The end of the world was a peaceful place. Calm gray rocks lounged next to pools of clear water that reflected the silvery halo of stormless sky. Towering walls hemmed in a crowd of corpses, throwing shade on ash-filled sarcophagi gently resting along with crumbling tombstones. The owners hadn’t quite gotten the memo that it was past their final bedtime, but alas, a corpse was a corpse and belonged buried even if the owner put in a post-mortem protest.
Then Elia broke that silence. Quietly, slowly, with as little sound as she could make with her rusted platemail, she snuck around a bend and climbed a pile of stone coffins to get a better eye on her goal. A building with a round dome, possibly a temple, rose so tantalizingly close beyond the maze she could make out details of the facade and a stone bird sitting atop its roof that seemed much larger from up close. The temple meant food, shelter, and safety. It was a goal and the maze was fighting her for every inch made towards it.
Currently, Elia was experimenting with a new, untried method of getting just that little bit closer. Namely being quiet, taking it slow and acting all stealthy-like.
Two militiamen slowly plodded towards her. She hid in a coffin thrown into a nearby growth of vines and brambles, eyes cracked open just the slightest bit. She didn’t need to see them; they were hard to miss with their pauldrons rasping against tattered mail and their shambling gait. When they had nearly passed her, two clouded eyes fell upon hers like lifeless fleshy marbles.
“Well shit.”
She shot up, fumbled her footing, and took two staggering steps before a thorny vine caught on her armor and she fell to the floor in a mess of plate and mail.
“Mercy for a fellow undead?”
The undead answered by bludgeoning her head a dozen times. Thanks to her helmet, only the thirteenth hit finally turned her insides into porridge.
You have died.
You have lost: Soul x325
You have lost. Bone shard [Common] x2
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The end of the world was a mostly peaceful place. Cold mud clung to soggy boots, slippery stones betrayed the steps of the mostly innocent, and at every opportunity a gravestone seemed to pop up out of nowhere for Elia to stub her toe on. There were so, so many gravestones, all a variety of shapes but hewn from the same gray rock that everything here seemed to be carved of.
“You’d think someone who bothers making an endless maze would have a sense of taste, of variety. I mean, I don’t blame you two for your choice of employer, y’know. Life’s tough when the economy’s down in the gutters. I mean, look at me, I don’t even have a job and I look two hundred. I didn’t even get a pension!"
Elia turned to look at the two corpses of the undead militiamen beneath her. Two on one wasn’t fair, but neither was dying, reviving and tracking your murderer for half a mile only to filet him and his buddy from behind.
She poked the first one, whose face gave her the impression of a pickle. “Hey, you guys listening?”
You have regained: Soul x325
You have regained. Bone shard [Common] x2
You have gained: Soul x158
“Guess not.”
Militiamen. Less than a soldier, more than the common undead that were only wrapped in the bandages or simple rags they had been buried with.
“Wonder if these guys even are undead,” she mumbled under her breath as she finished looting the corpses.
You have gained: Bone shard [Common] x2
“One shard a pop? Jeez louise, must be my lucky loop.”
She tugged on her broken shortsword that was embedded into the second guy’s back. It came loose with as much practiced effort as it had entered with. As an undead, Elia didn’t have much in the department of functioning muscles, but she made do. Everyone else being undead leveled the playing field somewhat. It didn’t matter to her much that everyone was a head taller than her, she had gotten over that complex years ago. As far as she was concerned, any obstacle could be overcome given practice, determination and good ol’ fashioned awesomeness. Like everything in this gray-on-gray world.
She took one step forward and a crossbow bolt embedded itself into the side of her neck.
“Blurg…”
You have died.
You have lost: Soul x483
You have lost: Bone shard [Common] x4
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The end of the world could go screw itself sideways, with its stacked old walls, brown plants determinedly clinging to craggy peaks and wind blowing up her face. The air had no business being this crisp, especially not for someone who ostensibly shouldn’t be able to feel it, for lack of a functioning nervous system. Her body protested, gaslighting itself into believing everything was alright while smelling like a mixture of old shoe and expired milk.
Presently, her impromptu climb was pushing it to the brink of strike. One hand reached for a loose rock and discarded it to the side, silencing the groaning undead swordsmen beneath Elia. Her left foot finally found a misaligned brick and with a single push, she was out of breath, but up the wall.
“I am never… climbing… in full armor… again.”
With shaking knees, she stood upright and beheld the distant temple. It didn’t feel far away anymore now that she had the right perspective. Cheating the labyrinth by staying up here was not a workable plan and she counted the seconds as she planned her way ahead through the rest of it.
