About the monster, there was nothing to say. New stage brings a new monster and another struggle. Rinse and repeat. There was nothing new about the result either. So what was there to say? The plant monster was just another obstacle, a hurdle for her to cross. It was defeated and the stage was over. Though her method varied, she struggled above her capacity and won; even though her victory came under the extreme scenario where she had to voluntarily let the monster swallow her.
Her impromptu plan somehow succeeded but it could have been disastrous. It was a do or die moment for her. She was on the verge of death already. If the monster had swept the rug with her, if she hadn’t managed to steal the fruit, if the vine had been too hard for her to cut, if she was had lost consciousness from the loss of blood; many things could have gone wrong. However, she survived and defeated that thing. She survived yet again. And Ria understood this fact very well. She had only survived, not won. She wasn’t free yet.
With the monster dead, the fruit consumed, and her body repaired as new and full of energy, it wouldn’t have been wise of her to waste time mingling with the vines and the motionless tree. The garden had even lost its capacity to offer her peace; what value did it have to offer to make her stay? Hence, she left as soon as the cave opened.
Ria crossed through the hole in the world trees trunk and stepped into the familiar dark and constrained walls of the tunnel beyond. A familiar chamber opened to her upon exiting the tunnel and a pair of torches lit up on her both sides. Watching a mirroring glow of torchlight up on the other end of the chamber, she stepped on the tombstone path which had once asked her to fill the grave with a body.
She had Killed Nicky here, in this chamber, with her own hands. And she had fulfilled the task, given the grave the body of her friend and left to struggle in the sewer to find the exit. She had selfishly sacrificed her only friend. But she was over the guilt surrounding Nicky’s death. She was over it but the wounds still remained. Her gritted teeth and rapid breathing told of her emotional state. But she kept walking on the tombstones with firm steps, reading the words inscribed into their faces.
Consequences are inevitable, Read the first tombstone. Whether life or death. Read the following one. Your paths are given; you chose the rest. She read on the tombstones being released from darkness’s hold by the light of torches lighting up with her steps. She came to stop at the foot of a circular platform which lit in sunset orange by a row of lanterns: eight of them, each a meter apart. It is unclear how she would have reacted upon seeing the blood-soaked dirt ground instead of the platform, but her released breath hints at an ease in her suffering.
A man she saw standing on the other end of the platform, lit similarly by the glow of torches. The platform was grey, coarse and old to look at the shallowest glance- much like the tombstone used as tiles to base a path in the dirt-filled the chamber. The man wore a skirt woven out of nylon thread -something he had probably found in the sewer- tied at his hips by a familiar green vine and boots.
“Ah, Boots…” Ria mumbled in regret. Where had she lost her favorite pair of sneakers? She had no idea. She remembered wearing them to the party, but had no recollection of anything which had perspired afterward; so she could only put the loss of her shoes on her bad luck and forget about them.
“Hey, it’s you!” She heard the man speak from the other side of the platform and the voice got her attention. It was a familiar voice, one belonging to the man she had parted ways with just a few hours ago. Surprise washed over her eyes. Opposite her stood the once paralyzed man whom she had rescued from the skeleton. He was smiling like none one else could with his arms spread wide- expressing disbelief and surprise at meeting with her so soon.
“You… the fruit…”
“Yes,” he yelled raising his arms in the air. “She remembers me. I thought you were someone different, but I was like I remember those breasts. Where else have I ever seen such a full bosom?”
Ria blushed at his blunt reminder and hid her breast with her left arm. She could have turned around and shown him her back, but that idea didn’t sit right with her. The sewer was really making her oblivious to her genders necessities. With taking beast and monsters haunting her right and left, there wasn’t any space left in her mind to worry about such things. She had many worries, but exhibitionism wasn’t one of them. She already had her hands full with staying alive. And the effect of her conditioning was noticeable from her brazen behavior. Yes, she did protect herself from his eyes, but that didn’t make her any less vigilant. She kept her eyes focused on him. Although he was pretty far from her, as long as attacking distance goes, that didn’t make her lose sight of where she was. That’s the most important thing to note. This grave was the last place she wanted to meet anyone alive, much less someone she knew. She really wasn’t expecting this.
“Thanks for saving me.” The man said folding his hands behind his head and standing by leaning on his left leg. He looked completely relaxed with not an iota of tension radiating from his posture. But he stayed at distance and didn’t try to close the distance between them. Which was also the thing which Ria felt was very odd. A normal human wouldn’t be able to stay calm after meeting their savior and not try to come closer.
