Hunger had a way of sharpening one’s mind, much in the same way that fear could.

  How fortunate was it, then, that River was not only starving, but also terrified?

  She’d been walking through this pitch black tunnel for almost ten minutes now, and exactly nothing had happened. It was certainly wearing on her nerves, though.

  Finally, after all of the walking, River spotted an orange light up ahead. A torch lit up a section of the stone passageway from its place on a sconce affixed to the wall.

  This was exactly the time that River expected she would fall straight into a pit of spikes or snakes or something, but fortunately for her, she managed to make it to the torch unscathed. It was only then that she heard the telling clack of a skeleton’s bony feet against stone.

  River cursed and readied her rocks. The sound came faster as the skeleton broke into a dead sprint. That was unfair, she thought. The undead should be slow and walk everywhere, they shouldn’t run like slavering freaks.

  Fortunately for River, the torch was bright enough that she saw him charging her well before he managed to reach her. He brandished a metal cudgel in one hand, his jawbone rattling against his skull with each footfall. A stone sailed past his head, but he paid no heed. The undead had no need for fear. River envied him for that, as another stone thrown by trembling hands missed its mark.

  The skeleton was in range. He drew back his weapon to strike and suddenly lurched backwards as River tackled him. She fell on top of him, drawing back her last stone and savagely crashing it against his skull.

  The skeleton made a desperate attempt to push her off as part of his face caved in. A weak attempt at swinging his weapon at the blonde-haired ball of rage and fear was easily deflected as she continued to pulverize his skull with a rock.

  Eventually, all that was left of the skull was powdered bone and scattered fragments. River stood up, huffing in exertion, arms sore. She dropped the rock and picked up the skeleton’s cudgel. Then she made a rude gesture at the pile of dead bones. River took a couple of steps towards the torch, then spun around and made another rude gesture, this time with both her hands.

  “Stupid damn skeletons,” she muttered to herself as she brushed a lock of blonde hair out of her face. River pulled the torch out of its resting place and held it in her left hand, the old cudgel in her right.

  She called it a cudgel, but she wasn’t really sure if that was the right name for the weapon. It just looked like a club with some metal stuff at the top. Maybe that’s what a cudgel was? She couldn’t exactly whip out her phone and google the difference between a club and a cudgel. Whatever, it didn’t matter.

  River was feeling a little better as she walked down the hallway. She had really kicked the crap out of that skeleton. Maybe it hadn’t been the most… graceful of victories, but hey, it worked, right? That was the important part, the part about surviving. Everything else was secondary.

  Up ahead, the pathway became a four-way intersection. Both the left and right paths were identical, but the one leading forward had a number of skulls lining the walkway on either side. They were good and dead skulls as far as River could tell, not the kind that likes to bite you until you die.

  Still, she felt extremely apprehensive at the idea of following the skull-marked path. It had a very ‘all ye who enter shall die’ kind of feel to it. Besides, River had played enough video games to recognize a boss room. Not that this was a video game, and not that she wasn’t taking it seriously. No, video games didn’t normally feature skeletons that bite your skin off while you slowly bleed to death. She took that very seriously. So instead, she turned down the left path.

  This corridor, though entirely linear, had a number of sharp turns leading into even more endless passageways. River had been expecting a skeleton to jump out at her from around one of these blind corners, so when one finally did, it received a cudgel directly to the face. The bones fell apart into a lifeless pile.

  River was fairly certain that she didn’t need to pulp the skeleton’s skull into dust, it just made her feel more confident that it was actually dead. She didn’t want anything to get back up and start creeping up behind her, even if the skeletons were fairly obvious to locate due to their loud footsteps in an otherwise silent room.

  The tunnel gave way to an open room, orange torchlight revealing a long wooden chest in the middle and not one, but two skeletons standing guard on either side of it. Worse yet, they were armed.

  One carried a sword, rusted and dull looking. The other held a flail, which he began swinging, the iron chain rattling as the metal ball it was affixed to spun in circles over the skeleton’s head. As soon as the light revealed them, the skeletons began moving, their empty eye sockets fixed on River.

  Two of them. River couldn’t handle two of them, she was certain. She could barely handle one without wetting herself. She wasn’t a warrior, she had never even been in a fight before all of this.

  She wanted to run, but where would she go? If the skeletons chased her, she would eventually hit a wall. River knew next to nothing about battle, but even she knew that fighting with your back against a wall was far from ideal. Besides, she couldn’t go back, she had to move forwards.

  River would have to fight, there was no other way.

