Talia was concussed. How she knew the symptoms of a concussion was a mystery to her, but the fact of the matter was undeniable. The world wobbled like a spinning top, jolted every so often by worrisome quakes that shook her to the bone. A scant few steps into the tunnel to her destination, she stopped to hack up bile, nearly running headfirst into a wall that had been much closer than it had first appeared. Her head felt too full and her vision blurred, flickering between pitch darkness and perfect visibility.

The perpetual feeling of confusion was just the carrack nut on the cake.

Common wisdom —or what she hoped was common wisdom— dictated that she stay put, wait for help to arrive and get her somewhere safe. Preferably a bed, where she could get some rest.

Said common —or possibly uncommon— wisdom posed several problems. For one, she had no idea where she was. For all she knew, the dead man who’d saved her life had been her only companion, leaving her all alone in an unfamiliar warren of smooth, almost Ancient-carved tunnels. Second, were any dangers the complex might contain. Though it was uncommon, goblins sometimes…

Goblins? Where did that come from?

Shaking her head only made the poor, crucial appendage attached to her neck ache harder.

Her final, most important concern, was the set of symptoms that were not linked to concussion. The shakes and tremors fit a bad concussion. A fearful part of her knew that tremors usually meant a brain bleed. Brain bleeds were Bad.

The good news? If she had one, she would’ve been long dead. So it wasn’t that.

Agonizing, full-body pain coming and going with no warning, did not fit a concussion. Nor did the whispers at the edge of her hearing. Or the purple glow in the corner of her eyes. The enigmatic runes that flicked across her vision. The empty hole in her chest begging to be filled with something.

Something is wrong with me.

The assessment and the decision that followed weren’t so much conscious as they were a subconscious weighing of the scales. A recognition that concussed or not, she only had one path forward. Were she more lucid, Talia might have considered that maybe heeding the beckoning of a fever dream wasn’t much of a path at all.

But her thoughts slurred and sloshed, each more painful to connect to the next.

So Talia trudged on, stumbling from wall to far-off wall like a runaway billiard ball.

At times, her sight failed her, plunging her into the dark. Cursing whatever subpar nighteye pills she must’ve taken, she felt her way forward with her hands, trusting —hoping that her dream had not lied. Sometimes, when Talia’s vision returned, she found herself crumpled up against the wall, head full of fuzz and mouth dry. She did not dwell on the additional holes in her recollection.

After all, what was another frayed thread on an already moth-eaten, decrepit tapestry?

The bouts of black senselessness melded together. Little slivers of death added to the growing tally of blank moments in her memory.

Talia woke from one such bout in a panic, fighting the instinct to gasp and holding her breath.

Fuck fuck fuck, gas eruption—

The fog of acrid gasses curled Talia’s nose hairs, roiling and pungent. She fumbled at her waist, groping for her gas mask, only succeeding in cutting her hand on a buckle.

“Shit, ahh, ouch,” Talia hissed, sticking the assaulted finger in her mouth.

She frowned, pulling the offending digit from her lips and up to her face. Her blood didn’t…taste right.

Blood beaded on her fingertip, red and…

Pearlescent?

Despite the gaps in her memories and her impaired functions, Talia knew that blood didn’t look like that. It didn’t shimmer. As it rolled down her finger onto her palm, she swirled it around, watching streaks of silver twist unnaturally amidst the carmine drops. It was…hypnotic. Time lost its meaning as she watched the tendril of silver flutter out of her bloodstream, dripping down her wrist.

Shit, the gas!

Talia jerked her hand away, splattering droplets across the floor in a frantic search for a gas mask. As her eyes registered the tunnel around her, that same hand dropped against her thigh.

The fog was gone.

Oh. Oh.

Had it even been there in the first place?

Talia’s head pounded as she levered herself up off the ground. She froze as soon as she was up, listening intently as a sound echoed down the tunnels.

A scream.

A very sapient scream. Shrill and mindless and full of pain.

Any thoughts of following where it came from fled her mind.

Let’s not follow the shriek of deathly terror in the middle of nowhere while I’m obviously…unwell. Seems like a bad idea, to say the least.

