Chapter 3: Chapter 3 - Riven Stone

Daniel staggered out of the tavern into the crisp night air, Kire’s coins clinking in his pocket. The moon, full and tinted orange, hung low in the sky. It’s dull light reflected in tiny amounts off of the broad stones making up the village’s paths.

He couldn’t die.

Anxiety crept through his veins like a poison, hot against the inside of his skin.

No, that wasn’t right. He could die. But he couldn’t stay dead.

Kire’s drunken monologue hadn’t sounded so bad at first. Daniel was a passionless man, drifting through life waiting for something to change his circumstance. A coward, a fool, a boring, pointless waste of blood and flesh. Having a goal thrust upon him sounded ideal — like a tutorial quest to kickstart who he was meant to be.

But this was so much worse. He had always found a comfort in giving up life. There was no obligation to be alive, you’re allowed to just give up. It’s the one thing you can always do to take control of your circumstances. It made the hard parts of life easier to swallow, reminded him that a beating heart was a choice.

Alcohol muddied his head, made him saunter blindly around the decrepit village. Stupid, a part of him knew. Don’t put your feet where you can’t see, an old lesson warned. Who had said that?

He remembered the first time he had comforted himself that way. He was eleven, the year before middle school, where he would have to shower after gym class. The ideas of locker rooms terrified him, filled him with a suffocating fear. Social anxiety.

The summer before the school year started, he lay in his bedroom, reassuring himself that he would just die before the end of summer. It would be easy enough, and he could relax until then. Only three months to go, then life would be over and he would never have to face his fear. He slept easy those nights.

He didn’t kill himself, obviously. But the idea had reassured him. Freedom from life was a gift, one he had always cherished. But now…

Daniel came to a stop at a statue placed between the blacksmith’s stone building and the general store’s wooden one. He sat against the lip of it — a fountain, not a statue, he noticed. There was just no water flowing through it. A pair from the tavern passed by him, sending him wary looks that he ignored.

Instead, he glared down at his hand, the runic scars silent of pain or pressure. “Fuck you…” he muttered at it, startling a single tavern patron that was approaching the tall stone building. She quickened her pace, but Daniel wasn’t looking at her to see the judgmental stares she was casting over her shoulder.

He slid off of the lip of the fountain, planting to the ground and leaning against the old architecture. He tilted his head back to look up at the sky. The woman carved into the fountain also looked skyward.

The urge to give up was overwhelming, but he didn’t even know how to do that.

Dying wasn’t a safety net. Dying wouldn’t free him. He didn’t know what would, but he only had one direction to go.

Kill something more powerful than you can imagine.

Dungeons were the key, Kire said. Dungeons were conquered by adventures, by men and women that donned arms and armor then slayed monsters.

Daniel killed a mouse that had gotten stuck in a glue trap once. He still felt the crunch of its bones, carried the feeling in his heart. He wondered if a monster would think the same of his bones.

He stood slowly, steadying himself on the old fountain, and approached the blacksmith.

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Daniel passed through the stone arch and into the shallow hallways of the chiseled building. He had to duck his head through part of the building, where the ceiling was caved, swollen and engorged. Water leaked from the wooden ceiling down the rocky walls.

To his right, the hallway snaked off and he could hear quiet chatter. He imagined it as some sort of barracks, where the group Kire had mentioned was staying. The Crawlers. Dungeon crawlers, he realized.

Straight ahead was a warmer glow. The sound of metal scraping on rock twisted in his ear, tickling the back of his neck in an irritating way. Torches lit the path.

He went straight, emerging into a small shop. An unfamiliar oven roared in the back, its flame guarded by intricate glass that matched the mugs the barkeep had served them with. In front of the oven was a tiny woman bent over a crude table made of a thick, flat stone and two supporting rectangular rocks.

There was a wooden counter between the two, displaying singles of various arrows, drawings of weapons with descriptions Daniel didn’t understand, and sheets of paper listing materials, such as coal, oil, and iron.

The woman held a finger up to delay Daniel’s question, her focus intense on a small rock figurine she was chiseling away at. She was tiny, barely reaching four feet tall. Her skin was an almost-shiny blue and her hair a messy mop of white curls, pushed up and pinned into a loose Mohawk.

After a moment of waiting, she turned to Daniel, and he had to choke down a gasp. He did as poor a job at that as her pins did at taming her hair.

Half of her face was petite. A small button nose and lips pursed in impatience. But the otherside was hardly a face at all. It looked as if someone had molded her out of clay, but forgotten what people looked like. As he stared, he saw the story her scars told.

Her face had been split open — an axe, maybe, a hot one. Her left eye was gone altogether, her eyelid cut in half and melted into the empty cavity. Burn scars textured her cheek and forehead, her eyebrow scorched clean off and never regrown. Her lip was cracked on the injured side, the lower missing flesh and revealing a sharp bottom tooth. The scars reached down the side of her face, into her neck, where they met a curious black circle, its interior empty, its texture unlike the scars that ravaged her.

