Nic raced through the darkened woods, his feet crunching on scattered branches and old leaves. The pounding behind him elevated his heartbeat even more. He had been careless. A Gigant Bear had heard him step on a branch a while back.

It had been asleep, but now that it was awake, it was furious. Gigant Bears are one of the many different species, now classified as monsters, that came from an animal mutation during the First Irradiated Winter. While some animals fused with humans, creating the beast people, and some were lucky to stay the same, the rest turned into monsters. For most animal races, they evolved into a single type of monster, such as with the many different types of Bears. No matter what race of bear they had been originally, they all turned into Gigant Bears in the end. Growing nearly double the size with much harder, almost armor-like, skin covering their vital points, Gigant Bears were one of the deadliest monsters a lone warrior could run into.

And Nic wasn’t even a warrior to begin with. To say that he was outmatched and outclassed was the understatement of the millennia.

Like most monsters, the Gigant Bear was much, much more aggressive than normal bears, who are already aggressive depending on the race. On top of that, their strength was nearly quadruple that of a normal bear.

If a Gigant Bear was spotted near a City-State like Sanum or within the borders of a Nation like Aethurius or Kyoku, then a group of at least 15-20 soldiers would be dispatched to take care of it. If they were near a rad-town, well, there usually wasn’t a rad-town there anymore.

The forest sped past Nic as he ran. His legs burned. His lungs did as well. Everything in him was on fire.

Despite his best effort, the Gigant Bear was gaining on him. He only had a few seconds left.

Is this really the end? I can’t even begin my true journey before dying.

The only weapon that Nic had on him was the beaten and worn down knife that he had been carrying since Aria and him had left the rad-town. A dull blade like that would be little more than a twig for the monster.

Thwap!

Nic ran straight into a branch and the level of his head. He hit the ground on his back, the air quickly leaving his lungs. As he struggled to breathe, his attempts at getting up failed time and time again. He didn’t notice the Gigant Bear looming over him until it was too late. The monster's front legs were already falling toward him.

He stopped his futile attempts to breathe. He closed his eyes and waited for the end to come. The only thing he regretted was his final moments with his parents. They had done so much for him, and yet the last time he had seen them, they had been arguing. It wasn’t even about anything significant.

“Ah, I wish I could’ve at least said sorry…”

Nic heard the sound of something hitting a stone hard. Opening his eyes, he found not the scene that he had closed them to, but a solid piece of rock sitting barely 5 cer from the tip of his nose. The edge of it sat right above his eyes.

Nic heard three thuds in rapid succession right above him, past the stone slab. A liquid fell over the edge of the slab, hitting Nic straight in the forehead. It was warm, sticky, and currently moving down the side of his head.

He shimmied out from beneath the stone slab. Looking at the Gigant Bear, trying to make sense of what he was seeing in the night’s dim light. Protruding from the stone slab he had been under were three stone spears stabbing through the Gigant Bear in different spots. One had punched through his lower stomach area. The second between its front shoulder blades. And the last one had completely removed the Gigant Bears' head from its body. If it hadn’t died from the first two spears, the last one had certainly done it.

The most inconspicuous part of the image, however, came from the stout man currently running his hands across the recently deceased Gigant Bears' body. Nic couldn’t make out any details in the darkened night, but he could tell that the man was barely five feet tall. His hair seemed to be cut short and he was quietly humming to himself while feeling up the Gigant Bear.

“So, young boy, why are you alone in this part of the woods so late at night?” The man never bothered to turn his head towards Nic as he asked him the question. Instead, he simply continued what he had been doing before.

“Just looking for a house nearby.” Nic kept his answer short, unsure of if he should tell this stranger anything.

“A house? What kind of house would be out here in the middle of the woods?”

“Who knows? All I know is that I need to find this house,” Nic walked away from the stranger, cutting off the conversation before it could go anywhere.

“Oi! Hey, don’t just walk away from me like that. If you’re looking for a house, then that means you’re looking for that house. Right?”

Nic stopped. The man’s accent of “that” meant he knew something. Sweat began rolling down the side of Nic’s face. Did this man know the truth? Would he try to kill Nic? How was Nic supposed to get out of this?

“I take it from the silence, you’re going to that house.”

“I don’t know what you mean by that house. Maybe I’m going there, maybe I’m not. I don’t even know what house you are talking about.” Nic quickened his pace. He wanted to get away from the man before anything else was said.

“Oi! What did I say about walking away from me?! And even faster now, do the young have no respect for their elders in this century?” A rumbling came from beneath Nic as he heard the stranger talking behind him, getting further and further away.

A step. The stranger got quieter. The rumbling got louder.

Another step. Nic no longer heard the stranger behind him. He only heard the rumbling beneath his feet.

