Samuel slid into one of the only upright chairs in the tavern. The place was a stinking mess, strewn with darkening blood, dismembered limbs, the pale head of an elf, and viscera. The windows were too small for Ned to crawl through, though he had found one and was trying to squeeze into it. Only his head and a single arm were through. He let out a keening whine occasionally, but Samuel didn’t look at him. Didn’t want to look at him. He felt numb, choosing instead to look at the pleasant image of three human fingers resting on the floor. Oscar was talking to him, but Samuel wasn’t listening.
This had become a waking nightmare. His body ached and the slightest movement from any part of him caused spurts of agony. He could feel the occasional droplet of blood running from his chin, down his neck, and soaking into his shirt. He wanted to sleep. He needed to sleep. He jumped as the Core spoke into his mind.
YOUR BODY METER IS DANGEROUSLY LOW. ANY LOWER AND YOU RISK UNCONSCIOUSNESS OR DEATH. CONSIDER TENDING TO YOUR WOUNDS, EATING, OR SLEEPING TO REPLENISH IT.
Samuel let out an exasperated laugh and asked, “Where the hell have you been?”
The Core didn’t respond.
“Was that The Core?” Oscar asked.
Samuel ignored him and summoned his Player Scroll.
Just as The Core had warned, his body meter was low. So was his mind meter, for that matter. The character sketch of Samuel had been updated, showing a bloody man covered in mud. It did a great job showcasing where his wounds were, labeling the cut on his chin with red ink to stand out against the black. New temporary traits caught his eye, and he studied the text.
----------------------------------------
NAME: Samuel Cardwell
Race: Human
Body: 6/40
Strength: 3
Dexterity: 1
Mind: 14/60
Charisma: 2
Intelligence: 4
Spells:
None
Permanent Traits:
Foodie: Your thorough appreciation for all things artfully prepared makes it 25% more sating and its positive status effect duration increase by 25%. Unprepared foods are 25% less sating.
Temporary Traits:
Exhaustion: You pushed too hard and are beyond tired. Body meter recovers 50% slower. Sleep to remove exhaustion.
Lingering Pacify: Someone wanted you calm. You can resist with your mind meter. Pass time or sleep to remove lingering pacify. Remaining time: 14 minutes, 32 seconds. Mind cost to resist: 1 point per 3 minutes.
Equipped Gear:
Rough-spun cotton tunic.
Rough-spun cotton trousers.
Rope belt.
Worn leather shoes.
Empty dagger sheath.
Inventory:
Empty
Active Quests:
Survive.
----------------------------------------
The stats were confused Samuel. As best he could tell, the Body Meter accounted for physical damage as well as exertion, like a combination of health and stamina. And as for the temporary trait Lingering Pacify, resisting sleep seemed to eat up quite a bit of his Mind Meter. Did the initial moment Jon used his Pacify spell also lower the points under Mind? If he was able to get his Mind Meter higher, would he have greater resistance to being pacified? Or was that dependent on the intelligence trait? Charisma? There were too many questions and too few answers. The countdown on lingering pacify wasn’t moving, so he guessed that the scroll only updated before it was summoned.
Almost a third of the front of Samuel’s shirt had soaked with sticky blood. He needed to stop the bleeding and clean the wound. He stood and shuffled to the bar. His first thought was to find a first aid kit, but he doubted such a thing would even exist here. He found a couple of clean rags behind the bar. They would have to do.
He sniffed at the few remaining bottles of alcohol until he came across a particularly potent one. He winced at the smell and was thought he could go blind if he drank it. It would be perfect. He doused his hands with the stuff, rubbing off as much of the blood and mud as he could.
He carefully tore one of the rags into strips and tied them together, making sure it was long enough to be able to tie around his head. Bracing himself, he poured the alcohol into the cut on his chin. He stifled a cry as it washed out his wound, killing all bacteria and flushing out any other foreign bodies. He wiped at his chin with one of the rags, trying to pat the area dry. After a second alcohol wash—and third for good measure—he tied the makeshift bandage around his chin and up behind his head.
Samuel checked the sketch on his Player Scroll and sure enough, it had updated with the rag tied around his head. His stats hadn’t changed, however, but his Body Meter now read one point higher at [7/40]. The countdown on Lingering Pacify had dropped, and so had a point of his Mind Meter. Samuel dismissed the scroll, letting the canvas dissolve into thin air.
“How’d you do that?” Oscar asked, seated against the far wall and attempting to tie a leather belt around his wounded leg and stop the bleeding. He was doing a miserable job.