She had an eyepatch, but it was lifted up into her hair. As he stared, she tugged it down over the cavernous hole in her face, but it did little to hide the horrific damage. She stuck the tool she was using into one of the front pockets of her mostly-metal apron, then folded her arms over her chest.

“Got a good look?”

“Sorry,” Daniel said, meaning it as sincerely as he could. He hated being stared at, and dropped his eyes to the counter between them as penance.

The woman waved her hand, dismissing the apology. Then she tapped a hand to the left side of her chest and extended it. “Don’t be. There’s an honesty in staring, for the beautiful and the ugly. You’re Daniel?”

Stolen story; please report.

Her words took some heat out of his face, and he copied the chest tap and shook her hand. “Yeah, Kire said I should come here.”

She groaned and slouched against the counter. “Well let’s see the damage, what’d you sell your soul for?”

”Oh,” he paused, thinking back to the lie Kire had told the tavern, and what he had asked of his patron. “I wasn’t sure what to ask for, honestly. So I asked to decide later.”

Their eyes met again and he saw the blacksmith was shaking her head slowly, but her lips had twisted out of the scowl, her eyebrow lifting in interest. “No, no I don’t mean your patron, I meant Kire,” she explained.

Daniel fished the coins out of his pocket and set them on the counter. “He gave me these, said he just wanted to help fellow Reborns.”

Her laugh cut through the quiet of the night, sharp and sardonic. “Oh yeah, Saint Kire, best start working on his temple,” she sneered and tapped the coins with a short, rounded nail. “Trust me, you’ll pay for these, with interest.”

”But too late now, so what’ll it be? What kind of man are you?” She continued, neutrality back in her face as she leaned further into the counter, spreading out the paper slips for better viewing.

He looked between papers, examining descriptions of swords, axes, and staves. He eyed the arrows, then the materials, but missing information paralyzed his decision-making.

“I don’t know,” he answered, suckered into honesty by her own. “What does it take to clear a dungeon and kill a bad guy?”

He expected another laugh, but when he looked up he found sympathy. And pity. Mostly pity.

“Didn’t do a lot of fighting in your home world?”

”No.”

”And didn’t ask for a gift from your patron?”

”Nope.”

She let out a low whistle. “You are mighty fucked, Daniel. You consider asking for basic arms training with that wish of yours?”

”The thought crossed my mind when I saw your face,” he said, regretting it when the taste of his foot entered his mouth. It felt much too mean, but her roar of laughter softened his worries.

“Smart man. Well, you don’t know anything and you don’t have anything. The good part of that is there’s no wrong answer, ‘cause there’s no right one.”

When he floundered for a few more minutes, still unable to pick a single item, she jumped in again.

“We’re clearing this junk village’s dungeon tomorrow. Won’t net you much loot, probably none if you can’t be useful, but it would give you some time to think and see how proper Reborns get the job done, if you want to follow us in,” she offered, resting her chin on one of her hands.

Daniel chewed on that. “‘We are’? Kire said you followed the Crawlers into town, not that you were one of them,” he said, lingering effects of Tish making recalling memories difficult.

“Kire isn’t half as smart as he thinks he is. Axen hired me, I’m not a scavenger. Kire was the last minute addition,” she scoffed. “Anyway, don’t think anyone will mind a newborn tagging along. It shouldn’t be a tough clear, place has been dead in the water a long time.”

”Then why are you here?”

She shrugged. “Because they’re paying me to be.”

He nodded and reexamined the papers. A clearer goal narrowed his mind and his options.

“How long are the spools of rope?”

”Increments of forty-four and a half feet.”

He scowled at the bizarre measurement, but when she seemed surprised by his reaction, the metaphorical light bulb lit. She was using a different measurement system, it was just being translated to something he could understand.

“Right. One forty-four and a half foot spool, one eighty-nine foot spool. A leather bag, double straps on the back. Three tinctures of oil in glass containers, one in a clay jar, and a short blade. Oh, and a sheath for the blade.” She nodded approvingly at his order and he nudged the pile of gold coins over to her. None of the papers had prices.

She smiled and pushed three of the coins back towards him, pocketing a single gold coin. She turned, flattened her hand and pressed her fingers together, then plunged it into the stone table she had been working over.

Her hand parted the material with ease, retrieving most of his asked for items and setting them on the table as she grabbed each one. She stepped to the side and repeated the technique, this time fishing inside the wall and pulling out his requested leather bag. She packed the items for him.

“How did you do that?” Daniel asked, examining her azure hand for signs of… anything. It was unremarkable, aside the unnatural color.

She curled her fist and planted it in the center of her chest, over her sternum. Her back straightened and she spoke from the depths of her lungs. “My patron is the god of masonry, manipulator of stone, father of gems, owner of all that makes up the ground beneath us. Hithe. Not a god of this world, but of my first rebirth,” she answered, pride gleaming in her smile. “My god.”

