Shade's First Rule

by A F Kay

  He toggled his Detect Temperature ability and then stepped closer to the door. Peering through the opening, he focused on the left wall and a shelf that sat there. He pictured the symbol of Distraction. Three things happened almost simultaneously: ten flashed on his Mana bar, a cough sounded from the shelf, and something leaped from behind the door and crashed into the shelf.

  Not wanting to waste his opportunity, Ruwen slid into the room and moved away from the entrance and toward the shelf. A round black mass two feet across with a dozen tubular arms had destroyed the shelf. The monster thrashed the wood with four of its arms while the others wriggled at its side. It stood on three of its appendages and bobbed up and down as if it floated on a river. This looked like the Thrasher Sift had described.

  Ruwen swung the staff with all his strength and struck the Thrasher right in the middle of its body. The sound of air being expelled was followed by terrible wheezing. The Thrasher staggered to the left and crashed into the wall. It put another two arms down to help keep its balance and weakly shot one of its arms at Ruwen. It struck his chest, and he instinctively jerked backward. The arm ripped off the Thrasher’s body, and Ruwen stumbled back a few steps.

  The Thrasher glowed red from Ruwen’s Detect Temperature, and he could even see the blood dripping to the floor. He smiled at his cleverness in realizing he could use this ability for more than cooking. Raising the staff above his head, he brought it down on the Thrasher’s body. He did it two more times just to make sure it was dead.

  The hair on the back of his neck stood, and he turned to find another Thrasher behind him. He raised his staff to strike, but the Thrasher flicked one of its arms out and struck Ruwen’s eye. He screamed, dropped his staff, and gripped the Thrasher’s arm, scared the Thrasher might yank it back and rip his eyeball out.

  The Thrasher’s arm was about the same thickness as Ruwen’s wrist, and he didn’t feel anything digging into his eye. Holding the appendage against his eye with his right hand, he used his left hand to jerk violently on the Thrasher’s arm. He stumbled backward as the arm separated from the monster.

  To his horror, the Thrasher’s arm didn’t release, and the appendage hung off his eye like a wet noodle. Terrified that the monster might strike his other eye, he let go of the Thrasher’s arm and prayed it wouldn’t pull his eye out. It hung limply from his face as Ruwen knelt and searched for his staff. His left eye had teared up from the force of the strike on the other eye, and everything looked blurry. He prayed he would still be able to see after this was finished.

  The Thrasher had paused, and Ruwen stared at it while his hands moved desperately across the ground, searching for his staff. He right hand found it, and he stood quickly, raising the weapon to protect himself. The staff felt slippery, but he couldn’t see it due to the three feet of Thrasher arm hanging off his face. Maybe the weapon was coated in blood.

  The staff moved, and Ruwen screamed, dropping what he thought was his weapon. But it didn’t leave his hand. Instead, it wrapped around it. He brought his arm around so he could see it with his left eye, and he screamed again.

  A Giant Centipede four feet long had wrapped itself around his arm. Its small eyes were behind two large pinchers, which clicked together. He hated bugs in general but detested centipedes. He could feel the legs, hundreds of them, wriggling against his skin. The head reared back like it meant to strike him, so Ruwen stretched his arm to get the Giant Centipede as far from his face as he could.

  Thoughts raced through his mind as panic threatened to overwhelm him. More than anything, he wanted to kill this horrible monster. He needed to crush its head. Bringing his arm down to the ground in preparation to stomp on it, his heart almost stopped when he saw another Giant Centipede wrapping its body around his leg. Fear paralyzed him.

  The Giant Centipede around his legs reared its head and then struck his thigh. The pinchers dug deep into his leg, and he gasped in pain.

  Ten flashed on his Health bar as it dropped and then every second two more Health disappeared. An icon flashed next to his debuffs. It looked like a coiled snake. Pain, like liquid fire, moved up his thigh and into his gut, and he realized he’d been poisoned. Ruwen almost collapsed as his legs wobbled.

