Am I dreaming? Marcus thought to himself absently. It wasn't a completely uncommon thought for him, but more often than not the asking was enough to confirm he wasn't. In this case though, he considered that it was perhaps on the less certain side as he lay in the absolute darkness enveloping him.
He had been laying on the couch in his small apartment, listening to videos he'd already seen a dozen times before off YouTube when... something happened? Because now he was in the dark laying on what felt for all the world like a cold stone slab, and that certainly was a non-sequitur.
He felt as his panic began to rise, exponentially so once he felt out with his hands and found that he was enclosed in some kind of stone box. His breathing quickened before he realized that it might be a problem in the near future. Taking a deep breath, he ran his hand along the stone around him. There was a small seam lining the top, and he could feel a small breeze slipping through the crack.
"Okay... so... not going to suffocate... just gonna get murdered by kidnappers." He chuckled nervously to himself, trying to tamp down on his pounding heart.
He pressed his palms flat against what he assumed was some kind of lid and heaved. He accomplished almost nothing, but he considered it a good attempt at least given he felt the slightest shift.
"Okay... okay... It moved, so maybe not locked... just heavy as all hell." Marcus assured himself absently.
He pulled his legs in as best he could, bringing his knees up to the slab and once again put his hands against it. He struggled with it for some time, taking occasional breaks but his muscles were starting to tire with what was certainly the first time he had strained them in quite some time.
"Well... this is what I get for letting myself get out of shape." He sighed before trying to get himself back into position for one last go.
He heaved and immediately stopped as a flash of light filled his vision with a soft, blue glow.
Through your efforts, your strength has increased! 24 to 25.
Marcus lay dumb struck by the apparent notification glowing in front of his eyes. It didn't seem to have any bearing on the environment given he couldn't see it reflecting off the stone around him. It was just... there.
"So... definitely dreaming I guess?" He almost relaxed, but it still didn't feel right. That was perhaps the problem, he could feel this. The cold stone against his back, the humidity building in the air from his breath, and the pleasant soreness of muscles long underused being put to action. This was either real or the most realistic nightmare he had ever felt.
Tentatively, he waved his hand out in front of himself trying to dispel the apparition but curiously his hand didn't pass through it. It was like the words floating in front of him were actually just in his eyes rather than some kind of projection.
"What the hell is going on..." He muttered as he blinked a few times and the words disappeared between one moment and the next. "Besides the fact that obviously I’m absolutely losing the plot" He sighed.
For a moment, he considered the words he had seen then the slab in the darkness above him again. If this was a dream, realizing it usually gave him the chance to just... escape whatever his most recent nightmare decided he should suffer through. But... it had said his strength had increased so...
He got back into position, took a deep breath, and pushed. This time, the slab moved just a bit more. It was... underwhelming but Marcus supposed a single point in a game wasn't likely to give a huge boost so by dream logic this wasn't particularly surprising. However, it was enough to see the faintest sliver of light to the left-most side of his prison.
He shifted on his shoulders to try to peer through the slit. There was some kind of light outside, in a creepy green hue perhaps, but light none the less. He couldn't see much, but he did at least notice the bricks forming the ceiling above him.
He rested his head back down on the stone beneath him. This was probably gonna take awhile, but at least he wasn't buried underground and choking slowly on his own exhaled breath.
He considered the gap for a moment. Should he call out for help? After some thought, he decided against it. He still had no idea what was going on, and suddenly waking up in strange places wasn't likely to mean he had friends waiting in the wings to help him out of a jam.
Over the next few minutes, he managed to wiggle the lid bit by bit until he was reasonably sure he would be able to slip through the gap. At least enough that he would be able to force it aside once he was in place.
This proved slightly more difficult than he had assumed, but eventually he managed to awkwardly maneuver himself into position. He had an arm and his head free but realized that the lid was already pressing against the wall of the small alcove he found himself in.
He sighed at the realization that he had as much room as he was going to get. He glanced out at the corridor the light was coming from then began the process of squeezing himself through the gap, breathing out as much as he could to try to free his chest.
After some effort, he managed to escape. He considered 'escape' to be a perhaps poor choice of words given he was now God knows where in some creepy ass building, but one step at a time.
He stood up straight, his head almost brushing the ceiling before he stepped to the edge of the alcove. He closed his eyes a moment then opened them as he took a quick peek out into the corridor and saw a whole lot of nothing.
"Alright... so... creepy brick corridor, stone box..." His brow furrowed before he looked down at the box he was still standing in. The only thing that sounded like was... a crypt.
He nervously stepped out of the box, trying to stay in the relative cover of the alcove as he eyed the edge of the presumptive sarcophagus. It took a second to focus in the pale light, but he could make out the words etched in the stone well enough.
Marcus A. Caldwell
1993 - 2025
134,562nd Cycle
He stared dumbly at it for a moment. He was surrounded by such an odd mix of dream-like stereotypes, and very real sensations. He took a slow deep breath, trying to keep himself calm. In the presence of both possible conclusions...
