Chapter 50 (Patreon)

Chapter 50

He was going to complain about the pain still radiating across his recently injured arm to Athela when he paused in what he was about to say… and a lump in his throat began to form.  Further back in the darker recess of the cell, past the blonde man, there was a pile of four small bodies.  All of them human, all of them children, and all of them dead with dark marks of bruising around their necks… Riven had a good idea where they’d come from considering there was a school bus out there in the front room of the temple.

Riven went rigid and immediately turned his face to look away, but refocused his attention as the other man got up and placed his head against the thick cell bars.  In the torchlight, it was evident that the guy was a natural athlete.  “So as I was saying, you’re from Earth?”

He looked to have the body of a long distance runner, was just slightly shorter than Riven by half an inch, and wore a pair of sweatpants with a tight black shirt.  The man looked up at him and their eyes met, and he sluggishly drawled out a reply.  “Yes.  These creatures killed any who resisted and dragged them away, and after I saw what they did to my friend Shawn I pretended to be unconscious as they dragged me here.  What is this place?  We were trying to outrun some monsters and all of a sudden we drove through a fiery door that appeared out of nowhere and ended up here…”

His voice carried with it a very slight, almost unnoticeable Irish accent.  Worry was etched into the man’s features, and his grip against the bars of his cell tightened, but he remained composed.  “First the world goes crazy and invading monsters roam the streets, killing everyone, and then we’re transported to some woodlands where the trees came alive to attack us.  Now this… I end up here, I watched my friend get killed before I’m saved by magic-wielding humans.  At least you’re human though.  My name is Ben.”

Ben extended a hand through the cell bars, and Riven grasped it to firmly shake.  It was nice, after all these weeks, finally seeing another person.  Talking to another person… though Riven could tell Ben didn’t feel the same way about the situation.

“My name is Riven.  This is Athela, and this is Azmoth.  Apparently we’re in Hell, in a dungeon called Negrada.  I have a lot of questions for you too, but that can wait for later.  As can our explanations for what we individually know.  Here.”

He began fidgeting with the keys and trying them out, one by one, on the cell Ben was locked into.  The keys were a little different than the ones he was used to - they were larger, thicker, and had different protrusions at all angles along the circumference of the circular rod that formed the base of the key.  However he was able to get it open soon enough, and pushing it in with a click - Ben stepped out.

Ben warily glanced Azmoth and Athela over.  “They seem friendly enough...  How did you get two of them on your side?”

“Long story.” Riven stated sourly underneath his hood as he glared at the pile of small bodies.  “I don’t feel like talking the entire thing through right now.”

Surprisingly, Ben wasn’t in much of a state of shock.  Nor did he seem overly grateful about being saved.  Rather, he seemed sad.  He glanced around the room, quickly accepting it for what it was, and let out a slow sigh.  “This is terrible.”

Riven watched him as he slowly strode up to where the corpse of the woman he’d known was laying.  Her heart was carved out, and what was left of her after Azmoth’s shattering attack to kill the caster was still tied down to chunks of the broken stone altar.

“Negrada…” Ben slowly said after a moment of pondering.  He walked over to let his fingers lightly touch the remnants of the stone altar.  He turned around and faced Riven, doing his best to ignore Azmoth who was staring him down a few feet away.  “You said we’re in Hell?  That’s what this notification I just got says too.  How weird.”

Riven nodded just once, then thought a bit and slowly came to a realization.  Stepping over another corpse and coming to stand directly in front of Ben, Riven picked up a dagger from one of the fallen satyr and handed it over to the other man.  “You’ll be needing this.  Honestly, I’m surprised you’re showing up now.  I’d assumed everybody was making the transition over at the same time and the same way… Did you ever go through the tutorial?”

Ben nervously took the blade, awkwardly palming it before shaking his head no.  “What’s the tutorial?  I never went through any tutorial.  I was on Earth until I arrived here, but the planet… it looked like it was being rearranged.  It was really weird, pieces of land mass were shifted and teleported or replaced by other things.  Some areas we drove by looked like they were going through a time warp with trees aging at incredible rates, and other areas looked like they were staying the same.  I didn’t know what to make of it…”

Riven frowned, remembering his own experience back in Dallas when he, Jose and Allie had managed to escape into the pillar of light right before he was told he was being separated from his childhood friend and sister.  There were too many questions and too few answers for his liking, but it did give him some sick measure of comfort knowing that he wasn’t alone on this ride of insanity.  “You mentioned monsters back on Earth.  What were yours like?  I was originally attacked by monsters back in Dallas before escaping into the pillars.”

