There were a few things I noticed when I came to myself.
Chief among them the amount of pain that wracked my entire body. I felt… Hungry. So very, very hungry.
My core was filled with dregs at best; cracked and leaking after the exertion I’d put it through. Every muscle in my body was singing me a symphony of misery, and I hurt in places I didn’t even know I could. My joints creaked, and my left arm hung limply at my side as I got up.
I could feel how dry my mouth was, and decided to take a sip of water from my inventory before taking any further steps. There were enough provisions in there to last me… maybe two weeks? If I could fix my core, a month.
As I tried to swallow the water, I thought better of it, and led my hand to my stomach. There was a hole there. My skin had closed over the back, but there was still a bleeding wound at the front, my body barely holding itself together with the dregs of Qi it could draw from the air.
Grimacing, I simply took some water in my mouth, letting it be absorbed through the membranes there, and closed my eyes.
Slowly, I called up the system.
[Name: Fiona Bellum
Class: Spearwoman (6)
* + Techniques
* + Stats
* + Disposition
Current Status: Dying]
I grinned a vicious smile. That healthy tag sure had lasted real fucking long. Mentally, I tapped it again, to call up a more detailed record of my health.
[Body: Heavily injured. Bleeding out.
Core: Cracked. Empty. Leaking.
Mind: Hardened. Enduring.]
With a grimace, I pulled up my inventory. I had only one health potion, and it sure as hell wasn't meant for this kind of thing. Maybe it’d at least stop my guts from trying to explore the outside world.
Slowly, with a shaky hand, I popped the cork and led the bottle to the wound. I made sure to sit with my back against a wall, and had the shaft of my spear in my mouth. This was going to be… unpleasant.
In a quick, practiced motion, I poured the potion onto the wound, then wrapped my hands tight around the wood of my companion weapon.
The pain hit me like a truck.
My entire being was set ablaze from one moment to the other. The potion made me very acutely aware of the fact that my stomach acid had spilled out and eaten through a good bit of my flesh. My insides were fucking mangled.
I bit down on the wood as hard as I could, and the only reason it didn’t crack was because of it being bound to me. My hands clenched so hard I think I pushed all blood out of them, my veins bulging and legs spasming. Every fibre of my being was focused on enduring the agony.
The fire of heat and pain ravaged through the wounds. Pulling on my skin as tears leaked from my eyes. My mind was whirring with expletives, the pain so radiant I couldn’t focus on anything else.
And finally, after an eternity, it faded.
I was panting now, my mouth dry again and my entire body feeling weak. My hands were shaky, and I felt pins and needles dance across them. I still couldn’t see, but a cursory tapping with my hands told me the wound on my stomach had… scabbed over. I took a moment of respite, taking deep breaths, and absorbed some Qi to regain my calm.
Noticing that after using my only healing potion, my body was still feeling like I’d been through a meat grinder, I decided to rest for a moment, and as fatigue embraced me, my eyes fell closed. I hardly had the time to wonder if this was a bad idea.
- - -
I awoke with a start, finding myself in perfect darkness. The rapid movement made my body scream, the wound on my stomach protesting and I grimaced again. My mind raced to catch up with things.
Once the delirium of sleep faded, I felt pain gnawing at my thigh. Not from the inside, but outside. With an exercise of will, I slowly felt to the place with my right arm, when I found fur. It was hard bristles, and once I made contact, there was a hiss, then the impact of teeth on my hand.
They pierced my skin to my bone and I stifled a scream, grabbing onto the thing biting me and crushing it in my grip.
Blood splattered across me, but I didn’t care. My breathing was heavy. I tried to get up, but my feet wouldn’t listen. With a grimace, I realised my left leg was broken, hanging on just as uselessly as the respective arm.
I… needed to move. I would not be eaten to death by stupid cave rats, or whatever that thing had been. If I wanted to die to rats, I could’ve been born when the black death was running rampant. So, I forced myself to move.
Flipping over hurt, but I grit my teeth through the pain. Eventually, I laid there, stomach on the floor, right arm extended. Since my left side was useless, I opted for this.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
With my lungs working like bellows, I reached out. My hand found the floor, fingers holding onto the ground, and I pulled. Every scrape and bruise on my body howled in agony, same with the wound through my stomach. I took a stuttering breath from the pain, then extended my hand again.
Clawing my way forward, I moved through the cave. I bet on the ruins I’d seen through the oily haze. Maybe they had something to save my life. I’d have to hope so.
- - -
I- I didn’t know how many days had passed. My life had been a cycle of clawing forward until I passed out, fending off rats trying to eat me, and attempting to get food into my stomach. My core wasn’t refilling, but I couldn’t fix it here. Simply meditating just wouldn’t be enough, and the death Qi might only serve to damage it further.
Every waking moment was filled with agony. My fingers had begun bleeding, scraped open by the stone floor. I couldn’t even see where I was going, but I had to move. The situation was grim, I needed to cling to hope. ‘Rule number six: The mirrors can’t eat you, but despair can.’
Somehow, this one had never seemed as real as now.
- - -
My body was wracked by heat. I was fevering. Damn rats and their diseases. It probably wasn’t helping that there were multiple open wounds on my body. My vision was growing hazier by the day. I could barely feel my legs anymore. And my rations were running out.
