I took the coat out and put it on. It fit me just fine, which was a tick in the this is my locker column.
But with the coat gone, the locker was miserably empty.
I eyed the other lockers now, wondering if the answer lay inside them. Just before I started smashing more locks, I checked the coat pockets.
There, zipped up in the inner coat pocket, was a slip of paper.
I took it out and saw writing on the back of it.
To Isaac.
“God, this is too much,” I said. To think of all the stuff I’d adjusted to since getting here, it was ridiculous that seeing my own name written down would floor me, but that was the state I was in right then.
I unfolded the paper. It was a letter written in squashed, cursive handwriting. There were only a couple of paragraphs.
Isaac,
Guess I’m not going to see you before I go, huh? We finished the last house, and that means there’s nothing else left but to collect our things and haul ass. Funny. The bunks felt like a torture rack all this time, but I’m gonna miss them.
I know you have to wait for the relief crew to portal here ‘fore you can come join us, and that’ll suck. But I guess the longer you wait, the better the village will be. You should see it, Isaac! We built real houses. We have plumbing systems. Warm water!
We’re also tagging any other settlements we find. You know, like those quaint-ass cottages and places like that. Makes sense to claim them, right? Save time and materials Only, other folks had the same idea. Well, I say folks, but…you know. You know what’s out there. Not everywhere is safe. Hardly anywhere is safe, actually. Better we build places ourselves, in places we know won’t be found.
If we spot any safe digs while we’re in the wilds, we’ll use the code. Just keep an eye out for the symbols. We’ll mark anywhere that’s dangerous, too.
So, I guess you’ll stay at the way station for a while. You’ll have to welcome the new portalers and let them get settled in. We all miss you, buddy.
T
I was shaking by the time I finished the letter. Not just because of the implications of it. Those would take a while to hit me, and when they did, it’d be like a sledgehammer to the face, I’m sure.
No, the strangest thing was something I realized after I finished it.
All that time, while I read the words, I’d heard them spoken in my head in a woman’s voice. It was a subconscious thing.
So was T a woman?
Who was she?
And then I felt like I had been stabbed in the thigh.
That was because I remembered the last time I had met a human woman, one called Thea, who had stabbed me in the thigh.
Did Thea write this letter? That didn’t make sense. The letter was warm, obviously written by a friend. Yet, the first thing Thea did when I bargained for her freedom was to stick a knife in me.
Unless I wasn’t the Isaac the letter was addressed to. It’d be the mother of coincidences, but it was possible.
As for the rest of the letter, well…there was a lot to unpack.
CHAPTER 44 – Just Flesh & Blood
There were many things the letter could have meant, but the most important one was this; whether I was the Isaac mentioned in the letter or not, there were people out there.
People who’d come through a portal, spent time here in the mines, and then gone out to make a settlement. I had to find them.
Renewed with energy, I went from locker to locker, smashing the padlocks and checking what was inside. I found a cell phone in one. No idea how they thought they would get signal out here. Network coverage in an alien land? Yeah, right.
That didn’t stop me trying though. The thing wouldn’t even turn on.
In another locker, I found a diary. Flicking through the pages, this turned out to be a kind of crude creature codes where the guy – the handwriting made me 99.9% certain it was a guy – had recorded every creature they’d encountered in the wilds.
He’d written about everything. Their behavior. Favored habitats. Aggression. The easiest way to kill them, or whether to avoid trying that in the first place. It was handy. No, not just handy. A god damn gold mine of information.
Not only that, but the diary also confirmed one of my suspicions; his notebook explained that the people here used a chemical solution to turn raw meat into pellets that would last for years. The problem? No god damn mention of what the chemical was, if they had stored a surplus, or how to make it.
I flicked through the diary now until I found what I needed.
Cavern Dweller:
Fascinating creatures. They navigate using smell, touch, sound, and taste. They exist on a sparse, plant-based diet, which is understandable given their habitat. However, when presented with an opportunity for meat, they will take it. After learning this the hard way, lone work is forbidden in the mines.
Buffs: Given their lifelong lack of nutrients, the dwellers are quick, but weak. I have found that strength-based buffs work best against them. I’m a weak guy, but after consuming a bear buff I smashed a cavern dweller’s skull with my bare hands.
The other lockers were pretty bare, save for random tat like waterproof coats and flashlights. I took the proofs and the lights, since I was a hoarder. I was beginning to think it was a security thing.
I mean, waterproofs and flashlights were useful, but if the lockers had brass monkeys and antique china cups, I’d still have taken them. There was something about filling my inventory bag with stuff that made me feel safe.
Item Received:
Creature Codex
Flashlight x4
Waterproof Jacket x2
Finally, I came to the last locker. After busting this open I found yet another diary, this one more a personal account of the person’s time in the wilds. I knew this could be a gold mine of information about this world, so I’d take it and read it later.
I quickly flicked through it to see how many pages had been written on, when a word caught my eye. It was written in block capitals and underlined five times.
