I sat up and turned to see Inethiel’s body on the floor. My character was unconscious.
It had been a while since this had happened. Usually, I was killed right away and could take my walk of shame to the nearest crypt or graveyard.
Molly, Victor, and everyone else in the world were blocked from my vision. I wouldn’t be able to see them again until I healed enough to wake up.
In the meantime, I brought up my menu and glanced over my character sheet. Several of my stats had changed for the better, and over half a dozen new skills were added to my repertoire.
What’s going on? I thought. Sword-wielding, sword mastery, parry, drain, and poison resistance were the ones that stood out.
I'd never encountered a poison before, so I understood the new resistance skill. The others, however, were a mystery, especially the weapon-related skills since shamblers weren't allowed to use them.
I couldn't see the actual rank of any of my skills since I was using role-playing mode. Words represented their numerical values, but out of morbid curiosity, I swapped back to standard mode.
Most of my stats were boosted. Strength, agility, concentration, and presence had at least fifteen points added to each one.
My poison resistance skill was rank 0.04. Then it went to 0.05 while I was watching it. Seeing it go up in real time was pretty neat.
Sword-wielding was at 25, and sword mastery was at 10. Since I couldn’t use weapons, they would never get better unless I paid someone to teach me. Parry joined my only other defensive skill, which was cloth use.
Drain was a skill that I'd never come across before. At leat not in DO. It was at rank 1.0. I tapped on the skill, and a description popped up.
‘Grab your victim and hold on while you suck the very life force from their body.’
That sounded like it might come in handy. I wonder what other new skills I—
Inethiel’s body lifted from the ground and melded with mine. You would think this would be the moment I would gasp for air, but our kind didn't need to breathe.
Molly and Victor hovered above me.
Victor had his spell book open and a page full of runes faded as he closed it. He gestured toward the sword and said, “Lass, you better put ‘at away.”
When I did as he suggested it felt as if a heavy weight had been lifted. The pain in my gut immediately subsided.
“What did you do?” I asked.
A gasp came from behind me. Several people had come to see why some girl was lying on the ground. Every one of them now knew I was undead. Damn.
I'd likely have to order a new mask and maybe a different color cloak too.
Victor set his spell book on the counter, grabbed my hand, and helped me up. “Only reason you’re alive is because you're in town. I increased your regeneration to wake you up.”
The Hexed were different from the Enlightened and the neutral races. Where they needed a heal-over-time spell, my kind needed a rot-over-time version. If it were cast on anyone other than a Hexed, it wouldn’t have worked.
“How do I get rid of the sword?” I asked.
Molly touched my shoulder. “You have to get the curse removed.”
“I’m surprised you’re still standing wit’ all of the different curses on you right now,” Victor said.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
Curses? The only ones I knew of were the poison and the inability to drop it. “There’s more?”
“‘At web captures people and turns ‘em into a curse,” he said.
Since Victor had already identified it, I opened up my menu and checked the stats. “That’s weird,” I said.
“What?” he asked.
I grabbed Victor's shoulder and turned my screen so he could see it. Contact with another person allowed me to share my AR screen. That wasn’t the only way to do it, but it was the most secure method.
His mouth dropped. “No, ‘at can’t be.”
Most of the people watching had dispersed by then, but there were a few that refused to leave. They inched closer as if they could somehow catch a glance at what I was showing Victor.
Molly must have noticed because she put herself between them and me.
“I need to see your sword again,” he said.
Falling unconscious again was not something I wanted to happen. However, my menu said that the rot spell was still active, so I brought it out. My stomach immediately hurt.
“Turn it round,” he said.
When I did, he brought my hand closer to his face as he examined the web. Even though the healing was working better than the poison, I didn’t see how I could stand this for more than a few minutes before getting sick.
“Not a single one,” he said.
The pain seemed to fester the longer he took. “One what?” I said.
“You’re the only ‘Exed on ‘ere,” he said as he pointed to the web.
At that point, I took him at his word because the pain had grown so intense that I had to blink to keep my eyes open.
Once Victor got a good look at me, he said, “Lass, put it away!”
I heard what he said, but my mind was so clouded that I couldn’t think clearly.
Between conscious and unconscious states, I heard a voice in my head say, Brave little shambler before I collapsed and the world spun into oblivion.
***
I awoke but wasn’t in front of the hut or in the mall where I should have been. I was in my room. The walls were decorated with digital photos from the trips my parents and I had been on. Memes and screenshots from my fights in DO were perched above my desk. Something was off about the photos, but I couldn’t figure out what.
Seeking some semblance of normalcy, I said, “Floor.”
Instead of it lighting up as it should have, the posters and pictures on my walls fluttered to the ground. It was as if they were something physical rather than a digital object I placed in AR. I freaked out when they slid across the floor into a pile. When I tried to back up, I found that I couldn’t because my hands were stuck to the bed, making it impossible for me to move.
A giant insect leg pushed its way out of the pile of posters. It shifted around as if trying to find something to steady itself. Eventually, it struck the ground and dug into my carpet. Then two other legs popped out where the first one had appeared. In a matter of seconds, an enormous silver spider with a red stripe along its body pulled itself from the posters. It turned, and its inky black eyes stared back at me.
Brave little shambler, echoed in my mind.
I sat up and was alone in front of the identifiers hut. Inethiel’s body was below me, unconscious again.
What the hell was that? I thought.
Suddenly, I fell backward into Inethiel and awoke with Molly and Victor above me. Before they could say anything, I put away the sword. I would not be bringing that thing out again unless it was to remove the curse that was binding it to me.
It felt as if my heart were trying to escape from my chest. Mixed reality was usually on or off, and it never invaded my personal space. My room was where I felt safe, and it was corrupted now.
I struggled to get to my feet. One of my legs had fallen asleep. “How do I get rid of it?”
Victor offered me a hand, and I took it. As he pulled me up, he said, “A priest could remove it.”
There weren’t any Hexed priests that I knew of, and I wouldn’t be able to enter holy ground if I wanted to.
“Magic can remove curses too, not just priests,” Molly said. She was close to me, her hands spread wide as if she were prepared to catch me if I fell again.
Ghosts were the only Hexed with an innate ability to practice magic without a teacher. “Do you know any poltergeists?”
She shook her head.
“One of the Enlightened mages might be willing to help,” she said.
There was no way I would ask them to help. I would rather face the pain and whatever the hell that spider was before begging for favors from their kind. “Can you identify and appraise the rest of my stuff?”
“Sure, lass,” Victor said.
He stared at me for a moment before he lifted a portion of the counter, slipped behind it, and got to work.
The two pedestrians who were watching me earlier were gone. Seeing someone get knocked out repeatedly was probably pretty boring anyway.
***