Wake up!
Words resounded in her head, and for what might as well be the first time, the girl felt herself gain consciousness.
It felt like trudging through cold water, fighting to emerge on the surface of a turbulent river.
Her eyes opened.
Her body quickly jerked up, drawing a long deep breath, only to feel herself slipping, tumbling to the ground, coughing and gasping for air.
It's okay. You are okay. Breathe, girl. Breathe.
The hard floor was cold and wet with some kind of substance that siphoned the heat from her bare skin. Like it was pure ice.
“I—help” A strange female voice echoed, her voice.
It took a moment to notice it was hers, but with all the new strangeness, she only registered it as one more thing to try making sense of.
She was on her knees in a poorly lit room, collapsed in a puddle of some kind. Looking straight ahead, the girl noticed what she had fallen from. Some sort of table, or a stone bed. She wasn’t completely sure.
Underneath her, the floor seemed to be stone. Solid rustic bricks, as something she would see in an old temple or a movie set depicting ruins.
Wait, how did she know that?
Can you get up?
Before she could delve more into what she did or did not know, the voice resounded again, bringing that pinch of strangeness into her confused and panicked state.
She took a moment to calm herself, her hot breath leaving trails in the cold, humid air. After a few seconds, she cleared her dry throat and acknowledged the voice in her head with a nod.
“I—I can.”
Good.
Slowly she started heaving herself up; her body sore and slightly numb in the extremities as they started to work properly. Steadily she got on her feet— Opening and closing her hands, so as to bring heat to them, and getting used to the feeling and movement of her own body, as if for the very first time. It was strange.
Now, I want you to listen very carefully to what I will say.
The voice, still new to the girl, yet familiar, seemed to tremble. It waited for a moment as if to gauge if she was ready for the next words. Or maybe to assure herself.
Regardless, time is of the essence.
You only have ten minutes left to live. Do what I say and we will both survive.
As the girl stumbled, turning to face the opposite direction, it suddenly hit her the kind of predicament she was in.
It might have been the words settling into her mind, ominous as they were. Or perhaps it was the dozens of bodies lying on the same reddish-orange liquid she just climbed out of. Either way, one thing was clear.
She wasn't safe.
***
It was like she had finally properly awakened from a dream.
“C-Come again?” she asked, as if she didn’t understand it the first time. Her eyes were wide, her head turning about quickly, looking at the scene she was in.
“Where am I? Wh-Who are you?” Her breathing and heartbeat started to speed up again. She carelessly took two steps back and almost tripped on the low stone bed, yelping in surprise.
Her mind was slowly getting straightened out. Which didn’t mean much. She was still confused and scared.
We don’t have much time. See what you can find and then we move on.
Looking around, she seemed to be in a small room. The walls and ceiling were simple stone blocks but sculpted in strange spirals and dotted patterns. The whole place smelled of a strange combination of mold and an unrecognizable citric scent. Of course, she was focusing on these details to avoid the elephant in the room. Or better saying, bodies in the room.
“A-Are those—?”
Don’t be scared. They are not the same as you. You need warmth and protection.
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“Protection from wh—”
“—Move! We don’t have much time!”
The figurative mental scream startled her, and her feet started moving before she knew where. She didn’t just feel the meaning of the words, but the emotion leaking from them.
The voice, she was also scared.
The girl started rummaging through the bodies. Most of them seemed to be naked, and to her relief, they really didn’t look like people. They had cold, light grey skin, and she couldn’t find any distinguishable characteristics about them, no forms nor features denouncing their sex or showing they once were alive. Where their faces should be, there was only a blank space, with what to her seemed like the malformation of a dim spiral. Like a fingerprint that had been erased in some places.
As she rummaged through the bodies, most of them didn’t look like humans. Most of them.
At the end of the pile, near a closed stone door, she saw three dead bodies. Humans. They were wearing long robes of a brownish-red color. She went to the one on the far left —a woman who didn’t seem much taller than her— and started taking her robes off.
She couldn’t picture the cause of the woman's death, only that she, like the other two figures, looked like they had just collapsed after a marathon. They were covered in sweat. She would believe they had just passed out, were their skin not depleted of color and cold as the floor underneath her feet.
Regardless, she didn’t delve long into this line of thought, quickly wrapping herself in the robes and hugging her body as if to trap the warmth in.
7 minutes, 53 seconds. Look through the pockets. See what you can find.
This time the girl didn’t stop to question the voice. She located the pair of pockets on the outside of the robe and searched for something in it.
It was in the right pocket that she found. Her hands fumbled through its contents while she was pulling it out, almost letting them fall to the ground.
They just looked like cards.
Four cards. Each with a name, image, and some other elements written in.
Before she could voice her findings, a sound echoed outside the room.
Steps.
It was quick, and it seemed to accelerate, getting closer and closer!
For a brief moment, it stopped.