"This is not a dream." He told himself with some shaky uncertainty "And if I am awake..." He eyed the walls around him "I need to make sure I'm safe."
He leaned back slightly and took a peek out into the corridor before turning around and taking a better look. He squinted down the long corridor, each side covered with what looked to be more alcoves of roughly the same size as the one he was standing in. Looking the other way revealed much of the same.
He furrowed his brow as his eyes traced over the stonework around him. Something he was looking at was wrong, but what was it... beyond the insanity of the current circumstances at least.
"What-" His eyes flicked up along the ceiling. There it was. "Where is all this light coming from..." There were no light sources that he could see. No overhead LEDs, no strange... green, he supposed, torches. It was like all the stone around him was glowing evenly across all surfaces.
He ran a finger along the stone next to him, pulling it away to inspect it closely. The glow didn't seem to come away with the dust coating his finger. He rubbed two fingers together before letting his hand fall away to his side.
"Not even gonna begin to wonder how that is working..." Marcus muttered as he stepped out into the corridor tentatively.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
He began to make his way down the corridor to his right. Of course he didn't make it far, stopping at the very next alcove to inspect it's contents.
Sure enough, there was a small, stone sarcophagus fixed into the alcove. In this case though, the text engraved into the foot of the stone fixture was almost completely faded away with time. He kneeled and ran a single finger along the time-worn words.
"1...3... 4.... 5.... 6...1?" Marcus let his approximation of the number beneath the indecipherable name hang in the air. "So..." He glanced to his left and right "Whatever a cycle is... it's definitely got an order." He considered the hall he came from and the one he had moved towards.
"More than 130,000 alcoves if that's a fair assumption... this place must be... massive" He shook his head, considering how mind boggling that number was in terms of the sheer footprint required. There must be multiple floors, Marcus mused.
He stood and almost continued the way he had initially headed before doubling back to the alcove just after his own. There was no text, or even the hint that time had worn it away in the interim.
"Alright, alright. That's a good sign... maybe." He muttered absently as he again continued down the corridor to the right. If it was counting in a single direction, then dream logic or no- he had to assume that he'd be going the right way. Or at least in a way he had to assume would bring him to the beginning of the structure.
The time around each step and the next quickly began to run together as be advanced down the corridor. He quickly began to feel the oppressive monotony of alcoves in the omnipresent glow closing in on him. There were no side corridors, no deviations in the stonework, and the only thing that let him no he wasn't walking in place was the slowly fading numbers on the sarcophagi when he bothered to stop and check how far he had come.
It wasn't long until he began to feel the first tingles of thirst in his throat. He didn't consider the connotations for several minutes before he stopped dead in his tracks. He was thirsty. He felt a cold feeling of dread grab at his heart before he could fully squash the sensation.
He moved to the nearest alcove hastily and spent a moment to decipher the number. He had barely covered 15,000 alcoves after what felt like hours in the endless tomb. And he was thirsty.
"Holy shit... this isn't a dream, this is real... and I haven’t seen a drop of water." He looked to the ceiling, praying for some errant leak into what he had to assume by this point was his subterranean prison.
He fell back onto his ass, letting his eyes slide away from the roof to the corridor ahead of him. How far would he make it? Certainly not 115,000 more... the final alcoves must be miles ahead, and they were not a guarantee of safety.
He turned his head back the way he came. It was pointless to search for any that way... but had there been any signs? A drip? A puddle? A crack in the stonework above? He sighed, knowing that if there had been- he hadn't been paying enough attention to notice as boredom had dominated his walk so far.
He had been complacent, and it was going to get him killed if he had missed something. He took a deep breath to gird himself for the next leg, before standing and finding himself swiveling his head around as a sudden ringing filled the air.
There.
An alcove some ten meters ahead. He rushed forward to the change in his surroundings and found himself face to face with a pair of dark wooden doors. He paused, eyeing the edifice. The door was... ominous.
Each side was engraved with the visage of a skeleton in intricately decorated armor, a shield held across their bodies with their spears crossing from one side to the other. But it was their eye sockets that made his skin crawl. There was a faint green glimmer in each orbit, aflame like sickly embers that glowed brighter than the ambient light of the stones around him.
His skin crawled as he placed his palm against one of the doors. It froze him to the spot as he stared up into the eyes of the silent guardians worked into the wood. It was like their burning eyes looked down into his very being, measuring him. Soon though, the feeling passed and he found himself poised to open the foreboding doors. At last, he gave them a push.
He wrinkled his nose as the door opened and let out a gust of air. There was a strange tang to it. It was... familiar. But he couldn't place it. It wasn't particularly foul, but... chemical, metallic. His instincts had him stepping away and letting the door fall closed before even looking inside.
"What the hell is that..." He took another sniff. Did it smell like something from his lab? Not particularly. But... maybe something he'd smelled in the hospital. Not biological though.
His eyes narrowed, trying to focus on the smell and place what it was. It made him feel nervous, but he couldn't figure out why. Was the room safe to enter?