The scattered rocks and pebbles in the room quivered. Ethos, a distant whisper in his head told him. Before he could consider the flitting thought further, she placed a loving hand on the smooth table and returned to the counter in front of Daniel. She set the bag down, followed by a simple sheath with an adjustable strap, and finally a gently-curved short blade she retrieved from somewhere behind the counter.

“Here,” she said. She eyed the gold coins remaining on the counter, then picked one up, pinning it between two fingers. “I can get you a set of leather armor. Won’t be done in time for the dungeon, but can get it to you after.”

”You think it’s a good idea?”

”Wouldn’t have thought it if I didn’t.”

Daniel nodded his acceptance and she pocketed the coin. “One more thing, do you have anything I can write with and on?” He asked, pointing to the paper her goods were listed on. She frowned.

“Not for sale. I got this overpriced parchment from the ‘store’ across the way.” She spat the word ‘store’ like it would poison her if she kept it in her mouth too long. “Word of advice — I wouldn’t buy a cup of water from the guy in a desert.”

“You and Kire share some ideals,” Daniel said, slinging the bag onto his back. The rope was heavier than he thought and the straps of the bag dug through his thin shirt and into his shoulders.

”What’s right in the world is right, even if Kire happens to agree,” she replied with a shrug, but her eye dropped to a squint. He got the impression she was reconsidering her stance.

Daniel slipped the sheath around his waist, weaving the strap between the belt loops of his pants. He slid the blade in after, uncomfortable holding a weapon but happy to have something sharp. “Thanks…” he trailed off, realizing he had never asked her name.

“Theothora. Call me Theo.”

”Thanks Theo,” he said with a smile, the weight of both the bag and an objective tomorrow smothering his anxiety like a heavy blanket. “Got any other ‘rights in the world’ I should know before I go?”

Theo clicked her tongue in dismissal, pulling out the tool in her apron pocket to return to the work he had interrupted. “I’m no college professor, learn your own lessons. Cots are in the other room, pick an open one. We’re heading out at dawn.”

Daniel laughed and she shooed him out of the room, bending over the table to resume her rock chiseling.

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On the cusp between exiting the building and seeking out a bed, Daniel hesitated. He had no idea what time it was, or how this world even measured time, but exhaustion was beginning to creep into his limbs, worsened by the tail end of alcohol’s effects.

It didn’t make much sense to him — he hadn’t been conscious that long, tiring as the walk to the village might have been. But once the idea of sleep entered his brain, it latched on like a parasite, driving him to its own selfish objective.

He wanted to see the other shop, get a notebook or something to write in. Find Kire and interrogate him about the coming dungeon. But his eyelids grew heavy — too heavy. A pair of fingers were pushing them down, clouding his mind.

The scars vibrated on his skin, stopping when he looked at them but resuming when his mind wandered from them.

He pointed his hand at the doorway leading out to the village and the need for sleep vanished, replaced by the eruption of pain up his arm.

“Shit,” he hissed through gritted teeth, worried Theo would hear him. He dragged his arm away, pointing his hand in the direction of the second room in the neglected building. The pain relented.

“This is a terrible communication method,” he muttered, stomping towards the hallway that led to a now quiet room. The heavy feeling of sleep returned. He should have listened to that first.

The hallway was poorly lit, only the light from Theo’s shop prevented it from being pitch black. But as he progressed, tennis shoes tapping against the damp stone floor, another light revealed itself within the room.

Most people were asleep, bundled in various piles of furs or knitted blankets. Bags of gear were slipped under cots or kept by feet, and the far wall had stacks of boxes and a few sacks leaning against it.

He could see all that because one person was awake. Her eyes were closed and brows furrowed, her silver hair straight as a pin and fanning over her back like a cape. She was murmuring words he couldn’t hear, but the soft and intimate tone reminded him of prayer.

Most notable, though, was that she glowed.

He could see her legs, exposed from her golden robes from the knees down, crossed and covered with spiral markings that emitted light in a soft hum. Their light waxed and waned with the gentle chant of her words. Her arm, as she had only the one, was covered in the same markings and hummed in the same manner.

She saw him approach, her eyes opening gradually as he entered the room. Her chanting ceased, and she lifted her hand to the left side of her chest, then extended it towards him, palm up.

She was on the other side of the room, and Daniel realized it was a distant version of the handshake Kire had given him. He mimicked the motion and she smiled, then closed her eyes and returned to her prayers.

Daniel sought out an empty cot, weaving through wooden support beams, slouched bags, and sleeping bodies. He found one in the far corner of the room, closest to a leak from the ceiling. The tanned skin that made the bed was stretched thin over a metal structure to make a flat sleeping surface lifted off the ground. There was no pillow, blanket, or other comfort for him. He scooted it away from the damp wall as far as he could then settled down.

It was cold and uncomfortable, and under normal circumstances he thought it more likely he wouldn’t sleep at all. But the moment he was horizontal, sleep overtook him like a wave capsizing a ship.