Then a loud, deafening explosion reverberated in the room as the stone door in front of the girl suddenly cracked in, nearly breaking apart. The girl yelped in shock, almost letting the cards fall to the ground a second time.
“What was that!” she asked, looking intently at the door as whatever was on the other side tried to get in.
What did you find? Quick!
“Cards! Four. What am I supposed to—”
—The names? The cards’ names!
“One says Fire Bolt, one Shield, one Healing Balm, and one… Plain Knife?”
The sound continued. This time less of an explosion and more of a hammer being hit against the door. It started to buck with each hit.
Quick! Take the Fire Bolt card, and say out loud, ‘Claim’!
The girl grasped the first card, the one named “Fire Bolt”. A card with, amongst other information, an image depicting a trail of fire flying forward. For a mere moment, she focused on the image and called, mimicking the voice.
“Claim!”
In a blink, to her surprise, the card suddenly disappeared from her hand.
With one last hit, the hinges holding the door to the wall exploded outwards, the whole stone block falling forward with a loud thump.
In the place of the door, a figure stood. He wasn’t much taller than the girl. At first glance, it looked like a twisted depiction of a boy. He had reddish brown skin and most of his body was lithe and diminutive, with a swollen, round stomach. But that’s where the similarities stopped.
The creature had a big, oblate head, with dozens of tiny pointy teeth, his mouth stretched in a macabre smile. His eyes were beady and bright red, with a predatory sheen to them. While his right arm seemed normal, his left was large and swollen and looked diseased, with dark purple tendrils extending at its length. It was uncannily muscular and reached all the way to the floor and then some more, as if it was as tall as his whole body.
That was no child. That was a monster.
The creature pointed his right hand towards the girl and said something in a thick accent, she didn't quite understand. But immediately after, a mote of fire started forming in his outstretched palm.
Dodge!
Even before the monster finished speaking, the voice screamed in her head, and without thinking, the girl threw herself to the side, hitting the hard cold floor near the dead bodies. She felt heat searing too close to her bare legs and soon a miniature explosion came from behind her, momentarily warming her back.
She didn’t waste much time, rolling to her side and immediately getting up. As soon as she turned around, looking back at the entrance, she saw the creature push the floor with his big arm and launch himself towards her. Mouth opened unnaturally wide, going for a bite.
Point your hand to it and say the card’s name!
She didn’t question the voice. Only did as she was instructed.
The creature was only a couple of meters from her when she quickly lifted her hand, pointed toward his torso, and screamed at the top of her lungs.
“Fire Bolt!”
A bolt of fire shot from her palm, very similar to what the monster had just done a moment before. Seeing the fire coming right at him, he tried to block it with his bigger arm, not moving quite fast enough. The fire bolt exploded between the arm and his ribs, propelling him backwards out of the room.
The girl was panting, and her heart felt like bursting, adrenaline driving it faster. She could feel it pumping in her ears. She stood there, frozen, still pointing her shaking hand toward the creature.
A sickly smell of burnt flesh permeated the whole area. For a moment the monster stayed still, smoke coming from his side. Until he suddenly twitched, once, twice, and slowly started getting up.
A big part of his body was seared, and he was badly burnt on one side. Yet he still managed to get up and look back, his sick, disturbing smile now contorted into a grimace.
Their eyes met, and the girl thought he would try jumping at her once again. Until the monster groaned something, turned around, and started running away, using his giant arm to propel his body forward in a strange mix of walking and jumping.
She was relieved.
With a deep breath, she was about to let herself fall back to the ground and rest when that voice once again resounded in her mind.
After it!
“What? Why would I—”
If we want to live, you have to kill it.
Pick up the cards, and go after it! You have 5 minutes, 23 seconds. Go!
For a moment she was frozen. Trying to digest what the voice meant. She didn’t know where this voice was really coming from, what this place was, or even who she herself was.
But she was too afraid to wait for the time to count down to zero.
Taking a few deep breaths, the girl quickly picked the three remaining cards from the floor and bolted towards the dimly lit corridor outside the room she was in.
The first thing she noticed was that it felt considerably hotter than the room she just left. To her, it felt like leaving an air-conditioned room on a very hot day. Not that she could quite remember what an air-conditioner really was, nor did she have the time to delve into this new intrusive line of thought right now.
Stopping dead in her tracks, she took a moment to take in her new scenery; from the outside, it just looked like a long, orange-colored, stone corridor. It was lit by a yellowish-red light, but she couldn’t quite tell where it was coming from. Its path seemed to stretch far behind her, ending in a smooth curve to the left.
Looking at the other side, where the creature had gone, it also seemed to go for quite a distance. The bad lighting made it hard to see, but she could tell it seemed to reach an end at some point.
She was quite far behind the creature, but considering his wounds and strange way of locomotion, he didn’t seem to be moving very fast. At least she had the impression that she could still reach him.
"Come on, you can do this!" With a deep breath, she bolted towards the corridor.
And for what might as well be the first time, the girl started running after a monster. And it certainly wouldn’t be the last…