saved my life with that spear and I definitely owed him thanks, and more thanks if he could take me to the nearest town. If that happened, I would buy him a literal ocean of drinks.

  I called out, “Hello! I’m Zac Riggs! Uhhh… thanks for saving my life!” I felt kind of stupid shouting into apparently empty trees like this. Then a thought struck me. “Do you speak English? Uh, hablas Espanol? Parlez-vous Francais? Sprichst du Deutsch?” I really hoped they didn’t answer in French or German. Spanish, I could sort of muddle through, but I knew enough of the rest to ask for the bathroom, and that was it.

  The hairs on the back of my neck stood straight up as an odd voice started jabbering behind me. When I spun around, the last thing I expected to see was a young woman. Well, no. The absolute last thing I expected was a young woman poking her head out from behind a tree, who, honest to God, had cat ears. My eyes went wide as I took in her appearance. Suddenly, alien abduction went from a lowball possibility on my list of “Ways Zac Riggs Could Have Ended Up Here,” to right near the top.

  Engineering Ludus, Chapter Two

  There’s no way my rescuer could have passed as human. Apart from the inhuman ears, her skin had a mottled look, almost spotted, and she had fur. The slightly pointed face wasn’t a muzzle, but wasn’t quite human, either. And those brown, slitted eyes flashed gold as a passing sunbeam caught them. She did have a head of hair, shortish and black. She wore ragged, but serviceable clothes, but no shoes, and I noticed her feet weren’t human, either; a cross between pads and toes, complete with extended claws.

  All in all she was at least a foot shorter than my own five foot eleven, and by my estimation looked about fifteen years old. Of course, there was no way of knowing if that meant she really was this young or what passed for forty around here.

  Whatever she was saying, it didn’t take long for her to realize I didn’t follow a single word. The cat woman—because what else could she have been, oh God, she even had a tail—switched to some other language. This new language was definitely not her native one, because she spoke slower and more deliberately. It didn’t help much; I still didn’t catch a single word.

  “I don’t understand you,” I said, slowly, shaking my head. Hopefully the tone would carry the message, and maybe it did because the cat girl petered off. Then I remembered the cliche of first contact stories throughout history, and with a grin, I pointed to myself. “Zac Riggs.”

  She nodded, which let me know nods were universal. Good to know. Pointing my direction, she repeated, “Zac Riggs.” I nodded enthusiastically, and then she smiled, revealing pointed canines as she poked her own chest. “Gazra-tam.”

  “Gazra-tam,” I said slowly and her smile turned into a grin. I found myself grinning back. This was some real progress here. Poking a thumb into my chest, I said, “Zac Riggs. Human. Human.”

  Gazra-tam shook her head at this, which was a bit odd, then she clearly said, “Terran.” Okay, I had read enough scifi to know Earth was Terra and this definitely made me a Terran, so I nodded emphatically. Then I pointed at her and made what I hoped was a confused expression, comically throwing my hands up in the air.

  “Mo’hali,” was the response, which I dutifully sounded out, and repeated. She nodded.

  Whelp, we had established I was Zac Riggs the Terran and she was Gazra-tam the Mo’hali. Progress! She had also recognized me for being Terran, which I reasoned meant the people on this world—and at this point I pretty well figured it was not Earth—had contact with humanity. But this reminded me that I ought to make absolutely sure of my assumptions, so I bent down to point at the ground while making the best questioning face I could muster. Again, I began to wonder if I might have been naturally gifted with charades skills because Gazra-tam made a motion that encompassed all of our surroundings and said, “Ludus.”

  On second thought, maybe Gazra-tam was the one who was good at charades.

  “Well, Riggs,” I muttered to myself, “welcome to Ludus.”

  ***

  Gazra-tam’s camp wasn’t far, maybe a fifteen-minute hike. And it was a slow hike because my various bumps and bruises were starting to make it very clear what they thought of me fighting things way out of my weight class. The two of us passed the time pantomiming at the forest and swapping words. While I’m not great with languages, my memory isn’t bad and I tried to absorb as much of this new language, Luda, as I could.

  We started by going through the basics: Yes, no, food, water, tree, rock, sky. It wasn’t much, but without any common ground it was hard to get any sort of complex ideas across. I would have killed for a smartphone loaded with a Luda translation app right about then. This likely wasn’t going to happen, so I focused on learning everything I could.

  Eventually we walked into a clearing with a small rise in the center. I had hoped to see some sign of an organized camp, but it just wasn’t in the cards. Gazra-tam led me to a small rocky outcropping and I realized that it was the entrance to a cave. At least, I thought it was a cave, right up until it opened into a hewn-stone hallway, and eventually some sort of receiving hall. The space was about fifty feet wide and thirty deep, with higher ceilings than you would expect from an underground structure. The roof was supported by carved columns inset with odd glowing stones, spaced evenly throughout the room.

