Chapter 2 - No Rest for The Dead
Subject has perished. CONFIRMED
First death of The Integration. CONFIRMED
Acting upon Paragraph Three, Section B, 17th Codex of Rules. CONFIRMED
Authority over _____________. DENIED
ERROR!
Subject has perished before entering The Tutorial. CONFIRMED
Producing Tutorial Scenario. CONFIRMED
Connection to First Plane Of Existence. DENIED.
ERROR!
Subject has perished before entering The Tutorial. CONFIRMED
Producing Tutorial Scenario. CONFIRMED
Connection to Second Plane Of Existence. DENIED.
ERROR!
Subject has perished before entering The Tutorial. CONFIRMED
Producing Tutorial Scenario. CONFIRMED
Connection to Third Plane Of Existence. DENIED
ERROR!
Subject has perished before entering The Tutorial. CONFIRMED
Producing Tutorial Scenario. CONFIRMED
Connection to In-Between. CONFIRMED
Final Calibrations Complete. CONFIRMED
SUCCESS!
Welcome to The Universal System.
Dominic Jones, Son of Theodor Jones.
May you develop successfully.
The sharp azure light seared Dominic’s retinas even before he opened his eyes. The messages pulsed inside their blue boxes, sending dizzying waves of understanding into his brain – until he could no longer ignore them and begged the light to cease.
It did as commanded. Azure templates disappeared from his sight and in return, the flood of memories they held was unleashed.
Armstrong’s request early in the morning.
Entering Elysium for the first time.
Meeting Imani.
Teaching her.
Falling.
Death.
His old body spasmed against his control, trying to avoid the sensation of his weary flesh being stabbed by the edge of steps that simply were not there anymore. And that’s, oddly, the first thing Dominic noticed.
He wasn’t falling.
His eyes opened at the sudden realization, what Dominic met was the light of a sun painted with the wrong color. A bulging star of pure, scarlet rays contained by a ring of darkness surrounded by a gray sky. The long stare he gave at the light made his eyes ache and pulse in hazy pain, half blocked by the remaining spots the blue screen left in its wake.
So he rolled over, letting the afterimages of the wrong sun fade from his eyes while his body felt the grass underneath it, so close to his skin that Dominic wondered if he had returned to one of the hippie communities and had gotten high on mushroom tea.
The grass was spiky and wet as if still covered in morning dew – though the wrong sun was so high in the sky Dominic was certain it was close to noon.
Close to noon? His confused mind backtracked at the inference. Dominic had finished planning with Imani at about 5 pm. It was supposed to be almost dark now. Then… where was he?
The question made his eyes open wide – and with no glaring light to stop him – Dominic faced a new reality.
A mix of red grass covered in a scarlet liquid – the strands longer and pointier than he remembered – and bushes with white flowers and thorns in the place of leaves laid around him, forming the edge of a clearing. Between each, in a loose configuration, were trees – giant and thick monoliths of black wood and gray leaves that rose so high into the wrong sky that Dominic had to bend his neck to find the canopy.
Some of them had the apparent misfortune of growing beside one of the flower bushes, and the thorns coiled around the trunks like a snake around its prey. Bone white flowers grew all over those trees, but they had none of the gray leaves.
And in front of him, between the odd vegetation and down into the slope Dominic seemed to be on, was a road.
With the color of burnt clay, the road sported that brownish-red hue he had learned to associate with the material – even if, for some reason, the road seemed a lot more rugged than it should be.
In fact, everything was a little blurry from beyond a set distance, and that’s what made him realize he had no glasses on.
Dominic stopped. Should he be concerned about that? In front of the unknown and the unthinkable?
No.
Yes.
Maybe.
His mind revolted against itself and only settled after a quick slap to the cheek. It made his ears ring, but it was enough to avoid the sudden spiraling. He had, first and foremost, to better understand things.
And Dominic wouldn’t be able to do that if he couldn’t see things.
Proper mindset achieved, the elderly man ignored the alien world around him with the sheer stubbornness of a weary soul.
