Chapter 4: Meeting Merillax.

The enchantment on the trolley’s wheels made it glide easily over sticks and muddy ground that would have disabled any ordinary trolley and once more I felt extremely grateful for the gift, but I couldn’t really remember how I’d gotten it anymore. I knew something had happened to me between worlds and I had learned something important about the truth of reality, but now It seemed to be evaporating from my brain entirely. Something about Rot-Fleshed pits and leaving the land of Kroger, a land of coffee, tuna, bubbling concoctions of flavoured water and pre-cut meats from a variety of beasts.

I was violently jerked off of that train of thought by a scream of pain that sounded as if it had come from hell itself, I could tell immediately that it had come echoing up to me from beneath the earth, I was a fuck-up in a lot of ways, but I’ve always run towards danger and this was no different. I stuffed cans in my pocket, snatched up my improvised candle and ran towards the sound, spear at the ready and wishing I’d taken the time to fashion a belt loop for the hatchet.

The scream had been male, guttural, agonised and it had galvanized me into action, I was poorly armed, level one and unsure of how this world functioned but poorly armed was still armed and that had a certain psychological boosting effect. Plus I was adrenalized enough to throw down with whatever awaited me.

My boots pounded the dirt beneath me and the scream came again, ahead of me I spied the entrance to a cave, not a nice easily accessible Skyrim cave, more narrow, almost the kind of thing you turned sideways and inched through in The Forest. Fortunately, it wasn’t quite that tight and I was able to keep my candle in front of me without any spillage. The walls of the cave were soft with moss but this squeeze had been recently rubbed bare by the passage of others before me and in that moment it began to sink in that I would likely have to face another person if I went deeper into the earth here. Perhaps a serial killer or a gang of bandits torturing a captive, maybe an assassin or bounty hunter in the pursuit of a hermit who dwelled here. Or, hopefully, if I was very lucky it could have been the scream of someone bitten by a snake who simply needed a tourniquet and a helping hand back to town

That would be nice, I could ask all kinds of questions about the world I was now inhabiting. For instance, what kind of currency was used would be a start and then endless questions about countries, factions, languages, work, living standards. I had a lot to figure out and no idea where to start so it would be great to have a guide. I heard another voice, this time it was a woman’s raised in a shout of rage, I heard the ringing of steel on steel and I’m proud to say I didn’t falter, I didn’t immediately pussy out and run.

Well, if we’re being honest I faltered a tiny bit, but then I uttered the words to my other cantrip and my summoned wick caught fire, I felt a sudden rush of magic as the candle swelled with potential energy that I could harness with my spells.

That wasn’t all, instead of shedding a small amount of light into the shadowy cave around me the improvised candle was providing proper illumination and I instinctively knew that this was because of me, in the hands of anyone else the candle would be a feeble thing. But not for a Spell-Candler, for me it may as well have been a blazing torch or a really big candle.

This feeling of competency bolstered my will to make a terrible decision and I gave a cursory inspection of the area ahead. There was a single path heading down and a few alcoves that looked like paths until I got close to them.

The whole way down I moved carefully but quickly, keeping an eye for tripwires, hidden attackers or suspicious patches of dirt and rock but I saw nothing and triggered nothing.

The descent took only a couple of minutes down a gentle slope that twisted and coiled with much crouching and squeezing but the sounds of battle continued the whole time and the woman wasn’t raging anymore. Now she sounded rattled, beginning to wear down, the clashing of blades continued but with a steadily muting intensity and I tried to move faster without tripping on the loose rocks and jagged protuberances in the narrow, downwards-sloping cave. “Die bastards! Die so the stygian legions can roast your fetid manhoods in the abyss!”

I could hear her clearly now, her voice was hard-edged but unmistakably feminine and immediately I would have recognised her as a serious fighter even if I hadn’t heard her valiant resistance throughout my entire descent. It wasn’t far now, another scream of rage, steel on stone as her blade missed its intended target and a new scream, one of pain. Unlike the others this scream had come from the woman. I rounded a final bend and the floor levelled out into a proper chamber the size of a tennis court, I saw a lot of bodies, some were skeletons, old bones that still twitched with magical animation while others wore black robes embroidered with red and golden runes that I couldn’t read or identify.

If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

I assumed those were necromancers and the woman in lace-edged chainmail, was obviously a knight or paladin of some sort. I could see she was having a rough time but she’d killed a lot of these robed guys with a silvery-steel longsword and seemed to be facing off with their leader now. I was guessing he was the leader but I felt pretty confident about that because he was wearing something different to all the other dead guys in robes and had waited until everyone else was dead before he stepped up to the plate. His garb was made of cloth and leather, as heavy as a Soviet greatcoat and covered in the same runes and strange talismans as the robes.

