I know that by now you might have become accustomed to a blow by blow account of my fights, but I saw so much combat in the next couple of weeks that telling the story that way would quickly bore you to death. There was a lot of strange, mostly undead shit in that building, and I had to fight it all.

First there was the tree. Its hunting mechanism was really quite ingenious. Squirt out a bunch of fruit to attract rodents. Munch on the rodents. Rinse and repeat. Using my enhanced rapier skills to slash off the flailing branches proved effective, but I had to resort to bashing the skull with a femur to finally kill the thing. Using the rapier as a machete did not improve its condition, but needs must. I didn’t try any of the fruit since I knew where it had come from.

The second room in the hallway looked to be officer’s quarters of some sort. The furnishings were of much higher quality and better preserved. When I walked in, there was a skeleton splayed out across a desk. Of course, when I entered it stood up and attacked me. This one was clever enough to use a weapon, a wicked looking double-bladed axe. I had already drawn my femur, and when it swung at me I blocked the axe on its haft. The handle broke, the axe head spinning away across the room. Then, it was brawl time. I was basically getting my butt kicked until I dropped down and swept the skeleton’s legs out from under it. I got up before it did and began raining blows down on its skull. The skull broke before the femur did. Knowledge of anatomy for the win.

Searching the room, I found a deep pitcher with a long handle made out of bronze that had not rusted or decayed, although it had oxidized. My water problem was solved. I could lower the pitcher into the stream and pull up water without having to climb the rope each time. That was a load off my mind, let me tell you.

I spent some time healing up from my battle, and while I waited I carefully shaved one of the femurs down to serve as a handle for my new axe head. Then I secured it with strips of leather cut from my fancy town shoes. If I had to keep fighting skeletal monsters, I thought that an axe would serve me better than a flimsy rapier, even if I didn’t know how to use it as well.

The last door in the hall was a mess area. Beyond the normal junk that had been ravaged by the passage of time, I did find some earthenware plates and mugs. Now, I could drink water like a civilized person. There was nothing to fight in there, and I was glad.

Then, it was through the door at the end of the hallway and into the rest of the complex. The entry area was clearly military in nature, but the rest of the place looked like a comfortable place to live, at least before it suffered from the ravages of time. There was a library, common area to congregate, apartments, bedrooms, kitchens, dining halls, workrooms. I could go on but I am sure you get the idea. The place had everything one would need to live a nice life, away from the threat posed by the outside world.

And I previously mentioned, there was a lot of crap to fight. There were skeletons, humanoid and otherwise. A pair I fought even had bones that were illuminated with an eldritch green fire that burned me when I got too close. There were skeletal dogs or wolves of some sort. The place was stocked with zombies by the dozen, some stinking of the sea as if they had just been recruited out of the ocean’s depths. I swear that at one point I had to battle something that looked like a mummified orangutan. In one room, a chapel of some sort, there was an ethereal ball covered with tortured faces with random body parts jutting from it at odd angles. Another room contained monstrous humanoids with leathery skin, bulging eyes, mouths full of sharp teeth and long, dangerous looking, poisonous claws. I had to flee from a pack of ghostly children, their voices shifting between the sweet sound of children playing to deep, low pitched growls that sounded like rock grinding against rock. Although later I returned, and I ended them.

I wish I could tell you that a switch had flipped in my mind and I was suddenly a competent combatant, breezing right through everything the place threw at me. That would be a lie. I found myself at death’s door many times. I had to run away often, drawing the monstrous creatures I was fighting to rooms that I knew were safe, fighting in a narrow doorway to avoid being completely overwhelmed. There were days when all I could do was recover, unable to advance any deeper into the complex.

Nonetheless, I could feel myself improving. Day by day, encounter by encounter, I absorbed the lessons from the essence stones, integrating them in my own way, creating a melange that was unique to me. I had enough sustenance to recover much of my muscle mass, which returned surprisingly quickly. I leaned heavily on my enhanced powers of healing, but also started testing the limits of the strength that I gained from the troll. When I used it, my sword started to feel not like something I wielded but an extension of my body. Speaking of my body, my ability to control it, to move lightly and lithely improved by leaps and bounds. I started to integrate unarmed strikes in combat when opportunity presented itself, and was somewhat surprised by how effective they were, at least sometimes. Although I wasn’t in the natural world, even the hunter’s abilities benefited me. My senses were much sharper and I was better attuned to danger.

Step by painstaking step, this building served as the crucible that molded me to be more effective, more confident than I had ever been before. Even as I cursed my weaknesses, which were still abundantly clear at times, I exulted at my improvements.

As I got deeper into the redoubt, I began to find things that I could loot and use. The most interesting things I found were probably in the library. Preserved by magic, there was a collection of journals that shed some light on the purpose of the complex and what had driven its construction. I studied them in my spare time, when I was resting or recovering from injuries.

Apparently, the local hatred against five-fingered humans in this area came to these people honestly, although I wasn’t sure whether the practice of enslaving them, us, started before or after this complex was built. At some time in the distant past, ships laden with these humans had invaded from the sea. This was surprising, as the predominant view up to that point had been that there were no substantial landmasses in the world beyond the north and south continents that comprised the known world, and the large island on the inner sea between them that served as the political center of the loosely allied kingdom.

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The five-fingered humans had swept inland, landing on this section of the southern continent. Their appearance was not very uniform. Fighting with a variety of weapons, many that were of a higher technological level than those used by the denizens of these lands, and speaking a panoply of languages, they advanced without any apparent cohesive strategy. Then as now, these lands weren’t well developed and didn’t hold much population density. Town after town, city after city were quickly subjugated by their advance.