For now, his hands began to touch the inner pockets of the jacket that he – thankfully – still wore, and it didn’t take long to wiggle his fingers inside the right pocket and find the slim steel frame of his glasses. He had stored them after finishing talking with Imani. Putting them in place, the small lenses made the world around him a little more focused.
Shapes lost their blurriness in favor of harder edges, and Dominic noticed that the flowers around him were actually made of hundreds upon hundreds of small petals – while their stem and center were black as night.
Freaky, but he filed that for later. Along with everything else he had been seeing.
Glasses in place, he rose from the floor and promptly ignored the scuttling shadows at the edge of his sight. They were not of his concern until he found his cane – which was his next, sudden mission – and found it sprawled not too far from him, a measly two meters.
Yet, it was difficult to even walk that much. Two steps were enough to make his back and knees begin to pulse, and it wasn’t until he managed to support himself on the trustworthy wood companion he had that Dominic found the energy to relax on his feet.
The support helped, but it wasn’t enough. So he sat on the ground, feeling the red grass bend underneath his backside, and only worried about the stains the liquid covering them would leave on his suit. Maybe he’ll even have to throw it away after all this. God knows he had done the same already after getting shot.
Blood had an awful way of staining things.
Anyway, with the cane set across his lap, it was well enough time for him to freak out.
In silence, the elder sat with crossed legs among the alien landscape and felt his mind revolt. All by itself, the doubt he felt about reality and the certainty that he was going bloody insane was enough to make him sweat.
Dominic was scared. And he couldn’t tell if it was of the possibility everything was real or… well, that he suddenly developed a mental illness. All things considered, none of his parents suffered from any kind of dementia before they passed away, so he’d be the first in the family.
Lucky he.
Nevertheless, fighting against the sudden dissociation and the building panic, Dominic took a deep breath. Trying to ground himself into reality. The way his fingers drummed over his wooden cane was good enough to set a rhythm to his breathing, regulating the inhaling and exhaling of this – alien and probably filled with pathogens – atmosphere.
No. Stop it. That way lies panic. Dominic backtracked and remade his thought, replacing the anxiety-inducing adjectives with other, easier for his mind to digest, ones. Like calling the air thick – similar to how it got before a storm – or humid.
Not alien. Not filled with unknown bacteria. Not damned dangerous to his lungs.
He had breathed in worse things. Dominic knew that. Like… like colored smoke in a Turkish bar years ago – or, that rotten cheese filled with maggots that ended up being outlawed.
Now, those things were even painful. This air he was breathing right now? It was soothing even. Riddled with petrichor of an intensity he had only found in the most rural of areas. There were faint twinges of sweat and grime in the air, but that was probably from him.
A shower was a new and pressing necessity. Dominic would have to remember that. If there was water around. There probably was… right?
Possible future dehydration aside, Dominic felt ready enough to face the truth. So slowly, ever so slowly, like a child building courage to see a horror movie, he opened one eye…
… And everything was the same. Red grass, white flowers, black trees, gray sky, all the complete package.
It was awful enough to send shivers down his spine, but Dominic steeled himself – though not too much or his body would flare in pain – and thought things over.
First and foremost, he was pretty sure he had died. Which was an odd certainty to have, because he did not feel dead right now. And a touch on his own arms later, Dominic was fairly certain there was nothing incorporeal about his state.
So he died. But he didn’t. Which is freaky, but could’ve been just an odd memory.
What else? There had been a blue… thing around his head before he fell down the stairs. He remembered that, if not the exact words it showed.
And then the fall, a snap and he was here. Lovely.
But there was something else. The blue light had appeared after the fall as well. Before Dominic opened his eyes to see the grim landscape. And he had begged it to leave his sight.
“Excuse me? Hello? Could you please return? Hm… blue box?”
The last question seemed to be close enough because the same odd prompt showed up with a startling ping! in his ears. Dominic jumped high into the air, before rubbing his backside and noticing that it had worked. There they were!
And there were many of them.
The first one was an odd… log? Was that the word? Like a computer’s data log, in which there were several errors and commands and sudden success.
Something programmers would enjoy, most likely. Still, they were easy to read, if not so quick to understand.
The first one, for example.
