The countryside was beautiful. Boasting a great tapestry of luscious fields that undulated to the horizon, crystal-blue waters that wound through the landscape, and distant white-tipped mountains that stood sentinel over all the land, it was like something out of a painting. It was awe-inspiring. Jaw-dropping. Something out of a fairy tale. The sight of it brought tears to Lucas’ eyes.
And he was beginning to suspect there wasn’t a single human out there.
Resting on a patch of dry grass, Lucas held a hand up to shield his eyes from the sun and pondered the small village he could see nestling at the bend of a distant river. It was too far away to make out any details, but he reckoned there were probably a dozen or two buildings, constructed from mud and stone and thatch in the style he’d come to expect from the settlements he’d come across thus far.
A week had passed since he’d escaped the overgrown city, and this was the sixth settlement he’d encountered. At this point, he held no hope of finding it populated with people. He’d learned his lesson.
The first time he’d happened upon a village—a sign of civilisation that had his heart soaring—the disappointment of realising it had long been abandoned had been almost crushing. He’d broken into a sprint, shouting greetings, only to be met with silence as deep as the grave.
A little hamlet consisting of a grand total of nine buildings, each one had been vacant, many reduced to piles of rubble. What few possessions had been left behind had rotted away if the building was even still standing. There hadn’t even really been anything useful to salvage. His best find was a wild patch of root vegetables that looked like purple carrots and had the consistency of potato. A stick remained his greatest weapon.
The same story had played out five more times over the last seven days. Settlements large and small lay abandoned. Anything that could be taken had already been taken. Many buildings had long collapsed, and most of them were steadily being reclaimed by the wild if they weren’t already overgrown entirely. Luckily for his heart, he found it was purely natural overgrowth taking back territory people had stolen.
Still, it was disheartening. Demotivating.
Hell, even if it had all still been standing and populated with friendly faces, the technological and developmental level would have been distressing on its own. Packed mud walls and thatched roofs—rotten and patchy—spoke of a civilisation that was far behind what he was used to.
Finding himself trapped in the past wasn’t that much of a surprise given everything else he’d been through, but it was still pretty fucking inconvenient. He was deluding himself with the hope that he’d stumble across a bunch of skyscrapers the moment he passed those far off mountains.
It didn’t seem likely.
For now, he was stuck with a more immediate dilemma. The settlement in the distance was almost certainly empty too, but what if it wasn’t?
Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me six times… shame on me again by that point, probably?
But what if…?
The trouble he was facing was thus: food could quickly become scarce if he was unlucky. He’d come to rely on his ability to grow fruit at a whim, but he hadn’t realised how much he’d been dependent on the vitality flowing through the plants of the overgrown city until he didn’t have access to it anymore. Without that link and the genetic information stored within it, he couldn’t arbitrarily grow apples out of brambles, or some such.
Luckily, forage wasn’t much of a problem out here, considering there didn’t seem to be anyone else to pick the land clean. But he was aware that things could change quickly. He didn’t know these lands; who was to say he wouldn’t stumble into a situation where food was abruptly a rarity? None of the weird fruits and vegetables he’d managed to pick so far would keep all that well, and he was no skilled hunter.
A mewling sound rang from beside him, and he absently reached down to scratch Jamie—named after his red-headed childhood friend—behind the ears. The tabby cat had followed him all the way out here, and he suspected it was as delighted to find another living creature as he was. There hadn’t been much sign of anything else.
Though it was entirely possible the cheeky little bugger was just happy to have someone to scrounge off, since it had no problem munching on the purple carrot things. He had no idea how it’d been surviving before he met it. Cats were supposed to be carnivores, hunters. He was still hoping it would be able to teach him a thing or two about tracking prey, though he wasn’t going to be eating mice unless things got really desperate.
He’d resolved that he wasn’t going to be eating the cat, either, no matter what situation he found himself in. He was no vegan, but he couldn’t imagine butchering and eating a creature he’d bonded with. He’d rather die. Maybe that was the perspective of a man who hadn’t had to endure starvation yet, but he liked to think he’d stick to that decision.
To that end, he probably couldn’t afford not to check the village for supplies. With a sigh, Lucas pushed himself to his feet and set off.
Over the past week, he’d gotten used to walking long distances with no destination in mind, only vague goals guiding him. His primary objectives were to figure out where the hell he was and how he got here, and so far he’d made no progress on either. Even so, he’d gained some appreciation for cross-country hiking, at least.
After the trepidation of the first few days had finally released its vice grip over his heart, he’d come to appreciate the beauty of the countryside.
Unmarred by roads and the endless cacophony of civilisation, the whispering wind was the only noise in the countryside. At first it had seemed eerie, so quiet it was as if it was highlighting the lack of the bustling din of the city that had been ever-present in his life, but it quickly became soothing and he found he liked it.
