Darians unexpected descent was suddenly brought to a jarring halt as he smashed down painfully onto a hard surface, the air forced out of his lungs by the landing. His fall had been brief, but it was long enough for Darian to know the abrupt ending had broken at least a couple of his ribs. Sucking in a mouthful of air, he felt sharp pains along the right side of his ribcage along with a wheezing sound. He thanked the gods as he managed to get his limbs moving, because this was a good sign he hadn’t damaged his spine.
Trying to move as little as possible, for each movement ignited hot, sharp spikes of agony in every joint, he tugged the bag by its strap until it was laying on his stomach. Slipping his hand inside, he withdrew the flask he had received, praying to himself that he remembered the description on it correctly. Fumbling with the top, he managed to lift it to his lips. Pulling the stopper out with his teeth, he spat it to one side before tipping the contents of the flask into his mouth.
The liquid that flowed down his throat was cold and tasteless. Darian would have thought it plain old tap water, except it lacked that metallic taste it gained from travelling through old pipes for too long. It was an effort keeping his head up to drink, so once he had finished he dropped his head back onto the ground and closed his eyes.
Within seconds he could feel the liquid start to work, moving his broken ribs back into their right positions, the bones knitting back together and his sword wound closing. The feeling of this happening was disconcerting, as well as being mildly uncomfortable, but the pain he had been experiencing quickly ebbed away as his body healed itself. Once it was over, he sighed with relief, not only feeling whole once again, but his thirst and fatigue were gone. He opened his eyes and saw the hole he had fallen into right above him, the light from the moon illuminating its edge.
Quickly Darian sat up and peered into the gloom around him, trying to see what he had fallen into. The little moonlight that entered only allowed him to make out dim outlines of unidentifiable objects, dust from his entry to this area floating in the air, making visibility even worse. From the little he could see clearly, it looked like he had landed in a fairly clear area, except for the rubble he had brought down with him.
Now the contents of the flask had done their job, he felt reinvigorated and jumped to his feet to search this underground space he was now in, hoping there was an easy way to climb back up to the surface, he didn’t fancy being stuck down here for an extended period.
The place he was in proved to be a fairly large room, most probably an old cellar from the things he found within it. Against one wall was a row of cupboards, partially collapsed, with glass containers stacked on the remaining shelves. Darian had opened one of the containers, hoping it contained something to eat, but the smell that emerged when he took the top off was so foul it made his stomach churn. He quickly replaced the cap and returned it to where he had taken it from, whatever was inside it was definitely inedible.
Darian spent five minutes wandering around, examining everything he found and placing anything that could be useful in a pile in the center of the room. It ended up being a rather small and disappointing pile, consisting of about five bottles of water, a handful of dried meat strips, a small rolled up scroll and two corked vials of a red liquid. He had also found a small handful of coins, something he considered as useless in his situation and of unknown worth, but Darian pocketed them anyway.
Placing everything into his bag, he examined the contents. The description of the meat said that each strip would be good to remove a portion of his hunger, and each water bottle contained enough water to slake his thirst three times before it was used up. The scroll, when he unrolled it, seemed to be a map of some sort, but in the dimness of the cellar it was totally unreadable, he placed that back into his bag for a another look when he had better lighting. He could also see that nine of his eleven bag slots were now filled with items. The most interesting item he had found was the two red vials.
Item: Potion of Minor Healing
The potion of Minor Healing will restore ten points of health to the user. This potion will not restore or remove fatigue, thirst, hunger, poison, disease or debuffs. Single use item
Item Class: Common
The one thing Darian hadn’t found was a way to leave this cellar. He had found the remains of what he thought was the stairway up, but time had seemed to have been unkind to it, for it was just a pile of collapsed timber now. Scratching his head Darian looked up at the only way out he knew of.
The room was about ten foot high, and the hole he had fallen through was located in roughly the center of it. It almost low enough for Darian to reach it with his fingertips if he jumped, which he did, but he couldn’t jump high enough to get a grip on anything solid enough to hold his weight.
After a few minutes of contemplation spent on a solution, Darian dragged the fallen timbers of the former staircase over and stacked them beneath the opening until he had made a stack about three foot high. Giving it a good shake to make sure it was at least partially stable, he carefully climbed up, balancing precariously, and reached up. He was surprised to find that his hands easily reached past the opening, the transformation from the gods must have added to his height.
Feeling a little more confident about his chance to escape, he crouched and launched himself upwards, angling himself to, hopefully, get enough of his body over the edge to get a firm purchase. As he thrust upwards, he felt the stack of wood beneath his give way. His jump took him up and over the edge, his hands thrust forward as he landed, the edge of the hole pressing against the pit of his stomach, the sharp edged scratching his skin.
At first he thought he was going to slip backwards, but he had managed to get enough of his body over the edge that his center of balance was keeping him aloft. From this position it was a simple task to swing his legs up and roll away from the hole. Laying on his back, Darian laughed, the exhilaration from being able to perform such actions thrilling him, something he was unable to do just three days previous.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
Finally free of the cellar, Darian noticed, on the small sliver of horizon he could see between two buildings, a glint of pinkness, heralding the arrival of dawn. Looking up at the second floor that he had considered climbing to before his unfortunate cellar trip, he decided it was even more imperative to get up there now. It offered him the only location to scope out the lay of the land beyond this village, and he needed to do that before he departed.