Looking at real warriors, moving faster than I could ever hope to match was sobering enough to make me wary of jumping into it and the gap between our weapons was crystal clear. I was armed with a basic spear while this guy held a longsword of his own so I stayed back, watching as these two warriors battled with a martial skill I found breathtaking.

It seemed the man had adopted an aggressive style that the woman had matched until now, but a deep and probably mortal gash down her side had necessitated a switch to a more desperate and defensive strategy, I saw her barely dodge a decapitating strike that reversed and nearly impaled her only to be deflected into the quillons of her blade at the last moment. Then the man bulled into her while their blades were locked and I felt my blood chill as the noble-looking woman’s weapon was knocked out of her hands along with the air in her lungs.

I acted without really thinking about it, stepping forwards and opening my mouth to yell “Hey asshole!” The man turned in surprise at my shout, leaping back so that he could face both the woman and I at the same time. That move didn’t actually help him though. My candle erupted into a spray of molten oil as I shouted the invocation for Waxen Splash and felt magical power flow from me into the can of oil, turning it into a momentary hose of burning-hot liquid as its entire contents were sprayed onto his face and neck before he could raise his arms to shield the vulnerable flesh from the molten onslaught.

I heard a hideous sizzle and saw flesh bubble as my candle guttered without fuel. The wick faded and died incredibly quickly and I could tell the candle was completely dead. I didn’t feel even a trace of magical energy within it now, it was spent and I was in the dark. If my opponent wasn’t clawing madly at his boiling oil bukkake then I would be dead right now too.

I didn’t have much hope that my level 1 spell would be enough to kill him though so I changed my spear into a two-handed grip and thrust it out in front of me as threateningly as I could manage for someone with no real training. I took a few steps back the way I’d come and listened with my heart pounding as the man’s scream turned into rage. I backed up even more, ready to thrust blindly through the darkness if I heard him come stumbling my way but hoping he’d give up or run away due to the pain.

Then came a bloody ripping sound that chilled my blood, it was followed by an awful, almost complete silence broken only by a wet dripping noise that must have come from blood falling on the stony floor. Trying not to make a sound I slowly drew the Kroger stove lighter from my pocket with fumbling fingers. My journey from one life to another had turned it into a metal device with a glass container of alcohol or oil that ignited via a mechanical trigger and I trembled as I held it in front of me and clicked the trigger.

A weak orange flame flickered to life at the nozzle end illuminating the horrid scene. In its feeble light I saw the woman I had sided with hunched over the burned man, one of her hands now tipped with ripping claws that had shredded runic coat like paper and were dripping with gore-soaked viscera. “Holy fucking shit” I squeaked, scrambling backward from the revelation. “Holy fucking shit, no, no, no” I summoned another wick into my hand and realized I wouldn’t be able to puncture and prepare another candle before the woman could reach me so I turned and ran for the slope but the woman lunged through the dark, grabbed me and wrenched me back immediately.

A steely vice-grip had my shoulder, I went for the spear I’d dropped, not sure what I’d do with it but needing to try. “Don’t” the single word hissed into my ear, it was the same hard-edged voice she’d used in the fight but now instead of a valiant paladin, I knew it as the dreadful tone of a monster. “You did a good thing for me mortal, you're ok, I won’t hurt you” The voice softened, becoming unnaturally sweet and It did not make me feel any better at all. “You're a monster!” I could hear the edge of terror in my voice and fought to control it instead of running screaming. Because I’m an idiot, lacking in self-preservation but as I’ve mentioned already; very full of the kind of insecurity that makes me face danger head-on instead of running like a smart person. “The hunters certainly thought so, and that’s what they got, but I’m not really. Light another candle and look at me”.

I realized then that the mysterious woman, the men in robes, and their leader had been fighting in pitch blackness before I had entered the scene with my magical candle. Neither side had needed any light to dodge or strike at the other, I shuddered and fumbled for the stove-lighter but must have dropped it in my fearful scrambling so I summoned a wick and lit it raw instead, the little piece of waxen twine flared unnaturally bright for a second at the cost of almost half my mana bar but I saw the woman up close for a moment.

She had pixie-like features, a cutely upturned nose, almost elfin ears and short, chopped red hair that loosely framed a mischievous, knowing smile that instantly tugged at my heart like I was a dumb teen all over again. This didn’t seem like the face of a woman who could shred leather, organs and muscle with her clawed fingers but I knew it was, I’d seen her do it and she’d killed everyone else down here as well.

And yet when I looked down at the murderous hand gripping my shoulder I saw only sensibly short, slightly pointed fingernails painted a deep red. She had hands that looked very soft and feminine, not like the tearing talons of a predator at all. Her pale eyes though, they were the eyes of a killer.

“I am Merrilax. who are you?”