After taking a few steps down, Simon couldn’t help but notiuch colder it was ihan it was in the cave he’d just left. The stairs desded at least three floors before ending in a door with ornate carvings around it, and . The goblin cave had that moist dampness you expected in a cave, but this was almost like walking inte restaurant refrigerators. He could see his breath by the time he got to the bottom, but fortuhe stairs were ice free so he wasn’t going to slip and break his neck again.
The door at the bottom opeo reveal a crypt, with stone sarcophagi dominating the floor and nitches on the walls where skeletons y iual rest. So the level was a crypt, huh? That figured he supposed. Skeletons were even easier than zombies, so at least this wouldn’t be too hard. The skeletons mostly y in moth eaten robes or other ceremonial garments, but the armor that some still wore had rusted pletely through in pces. Last time he’d tried to sneak by the monsters, but that didn’t work. They were probably programmed so that it would never work, he realized, w how far out he would pull aggro from creatures like this. Not that it mattered - this time he decided that he was just going to go for it as he walked to the first skeleton and swung down hard on the spine, between the skull and the cvicle. The skull fell away almost immediately and he moved to the one, hoping to kill as many of these things as he could before they started to rise. There had to be almost thirty though, and by the time Simon had beheaded the third, the first few closest to him were starting to rise to their feet.
Ohese things were awake and holding their a ons he had to turn his attention from the easiest to kill, to the ohat was the closest to killing him. This worked for the few without any issue, but crucially he noticed that simply stabbing the head or severing an arm did very little. It looked like these things were operating on zombie rules: the only way to make them crumble into dust was to strike their head from their shoulders or to smash the skull to pieces with a savage overhead chop. It turned out that that was easier said than done. Any ued move, or half-hearted parry on their part and suddenly the blow he’d lined up to perfectly separate their head from their shoulders became a gng blow at best. By the time he’d killed the twelfth skeleton he ractically surrounded and utterly exhausted. Now that they were fully awake they were swinging at him as well. Their ons were slow and easily parried, but with so many attag him at ohe only viable defense quickly became to give ground.
Simon was slowly fighting his way back to the doorway when he saw it. Rising from the tomb farthest from him was a skeletal knight uhe rest of the m skeleton’s he’d sin so far. They were little more than bones and rusted ons, but it was actually a knight that had been buried in a suit of full pte armor. Even after decades or turies of being interred it looked almost new, along with the great bastard sword that it uhed as soon as it was standing. That wasn’t what attracted Simon’s attention though. It was the gre. The rest of these skeletons only had empty sockets, which was unnerving enough, but the knight had a blue glow where its eyes should be. Simon found himself paralyzed by it, and was uo look away. As the knight strode toward him in slow motion, he could see clouds of frost radiating from the joints in the armor and finally uood what the word terror really meant.
When Simon was younger he’d spent hours arguing with friends about the differeween fear and terror in differant games. He thought that it was a dumb meid that it was immpossible for there to be some sort of fear that was worse than fear itself. He was wrong. He’d obviously failed a saving throw or something, because he was utterly petrified by the personification of death that was walking towards him with unhurried steps. It was a nightmare - a waking dream, and even though he khat the other skeletons were still a risk he couldn’t do much but hold his sword up numbly as they pressed their attack. Seds ter the first bde pierced his armor, slig ly through his flesh. Others followed, and by the time he dropped his on from numb fingers he’d been impaled through the liver, the stomach, and the lungs by han six swords and daggers.
Uhe other deaths he’d suffered so far at the hands of his ehis o least wasn’t too painful. It was ore than anything. Each of the bdes that skewered him was bone chillingly cold, but in his dying moments he sidered that a small price to pay to escape the horrible gaze of that terrible knight. He lost sciousness before that awful oppo was able to reach him, and died grateful.
When Simon woke up the terror still hadn’t left him pletely, and he id practically paralyzed in his bed for ten minutes before he sat up. “What in the hell was that?” he asked himself. “It had to be some kind of spell - right?”
Either that or I’m a coward, he thought to himself as looked up and noticed the mirror was writing to him. ‘I’m not sure what you’re asking about, you be more specific?’
