I awoke to a voice.
“WELCOME... TO THE MEGA-DUNGEON!”
Okay, more like a very fucking loud voice startled me awake.
“YOU HAVE BEEN SELECTED—NAY... Ordained? Was it Ordained? NAY... CHOSEN! YES CHOSEN, that’s it. YOU HAVE BEEN CHOSEN TO SAVE THE WORLD.”
I began to ignore the voice. It was clearly still working out it’s material, and I felt a pressing need to figure out what was going on. It’s one of my quirky traits, wanting to know what is going on.
I was in a white room. No, eggshell white. It was clearly an eggshell room. I was in an eggshell room, and in front of me was a small hand radio. The voice didn’t come from the radio, but instead emanated from all around me in a wall of sound.
Just sloppy workmanship.
I had clothing on, which was good. Preferable to the alternative. Jeans, a t-shirt, and what seemed to be a hoodie. The front of the hoodie was emblazoned with the text ‘Popular Brand Logo Placeholder’.
“...AND SO AS THE PROPHECY OF THE CHOSEN ONE WHO WAS CHOSEN MUST BE FULFILLED, YOU MUST PROVE YOURSELF IN COMBAT TO THE DEATH!”
I tuned back into the voice at a less than ideal time. Earlier would definitely have been better.
“Could you repeat that last part again?”
“SURELY! I SAID ‘TO THE DEATH’.”
I couldn’t even tell if I was being messed with.
Suddenly a door I hadn’t noticed before came to my attention. I found this odd, as the room had definitely not had any doors earlier. But, I reflected, it’s pretty weird for a room to have no doors either.
I tried to look around again to see if there was anything else around that could be noticed, but all this revealed was that every time my gaze completely shifted away from the door, an overpowering sense of ‘noticing the door’ would sweep over me and I would be compelled to look back at it.
Now I love an object that parasitizes your cognition as much as the next guy—which is to say, not at all.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
Without much to do besides engage with the extremely persistent door, I opened it, hoping that perhaps this would get the very bad thing out of my mind.
I liked what was through the door even less.
Inside was like an abattoir. Three hunched figures with green skin in crude loin-clothes idly picked at a dismembered a corpse between them. Even as I watched one reached down to pull off a—I closed the door.
“I would really prefer not.”
“WHAT DO YOU MEAN? IT IS YOUR DESTINY!”
“Okay, so I get that and all, but honestly those guys seem like they’re having a fine time. I do see some cultural differences, but I’m willing to just stay on this side of the door while they stay on that side.”
“THEY FEAST ON THE FALSE HEROES OF PAST SUMMONS, YOUR KINDRED, HOWEVER MISGUIDED IN THEIR CLAIMS TO YOUR RIGHTFUL TITLE. DOES THIS MEAN NOTHING TO YOU?”
“You know, you’re really not getting this. I just don’t want to kill those dudes.”
Or be killed and eaten by them.
“AH, I SEE. HOW FOOLISH OF ME, I FORGOT TO PROVIDE YOU WITH YOUR HERO’S BLADE. OF COURSE THE THRILL OF COMBAT HAS LITTLE ALLURE WHEN YOU ARE NOT PROPERLY ARMED. HERE.”
A glowing sword of elaborate design rose form the floor, flowing off of it were waves of purist light and divine essence. Golden filigree traced along it’s entire length, forming runes of clear arcane power. Even looking at it I could tell that the edge transcended sharpness, it spoke to me of the infinite partition, the pure power of separation that it had been imbued with upon its creation, in fact...
“Ow!” I had looked too closely at the sword and now I had cut on my hand.
It was a really fucking good sword okay? And I really wanted the really good sword, but the way things were going I didn’t want to seem overeager.
“Oh, I suppose I could go for those guys with that in hand. Yeah, it’s worth my while.” I spoke casually while even more casually sauntering over to the sword. It must have been Friday, that’s how casual it was.
“MY MISTAKE, THAT IS THE WRONG BLADE. THAT ONE COMES MUCH LATER ON. HERE, LET ME JUST GIVE YOU THE CORRECT BLADE.”
My heart broke. I would have my revenge for this theft of the very good sword that I may have never touched but definitely was mine by rights of having seen it and wanting it. But alas, even as my soul cried out in horror the blade sunk back into the floor, accompanied by a chorus of angels.
“HERE IS THE CORRECT SWORD.”
A rust covered short-sword spawned from the air right in front of me and promptly clattered to the ground.
A chunk of the blade broke off on impact.
I noticed that there was a bit of sharp metal sticking out of the grip, right where my palm would go.
The edge... mostly spoke of tetanus.
“...AND SO YOU SEE, IT WAS REALLY A VERY EASY MISTAKE TO MAKE. ‘RUSTY SWORD’ AND ‘RUSTIVYR, THE FLOWING EDGE’ ARE RIGHT NEXT TO EACH OTHER IN THE CODEX AND I SELECTED THE WRONG ONE.” The voice was explaining itself over my infinite desolation. Nothing could move me from the pain of loss I felt. “ANYWAY, THE DOOR WILL BE OPENING IN TEN SECONDS, SO YOU BEST SEIZE YOUR BLADE AND PREPARE FOR YOUR TRIAL! GOODBYE!”
I suddenly felt incredibly motivated to pick up the Rusty Sword.
The sharp bit on the handle was just as irritating as I thought it would be.
What was most important now was not dying and being eaten, that had jumped to the very very top of my immediate goals.
I set my mind to the challenge before me.
Clearly the creatures in there were highly successful at killing people just like me. There had been ample evidence of that on the ground, the walls, and around their mouths. Especially their mouths.
But those poor bastards hadn’t had a sword!
Now they only had me outnumbered and out-experienced! But not out-armed! How could I turn that to my advantage in the next five or so seconds?