On a landmass, away from London, Grant or his Dungeon... We look now to the East, not too far but not close...
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As the executioner’s blade fell through the air, I realised I wanted it to stop. My desires hadn’t been able to change the world so far and unfortunately for the criminal, today was no different. I flinched as the sword smacked into the wood. It didn’t help avoiding the moment, the thud of a skull hitting the stage magnified by the darkness.
Already on the side of the crowd, I found a clear spot of grass to evacuate my stomach. I painted the green ground with the day’s breakfast and a hand alternated between firm smacks and quick rubs. “Get it out,” a deep, gentle voice said, “it was never going to be easy.”
I collected myself pretty quickly, I thought. There were others who reacted similarly, but I met the eyes of the family who had been wronged and my reaction suddenly felt indulgent. The dead man had attacked two of them in the night. Why did I feel bad for him? Walking away, I grumbled to my father. “I said I didn’t want to watch.”
“You didn’t though, did you?” I held the retort on my tongue as my face turned red. Toughening me up was the whole excuse for coming. Admonishment never came, however. My father’s voice was gentle when he spoke. “It’s okay. You weren’t here to get thrills. We came so we could find out whether you would watch or you would look away. I’m glad you didn’t want to watch.”
I looked up from my feet and saw hard eyes looking ahead. His father hadn’t closed his eyes, of course. “What does it mean?” I asked, terrified. I failed the test, but I didn’t know it was happening.
He laughed, the sound of safety. “It means you’ll listen when I tell you to stay home and work on a Profession like Sean will. Leave the dungeoneering to the rest of us, Sinead.” A huge arm wrapped around me and pulled me into a hug. The shadows of death in my mind were whisked away and I conceded the point.
When the System had arrived, none of us knew what to do. Grant would be okay, because he was always okay, but what about the rest of them? People were getting stronger, monsters were appearing. Technically they were a part of the local township but they were too far away for any help to arrive. Once night fell, demons began walking the Earth.
Everything had been quiet in the minutes leading up to the attack. It was as though we could all sense the change in the air, a storm brewing. The silence was broken by a long, loud groan born straight in the pits of hell. The night exploded into an awful tumult as monsters pulled themselves from the ground itself to attack.
Things were scary, until the man of the house stepped up to protect them. Using a ball peen hammer, he had slain the first monster to break in predictably gruesome fashion. Her older brothers were quick to follow suit. Well, except for Sean. Their father, her oldest brother Liam and the third oldest Conor had all received their first levels from defeating the creatures which attacked their home on the edge of nowhere.
It had been over two weeks since that night. I could still smell the evil stench of monster blood whenever I closed my eyes to sleep. To counter the fear, I had asked the boys if they would help me learn how to fight, but of course they hadn’t. Today was the final nail in that coffin and I couldn’t find any words to rally against the verdict. Maybe fighting wasn’t for me. Would I be okay with that?
No. Sean’s a coward but I’m not like that.
“It’s the only way to keep you safe.” I blinked, coming out of my own thoughts and realising that dad was talking. I also gathered quickly that he hadn’t quite read my mind. His ramblings were about the criminal. “Prisons aren’t strong enough to hold people now. Hopefully people like Sean will figure out how to build things stronger than we used to. Until we can actually hold these people there’s no other choice. I guess they’re also monsters.”
His face was dark. I didn’t have anything to say, but I got it. The System had brought to life some of our worst nightmares, but it had done more than that. It allowed people to be more than they used to be, which for some meant becoming unchained from morals. It was much easier to deal with a cow-sized lizard than the previously hidden thoughts of a neighbour.
More than any of them, my father was trying to deal with the changes of the world and finding it impossible. I think if it were up to him, he would find some way to avoid the rest of the world entirely until everything had blown over. As it wasn’t looking like things were going to suddenly snap back to the way they were, he was doing his best. Of course, half his time was spent trying to wake up his wife from her haze.
Mother reacted fairly normally to the appearance of the System, at least for her, which is to say she had been shut down completely for two weeks. It was her natural response to any actual emotion. She could eat or drink if food and water were given to her but beyond that? Almost nothing. She had muttered a few times about Grant here or there, asking when he was coming home, but not much more. Who had the heart to tell her he probably wasn’t?
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
Even if he was surviving, even if he thrived, how would he get here? Swim? It’s not like he was a sailor and there was a fairly dangerous sea between Ireland and England, especially this time of year. I held onto hope that Grant was alive and well, but thinking about him for too long made me sad.
When I didn’t respond, Dad had just stopped talking. The journey home in silence was uninterrupted, and I went straight to my room as soon as I could. Obviously, it wasn’t only my room, so I couldn’t avoid the depressed thoughts weighing me down. One half of the double bedroom was mine, lilac walls and simple decoration. The other side of the room was a pink glittery mess at all times, no exceptions. “Did you watch?” Niamh asked immediately as I opened the door.