  Skeletons. They were slow and River felt that she could easily outpace them even if they were sprinting at her. Additionally, their dry old bones were fairly easy to break, often taking only one solid strike to the head to stop. The problem was that they were strong and much heavier than they should be, likely the reason why their bones were so noisy against the stone floor.

  River threw the torch onto the ground and held her cudgel in two hands. It easily lit the entire room save for the long shadow cast by the treasure chest in the center. The plan was to fight them one on one, dodging backwards and fleeing if the second came in range.

  The first to reach her was the one holding the sword. He swung the weapon the moment he came in range and River brought up her cudgel to block. The blade thunked against the wood and lodged itself deep inside. River, more out of a fearful attempt at retreating rather than as a premeditated stratagem, wrenched the weapon out of the skeleton’s hands as she pulled her cudgel with her, leaving the skeleton unarmed.

  Retreating to keep the skeletons at range, River pulled the sword free from her cudgel, turned, and tossed it down the passageway, sending it clattering into the darkness. Her current weapon was far preferable for fighting skeletons than a sword, which would otherwise just get in the way.

  The unarmed skeleton was a little faster without his weapon. He lunged forward and River missed with her first attack. The monster seized her left wrist and drew back his skull, opening his skeletal mouth wide. River shrieked and smashed her cudgel straight through his face, sending bone shrapnel flying in all directions.

  She didn’t have any time to recover, the second skeleton was already in range to attack. It swung, the metal ball hurling towards her. River held up her cudgel, intercepting the chain and causing it to wrap around her weapon. She let go and the skeleton’s mouth popped open in surprise as the blonde girl launched herself forward, shoulder checking the skeleton and sending him toppling over.

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

  Lacing her fingers through the orbit of the monster’s eye sockets, River wrenched the skull off the thing’s body, causing its bones to fall to the ground lifelessly. She held up the skull and began smashing it against the stone floor. When it was finally dead and both bodies were still, she crawled across the floor and sat with her back against the treasure chest, breathing heavily. Bone fragments and the rough stone had scuffed and scratched her hands with trivial cuts causing drops of blood to drip from her fingers.

  When she managed to catch her breath and calm her slamming heart, River stood up and looked down at the chest she had been sitting against. It looked like your standard treasure chest, save for the fact that it was extremely long. This thing was as long as River was tall, making it look disconcertingly like a cross between a treasure chest and a sarcophagus.

  River had already decided she would open the chest. Although she was wary of it, she couldn’t help but feel a little hope and more than a little curiosity at what might be inside. That said, if there was a skeleton waiting inside to bite her face off, she was going to be very upset.

  The chest creaked open and River held her torch up to reveal the contents. The shining metal of a gleaming sword glinted with orange torchlight. It was massive, easily as tall as River and with swirling embellishments carved into the metal. Carvings of swirling vines and leaves ran along the flat of the blade. A crossguard featured similar filigree as was carved into the blade itself and the handle was long, meant to be held in two hands.

  It was a beautiful weapon, but it was just so comically huge. River thought it looked like the absurd kind of sword that an anime protagonist might use and there was no way she could so much as lift something this ridiculously large, let alone swing it.

  She hadn’t seen it at first, given that her attention had initially been drawn to the blade, but River also saw that there was a simple white card in the treasure chest as well. It had writing on it, written by hand in black ink with elegant penmanship:

  Lost Legacy

  That must have been the name of the sword. Wasn’t it strange that it was written in English? River found it strange, in any event. She flipped the card over and found that more was written on the back.

  One of the five unbreaking artifact weapons that may be found within the first floor of the Hollow Delve. The ancient enchantments carved into its metal allow it to become near weightless in the hands of its wielder, yet still exert the full extent of its weight on everything else.

  River blinked at the card and stared greedily down at the sword, then slowly reached down to grip its handle. Turquoise-green light flashed along the carvings set into the blade and crossguard, glowing faintly with magic. Easily, she lifted the massive sword out of the treasure chest with one hand.

  The white card had over-exaggerated the effects a little, River realized. The sword most definitely had weight. Infact, it was still kind of heavy, though she could easily hold it with one hand. She could even swing it with one hand with some difficulty, but it was much easier with two and felt less unwieldy that way.

  She experimentally swung the sword left and right. The air whooshed with the movement, quite loudly if she swung it in one quick strike. It should have been impossible for her to hold, and it doubtlessly looked ridiculous in her hands.

  River let the tip of the sword rest against the stone floor and ran a finger along the softly glowing blue-green lines carved into the metal of the blade. Enchantments. Magic. She had suspected it before, but now she knew. This really was a fantasy world, a place with magic and monsters.