And so, as the rich and powerful are wont to do, a plan was made to build a holdout for those people “worth saving.” Deep in the canyon lands, aided in its construction by powerful magics, this redoubt was constructed. The elite were to be hidden and protected while the more developed territories to the north mobilized their military might. In relative comfort, those deemed worthy waited out the storm in the world above them, hoping for a rescue that apparently never came.

As time passed, the details in the journal became grim. Because of the hurried nature of the construction and the rapid advance of the invaders, when the redoubt was opened it was not supplied with the full allotment of provisions that were planned. Within a short time, there were food shortages. Rationing followed, but that was a short-lived solution. Eventually, those in control expelled the lesser half of the population, turning them out into the canyons in the hope that the supplies would stretch long enough for rescue.

Of course, there was little food in the barren world outside, and soon enough those who had been expelled came back with their list of grievances, trying to force their way back inside and take control. Their assault failed at the portcullis, the remaining soldiers using their defensive fortifications to good advantage, driving those who survived the assault back into the wilderness.

Food continued to dwindle and the situation inside the complex continued to deteriorate. The end of the journals detailed a final plan. Much of the remaining population would be sacrificed and through the power of necromancy transformed into tireless undead servants for the most worthy. The journal entries ended there, but based upon what I had encountered, the ritual must have been performed but now only the fruits of that rite remained. Things must have gone wrong very quickly.

I imagine I was the first living sapient creature to walk these halls for many hundreds of years. The journal entries were dated, but I had no idea how this world kept its calendar so I had no frame of reference to judge the passage of time.

The journals weren’t the only useful things that I managed to find. There were quite a few valuables – coins, precious metals, gems, works of art -- that survived the intervening years. Unfortunately, I was already pretty laden with stuff and carrying more seemed like a bad idea, especially if I had to climb out of the canyon. Sure, I packed away an interesting piece from time to time, but most of it was left where I found it.

There were other things, however, that proved more useful. There were weapons that were new and pristine, seemingly untouched by the rot and ruin that seemed to dominate the rest of the complex. I assumed they were magic of some sort, and after procuring a long tapered staff covered with indecipherable runes, my ability to fight the undead monstrosities improved. The staff lengthened my reach, giving me an additional safety margin, and seemed to affect things that my ordinary weapons couldn’t touch. I used it to smite the creepy spirits of those ghostly children, sending them to oblivion one by one.

This world was so damn hard on clothing, and once again I found myself wearing little more than rags as I slowly started piecing together a wardrobe out of those preserved things left behind. For several days, I explored the passages in a ball gown that I found secreted in a closet. It was blue with a plunging neckline and somewhat frilly. I had to cut off material at the bottom to avoid tripping over its flowing train. I had never worn a ball gown before, and don’t expect I ever will again, but it saved me from having sensitive bits waving about in the breeze. Over time, though, I was able to assemble a motley collection of clothes that fit, all of it hundreds of years out of fashion and very different from what I had seen people wearing in the present day. A burgundy cape complimented by peach colored pants and a dark green jerkin will not win you fashion awards anywhere but the carnival.

I found an ornate dagger to replace my thoroughly dulled belt knife, although I kept that knife as well to see whether I could get it sharpened again. There were pieces of armor that wouldn’t fit and that I had no way to adapt to my frame.

Slowly, room by room, I cleared the building. Every day, my supplies dwindled more. I found nothing to eat, and there was nothing to drink except water. The corridors and rooms became as familiar to me as the hallways in my high school had been. But I could feel the passage of time, and my time here was running out.

As the days passed and my supplies were consumed, I had just finished clearing a series of rooms at the back of the complex. These rooms were larger, and some effort had been expended to make them more ornate, with better flooring and low relief carving adorning the walls. I expected that this area was where the truly rich and powerful had lived. Based upon the number of creatures that I had to clear out, it was also where they died. Finally, I came to a single door. Every other passage that I could find had been explored. Either my redemption was at hand, or it was time to fill up my waterskin and go for broke up the side of the canyon.

The door was fashioned from some sort of stone and appeared to open inwards. I stalked up to it and shoved it hard. The hinges must have rusted through at some point as the door tipped inward like an eight foot tall domino. I could feel the thud of its impact through the soles of my feet.

The room beyond wasn’t very large, maybe twenty feet by twenty five feet. It appeared to be a private temple of some sort, and all of the furnishings in the room had been roughly shoved to the exterior walls. In the center of the room, there were faded traces of a circle similar to the one that powered my arrival into this world back at the resource camp. The skeletal remains of people, men, women and children, were scattered throughout the circle, but they did not rise to attack me. Many of the bones looked like they were splintered and crushed.

Kneeling, facing the altar, was a figure dressed in a rich brown hooded robe. As the echoes from the door’s fall finished reverberating through the chamber, it stood. I grasped my staff and prepared to attack but was momentarily taken aback by the creature that had smoothly spun to face me.

The skeletal remains of an alligator-like head were perched atop an elongated neck. Sharp teeth prominently sprung from both the upper and lower jaw and long bony fingers tipped with claws hung loosely at its side.

I started to move forward to engage, but once again stumbled to a stop when a hollow voice projected from the misshapen skull.

“It has been so long, and I am so hungry.”

As the thing began gliding towards me, I didn’t think it was going to ask me to cook it dinner.