Talia stumbled against the wall as a surge of agony ran amok across her nerves. It felt like an urvai beetle nest had made its home in her muscle fibres. Like her body was a stretched cord drawn tight and taut to the point of fraying down the middle. Weathering the episode, Talia stood straight, unsheathing the unwieldy cleaver and using it for something far more practical.

It clicked against the stone floor as she traipsed onward, using it as a makeshift walking stick.

If the dream was accurate, I still have a ways to go.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

The convenient timepiece on Talia’s wrist told her that she’d been walking for hours. Well, travelling for hours. Frequent bouts of darkness, both conscious and not, ate at both her time and her perception of it. What had been hours had felt like days while she lived them. It was enough to drive anyone to the brink of giving up.

Luckily, with only one thing to focus on, Talia’s thoughts settled into their track, keeping her moving, if slowly. Exhaustion and pain hindered any ideas of well…anything. She’d decided on her course, and if she died before she reached her destination, well, for some reason, that thought wasn’t as scary as it had been when she’d woken up.

I wonder if anyone will remember me?

The memory of a caramel-skinned girl with big brown puppy eyes and mousy features hazed across her thoughts. An old dwarf with a thick white beard and spectacles that framed smile lines.

I’m sorry, whoever you are.

Then, the lights went out.

Well, her sight went out.

Shuffling to the side, Talia pressed her hand against the wall, moving forward blindly. Her metal arm was stronger than it looked, easily carrying the giant cleaver one-handed.

This thing needs a name.

Talia giggled, not sure why the prospect was so funny to her.

Hmm…let’s see… Compensation has a kind of irony to it.

She was certain it wouldn’t escape anyone that the sword was nearly as big as she was.

Or should it be something more meaningful? More serious? Darkfriend. Or…oh! Beastrender. That’s a fearsome name, right?

Twisting her metal wrist, she struggled to slip the huge weapon back into its inverted sheath. The shakes she’d been suffering seemed to extend to the prosthesis for some arcane reason. Probably the same reason it felt like a real arm, though, so she supposed she should be thankful to whoever had attached it. For now, she cursed the inconvenience.

“Hehe,” she chuckled as the thought registered, giving up and raising the blade up to her face. “I dub thee, Inconvenience.”

So caught was she in her own delirious amusement that she didn’t notice when the wall she was following along gave way to a door. One which she promptly fell through in a tumble of flailing arms and clanking metal.

Her head hit something with enough force to give her another concussion, and the darkness around her suddenly became much more tangible.

At least I might remember falling asleep this…

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Clank—bang—clank—bang—clank—bang—clank—BANG!

Talia jerked to life for the nth time, not knowing where she was, or how she’d gotten there. Memories fluttered in drowsily with each painful throb of her heart behind her eyes.

She swept them aside, ratcheting herself upright and sweeping a blurry gaze across the room, looking for whatever was making the racket that had woken her. She didn’t have to look long —it was the only source of light in an otherwise dim and grey hall.

The room itself was larger than the guildhall of the Arcanists’ Guild, maybe three or four hundred square metres all told. All kinds of strange machines littered what looked like a factory floor, all right angles and sleek metal construction, the finer details opaque to Talia’s blurry-eyed gaze.

The glowing red eyes of a metal…man, on the other hand, were unmissable.

Its construction was sleek, like the rest of the machines. Human-shaped, but about twice as big as the dead, nameless friend she’d left in the cistern, with a set of six multi-jointed…well, they weren’t arms, more like appendages. Smooth silver glowed with angry hues as runescript flared.

Instinct told Talia to flee, but a closer look as her vision cleared told her that the construct was trapped. One of the hulking, similarly runed but glaringly dim and rune-rotted machines had been toppled across its midsection at some point.

A long time ago, if the dust is anything to go by. Heh. Guess I dusted off the past here, didn’t I?

The thought brought a chuckle to her lips, nonsensical and unfunny as it was.

Clank—clink—BANG!

All traces of mirth died as the mass of metal obstructing the construct’s movement shifted, debris shaking itself loose as it struggled to get free.

Is it just me, or does that thing look…murderous?

