Chapter 136

  David Chestermill.

  I stared at the two doors that had opened in the wall of the dungeon after I beat the first-floor boss room. Behind me, the quickly vanishing remains of the many skeletons and boss goblins were a heap of bones and misshapen flesh, reduced to a pulp by the raw might of my bare strength. The rightmost door was a portal of solid light, eerily bright despite the late hour outside of the dungeon. It was enticing, the easy way out: just a single step and I could once again tell myself that I would face my fears tomorrow.

  I did not want to be that person anymore. I had been a coward for far too long. Summoning my Stone Skin, I felt the protective layer of my chosen Element wrap around me like a comforting blanket. I stared at the door on the left—it was a void of no light, and three steps etched in the stone were visible before the darkness engulfed everything. The dungeon had told me, like it always did whenever I reached this point, that my challenge awaited at the bottom of the staircase. It did not communicate with me through window screens, but it made itself understandable as if it spoke a language only it and I shared.

  That alone had been the source of many sleepless nights. How did the dungeon, the strange entity I had never seen nor met before, know me better than I knew myself?

  I took a breath, and did not hesitate any longer. Step after step, I felt my surroundings change around me. My connection to the Stone told me that I was no longer in the same cave system I was before entering the staircase, and by the time I reached the last step, I found myself in the middle of a landscape that was utterly alien and hostile.

  Windswept steppes plunged in eternal twilight surrounded me. Only the occasional flash of lightning provided illumination to the dark hills, where black grass and knotted shrubs swayed in the harsh wind. Above me, a maelstrom of magic was the herald of the end of times, the violet sky dotted with green clouds filled with malice that was almost palpable.

  As I turned around to check my surroundings better, I realized that there was no trace of the staircase. In that moment, I felt utterly alone for the first time in ages. I felt panic rise in my throat, the sensation of loss and lack of direction threatening to make me lose my footing. But then I summoned my own power, flexing my muscles to banish the cold that the whipping wind was making seep in my bones. I felt for my magic, the skills granted to me by my former pupil were like a blinding beacon in the night. They granted me power, borrowed power that was nonetheless purer than any power brought by tools back on Earth.

  In that moment, I felt something click inside me. Knowledge from the dungeon informed me that this was a challenge, and that I had one week to beat it. It did not tell me what the challenge was about, nor did it inform me of what would happen should I fail to complete it within the time limit.

  I soon realized that I was feeling none of the usual dread that being in the dungeon always induced in me. The sensation of wrongness had not disappeared. No, rather I realized that the sensation of oppression the Gaze always brought had been absent ever since I stepped foot in the first floor with the intention to finally beat my own fears, as if the dungeon knew that today was going to be the day I finally stopped denying myself.

  I felt euphoric. I felt powerful. I felt the potential of a long road ahead of me, the image of a crumbling path slowly giving way to that of a harsh mountain path that I could tread—carefully, with effort, but without the final specter of impossibility that had accompanied me for most of my twilight years.

  Then the biting cold, the pelting rain and the red flashes of lightning against a purple sky reminded me of where I was. I wrapped myself in my own clothes, not nearly enough to shelter me from the wind. The Stone Skin acted as a layer of protection, but it too was not enough.

  Shivering, I swiveled my head around in search of signs—any sign. I spotted a light, beyond a hill far away. With no better alternative, I set out towards the light, climbing the hills and treading my own path through the dead vegetation of bare wood and thorns. The air was hostile, not only because of the wind, but because within it seemed to dwell the same malice I could read in the clouds.

  It had been the air that had poisoned the plants, killing most vegetation. It had then poisoned the soil, so deeply that even the stone below carried some of the taint that had killed whatever place I was walking.

  After a long time, the light I saw in the distance became the flickering light of a candle lit in a room of a two-story wooden house. Around it, several other houses stood like dark shacks against the twilight sky. The wind made their beams groan and whistle, open windows and doors ajar and signs of decay and disrepair all around. The moss on the wood was dry despite the rain, and when I touched it turned to dust between my fingers, dead.

  There was only one light in the whole village, the second story of the only two-story house. I had to cross the central plaza to get to the house, and in the middle of the plaza there was a well with an iron grate welded on top. Someone had fixed a bell to a tall iron rod on top of the grate, protected by the wind but propped in a way that if the grate moved, then the bell would toll.

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  Remains of broken-down vehicles, tractors and farming equipment were strewn across the plaza. In the darkness, I could not make out their features well, but I could see that the metal was rusted and bent. Someone had disassembled most of the vehicles for pieces, with only one of them seemingly in a state of haphazard functionality, as if the pieces coming from the other machines had served to extend this one’s lifespan a little bit longer, until it too eventually breathed its last.

  Lamps with broken glass littered the streets.