Subject has perished. CONFIRMED
First death of The Integration. CONFIRMED
Acting upon Paragraph Three, Section B, 17th Codex of Rules. CONFIRMED
Authority over_____________. DENIED
ERROR!
Well, that settled it. Dominic giggled while imagining himself receiving a golden medal for both “Dementia” and “Death”. A cursed Olympics, perhaps?
He slapped his cheek again, lightly this time. Focus was a pressing need and his thoughts were not helping. Still, they told the truth – if the blue box was to be believed at least.
Dominic had died.
Then something happened according to a code of law he didn’t know and someone tried to give him “Authority over _____________.”
Which couldn’t possibly be a good thing.
Anyways, onto the next box. Instinctively, Dominic moved a finger away and the first one shrunk until vanishing. Then came the next one.
Subject has perished before entering The Tutorial. CONFIRMED
Producing Tutorial Scenario. CONFIRMED
Connection to First Plane Of Existence. DENIED.
ERROR!
Okay. Alright. That elucidated a little more. Dominic rubbed his chin while reading the colorful words, eyes narrowed as he tried to comprehend their meaning. The humming sound he made was just to complement the scene.
Nevertheless, the box told him he had died before something called “The Tutorial”, which, if he was correct, would be like a test phase of things? To see if they learned new things or the rules?
Maybe like a boot camp to teach skills.
Admitting the hypothesis, Dominic looked at the next lines and began to doubt a little. Not the second one, though. He could well admit – through some mental gymnastics – that something had made a “Tutorial Scenario” for him. Which was alright and, if he was being honest, quite thoughtful of them.
The problem however was the last line. Mostly because the First Plane of Existence sounded like something Dominic pretty much wanted to be connected to, and the fact he wasn’t didn’t make sense.
Because he was pretty sure he existed.
He gulped, shaky breaths leaving his body before steeling himself once more.
Onto the next one.
Subject has perished before entering The Tutorial. CONFIRMED
Producing Tutorial Scenario. CONFIRMED
Connection to Second Plane Of Existence. DENIED.
ERROR!
Well, well, well. Dominic huffed at the message. Someone was denying him entry, it seems. Which was quite rude because he belonged in existence. It felt like someone was locking him out of his own house… or his own universe.
Anyway, apparently there was a Second Plane of Existence. Good to know, but useless. Next.
Subject has perished before entering The Tutorial. CONFIRMED
Producing Tutorial Scenario. CONFIRMED
Connection to Third Plane Of Existence. DENIED
ERROR!
Dominic’s hums became louder as he wondered about the number of universes – or Existences if they can actually be used interchangeably – out there. Which was a line of questioning he had never thought of before.
Granted, he tried to shy away from existential topics, but it was still funny to him that although he could believe in aliens, multiverses were suddenly too much. Maybe he was going insane.
The nervous energy with which he had been reading the prompts faded a little at the sudden notion. Dominic slowed and tried to shake away what he could of his exasperated disbelief. This was important. Somehow.
He couldn’t fully understand it, but there was a… feeling with every eerie blue box, waning and flaring every time they pulsed. A siren’s call – charming him into looking.
Maybe there was nothing, and this was all his addled mind being fascinated with the new events it couldn’t comprehend.
It didn’t matter. Dominic gave in.
Subject has perished before entering The Tutorial. CONFIRMED
Producing Tutorial Scenario. CONFIRMED
Connection to In-Between. CONFIRMED
Final Calibrations Complete. CONFIRMED
SUCCESS!
Dominic took a deep breath. In. Hold. Out. The air was thick and almost made him choke on its density, but it filled his lungs so completely that the elder couldn’t help but do it again
In. Hold. Out.
It served well in centering him before the incredulity turned him into a reckless mess. Silently, he re-read the words, admitting them into his brain.
The first two lines remained the same, but the last two showed him a new story. Instead of being connected to one of the planes of existence, something had sent him to the In-Between – whatever that means.
The odd thing, however, was that Dominic was still inside the “Tutorial Scenario”. Nothing had said otherwise at least. Does that mean the tutorial is currently ongoing? Or, maybe, if he had access to the First Plane of Existence, would it happen on Earth?
