Chapter 1 Eyes wide open
A strong, pulsating pain welcomed Leshy, even before he had an opportunity to open his eyes. His temple felt as if it was about to burst open from a hangover of a lifetime.
That pain, however, became irrelevant just a second later, as a much stronger feeling of fear overtook every sense.
It was this kind of gruesome fear, which one experiences in the face of deadly danger.
Imagine that you are crossing a road and suddenly hear a loud “beep” sound, coming from a quickly approaching car. Obviously, that car is coming straight at you with no intent to stop.
At the moment like this, you feel an utter terror. That terror comes from a simple fact of understanding that your life is likely to perish.
That fear made Leshy, even though still asleep to moved his arm muscles and to forcefully wake himself up. He opened his eyes and started scanning the bedroom. A quick glance was enough to form a wave of disbelief as the scene before him was against any reasoning.
What used to be a nice, modern bedroom was no longer there, replaced by a dark, primitive room.
Walls were no longer covered by paint but were full of moss and tree roots, which were coming from countless cracks, creating some kind of bizarre, web.
The room also became much darker since its main window turned in nothing more than an unevenly shaped hole, half-covered in vegetation.
The bed, in which Leshy was currently lying could no longer be called a piece of furniture as it became nothing more than a pile of furs. The smell was also questionable at best.
“What the hell happened here?” Leshy thought in a daze as he was getting himself on two feet. “And where is Vanessa,” asked himself very nervously looking at the empty place next to him in the “bed”.
The feeling of danger was growing stronger and stronger. Leshy felt in his mind as if two red dots were getting slowly but steadily closer to his location.
He was strangely certain that those two dots were the source of perceived danger. He walked from a pile of furs, stepped on the stone floor (used to be wooden) and quickly moved to where a kitchen supposed to be.
The irrational fear made Leshy search for something sharp or heavy, preferably both…
Once he entered the kitchen it becomes obvious that it had changed as well. The room was much brighter than it used to be as one of its walls got removed.
Instead of a wall, there was a view of what seems to be a vast forest. Originally apartment was located on the 3rd floor and this height had been maintained as Leshy could see tops of trees and landscape from hundreds of meters away.
Currently, the “apartment” or rather a cave in which Leshy was standing, was located on side of the small hill.
It couldn’t sound more ridiculous - a small mountain in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by wild nature.
“Seriously, where in the devil have I landed?” asked out loud Leshy as he stepped out of the edge of the cave and looked at the direction of the kitchen.
The kitchen was absent of all new-age equipment like RTV/AGD and nice furniture. Everything was gone replaced by stone walls, primitive wooden shelves and even worse looking holding bags.
It didn't look to be of bad quality, but rather something taken from early medieval ages, from times were technology was very primitive.
All equipment seemed to transform to old ages standards - in place of the microwave, there was a piece of fire starter, an oven was now just a fireplace and instead of the refrigerator, some smoked meat was hanging from the ceiling.
Leshy glanced hopefully a place where kitchen knives used to stand and his prayers seemed to be heard as two scary looking knives were coldly lying on the desk.
The first one, quite long and sharp, looked more like a dagger then knife while the other was a simple and ugly butcher knife.
” What a shame! Those knives were a housewarming party gift.” Leshy said despite fear and strangeness of the situation.
“Over 8 friends collected money to buy that set and I got left with just two crude knifes” the regret visible in his eyes could make heaves cry.
At that moment he felt a stab of pain in his head, urging him to focus. He quickly grabbed the butcher knife and its heavyweight had something reassuring to it making him feel slightly better.
He had, however, a very remote idea of how to use the knife as a weapon. His expertise in this matter was narrowed to the quite straightforward idea, that the sharp part should be pointed to what needed to be cut.
It must be said that Leshy used to train little martial art like karate and kung-fu to keep himself in decent shape. He was also from this kind of people that enjoyed a thrill of fighting and had good enough mixture of skills, reflexes, and instincts to win most of the time.
So, he knew how to punch and not hurt himself. Honestly, that is already above expectations for an average white-collar worker.
The feelings of danger keep on mounting as two dots in his mind were slowly getting bigger and somewhat closer. It was a very bizarre feeling which gave him the certainty that some grand finale will be happening once those two dotes will get to his position.
Suddenly, from the remote part of the apartment, where the entry door used to be, came a muffled sound of footsteps.
