Beware the dagger…
In shadows deep, where eldritch terrors dwell,
A dagger lies, its power all-consuming,
Whispers echo, from umbral realms of hell,
Of secrets cursed, and madness never-ending.
The blade it gleams, with metal black as night,
A magic old, that eats the mind and will,
Of power lost, that turns day to blight,
And drags the wielder to a cursed kill.
Its origin lost, in ancient, darkened seas,
The dagger lies, a thing of ill portend,
In tales of old, it claims its victories,
And those who seek it, soon shall meet their end.
Beware the dagger…
Samuel closed the old leather journal with a groan and tucked it back into his belt pouch. He looked at the dark blade sitting on the ground in front of him.
The Echoes of Umbra.
“Of course, you’re goddamned cursed,” Samuel said to it. “Why wouldn’t you be?”
He checked his Player Scroll again, scanning once more for any indication the dagger had done something nefarious to him. As far as he could tell, he was in the clear.
Samuel had woken up half an hour earlier and spent that time constantly checking his stats, summoning and dismissing his scroll every couple of minutes. His Body Meter had reached [35/60] during the night and remained the same since he woke up. His Mind Meter, however, had added two points since he started checking bringing it to a total of [63/80].
He also received a new temporary negative trait that berated him for choosing an uncomfortable place to sleep. Samuel was frustrated with how difficult survival had been so far in this unfamiliar world. He hoped that once he could sleep in an actual bed, a positive temporary trait would appear—if such a thing even existed in this masochistic world.
A deep rumble resounded from his belly, reminding him once again that he hadn’t eaten anything the day before. Samuel pulled himself up and out of the deer bed and stretched, letting a thin patch of morning sun breaking through the trees warm his face.
He sheathed the cursed dagger and set out into the forest, a slight limp from his sprained ankle. After some minutes, he found the trickle of a small stream, a tiny rivulet in the otherwise dry forest floor. Samuel knelt and cupped his hands in the water, taking small sips. It was refreshing, and he drank his fill before standing and following the stream.
After some time, other small streams joined up, forming a small creek.
He came upon a shallow widening of the water and smiled, watching the shadows of a few small fish swimming lazily underneath. He carved a pronged fishing spear using Echoes of Umbra. The dagger made quick work of the wood, forcing Samuel to be extra cautious with the sharp blade lest he accidentally cut himself.
Filled with summer memories with his brother Lucas and their father—when the man had been sober—Samuel removed his shoes, rolled up his pants, and stepped into the creek bed, careful not to disturb the water more than necessary and waited. Slowly, cautiously, the fish returned to the area, swimming lazily around Samuel’s bare toes. He stabbed the spear into the water and missed, causing the fish to dart away. Minutes passed, testing Samuel’s patience and hunger. When the fish finally returned, he carefully aimed and shoved the spear into the water, striking a fish and pinning it to the ground under the water.
“Hah!” Samuel yelled, triumphant.
The fish was about six inches in length with a belly lined with a kaleidoscope of saturated color—somewhat like a rainbow trout but brighter. He examined the fish carefully before he decided to commit to eating them. He would have to take risks if he was going to survive.
He caught several more of them before he had thinned the creek out no fish remained. He built a small pile of dry wood and attempted to ignite it with his thumb. It was a frustrating process and felt like trying to learn how to use a limb he hadn’t known existed. The magical muscles were awkward and difficult to manipulate. Eventually his frustration grew, and with it the heat came easier. A few sparks from his thumb ignited the pile and soon he had it built up into a warm flame.
The fish were barely big enough to gut and Echoes of Umbra was a bit too large to make the process easy, but Samuel cleaned them all out and threaded a stick through their gills. He roasted them over the fire, his mouth watering as oils from the fish dripped into the fire and sizzled with a pleasant aroma.
Samuel pulled the first fish from the fire and let the crisp skin cool before he tried to take a bite. The flesh melted into his mouth, causing him to let out an audible groan of pleasure. He ate the rest of the fish in short order and leaned against a nearby tree, hands resting contentedly on his belly.
His breathing grew steady, and he fell into a meditative malaise, letting the tension he had built up in his body ease and take a break.
After a time, he ruminated on the frustrations of trying to get a small fire lit. If the extent of his accidentally stolen magic was making his thumb a human lighter, he would be sorely disappointed. He experimented with the magic for hours, straining his mind and body to the limit. Slowly, the sparks grew easier and more intuitive to summon, and eventually, he got a small flame to burst out from his hand.