With a grunt, I heaved myself forward again. My lungs hurt so much now. I could barely breathe anymore it felt like. Dust coated every bit of my skin, mixed with caked dirt and dried sweat. I didn’t want to know what I smelled like now.
Grimacing, I stretched out my hand again, put it onto the ground and pulled. I slipped halfway through, the blood leaking from my fingers making the ground slippery. I considered just lying still and falling asleep for half a moment. I wanted to, so badly.
Then I reached out, and pulled again.
It was monotonous. There were no changes in the darkness of the cave, no sounds to distract me, and nothing was different. I was reaching the end of my endurance, my mind slipping closer to its breaking point.
And then, my fingers found purchase.
It wasn’t a lot, but when I reached forward once more, the motion almost robotic, my bloodied hand curled around something solid and square. It felt porous, not smooth like the natural stone. It was… a brick?
My mind flickered to attention, whatever fragments of willpower I still had suddenly coalescing into one. A brick. The ruins. I was so close now.
Heaving from the exertion, I pulled. When I was closer, I felt around. The brick was part of a wall, a crumbled one. A structure.
Every muscle on my body was aching in agony, some having begun to atrophy from my lack of eating. But still, I pulled myself up.
With the wall to steady myself against, the cave suddenly didn’t seem so hopeless anymore. I made whatever motes of Qi my core was subsisting off of mine, having them dance across the air for a moment. It made my chest hurt, and I knew the damage to my core was worsening, but I simply needed to see.
For a moment, golden flickers illuminated the room. I saw rubble, and decay, the floor littered with broken pieces of stone and relief. The walls were decorated, or, well, had been decorated once, but my tired mind didn’t care.
There were so many things in the way though. Loose rubble and dregs of stone covered the floor, making my crawl almost entirely impossible. I'd have to walk, if I wanted to make it the last bit.
I grit my teeth, hard, summoning up whatever motes of Qi my cracked core still had. Pain flared in my chest, but I pushed it aside, focusing as much as I could. Dripping with sweat from the exertion, my entire body overheating, I summoned my spear, placing the butt of it under the armpit of my broken arm to use as a walking stick. The blade scraped across the floor in protest, probably growing more dull, but it gave me some stability.
Collecting the dregs of energy still in my body, I took a step, then another.
My legs shook, and my entire body ached in protest, but I stood. Hopped on my broken leg, more like. It hurt, but at the very least I managed to somehow squeeze between the gaps between rocks, shuffling through them and flopping around a bit like a fish on land. It probably looked pathetic, but I didn't care.
I couldn’t see very far into the building, but it was a large chamber. Parts of the ceiling had caved in, but all that came from above was a steady, thin trickle of black grains of sand. They were so full of decay that they fell apart to nothing but wisps of darkness as they struck against the ground.
Shambling through the ruins, I bore with the pain. Either I found something here, or it was my last day on Eden. It was the final lesson my master had imparted on me. ‘Rule number seven: The mirrors can’t eat you, but death can.’
It had always seemed like the most pointless one of the tenets, yet here I was. Staring down the barrel of no monster, no mirror, and no emotion other than death. It was simply a game of fate, now.
I hopped. Stumbled over the rubble and fell, dislodging my broken bones further. Then I got up, and stumbled forward some more.
The buildings melded into each other, doorways far too large for humans. They were engraved with images. Reliefs of battle, and beautiful geometric patterns. Ann would have loved to study them. I truly hoped she was safe.
Clinging to the memories helped me find the resolution to move further. And move I did. Chamber after chamber, room by room, I felt death’s fingers against my throat. But if it wanted me, it would have to take me by itself.
Bellum meant war. I would fight to my last fucking breath.
Except, my last breath would not come that day.
The last chamber I entered into was large. It was also square. The entire end of it, the one I was facing, was a humongous mirror.
Parts of it had broken off over the ages, fragments of glass, some as small as sand, but the one straight in front of me showed my full reflection. Sticky hair, entire body covered with blood and wounds and grime. I looked like I had been dragged through a swamp, then flogged, then put through a grinder.
It made me grimace. I… this was closer to death than I’d imagined.
But there was hope in my chest. Sure, not every mirror was a gateway, that would be silly. But perhaps, if just… If this one was, I might yet live. Slowly, carefully, I stepped forward, reaching out. I stumbled in my carelessness, falling, as shards of glass dug themselves into my knees.
The pain made me groan, but I moved on. My right hand, the one I could move, sticky with blood as it was, remained extended to the furthest reaches. And then it touched the mirror, leaving a crimson handprint on the surface.
And it was inert glass.
…
As my hand touched the smooth surface, staining it, something within me cracked. The mirror didn’t ripple, didn’t become liquidy and envelop me to whisk me back home, it simply remained as it was.
Tears leaked from my face, water which I didn’t know my body still held. My strength faded, as I slumped forward, my hand slowly sliding downward on the glass, leaving a long streak of red. And when my face hit the floor, and the motes of gold around me fizzled out, it was dark again.
Until a radiant screen burned itself into my closed eyes.
[You have touched a lost gateway! Congratulations!]
[In order to restore the extensive damage, the gateway will be fused to you. Please stand by.]
And as the mirror enveloped me, my world went dark.