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
And that came around to the most primordial question of them: What was going on?
The pulsing blue box refused to answer, which was fine on their part, if a little annoying. Still, Dominic waved the prompt away and saw nothing fill his sight this time.
“All finished? Anything more I should see?”
And there it was. That sudden ping! in his brain that alerted the blue box had appeared. Dominic disliked it quite a lot.
“First and foremost, please stop with the notification sound. I can barely stand my cell phone doing the same. Then, could you please move yourself so as not to be in the center of my sight? Like… in the corner? Ah, you’re already doing it. Thank you, my dear.”
The blue box floating on his retina was shoved to the side – fixing itself on the right side of his vision – and allowing for it to be read as long as Dominic focused on it. And it had new things written on it.
A lot of new things.
Welcome to The Universal System.
Dominic Jones, Son of Theodor Jones.
May you develop successfully.
Status
Name
Dominic Emilio Jones
Titles
Tutorial Participant
Race
Ghost
Type
Undead
Primary Class
–
Secondary Class
LOCKED
Tertiary Class
LOCKED
Skills
–
Grimoire
–
Paths
Path of The Elder (0/3)
Path of The Manager (0/5)
Path of The Novice (1/3)
Path of The Ghost (1/4)
Path of The Tutorial (0/4)
Dominic looked at the sudden influx of information and felt really, really tempted to laugh. Because this? He knew this. He might be old, but so were many tabletop RPGs. And he might have played a few during his thirties. Or forties. Maybe a while longer.
This was a game screen. A character profile. That’s why the blue boxes felt so familiar.
It was with a mix of fear and fascination that Dominic delved deeper into it, asking aloud for the – now named System – to show more details on things. What he got as an answer was so little it felt bittersweet.
Because nothing worked. Trying to click on the Skills and the Grimoire gave him nothing – and even after asking the System he received only silence.
Dominic tried one by one after that. His Name gave him nothing as well, which, in retrospect, made perfect sense – Dominic believed he would actually feel more disturbed if the System told him some hidden truth about his name.
Nevertheless, the next three sections were the ones to actually respond to his prodding.
Title - Tutorial Participant
As an individual birthed in a newly Integrated world, you have been forcefully transported into the System’s Tutorial.
Grants full translation to all necessary languages while within the Tutorial.
Race - Ghost
Common creatures spawned after the demise of sentient beings, ghosts are the most basic of undead races to retain their older personalities. With a glaring weakness against salt and flowing water, these simple specters can do little more than behave badly against strangers.
Vulnerabilities: Salt, Flowing Water, Holy Magic, Light Magic, Life Magic, Exorcisms.
Affinities: Death, Curses, Fear.
Type - Undead
Products of a coalescence of Dark or Death Magic, the Undead are all of the creatures birthed through the death of another without achieving proper life. Beware of rogue [Necromancers] trying to control you and [Priests] trying to destroy you.
Okay. This might be a little bad.
Not the Title, of course. Dominic allowed some of the building tension on his body to fade as the System solved a problem he hadn’t acknowledged yet. Much like what he had done for Imani.
If he were to meet… whatever lived in this place, and found himself unable to even speak the language? Well, Dominic knew enough to know how most would treat an alien that found themselves on his doorstep while speaking utter gibberish. And it didn’t involve hugs and coffee breaks.
Besides possibly being a subject to the violence of alien races, the next two prompts didn’t nearly affect him as much as the first one. Being no longer Human felt, somehow, very unimportant to Dominic. After all, it’s not like something changed on his body – in fact, everything was still the same.
Being an Undead? Alright. A little freaky, but since he wasn’t a Zombie then there was no worry of rotting, at least. Maybe he could be like… Beetlejuice or Casper.
Casper would be nice.
The vulnerabilities though… they worried him. Especially because not all of them were explicit. Granted, Holy, Life, and Light Magic felt fitting to be vulnerable against – not that Dominic had any idea where exactly he would find such things.
