I stood in the dwindling silence for several heartbeats, trying to figure out if the combat had attracted attention. When no one else came out of the woods I went and looked at the archer. He was still alive, but half his face was broken and his lower leg was almost entirely blown off. He opened his healthy eye, coughed out some broken teeth, and moaned.
I went back and retrieved the power short sword. It was worn, torn, and patched up, but it still was, I must admit, a thing of beauty. I powered on the sword, then bent down and grabbed the bowman’s left leg. He twisted and moaned, then screamed and passed out when I sliced his lower leg off with two bloody hacks. I am not a sword master, but it was close to a clean cut and, basically, a fair deal. There was the smell of meat searing itself shut. The archer might live, and I’d gotten my nourishment. I went and picked up the bow as well but the man’s fall had cracked the wood. I kept it anyway for firewood. There were a few crude looking metal coins in his belt pocket, a water skin filled with the most terrible wine I had ever tasted, and a lethal-looking skinning knife with a chipped blade.
Dun was dying fast, and I made sure he got there by cutting off his head. He had a heftier coin bag. I opened it and spilled some of its contents into my hand. Dark metal coins, mostly half the size of my hand but a few smaller ones. It took me a few seconds to remember what their use was, and if I needed proof of how far humanity had fallen, it was lying in the palm of my hand. You’d have to go to the most remote places in the world to find people who still used paper money, let alone coins, yet here they were in my hand. Each coin had a faded but unmistakable emblem of four towers of Tarkania, which made my heart race again. I closed the pouch and turned to the enthusiastic rapist.
He was conscious. Maybe the bowman’s screams had woken him up. His eyes were still fixated on the severed head of Dun when I approached him, holding the archer’s stump in one hand and the bloodied power sword with the other.
He looked up at me with bloodshot, frightened eyes.
“Please,” he begged.
I waved the stump in my hand in front of him. “I have some questions for you, young man.”
This was how I learned about the Catastrophe, that Dun was an ex-Salvationist from Tarakan Valley who had broken the contract with his guild and fled to make easy pickings in what was now called the Radiated City, one of several cities that were utterly destroyed. With a sinking heart, I learned what had happened to my people and that the once-magnificent Tarkania was now defiled by the remnants of humanity who no longer remembered its name and call it “the City of Towers.”
Several deep roars from the forest proved Dun was at least not lying about the beasts that lurked here. It was time to go.
“Please,” Malk begged when I turned away, “please, mercy.” His broken knee was protruding from his skin.
I don’t know if he wanted me to give him a clean death or carry him across the ruins, but I left him for the two-headed lions and limped away slowly, my new body punishing me severely for the ESM I had put it through.
If what Malk just told me was true, I was not walking in a ruined city, I was walking in a destroyed world. By his body language, I knew Malk believed in what he’d told me, but I still refused to accept it. Perhaps that was why I left him there.
A little while later I heard him scream one last time.
Twinkle Eyes
Not withstanding the horrible memories of my demise, waking up from the dead the first time was a pleasant experience, to the point where for a moment I’d wondered if I was in one of those heavenly gardens many of the different religions promised you ended up in if you followed their creed. This time I woke up in a place which was the extreme opposite of paradise.
Various metallic instruments that must have kept my new body alive withdrew into darkness, and the bed simply tilted and I slid down to the metal floor. I lay there, gasping for air, blind and horrified, surrounded by darkness, pierced by the periodic flashing of red lights accompanied by a deafening siren. As I tried to get up, a calm yet loud female voice spoke, informing me that I was in danger and must leave the premises. I did not need her encouragement. My skin stung, not in a certain place or two, but over my entire body, as if the air was on fire. I knew to the core of my new being that whatever I was breathing was killing me. I coughed, sneezed, vomited, and lost control of my bowels in nasty succession, while trying in vain to get hold of something to push myself up with.
Amid all that fun one instinct remained true. I tried to deepen my sight, the curse that touched me in youth and the only edge I had on most of mankind. It didn’t work. Not at first, anyway. When it finally did, it was not as I remembered. My sight flickered through various mediums of vision, a few of which I only knew about from stories. The quick sequence left me completely disoriented. Whatever progress I was making in getting up was lost and I hit the floor again, sitting in my own bile and bodily fluids, covering my eyes with my hands and wishing this life would end faster than my previous death had taken.
The sirens and the urging female voice were too loud for me to hear steps, but I felt their vibration as someone ran towards me. I tried to look around, flailing my arms in the darkness, but my sight was out of control—I was completely blinded by the flashing of various shades of light and darkness.
A hand caught my arm, and as I was hauled to my feet I felt the grasping fingers burn my skin.
“Try not to breathe.” I didn’t recognise the voice, but the accent was familiar.
“I can’t see, I …” Another cough caught me as my body battled whatever I was breathing, and this time my rescuer had to hug me to prevent another collapse.
He was naked. We both were. The strange thing was that I registered that our naked bodies were touching, but it was more a thought in my mind than what I remembered a naked body should feel. The notion was so eerie that for a moment my mind cleared.
“Slow your breathing.” His voice was at my ear as he picked me up with ease in a bear hug. “You can block some of the shit out.”
And lo and behold, there it was. I thought it, and my body slowed its breath. Whatever was coming down my throat was somehow more acceptable, even though I knew it would still kill me—well, us—shortly.
“We need to get out of here,” I croaked.
“Rust, you think so?” The man coughed out a dry chuckle. “There is a ladder here, attached to the wall.”
“I can’t see. Where does it go?”
“It goes somewhere, better up than to stay here.”
“I can’t see.” My hands flailed in the darkness.
“Here, feel this …”
He pretty much slammed me into the metal ladder, the first sign that he was losing the battle against the elements as rapidly as I was.
“I can’t see.” Panic was gripping my throat as painfully as the cursed air I was breathing.
“Climb first. If you fall I might be able to catch you.”
“I can’t, I’m too weak, I can’t see.” I wheezed, gripping a metal rung.
“Well then, been nice knowing ya, even briefly.” His hands began shoving me aside and I felt his leg brush past mine and push against the first rung.
“Wait, no, I can do it.”
The