Ten seconds left. She made for her descent, blinked twice and a stone eagle the size of a cement mixer tore her off the wall, launching her a few hundred feet through the air like a silvery frisbee.
“This isn’t fair! I demand a redoooo…”
You have died.
You have lost…
Elia woke up and not for the first time in recent memory, decided to change her approach yet again.
“If playing smart gets me killed, maybe the opposite might not?”
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The answer was a clear and decisive “No”.
For the gazillionth time, the gentle silence of a world devoid of all things nice was cut in two by Elia vigorously screaming and running across a treacherous cobblestone pathway. Her metal armor both slowed her escape and made an unnecessary, but very knightly, ruckus. Seven or eight hooded figures chased in a disorderly pursuit. Their fashion sense was so last millennia, their dull purple and blue rags barely even qualified to keep their decency.
Their chase game however was on point. This was not a good thing.
She bounded over a small puddle, rousing another figure from an alcove it had been sitting in. It brandished its sword, like all the others, and ran after the dead girl running.
“STOP FOLLOWING ME!” she yelled to the sky.
“GURGLE–BURGLE!” the figures gurgled.
Most undead looked human, though they weren’t truly alive. She’d seen them up close often enough during her short scuffles and exchanges of polite stabbings. They looked less like zombies, and more like old, shriveled up husks of man. Walking prunes. LARP–ing geriatric senior citizens.
The horde was not exactly slow. No matter how many sharp turns she took, Elia already knew how this run was going to end. They were relentless and would not stop until she was dead. But she was so, so close.
An overgrown passage hidden behind dead vines flickered by her eyes, and she skidded to a halt before doubling back and dashing into the alley she hoped wasn’t a dead end. Her bare feet sunk into muddy water quickly reaching up to knee height. A figure rose from the waters, desiccated skin and bones not showing an inch of bloat.
She rammed her sword into its gut, twisted her ankle and promptly fell onto the already dying foe. She clattered to the ground in a tumble, coughed up a mouthful of water and pulled her sword from the undead’s guts.
You have gained: Soul x63
The notification hung in the air like smoky vapor, but it wasn’t important. A perfectly round mote of light barely larger than a firefly rose from the lifeless corpse, settling on its chest. Elia snatched it quicker than she had thought possible and wrenched herself onto her feet just as the horde came pouring around the corner.
You have gained: Bone shard [Common] x1
“YES!” The shard went into her pouch. “Ohoho, you’re all royally shafted now!”
You have fused: Bone shard [Common] x12 into Bones of Boons [Common] x1
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From the same pouch along her belt, she pulled a small many sided gray die and kissed it. “Please be a fireball. Please be superstrength. Please be infinite gummy bears. Please don’t be shit.”
She threw the dice and the world ground to a halt.
You have used: Bones of Boons [Common]
All light seemed to be sucked in towards her until she could barely see further than her arms. This part always made her heart race. Gambling did that, especially with the outlook of winning a magical boon, or not being carved up into fricassee. Elia was a fervent believer in the cruelty of absolute power, but the endless experience of the same rotten graveyard again and again made her pray for an ounce for herself anyways.
The die entered her vision and her dead heart spiked. Elia watched it tumbled over a nearby sarcophagus, taking in its million-million sides and wondering for the thousandth time how she could see each and every one of them without the die being a circle. Magic made magic happen, she guessed, as common gray symbols made way for uncommon greens and the rarest blues, all differentiated by entire orders of magnitude in number. It fell, only to bounce off one of her pursuers boots and roll across the uneven cobblestone floor, coming to a stop in a clear puddle right in front of her eyes.
A million pictures flashed before her eyes. Giants, dogs, swords, frying pans, fishing hooks, pebbles, and fractal flowers. Her gaze was pulled towards a change in color as the die slowly teetered – and landed on a green symbol.
You have gained a divine boon: Psychometry [Uncommon]
Now there was a new word. Psychometry. But what did it do?
[Spirit] Psychometry [Uncommon] [Empty Socket]
Through a touch, a thought, a flight of anger or tear of grief, an imprint of the soul is made upon even unliving objects. Read the traces of an object’s soul and reveal a history long passed.
Elia stared at the die, then at the familiar popup made of translucent smoke, then at the die again with a unique and renewed sense of disdain as nothing changed. No fireball materialized in her hand, no skill burnt itself onto her mind nor did the world look sharper or her steps feel lighter. The small picture on the die – two circles joined by a pitiable string – seemed like it was mocking her specifically. The frozen moment passed and as time sped up, Elia only had one thing to say.
“FUUUC–!”