“Heh. Of courshe it’s jusht me. Well, me ann youuu, I guesshh. You and I? Thatsh it. Juss you an I buddiesh, trapped in thish pit togezsher,” Talia slurred, falling back on her elbows and watching the far-off ceiling swirl and contort.

Hmm. That can’t be good.

“Mind if I share your graaave? I’m pretty shhure I’m done now. Heh. Done, get it? Like deash.”

A tinny, screeching whine echoed across the cavernous hall, emanating from the construct.

“Rude,” Talia pouted, “Too bad ya cantsh do anyshing about it righh? Hehehe.”

The machine shifted again.

Oh shit.

Scrambling to her feet, Talia fought off a dizzy spell. The room whorled around her.

Not the place to lie down, got it!

Metal appendages moved without sound, contorting in ways nature hadn’t designed into flesh and blood beings, beginning to scoop the heaping pile of rent metal off of itself.

“I’m going, I’m going!”

Another screech of anger from the demon construct echoed against the hall full of lost runescript and metal.

Talia frowned, leaning against the nearest metal monolith.

Almost sounds like the voice from my dream.

“Oh shiii—t not the time for that, Talsh, gotta gooo—”

She nearly retched when she bent to pick up Inconvenience, the sword’s name coming to her unbidden as she swallowed back bile.

Clank. Clank. BOomm

Sound waves rattled her skull as the giant derelict machine finally moved.

Wyrr’s tangled testicles, how strong is that thing?!

Talia’s ears rang as she turned to stare at the silver monstrosity.

Fuck me.

Intricate, swirling lines flared red as mana filled the runescripted channels on the construct’s chassis. Talia had no idea if it all still worked, but given the alacrity with which the metal being was standing up, she didn’t feel like sticking around to find out.

Tripping from metal monolith to metal monolith, she made her way to the door, just a few metres away up a small set of stone stairs. Head down to fight off the nausea, she frowned as a red glow fell over her feet.

Oh, that’s just not fair.

Looking up slowly and glaring at the construct, Talia spat, noting the copper taste in her mouth.

“You’sh got no righ’ bein thaaat shilent, you know buddiesh?”

Now that it was closer, she could make out the exquisite craftsmanship of the thing. It was nearly seamless. Smooth interlocking plates covering joints where it wasn’t one solid block of hulking silver. One such joint tilted down and to the side to peer at her.

The metallic screech rang in her ears as Talia backed away.

Bits of runescript flickered unsteadily all across its body, going dim and flaring up sporadically.

It’s damaged.

Something told her that, damaged or not, it would still be more than capable of crushing her like a bug.

Talia began backing away slowly as it stared at her.

It repeated the same tone, smooth-angled faceplate twitching fractionally as it followed her movements.

“Shorry for bothering you, buddiesh. I’ll be going now ook?” Talia asked placatingly, hands outstretched as if to reassure a wild beast, nodding her head as an example, “O-K. Understand?”

I am talking to a moving machine shaped like the love child of a man and a crescian. I’m mad.

Maybe it was like the fog from before? A figment of her damaged imagination?

Still lucid enough to keep from reaching out and confirming her theory, Talia kept moving backward.

Thud.

She winced as her head banged against one of the monoliths, producing a hollow sound. Panic began to filter through her confusion as she realized she’d backed herself into a corner.

The construct moved.

Oh fuck fuck fuck—

Springing to action as best she could, Talia flipped around and ran deeper into the factory —a snaky appendage wrapped around her boot, pulling her from the slim gap she’d slid into with a violent tug.

Light flashed in her vision and what felt like an electric current surged across her nerves as the metal made contact with her sabaton. Amid the agony, Talia couldn’t tell if the pain was damage from the fall or some weapon the construct had deployed.

“Gaaaaaaahhhhhhh—”

Just as suddenly as it had appeared, the pain stopped.

Another voice —the one from the dream— blared in her thoughts, its undecipherable words more coherent than the red construct that held her captive.

Through the blur of colours, Talia could make out carmine hues fading as she was jerked around, still hanging by the appendage. A flare of purple—

THUMP

Talia’s last thought was that she should really stop getting hit in the head. Then there were no more.