The Birth of Fantasy

Chapter 5

I opened my eyes and stared at the stone ceiling above me for a few fleeting moments before I forced myself to sit up and look around. I was back in the same room after my cosmic road trip. Just a moment ago, I had a text box saying I had died from an infection.

I felt around the top part of my right foot and found that it was like It had never been impaled. Looking down at my arm and touching my back showed the same results. What had the text box meant? How could I have died, If I'm sitting here?"

It took me a moment to realize I was in the same shotty clothing I had been in yesterday but without the tears and rips. A 'click' removed me from my pondering, and I hopped off the table and went to look at the counter of runes at the head of the table. I watched as it slowly clicked down, then sprang back up to the default runes.

Did I die and somehow get resurrected back on this altar? Was this counter showing me how many lives they had? My mind was breaking. I staggered backward, and when my back hit the wall, my legs gave out as if my strings had been cut, and I fell onto my ass. I sat there and stared at the metallic pipes and colorful gems below the altar's stone slab.

After god knows how long, I stood up and took a lap around the room to see if I missed anything the last time I was here. Not seeing anything of interest, I went over to the door and opened it. Without letting go, I stuck my head out and looked both ways, same damn stone halls with the mysterious blue fireballs lighting the way.

Backing out of the door, I let it close and kept my eye on it. It remained a part of the wall. I opened it back up and looked inside to see the same stone slab altar and closed it back up. Still there. As I heard a 'clank' in the distance, I looked towards the offending sound. Not seeing the skeleton yet, I looked back to the now stone brick wall.

"That is just the coolest thing I've ever seen," I whispered to myself.

I began to wander the halls trying to avoid the genuine undead problems stalking the area. I couldn't find the chairs I had laid out but did find the prison cells pretty quickly. It took me quite some time after that to find one of the barracks. Using one of the smaller pillowcases, I removed some skins and bags of jerky from the room's storage. I was happy to find this barracks also had one of the leather maps on its wall. Before I left, I broke one of the chairs, grabbing the two legs with the longest reach.

I wandered the halls for what seemed like days. I even walked straight past sixteen halls. I'm pretty sure I had somehow walked in a circle, but anything I left on the ground to mark my start seemed to vanish. Maybe something was cleaning up behind me?

After I slept in one of the random barracks for a second time, I came across an odd room. It looked like any of the other barracks I came across but had two mirrors on one wall. In the mirror on the left, I could see my reflection. I looked almost exactly like I had before I stepped into the shower back on the F.N. Xistrith so long ago. My hair was down to my shoulders and was the color of freshly fallen snow. My skin was its usual darker blueish-white. The same color I vaguely remembered my mother having. The changes to my body I noticed right away were my eyes and ears.

My eyes seemed to glow the most radiant lavender I had ever seen. The glowing was strange, but the fact my eyes had been grey was what shocked me the most. Then there were my ears which seemed to have gotten pointier and more prolonged, almost like the ears of a Drow, only without the dark coloring.

However, what made this room an oddity was the second mirror in the room. While the left one showed my reflection, the right one did not. It showed a dark room with a few visible doors. It was almost like the mirror was a doorway into another room, and the glass on the mirror was missing. I tossed one of the broken chair legs at the mirror to test a hypothesis that came to mind.