  The Giant Centipede around his leg raised its head to strike again, but Ruwen grabbed it with his left hand. He stood there, hunched over, a Giant Centipede in each hand and a Thrasher appendage hanging from his eye. He puked up his breakfast as the poison reached his stomach, and the sausage burned his nostrils as it came out. His working eye had filled with tears, but he could make out the other Thrasher moving between him and the door. Like a heartbeat, the poison ticked, taking two Health with every beat. In moments, he had lost a quarter of his Health.

  He didn’t know what to do. If he let go of either Giant Centipede, they would bite him, and he didn’t think he would survive another two doses of poison. Reaching for his dagger or the baton was out of the question, as it would bring the Giant Centipede within biting distance of his body. The poison had weakened his leg and core, and he didn’t think he could even kick the attacking Thrasher. Not that he had the coordination for that anyway. If he didn’t do something soon, one of these three monsters would be the end of him.

  Ruwen cast Distraction at the far wall, desperate to do something. The Thrasher stopped approaching and slowly rotated. He didn’t even know where its eyes were, but it had stopped, and that had bought him a few more seconds to think.

  He could cast Campfire, but it seemed useless since the Thrasher could easily walk around it. Plus, he probably didn’t have the five seconds it would take to cast it. That literally left him a single thing to try: Scrub.

  If he hadn’t been greedy and agreed to Fluffy’s deal, he wouldn’t have had to take such a useless spell. His other choices hadn’t been great, but they couldn’t have been worse than a cleaning spell. He only had himself to blame.

  The irony didn’t escape him. While he had dreamed of fighting monsters like this, it had been with powerful Mage spells. Instead, he would die while cleaning them. He couldn’t have made his Worker Class prouder. Sift would find his dead body surrounded by sparkling Giant Centipedes.

  He screamed in frustration, and the Thrasher moved toward him again. The poison had stopped taking Health, but the burning and dizziness remained. Resigned to his fate, cursing his Class, he pictured the brush symbol for Scrub.

  His hands vibrated, and a white glow seeped from his palms. The area he gripped on each Giant Centipede turned from brown to silver. He could see faint traces of pink and blue on the monsters’ bodies as the dirt and grime dissolved. How could such disgusting creatures have beautiful scales? A small part of him had hoped the dire warnings in the textbook would have allowed him to use this as a weapon. But the proof was right in front of him. It performed as advertised. It cleaned.

  The Thrasher was almost close enough to reach him. Ruwen’s time was almost up. A two flashed over his Energy bar every second, but the bar remained full. The two Energy per second he was channeling to Scrub was barely more than his 1.9 that he regenerated every second. He could stand here all day cleaning these things. The numbers reminded him what he’d found strange about Scrub. Its Energy consumption was variable. In fact, he remembered it went to twenty even though a warning had said to never go past ten.

  With a thought, he pushed as much Energy as he could to his hands. His Energy bar dropped in chunks of twenty as his hands vibrated so fast they began to blur. At this rate, he would be out of Energy in less than ten seconds. The white glow, which had been soft before, became blinding. Any part of the Giant Centipedes that touched his hands simply dissolved.

  The Giant Centipede in his right hand fell in two pieces to the ground and writhed as it died. The Giant Centipede wrapped around his leg released its grip as its head dropped to the floor. Ruwen reached down to pull the creature off his leg and screamed in pain as his hand neared his leg. A thirty flashed on his Health bar, and Ruwen collapsed as his leg gave out
. The shaking in his hands made them impossible to control.

  The Thrasher, seeing its opportunity, jumped on him. Instinctively, Ruwen raised his arms and thrust out his hands to shield himself. The Thrasher crashed into Ruwen’s body as his hands dissolved a path through the Thrasher’s body. The Thrasher convulsed as it died, blood soaking Ruwen’s shirt. His Energy bar turned red, and he immediately stopped channeling Scrub. He didn’t move, the shock of surviving too great.

  He stayed like that, staring at the ceiling with his one good eye, a Thrasher half on him like he was putting on a shirt. His mind had gone numb. He never wanted to do anything like this again.