  I approached the inhabited house. The door was closed, but through the smashed windows I could see that the whole ground floor was dark and empty. The house, like the vehicles outside, had been cannibalized for pieces, perhaps for firewood, but the fireplace was now dark and cold like the rest of the room. The boarded windows offered no protection from the wind, and I doubted they would offer much resistance to my strength either.

  Still, out of some sense of respect for whoever had managed to survive in this harsh place, perhaps the last person alive in this whole village, I chose to knock.

  I heard a yelp, and a scramble to grab something. I heard someone rush down the stairs, panting, upturning the table I had seen from the window and throwing themselves behind its flimsy protection.

  “Hello?” I called, not knowing what else to say to the clearly spooked person inside.

  The action seemed to have the opposite reaction to what I was expecting. The hiding figure retreated, and I could hear her whimpers now.

  “I’m not going to hurt you,” I said in a soft voice. It was unnatural of me, and I suspect it came out booming and powerful due to the wind. “What’s your name?”

  There was a long silence.

  “Liff,” she managed to respond in the end. “Who are you?” she asked, quivering. Her voice was tiny and scared.

  “My name’s David,” I said, trying to project calm and safety. “People call me Old Dave where I’m from. Why don’t you open the door?”

  Somehow, I could feel Liff shaking her head.

  “Uncle Roger said that they would come for me too. He said not to open the door until he was back!”

  I imagined her long, unkempt hair getting in her face as she shook her head violently, trying to banish whatever demons haunted her dreams. She was just a small girl, alone and scared.

  “Are you…” she asked in a small voice, “are you here to take me away like they took him away?”

  “I don’t know your uncle,” I said, “and I’m not here to take you away. Why don’t you open the door?”

  At that moment, I wished I had Michael’s Candle Light skill that could heal the mind, but I didn’t. I heard the shuffling of feet, and then rattling as Liff fiddled with a shoddy lock. The door opened slowly, the hinges hissing and groaning to reveal the sunken cheeks of a malnourished small girl with freckles like fire. Her eyes, dark and brown, were so full of life that they made the contrast with the rest of her even harsher.

  She was ten, or perhaps older but without enough calories to develop, and barely reached my hips. She stared at me with her wide eyes for a long moment before throwing herself at me, wrapping me in a hug with surprising strength. I did not even realize that I had dropped the Stone Skin until later, when she grabbed my hand and took me inside.

  I learned that the dismantled machinery out there had been the handiwork of her uncle Roger and a bunch of other villagers, their last attempt at making something work in this wasteland they called home. The trees on the hills far away had been the first to die, their thick canopies becoming shallower with each passing year. They thought it was just a temporary thing, but then the animals too started to become sick and die. Then the crops began to fail.

  “Dreams have power here, but we stopped having dreams long ago. All that we have left, are nightmares.”

  “What did you say?” I asked, taken aback by Liff’s suddenness.

  “Uncle Roger didn’t like it when grandpa Heorest said it,” she said, shaking her head. “He used to say that it was only a rough patch, and that we would get over it and that things would be better than ever for the good people of this town.”

  She looked at me, and the way she shook her head reminded me of an old woman who had seen more than she could tell. Then, she said: “I didn’t believe him when he said that, but the others did. They called grandpa Heorest and his fellow crew defeatists, and went on with their plan without them.”

  “Is that why they left?” I asked.

  She nodded. “Grandpa said that without resources, we couldn’t keep modernity alive. I had a storybook. He used to tell me of the world before, like that in the pages of the storybook. I had never seen the world as it was before, with all those greens and blues, but for some reasons the images in the storybook always made me cry. I cried even more when I was forced to burn it to keep warm.”

  I listened to her narration, bringing her close to me to keep her warm.

  “There was a wolf in the book, and a witch. Sometimes, I thought that the wolf was leaping out of the storybook to go look for the witch, but witches are not easily fooled by animals. Grandpa said that only little resourceful girls could fool the witches, and that while they were scary and powerful and always had one or two familiars that were even scarier than them, in the end the witches all ended up doing what the little girl wanted, as if they had no real power over her.”

  “But in the real world,” she continued, “uncle Roger said that resourceful little girls and their witches are just fantasies. That the world is harsh, and only the hard work of men could keep us alive. Except, in the end, after grandpa was gone and all the hard work of uncle’s friends did nothing to save us from starvation, he told me that perhaps grandpa was right, and left.”

  “Where did he go?”

  “He left in search for the witch, of course,” Liff said chipperly. “Things hadn’t been getting better for a while, and rhetorics only do so much when you have a whole village of starving people to lead.”

  Silence descended on us. I kept thinking about what Liff said as I went to search for some food and timber to make a fire to keep us warm. She wanted to come with me, but I managed to convince her to say, although she clung to me like I was her only lifeline whenever I returned. She feared that, one of those trips, I would do like all the others and not return, and no amount of promises would convince her.

  Liff, the girl who was both a child and too mature for her age.

  The girl and her witch.