She missed the next turn in the road, slipping on a particularly algae–infested puddle, and slammed face–first into a broken stone statue some deranged architect had orchestrated to be put right in the way of her fall. The impact resounded through her skull with a sickening crunch and a gong.
Bowl of Respite
A proper death denied, the water within these bowls gives comfort and respite to those weary souls cursed with undeath.
“I thigg my nobes brogen again. Ow.” Slowly, she got back up, the heaviness of defeat, a concussion and fun facts about ecclesiastical architecture weighing her down. It was a bad time to be out of breath, out of clever ideas and out of options besides how and where to die. The chase was well and truly over, there was no way she was making it to the next checkpoint even if she knew where it was.
Ignoring the sharp pain, with a practiced motion the nose cracked roughly back into place. Elia snorted a bloody glob onto the floor and turned to face her pursuers. “Alright chucklefugs, who wants a facial piercing or three?”
Steady with her back against the statue and blood running down her face, she would have struck an imposing figure brandishing a sword of her own and ready to die in a last stand for the ages. But it was a very short sword. A rusted thing. A dagger, the blade snapped at the halfway point.
Nevertheless, with the right motivation, everything became a deadly tool in her hands.
The undead horde tore around the corner in a tumbling mess of moans and groans. Through a combination of predictable movements and lack of object permanence, the first one impaled itself on her blade.
You have gained: Soul x54
“Cha–ching, one customer served. All skill, all me.” A strike deflected off her chest plate. “Next!”
The second one nearly batted the sword from her shaking hands, her short arms just about as weak as the desiccated undead’s, making the ensuing duel all the more pitiful to behold, like two toddlers wrestling over a stick.
“Can’t touch this!” She ducked.
“You suck!” She nearly failed to bob.
“Your balls have fleas and your mother’s a horse!” She weaved her head to the side and the sword bit into her neck instead. The undead never heard of proper sword care (apply seed oil once a month, or once every week when in heavy use), else she might have lost her head.
Instead, she eked out a win against the second undead before the third one threw itself at her face. She failed to disembowel it as it cracked her head against the wall. Then came a fourth, a fifth and the rest of the horde all piling onto her in a press of limbs and bad breath.
Swords sunk into cracks between her armor. A spear caught her in the neck and a feathered bolt to her armpit made her convulse over. She’d had worse, but it still hurt. No matter how many times it happened, Elia never could completely ignore the pain of dying.
“I’ll… be… back,” she gurgled and with a defiant one-finger salute drowned in the raving mass of bodies, the white smoke mocking her with a much-needed notification.
You have died.
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The matte blue sky filled with nothing, nothing and nothing again greeted Elia as she blinked back awake. It was a vista she was used to seeing; the most common position for coming back from the dead was lying on her back, next to a large stone bowl. It was a checkpoint, a place where she always returned after death. Every checkpoint was like it, carved of an old rock, weathered to the point of having lost all ornamentation and filled with crystal clear water that soothed the body and soul.
You have lost: Soul x1507
You have lost. Bone shard [Common] x0
Even when she was just trying to settle her thoughts, the damnable smoke wouldn’t leave her unnotified. Not even closing her eyes gave her an escape, though there the background at least provided a clean contrast.
Time until lost items and souls dissipate: 15 min
She breathed in once, heavily, then reached into her pocket and pulled out a squat green toad, her only friend in this world.
“Alright Quibbles, which route do we try next?”
“Ribbit.”
“Yeah, keeping right is a bust. God has conspired against us; made a maze that leads us in circles when we only choose right. Totally unfair, I know. But it’s what we’re working with here. God must die.”
“Croak.”
“Oh, I agree, we’re not going the tower route. I’ve had enough of giant spiders for a few hundred more runs.”
“Ribbit?”
“Go back? Quibbles, are you insane? We’d have to go through the mulcher, past the pricklefiend of infinite prickling and through the bridge of doom all over again. The doom is in the name! Would you want to return to a place called the lake of drowning, the road of roadkill or the sepulcher of dentists?”
“Ribbit…”
Elia stared into the dark, wiggly pupils of her amphibian friend. “I’m pretty sure that last one was my own ribbit. I’m not going insane from talking to a toad about my next choice of death again, am I?”
Quibbles croaked. What a good conversationalist.
“No. You’re right. I did hit my head pretty hard.” She patted Quibbles and stuffed him back in his moist bag of leaves before returning to stare at the peaceful sky. It wouldn’t last forever.