  The strangeness and the awe of it struck her, leaving River wondering if this really wasn’t just some vivid dream or a delusion borne from a lapse in sanity. Magic. She would have refused to believe it if she hadn’t felt the very weight of it in her own hands.

  It was a subtle thing, but a tiny spark of excitement flickered to life in River’s heart, a single light to part the lingering fear that shadowed her thoughts and rattled her hands.

  She shook her head. This wasn’t the time to think about that. River needed to find a way to escape… what was it that the note had called this place? The Hollow Delve.

  First she needed to escape this skeleton pit, then she needed to find food and water, and only then could she try and figure out what the hell was going on. To that end, there was no point in sitting around and wasting time.

  River started walking back the way she came. There was nothing left for her in the chest room, so she would have to backtrack and take one of the other paths at the intersection. Passing by the skull-adorned corridor, she went down the only other path that she hadn’t explored yet.

  Flickering orange light from the torch in River’s left hand waved away the darkness and in her right she kept the massive sword propped up against her shoulder. Two more skeletons jumped out at her, one holding a mace and the other a sword, but River dispatched them both relatively easily with the massive sword. Even if they successfully blocked one of her swings, the bones of their arms would shatter on impact. That, paired with Lost Legacy’s considerable reach, meant that River could dispatch them from a relatively safe distance.

  A big step up from rocks, River thought.

  She found another treasure room. Unlike the last one, there was only one skeleton present in this room. He held a metal spear and stood with the impeccable posture of a well-disciplined soldier, as opposed to the more slouched stature of the other skeletons.

  This one was tricky. Unlike the dumb brutes that she had faced before, this one watched River carefully, testing her defenses with quick jabs and dodging backwards at her counterattack. He evidently came to the conclusion that he wouldn’t be able to break through, so he hefted his spear and threw it at her.

  River yelped at the unexpected attack and tried to dodge out of the way. Rather than lance through her heart, which had been the skeleton’s target, the spear tore a deep gouge into her left shoulder. The skeleton tried to capitalize on the distraction, charging in hands raised, but River cut it in half with one wide sweep. Hefting the sword, she crushed its skull into the ground.

  The cut in her shoulder seeped blood. It hurt, but River had felt much, much worse pain than this. This was nothing.

  The blood still made her uncomfortable, though. She cut the cloth from her pants at the knee and used it to tie a basic bandage around her shoulder. It would do, for now.

  Finally, she went to the treasure chest at the center of the room, this one much smaller than the one that had held Lost Legacy. Inside was a pair of rather unremarkable-looking boots and a familiar white card to go along with them.

  Fleetfoot Boots

  A pair of magical boots that can quicken their wearer’s step and allow for limited wall-running.

  Loot really had a way of taking the edge off of the everpresent horror of potentially being eaten by the undead, River thought to herself as she slipped on the new boots. They were kind of ugly, not that she minded, but heck if they weren’t comfortable. She felt like she could run ten miles in these boots and not feel a thing.

  River tried running a circuit around the room with the boots and certainly felt faster, but the murky darkness of this frightening catacomb was a little too unnerving to really put these boots through their paces.

  The wallrunning, however, was interesting. She wondered if she could wallrun her way up to the surface from the bottom of the well. Considering this treasure room was another dead end, it was either that or face the ominous skull-marked path.

  So, she made her way back to the foot of the well, sunlight still streaming down from up above. With a running start, she sprinted up the side of the vertical shaft, made it roughly a quarter of the way up, then promptly plummeted back down as the boots ceased working. Her head struck the stone ground and she blacked out.

  River came to an hour later with a splitting headache and her whole body feeling battered and bruised from the fall. Well, she wasn’t going to try that again, she thought as she rubbed at the back of her head. Apparently limited wall-running really did mean limited.

  She even had the idea to cut handholds in the stone using Lost Legacy, but it quickly became apparent that it wouldn’t work. She could cut grooves in the stone with some difficulty, but the problems arose when she tried to balance on one foothold while cutting another. The sword was too long, the position too awkward, and if she slipped and fell, particularly at the higher points in the ascent, she would break her legs in the fall.

  Her current equipment wasn’t enough to escape this dungeon. River needed something better suited to climbing such a sheer wall, and having already explored the rest of the area, that meant she only had one option left.

  River nervously stepped up to the path lined with skulls. Her shoulder burned, her entire body ached, and the hunger pains were wearing on her. She was exhausted, terrified and traumatized, but she was as ready as she would ever be.

  Reluctantly, she stepped past the skulls and started down the path towards whatever lingered in this dark recess of the Hollow Delve.