I tried to wither her with my eyes but instead of dying like a good sister, she bounced around the room. Niamh had the general energy level of a puppy full of energy drinks, except without the inevitably tragic ending to the metaphor. “Ooh, that bad? Did daddy tell you off or did you get away with it like always? Oh, Naedie, it was a joke!” I didn’t shout anything back as I turned away.
Spending around three seconds in the room before tears started threatening to fall was good going, really. I dashed straight back out the front door. I didn’t care where, I just wanted to get away. I had to push past Liam, who shouted, but thankfully he let me go. Another reminder about the changed world. Liam was like a castle wall for all I could make him move.
I got some distance from the house I had grown up in and screamed. I howled with all the strength I could muster. I tore at the grass around my feet, even ripping out some flowers which wasn’t like me. I screamed some more. A pitch black tar sat on my soul and no amount of flailing was making it move.
I just hated everything. The whole world had gone crazy and no one had slowed down to explain it to me. I pulled the mobile phone from my pocket and dashed it off a tree. None of the features worked, unless I wanted to play a stupid game which had come with the device. “Whoa,” a voice surprised me, “nearly hit me.”
I had already been screaming, but I was still red faced after my shriek of fright. “Sean?” I demanded angrily. “Why are you hiding behind a tree?”
“Avoiding falling galaxies, apparently.” He looked at my destroyed phone with a smirk all the boys carried. When Liam and Conor smiled, they looked like each other. When Sean smiled, he looked like Grant. I gave up on anger and threw myself into his arms and wept. He didn’t say anything because Sean was nice like that. After a fairly long hug, he pulled away. “Also, this little guy.”
Sean lead me around the tree and I gasped. “Is that- Why do you have a baby monster?” I could feel the magic of the creature. Unfortunately all trepidation vanished when the little kitten squealed at me. I looked at Sean who shrugged and nodded.
“I wouldn’t say monster, though it’s got some appetite, I’ll tell you.” Sean just watched as I made first contact with the adorable thing. It was avoiding any weight on its back right leg and watched me intently. The most interesting thing was obviously the colouration of the feline. Its fur was the faintest baby pink colour, mostly looking white. In seemingly random swirls and lines, blue energy pulsed gently. “Reckon Da’ll let me keep it?”
“Magic’s real, but not that strong,” I whispered. I didn’t want to spook the small thing more than I had. I felt terribly about my outburst now. “Seriously, Sean, what’s going on?” I showed the kitten the back of my hand and it sniffed me. I passed the test and it nuzzled my hand. My life was complete.
“I said I’d find a way to level up without fighting… and I have.” Sean opened his System page and showed me his level. He was now at level three! Nothing compared to the other men of the family, but it was a start. “Play with it a bit, the System will explain better than I could.”
I was confused but playing with a magic cat wasn’t a hard directive to follow. I barely noticed the memories of the day becoming softer as the minutes passed. Despite the damage to its back paw, the kitten was happy to flop onto its back and play fight. It had a lot of personality, sometimes stopping sharply and analysing me before returning to its more catlike behaviours.
There was an intelligence in those eyes which shocked me. After around ten minutes, the cat allowed me to brush its bad leg. I heard Sean suck in a breath and worried I might get a scratch but I touched the injury all the same. The System blinked into life for the first time since all this had started. I hadn’t received a prompt before, but now I had two.
Manaphyte Kitten has drained some mana.
The weird cat had taken some mana. Whatever that was, it felt like I had just swam ten laps of a big swimming pool. I nearly passed out, and Sean held me up. “I’m going to throw up…” Luckily, I had another prompt which flipped the script.
Level up! +5 attribute points.
All the energy I had just lost and then some came flooding through me. I felt amazing. I looked between Sean and the kitten with eyes wide in wonder. I could sense where the energy the kitten had just taken - mana - moved through me and refilled the slightly empty spaces inside. “Sean!”
“I know!” We jumped together, and the kitten clearly wanted to join. It clambered up my back, which is when I noticed its paw was healed. “Yeah, that makes sense. Its leg was worse when I got here, so I was going to wait until I could give it some more mana. Clearly, you did the job just as good.”
I beamed at him, enamoured by the kitten currently nuzzling the side of my head. “We have to keep her,” I told Sean solemnly. He laughed and shook his head at me for claiming the kitten. He had to know this would happen. There was still an important question. “But why did we level up?”
“I’m not sure, but you know how Liam said the System tells him things, like how to swing a sword properly? It’s a bit like that. I think it’s just because we’re actually doing a System thing, you know? We healed the cat with magic. Technically I think it’s the cat’s magic, but it still counts.”
Healing was a System thing? Wasn’t the System just about monsters and killing?
The dark clouds which had gathered around me for weeks were dispelled. The System had felt like an apocalypse, but it wasn’t. Gaining a level meant I wasn’t stuck, meant none of us were. Maybe even Mama would get better. I took a deep breath, taking Salmon - the name I had just decided for the kitten - off my shoulder. She batted my nose with her paw.
No, I realised. The System isn’t the end of the world… It's just the start of a new one.