Breaking the Status Quo [Fantasy]

[LonesomeTomb773]

[X] Consume it (+2 Life Essence, 24 hours; +???).

Snip Eleven:

You decide to take a risk. You shove your fingers into the seam between the mechanism and the stone it's embedded in. You can only fit your fingertips in, but it's enough.

Using all of your strength, you pull on the rune-inscribed disk. It initially puts up resistance, but with a little more force, you pry it free easily. As soon as you do, the entire pillar stops glowing. A few pieces of dust fall down from the ceiling, but nothing particularly worrying.

Examining the disk itself, you notice that it is lit up again and spinning, but there's no voice in your head like the one from before. You lift it above your head, slightly surprised by how light it is, and dash it against the pillar in front of you, completely shattering it. Well, actually, it crumbles into dust, but either way, it's destroyed.

You feel a rush of energy, and you feel much stronger than before. Your bones ache slightly, before expanding. In fact, all of you seems to get bigger. You feel like you've grown a foot or two, and your bones are almost twice as thick as before. Examining your claws, you think that you might be able to cut through some light armor with them, seeing as they are far sharper and longer.

Looking up, you notice that the top of the hollow in the pillar is now down to your shoulders, whereas before it was just above the top of your head. Yeah, you're definitely taller by a foot at least. For some reason, your neck seems a bit longer than it should be, and your skull is definitely a bit more elongated than would be proportional.

You feel your face, and your teeth feel sharper and your eye sockets seem to have a weak barrier where your eyes should be. You can still stick your finger all the way into your skull, but there's a bit of initial difficulty.

Done examining yourself, you observe the area around you.

You are filled with the desire to swear.

The walls of the room are now brown instead of tan, and they're cracking. The room itself has big piles of some powder around the edges. You examine the powder. It's… dirt?

You suddenly feel like you should have read that book in closer detail. Is alchemy a thing in this world? Taking a quick glance at the walls around you… yeah, they're made out of dirt as well. The pillar? Uh-huh.

You make the wise decision to leave the room before getting buried under hundreds of tons of dirt. When you reach the big hub room from before, you exasperatedly notice that it also seems to be turning into dirt, just… slower. You try the door to the elevator room, thinking you might be able to leave by spinning the dial, but the door refuses to open.

There's only one thing to do. Get out of this place before it collapses on you.

But which way is the way out? On the same wall as the dial room is the dining room that you haven't investigated yet, but it seems to be very crumbly and brown. The blockaded room and the tablet room look almost untouched, but the tablet room doesn't look like it has a way through, and the blockade room is, well, blockaded. And that room that looks plain, well, it's not quite as bad as the pillar room, but there is another room through there.

Of course, none of them are guaranteed to be the way out, but you have to try.

[ ] Go through the barricade.
[ ] Investigate the tablet.
[ ] Explore the dining room.
[ ] Go through the "plain" room.

Spoiler: Status Change

+2 Life Essence, 24 hours
+Dirt-to-Stone Durability

 

[LonesomeTomb773]

AN: So, I decided to take some liberties with the voting. Feel free to complain about it.

[X] Investigate the tablet.
[X] Test Dirt-to-Stone Durability. Plenty of dirt around.
[X] Go through the "plain" room.

Snip Twelve:

Well, the walls might be turning into dirt, but it seems to be slow enough that you don't have to leave immediately. And there is that mysterious tablet chained to a pedestal; you would prefer to not leave it behind to be buried underneath the mountains of dirt.

You hurriedly enter the small room. It's small enough that, even without passing all the way through the doorway, you can touch the tablet if you reach out. If, you know, it wasn't completely covered in chains.

The room is still currently stone, but you can see the edge of the transmutation approaching, rather quickly at that. You should hurry.

You examine the tablet. It's made out of some kind of shiny black stone, possibly obsidian. The chains are some kind of steel, and they almost completely cover the tablet itself, attaching it firmly to the pedestal. The holes in the chain are wide enough that you can fit your fingers through them, and you do.

On instinct, you apply your full strength to pulling the chain apart, expecting the chain to be stronger than you. However, it easily shatters under your ministrations, and you fall backward, unbalanced. Bits of metal clank against the stone walls, causing some dirt to rain down from the ceiling.

Quickly, you examine the tablet. It's covered in runic inscriptions that hurt your eyes to look at. The tablet itself feels weak, almost dead, like the spinning disk from before. However, you also feel a… tie, for the lack of a better word, that connects your life force to it. Maybe you could rejuvenate it? You won't be able to do so before the building collapses around you, though.

Speaking of the building collapsing…

You return to the hub room, where the wave of collapsing dirt has reached about three-quarters of the way across the room. You stride toward the center of the room and place your hand on the hard-packed earth. Concentrating, you push your life force through your claws, concentrating on the concept of earth turning into stone.

You feel slightly weaker, but not nearly as much as you were when you first woke up back with those knights. The dirt before you has turned back to it's previous state, some sort of tannish stone. The area of the effect seems to be most of the floor of the room you're in, and the bottom of the walls. However, even as you look, the edges seem to be crumbling again. You can feel a tie from your life force to the stone you just transmuted, and you guess that you could probably pour more energy into the spell in order to sustain it, if you wanted.

