Janus and The Prince: A LitRPG Saga (The Nightmares of Alamir Book 2)

by Noam Oswin

  Arol

  [Fort Zvyar Scout]

  [Little Berserker]

  [Sacrifice of the Aljutha]

  Leporinian Poltergeist

  Lv. ?

  The macuahuitl wielding, red-hooded rabbit-person poltergeist was a young preteen girl. Never in my life did I believe such a nonsensical sentence would run through my mind. A snarl escaped her lips, and the pressure against my dagger increased tenfold. The Elvani Dagger in my grasp could only withstand so much damage against the obsidian blade and heavily absurd strength of the poltergeist that was beginning to irritate me.

  Your [Elvani Dagger] is badly damaged.

  “You’re… pretty strong for someone so small.”

  “You’re pretty chatty for someone so weak.”

  Your [Elvani Dagger] has broken.

  Fuck –

  It happened faster than I expected. My [Elvani Dagger] snapped in half like dried bamboo in a panda’s jaws. The oversized macuahuitl swung for my skull, and self-preservation instincts forced me to raise both my gauntleted hands up to catch it.

  As a normal human attempting to catch a baseball bat swung horizontally at their face could testify, it was a very stupid move.

  –2506 HP!

  HP: 2594/5100

  The flat of the wooden-sword-bat slammed against my face and unearthed me from the ground. My sense of up and down was inversed as I soared in the air, my spine shrieking in pain as I crashed into and through a wooden deciduous tree before finally rolling to a stop.

  Nearly… half my HP… in one hit?

  Disoriented, I forced myself to stand, push through the pain and think. Think! Think! She was incorporeal, meaning I could not touch her, my golems could not touch her, and she was immune to physical harm. On top of that, she was fast and she was strong. She was overpowering me, and I had a skill literally called [Herculean Strength] which augmented my lifting and striking power about a hundred-thousand-fold, relative to my weight.

  Her weapon isn’t intangible.

  Her weapon was not intangible, but the rest of her was? How did that work?

  [Sixth Sense – DANGER DETECTED!]

  She lunged at me at a speed that would outpace racecars, macuahuitl swinging overhead and wide. The weapon – aim for the weapon –

  “[Diamond Bullet.]”

  A crack of supersonic air echoed through the forest as the diamond projectile struck the wooden object and bounced off like a rubber ball hitting a concrete wall.

  “Oh for fuck’s sakes!”

  I side-stepped the overhead swing at the last moment, the impact cratering the ground and costing me my footing. The little devil did not hesitate, ceasing the advantage, she balanced the grip of the weapon on her shoulder lifting it into the air, and then swinging it in an arch designed to simultaneously cut me in half and break every bone in my body.

  “[Earth Control!]”

  A crude riot-shield of granite rose in my left hand just as the impact came.

  –256 HP!

  HP: 2338/5100

  [Warning!]

  You have attained the Negative Effect: [Crippled]

  You cannot use the affected limb [Crippled] is mitigated.

  My left arm was crushed. The damage was such that the limb hung loosely without me feeling any connection to it. My arm had never been broken before. Neither in this life, nor the previous. The feat impressed and disturbed me. I was a skeleton, yet somehow, it never occurred to me that any of my bones could be rendered immobile.

  The crudely made granite riot-shield did its job in protecting me, even at the cost of shattering, the cost of my left hand, and the cost of sending me sliding across the earth. My amusement with the entire situation was gone.

  “Why are you attacking me?”

  [Sixth Sense]

  The sound of objects whistling through the air again came to my attention. The Mask of Janus ensured immunity to flanking attacks, granting me relief that I did not have to deflect the sniping rounds aimed at my back, as they dropped harmlessly to the ground before they connected. The presence of the sniper reminded me that Arol was not alone. That was troubling. Even assuming that I was, somehow, able to find a way to beat the incorporeal little ghost, what were my chances of also succeeding against whoever it was that was cautious enough to hide in wait, and take shots at me from afar?

  She wielded her oversized macuahuitl like it was a butter-knife, spinning it into the air in contrast against her tiny, diminutive form. “You’re asking the wrong question.” Her voice was one that matched her appearance and seeming age. High-pitched. Feminine. Underlying with a tint of what was either sarcasm or disdain.

