Of Mice and Metal
The Bone Champion
He learned that he was immortal the day the world ended. The land became blood and offal pulling the weak into its depths to drown in filth. The sky pulled screaming heroes into its expanse like inverted rain. Only the High Heroes of Yore lasted beyond a few moments. But that horrific slaughter, of unseen things ending so many lives, and of the fundamental laws of his world being upset, was the mercy. The fog came upon the land like the exhale of an impossible giant, wreathing him and others in multicolor mist. When it touched him, his world became ash, and he was abruptly gone.
When he woke, he was weightless. Something gripped iron fingers into his skull as his neck protested. His limbs swung freely as he lashed out seeking purchase. Light seared his eyes when they were opened in a panic. Through a wash of tears, he was only able to make out slick gray stone, so ancient that it was crumbling under its own mass before something tore into his body. He gasped, but where there should have been pain there was only a chilling cold that no mortal ice could duplicate. The feeling of wrongness was powerful, then a lightness, and a lack where there should have been weight. Liquid iron filled his mouth and he choked. Bright red fluid spewed from his mouth in a shocking glut. It was too much. But he could not breathe. His body spasmed and twisted. Confusion warred with mind-breaking panic. He could not draw breath. Please…please let me breathe!
His strength failed him. His head fell on his chest which was drenched with his blood. Pale bone, and purplish ropes of viscera burst around a pitted slab of an iron sword. Panic seized him and granted new strength. He twisted and jerked, impaled like a worm. His left arm was gone, sawed off where the huge blade cut into his body, nearly parting him in two. And then the pain came. It was like an abrupt scream in the night, worse than any he had ever felt, mind-shattering, his teeth cracked as he unconsciously clenched his jaw before his strength left him once more. Cold subsumed him, and then darkness took him. Of all the horrors he felt. Even when he saw his world burn and vanish and felt death take hold of him, there was no fear like the fear in that moment.
Tyl died.
[DEATH DEBUFF: Status Affected(-14 Stats/+1 Stat)/Level -1]
He woke to life the way a moan rose in cadence to a blood curling scream. His eyes shot open and was beset by crumbling gray stone, with ancient colorless slime for mortar crosshatching rough walls and floors worn smooth by millennia of hobnailed boots and sabatons. The ruins of various things that could have been furniture centuries past made piles against the walls or in the middle of the floor. The only light came from an extravagantly ancient lantern, rusted black iron, with glass that had long since shattered and a fat nib of a candle that looked as if it too was the dregs of melted wax. The lantern sat on the floor next to the lustrous blue-silver greaves of a silent and motionless knight. Candle wax dribbled out from the lantern’s cage and lapped against that too shiny armour. There were marks on the ankle end of the greaves that showed that the knight twisted away from the light as the candle wax dried in crusty waves upon it, the old above the new. Tyl remembered the great blade tearing open his body and so he dared not speak to the knight, even though its silver worked, azure felt scabbard, held a much smaller arming sword.
Shadows danced in the tower. Tyl’s eyes searched the space, as he noted though he could spy the edges where wall and floor met in a large circle, the ceiling itself lost to deep darkness. There were two openings in the walls as well, doorways as black as the shadow above and pregnant with the hostility of unopened eyes. Feeling the hard stone pressing against his back, made the young mouse jump. He did not recall trying to flee the darkness of the doors or ceiling. The abrupt motion inspired another and Tyl nearly screamed in terror when the motionless knight spoke.
“I’m sorry you are here, friend.”
Tyl clutched his bare chest and froze, multicolor eyes round, teeth clenched in the rectus of fear.
The knight did not move but his voice sounded tinny as it continued, uncaring of the fear within Tyl. “You have chosen the wrong place to not die in. But no matter, it is too late. You are trapped as I was trapped. Only pain and endless death awaits you. But not I…not…I…”
It was minutes before Tyl summoned the courage to speak, and that was only when the knight showed no intention of continuing his speech. “Why are you saying that? Where am I? What happened to my home…to the place I was before? How did I get here?”
Tyl took a step towards the knight, emboldened by the fact that even when speaking the knight did not move or even twitch.
The knight spoke up again, making the mouse jump back against the wall.
“It hurts so much. I thought myself immune to pain, to angst, to the agonies that no beast cursed as we are, can avoid. But Such is Greater Death. Middling death is torment, and lesser death, the mere whisper of hurt but the Greater Death that ends it all, that burns the very weight of one’s soul, it tests even the stalwart heart.”