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
“Do what?” Samuel replied.
“Make that piece of paper disappear?”
“It’s… Have you not looked at your Player Scroll?”
“No, if you haven’t noticed I’ve been fucking unconscious. Is that a zombie?” Oscar asked, pointing at Ned.”
“Yes,” Samuel sighed. “That’s a zombie.”
Oscar nodded, taking the news in stride.
“Cool,” he said.
Samuel winced at Oscar’s reply.
“So how did you do it?” Oscar asked. “The scroll thing?”
Samuel rubbed his eyes, more out of exhaustion than frustration, and told Oscar how to do it. Oscar marveled at the bit of parchment appearing in his hands, reading over his stats.
“We need to clean the cut on your leg,” Samuel said, bringing over the rags and alcohol and kneeling next to Oscar. Calling it a cut was as big an understatement as saying “Cool” had been to the fact there was a zombie hanging it’s head to the window. Oscar had been fully stabbed by a few inches of metal. Samuel didn’t have a lot of first aid experience, but he knew cuts that deep often required multiple layers of suturing, down and in the muscle itself. Even if Samuel could stitch the leg, they didn’t have the required tools.
Samuel gestured at the belt tied haphazardly above the wound.
“May I?” He asked.
Oscar nodded, not even looking up from his Player Scroll.
Samuel untied the belt and Oscar winced, dropping the scroll. It dissolved before hitting the ground. Oscar gave his full attention, watching Samuel work.
Blood lazily pulsed out of the wound, congealing on the edges. Samuel didn’t hesitate and poured the alcohol right into the wound. Oscar yelped and jumped back, kicking his leg out like a child throwing an absolute fit after a bee sting. He knocked the bottle out of Samuel’s hand and it crashed to the ground. The glass held, shockingly, and the bottle only spilled a bit as it rolled away. Oscar moaned and felt at his mouth.
“I bit my tongue,” he said, speech slurred by a bit of blood.
Samuel cringed, unconsciously feeling at his own tongue in his mouth.
“I lost fucking everything in a couple bad deals in New York. Thought that was the worst day of my life. I think this all might be worse,” Oscar said gesturing at everything in the room. He spit some blood onto the ground.
Samuel retrieved the alcohol and hovered it over Oscar’s leg.
“Hold still this time, yeah?” Samuel asked.
“Yeah, OK.” Oscar answered. He took a deep breath, held it, and gave Samuel a nod of ascent.
Samuel washed out the wound, using a clean rag to wipe away excess blood and mud. Once he was satisfied it was as clean as they would get it, Samuel tied a rag tight around Oscar’s leg right over the cut. After finishing, he sat down against the wall next to Oscar and exhaled. He sniffed at the remaining finger of hard alcohol, thought better of it, and set the bottle down between them.
Oscar took the bottle and swigged it down. He winced and swallowed.
“Oh, that’s bad,” he said.
They sat together for a moment, the only silence broken by the occasional whine coming from Ned.
“Think we should take care of baldy over there?” Oscar asked.
Samuel allowed himself to look at Ned then. The man was staring at them both, one arm through the sill of the window outstretched, reaching, reaching.
“Probably.”
They watched the zombie claw at the air, neither making any moves to take care of it. When neither did anything, Oscar resummoned his Player Scroll.
He felt like a middle schooler cheating on a test, but Samuel side-eyed Oscar’s scroll. From his perspective, the page was entirely blank.
“It says I have a spell!” Oscar shouted in excitement.
“What, where?” Samuel asked, no longer hiding his glance at the scroll as jealousy gnawed at his gut.
“Decay. Level 1,” Oscar replied, pointing to an empty spot on the parchment.
Samuel summoned his own Player Scroll.
“Can you see this?” he asked, pointing at Lingering Pacify in his temporary traits category. Only another minute remained on the countdown.
“See what?”
“I don’t think we can see each other’s stats.”
Oscar didn’t seem to care at all about what Samuel was saying. He was concentrating, staring at Ned’s three fingers on the floor near the door. He raised his palm toward them and clenched his jaw. Veins bulged in his forehead.
Samuel held his breath.
And nothing happened.
Oscar dropped his hand, dejected.
“Hey, voice in the sky! How do I use spells?” he called.
Samuel watched Oscar for any sign that The Core was talking to him. It seemed The Core refused to speak to Oscar on Oscar’s terms as well. When and why The Core said anything made zero sense to Samuel.