  My preconceived notions of what ‘nightmares’ were supposed to be was changing with every passing second. Unlike Ilikbolg and the monsters I met at the Final Sanctuary Woodlands who seemed to be devoid of reason, purpose or personality, being nothing more than the stereotypical fantasy beasts, Arol before me was nothing of the sort.

  “What is the correct question?”

  “Definitely not that one.”

  My amusement grew. “Snarky aren’t we.”

  “Just sit still and this’ll be over in a couple of seconds.”

  “Can’t do that I’m afraid. Death and I have danced once, and it didn’t end well.”

  Her lips twitched. “Poor dancer?”

  “Terrible,” I said. “Stepped all over her toes. Poor Lady Death enduring my two left feet.”

  “I hope you taste better than you dance.”

  “Taste?”

  I stared down at my form. I may have disguised myself a bit too well. With the aid of my Chameleon Panther Cloak and the large Iron Gauntlets I wore, I understood how someone could mistake me as something actually worth eating.

  Sighing, I exposed my coat and revealed the contents within “Unless you have a craving for bones… I’m afraid my taste isn’t going to be anything spectacular.”

  The girl stood still for several minutes. “You’re a skeleton.”

  “Unfortunately.”

  She slammed her weapon into the earth and let out a large, disappointed groan. “A skeleton? I can’t believe –” she muttered several words I had never heard before underneath her breath. Several of them were most likely colorful expletives.

  “Wunder!” she called to the forest “It’s just a stupid skeleton!”

  “I take offense to the stupid part of that –”

  “A stupid skeleton with a quick tongue!” She huffed, pointing her finger at me. “What’s a skeleton doing sitting in front of a fire, roasting rabbits in the middle of the forest? It was something so stupid I thought for sure you were a rookie adventurer.”

  I opened my mouth, but she continued off on a tangent. “And what’s with that stupid mask and stupid cloak and weird iron shoes? Why are you dressed like that? Why’s your aura so weak? You’re named aren’t you? You’d have to be named to talk so you’re definitely named. You were named recently, right? What’s a named one doing in the Hlahan Forest alone? Where’s your Nightwitch or Nightshaman? Are you contracted to an Aljutha? Why do you smell funny? What’s your –”

  “Arol, I don’t think the skeleton here can answer a dozen questions at a time.”

  The creature that approached from the forest was almost my height, but with several inches added that placed him in the six-foot-seven range. Thick, large and buff, he was some unholy cross between a man and a porcupine, with his back and arms littered in a thousand black spines that glistened in the darkness. Eyes pitch black and devoid of pupils, his face possessed humanoid traits, if somehow humans had evolved to possess snouts instead of noses and whiskers instead of beards. With no clothes at all on his form, it disturbed me to realize that ‘it’ was visible, hanging between his legs, protected by spines of a somewhat darker color than the rest that adorned his body.

  Wunder

  [Fort Zvyar Lieutenant]

  [Beast of Unhurried Demises]

  [The Kindred Heretic]

 
; Thousand-Quilled Barbeast

  Lv. ?

  His voice was deep but not unpleasant, almost sounding like a man who’d spent his entire life singing blues, there was a dissonance in my mind between what he looked like and what he sounded like. With his bulky frame and sharp, lethal looking quills, I almost questioned why he needed to attack from a distance. Why he chose to attack from a distance.

  “Though, I’ll admit, you are rather unusual for a skeleton.” Wunder approached me, dark eyes almost shining in the darkness.

  “I know!” Arol chipped in. “After I attacked him, he complemented my eyes. My. Eyes.”

  “Oh?” Wunder crossed his arms. “Perhaps he has a thing for his fellow undead. A skeleton and a poltergeist would make a great pair don’t you think?”

  Sorry – what? “I’m not –”

  “No way! He doesn’t even have a cock. How would we fuck?”

  “My fingers still work rather fine.”

  The duo stared at me. I realized what I’d said and was glad that my mask covered my face. It was almost second nature for me to let out a snide or sarcastic response to things at this point, and sometimes I did it without even thinking. I coughed heavily into my working right hand to try and regain some sense of where the conversation was going. “You two are nightmares, correct?”