“I don’t understand what you are saying.” Tyl said.
“You will.” Said the knight, in a voice full of regret and sorrow.
Sounds beyond the darkness of the doors on the stone walls, made the fur on Tyl’s back stand on end.
“It comes in a wave of shambling boots and clawing bones, clubs that crush and swords that cut.” The knight said. “But no matter. It is the Lesser.”
“How do I get out of here?” Asked Tyl desperately, the beds of his claws bled as he dug his paws into the stone wall behind him.
“A coward will die a billion deaths. An end without ending. But a hero will only die a thousand. I will give you the key once you’ve shown which one you are.”
“No!” Tyl screamed, losing any semblance of control. He remembered too closely the feel of that massive sword hacking into his body. He did not want to die again. “Please help me! Please!”
The knight went silent. The darkness without the room was not silent. It rattled and clamored with the sound of armour and weapons. Metal slapped against stone, bone against metal and ancient wood, and weapons against rotted cloth. A creature of bone and old black iron rambled into the flickering light of the lantern. It had a flat face with fleshless caverns where eyeballs of gelatin, fat, and jelly should have been. When that bone face encased by thick black iron looked at Tyl, ghostly blue-white fire appeared, and the mouse felt a burning in his chest. Fear choked him. His body froze as if it was stone. Many skeletons swarmed behind the large armoured undead in front of him, but he could not look away from it. The giant greatsword rose, twice as long as Tyl was tall, as wide as its owner was broad in its round pauldrons, and thicker than the mouse was deep in the chest. The sword fell and shattered Tyl’s body. Agony seared him. His body was cruelly ripped apart in a splash of bodily fluids, fecal waste, shards of bone, and chunks of ruddy flesh and auburn fur. His world split in two before that deep darkness took him once more.
[DEATH DEBUFF: Status Affected(-14 Stats/+1 Stat)/Level -2]
Tyl awoke with a scream. The lantern flickered and the light within it danced, making the shadows writhe. The mouse clutched at his muzzle and choked as his saliva became slime in his throat. Tyl’s scream echoed off the walls. The darkness beyond the doorways started the clamor once more. I died. I’m going to die again. Its…no…I can’t. Tyl fastened panicked eyes upon the armoured beast near the lantern. “Don’t just lay there! Help…me!”
The knight lay there silently, gleaming brilliantly under the fickle orange glow of the lantern light. This time the flat-faced skeletons in lesser armour flooded the room. Tyl held up a paw to ward off their weapons. A rust bitten iron spear tore through the hand, making Tyl cry-out, as the monster pushed the pole arm through breaking apart the phalanges and gouging the flesh with ancient splinters. The spear head missed his body after piercing his paw, instead chipping the stone wall at Tyl’s ear with a shriek. The mouse did not have a chance to celebrate his survival of the first blow. Old iron longswords, hand axes, short spears, cruel hooks, and sickles made to harvest wheat and barley, tore open his body and slew him. The death took longer this time. Even as he slipped from the glow of the lantern filtered by the bodies of long dead monsters pungent with dust-old rot, every part of his body vibrated with pain.
[DEATH DEBUFF: Status Affected(-14 Stats/+1 Stat)/Level -3]
The mouse was drooling when he came to this time. The echoes of the pain of death shuddered through him scrambling his mind. He was still drooling when the shambling bones of the long dead, came once more for him.
[DEATH DEBUFF: Status Affected(-14 Stats/+1 Stat)/Level -4]
With every death the pain grew until the center of his bones was molten with it, his skin crawled with agony, his mind was a soup of angst that spilled from his eyes, nose and mouth in tears, snot, and bile. He died two hundred times more before he had the presence of mind to crawl from the chamber, opposite the door where his executioners invaded.
[DEATH DEBUFF: Status Affected(-14 Stats/+1 Stat)/Level -204]
The fog of excruciating pain pushed him to crawl in the darkness beyond over three hundred more times before he returned to the first room to use the lantern.
[DEATH DEBUFF: Status Affected(-14 Stats/+1 Stat)/Level -510]
He escaped death for hours as he ran from the clamor of death, bone, and metal that chased him the way the passage of time chased mortal beasts. The depths of the place were a labyrinth, with deep dark clinging along with cobwebs to corners and old stone; and dank slicking walls, as languid pools of filth made Tyl slip and fall. Death and hurt eventually found him.