At least I couldn’t have.
“You sacrificed yourself to save me. I don’t know how I’ll ever repay your kindness.”
“You don’t have to.” She replied with a strained voice. There were many thoughts going through her head and one of them was her concern about the task. Though she was surprised to see him, she wasn’t happy. She was concerned.
This fucking sewer,
“Don’t you know why we are here?” she asked and unsurprisingly the man puckered his lips.
“Yea, I kinda know,” he said, rapidly tapping the ground with his foot. The rhythmic sound easily reached Ria’s ears, stressing her further. And to her surprise, he looked at the roof, as if calculating something, and stepped onto the platform.
“Thanks to you I am alive. Now,” He said coming closer and closer then abruptly stopping just a few meters away from her, grinning. “Wanna have sex one last time before we do this thing?”
“What’s that?”She asked, but he didn’t answer back. Maybe the look of her eyes scared him mute or he was done talking to her. It is possible that he was trying to loosen her vigilance, but Ria had also been through her share of troubles. Sexual harassment wasn’t about to get him much further. So he pounced.
Not directly at her, but to the left and as Ria’s eyes followed his sudden jump and her body stiffened, something bright and glowing and warm . . . something really dangerous . . . speed toward her. As her eyes were still following him, she perfectly saw him smiling and wording, Thank you before a shiver started her whole body.
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By the moment her eyes registered the bright orange ball of fire, it was right upon her. Ria thought she didn’t have enough time to move . . . much less dodge the fireball, and her own movement surprised her more than it shocked the man when her hips swayed out of the fireball's path and she managed to perfectly dodge the life-threatening bullet.
“Holy shit!” she heard behind the buzzing of another something glowing and burning rapidly flying toward her. Having learned from her mistake, Ria fell away from that things flight path; and as the thing swirled past her, she fixated her eyes on the man and pulled out her knife once again. For the first time since having received the tool, she saw its importance.
The zombie and the skeleton hadn’t shown any reaction to her knife, but the man flinched and slipped seeing it in her hand. It was a very effective tool: very sharp and strong. It had saved her a lot of time, but for the first time, it made her opponent scared of her. It was a fulfilling sensation.
“Ho-how did-did you?” She heard him say and stepped toward him.
“Stay away from me DEMON!”
She didn’t care about his shameful display. Maybe he was scared of her or he was trying to make her complacent. She nonetheless kept his under her sight and didn’t forget about the burning ball of fire he had unleashed at her. Just a fraction of late reaction and she could have died. It wasn’t something he would be forgiven for.
“So this is how you wanted to pay me back, huh? Seems like a reasonable thing to do.”
Ria wanted to question him about his power but then thought against it. Humans are not born with such abilities. Only the Goblin’s marble could bless an individual with such an unusual strength. She pined the thought to ask the Goblin about the marble upon returning to his room and decided what to do with this man.
“I helped you.” She said stepping near him. The man cowered before her. Whatever his reason, he didn’t attack her again with his ability.
“Stay away from me,”
“I fought against the skeleton while you laid back and watched me getting hurt.”
“Don’t come near me! I’m-I’m telling you-“
“I went against the Croc and helped you across the door. If I hadn’t saved you then the Croc would have eaten you . . .”
“I-I-”
“And this is how you pay back your due.”
One on the platform, Ria jumped at him. They weren’t that far away from each other, to begin with, and she had already reduced the distance between them by walking. But the moment she jumped at the man, his face refreshed and his lips curled upwards.
“Got ya!” He said, pointing his right palm toward her.
Ria saw a spark ignite at the center of his palm. The spark quickly grew into a radiant ball of fire the size of his hand which he pushed with his palm toward her.
There was nowhere for her to dodge. His laughter was already starting to echoes back and forth inside the chamber. She did what she had to do. Drawing a large breath, she gritted her teeth and sliced at the fireball with her knife.
The man squinted at the sight of his fireball deforming at the blades touch; His face lost all color when the knife and is shadow both sheared past the fireballs buzzing and his head in one swift motion.
He saw with his tumbling sight an explosion of orange swallowing Ria before a well of complete darkness swallowed his sight and all the colors and sounds of life along with it.