Ben looked surprised.  “It was all over the news, mate.  Before the TV stations went down.  Monsters started appearing and killing anyone who was left with a timer lighting up in vision along the top right-hand side… It was horrible.”

“I only saw snippets of the news, my phone was low on battery when it all happened and it died on the way out.”

“Oh.  Half of Earth’s population was pretty much annihilated all at once, or that’s what people were guessing right before shit really started hitting the fan.”

Riven stared at the younger man for some time in silent thought.

Half?

But knowing news stations back on Earth, that number could have been blown way out of proportion.  There was no real way to tell just how many people had died.  Nevertheless, it was likely in the many millions at the very least since it’d been a worldwide event.

Ben gave a long, exasperated sight and uncomfortably folded his arms over his chest.  “I was an elementary school teacher…  The school seemed to be an area where everyone had remained behind, and none of my students were abducted, so I piled them in the school bus and tried to make a run for it when the school got attacked by what I think are werewolves now.  Some of the other teachers came with me.  You saw how that all ended… I think I’m in a state of shock right now.  It doesn’t feel real to me.  Anyways, I was pulled into an abyss when we drove through the fiery door… It was almost like a portal.  Probably was one in hindsight.  These strange symbols started appearing everywhere, ones I didn’t recognize, and now I’m here.  Where is everyone else?  Have yo unseen anyone else other than us?

Riven frowned even more deeply and nodded slowly.  This guy hadn’t seen the pillars of light?  He’d been taken through a portal?  And why had it been so much later than when Riven had gotten here?

Something didn’t add up.

“There was one other person I’ve personally met here in the dungeon who claimed to be from another planet… but he’s dead now.  Saw another girl but she ran off.  Before that there were people in my tutorial too, and they were all from Earth as well.  Then there was my friend and my sister, and the system prompt I originally got before starting this whole mess said if I survived the tutorial I would get to reunite with them.  So that’s the current goal.  I’m not sure about all the pieces to the puzzle just yet, but from what I can gather this is some kind of event that’s merging Earth with another world, or worlds in the plural, and into a multiverse of some sort.  I can’t get answers from my minions because of some kind of rules set up by the system… and I’m on a unique starting path when compared to most of the other people from Earth.  Again, this is a hellscape dungeon, instead of the tutorial dungeon most people go through, and I had to choose between taking the hard road myself or sacrificing the people I’d made acquaintances with for an easy way out.  Obviously I’m here, so I took the hard road.”

There was a very long pause.

“I see…” Ben replied flatly, eyes boring into the stone floor beneath his feet.  They both stared silently at the floor, and then Ben spoke up again.  “Well I’m too deep into this shit to question your sanity.  So… What’s with the demons you have with you?”

Riven gave a slight smile and motioned over to his minions - outlined in the firelight of the torches along the walls.  “I started a path that appears to be molding me into a Warlock, even got a class title for it.  You get race and class points to add to your stat page with every level up, but if you don’t know what I’m talking about then you’re further behind than I’d hoped for.”

“Yes I know about the leveling system.  One of my friends leveled up by running over one of the monsters in our way.  Any chance you know of a way out of here?”

Riven shook his head sourly.  “Not yet, but I’m working on it.  Surprisingly enough, I think this dungeon is an extension of the core system worlds - which are worlds outside the realm of Earth from what I’ve been told.”

“To Elysium?”

“Yes, if I’m understanding things correctly.  Elysium is apparently a bunch of interconnected worlds.  Like I mentioned earlier, it’s a multiverse of some sort like the ones you read about in comics as a kid… but I’m not entirely sure how it works.”

Riven took the next ten minutes explaining the various things he’d learned since getting there.  He explained how quests worked, system notifications, skills, attribute pillars, how he’d gotten his own class title and how there were various ways to orient to a given pillar if Ben found the means through happenstance or study.  He explained stats, the hidden health / mana / stamina that everyone apparently had, and he explained in detail what he’d been doing there in the dungeon for a couple weeks while trying to find a way out.  Lastly he told Ben about the ‘Dao’ that was currently not available until the tutorial was over, whatever the hell ‘Dao’ was, but it’d been mentioned enough times to likely be important.  Then again: weren’t his pillars Dao related?  Ugh.  He really needed to get his head on straight, maybe when he got out of here he’d figure things out.

Ben took it in stride and at face value, taking in another deep breath and shaking his head in wonder as Riven finished his condensed version of the story.  “We’re really fucked then, aren’t we?  And no, I don’t know what Dao is either.”