[DEATH DEBUFF: Status Affected(-14 Stats/+1 Stat)/Level -999]
Tyl gripped the mace in his paws tightly as he swung the weapon with relish at the nearest skeleton. The mace with its blunt spikes skipped over the monster’s throat guard and dented it, making the rust on it fly free along with chips of metal and a flash of orange sparks. Still, Tyl’s swing was true, and it shattered the skull, making the orbital bone and hollow where the right eye might have been into a dark chasm. The ghostly light in those hollows died instantly. More came to replace the dozens Tyl slew.
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[You Have Leveled Up!]
The cost for leveling decreased for each level lost. So, slaying even a low monster was enough to grant a few levels. However, each level lost made him far weaker than he was when he first woke in the tower. Tyl barely had the strength of a sickly babe before he made his first kill. In those early clashes he had to use their low intelligence and ungainly movements to make them strike one another. Still, no matter how careful he was the bone monsters would pull him down and tear him apart. It was a painful trial and error that felt like it took place over months and years. Yet, Tyl eventually became adept at slaying the skeletal warriors.
[DEATH DEBUFF: Status Affected(-14 Stats/+1 Stat)/Level -2000]
The mouse leveled up dozens, hundreds of times but the deaths more than matched his ascent. He no longer fell easily to the lower monsters. Now, the large skeleton warrior was always the cause of his recent demises. Tyl tried swords and cast them away almost immediately. Then it was axes and hammers, armour-piercing spikes and lances, mauls and pickaxes. They worked well enough. However, the mace with the blunt spikes, of the weapons that he could use without penalty, worked best. He died tens of thousands of times and it never got easy. The pain always hit as if he never knew agony before and the horror of the death would only abate when he leveled up. This cycle of death and revival changed only when he was able to defeat the large skeleton monster. Tyl broke the bones of every skeleton warrior he could find. He fled groups that were too large, gaining distance in halls, and adjoining rooms that were now more familiar than any space in the world he left behind. He also fled the skeletal champion and spent countless hours luring the lesser bone monsters away from it.
When Tyl felt that it was time to face it, he found himself in the same chamber that he started in. The mouse left the old inexhaustible lantern where it had been, having long memorized the passages of the stone structure even in lightless dark. Tyl approached in an even lope towards the monster. Retreating on the first clash usually ended the fight in three heartbeats even when he was in good form.
It was half again as tall as the mouse, clad in full black armour; sabatons to helmet, and with the reach of the blade, it could attack from a great distance with ease. Tyl was able to strike glancing blows at the sides of its knee guards before it turned to guard against attack at the weak point of the joint to the back of its knee. Even knowing that pommel strike was coming Tyl had to crouch low and roll away before back pedaling furiously. The iron pommel cracked against the stone and the mouse could have sworn that the ancient lantern jumped at the force. Almost before he could blink the tip of the blade cut the air right before his nose shaving off the ends of whiskers. Tyl did not leap as he wanted to over the relatively low swing, but he dropped to his chest and then rolled forward twice. He feigned left and then rolled right. The large skeletal warrior reacted to the first. His feint to attack the back of the right knee forced the monster to react again making it reverse the horizontal slash and spin to track the mouse. Tyl already backstepped and hopped upon the large blade before leaping and spinning to generate as much force as he could in the opening that he had. The opposing spins generated more force than Tyl could have done alone with a mace twice the weight and all the windup he needed. The mace smashed into open face of the helmet. Bone crunched sickeningly. Tyl felt his heart skip a beat. But he dared not celebrate.
At the cost of five deaths per successful attack on the bone champion’s face, the mouse completed that same maneuver fifty times. In the past he was able to score a hit on the skull with any attack two hundred times and was able to stagger the monster with attacks at the joints of its armoured knees, elbows or its skeletal hands over a thousand times. Tyl used the broken bones of the monster’s face to grind more damage into it, while stopping his spin, and pushing off the monster into a reverse spin that moved him away from the monster’s massive greatsword. The weapon came up with incredible force just as Tyl barely escaped its path. The flat of the weapon smashed into the skeletal champions face and cuirass with the piercing clang of metal striking metal. The monster stumbled away from Tyl, but the mouse pressed his advantage. Tyl saw that same counter to the mouse’s agility many times, and each time before it smashed the mouse so far in the air before, that even if the blow that launched him up had not shattered most of the bones in his body, the landing on the stone itself would have broken the rest and ended his life immediately. Learning that took more than a few deaths. Learning not to die by it, took hundreds more.