Runenmer
Wait, did I just see that?
I went back a few pages and found the full entry.
Tuesday, 55 Post-Portal
Encountered a thing that our Lonehill contact refers to as the ‘Runenmer’. Our contact seemed petrified of him and held him up as a sort of…I suppose a bogeyman would be the nearest word to it. A creature parents used to scare their children into behaving.
His magic was a strange one; trap-based, and apparently conjured using strange shapes of light. We found ourselves surrounded by hellish creatures, while the ‘Runenmer’ himself watched.
As with all encounters in this world, it is best not to panic just because something is unknown. His demons died like anything else; Yates had brought a shotgun with us, and the demonic entities didn’t hold up against lead.
So too is this ‘Runenmer’ creature mortal, despite his seemingly real power. Yates clipped him in the shoulder, and while the creature struggled with the pain, I was able to taser him.
We tried to bring him back here, but the bullets and taser effects lasted for just seconds, before he recovered, killed Yates, and turned his attention to the rest of us.
Well, we didn’t hold back then.
Did we kill him? It sure as shit looked like it. Our contact says not. “The Runenmer always comes back,” was his answer.
I snapped the book shut and put it in my inventory.
This was just…well, I didn’t know how to feel about it. Confused? Happy? I mean, there were people out there. I wasn’t alone. That enough would have been a cause for celebration.
Not only that, but the Runenmer could be killed. He wasn’t some mythical being above the laws of mortality; his body was flesh, and that I meant I could slaughter him.
I guessed the only law of life and death he broke was when he returned from the abyss of mortality. The bastard could come back from the land beyond, as the Lonehills called it.
; I realized something then.
The Runenmer was flesh and blood. Everything was just flesh and blood. Ogres, gnomes, hellgres, dwellers.
There was nothing in this world I couldn’t kill. As long as I went about it the right way, I could take on anything.
Survival?
Pah.
All this time I had focused on it when really, I was framing all of this wrong. I didn’t need to just survive.
I was a predator in this place.
All I cared about now was finding what I needed in the mines and getting out of here and seeing if I could find the other people. If the Runenmer stopped me on the way, well so what? I knew I could kill him now.
After another check of the room revealed nothing else worth taking, I took one last look around, and then I left by the door I had entered, and I stepped back out into the mines.
Out there, the chill hit me. It was then I realized that the room had been insulated, but there was nothing but cold and darkness out here in the mine cavern.
I took two flashlights from my bag. I clicked them on, relieved when they worked and sent out twin beams of light ahead of me. The lights had clips on the side, and I fastened these to my trouser hemline so that I didn’t have to carry them.
Time to find the other guys now. Before I had first found this door, I had a choice of two tunnels. There was nowhere left to explore in this part of the tunnel, so it was time to take the other route.
Just as I set off toward the tunnel, I heard something behind me. It was a soft sound, but unmistakably the sound of something landing on the ground.
Dwellers.
It had to be. Even if it wasn’t, I was taking no chances.
I remembered what the creature codex had told me now; the dwellers were fast and adaptable, but they were weak.
I quickly took a bear buff pellet from my bag and ate it. In an instant, I felt a surge of raw power inside me. My muscles stayed the same size physically, but inside it felt like they had swollen. The sensation was strange, as though I was walking in someone else’s body while retaining full control.
More sounds came from my rear. At least three dwellers, maybe more.
I unclipped my hunting knife and gripped it in one hand. I made the first few stances of a spell. With my practiced movements and Siddel’s medallion, it took milliseconds.
As the magic energy built in me, I turned around, spinning my body and the beams from my flashlight.
Holy shit!
Ten dwellers. Ten spider-like freaks all behind me, pin-prick eyes focused on me, legs tensed and ready to strike.
“Hrr-Chare!”
Flames whooshed from me, forming a ball that whizzed through the cavern and struck the creatures.
The blast sent three of them flying, and set another two on fire, while three others panicked and fled from the orange and yellow flames, skittering off to the sides of the cavern out of reach of the fire.
One dweller leaped at me now, teeth bared, legs flailing in midair.
I ducked, sank to my knees and let it sail over me, where it landed with a thud and stumbled as it tried to regain balance.
I reached forward, grabbed two of its legs, and I pulled them clean out of their sockets.
The dweller cried out in its horrible chirping voice, but I got to my feet, approached it, and delivered a punch with bear buff-infused fists.
I watched in a mix of triumph and horror as my hand sank deep into its head, soon coated in a mix of pulp and blood and bone and flesh.
The dweller lashed at me with another leg, scratching a great gouge across my face. The pain burned, and I felt my blood drip down my cheek. I wrenched my hand free, earning a face-spray of spider blood, and I punched it again.
The dweller flopped, legs splayed out, and it twitched a few times.
I let out a long, trailing breath. Another down. How many was that now? Four? Five?