He’d headed west from the overgrown city and never looked back. Bathing in streams was heavenly in comparison to wiping himself down by dipping makeshift rags in his gathered drinking water, but he would’ve killed for a hot shower.
The air was generally cold but there were few overcast days, and the warmth of the sun made up for the crisp weather. He’d long gotten used to the scent of pollen and damp plants that seemed omnipresent in the countryside. It was nothing compared to the domed chamber’s aroma.
The weirdest part of it all was the plant life. After the time he’d spent in the overgrown city he’d thought he’d never find weirder foliage, but the further he travelled the more oddities he saw.
Here and there, things seemed to be warped. Trees would have multiple types and colours of leaves, and they grew in ways he could see no logical reason for them to. Bushes had contorted themselves into nonsensical shapes in places, and if he inspected a branch it could sometimes bleed into a different species of plant multiple times across its length. Pulsing his vitality through them gave him the impression that often several plants had kind of… grown into each other. Combined.
Even the colours were off, on a more general level. Grass and leaves and other stuff that was supposed to be green were instead closer to blue, and bark on trees inched towards red instead of brown. And that wasn’t even speaking of the plants that looked like a bad photoshop job; one tree he saw had a neon yellow trunk with circular pink leaves, and he stayed well away from it.
It all combined to give the place an alien feel, and he didn’t know how to feel about it. Magic and mediaeval architecture was distressing enough, but if it turned out he was on another planet entirely he was liable to have a breakdown. It was still gorgeous to behold, at least.
And there were other positives. No longer needing to constantly push plants out of the way, his vitality experimentation had turned almost entirely internal. His improvements with speeding up/slowing down the flow as well as opening a dozen more sub-channels had seen material results in reality: he was making absurdly good time.
There was little in the way of roads or paths, but that barely slowed him down. His stamina was proving to be outrageous. It was like slowing down his vitality’s flow also slowed down the loss of his energy. One con was it made him more hungry, but he felt that was a decent trade.
Aside from the abandoned villages, his travels had carried him past some marvellous landscapes. He’d skirted around a forest of golden-leaved fir trees, forded a river with water clear as glass despite its current, and from atop a great hill beheld an endless expanse of rolling grasslands like a green ocean. The sights he’d encountered almost didn’t seem real, even if they weren’t especially grand in scope or scale.
It would have been a perfectly pleasant experience if he hadn’t been snatched away from his breakfast and dumped here just a month(ish) ago. It left him with mixed feelings, appreciating the beauty of the place with a tinge of bitterness.
That feeling was suffusing him now as he marched across rolling greeny-blue fields, aiming unerringly for yet another village that was probably devoid of all life. The image before him was a dreamlike vista, but the colour seemed to wash out as dark thoughts seeped into his mind.
The past week had raised even more questions, and they weren’t pleasant ones.
Paramount among them: where had all the people gone?
Considering the half a hundred skeletons he’d found in the overgrown city, he wasn’t sure he wanted to know.
It was mid afternoon by the time he arrived at the village’s edge, and he found it was a little bigger than he’d guessed from afar. There were maybe thirty buildings, and a good majority of them were still standing though the larger ones had fallen. That probably owed to the comparatively impressive stone work, grey blocks stacked high to stand the test of time. How much time, he didn’t know. The high hiss of the nearby river was the only sound.
Looking closer, there were etchings on some of the stones, tiny symbols scratched into the outer walls. It seemed random. There was no pattern to it Lucas could discern, at least; it didn’t give him the vibe of written script, somehow.
The village seemed to have sprouted out of a larger round building at its centre that had since collapsed, ringing it in four concentric circles that each boasted more houses. A wider road sliced through the village, and Lucas followed it to the centre, deciding to start his search from the middle and expand outwards. Long grass filled the gaps between buildings, and he had to stomp it down.
Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
Arriving at the centre of the settlement, he stopped before a squared block of stone. It had been cut precisely at some point, but time had worn away at it, rounding its edges and sanding away at the script carved into its outward face. What had once presumably been words had worn away to blurry white lines.
Still, though the words had faded, five larger symbols still stood out well enough. They were arranged with four smaller icons in a row below a much larger icon. A sword, shield, bow, and wand below a five-pointed star.
Lucas spent a brief moment wondering what it meant before his curiosity ran its course. He turned away, surveying the village.
Out of habit more than any real optimism, he called out: “Hello? Is anyone here?”
Silence answered him, as he’d come to expect by now. Jamie rubbed himself against Lucas’ leg and purred, and he reached down to pet the cat with a sigh. Setting his main sack down and hefting an empty sack for looting, he got to work.