The moment the ball of fire left his hand, Samuel felt his arm go cold and slightly numb as if it had used his internal body heat as fuel. He checked it against his Player Scroll, and after a few moments of recovery and warming up his arm in front of his small fire, he conjured another small flare of fire. Unlike how Samuel expected a mana or magic bar to work, using the fire ate away at both his Body and Mind Meter, the majority of the use showing up in the Mind. After more frustrations and letting fly the occasional curse, he discovered he could summon heat almost anywhere on his body—the etching being the easiest place to let it out. The further from the etching the heat was summoned, the more difficult it became. A splitting headache formed at the back of Samuel’s skull and he was forced to stop.
He marveled at the flexibility of the spell. It wasn’t just a simple fireball he could activate and throw once or twice a day, but a multifaceted tool he could manipulate to suit him. Checking his scroll revealed that the experimenting had raised his Fire Spell to level 4. It seemed to work like a muscle, and the more Samuel used it, the stronger it became.
Already the heat of the midday sun burned above, some of the harsher rays uncomfortably hot on Samuel’s exposed chest. He shifted himself into the shade and re-examined his position in the world.
He felt like a contestant on a survival game show—and after some thought, decided that wasn’t far from the truth of it all. Was Nathan watching him, then, on a video feed? In case he was, Samuel flipped off the open air.
“This one’s for you, Nathan.”
Two options came to the forefront of Samuel’s mind. He could follow Nathan’s advice and stay away from the rest of the world. Hide in this forest he had found himself in and let the time tick by. Or he could seek others. Find safety in numbers. Maybe even find Blythe, who even if her motives were less than selfless, she wanted to help keep Samuel alive.
He knew Nathan would say to find a hole to crawl into and hide. But that posed a few problems. If he were to stay hidden away in this forest, sustaining himself on fish and whatever other forageables he dared to try, he would slowly go mad with the loneliness. Or the safety he felt within in the forest was all together an illusion, and a massive monster was simply waiting to tear him apart right around the nearest tree.
Finding other people was his best bet.
It didn’t mean he had to like them, or even trust them, but other people meant easier access to food, clothing, medicine, and protection from the unknown.
That was if the entire population of this god-forsaken fantasy land hadn’t turned undead. Thoughts of Oscar and other potential zombies made him feel like his dagger was far too close quarters of a weapon to use in any future fight.
He spent the afternoon looking for the right sticks, approximately his own height, and carving rudimentary spears. He carved a couple of them and practiced throwing them at a target he carved into a tree. His aim was abysmal. Each spear seemingly had a mind of its own, spinning or tumbling away. The flat side of the spear hit the target more than either point. Throwing them turned out to be a poor option. They needed some weight on the end to keep them straight.
At the very least, they would help him be able to stab with a bit of reach. He kept the best spear, discarded the rest, and walked further down along the creek bed, hoping to chance on something, anything he could use.
This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.
As he trudged through the dense underbrush, his mind churned through a hundred options with no answers or clear paths forward. The trickling stream, the rustling of leaves, and the snapping of twigs underfoot were the only sounds to be heard in forest.
High above Samuel, silent as the breeze, an ambush predator leapt from tree to tree, stalking the loud human wandering where he wasn’t supposed to be.
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Hours later, Samuel sat to rest his aching ankle. The forest had remained largely the same during his hike, the only discernable difference being that the creek he followed had widened into a small river. He cracked open the old journal again, hoping to glean some insight into his cursed dagger.
Weeks have passed since I took pulled the dagger from the corpse’s head.
The Echoes of Umbra are whispering to me, coaxing me to call on "Umbral Shift", an ability they promise will let me step through shadows. To make me untouchable.
I fear to use it, fear to give in to those dark whispers.
If I step into those shadows, what will be there to greet me?
The whispers drive me near madness. Begging me. Cajoling.
They are incessant.
What will they gain?
Umbral Shift is unlike anything I've ever experienced before.
It's like being both here and not at the same time.
I enter a shadowland of sorts.
The world is the same, but not.
The power is intoxicating.
I can slip through the shadows and reappear a few paces away. Time moves slowly when I’m in that darkness.
Greater contracts call to me.
I am the hand of death.
Paranoia is getting to me. I see eyes.
