Chapter 2:  Waking up

I was in pain.  That was the first sensation I had when I woke up.  Although the term woke up might not be entirely accurate as I didn't know if it was possible to sleep standing up or not.  Regardless that was what the closest comparison I could make for the way I felt.  

It was odd, I knew I was in pain but it was almost a detached feeling with no direct source.  Sure my body felt sore and my head was pounding but I can ignore physical pain fairly easily so that wasn't the problem.  The problem was that it felt that there was a jagged hole in my very being and I had no idea how it got there.  It made me uncomfortable.

I decided to ignore it betting on the chance that the sensation would go away if I ignored it long enough, or I'd get used to it so it wouldn't matter anymore.  Bringing myself out of my thoughts I took stalk of the situation.  The room I was in was covered in blood, from the floor to the walls to the ceiling to the shattered debris of the former furniture.  The wood floor underneath me also supported a large number of cracks in circle around where I stood.

Confusion.  That was the overriding feeling I had currently.  I remember coming into the house but it had not looked like this when I did, and when I tried to recall what might have happened my mind turned up empty.   Taking my gaze off the floor I give myself a quick visual inspection.  Nothing was out of place; I looked exactly the same as when I had first entered the home.

This surprised me as I remember there not being nearly this much blood in the room when I first arrived and it didn't make sense that whatever caused the room to be painted in blood spared me.  I was still musing over that thought when I noticed movement out of the corner of my eye.  Reacting on instinct I drew an arrow from my quiver and readied my bow, not the best choice in a confined environment but better than wasting time to drop it and ready something else.

Looking around the room I didn't see anything, which put me on edge.  I wasn't sure why I was in this home anymore but I figured I had a reason so I made the decision to scout out the rest of the building and make sure there were no more surprises.  The search was relatively short as the house only had one floor but I kept seeing something move around the edge of my vision and it was wearing down my nerves.  After making a full sweep of the house I returned to the living room where I had first entered the house.

As soon as I exited the hallway I finally saw what had been ghosting around the edge of my vision.  Luckily for her I strangely had no impulse to kill her for some odd reason.  She gave me a strange feeling; like I had met her before and the curiosity that feeling brought the only reason why I didn't immediately threaten her.  She was a girl, roughly four or five year younger than me so likely still in high-school,  with the same black hair as me and coming to within a few inches of my full height, which was surprising enough by itself for a girl.

The most bizarre thing though was that she was standing in the middle of the lumps of flesh that I presumed the wall decorations came from.  Despite obviously having to walk through the blood soaked room her clothes didn't have a single blood stain on them.  In addition she was holding up on of the crude knives I've seen the goblins carry with them.  I couldn't see her face, as her back was turned towards me, but she gave the impression that she was staring at it intently.

I ease up on my bow and put it over my shoulder as I had the feeling she wouldn't pose a threat to me.  Walking out of the hallway I had been observing her from I call out to her.

"Excuse me, what are you doing in here? And why are you so fixated on that knife?"

I assume she heard me as she started to slowly turn around.  What I saw was odd; if I had been normal it might have disturbing or even horrifying.  Her eyes were dead and the front of her clothes appeared to have been ripped off.  Judging from the amount of wounds in addition to the blood covering her it appeared as if she had been raped and tortured to death.  Her face was what really gave me pause though.  It looked familiar and the painful feeling that still hadn't left me grew in intensity when I saw it.

It only got worse when I saw for some reason she started crying.  Before I could question her she gives a rough whisper, like someone choking back unimaginable pain or suffering.  

"Why?"

That was all she said before she disappeared leaving the knife to clatter onto the bloody floor.  I was frozen by the odd scene that had happened before me.  I had never believed in ghosts before, as far as I could remember anyways, but that seemed like a decent explanation.  Besides if goblins were now real ghosts could be to right?  Of course there was another option and that was that I had hallucinated the whole thing.  I didn't through the idea out since I had no idea how to disprove either explanation but I thought ghost was more likely as while the girl seemed familiar I didn't have any memory of her.

I decided to think about it later but my curiosity was still peeked so I decided to see what was so interesting about that particular knife.  Walking through the muck was annoying as my boots kept sticking to the floor but I reached the knife without incident.  A quick visual inspection revealed it to be an almost identical copy to the one I looted from my first goblin kill.  Deciding to get a closer look I picked it up, bad decision.

The first thing I did was throw up, not from any of the images or information that popped into my head but simply from the shear amount of it.  I don't know why but as soon as I touched it I got an entire overview of the knives existence, from its creation to its last and final use.  At some point I had fallen to my knees, which was annoying as I landed in a pile flesh of what was once the previous owner of this knife.  At least I had a better idea of who that girl was though.

I "saw" everything that this knife did, including the mutilation of aforementioned ghost or hallucination.  The images made part of me uncomfortable for some reason while another was writing down notes for future reference on technique.  It was an odd mix of sensations but the feeling quickly passed, although the headache from the flood of information stayed.