Tyl had five fighting heartbeats to hammer the monster’s knees with all he had before he had to retreat from a barrage of attacks that forced him to turn tail and run. This pulled the armoured skeleton from its mad flurry of attacks and made it chase him. Three heartbeats. That was his first conscious thought before the battle. The reminder cut through the exhilaration from his most successful bout with the monster as of yet. Tyl slowed and turned around a corner and ran upon the wall as stone shattered from the blow that went through the space and beyond where his body had been a split second before. He leapt back towards the monster, his bare paws slapping against the stone, urging his body forward with more speed. The horizontal slash moved the blade out to the bone champions left and the mouse’s right creating another opening, one that Tyl had never capitalized on before. Then the monster did something Tyl had never saw it do. It dropped its greatsword lifted his armoured vambraces and gauntlets high and then slammed them against the floor. It was so fast that the monster got the attack off before the mouse was able to get within range of it. Teeth clenched, eyes wide Tyl skidded on the floor losing layers of skins to the stone, before he felt the floor leap and his knees buckle at the force of the blow. The greatsword smashed into a distant wall what felt like an hour later. He could no longer hear it, only the vibrations made it to him. His world narrowed until the monster was the only thing that existed. He was too far gone for thought but his entire being knew that he was going to die and so he did something that he never did before. Despite his realization and despite the fact that he believed there was nothing to lose, he did not truly decide. His body moved on its own.
This was the time, when the plan fell apart or he went further than he had ever went before that he would flee until the monster caught up to him and tore him limb from limb, or he would freeze in fear of the agony of death and thus have that death visited upon him. Instead of freezing or fleeing he attacked. The skeletal warrior recovered before he could and was able to launch a haymaker. Tyl slammed his mace into reinforced knuckles, which bounced the monster’s arm back and did little to no damage. The bone champion’s left cross was also bounced back, but Tyl was able to use the recoil to smash it into the inside elbow of the monster’s armoured arm, making the metal ring. The right arm dropped for an instant and Tyl’s attention was drawn to a rising knee and a grasping left gauntlet that sought purchase on the back of his skull. Tyl smashed the gauntlet away and braced himself against the knee with the hilt of his mace. Metal clamored against metal launching the mouse in a somersault over his much stronger foe. His face felt numb as he landed on slick paws that slid out from underneath him as teeth clattered against stone and bounced away or into his throat, trailing ribbons of blood. Dizziness flared and faded in an instant as pure adrenaline filled him. That slipped saved Tyl. The skeletal champion’s back kick soared over his head.
Somehow Tyl was able to leap to his knees and smash his mace into the back of the monster’s planted leg. The mouse felt hope flare and then die as the bone warrior wobbled on one armoured leg but regained his balance. Then his courage failed him and Tyl turned and ran away from the monster. He ran directly for the monster’s sword which bisected the doorway between this chamber and the winding hall. In his panic he dropped his mace when he was a few paces from his objective and a few more moments of life, ridding himself of any unnecessary weight for more speed. Tyl could almost feel those gauntleted fingers clawing at his fur missing by a hairsbreadth, before the monster stepped on the head of his mace and fell, momentum throwing him forward with a loud crash. The darkness was banished in part for an instant as black iron screamed against old stone floor drawing a wash of bright orange sparks. Tyl turned in midair, hurdling the obstruction before him, before twisting at another sound, this one of a thunderous clang, which reverberated through the center of the massive greatsword and followed the spark of metal being shaved from the gorget. The head of the bone champion flew from its body slammed into his chest knocking the wind from him as he tumbled end over end.
It took long moments for his breath to come back in a shuddering gasp that filled his lungs with mold and wet and sweet air.
[You Have Leveled Up!]
[You Have Leveled Up!]
[You Have Leveled Up!]
[You Have Leveled Up!]
[You Have Leveled Up!]
[You Have Leveled Up!]
[You Have Leveled Up!]
[You Have Leveled Up!]
[You Have Leveled Up!]
[You Have Leveled Up!]
[You Have Leveled Up!]
[You Have Leveled Up!]
Tyl laid on that damp stone floor cradling the head for a long moment before he let out a loud wailing laugh that ranged in the halls of the place for minutes on end. Tears streamed from his face, and he choked in his gallows mirth still holding tight to the disembodied head. When the last peal of laughter faded into a soft chuckle, and as his stomach spasmed from the unfamiliar working of muscles involved in belly-deep mirth, Tyl closed his eyes tight. He listened to the silence for a while. When bone scrapped against stone close behind him Tyl only had time to open his eyes uselessly as a dagger punched into his forehead.