Are there mages on Earth now? Were there mages on Earth before this… System? No, that’s – unlikely. Dominic had traveled enough to participate in many esoteric rituals, which were quite a personal interest of his, and besides a few closed and ancient practices, real magic was… extremely rare in his point of view.
Sadly.
Yet, it was the other details that made him frown. Exorcism made sense, he could get behind that. [Priests] as well. [Necromancers] though? Dominic wasn’t really certain he even knew what the word meant.
Well, not entirely at least. Dominic had read enough of H.P. Lovecraft – the racist prick – to know that Necro meant death. Which… did not bode well.
Still, the description inferred that these [Necromancers] could control the Undead. And that possibility was enough to make Dominic want to stay very far away from them.
As an older man, Dominic prized his independence very much. It was quite the badge of honor in his social circle to be so active at his age. And one that he wore with great pride.
After that, however, came the really weird vulnerabilities. Salt? Flowing Water? Wasn’t that supposed to only work for vampires?
And how would someone kill him with a fistful of salt? What made salt bad for him? Does that mean unsalted food forever? Does that mean no showers? No going to the beach?
That would be absolutely, completely unforgivable. How would Dominic ever be himself if he could never again enjoy the salty breeze of the sea and have half a dozen piña coladas as he sunbathes? It was, like, a fifth of his personality.
At the very least, a fifth of his year!
The old man sighed, almost defeated, before defiantly turning his stare to the blue box through his steel-rimmed glasses – a surge of energy going through his limbs. He would find a way. He must. Nothing, not even whatever this system was, would stop him from enjoying a nice sunset at the beach.
With the vigor of someone half his age, Dominic continued his prodding at the Status Screen.
The Class section gave him nothing. The Grimoire was utterly empty and the Skill section was incorrectly vacant. In fact, he would make a formal complaint about that last part if the System had an ombudsman.
Dominic had skills! He was an amazing cook, a good enough masseur, and an even better boss and entrepreneur. Those things took skill to do, and when you were doing them for as long as he did, you got a lot of compliments on them.
Incorrect assessments aside – despite how much Dominic disliked this System’s organization and unexplained categories – it was the last session that granted him something new to learn.
As he asked the blue box to open the Paths, the System responded with five new boxes, neatly arranged over each other like a hand of cards.
Plucking the first one, Dominic stared at the message.
Path of The Manager
Make a Deal (0/1)
Engage in a Successful Trade (0/1)
Perform a Sell at a Profit (0/1)
Shake Hands (0/3)
Have a Subordinate (0/1)
How… candid.
So this was a Path? Dominic would better compare them to tasks than something as broad as a path, but that mattered little.
What made his excitement soar as he better thought of the possibilities, however, was the fact these were actual, tangible tasks. He wouldn’t have to despair over what to do in this foreign land – this gave him proper grounding, an objective, something to fight towards.
For a moment, he relaxed. This… Dominic could work with this.
In a hurry, he pulled up the other Paths.
Path of The Novice
Open the Status Window (1/1)
Obtain your First Class (0/1)
Complete your First Path (0/1)
Path of The Elder
Tell a Personal Story (0/1)
Reprimand the Youth (0/1)
Gossip with an Elder (0/1)
Path of The Ghost
Die (1/1)
Scare a Living Being (0/3)
Possess an Object (0/1)
Possess a Sentient Creature (0/2)
Path of The Tutorial
Stop the Cult of Eternal Dark (0/1)
Learn the Truth About the Imps (0/1)
Eliminate the Queen of Bones (0/1)
Ah. Dominic smiled with all of his – intact and original, thank you very much – white teeth. He had forgotten how good it felt to have a goal.
***
The aftermath of his long delve into the System was particularly simple. There was, much to his disappointment, nothing around for Dominic to explore beyond the gruesome façade of red and black and white. Not even the scuttling shapes he had previously ignored dared to approach him.
Which was concerning on its own. Because there was nothing else beyond those curious shadows. In fact, after taking a moment to gather his breath while resting against one of the trees, Dominic realized that this entire field was silent.
No insects buzzed. No frogs croaked. There wasn’t even a single bird in the sky.
Were it not for the plants around him, Dominic could very well consider the entire area around him dead. And that did not bode well for him.
