Chapter 7) Incarnate

The Goblin appeared in the middle of the room, facing the entrance, and was entirely solid instead of the ghost like images of the equipment waiting around for a Fighter to show up in the dungeons, but there. Real. Really real. Like standing there, and breathing.

It wasn't doing much of anything else. Just standing there with its chest heaving up and down with each breath and staring blankly forward.

I circled around it a bit, and it didn't react. So… can I get any more details off it with the starring thing?

“Let’s give it a tryyyyyyy!”

What just…?

“Ahhh!”

What the hell? What happened? "Why am I inside the goblin?"

And why is my voice so guttural sounding?

I could feel again. My skin, the rags I was wearing, the club landing on my foot after I dropped it.

My breath was coming in and out of my mouth and nose…

And my knees could feel the ground as I dropped down and caught myself with my hands before I rolled over onto my side and began to shake as I wept.

I had died.

And now I could feel it. The memories of getting sick, the dizziness, falling to the floor before I blacked out.

The ride in the ambulance, the IV going into my arm, and the oxygen mask over my face.

The look on the face of my niece, her bringing the children in, not knowing it was so I could say goodbye.

Little Al knew. He always was too wise for his years. He stayed a little behind to take my hand and told me he was sorry I was going away.

“Crap…”

I had never liked swearing, but this called for it.

After a while, I stood up and began to walk around the deep dimly lit tunnels under the spooky red sky, and its thin orange clouds you could only see by the flash of the occasional purple lighting. The sheer strangeness of the place brought me back to myself.

“Well, ain’t this unwholesome as all heck.”

The goblin's voice was guttural and hurt my throat just to talk. But I had an opportunity.

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One, the water was in fact five feet deep, which turned out to be a foot over the head of the goblin. But it was fresh water and tasted fine.

The sand was about four inches or so deep, and the goblin was more than capable of picking up the sticks in the fire starter room.

It might even be able to use the fire starter kit, but it wasn’t appearing just because a goblin was walking around.

And, I couldn't see the ghostly image of the kit, the bucket, or any of the stuff in the equipment room.

I also couldn't make the stone grow, vanish, or get any panels to appear. I was cut off from the Dungeon building stuff, but…

Focusing still worked.

[ Water ]

[ Sand ]

[ Strata ]

Even if it wasn’t all that helpful, although the description of the dungeon wall seemed a little interesting.

So now what? How do I stop being a goblin? I guess I could dismiss it like I could the water and other squares, or like the equipment which I hadn't tried. But I didn't have access to the system while I was a goblin.

So how do I get out? “Exit body. Get me out of this thing. End holodeck program?”

Nope.

“Maybe… I can’t die if I’m already dead right.” Oh yeah, I’m dead. Thanks me for reminding me.

I had a seat on my bench, which is too tall for a goblin leaving me with my feet dangling about half a foot off the ground. It was also even less comfortable than I had hoped for a solid stone bench.

“Right, focus. I’m dead, so if I kill this body I should get free of it just like I did when my real body died. Right? I mean I could be trapped inside a dead body until Alice something or other showed up to see why I'm not doing my job."

Of course, dying in this body might send me off somewhere else. I mean I got into it with the Focus thing rather than an option from one of the panels, so it may be an entirely different system than the system that put me in for service to pay off someone else's debt.

I might even just be… gone. Kaput. Dead dead if you will.

"I could just wait, but…" Alice something or other seemed pretty busy, it might be a while before she comes around. Maybe even more than it would take to run ten thousand people through a tutorial dungeon.

“I would get pretty darn bored, and I think waiting would just be putting things off.”

Shoot. Let’s just get it done and over with. “If I had that big old knife I could cut my own throat.”

But without it. I only got two options.

Climb up the twenty foot wall, and kick off of it hard enough to hit the solid part of the floor in between all the sand squares, or dive down to the bottom of the pool and take in a deep breath.

It had been too much of a struggle to really swim, so I had to climb out after splashing around for a bit in between kicks off the bottom of the pool. I think it's because the goblin is like a bodybuilder. All dense muscle so it can't float.

But even with negative buoyancy, I would panic and struggle to get back up to the surface and try to cough up the water unless goblins don't have that instinct. After all, this isn't a real creature, just something made of magic I guess.

But if I fall… it would hurt, and may not kill me. I could end up paralyzed, stuck in one spot unable to move but still feeling all the pain.

For a long, long, time...

Water it is.

Heading over to where I had made part of the wall disappear until I was left with a stone ball, I reached up and pulled it free with a bit of a struggle and tied it around my ankles with the rags that came with the goblin.

I let out a deep breath and stepped off the edge of the pool. Once I was underneath, I inhaled.

The water felt cold in my chest, and I felt oddly… filled?

No panic, just a slight discomfort. And a black fog covered my vision as I breathed the water in and out.

I had to fight to keep myself calm. Closing my eyes helped, and telling myself that It was just like falling asleep.

A moment later I found myself up in the air above a dead goblin lying on the bottom of a pool of water.

"Well. Ain't that something? Also, that’s creepy looking as all heck.”

I headed straight up, pushing my limits for how high I could go, and trying to look anywhere but the open topped place down below me.

I was all calm once more, in an abstract kind of way. I guess I was still feeling some existential horror, but as if it was at a distance.

Like that other open topped structure a several thousand feet off at an angle from my own.

“Hey. Looks like I’m not alone after all.”

Of course, I got no way of getting over there, but maybe…

“Behold the power of Focus.”

[ Mage Tutorial Dungeon: Defunct ]

Huh. "Guess they finished up their ten thousand."