Eyes in the shadows.
Eyes in the darkness.
Eyes.
They want me to join them.
They want—
"Samuel,” a thousand voices whispered into Samuel’s mind at once.
“Nope!” Samuel blurted, slamming the journal shut and throwing it away from him. He watched as several of the pages flew out from the leather’s loose binding. The book bounced through the dirt and Samuel felt his hackles rise.
“It’s not real, it’s not real,” Samuel breathed.
Silence, then blinding pain lanced through his body. Samuel felt his face push into the forest floor. Felt the weight of something pinning him down. Felt the pulse of his own hot blood seeping from the back of his neck where a row of teeth was biting into his flesh. It wasn’t the Echoes of Umbra, but a beast attacking him.
Samuel cried out as his mind caught up to his body. He had just gotten out of the mouth of one monster and already found himself in the jaws of another.
Heat built in Samuel’s body.
Heat that needed an outlet.
A ball of flame burst from Samuel’s hand. He pressed it into the creature’s side, hearing a satisfying sizzle and smelling the acrid stink of singed hair. The beast snarled as its flesh burned, but it sank its teeth deeper into Samuel’s neck, unrelenting.
Samuel’s arm went cold as his fire magic died out.
“Not… today…” Samuel got out through clenched teeth. He pushed the fire magic up to the back of his neck, feeling the heat escape and spark. It did not, unfortunately, spew fire into the creature’s maw, and the attacker did not release its death grip.
“Samuel,” a thousand voices whispered, beckoning, begging. “Call on us. Use Umbral Shift.”
“Fucking fine,” Samuel spat, grabbing the hilt of Echoes of Umbra and willing himself to enter the shadows.
After his struggles with manipulating fire magic, Umbral Shift was far easier than he expected. His senses shifted. The bright light of the afternoon sun gave way to a world of dark shadows. Samuel felt weightless, as if his being floated in space. The world around him existed only in outline, the trees and forest fuzzy.
“Shift away,” the voices whispered.
Samuel obeyed, the floaty movement intuitive and easy. He willed his body to glide to the left and it did.
As if the Umbral shadows couldn’t handle holding Samuel’s presence any longer, he popped back into the real world like a suction cup being ripped from its purchase. Back into the vivid glory of color and sensation, the light of the sun temporarily blinded him as he felt the soft mulch of the forest floor under his hand.
The beast dropped to the ground several feet away from Samuel. The creature’s paw snapped Samuel’s crude spear in half and it snarled in confusion about its lost prey. Samuel got his first good look at it. The beast was terrifying, but no more otherworldly than the zombies or fish monster had been. Bristly brown fur covered a powerful body that looked simultaneously humanoid and bearlike. It was a Yeti, digging its claws deep into the earth, leaving deep gouges and readying itself to strike. It locked eyes with Samuel and snarled menacing set of fangs covered in blood. Samuel’s blood. He felt it trickle down his neck.
They circled each other. Samuel clutched Echoes of Umbra and kept his empty hand ready to summon fire. The creature flowed effortlessly from one step to the next, each movement precise and calculated. Dark eyes regarded Samuel with the same weariness he too felt. Samuel knew that if he let his guard down for even a moment, the creature would attack.
But maybe that would be a good thing.
Samuel feigned stumbling over a branch and the yeti charged him, claws extended in a swipe that would gut Samuel. At the last moment, Samuel called on Umbral Shift. His body turned incorporeal, at once one with the realm of shadows. The dark and fuzzy outline of the creature’s claws approached Samuel in slow motion and passed harmlessly through him. Samuel willed his body behind the creature and popped back into the world.
Samuel slammed Echoes of Umbra into the back of the Yeti’s neck, severing the spine and killing it instantly.
The creature’s corpse dropped to the ground in front of Samuel.
It was the first fight Samuel had been in that hadn’t driven him toward the brink of madness and collapse.
Blood, cooled by the forest’s breeze, ran in tiny rivulets down Samuel’s back and into the waistline of his pants. He felt at the wound in his neck with tentative fingers, feeling at the several punctures and tears in the skin there.
He kicked the yeti, pointlessly letting it know his frustration.
“Goddammit,” Samuel muttered.
He washed the wounds out with the river’s water as best he could and carefully cauterized them with his thumb. He was shocked how the act of burning his own skin already felt more like a chore than a traumatizing experience.