He had little experience with environmental disasters, despite his long life, but from what he remembered, nothing he had ever seen served as an adequate comparison to the utter emptiness of the region.
Think about it. If there had been some kind of large-scale disaster, such as a sudden epidemic that only affected animals, there should have been bodies around. And if there were bodies – and coupled with the humid climate – at least a few buzzing insects.
But no. There was no rot in this place. It was, in fact, awfully clean in a way that would probably disturb even the most germophobic minds. And that sent shivers down Dominic’s spine.
Because it wasn’t unnatural in the way that the System was. He could understand the artificiality of it. There was a frame of reference with all the blue boxes and oddly technological language.
This… this was unnatural in a way that nightmares were. Disturbing due to the very impossibility of it existing and yet being conjured by one’s sleepy mind.
Dominic tried to distance himself from the silence and the wrongness of the place by looking up, but the sky gave no respite. And without the protection of surprise, he saw through the gray leaves of the canopy above, and there was only more gray.
An entire sky worth of the color. And not the dark shade of storms or the light-silverish gray you could sometimes find in someone’s eyes. No, this was the color of old death, of rigid bodies, of corpses getting ready to putrefy.
All the while infected by that sun that stood like an open wound. Red as blood and wearing a chain in its middle that emanated its dark, dark light.
Dominic looked back to the ground, tears of blood dripping from his eyes with none of the pain and sweating profusely as the eldritch images faded from his sight. One ragged breath after the other and the elder knew looking at the sky for too long wasn’t something he should do.
Stick to the ground. That was the lesson here. And Dominic wasn’t willing to repeat it.
So he continued on his path, making his way through the slope and approaching the road. Dominic walked slowly – the pain on his knees and back making it hard to continue – and yet his pace was constant, never too fast and never stopping, propelled by half fear and half insane curiosity while being held back by an aching body.
And his passage went unimpeded. By the time he found flat ground again, Dominic was a measly few meters away from the side of the road, and the details of the – quite human-like – construction made him raise an eyebrow.
First, because the road was made of bricks.
As rust-colored as he had seen from the top of the hill he woke up on, but still a lot cleaner than one would expect from an open construction. There were no divots made with the friction of wheels or feet, nor was there any indication that the road was anything but a few weeks old.
It was pristine. And after Dominic used the tip of his cane to touch one of the rugged bricks, he could tell that not even dust accumulated on top of it. So he chose not to walk upon it. For safety reasons.
And because this was, once again, bursting what he was taking to call the freaky scale.
Walking parallel to the road, Dominic was forced to slow his pace down. Mostly because the black trees seemed to shy away from the construction, forming an open area all around it. But he persevered, and after walking another couple dozen of meters, Dominic found something.
On a perfect line of rugged bricks, going from one side of the road to the other, were inscriptions.
Etched onto the brownish-red bricks, the letters – if they were letters – made almost no sense to Dominic’s eyes. Until they did.
Propriety of his Dark Eminence, High Lord Silivan Noir. Forever in shadows will he reign.
… Alright, then. Not aliens. Just goths.
Dominic couldn’t tell if it was better or worse.
The inscriptions gave nothing else for him to read – besides the obvious and oddly french surname of “His Dark Eminence” – but with some effort of his squinting eyes, Dominic could tell that the message repeated itself in every single brick of the line.
Sighing at the uselessness of his first clue, the old man continued his walk, traveling on slow steps as the road began to curve to the east.
And he walked.
And walked.
And walked.
By the time he had counted the twentieth line of inscriptions on the bricks, Dominic saw ongoing destruction.
Quickly ducking – and regretting almost immediately as his spine pulsed in pain – Dominic was able to luckily dodge the stray mass of red flames traveling through the air. The velocity of the fire cutting the atmosphere made the air scream at its passage.
As fear settled in, a block of ice on the bottom of his guts, Dominic saw the perpetrators. They were of two types – and on the side opposite to his was… a dragon.
He hated it already. Especially because there was no other comparison he could make. The best description Dominic could probably give would be a draconic humanoid, with dull yellow scales and wearing a ragged robe. No, not ragged, rotten – as if eaten by clothes moths.