Turning back around, I saw various spots of burning flames spread out over the cavern from where fire-struck dwellers had fled, died, and were now burning to cinders.
There were six separate flames. Added to the one whose skull I smashed, that made seven. This meant I had sent three dwellers fleeing, and there was no sign of them now.
Ten versus one, and I was still standing. A month or two ago, and I’d have been dead in an instant.
It should have been a good thing that I had faced a host of these creatures and made them run, but instead, I was worried. The other three would go back to their nest and fetch the others.
Time to go.
Thump, thump, thump.
The sound made me turn around, where I saw that a dozen more dwellers had landed around me.
These had bulbous abdomens and human torsos like the rest, but some of their belly bulges were different colors; two were blue, four green, while the rest were black.
“I guess that color isn’t so you look pretty for me?”
One dweller answered with a hiss, while the rest stared at me.
A blue-bellied creature raised itself on its back legs, revealing its abdomen to me. There, in the center, was a little hole. Kinda like a bumhole, being honest about it.
A stream of blue thread shot out of it, then whizzed through the air toward me. I turned 90 degrees just in time to let it go past me, where it reached the other side of the cavern and hit the wall, shattering into pieces that tinkled onto the ground.
Was that ice?
These bastards were magic?
There was more to the dwellers than anyone thought. And now, I saw that all six colored dwellers were raising their magic asses to me.
“Hrr-barrer!”
A shield formed around me in time to greet six separate threads of magic web.
Thud, thud, thud.
The shield flickered once, twice, and then faded as ice spread over some parts of it, and a green toxin scorched others.
That told me something else; their magic webbing was strong. It would have taken them a hell of a lot longer to destroy the shield by mere physical force.
The colored dwellers readied more webbing now, while the regular black-bellied ones spread out on both sides of the cavern to flank me.
“Hrr-Barrer!”
I cast another shield in front of me.
That gave me a little protection on that side, but not for long. Next, I needed to deal with the dwellers trying to trap me in a pincer movement.
“Hrr-chare!”
Flames shot from my hands and toward a dweller, but the spider leaped over them, before landing on the ground just ten feet away from me.
I still had the bear buff. I could take this bastard down. But if I left the safety of my shield I’d get blasted with magic webbing, yet if I stayed here, I’d get trapped by the flanking dwellers.
Decisions, decisions.
I spun around.
“Hrr-barrer!”
A shield formed on the flank just as a dweller leaped. The beast crashed into it and slid off, before getting back to its feet.
Turning again, I saw another dweller jumping at me.
Webs of ice and fire smashed into one of my shields, devouring the protective light.
But that was good, because it gave me time.
I could do this!
I rolled away from my position now, sure that the dwellers would need time to ready more webbing.
The dweller, surprised by my movement, missed its jump and sailed over me.
And that was when I realized that one dweller had saved its webbing.
It fired it now, and I was too surprised to avoid the lashing of blue web that crashed into my stomach, knocking the wind out of me. It felt like an ice giant had just sucker-punched me in the guts.
For a second, I couldn’t breathe. The more I tried to suck in the air the more it hurt, the more I felt like I was choking. The agony was enough to bring tears to my eyes.
The black-bellied dweller readied for another leap.
The others were just counting down the secon
ds until they could blast me again.
I tried to breathe, hearing a horrible whining sound coming from my throat like air leaking from a football. Just…need…to…breathe…
The dweller jumped at me.
All I could do was drop to the ground and press against it, and I felt my hair ruffle as it missed me by centimeters.
It wouldn’t miss again.
I took a tin out of my bag, opening it so quickly the lid rolled off out of sight.
Green Alchemooze. Just what I needed.
I scooped it out and smeared it over my belly, feeling the ooze work through my skin and spread warmth through my stomach.
The pain lessened. I could breathe.
It took a long gulp and got to my feet, just as the dweller leaped at me again.
Shit!
As it jumped toward me, I first ducked out of reach, and when it was directly over my head I leaped upwards with my bear-buffed fist clenched, smashing through its belly.
Guts and blood and watery insides showered over me, in my hair, over my face, on my lips.
A thump came from behind me, where the dweller was battering against my one remaining shield. It would have to wait; the colored-belly spiders were readying more webbing.
I focused on the blue-bellied creatures.
“Hrr-chare!”
Given they were ice-based creatures, my flames devoured them, the fire scorching their skin, melting it, peeling it back as they screamed in pain and terror and as the stink of burning dweller flesh filled the cavern.
“Hrr-barrer!”
I cast another shield to protect me from the green-bellied creatures, and now I focused on the sole black-bellied one.
From the way it was thudding into my shield again and again, I felt like I had learned a little about their intelligence.
They were dumb as shit.
I tucked my hunting knife in my belt and equipped my sword from my inventory.
Kneeling right behind one shield, all I had to do was wait with my sword pointed outwards.
Everything Is Worth Killing- Isaac's Tale Page 48