  “You’re not supposed to wear them,” Sift said as he pulled the Thrasher off Ruwen’s body.

  “Looks like you’re going to lose your eye, too,” Sift said.

  Ruwen didn’t react, his mind replaying the horrible events that had almost killed him.

  “Hey, I’m joking. You okay?” Sift asked.

  Ruwen felt Sift grab the sucker attached to his eye and squeeze. A moment later the appendage came off with a pop. Sift filled his vision. Both eyes still worked.

  “You’re going to have a black eye from that,” Sift said. “You’d think the eye is the worst place to get one of these, but it isn’t.”

  Ruwen’s brain started to work a little. Sift helped Ruwen sit up, and he leaned against the wall. For the first time, he could see the whole room. It looked like a library, although most of the books were scattered on the floor.

  Ruwen rubbed the eye that had been covered by the sucker and noticed his hand was clean. Really clean.

  “What?” Ruwen asked.

  “It’s the nipple,” Sift said.

  Ruwen stared at Sift.

  “Nevermind, are you okay?” Sift asked.

  “No, I’m not.”

  Chapter 21

  Sift sat down next to Ruwen.

  “I honestly thought I was going to die,” Ruwen said. “Again.”

  “Only once has Ky brought someone under level twenty through the Blood Gate. She was level ten,” Sift said. He rolled the blood-stained hem of his pants between his fingers. “She didn’t last long.”

  “Are you trying to help? Because you suck at it,” Ruwen said.

  “My point is, Ky bringing you here means the other options were worse.”

  Ruwen rubbed his face with his hands. Thoughts of the Giant Centipedes made him shudder. “That’s hard to believe.”

  “I agree. You must be in a real mess back home.”

  “I am. For reasons I don’t even understand.”

  “Why are you here?”

  Why was he here? That was a good question. Because Ky hated him and enjoyed putting him in these miserable situations? No, she had bigger issues than wasting time on a worthless level two Worker. Maybe it was because that stupid high priest had punished him by making him a Worker in the first place. But that rang hollow as well. He’d acted like an idiot and revealed his two-Class ability to the very people looking for it was probably the most accurate answer. Even if that was the catalyst, it wasn’t the reason he was here. His goals were basically the same as they were before the madness surrounding his Ascension. He needed to survive long enough to gain the power and skills to find his missing parents.

  “I’m here because of my parents,” Ruwen said.

  “Now that is something I can understand!” Sift said.

  Ruwen gave Sift a small smile. Sift was trying hard to cheer him up.

  “My parents disappeared a year ago. Their whole party died except for them. They got blamed for killing everyone, and for the fortune in terium that went missing. I’ve suffered because of it. I want to find them, and I want the truth. But I can’t do any of that until I’m stronger.”

  What Ruwen didn’t say was how the constant whispers that his parents had abandoned him for all that money had started to stick to his thoughts.

  “I’m sorry,” Sift said.

  “Thanks.”

  “But you should find another reason, too. A personal one.”

  “That is personal. It’s my name that got ruined that day, too!”

  “Easy, friend. I agree that is powerful motivation, and probably fine for years. But eventually, you’re going to need more to power your growth. Something that allows you to push yourself.”

  “What’s yours?”

  Sift bit his lip. “I’ve never told anyone.”

  Ruwen held up his hands. “I didn’t mean to pry.”

  “No, it’s okay. I like you. Even if you have a weird thing with wearing the monsters you kill.”

  “That was an accident. It was a last resort situation.”

  “Don’t worry, I won’t tell…many people.”

  They both laughed.

  After a few seconds of quiet Sift spoke again. “Freedom. That is the prism I see everything through.”

  “Freedom from here? Your parents?”

  Sift nodded. “I want to hear the sound of the sea, taste snow, feel the energy at a Step tournament, and a thousand other things I can’t do here. I also might want to get away from my parents.”

  Ruwen chuckled. “You want to leave your parents, and I want to find mine.”

  “And yet our paths crossed.”

  Sift opened his bag, removed a small bar, and handed it to Ruwen. “Eat that. It looks like you lost your breakfast.”