Getting up, he skirted around the hole in the floor and made his way over to the fallen section of floor. The angle it had fallen at gave Darian an easy climb upwards, and it wasn’t long before he was standing on the small section of the upper floor that remained. As he stepped further in, the floor beneath him creaked alarmingly, fearing another collapse he carefully stepped over top where the floor met the outside wall, figuring this is where the floor would be the most safe.
Looking out of an empty window, the glass long gone, he was just in time to see the sun peek over the horizon, lighting the landscape between it and him. The anticipation he had felt at seeing his first ‘alien’ landscape plummeted as he looked out, even turning to see what lay in other directions. Before him lay a vast, but desolate, landscape of baked earth and dry, withered trees. Vey little vegetation survived whatever had scorched the lands, only surviving in small pockets that were hard to spot.
The only thing that broke this expanse of old destruction lay on the opposite side of the building he was standing in, and it brought a small feeling of hope to Darian that all was not as bad as he saw, that there was a more out there than desolation. About a mile away, Darian could make out something that was dark, and filled the whole side of the horizon on that side, and he knew that he would have to wait until the sun was higher in the sky before it allowed him to see what it was.
To wait the time until this happened Darian sat down with his back against the wall and pulled the map scroll out of his bag. Unrolling it across his outstretched legs he studied it. It was a plain map, consisting of nothing more than outlines of what he surmised was a coastline. Which side was water, and which side was land he had no idea at all , nor was there any markers or text to indicate the position of features or places of interest. He didn’t even know if it was a map of the area he was in.
Something on the map caught his eye, it looked like a very small discoloration on the paper, placed directly on one of the drawn coastlines. Darian reached out a finger to scratch at the mark, but pulled his hand back in alarm as the map suddenly changed when he touched it, the discoloration zooming out., growing larger. The drawing on the scroll stopped moving when it filled about half of the maps surface. It was only then he realized he must have activated a zoom feature, a rather unusual thing to have on a paper map in a world supposable without technology.
The discoloration, now quite large, showed itself to be a finely detailed map, and from what he could see on it, of where he was and what he had already seen. He experimented a little further with the map and worked out he could zoom back out again with another touch, or move the map around by sliding his finger across the surface. If he pinched with two fingers, he could control how much the map zoomed in and out. While he was doing this, he discovered other areas on the map that he couldn’t detect at the start, mostly only text holders or icons, nothing really informative.
Leaving the map alone for a moment, Darian sat back to think about what he had discovered. Absently he reached out to grab his daily morning cup of coffee, just like he did every morning when reading the news. Comprehension dawned on him as his fingers scrabbled for something that wasn’t there, and no longer would be. Laughing softly at his absentmindedness, he pulled his hand back, then wondered if there was anything in this world that resembled coffee, and a cigarette while he was thinking about it. Damn, wish I hadn’t thought about a smoke, Darian groused, now I bloody want one. No chance of finding out if they are available in this god forsaken place.
Sighing, he rolled the map up and tried to replace it into the bag, only to be stopped by a text pop up across his vision.
You are attempting to place item Mapping Scroll into your inventory. Do you wish to continue this action, or would you like to install it into your character ?
Installing the Mapping Scroll will make it available you instantly through your interface, allowing for instant updates to the map as you travel. It will also permit you to add personal notes to your map.
An installed map can be called up into your vision at any time by thinking ‘Open Map’.
Place in Inventory / Install to Character ?.
Darian chose to install the map, which disappeared from his hand, then tested it by thinking ‘Open Map’. Instantly his vision was filled with the image of the map, his current position in the center of the image. He knew this because the graphic of the village he was in was dead center with a little glowing light over one building, the one he was on. Darian also worked out that his hand gestures also worked on this map the same as it did with the paper version he had once had.
From his study of the map, the village he was in was called Rockburgh. The map had also showed a small icon of a gravestone slightly to the left, probably indicating where that skeleton had come from, most likely being the graveyard for this village. Close to the right was a line indicating a coastline, informing Darian that the dark patch he saw earlier was most probably the sea. The only other thing he had found relatively close to this village was an icon of an unnamed castle on the coastline south of his location. It wasn’t close and he suspected it would take him days to travel there on foot, but he had nowhere else to go and had decided this would be his next designation. He thought ‘close map’ and the map disappeared.
Before staring out, Darian opened his bag and checked out his supplies. He had enough food with the dried meat for about four day, and the bottled water would last him five. He could stretch out the meat, but the water was vital, especially as the heat around here would increase his thirst quicker than normal. Igf the castle was further than five days travel, plus an additional day if needed, then he was going to be in trouble. He needed to find a way to increase his supply of water.
As he planned to travel along the coastline, he knew he had been gifted with that item that purified water, the Firestone of Vallinas, but he needed a container to hold seawater in to purify, and he didn’t have one. He also knew that it was as good as impossible that something like that would have survived in this village. The only other place available to him, as yet unsearched, was that grave marker location on his map.
Well, Darian thought, that first skeleton was fairly easy to kill, so if I am careful, I should be able to kill off another one or two with no problems, this is a small village after all, there shouldn’t be that many there.