Another step. There wasn’t another step. Instead, Nic’s foot hit a stone wall that had suddenly appeared before him. It rose nearly half a mer above his head. Two more stone walls quickly appeared on either side of him, blocking Nic off completely. Turning around, the stranger was blocking the last segment behind him.

“So, now that you can’t go anywhere, are you going to that house?” Having finally cornered him, the stranger asked Nic the same question for the third time. This time, there was no running.

“I don’t know what house you are talking about.” Feigning ignorance was Nic’s only play. The only way for him to get out of this situation.

“The Verilo household. It’s up ahead, didn’t you know? Though, looking at your face, it’s clear you did.”

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

Nic reached a hand up to his face. Was he that clear to read?

“Why… why do you care if I’m going to the Verilo house?” Nic gave in. The stranger had already guessed his destination. There was no reason to hide now. If this was where he died, then he would simply fight back with everything he had. He would go down fighting till the end.

“Well, you see, I happen to know that if a Verilo who can’t use magic goes near the house, they are going to be stopped by the house’s caretaker. In the best case, they will be turned away harmlessly. But in the worst case, I hear some of the Verilos who came tried to force their way in. They were dead in less than the blink of an eye.” Nic’s mouth parched at the words the stranger spoke. He hadn’t known that those who came before him had been killed before.

Nic shook the doubt out of his mind. Nothing this stranger would say would deviate Nic from his course. Unlike his ancestors, Nic had magic on his side. Even if it was weak, it should be enough to get through safely.

“The last time someone came to the house was what, 25 years ago? 20? Somewhere in there. It was a young man and a woman who followed him. Unlike you, it was midday when they came. The woman stayed far enough away that she wouldn’t absorb too much Irradiation in the area surrounding the house while the man talked to the caretaker. He-”

“Wait dad came to the house!? And mom too?” Nic cut the stranger off, blurting out a duo of questions without thinking. It was only when he saw a grin on the stranger's face that he realized what he had said. He took a step back and hit the stone wall behind him.

“So you were a Verilo. It’s only natural, seeing how you are still up despite being so close to the house.”

“Who are you?” Nic finally asked the stranger for his name. This man clearly knew a lot about his family lineage and their reasons for coming to the house. On top of that, the stranger was claiming to have been there when Nic’s parents came to the house.

The stranger grabbed a rock off of the ground and bent a branch until it came off of a nearby tree. Nic tensed up as the stranger walked up to the opening in the walls with the two natural items that could conceivably be used to kill someone.

Clack. Clack. Clack. The stranger hit the rock against the wall, creating small sparks. It only took a few hits but the branch in his hand soon caught fire. Nic was finally able to see the stranger's face.

“Your eyes…” The most striking thing about the stranger’s face was his eyes. Those pure white eyes were completely devoid of any pupils or iris’. The man should be blind, yet he walked and talked like he saw everything.

Aside from his striking eyes, the stranger had rustic orange hair, was clean shaven, and was clearly old. His face was full of a mixture of scars and lines that came with age.

“You must be wonderin’ how I see, right? The truth is I see through the rocks all around us. Amazin’ right? My name is Rust. Just Rust. And I’m a Deep Dwarf.” The stranger, Rust, held out a hand to Nic. Nic shook it, still a bit in shock at the eyes staring back at him.

“A Dwarf? Isn’t that the name given to Earth Elves? Then what’s a Deep Dwarf? I’ve never heard of that.”

“Look at you, knowledgeable on your demi-human slang. That’s right, Dwarf was the name given to us by the rest of the land-dwelling Elves. Like the Water Elves, who were later named Mermen, the Earth Elves were named Dwarves. The surface-dwelling Elves think of us as another species entirely because we prefer different areas of living. As for the Deep part of me, that comes from the fact that I absorbed a much larger amount of Earth Spirits due to how close I was to Noah after the first Irradiated Winter.”

“Noah…? Then you are…”

“The caretaker of the Verilo house, that’s right. And yes, I’m nearly 300 years old, though I don’t look a day over sixty if I say so myself.” Suddenly a lot made sense to Nic. This was the man that Nic had to show his magic to be let in the house.

“Uh, Rust, sir. If you don-”

“Look, kid. If you want to get into the house, that’s going to be a big no. Only once one of you has learned magic will they be let in. I’m sorry but you’re going to need to leave.”

“Bu-”

“No buts. You were struggling with a Gigant Bear while I easily crushed it. Do you really think you can get past me?”

Nic grabbed his old knife and brought it up in front of him in a defensive position. Rust was not going to listen to him. So Nic would fight it out. At least he would have. Instead he found himself pinned against a rock wall in an instant.

Rust reached out and grabbed the knife from Nic’s hand. He looked at it and grimaced.