The dark material gleamed with unholy light, and from one of the claws he could see coming out of the sleeves, Dominic recognized smoke and flames. Yellow and sickly, the fire stank like rotten eggs, and he could feel its foul smell even from this distance.
The other claw held a crystal – a sharp thing that looked almost organic, all jagged edges and pulsing like a heart as it shed its dark light – similar to the black shine from part of the sun. And didn’t that notion send shivers down his spine?
On his side of the road, fallen among the wreckage of broken bricks or standing with barely concealed pain, were other creatures. These were chubby, skin-covered monsters, no taller than a pre-teen.
A pair of horns grew from their foreheads, small and harmless like a baby goat’s, and their hips were adorned with a pair of bat wings that should have been too tiny to possibly carry them anywhere, making for the glaring details of their hellish visage.
Their face was another demonic construction. Huge black eyes stared in fright at their enemy, many covering the pig’s snout they had in place of their noses with their hand while the others waved harmless-looking sticks at the dragon.
Some, the bravest ones, snarled at their enemy – revealing a set of yellowish teeth adorned with protuberant boar-like tusks – and waved what at first glance seemed to be metal weapons.
Trying to flee towards the tree line and hoping he was inconspicuous while doing it, Dominic hid behind the first black tree he found. And this time, he saw what the little creatures were holding.
Work instruments. Hoes, farming scythes, a pair of scissors, shovels… the luckier ones had axes and kitchen knives – one of them even bearing a cleaver. Few were the ones holding anything that would be found on a war front, only small groups holding bows and arrows or sharp swords that should have forever stayed within a medieval museum.
But even these proved themselves useless when facing their scaly enemy.
A group of five tried to go around the creature, vying for some kind of opportunity to attack while the dragon conjured more and more flames. Their enemy, however, wasn’t so distracted in their fire not to notice the approach – and with a flick of their fingers, a small burst of yellow fire lashed against the creatures.
And Dominic knew where he was. A place most human religions had their own version of, but he – growing up Christian – knew it by only one name.
Hell.
The fire touched the chubby monsters and the flesh peeled off their bones. The luckier ones died within instants, shrieking as the flames rotted their lungs and throat and turned their blood into pus.
The others, not in the central line of fire, suffered. Where fire met skin pustules grew, popping with sickly sounds as blood and pus burst from the open wounds. Their pink skin turned yellow under the assault, their eyes milky as the smoke putrefied their corneas and their horns fell to the ground.
And the fire expanded. Spreading through the small group until every breath they took in turned their organs into a pulp and all they could do was scream.
Dominic trembled so hard he worried his heart would give in. Fear rooted him in place, and he turned his head away from the sight, closing his eyes tightly until they ached – all the while wishing this would all go away.
Paths? Grimoires? The novelty of the blue boxes? None of that mattered when he knew death lived on the other side of the road, encased in dull, yellowish scales.
And the assault seemed to last an eternity. The small creature’s shrieks went on and on as more of them felt the fire lick their skin and choked as blood filled their lungs. Many grew blind as the smoke wafted towards their faces, rotting their senses.
And they died. One by one.
While Dominic feared.
The screams, fortunately, came to an end. And with the last choked gurgle, Dominic heard enough silence to open his eyes. And when looking over, it was a massacre.
The dragon stood, pride wafting from his body in sulphuric waves as he showed his fangs at the dead. A smile Dominic knew belonged to only the most sadist of living beings. And it was ingrained in his memory now.
Yet… the creature saw him not. And as he called back the still burning flames – the fire returning in sickly clumps, traveling through the air like low-density tumors – the dragon allowed them to spin around him in a maelstrom, until they vanished.
And that… that monster was no more.
Slowly, ever so slowly, Dominic peeled his sweaty back from the tree trunk, shaking so badly his cane had difficulty finding a grip on the floor. Only when the knuckles around the trusty wood turned white with strength, did Dominic feel secure enough to try and take a step forward.
It was a mistake.
The fear had turned his legs into jelly and his face met the scarlet grass in a mess of flailing limbs. The fall was painful enough to take his breath away from him, his knees pulsing while his cane rolled away. The shaking never stopped.