Time until lost items and souls dissipate: 11 min
With an idle breath, she materialized a window of white-on-gray smoke. Whatever a psychometry was, it didn’t help her out mid combat. All it did was tell her a fun fact about some random architecture the moment it obliterated her nose. The memory of how she did it was slightly hazy, but as she held out her trusty sword, a focus of will reformed smoke that normally told her so little into a novel shape.
Broken shortsword
The broken remnants of a once trusty weapon. Only a fool or the insane would consider using this.
“Huh.” A description for objects. That was new. Intrigued and only mildly insulted, Elia rummaged further through her pockets.
Rubbish
A useless collection of pebbles, bark, and fleece.
Hey, now it was just being judgmental. The fleece had use because it was soft, the bark too because she could imagine she was eating jerky while chewing it and the pebble had sentimental value. No pictures accompanied them this time. It seemed swords just had good memories.
Pebble
A pebble, shapely and small.
…sadly, the pebble's value truly was purely sentimental. No hidden power of friendship here. Oh well, Elia had a whole slew of other bits and bobs to try out and her mood was lightening as she realized the weight of her newly acquired boon. Information was options, information was power.
Blue brilliant beetle
A beetle with a shell of brilliant blue hue. Slightly increases magic resistance for a short period when consumed. These insects are commonly found in the Viln or upon the graves of mages, consuming the plants that grow nearby.
“Well, well, well.” Her eyes bounced between the beetle in hand and the oddly educative vapor. “This boon is good. Beyond good. This is… Wumbo.”
To top it all off, there was an emptiness hidden inside her chest where the boon resided. A small receptacle, a female USB-port in non-fantastical terms. And she had just the thing she was itching to stick in there. She reached for a weird little ball, deeply nested inside a pocket, no larger than a marble. It looked like a pearl, and she would most certainly have thrown it away long ago if she wasn’t certain that the milky white substance surrounding tendrils of black smoke was moving.
“Please be good, please be good, please be good!”
Essence of Ego
An essence of Ego caught within a glossy shell of a pearl-like substance. Swallow to imbue a boon with essence.
Her face was threatening to tear in half from the manic smile stretching from cheek to cheek. The information on the pearl – the essence – was a neat bonus, and she had used dozens of them in the past to upgrade boons now lost. But this boon? This loot encyclopedia? [Psychometry] was not a word, but it could be her ticket out. Maybe.
A long pink tongue zipped up and with one smack, the pearl was gone.
“NOOO! QUIBBLES, YOU TRAITOR!” Elia snatched the toad that had snuck out of his little pocket. His happy chewing accelerated, like a dog that knew the food wasn’t really meant for him. “Give it back, give it back, give it back! This is the first magic Item beside the dice in forever, I am not letting you sabotage our efforts just because your little gremlin ass can’t resist the allure of shinies!”
Elia stared at the toad, applying gentle physical pressure and, once that failed, a lot less gentle pressure.
“Give. It. BACK!”
She was holding him like a hamburger and had barely moments to register the telltale signs of bucking, convulsing, and looking cross-eyed before the ball was regurgitated at blistering speeds, shooting out of its mouth and – still slippery with ick – lodged itself in the back of her throat.
Elia swallowed the ball. It tasted faintly like heartburn.
“Oh no.”
Then, it tasted like someone encased her heart in natrium and dropped it into a generously chlorinated swimming pool. Like boiling alive, except everywhere and all at once.
Agony was another word for it, but the flash that burned through nerves up her arms disappeared as quickly as it had come. Elia was on her side, heaving and hacking, but with the presence of mind to take actual breaths in between.
It went by, like all pain did and Elia didn’t have the time to pry the amphibious traitor out from the bag he had already crawled back into. Something changed with her only boon, her magic, and she summoned up the smoke to tell her what was new in town.
[Spirit] Psychometry [Uncommon] [Essence of Ego]
Through a touch, a thought, a flight of anger or tear of grief, an imprint of the soul is made upon even unliving objects. Read the traces of an object’s soul or your own and reveal a history long passed.
“Huh. So it can affect myself now?” She coughed up a lungful of nothing, the blistering of nerves fading like ash in the wind. “How does that even work?”
It was a stupid question, because seconds later, she was already touching herself. Magically.
It didn’t feel like a burning hellfire this time. It didn’t make the world go purple and sideways. It didn’t give her a notification like the games she used to play or make her die and restart for having the audacity to try something new.
Nothing happened. Nothing but a tired yawn that did not belong to her, echoing as it rang inside her head.
Mum? Five more minutes, the sun isn’t even… out… oh gods, where am I?
“Ummm…” Elia ummm-ed.
UMMM the ethereal voice in her head echoed, moderately more distressed.
“Oh great.” Elia sighed. “My new superpower is a multiple personality disorder.”