Squatting, he examined the yeti’s corpse. He was unsure if he could take anything of value from it.
“Hey, Core,” Samuel started, staring at the sky. “Think you could magically process this guy into his useful parts? Give me his pelt, or something?”
The Core did not respond.
“Didn’t think so,” Samuel muttered. “Nathan?”
Nathan did not respond.
Samuel sighed, looking down on the beast he had killed. He wasn’t confident he could stomach gutting the thing, and it was too humanoid to feel comfortable roasting it over a fire. That wasn’t even mentioning he didn’t know the first thing about curing animal skins. He’d just end up wasting the poor thing’s body and making himself sick.
“Give it to us,” the Echoes of Umbra whispered in Samuel’s mind, sending goosebumps crawling over Samuel’s arms. “Let us use it.”
“Why?” he asked tentatively.
“Umbral Shift… requires… energy,” the voices replied.
Samuel scrutinized the blade. The deep black of its metal had greyed somewhat.
“Feed us,” the voices continued. “And we will give you power.”
“Got it,” Samuel said. “You guys need corpses to recharge Umbral Shift?”
“Yes,” the voices confirmed.
“And what happens if I don’t give it to you?”
The voices were slow to answer. “We will find another to serve us.”
“That’s ominous,” Samuel replied, considering his next move.
“Yes,” the voices replied.
Samuel chuckled at the response and pulled up his Player Scroll. A new permanent trait had appeared.
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Traits:
Permanent:
Foodie
Umbral Bridge: You are watched by the eyes of Umbra. They promise power, but what will you have to give in return? Feed the echoes the corpses of your slain enemies to strengthen your connection.
Abilities granted:
Umbral Shift: A movement skill, you can enter the umbral plane and become temporarily incorporeal, shifting your position in the world by up to two paces. Current charges: [0/2]
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“Well, shit,” Samuel breathed. “What’s your ultimate goal here, huh?”
“Power,” they replied as one.
“In exchange for?”
“Power…” they whispered.
The word was laced with the smallest hint of sarcasm.
Helping the Echoes—the eyes—felt like dancing with the devil himself. Samuel weighed his options carefully. On one hand, he could gain the power and protection he so desperately needed to survive in this world. But on the other, he risked losing his freedom and possibly even his soul—the details of the exchange weren’t clear. Samuel needed more information before he could make a decision.
“You need me to give you the corpse to recharge Umbral Shift, right?”
“You already asked that…”
“Say I give you more corpses, does the ability improve?”
“Yes…” That impatience again. “Feed us in exchange for power.”
“Right, I got that. Does this end with you guys eating my soul or something?”
There was a pause.
“No…” The voices whispered.
Samuel was unconvinced, but with only unwieldy fire magic to his name, Echoes of Umbra was a massive upper hand in a tough spot.
“How do I feed the yeti to you? What does the process look like?”
“Stab the dagger into the creature’s skull.”
Samuel knew that at some point helping the eyes in exchange for power could cause him regret. Dire consequences were expected. But the ability was too great a card to give up just yet—and who knew what else lurked in the forest waiting for him. He let out a long breath, his decision made.
He stabbed the dagger into the beast’s skull, the blade passing through bone far easier than Samuel had expected. It sunk to the handle and stopped. Samuel felt a shiver pass through him as it reminded him of the where he had first found the weapon. Of the corpse’s head he had pulled it from. He left the blade embedded and pulled his hand away.
A black mist materialized and enveloped the corpse’s body like a dark cloud, obscuring it from Samuel’s view. He watched with cold sweat building on his forehead. Minutes ticked by and then all at once, the mist disappeared.
Echoes of Umbra dropped to empty ground. The beast’s body was gone. Consumed.
“Echoes?” Samuel asked.
“Feed us…” They whispered back, drunken satisfaction slurring their speech.
“Is that not what I just did?” Samuel asked.
The eyes did not respond.
Samuel checked his Player Scroll. A single use of Umbral Shift had been recharged. He exhaled with fatigue. If an entire corpse was required for each use of the ability, using the ability had a cumbersome price tag. Would the eyes connection to Samuel grow stronger with each corpse he fed them? Or did using the ability as he fed corpses create a sort of equilibrium and prevent it from growing stronger. Questions upon questions upon questions piled themselves on top of each other in Samuel’s mind.
Somewhere in the forest, a woman let out a blood curdling scream.