“I’m not talking to you,” Simon said automatically before thinking about it. “Actually wait - do you know if the skeleton knight on the fourth floor has some kind of fear based ability? Is it gaze based or an aura or what?”
‘I have no knowledge of the dahat await you i,’ the s answered with its normal blue cursive letters.
“Then what good are you? What are you even here for?” Simon asked, but he didn’t care about the answer. He was already standing up and walking to the ets to rifle through them for something to eat. Looking at his options didly take long. Every time he came back it was the same few options. He could choose between the bread, the cheese, the wine, or the sausages. That was his whole world now. On the bright side he didn’t have to worry about running out of food. All he had to do was die again and his meager rder would be full. As he bit down into the bread he wondered how long it would be until he was hopelessly sick of these choices. At least that was tomorrow problem, he decided.
The only today problem was deg what to do with today because he definitely wasn’t ready to go back down into the pit again. Just the thought of it made him shiver as he remembered that cold soulless glow. Maybe tomorrow he’d feel like it, he decided, pocketing the rest of the loaf and slinging the water skin over his shoulder. On his way out the door he belted on the sword but decided not to bother with the crossbow or the leather. After all, if the wood was the same every day then the weather probably was too, and it was going to get hot ter. Besides, he wasn’t looking for a fight, he just wao get a y of the nd for his mental map and clear his head before he went back down there.
So he went for a walk. First he went part way back along the trail just to make sure everything looked the same. Before the was entirely out of view though, he took a left into the forest, following a small stream to make sure he didn’t get lost. If the rules were the same as his st walk theually he’d e back to the trail from the other side. It turned out that he didn’t, but it was hard to say his experiment was clusive, because walking through the underbrush was slow and exhausting pared to walking orail. He did find somethihough.
Perhaps a quarter mile and maybe twenty minutes from the trail he stopped for a break with his chest heaving at the edge of the meadow. The meadow wasn’t the important part though. While he waited to catch his breath and make sure there were no monsters patrolling the area to agro on him he realized the rock he was sitting on wasn’t a rock at all: it was a slice of a toppled n. Once he realized this he stood and pulled his sword looking for the guardian of the ruin t out and attack him, but no one did. He did find the rest of the temple set back slightly further into the shadows though. It was so obvious now that he was looking at it, that he wondered how he missed it before.
Simon hacked away at the worst of the vines as he slowly made his way to the top of the stairs. The whole thing seemed almost romon to him with thick stone pilrs, one surviving arch, and part of a surviving Apse. The ceiling was gohough, and the only decorations that survived were stone carvings in the walls and floor. Some of them were pretty, but none of them were in a nguage he had any ce of transting. He poked around for a while, pushing er stones, looking for a secret passage or hidde but came away empty handed. “e on guys,” he grumbled “a location like this and you don’t even have a quest giver? Who’s designing this thing?”
Relutly he left such a promising find unfulfilled. Why would it have been included into the game or the challenge or whatever it was with no actual purpose. When he reached the bottom of the stairs he thought about traveling further to see what else might be beyond the meadow but decided against it. One unhelpful discovery for the day was more than enough for him. Instead he walked back, finishing his water before he got to the trail so he could refill it on the way home. The only real disadvao his picturesque was a distinct ck of running water, and if he got thirsty after dark the st thing he wao do was go outside.
On the way home he finished his bread and had his heart set on roasting a couple of those sausages, but whe back to the he discovered that the embers in the hearth had goone cold and after an hour spent trying to light a piece of wood with the flint and steel he gave up aled for cheese. He could try again with the sausages tomorrow.
Without a light when the sun finally set behind the trees it got really dark. That was another surprise to Simon. He hadn’t been on a camping trip since he was twelve, so the idea of not being able to turn on a light switch or use the fshlight on his smartphoo solve the problem was like a sp in the face. Relutly he went to bed early, but only after he closed and barred every shutter, plunging the already dark into total bess.
His dreams that night weren’t pleasant, and he woke up repeatedly to visions of that terrible skeleton. It was an awful experience, and as he y in bed breathing hard after it happened for the third time he heard something very softly rattle the door, and then go around the house trying each window one by one. Simon practically held his breath while all this was going on, and it was only after everythiuro silehat he went outside in bare feet holding the fnged mace to iigate, but there was no ohere.
