My breath comes out in frosty clouds as I step into the early morning air. Cold nipped at my nose, and the smell of distant chimneys spewing curling black smoke to the sky. I mentally ask the Shard to pull up the map. Six doors lay in the middle of the road between my house and the intersection of the first street of my, “supply route.”
The sides of the streets are crowded with cars, so I move inconspicuously as I approach the first door about fifteen yards from my front door — glancing left and right to ensure that no one is watching me.
“What level is it?”
“1.” Came the reply.
Why couldn’t I have picked this door first? I pull it open and step in, and step into the black void. I step into the entry hall of one of the houses in the other world. It’s almost sickenly familiar at this point. I draw my wand from the pocket of my jeans and look at my wrist.
“Destroy the Shrine.”
Something I know how to do. The Ratman must have heard my muttering because a great thumping came out from the floor above. I ready my wand and point it towards the staircase the thumping approached. For him, I’ll use my strongest spell.
“Dance for me,” I begin the incantation just as the noises begin to descend, “O’ daughters of the wind.”
I finish drawing the rune as the brown-furred Ratman steps off the stairs. A heavy gust of wind picks up and spins around me. The Ratman shields his eyes from the cloud of dust that it kicks up and spins around. Yet, other than bracing itself a little, it remains unfazed; stepping towards me through the whipping gale winds.
I hold up my arm to defend my head against the swung hatchet. It bites into my upper bicep, but the pain of the blow is more intense than the pain of the scant blood it draws from its blunted edges: my three layers of clothes are enough to stop it at that point. It chitters in an insulting tone in response as I grab hold of the creature’s wrist and roll my knuckles around my wand, and throw a haymaker into the Ratman’s jaw. It staggers, but I pull it forward with a yank on its wrist and punch it again. Its taut wrist goes slack as it drops the hatchet and its black, beady eyes roll into the back of its head. I release it and it falls to the ground. Perhaps I should have become a warrior.
My knuckles throb as I let go of my wand, draw the dagger and stab it down into the creature’s heart. It wears no armor, so the curvy blade sinks in easily. Black-red blood flows through the gaps between the floorboards and drips into the cellar. I wipe the bloody dagger off on the Ratman’s wiry fur and slide it back into its sheathe on my belt. I pull the single golden ring off its tail and look around. It takes me thirty minutes to locate the shrine. It was in a hidden room behind a dresser on the top floor. I salvage whatever I can, then destroy it and leave the house. 110 dollars wait for me on the road as the door vanishes. I pick up the two bills and go about my way before anyone sees me.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
Five other doors lay between that door and the first intersection of my, ‘supply route.’ Two level 1’s, one level 3, and two level 4’s. It took me eight hours to close those doors; mostly because level 4 had another talisman, and time spent loitering around waiting for the streets to empty. I killed two flying serpents and eight Ratmen. After killing the two serpents I realized something about them — why, ‘gust,’ worked so well on them. They were light. Despite their size, they couldn’t have weighed more than 30 or so pounds. That should have been obvious, I suppose. I didn’t recoil too much when it slammed into the shield the other day, and how else would something of that size fly?
My backpack was laden with jingling rings, and odd things that I found around the buildings, and my pockets were heavy with the nearly 1000 dollars I had stuffed within them. With the three stat points from the single level I gained, I invested two into magic, and one into intelligence. The quicker I can decipher the language from the other side, the sooner I could bring out the full potential of this kris, and any other enchanted items I might come across.
I ate a bit of the food I had brought along with me and went home briefly to fill up the water. My father had passed out, and my mother was watching the television on full blast, so she didn’t hear me come in. I slipped out just as quietly with a full jug of water, some more crackers, and some cans of soup. I planned on staying out until all of the doors along the route were closed. No matter how many days it took.
The door at the interception was right in the middle of the crossroads. It was large and wooden, with a heavy iron ring in the middle — like those one would expect at the entrance of a wooden gate. It was the first time I saw that wasn’t a house door. I wonder, briefly, what it meant. This area is more abandoned. It existed at the end of a street that bled into the dirt paths that would lead to the river bank on one side, and on the other, an empty, fallow field with a dilapidated, yellow farmhouse sitting in the middle beneath a towering oak tree.
I wait for a lull in the stream of cars entering and exiting the street before I hold up my wrist and whisper into the bracelet.
“What level is this?”
“Level 10.”
It’d be the toughest one I’ve done so far; but compared to the level difference between when I first started, it should be nothing. Confidentially, I pull open the large door and step in. I have gotten used to the rushing blackness at this point, so I merely wait for it to stop. I tumble out onto a wooden surface. The fog wall extends in the distance the furthest I’ve ever seen it extend. Ahead of me are rolling fields of grassy knolls, rising and falling, even well past the wall of fog. Behind me, however, was a different story.
As I first thought, I had stepped through a gate; though the one I had opened was nowhere as large as this. It stood dozens of feet up into the air, surrounded on either side by stone and clay walls that stretched just as high. Parapets lined the top, and arrow slits lined the middle. A large moat separated the grasslands from the heavy gate; water rushes out from underneath the walls in massive flows through massive, grated pipes, and ran around through erosion-carved portions of the earth until it vanished somewhere beyond the Fogwall.
“What’s the task this time around?” I ask the Shard.
“Destroy the temple.”