“What a poor knife. I can see why you struggled with even just a Gigant Bear.”

“Give that back!”

Rust simply looked at Nic as he yelled at him.

“No.”

With that, Rust turned and the knife started flying through the air away from the two. If Nic did nothing, he would lose his only line of protection.

He reached out with his hand. He felt for the knife through the air and pulled. He pulled on the invisible force connecting him and the knife with everything he had. He pulled and pulled and pulled. He strained against the rock keeping him in place, hoping for even a cer less space between his hand and the knife’s grip. A lifetime seemed to pass before Nic felt the hilt of the knife in his palm.

In actuality, it had only been a second. And in that second, the knife he had thrown started moving backwards. It had zipped by him, close enough to net him another scar in a few days time. When Rust turned around, the knife was sitting squarely in the hand of Nic.

The rock binding keeping Nic up against the wall disappeared as fast as they had appeared, dropping him to his knees. His breath labored as he stood back up. The air rushed into his lungs, helping him recover from straining too hard to use magic.

“Wind magic… this… -riael? Too…” Rust was muttering under his breath, patches of which Nic heard. It was all nonsense to him though so he ignored it.

“I have magic! I’m a Verilo with magic! So will you take me to the house now?”

“This is… It’s early, but this is an undeniable truth.” A soft sigh escaped Rust’s lips before he extended a hand to Nic. “Alright. Let’s go then.”

“Wait, really?”

“You clearly showed magic. There’s not much I can say in the face of that.”

It only took the two of them a few minutes before the forest thinned out, eventually disappearing entirely to a wide circle. It was nearly 100 Mer in diameter, and in the center was an old, falling apart, house.

Nic honestly thought that calling it simply “falling apart” was too nice. Every window had been boarded up, and then the boards had fallen off. The glass visible in those chunks was cracked beyond compare. The front door was barely on its hinges and was broken in half. The roof had collapsed in on itself, with half of it completely missing. The ground around the house was barely any better. Throughout the entire clearing, the ground was blackened. The Irradiation had completely taken over the ground. It was the sole reason for the clearing in the first place. The dirt had absorbed so much Irradiation that no trees or bush could grow on it.

Where once the forest, even at night, had been abuzz with the sounds of insects and critters, it was now dead silent. Not a living thing stayed in the clearing or near the house.

Rust led Nic through the front door. As it opened, the last half fell to the ground with a thud. Walking through the door, the air was full of dust. Nic coughed lightly as the dust entered his lungs while breathing in. The inside of the house was barely better than the outside. Broken furnishings lined the walls of rooms and hallways. Candlesticks that were once meant to give light had been snapped in half and dropped to the floor. Rugs that might have once been magnificent floor decor had been trampled on and torn enough that they barely served their original function.

The two finally came to a stop in a room just a few mer inside the door. Unlike the rest of the house, the back wall of this room was immaculate. Truly, not a speck of dust sat on the pristine shelves that lined the wall. The door sitting in the center of it was the complete opposite of the door that had led into the house. It was whole, undamaged and easily opened.

“In here.” Rust led Nic through the door and down a flight of stairs. At the bottom lay a small room. No decorations adorned the walls, and only a bed and a small nightstand with a weird item atop it lay on the ground. It was simple really. It had a square base connected to a round ball by a thin pole, all of which was made from a dark wood. The weird part of the item came from the fact that it had two wooden rings hovering next to the ball part.

“Put your hand on this detector and use your magic. Once it has detected it and confirmed it, you will need to lay down on the bed.” Rust explained what needed to be done while motioning to the device sitting on the nightstand. Based on his explanation, Nic assumed it to be some sort of Magic Detector, though he had never heard of such a device existing before. It might have been a device from the Aethurian Nation in the west. Aethurius was known throughout Kronul as the de facto lead in Magical developments.

“Got it.” Nic did as he was instructed. Once he put his hand on the device, he felt a pull on his hand. Closing his eyes, he slowly pushed out with his magic until he heard a beep come from the device. The once wooden ball on the top of the device was now glowing a verdant green. The hue of the glow extended out to the two rings that had been floating on the side.

As if on cue, the two rings quickly moved to two different points along Nic’s arm before shrinking to the point that they would be difficult to remove.

“Huh!?” A surprised welp came out of Nic’s mouth as the rings tightened around his arm. Drowsiness quickly took him over. Nic looked over at Rust, only to see him pointing towards the bed in front of him. He had to sleep now, which didn’t seem like it would be too hard.

Falling onto the bed, Nic found himself falling asleep far faster than he thought possible. His eyelids quickly got too heavy to keep open. The darkness took him quickly. It would only be later that he learned that Rust left the room as soon as Nic fell asleep.