The first thought that came to my mind was to be very careful about doing that again.  The second was that I had no idea if it would happen again or not.  If it would I would need to figure out sooner rather than later if it's an always active thing or if I can figure out a way to turn it off.  Deciding to do a quick test I got up and grabbed one of the knives in my boots.  I figured the knife would have much information to give as it had been in a display case until recently so it was likely fairly new.

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Now that I was expecting it I felt a strange sensation, like something form the weapon was reaching out to cling onto me.  It was a very faint sensation but once I felt it a flood of information once more enter my mind.  This time, whether it was because I was prepared, it had a small amount of information or simply because I had already thrown up I managed to avoid a similar fate as my first time.  The information was about what I expected but the repeat performance made me curious as to why such a thing hadn't happened when I was holding my bow or searching the house.

Curious I grab my bow with my hand and was once more flooded with its history.  I had not explanation of why I was suddenly having this happen now though I guessed it had something to do with my ghost friend.  This presented a problem though as I couldn't freeze up every time I touched something as it could result in my demise.  I just made a random guess and decided to look for a pair of gloves in the hope that direct skin contact with my hands was required, as I hadn't received any information on the clothes I was wearing yet.

I returned to the room I had checked first, what appeared to be a males bedroom though it didn't appear to have been lived in for a while.  I hoped whoever had lived there had glove my size, considering that the girl was close to my size I assumed the boy, who I assumed would be her brother, would be the same.  The process of searching the room was long and unpleasant to say the least.

Any time I touched something I was assaulted with information that caused my ever growing headache to throb even more.  My efforts paid off however and I was able to find a pair of leather gloves that fit my rather well.  Of course I got the information about its history but like everything else in this room I wasn't able to see the face of the person who used them, which was odd but I didn't worry about it.  After there were on I tried picking up something else and to my relief I wasn't instantly assaulted by the clothing's life story.

I still felt the sensation of something trying to grab onto my hand but it wasn't able to reach it.  I did find however if I decided to focus on reach out to it I could still see it's past but it took a lot more concentration than I'd be able to give in a normal situation so I was pleased.

I still wasn't sure why I had come to this house, as far as I had determined there had been nothing I had deemed of value during my previous search.  I didn't feel like this place was very safe either, as it wasn't very defensible and I had no idea when or if more creatures would search the house or possibly even appear inside of it again.  As I was pondering over whether or not to leave the city or just find somewhere to hunker down for a while I heard a faint whisper in my mind.

...Stay..

That was all that I heard and it wasn't repeated again.  I pondered over the wisdom of listening to voices in my head but I had a bad feeling I wouldn't like what would happen if I just ignored it.  I decided to split the difference and find a safe place to hunker down that was still in the city but not easily accessible.  Luckily I knew of a place I could go near here.

There was a nearby school whose roof I could get onto fairly easy.  It was a middle school and there was only one normal entrance in the form of a ladder and a hatch that was always locked to get up to.  I had a vague memory of climbing up the building during the night to just watch the stars but the memory was gone as soon as it appeared.  It would be a bit trickier to get up there than before as I wasn't carrying fifty pounds of gear plus weapons the time I remembered from my memory but it was my best bet as I was exhausted and needed to refuel and rest up  before doing anything else.

The middle school was only a few blocks away from the house but it took a while to get there as I had to kill a few groups of goblins and hide from even more along the way.  I don't know if they were just getting done with all their victims and were looking for more or if more had just simply showed up.  Either way it took me another hour before I reached the wall surrounding the school.

It was a pretty recent construction but with the limited space available in the general LA area the walls were built closely to the main school building.  This worked to my advantage as there was an easy ledge to jump to on the second floor from the top of the wall.  The jump was a bit harder with the extra weight I was carrying and I almost lost my balance on the landing but I made it.  The climb up was just as difficult and was torture on my fingers which had to bear all my weight as I used them to slowly make my way up.

By the time I managed to pull myself onto the top of the roof my fingers were scraped and bleeding, I had even managed to take out a nail on my left hand.  Still I had made it up and from my brief look over there were no enemies.  I hadn't seen any of the bastards on any roofs during any of my trips so I figured they either couldn't climb, didn't appear on them or both.  I quickly dumped my gear on top of the hatch, using the extra weight as insurance for keeping it closed as well as a warning system, and took out some supplies.  

I ate a quick meal of protein bars and a bottle of water before setting up my sleeping bag and going to sleep.  As I was slowly losing consciousness I saw a figure above me but for some reason I wasn't worried and continued to fall asleep.  As my eyes began to close I caught briefly saw what the figure was.  The woman looked similar to the girl from before only shorter and much older.  Also like the girl she gave me a familiar feeling and when my eyes finally closed she whispered the same question.

Why?

AN:  Yo this is Ren, likely not going to do too many AN's but just wanted to ask you guys what you thought of the story so far and if you had any suggestions for me.  I'll explain much more about the world and the changes that occurred in the next two chapters.  

Thanks for reading,

Ren Waya