  “I’m a scarecrow and he’s the village pillory.”

  “I’ll take that as a yes.”

  “Sorry Arol. This skeleton is perhaps too unintelligent for you.”

  “I told you he was stupid.”

  My face would burn with indignation if I had a face to burn. “I believed all nightmares were just mindless monsters who wanted to destroy and pillage and burn.”

  “Of course we want to destroy and pillage and burn!” Arol said. “Destroying is fun. We get to tear stuff down. Pillaging is fun. We get to get new stuff. Burning is fun. Have you seen how great a fire looks at night?”

  “Ah.” I said, understanding slowly dawning. “So it’s not that you’re mindless monsters, but sociopathic monsters.”

  “Sozopahic?” Arol scrunched up her nose. “What’s that?” She frowned. “Ah, I know what that is. Leader Erzili told us. You’re talking about that thing Alamirians have… um… em.. erm…”

  “Empathy.” Wunder said, giving me a side-eye glance. “You must be a soulborn.”

  “Soulborn?”

  “Like me!” She said, placing one hand on her hip. “That explains it. I used to be a Leporinian before I died, but an Aljutha used me for this dark ritual thing, and my soul lingered and festered and I met Lady Rhamnusia and she turned me into a nightmare. I was stupid like you, but Leader Erzili helped fix me. Maybe Leader Erzili can fix you too.”

  “Is that so?” I tried to keep my tone neutral. “Having empathy means you’re broken?”

  “Yep!” Arol nodded. “Broken badly.”

  “And why’s that?”

  “Because –”

  “Arol, allow me.” Wunder said, the larger creature staring me down. “Whatever you were before you died, forget it. You’re a nightmare now. Even if you were to become a hermit that lived at the top of a mountain eating leaves and counting grass, the Alamirians – the Elvani, Humans, Leporinians, Midwarfs, Lycaoni, Felani and Druids – they will gather forces and raise up arms, burn down your mountain, destroy your home and hunt you without rest until your head hangs on a pike at their gates and your killer is heralded a champion. Children will sing tales of your killer as a vanquisher of evil, songs will exaggerate their bravery and courage, and the cold truth of a nightmare who did no wrong and begged for mercy will be unheard by history.”

  My mouth opened behind my mask, and closed slowly. “That was… rather elegant. Still unsure as to how it has to relate with why having empathy is bad, but it was elegant nonetheless.”

  Wunder patted me against the back, staggering me from the strength in his arms and making me confused at an almost forgotten gesture that felt alien coming from a creature as huge and grotesque as he was.

  “We are Nightmares of Alamir. If we will be hunted and feared regardless, we must make ourselves worthy of both the hunt and the fear. And of course, we mustn’t forget to enjoy ourselves in the process. Isn’t that right Arol?”

  “Alamirians are delicious.”

  “There’s also that,” Wunder chuckled. “Speaking of delicious things… we still haven’t caught any.”

  “Ugh… you had to remind me. Onna’s gonna outdo us in the hunting again. I’m sick of eating kobold for dinner. Every time she just goes off and brings back frozen kobold for dinner.” The little poltergeist clicked her tongue and glared in my direction. “Why did you have to be a skeleton? Couldn’t you have been something with flesh and bones and blood that could be made into a broth?”

  “No one is more disappointed in my lack of fleshy parts than I am.” I said. The remaining part of her sentence caught up to me, along with the implications. “You’d eat me if I was a nightmare that had flesh?”

  “Of course.” Wunder said.

  “Especially if you were very meaty.” Arol added.

  “It’s nothing personal little skeleton,” Wunder said, “But as per Erzili’s rules, everyone is food by default unless the amount of effort required in killing them is more than the satisfaction you’d get from eating them. Like in your case.”

  “My case?”

  “Most nightmares aren’t sturdy enough or strong enough to withstand three blows from Arol’s Sword of Rhamnusia, and they certainly aren’t fast enough to catch or deflect my quills. If you don’t die after about one or two attempts to kill you, you’re more valuable alive than as a meal. No hunter will want to eat an elk that can catch his arrows, when he can showcase it and earn enough to buy a hundred normal elk.” He pointed at me. “In your case, it also helps that there’d be literally no satisfaction in eating you.”