Then all of the sudden Samuel’s headache eased a bit. He almost sighed with pleasure as the pressure he didn’t know he’d been functioning under released itself. He summoned his Player Scroll. Lingering Pacify was no longer listed under his temporary traits. His mind felt sharper, somehow, as if his thoughts were no longer pumping through clogged drains.
He eyed Ned stuck in the window and hung his head with a sigh. They couldn’t leave such a threat so close. He pushed off his knees to stand and surveyed the room, letting his scroll drop from his hand and dematerialize. Already the behavior was becoming second nature.
With the small bit of light from the few remaining oil lanterns softly flickering, it was difficult to spot anything amidst the splotches of blood. Jon’s broken club lay on the ground. It had snapped in half, both ends forming a crude wooden spike. That could work but didn’t have a lot of reach and would put Samuel within clawing distance. Blythe’s quiver full of arrows was strewn on the ground next to her forgotten bags, but her bow was gone. Samuel couldn’t remember if she had left it upstairs or dashed into the woods with it. He could throw the arrows but doubted it would have enough force to break through to the brain. He eyed Blythe’s bag full of trade goods again.
Nathan’s second rule echoed in Samuel’s mind. Be a greedy bastard.
“Desperate times…” Samuel whispered to himself.
Samuel carefully knelt on a spot of the ground not caked in blood and pulled Blythe’s pack closer. It was a rudimentary backpack made of tanned leather with straps holding a scratchy wool bedroll to the bottom. The inside was luxuriantly soft and filled to the brim with expected and unexpected trade goods. Pouches of salts, peppers, and more exotic spices were carefully wrapped and labelled. There were some powders among them Samuel didn’t recognize and didn’t dare test.
He found a bit of what felt like hardtack. When the smell test came back neutral and wholly devoid of anything sinister, he bit a small corner off it and chewed. The name was apt. It was hard and tacky. And thankfully tasteless. But as Samuel ate, he felt a little bit better. A little bit more alert. He threw a piece to Oscar. It went wide and Samuel grimaced. Oscar would have to scoot a bit to reach the food.
“What is that?” Oscar asked suspiciously.
“Just some hardtack.”
“What in the hell is that?”
“I don’t know—hard bread? A really thick cracker? It’s food.”
Oscar hesitantly reached over, picked up the hardtack, and sniffed it.
Samuel didn’t really care if Oscar ate it or not and turned his attention back to Blythe’s backpack. A small glass vile held a lime-green spider. It made Samuel’s skin crawl, and he felt the phantom sensations of imaginary insects crawling under his clothes and through his hair. Small air holes were poked in the bit of leather tied at the top of the vial like a miniature drum—the only thing holding the little spider from freedom. It had spun itself into a webbed cocoon and was watching Samuel with eight intelligent golden eyes. Samuel did his best not to touch the bottle.
Deep within the confines of the bag, a faint, reddish light flickered weakly to the rhythm of a slow and steady heartbeat. With careful movements, Samuel searched for the source of the light until he finally produced a small wooden jewelry box, warm to the touch and fastened tightly with a twine bow. The seams of the box glowed with the pulsating red light, suggesting that it held within it a power of immense magnitude. Samuel carefully untied the twine and lifted the lid to reveal a small red stone, no larger than a thumbnail, nestled in a bed of rough linen.
Upon closer inspection, Samuel noticed that the stone was adorned with a simple yet stunning curving flame etched in the center. Overcome with fascination, Samuel found himself transfixed by the pulsating light emanating from the stone. He plucked the stone out and held it in his palm. He could feel the heat radiating from it, yet he was drawn deeper into the stone's fiery energy.
Suddenly, he was standing the precipice of a mountain, where rivers of lava flowed to either side of him, causing a searing wind to whip at his face. He looked around himself with wild eyes. The earth below him rumbled with power so powerful and terrible he fell to his knees. At the peak of the mountain, an explosion of molten rock exploded into the air amidst a cloud of black. Samuel's thumb burned as though it had been dipped into a boiling pan of oil, and he looked down to find his hand submerged in the river of lava. He yelped and pulled his hand free.
In an instant, Samuel was back in the tavern, the stone having slipped from his grasp and fallen to the ground, the pulsating light dying down to a mere ember before fading away completely. As he clutched his throbbing thumb, Samuel felt the intense heat spread throughout his body, causing him to panic. It travelled up his arm and into his shoulder. Into his heart. The scorching heat of the stone had engulfed him entirely, leaving him to grapple with the full force of a blazing sun burning bright within his chest.
Samuel lost consciousness.