The houses immediately surrounding the central building were single story affairs with two or three rooms each, and there was little to speak of inside of them. Anything wooden had long rotted, and the floors consisted of packed mud and whatever plants could endure with little sunlight. Lucas employed his vitality sense, but nothing pinged his mental radar.
The next ring told much the same story, though he did find a set of dull misshapen lumps of metal of some kind that once might have been knives. He chucked them in his looting sack, sure he could find a use for them in some way. Metal had been in short supply so far; the kind of thing people would bother to take with them when they left their home behind, he imagined.
The third ring had nothing of note, and by the time he got to the fourth, outermost ring he was feeling dejected enough that he didn’t so much find something as tread straight on it. His footwear was more sock than shoe, clumsily woven together from plant fibres as it was, and it did nothing to prevent something sharp from sticking into the bottom of his foot.
Lucas let out an enraged roar that sent Jamie skittering away. He ended up hopping around, frantically batting at his injured foot to dislodge the foreign object. It took an embarrassingly long time before the piece of shaped metal tumbled to the floor, and Lucas glared at it with all the loathing he could summon.
Which turned out to be not much loathing at all, once he got a good look at it.
Shaped into a curve, it took him a moment to realise what the two-pronged fork was even supposed to be. It was the ornate floral design with a purple gem inlaid at the opposite end from the spikes that gave it away.
Lucas picked up the hairpin, marvelling at the first manmade trinket he’d encountered since finding himself in this place a month ago. Embarrassingly, emotion overwhelmed him, and he found his vision blurring. He had to swallow back a lump in his throat.
It was so silly. He’d encountered six villages, for fuck’s sake. They certainly weren’t built by animals.
But somehow a cheap curved piece of metal that someone used to pin up their hair, something worthless enough it had been left behind here, was what hammered home that there really had been people in this place not so long ago.
A laugh bubbled up from his belly, and he didn’t bother to stop it.
Naturally, he wasn’t allowed to have nice things, and what meagre happiness he’d gotten didn’t last long.
A frightened yowl came from somewhere outside, and closely following it was a sound he’d never be able to forget.
It was like someone had taken the death rattle of a dying animal, the buzz of a giant fly, the screech of a wounded bird, and the gurgle of a drowning man, and combined them all into one. It pierced through him, driving icy lances of fear deep into his heart. It was an unnatural sound, activating primal instincts that told him to run run run get away now!
But Jamie was out there facing whatever fucking godawful beast made that noise.
Vitality roaring in his channels, Lucas burst out of the house. With no other option, he palmed a warped maybe-dagger in each hand and charged towards the source of the noise against every self-preservation instinct he had.
The noise kept going and going, like the monstrosity making it didn’t have to stop for breath. It didn’t change pitch or volume. There was no emotion to it, no purpose. It bastardised the natural order of the world.
And yet still it was a boon, because Lucas could follow it to its source without having to search. It was coming from the centre of the village, and he charged towards it with reckless abandon, hoping that the lack of Jamie’s yowls didn’t mean the worst.
Then he rounded a corner and sighted the beast for the first time, and he had no time to regret his rash decision before its giant bloodshot eye was upon him.
Just as its voice was a horror-show combination of disparate elements, so too was its form. The eye’s sclera was a sickly yellow, and it covered half of the creature’s carapaced insectoid body. A dozen spindly legs jutted out at odd angles, and steaming black ichor drooled from three gaping maws, one at either end of its body and one smaller mouth between the bloody, broken wings on its upper back. All three held crooked, serrated teeth, and a dozen tongues that wriggled around like worms.
It moved jerkily, skittish. It stood out from its surroundings, like it was a stop motion clay animation in a live action movie. It didn’t immediately charge him down as he expected, and if it had it probably would’ve killed him, because he’d frozen on the spot the moment he laid eyes on it.
His mind had gone blank. All thoughts and what little plans he’d been cooking up had fled him. It was like his brain refused to comprehend what it was seeing, refusing to believe it. This had to be a dream, and he’d wake up at any moment having drifted off where he sat down on that distant meadow. He’d disconnected from his body, sensation muted and distant. His vitality had even settled back to its default state in his inattention.
Without warning, the creature went from jerky back and forth movements to an all out charge. Its thin legs scraped it along the ground, and only its wings that seemed to vibrate more than flap kept it from dragging through the grass like a centipede. Before it had closed half the distance, it lunged at him, sailing through the air.
Lucas found himself unprepared.
It collided with his upper body, and Lucas didn’t so much block its assault as his knives just happened to already have been raised when he froze up. It was heavy, its body tough as leather, and the impact drove the air from his lungs and sent him sprawling to the ground. It followed him down, its jaws snapping at his face.