  “Three hurrays for being a skeleton… hurray.”

  “That was only one,” Arol said.

  “Congratulations, you can count.”

  The girl stuck out her tongue at me. Wunder chuckled a bit. “The night is still pretty young. What do you say, skeleton? Want to accompany Arol and I as we hunt for dinner? We could explain some stuff you want to know, and in turn, you can tell us how a lone skeleton found himself all the way on this side of the Hlahan Forest.”

  “It’s… it’s a rather long story.”

  “It’s a rather long night. Besides,” Wunder pointed at my broken left arm. “With one bad arm, it’s a night that you probably don’t want to be spending alone. Erzili has restorative abilities. Once we get to Fort Zyvar – you can have that fixed up.”

  “What’s the catch?”

  “What?”

  “For a group who believe having empathy is bad, you’re showing an awfully large amount of it,” I pointed. “If you’re not helping me out of altruism, you’re helping me because there’s a reason.”

  A large grin tore on Wunder’s face. “You’re right. There is a reason.”

  “And?”

  “… there was a… disturbance out in the forest recently. Know anything about that?”

  Arol scoffed. “Wunder, it’s obviously not him. The power we felt was waaaaayyyy too much to have come from this tiny little skeleton.”

  They were talking about Apophis. There was no mistaking it. “I did feel a surge of power a while back, and as I’ve already told you about my desire to not dance with death, I did my best to steer clear away from it.”

  Wunder locked his gaze on me for several seconds, before sighing. “A smart move.”

  “That can’t be the only reason you’re helping me.”

  “You’re a paranoid one you know that?”

  I said nothing, waiting expectantly at the duo.

  “Also a weird one. You… you don’t seem to be afraid of us at all.”

  “Should I be?”

  “We’re stronger than you. We could kill you without much difficulty.”

 
“Almost everyone I’ve ever met could make that claim, and they would all be right.”

  Wunder gave me a wide, toothed grin. “I like you skeleton.” He said. “Fearless in the face of overpowering adversaries, quick-witted and silver-tongued… with some work, you just might fit in at Fort Zyvar.”

  “So… you’re recruiting me?”

  “Yes! We’re recruiting you!” Arol whined. “Now can we move? We still have to hunt!”

  “Alright.” I said, relenting. “Lead the way.”

  “Finally!” Arol said, floating in the air. “You also have to tell us your story. It better be good. I haven’t heard a good story in forever. Only Leader Erzili usually has great stories, everyone else’s is boring. Yours better not be boring.”

  “Even mine is boring?” Wunder asked.

  “You never get explicit enough.”

  “Because every time I do, you start using your –”

  “Shhh! Let Mister Skeleton talk.”

  “My name is Janus, not Mister Skeleton.”

  Arol and Wunder rose an eyebrow at that. “That sounds like a powerful name.”

  “Yeah. How’d you get a name like that?”

  Cradling my broken left arm, memories rushed to the front of my mind.

  “It all began with a strange woman who came to me looking for a job…”

  Chapter 5: The Hunt

  Neither Arol nor Wunder were what I expected when I envisioned nightmares or monsters. They laughed, they cracked jokes, understood sarcasm and wry humor and were almost always in high spirits. Besides Wunder’s beastly appearance and Arol’s otherworldly strength and abilities, there was nothing remotely monstrous or nightmarish about them.

  They were also, as it stood, beyond my abilities and capabilities to defeat to gather experience points. Assuming all of it was some ploy designed to get me to lower my guard, I still did not know how I would go about defeating them should their leader, this Erzili I kept hearing about, order them to kill me.

  Arol was a poltergeist that could not be touched. She phased through everything, making her essentially invulnerable for all intents and purposes as there was nothing in my arsenal that could harm her. Wunder on the other hand was not invulnerable, but I knew far too little about his capabilities to even get an accurate read on his power. The friendly giant quill-monster was genial, and at first glance, he almost seemed to act possessive of Arol, like a father-figure to her. This was only at first glance though, as I noticed more and more that rather than a father-figure, it was more or less of a relationship between a teacher and student. Albeit a very lax teacher, and a very hyperactive, talkative student.