"Alright... alright, just a quick look" He idly lay his hand on the door again and pushed slowly. He paused for a moment then decided it would be best to hold his breath before opening the door with a loud creak.
The room on the other side was... huge. It was like something out of a fantasy novel- a long hall, filled with pillars extending out into the distance. At the end of the room, there was a raised dais that seemed to be radiating a much more concentrated glow from the rest of the ambient stones. It almost hurt to look at.
He slowly let out his breath before sniffing in some more air. The scent was still present but there didn't appear to be any immediate reaction.
"Well... so good so far?" He nervously looked side to side at the pillars as he began his advance into the room, occasionally glancing at the distant light burning at the end on the dais.
As his nervousness gradually waned, he took a moment to inspect the nearest pillar. It was... well, gruesome wasn’t the right word, but certainly gave him a bad feeling. It was covered in an incredibly intricate carving, filled with skulls, bones, full skeletons and all kinds of death-related imagery.
"Jesus, this is like those old European chapels made out of bone." He muttered, glancing past the pillar towards the outer walls. Still stonework as far as he could tell "At least I haven’t woken up in the Parisian catacombs or something." He muttered, not entirely sure he wasn't somewhere far worse.
His progress slowed as he crossed the hall, finding himself inspecting each pillar on turn. More of the same, and hardly enough to catch his attention but he felt the need to do so if only to put off approaching the brilliant light adoring the end of the hall. Inevitably, however, he found himself nearing it and taking in more and more of the details.
There was a throne on the dais, rising out of the stone floor as if carved from it rather than being placed there. The light came from near the top, the only adornment he could make out. He found it somewhat strange given the intricate craftsmanship that filled the space around it, but the glow was enough to fill it with its own grandeur.
When he finally made his way to the foot of the dais, he found himself almost reluctant to take the step up above the floor but did so after only a brief pause. The glow here was enough to make him squint through its brilliance, but he was enraptured by what he saw. Embedded at the crown of the throne was a gem the size of a bowling ball, searing the space around it with its glow.
He neared the throne hesitantly, reaching out and running a finger along it's armrest. It was warm. The gem seemed to give off actual heat, warming the throne to a comfortable, inviting temperature. The stone felt almost alive, like body heat rather than the burning sensation of sun-heated rock.
He reached his hand out to tap the strange glowing gem but suddenly found himself feeling weak. He wobbled for a moment then collapsed to his knee before the throne. Panic began to set in at the sudden weakness. Was he in danger? He looked up at the gem. Was it the-
He wretched, pulling himself into the fetal position on his knees before collapsing to one side. His eyes settled onto the gem again, glaring down at him with that... sickly, green light.
Gasping for breath, the smell here was intense. That same chemical tang filled the air, smothering his senses as he desperately tried to focus on it. He was in danger, but how? Knowledge is power, and he has to know what’s killing him before he cou- it clicked. Ozone.
Affliction Gained! You have been poisoned by ambient Death Mana.
Marcus' world became a cacophony of pain and sickness. Feverish chills began to wrack his body as he wretched and weakly began to crawl backwards away from the throne. This sure as hell wasn't a dream, and he knew he was a dead man already.
Still, he found himself desperately clawing for one more ounce of life while he still had some left. It took several minutes, but he eventually managed to drag himself into cover behind the nearest stone pillar.
He propped himself up against it, trying to fight off the overwhelming nausea. His eyes closed as he tried to focus. He was protected from the direct light of the gem here... but he could only think about the scent of ozone. And now, a metallic taste teased his tongue.
He touched the back of his hand to his mouth, and stared at it until his eyes could bring it into focus against the shakes. There it was, a light film of saliva diluted blood.
He rested his head against the cover next to him. No, it wasn't cover. It was shielding. That light, the ozone, the sickness... it was radiation.
He furrowed his brows, trying to read the alert that had flashed across his vision. Death Mana poisoning certainly sounds like what a medieval alchemist might call radiation sickness. He managed a weak chuckle at the thought. Still... knowing what it was, wasn't a comfort.
He tried to turn his head to look at the next pillar behind him but only managed to by turning his back to the pillar he was against already. He felt like he was on the verge of passing out.
His eyes flicked down to the space between him and the next pillar. He could see the shadow give way to the gems light. It seemed like an insurmountable distance.
"Is it worth it..." He muttered weakly. "I should be safer the further away I get but... I still need to survive getting away."
Affliction Gained! You have been afflicted by Necrotic Shock due to Death Mana poisoning.
Marcus relaxed against the pillar as he felt his warmth begin to fade. Shock. Shock was bad, necrosis was horrific. It was becoming harder to concentrate. Necrotic shock. Sepsis? He was trying to parse the words but it was getting more and more difficult to work it out.
He just needed to get some rest. He would just take a quick nap here, then he would move to the next pillar. Once he had some of his strength back.
His eyes slowly drifted closed, and the adrenaline keeping his body going faded away. Soon, he slumped and slid along the pillar to the floor as the darkness took him into its embrace.