Survival instinct dragged him out of his terror-induced haze. His vitality roared brighter than it ever had before, practically stopping in his channels it was moving so slow. His limbs turned to steel. He shoved the creature with all the strength of his upper body, and it tumbled off to the side. Lucas rolled and scrambled away backwards, but it gave him no reprieve.
He lashed out blindly with one of the knives, and it bounced off the monster’s thick hide. Lucas screamed as it hauled itself onto his legs, frantically kicking to keep his limbs away from one of its razor-filled mouths. The force of his kicks bucked it off once more, but again it came at him.
It never stopped its demonic scream.
The ensuing moments were filled with terrified combat. Lucas lost track of himself, of his surroundings, his entire being focused on fighting for his life. He lashed out with his knives with all his vitality’s strength behind the blows, but they were uncoordinated and unskilled, and the metal wasn’t strong enough to pierce its rough skin. It became a game of keepaway, with Lucas constantly throwing the creature off and backing away to gain space, only for it to tirelessly launch itself at him over and over.
He became more and more frantic by the moment. His dull knives couldn’t hurt the beast, and he desperately didn’t want to find out whether its teeth could pierce him. This couldn’t go on. Eventually he would tire. Eventually it would get him, bite him, and then he’d be done. The tarry ichor drooling from its maws didn’t look like the kind of thing he wanted to get in a wound.
Their battle moved closer to the village centre, and Lucas went tumbling to the ground once more as his feet got tangled with something lumpy and hard. The beast wasted no time taking advantage, but he was getting better at blocking even as his stamina slowly trickled away, and he fended it off with his dull blades and tossed it to the side before its teeth could tear at him.
Glancing down furiously at what had tripped him, Lucas found something he’d forgotten about. When he’d set out on his search of the village, he’d left behind the sack of things he’d gathered from elsewhere. Focused on the battle, he hadn’t seen the danger.
Now, half his stuff was strewn across the floor, and close at hand was a stick.
He didn’t have time to contemplate the idea that came to mind, he just acted. Tossing one of the knives aside, he snatched up the stick and surged to his feet.
What happened next surprised even him.
His vitality flowed into the stick, following a familiar habit he’d formed in those early days in the overgrown city. The piece of wood lit up like a beacon, his slow-moving vitality reinforcing it until in a moment it was suddenly tenfold as strong as it should’ve been.
The beast came at him again, and Lucas acted on instinct.
It didn’t even get close to him.
Moving with the proficiency and speed of a master, he batted the beast aside, and for the first time the pitch of its scream changed. All of a sudden, it seemed so slow. It was nothing compared to the grasping vines that had struck like snakes, and its teeth weren’t half so sharp as the thorns—though neither had touched him.
And its skin wasn’t half so invulnerable to the stick’s pointed end as it had been to the dull knives.
He hadn’t even intended to scratch it on that first attack, aiming to parry its lunge away from him like he had done to the fast-moving branches in the overgrown city. A glancing blow from the stick’s point had scored an oozing line along its flank, and it was curling up as if to defend the wound.
But the evident pain didn’t stop its assault, and it came back at him once more without hesitation. Confidence surging into him, Lucas determined it would be their last clash. He held his weapon ready.
The beast lunged length-ways this time, attempting to attack him with all three of its mouths at once.
Lucas watched it come, waiting for the right moment.
It twisted in the air, contorting itself into a U-shape, surely hoping to wrap itself around him and tear him to shreds from multiple angles. Its teeth were razor sharp. Its tongues looked deadly. Droplets of ichor sprayed through the air in its wake. Every eye on its grotesque body was trained on him, filled with malice and hunger.
And Lucas smacked it in the fucking face before it could reach him.
It let out a screech as the stick folded it like a piece of paper and slammed it to the ground. It kept screeching as he raised his stick and brought it down once more with all the strength his body possessed. It only stopped screeching when he’d battered it a dozen more times, turning it into a pulp of black blood puddling among the mud and grass.
Then the strangest thing yet happened.
Its body lit up with wispy white vitality, and the vitality rose like a spectre roughly in the shape of the creature’s form. It rose like white smoke glowing with an inner light, and it headed straight for Lucas.
He could only watch dumbly as it drifted towards him, and when it reached close enough it seemed to twist on itself. There was an ache in his chest like he’d just opened a new sub-channel with his vitality, then the white vitality surged towards him like he was vacuuming it up.
Alarmed, he tried to step away, but it followed as if it was fixed in the world in relation to him. There was no escaping it as the vitality flowed into his channels, and when it was done, he felt larger, denser. Again, just like what happened when he opened one of his sub-channels.
A soft mew brought his attention back to the real world. He looked down.
Jamie was sitting on his haunches, blinking up at Lucas with feline bewilderment.
“I don’t know either, little buddy,” Lucas said with a tremor in his voice.