Thankfully, his glasses got only crooked at the impact, even if they were now stained with that red liquid that seemed to drizzle from the blades of grass. Defeated and in pain, Dominic turned his chest to the sky and almost forgot to close his eyes.
But he did. And the darkness of closed eyelids gave him enough respite to breathe.
With a huff, the elder tried to rise, but was met with no success. His arms faltered when trying to propel himself upwards and his knees burst in so much pain that Domenic saw stars.
He fell. Again. Cheek meeting grass and taking deep, ragged breaths as he noticed how exhausted he was. The long walk, coupled with the sudden tension, made his heart beat loudly against his eardrums.
But he had to rise. He was the witness of a crime now. Maybe… maybe he could make a statement to someone.
Maybe someone was still alive.
Dominic didn’t try to rise again, not without support, so he crawled over the wet grass like a worm – pushing his body more than a man of his age ever should – and only when he felt the touch of that smooth wood on his fingers did he exhale.
He tried, slowly, to use his hands and legs and push himself upwards, his cane as a trusty support at all times.
Dominic failed. Twice.
And yet, after a push and a barely contained scream for his efforts, the elder rose enough to put his feet under his body. His hands shook with the effort still, and sweat had glued his white hair to his forehead, but he was up.
He had won against fear.
Leaning heavily against his cane, he took a small step forward and felt his knees almost buckle before they steadied. Another step, another victory. And while battling the growing exhaustion, Dominic walked enough to approach the site.
Not too closely. His confusion and anxiety waned enough for him to know that the site of their death could still be… affected by whatever that fire had brought.
That and – he feared there was no one to save at the center of the massacre.
All that was left of those most affected were bones and puddles of liquefied flesh. The edges of the final destruction were riddled with bodies not so destroyed, but still dead – their milky eyes staring at the forbidden sky and seeing nothing in their demise.
Dominic began to walk around the destruction, circumventing the dead as the sight burned itself against his retinas. Somehow, he knew he’d dream about this for a long time still…
…And then a gurgle. A whimper. Far enough from the destruction and yet so loud against the silence of this hellish place that it might as well have been a gunshot.
Dominic turned to the line of trees and there it was. Far from the destruction. A deserter. A survivor.
As fast as his limping gait allowed him to, Dominic approached. And he was already almost dissociating when he saw the gore.
One of those small creatures had tried to flee, but not before a stray flame caught them. Most of his left arm and wing had already turned into mush, but without the sick fire to propel the disease forward, the infection was taking a slow but steady advance.
The demon opened his eyes at a flare of pain, and one of them was no longer of the black color Dominic had seen on the others. Half blind, it turned to him, and under the tusks and snout… the voice was child-like. Boyish.
“Please…”
The boy choked on the rest of his words, eyes unfocused as he supplicated for something none so young should ask for. Oh, how Dominic hated it.
It would be so much easier to distance himself as the witness to the purge of monsters. But this? This fitted all the criteria of the job he had been doing for twenty-odd years. Even if the venue was not the same.
Protect the youth.
Stop the pain.
Bring hope.
The elder looked around and his eyes firmed. A stony stare turned to the child in demon flesh and nodded, silently, in respect to his wishes. He looked around and… there it was.
The kid was one of the unlucky ones bearing a work tool. A brave child fighting in a battle he should have never witnessed. Dominic could almost see the story unfolding.
A call to arms echoing through a community of small, chubby demons.
A child, the son of nothing more than a lumberjack, stealing his father’s axe and hiding behind the throng of armed bodies.
Then the battle, where a soldier tested his bravery against the certainty of death and found it faltering.
And pain, lashing and growing as yellow flames spread through parts of his body, maiming him forever. A death sentence clad in disease and smoke.
A man, light brown and foreign, holding a cane and promising to fulfill one last, merciful request.
Then a blow as his father's axe missed the boy’s neck and cut his left arm from his shoulder. Then another, and his wing was no more.
And then suffering, echoing in his screams as the man attempted to save his life.
By the time it was over, Dominic wept.