Leshy’s heart begun pounding like crazy and he got frozen in place unable to think or take any action for this short moment when the body subconsciously makes a decision whether to fight or run.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Second, later adrenaline kicked in, the brain started processing at rapid speed, forming a conclusion that there is no way to run. Leshy’s legs started to tremble out of pressure, yet he moved as quietly as possible to the corridor connecting the kitchen so he could hide at the corner.
The corridor was in L shape and right behind the corner there used to be a small wardrobe and now there was enough place to hide in darkness as the light from the kitchen and bedroom was not reaching that place.
There used to be a small wardrobe and now there was enough place to hid in darkness. The cave, beside the kitchen, was almost devoided of light anyway, so whoever enters will have trouble distinguishing the corridor walls without extra focus.
Very quiet footsteps could be heard around 5 meters from Leshy. The sound was slowly moving towards the corridor’s corner where Leshy was hiding and holding his breath. His hand which was clenching the grip of butcher knife becomes cold and sweaty due to using too much force. Step after step the creature was getting closer.
Right now, Leshy could distinguish that the sound of footsteps was not coming from one creature but rather from two.
“Not good” thought Leshy. Every pore of his body was telling him that what was approaching was an enemy and the encounter can finish with only one party standing. It seems that the image of a glowing red dot in his head was a kind of strange ability to percept incoming danger. And right now the red dot couldn’t possibly become bigger.
A second later, what appeared next to Leshy was some medium-size creature, around 140 centimeters tall. With that height, the tip of the creature’s head could at most reach at Leshy’s chest. It seems the creature recognized that’s something was amiss and tried to quickly glance at a dark corner where Leshy was standing.
However, it was a split second too late. Leshy, after a brief moment of hesitation, was using all his might to hack the butcher knife at the creature’s head. The creature started to perform the dodged but it was too late as heavy butcher knife cracked the skull open with a nasty sound. The blood and the brain matter splashed the walls of the corridor with a moist sound and yell of surprise came from the second creature standing behind.
Leshy heard the yell and saw a second create which was holding a spear. The creature reacted instantly, moved and thrust the spear at Leshy’s body. At that moment Leshy was still holding the butcher knife which got stuck in a skull of the dead adversary and holding the body with the second hand.
Without a moment of thinking, he placed the dead body in front of him just in time to engage the incoming spear. The force of spear was great enough to pierce through the body and going 2-3 centimeters in Leshy’s side giving nasty wound. Leshy breathed heavily due to the force of the impact and newly formed sensation of pain coming from his side.
The creature tried to pull back the spear but it got stuck in the dead body which gave Leashy and opportunity to act. Using all of his might he pushed his dead shield, throwing it diagonally to the second creature.
The force of push made the spear which was still in the dead body made cracking noises by breaking some of the ribs and releasing a small fountain of blood and gore. Since the second adversary was still holding the end of the very same spear, the Leshy’s violent moved surprised the creature and made it drop the spear and trying to catch balance.
After a few shaky steps creature dropped to the ground, unable to mitigate the energy of the impact. Leshy quickly dashed towards the getting up enemy and kicked it blindly to interrupt the attempts of standing up. The kick seemed to be effective as there was a puffing sound of pain coming from the creature.
That was all Leshy needed as he could localize its head. He jumped on the enemy and started it hit it using his fists and elbows. There was warm blood running from his wound on the left side but Leshy felt no pain as the adrenaline from first life and death fight was blocking all of his senses.
The creature beneath him tried to struggle by slashing at Leshe’s face with hand’s short claws but there was not much force behind it as the creature was already slowly losing consciousness. The slash left only a shallow but bloody mark on Leshy’s profile. Leshy still in berserk mode was breathing heavily, his punches started to sound wet as the creature's head became a mixture of broken bones, blood, and minced meat.
After an unknown amount of time past Leshy had no longer any strength left to continue punching, his hands were bleeding from cuts done by bone fragments and he slowly dropped to the ground. Leshy glanced at the wound on his side and it looked bad with blood slowly pouring out of it as well.
Leshy suddenly felt very weak and almost fainted due to seeing so much of his own blood. The tick scent of gore in the air was also not helping.
At that moment the fear of death filled his head, made him stand up and to move heavily to the “bedroom”. He frantically grabbed a few pieces of leather and started to bandage the wound in order to do something with bleeding. At that moment this becomes the most important task in his entire life, making him more focused than ever before. After provisional dressing was made which could be treated as a temporary solution at best he finally took off eyes from a wound and looked around.