  “Stupid Giant Centipedes. It’s bad enough they have all those legs and pinchers and small dead eyes, but poison too?”

  “That’s Blapy for you. There are bigger ones below that can fly. I hate those. She is always experimenting with new ways to torture people. How did you kill these?”

  Ruwen looked at his leg where the Giant Centipede had bitten him. The wounds had healed, but he could still feel the cold teeth chomping on his leg. A hand-sized hole in his pants reminded him how much damage Scrub could do. He could have killed himself if he’d scratched his nose.

  “I cleaned them to death,” Ruwen said.

  “What?”

  “Literally, I scrubbed them so hard they fell apart.”

  “That’s a new one.”

  “I’m so bad at fighting. Before coming in here, I reminded myself not to drop my weapon and not to turn my back on anything. Then, I spent too much time killing the first one, and something got behind me. Then when it attacked me, the first thing I did was drop my weapon. How can I be so bad at this?”

  “I’m not going to lie, you are not a natural fighter. And it doesn’t help that you have to push yourself here. What you are doing is risky. I trust Ky though, so I know it must be necessary.”

  “Thanks for your honesty. As much as it hurts.”

  “That’s why we practice. Because nothing has been handed to us. If it makes you feel better, everything past here we’ll do together.”

  “I thought you said the experience loss would be too great.”

  “These were all level one, and you barely survived. You won’t survive level two on your own, so the experience issue is moot.”

  “That does make me feel better actually.”

  “Good, now go see if Blapy gave you anything good.”

  Ruwen pushed himself to his feet, placed his staff in its harness, and looked around. Only a few tables still stood on four legs. On the one closest to him, the familiar brown leather bag had appeared. He walked to the table, opened the bag, and dumped it out.

  A centipede, about the size of his pinky, tumbled out of the bag and rolled toward him. He jumped back and grabbed the baton from his waist. Raising it above his head, he prepared to smash the small creature. It lay unmoving on its side, and he slowly lowered his baton. Poking the centipede with the baton didn’t cause a reaction, and as he got closer, he realized it wasn’t living at all.

  “Are you serious?” Ruwen asked.

  “What?” Sift said from behind him.

  Ruwen carefully picked up the centipede, ready to throw it if it suddenly moved.

  Tring!
<
br />   The Black Pyramid has rewarded you…

  Name: Stuffed Centipede of Solace

  Quality: Uncommon

  Charges: 5

  Durability: 10 of 10

  Weight: 1.0 lbs.

  Effect: Cure poison when placed against the lips. 100% effective against level 1 poisons. Effectiveness halves per poison level increase.

  Description: Gently clean with warm water. Scrubbing will cause damage.

  Ruwen held it up. “She gave me a stuffed centipede.”

  “It’s cute.”

  “It cures poison, but you have to kiss it.”

  “Oh, that’s evil.”

  “I think she’s really enjoying this,” Ruwen said.

  “She probably gets bored.”

  “So, we are some sort of entertainment?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “You never look in the bags?” Ruwen asked.

  “She doesn’t even put things in bags anymore. When I never opened them, she placed the loot in plain sight.”

  Ruwen shook his head and looked at the remaining two items on the table. The items closest to him looked like a stack of silver squares about the size of his palm. They reflected the light and rainbows raced across the surface.

  Tring!

  The Black Pyramid has rewarded you…

  Name: Rock Centipede Scales

  Quantity: 5

  Quality: Uncommon

  Durability: 50 of 50

  Weight: 5.0 lbs.

  Description: Alchemy component. Very clean.

  The very clean comment made him wonder if these were actually scales from the ones he’d killed. Blapy had already absorbed them. Probably not, he decided. She was just taking every opportunity to poke fun at him. He put them in his Void Band and then focused on the last reward.

  The final items were round, pink, and as wide as his thumb.

  Tring!

  The Black Pyramid has rewarded you…

  Name: Floating Clasper Sucker

  Quantity: 3

  Quality: Uncommon

  Durability: 5 of 5

  Weight: 0.10 lbs.