  The lights fascinated me. They were as bright as a high-wattage incandescent bulb, but I didn’t see any sort of wiring. I started over towards one to get a closer look. Inductive power, maybe? Or could they all have batteries? I was brought up short by Gazra-tam as she hissed and yanked me back. Her grip was strong, really strong, like Arnold-strong, and her hand had landed right on top of one of my new bruises. I stumbled back with a yelp, and saw her shaking her head violently while she said something. Then I realized that her words were actually part of my new, very limited Luda vocabulary and translated to “No walk rock.”

  Frowning, I motioned at the stone floors we had been walking on the whole time. “Rock.”

  After indicating I should stay where I
was, she began slowly retracing her steps, and with each one repeating, “Walk rock.” Then she got to the big tile I had been about to step on, and without stepping on it said, “No walk rock.”

  Bending down and looking closely, I compared the “Walk rocks” and “No walk rock.” It took a moment, but I started to notice a few differences. There was a hairline crack surrounding the suspicious tile and it was ever so slightly raised above the rest. Could it be some sort of pressure plate?

  I began to wonder if I had really been transported into the real-life equivalent of Minecraft. This might explain a dungeon full of traps and monsters like Fuzzy Wuzzy, or my cat-girl guide. I straightened, nodded, then pointed to the raised tile and repeated, “No walk rock.”

  Gravely, Gazra-tam nodded back, then used her spear to point from the tile to little holes in the walls and ceiling. There was no way for me to know if they would shoot poison darts, or gouts of flame, or some sort of caustic acid, or any of a thousand different things. The message was clear, though: Do Not Step on the Tile.

  No walk rocks, indeed.

  With the point made, my guide led me through the room, deliberately avoiding three other ever-so-slightly raised tiles. As we walked, she used her spear to indicate each one as we passed, repeating a single word. I wasn’t totally sure, but figured it meant, “trap.”

  Someone had gone through a lot of effort to kill any casual spelunkers who happened to wander down here. Was this the playground of a sadistic madman or were we wandering through the remnants of some abandoned fortress? Whatever the place was, I was intensely grateful to Gazra-tam for saving my life for the second time in an hour.

  Of course, she’d led me down here in the first place, but I decided not to think too much about that. There was a noticeable lack of Fuzzy’s friends down here, which I decided was an improvement of my potential situation earlier.

  After the entry hall we went down a set of stairs. Gazra-tam periodically pointed to this thing or that and said the word I had come to associate with trap. Individual steps, a section of handrail, and even an entire side passage were all labeled with the same word. I made a mental note as I stepped gingerly over a gossamer tripwire that moving around this area without a guide would be a Bad Idea, capitalized, and I resolved that if I got lost, I’d just scream for Gazra-tam and hope she found me.

  The staircase of death felt like it lasted a few dozen stories at least, but when I looked back it was only about forty steps. Damn, it had sure felt longer. Returning my gaze to the room in front of me, I saw the makings of a camp. There was a small bedroll in one corner with some basic supplies and scorch marks where there might have been a fire. A small trickle of water forcing its way through the wall and down a convenient drain explained why Gazra-tam had chosen this room to make her home. It didn’t really explain why she was here, but there was no way I would be able to ask for her story without a few more language lessons. Well, no time like the present to get started.

  We settled down to “speak” with each other with lots of hand motions, grunts, and miming. But with effort and time, we seemed to be able to communicate. This didn’t mean trying to learn Luda without any common ground wasn’t painful. It certainly wasn’t easy.

  To make things worse, Luda obviously wasn’t Gazra-tam’s native language, either. She could speak it without trouble, no question, but she would have to pause at times to find a word or phrase. At one point I tried to get her to just teach me her own tongue and she flat-out refused. “Terran no good Mo’hali,” was her only explanation.

  So except for sharing a bit of English, I mostly concentrated on learning Luda, and immersed myself in it. On this world, it seemed Luda was the trade language so it wasn’t as if I could fall back on the old, “This is America, speak English” line, could I?

  This literally wasn’t America; it wasn’t even Earth. My new reality was enough of a mind fuck that I shied away from really examining it.

  Hours later—I could only guess without a phone or a watch—Gazra-tam held up one hand and asked, “Food?” Since my stomach took that cue to do its best earthquake imitation, it was a welcome suggestion. By my estimation I had hiked at least five miles, fought a “mole-faced-bat-eared-ape-demon” as the locals called it—at least Gazra-tam had—and I’d gotten a crash course in a new language. This had all taken place since I last ate back in Colorado, so feeling like I was starving wasn’t unexpected, once I thought about it.