Ria’s slim bare figure exploded out of the fire plumes. With the aftertaste of swallowed smoke coalescing into tar inside her mouth, she fell forward and rolled on the platform. She coughed, puffing black smoke. Her ringing ears slowly normalized and the room stabilized around her.
Focus sharply returned to her eyes and she hurriedly checked her body for signs of burning fire and lesions but found no signs of defects other than slight redness of her skin at the abdomen and swelling in the nearby region. She was fine otherwise. The explosion whose intensity she had felt with her own body had failed to burn her unrecognizable. She had survived once again. This time it was due to the restructuring done by the fruit. She understood the meaning behind it. The fruits could strengthen the human body.
“No, not the fruit, it was the starlight.” The fruit, she had only taken a bite out of it. What had really worked miraculously to heal her was the starlight concealed inside its fibers. The same starlight which was not only bountiful in the crystals roof of the garden but –as she had found out- also present inside monsters, confined inside an orb-shaped container. Now whether the orb was artificially put inside the plant monster or a natural organ was unknown to her.
“That means the zombie and skeleton might also have had starlight inside their bodies in some shape or form.”
But Ria knew she wouldn’t get to check out her hypothesis and neither did she want to face the monsters again.
Seeing that her body was responding beautifully to her command she glanced at the man and sighed. She didn’t know how far she would have to go and how much more blood she will have to spill with her hands, but there was no hesitation in her mind. Not anymore. She hadn’t’ stopped being a human, but if others couldn’t even respect her for saving their lives then she had nothing to say to them or any emotions to show at their deaths. Mankind as a species fell a few more places in her eyes. But she didn’t forget the key thing which makes mankind different from beasts-
“Not everyone is the same. Nicky wasn’t like him or like my brother. She was herself. Not the best of us but not selfish either.”
For the same reason, she really wanted to get out of the sewer and find someone . . . anyone, working selflessly to help others. She believed that not everyone was like the man beside her but really wanted to meet someone like that. Because she was losing slowly hope. She knew politeness wasn’t the true measure of selflessness, but a mask people wear to hide their filth. The dead man wasn’t the first to have approached her wearing the mask of familiarity and friendship and she knew he wasn’t going to be the last one either. But it was really a tiring thing to think about. To understand that the place she called home wasn’t any less crowded with monsters than this sewer she currently roamed about.
When the door leading to the next floor, to another stage, back to the goblin appeared in front of her, she didn’t wait long before stepping through it. The floors were becoming a chore for her, but they hadn’t managed to rubout her hatred for the goblin from her mind. Though that doesn’t mean she would pounce at the sight of him like before. There was one thing which had naturally come to her from her time spent inside the sewer, and that was self-control.
She crossed the door with the goblins face ingrained on it and found herself back in the goblins abode. The fire still burned in the fireplace. The pieces of the chair she had broken were similarly still lying on the floor. The goblin stood right in front of her; his foot continuously tapping the wooden floor; he was anxious.
The moment her eyes met with the goblins, she saw relief wash over its face. Glee replaced anxiousness in seconds and his foot turned still.
“There you are. Me was starting to get worried here.”
She stared at him instead of replying back. It didn’t seem to her like he was asking her the question, rather speaking out loud.
“Must have been tough to get through the monsters with a human's pathetic body, me presume?” this time however she cut in between his monologue. He was happy for some reason, but she thought it was the perfect time to ask the questions which had thought of while waiting in the grave for the door to arrive.
“Was that man’s ability to conjure fireballs also a boon of power? Is that the kind of things which the marble gives?”
He ignored her poking and started moving around her instead.
“You finally found yourself a pair of boots, huh? Though, me can’t see where you might have lost the rest of your clothes. Don’t be mad though. Me is very liking your attire- fewer clothes for me to rip off your body.”
Saying that he laughed to himself, but her angry stare made him stop.
“Well, it doesn’t matter. Me like angry little girls, just so you know. Your angry stare is only making me harder. Umm, Me really wanted to have fun tearing all of your holes one by one. Me find it a very shameful thing to not enjoy your body thoroughly.”
Having said his piece, the goblin stopped in front of her, grinning to himself. Ria staggered a step back in plain fright, which only worked as a reminder of her hate toward him. The moment rage built up inside her she lost all fear toward him. It was acting strange and she was about to find out why.
“What?” The goblin sternly said staring straight into her eyes. “Didn’t think that was funny? Me will then drop the formalities and ask you directly if you may. Me wants to know, has the marble chosen you its master?”