Testing out a new (secondary) story! (Patreon)

After realizing that 'Dungeon Item Shop' wasn't the right fit for me I have been working on something else instead! Something a little different. I'll see how it goes and if I get a good feeling for it I will upload to RR/SH. Let me know what you think on the way. No summary just yet, but consider it a lowbrow dungeon-core fantasy like the rest of my web novel work, but with some [insert]-punk elements =)

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  Pen sits on her knees and looks at the bi-refractive-shard in her hand with bright eyes that shine full of child-like wonder. Her body shakes from a mixture of excitement and from the biting cold that had been nipping at her for so many hours now. The glowing yellow crystal, which is the size of her own palm in width, but a full forearm in length was the largest she had ever held herself. The largest she had ever had herself. Not some splinter or fragment or sliver, but an entire shard. She could live for a month off of this easily. Like a queen. Warily she looked around the dusty, crumbling ruin she had delved into; her gaze switching from wonderment now to paranoia. She clutches the pristine crystal shard close to her chest, her fingers wrapping tightly around it. It radiates such warmth, it feels good to hold against the shoddily thin, torn rags covering her body that do little to keep out the underground chill. It was hot like a bottle filled with piping water on a winter’s day.

The young girl’s eyes dart around the underground chamber, searching for any shadow that was about to twist. For any stone-borne gestalt to spring to life and lunge at her from the corners of her vision. But there is nothing. Nobody else is there and nothing stirs in the room apart from the shifting of the airborne dust-motes surrounding her, blown away by her own heavy, excited breathing. She shivers and holds the glowing crystal closer against herself, feeling more of its radiating warmth shine into her body. After a minute of sitting like that she can see her now slowly heating breath in the cold air again. But it does little to help with the sting and tingling of her long since numb feet, which are now filling with warm blood from her torso. The crystal resonates with a permanent gentle, dull hum that she finds almost pleasant to listen to. To feel.

She has to keep moving thinks the girl. This was a good find. But there might be more! She had come all the way down to this dangerous ruin, she might never get this chance again. She couldn’t leave now. Couldn’t quit now. Pen jumps up from the ground, both of her arms wrapped around the bi-refractive-crystal like a mother holding a precious newborn. If she could find one more, maybe even two more. That was all she needed. That was all she needed. Tilting her head down she wipes her brow on her shoulder, getting the slick strand of red-brown hair out of her face. Her head turns back to the small shaft behind her on the side of the room she had just come in from a minute before. The entrance to this floor of the ruin.

This was only the first room of this floor and she had found this treasure already. At this point it would be stupid not to go further, right? Her arms never loosening their embrace around her find, she walks onward; silently meandering through the grim darkness. Using the light seeping through the gaps in her grip around the crystal to brighten her way. It is quiet except for the sound of her bare feet against the stone floor, the sound of the occasional pebble or rock tumbling to the side as she kicks them with a numb appendage, the occasional hiss of her breath with the accompanying wince as she steps on one. The painful sensation now manages to shoot through her feet. Her feet that were now returning to a vague sense of life at perhaps the worst time as the warmed blood continues to circulate through her.

Suddenly a loud metal clanking rings out from somewhere in the distance and the girl jumps back, stumbling in fright of the sharp metallic noise bouncing off of dozens of walls before reaching her, making its origins impossible to locate. She begins shaking again, this time not because of the temperature and stands there quietly, listening and waiting; her mind telling her to run but her greed telling her to stay. Her survival instinct now internally conflicting with itself if it should prioritize the short-term or the long. It was probably just some metal that fell over, some old pipes or some rusted creature that had fallen apart eons ago she thought. Nothing else.

Pen nods to herself, gulping at the same time and with a grimace takes another tender step forward, half expecting the world to explode as she does so. But nothing happens. Warily she dares to take another and then another, ignoring the shivering in her body and the nausea in her gut. Ignoring the sting on her bleeding, half-frozen feet caked with a dried mixture of dirt and caked red. Just one or two more and she would leave. That’s all she needed, repeats Pen to herself in her mind. Just one or two more and she could go. She could sell them and buy real food, real medicine. She could pay back the money. No. She could leave.

The strand of hair falls back before her eyes and she does her best to wipe it away again, her grip still not loosening from the crystal in the least. Silently she walks down the hallway of the forbidden floor of the ruin, listening out for any sound. Listening for any hint of danger with her sharp ears up in the air, jutting out of her ragged, greasy reddish-brown hair. They were just as cold as her feet. But there was no unexpected sound to be heard. Still nothing apart from the tepid patter of her own icy movements and the gentle hum of the glowing crystal in her arms that never stops.

A sudden burning feeling in her chest reminds her that has forgotten to exhale and lets out a long, extended heavy breath; watching as it leaves her body like the trail of a ghost floating away from the mortal plane. Walking through the darkness illuminated only by the light of the crystal her eyes dart around, searching for any signs of new light. For any signs of danger. Another metal crash strikes out and Pen ducks down, jumping behind a pile of rubble and bricks next to her. Hiding behind it as if the glow of the crystal she was holding wouldn’t give her away in the otherwise perfect darkness. Her heart begins to beat fast once more and she feels the pulse of its strike lurching her body forward just an inch with each beat. She feels her eyes grow just a little wider with each beat, her ears perk just a little higher with each beat.

She exhales again, realizing she wasn’t breathing for a second time now and listens to the darkness ahead.

Listens to the sound of some deathly machine ambling in the distance, clanking, grinding, walking.