  I nodded eagerly with a big smile. “Food, yes. Thank you.” She smiled back and pulled some roots and leaves out of a bag near her bedroll. I looked at them a bit questioningly, but the cat girl apparently wasn’t as carnivorous as she looked. She attacked the vegetables with a passion.

  Experimentally, I bit into a root. It turned out my caution was warranted because the thing tasted terrible! It was like…rancid mothballs mixed with celery.

  Meanwhile, Gazra-tam was sitting there munching on an identical one. Maybe it didn’t exactly look like she was enjoying a five-star meal, but she wasn’t acting like she was choking down something that tasted like it came out of my grandmother’s linen closet, either. I spat, trying to get the chemical taste out of my mouth. Ugh, no good. Maybe washing it out will help. There was water in my pack, and real food, too! I stood from the rock that had been my seat for the past few hours.

  …And my pants fell down. Of course, Gazra-tam chuckled.

  My face turned red and the cat girl started full-throated laughing at me. I was pretty sure she was more amused by my embarrassment than seeing my boxer briefs, but this didn’t make it any better. Yanking my pants up in a huff, I fumbled for the button and found… nothing.

  Humiliation turned to confusion as I examined my waist to find the stainless steel button had rusted right through; it was powder now. Gazra-tam’s laughs finally tapered off and she came over. I showed her the crumbling fastener and she said something that sounded like a curse. After a bit of back and forth I established the local word for steel or iron, and apparently rust or decay as well. Rot, maybe? But from the sound of things, it was the kind of word that would get a kid’s mouth washed out with soap. This begged the question of exactly why would people use rot of all things as a curse. Unless…

  A sudden thought struck me, and the hand that wasn’t busy holding my pants up darted into a pocket for my knife…and came back with what was left of it. The textured plastic scale was perfectly fine, but the hardened steel of the blade had turned to flakes, and filled my pocket with garbage.

  This is very, very weird, I thought.

  Something on this world apparently really hated ferrous metals. Luckily, blood seemed okay or my blood would have stopped carrying oxygen a long time ago. But something had just caused every bit of iron or steel I had to go through fifty years of corrosion in a few hours. A quick glance at the aluminum frame of my hiking backpack and the titanium e-tool still strapped to it confirmed they were fine.

  “What kind of world can exist without steel?” I wondered to myself out loud. So much of Earth’s technology was based on steel and iron, from heavy industry, to railroads, to guns, skyscrapers, even the most basic tools. Hell, even clothes used steel, as I had just discovered. The engineering degree I had been working towards wouldn’t exist without the stuff! There were half a dozen undergraduate courses alone with the word “steel” in their name.

  One thing was for sure, Ludus would take some serious getting used to.

  Engineering Ludus, Chapter Three

  The surrounding forest was usually quiet, way quieter than the ones back on Earth. When I had tried to ask Gazra-tam about it, she hadn’t really understood my question.

  Maybe the lack of noise had something to do with the woods on Ludus being so full of super predators, things like Fuzzy-Wuzzy, and anything resembling prey had evolved to be silent. Thankfully “full of predators” hadn’t impacted my life too much since I’d first arrived to this world. I’d seen a few more monsters since then, and even killed a Rock-Skinned-Wide-Mout
hed-Badger-Demon. The creature had seemed to believe that its rock-hard hide would keep it safe. Fun fact, a titanium shovel blade with a hundred-seventy pounds of force behind it will go right through its natural armor.

  The last three weeks I had carried my shovel every time I left my dungeon home, as well as a fire-hardened javelin that Gazra-tam had helped me fashion. I’d wished there was something like flint around here to make a proper spearhead, but sadly it wasn’t meant to be, or at least, I hadn’t found any. Maybe this was a good thing because I didn’t know the first thing about knapping flint and I’d have probably cut a finger off.

  Now I understood why Gazra-tam prized her bronze spearhead so highly. Knowing this, I just appreciated her saving my life on that first day even more.

  By my count, I had been on Ludus for twenty-three days. And it had been…interesting so far. Gazra-tam was great. Actually, that’s not the right word for it. The cat girl was becoming like the little sister I’d never had, and one that knew infinitely more about this world than I did. Luckily, she seemed to actually enjoy bringing me up to speed.

  After the first week, I had enough of the language down to start having meaningful conversations with Gazra-tam. These conversations were by no means smooth, because, I mean, no one can pick up an entire language in a week. But I had enough nouns and verbs down that I could muddle through some semi-coherent questions and puzzle out the response about a third of the time. The rest, the missed exchanges, were just opportunities to learn more Luda.

  I’d learned a lot.

  Now I’d accepted that I was stuck on some sort of primitive death world, transported by a jackass of a self-proclaimed god named Dolos. Apparently knowledge of Dolos, and of people coming from other worlds was common on Ludus.