[DEATH DEBUFF: Status Affected(-14 Stats/+1 Stat)/Level -9999]
Tyallandyor Allbrandt Corianndel was furious. Throughout the agony of death, he clenched what remained of his teeth and dug his claws into his palms as if he was clenching the bludgeons that he would use to destroy the skeleton that slew him. The darkness of death snuffed out his fury and replaced it with icy fear but when he woke once more to life the rage returned. Tyl did not even spare the knight a look as he immediately slipped into the doorway opposite the one that would discharge the flood of the skeleton soldiers. Tyl pushed his fury down until it became cold and calculating and slowly picked off lone skeletons and small groups of the monsters. After dying tens of thousands of times and beset by deep shadow and lantern light, time moved differently for him. Still, it took an exceptionally long time for Tyl to dispose of every bone warrior that he could find, excluding the large greatsword-wielding brute. Since his hunger, thirst, and fatigue vanished with each level he gained, that too was not a reliable way to measure the time. Though at his best recollection, each skeleton he killed was usually after hunger large enough to encompass weeks if not months of careful stalking. Tyl only attempted to chew the bones once before their taste, which was worse than starving to death, nearly enough to slay him, reached his tongue.
The fight with the skeletal champion was vastly different than the last save for the final blow. He was barely able to damage the monstrosity for most of the fight. Using the same ploy as a before he was able to take the head of the huge monster. He laid down exactly as he did before and waited, body rigid, fur stiff with blood from wounds that healed when he received the levels from the champion. Focusing on the noises around him, Tyl was able to discern the soft scrape of bone in sabatons as it tried to sneak up on him once more. Tyl dodged the instant the sabatons stopped, the sound just behind his head and was rewarded with a red spark and chips of stone that pelted him when the heavy dagger missed and hit the floor. Tyl launched the head of the bone champion at the unseen skeleton, leapt to his feet and ran towards the hall with the greatsword lodged in the frame of its entryway. The skeleton was not far behind. The mouse considered that the bony head barely made it pause. On top of that, Tyl made sure that it was close enough to grasp at him, before he leapt over the massive blade of the greatsword. The armoured skeleton smashed into the weapon with metallic crash that stopped it dead and made its helm fly from its skull and across the room. Somehow it held onto the dagger. Tyl wanted to run to where the lantern was so that he could properly deal with the monster. Instead, he picked his mace up from the floor where it caused the fallen champion to slip and meet its demise, then turned and focused on the skeleton’s glowing phantasmagoric eyes.
The armoured skeleton was still stuck to the greatsword. The thick pitted blade lodged fast into its bards between the fauld and cuisses. The monster swiped at him with the dagger making the mouse dodge back half a dozen times before Tyl gritted his teeth and used his naked paw to catch the blade in his flesh and then use the clench to trick the monster into pushing forward and within range of his mace. Tyl smashed his foe’s skull to pieces with a cry of relish and pain. He then spat at the monster, sat down and gingerly pulled the dagger loose. Hissing the mouse waited for the relief to come.
[You Have Leveled Up!]
[You Have Leveled Up!]
Tyl kept the heavy bladed knife. His flesh was knit together, and the pain faded to a memory. He stood tall and then tried to pry the greatsword from its lodging in the stone mounting of the door. After failing for a hundred heartbeats, he stopped and stared at it for what could have been a moment or days. After that, the mouse numbly made his way to the first room with lantern and sat down across from the sprawled knight with its beautiful armour. He once tried to take that armour, but he could not even lift a gauntlet’s phalange for its absurd weight. The armour from the skeletons was only marginally better, but even the vambraces pulled at his arms trying to dislocated them from their weight alone. And worse the armour did not fit him. The shape was odd. The clasps would pinch him or tear clumps of fur from his body if Tyl persisted in trying to don it. The mouse sat there numb, trying not the think about the oppressive darkness. He ignored the thought that he would starve to death, come back to life in the place and repeat the cycle for all eternity. Tyl did not try to fathom that this place, the dank slime slick wall and fetid pools slicking stone floors, would be his world for all of time.
Tyl considered one thing and one thing only.
“I…have…won.”
The mouse voice was croak and a whisper both, the words nearly mangled by a throat that had long given up the utility of words. It was the tenth time he tried to speak his mind. It made him feel tired in a way that the endless battle against the skeletons did not. His words sounded strange, almost monstrous.
“Close enough.” A familiar voice said.