But enough experimenting, more escaping. A quick glance reveals that only three rooms are even traversable; the dining room's doorway is blocked by a slowly growing mound of dirt, and the pillar room is just gone. A quick check reveals that the dial room is still locked tightly. One of the three remaining rooms is the tablet room that you had just left. Now there's only the blockaded room and the plainish room that your eyes keep being drawn to.

Well, considering that either one of them has an equal chance for being an exit, you decide that you don't have time to try to break down a barricade, even if the room is slightly more intact. You head into the plain room. Beyond it is another room, with another doorway. And beyond that, another one. It reminds you of the architectural style of the place you started in: an apparently random series of rooms that occasionally branches off into multiple paths, like some kind of labyrinth.

Okay, so there doesn't seem to be very much branching, but besides that, it seems to be about the same. You head through the series of rooms that seem to twist and turn into illogical patterns, and at times you're forced to use your one spell to prop up a collapsing ceiling. All of the rooms are well-lit, but empty. At one point, you come across what looks like a staircase heading up, but it's completely blocked by the upper floor's remains.

After just a little bit of wandering, you end up at a pair of doors. These doors remind you of the big doors before, but there are some differences. For one, these ones are slightly ajar, and are being held open by a slightly bent metal bar, as if the doors were trying to close with immense force. For another, through that crack, you can see sunlight, green grasslands, and some mountains off in the distance!

With some effort, you pry the doors apart. Apparently, that bar was preventing the doors from slamming closed. You manage to push the doors into the walls, seemingly locking them in place. You finally exit the labyrinth that has held you prisoner for so long. Well, a couple hours. Okay, it wasn't actually that long, it just felt like it was.

You turn around to look at the building you left, just in time to watch the second story collapse into the first, sending a billowing cloud of dirt into the air. The outer walls of the first story are still mostly intact, but they're slowly turning into dirt at the bottom. After another couple minutes, they completely collapse, leaving only a massive pile of dirt where there once was a multi-story dungeon.

Well, that's over, apparently. Now that you've escaped, you need to know where to go. In the distance, you see a small mountain range. To the right of those mountains, you can see what looks like a large walled city, even further away. To the left, you can only see more plains for miles and miles, with only a few villages marring the near-perfectly flat landscape. In the opposite direction of the mountain range, you can see the ocean, just barely. There's a few small towns scattered about, but by and large the area seems to be mostly wilderness.

Where to go?

[ ] To landmark.

[ ] Ocean.​

[ ] City.​

[ ] Mountain.​

[ ] Plains.​

[ ] To villages.

[ ] Toward the ocean.​

[ ] Toward the city.​

[ ] Toward the mountain.​

[ ] Toward the plains.​

[ ] Write-in? (Feel free to head in any direction you want.)

Spoiler: Status Change

-30 minutes
+1 Mysterious Tablet

 

[LonesomeTomb773]

[X] To landmark.

[X] Ocean.​

Snip Thirteen:

You decide to head to the ocean. There'll probably be a lot of small life-forms around to hunt for their life essence, and, since you probably don't need to breathe, it'll provide a possible avenue of escape from any land creatures.

Well, that's still assuming that the oceans of this world are much like your home world's. For all you know, it might be highly acidic and populated solely by gargantuan sea leviathans that can use highly advanced magic instinctively.

You think that that scenario is not very likely, but it's something to keep in mind regardless.

But regardless of the possibilities, you still think that heading to the ocean is a good bet. You orient yourself in the correct direction, and begin your long march toward it. You notice that there are a couple small villages on the way and resolve to avoid them. Being a six-foot-tall undead abomination, you feel like your presence would frighten random villagers. And anyone who wouldn't be frightened would probably try to kill you. Best to just not take the risk.

You know that you'll have to face civilization eventually, but you'd rather put that off for now. You want to establish yourself before you risk getting killed.

On the way, you decide to jog it, seeing as how your stamina is apparently infinite.

---

Only a couple hours after you start your uneventful hike, you reach your destination.

The ocean is far from what you expected. There's the bluish-green water, sure, but everything else is different. It's unusually tumultuous, with waves as high as your head crashing relentlessly against the shore. The shore itself consists of a short bar of sand followed by a steep cliff, several meters high. The wind blows against you, providing a noticeable resistance to movement.

When you look around, there's no sign of civilization anywhere nearby. It's just endless fields of grass and flowers, with the occasional tree, all swaying violently in the wind.

After a short examination of the cliffs, you find a safe way down; a path as wide as two people, worn deep into the cliffside.

Of course, this means that someone, or something, has climbed up and down this specific path enough times to wear it into solid rock. Something big.

You start to wonder if visiting the ocean was a good idea.

Far off in the distance, you can see a stormfront floating above the ocean. Strangely enough, the rest of the sky is completely cloudless. You can easily guess that that's where the wind is coming from.

While you are watching the storm throwing the ocean below into a tumultuous chaos, you spot movement out of the corner of your eye. You turn your head to look, just in time to see a massive black shape sinking back underneath the waves. It moves too quickly for you to make out any details besides a series of fins, all huge.

You are now reconsidering staying by the ocean.

[ ] Go elsewhere.

[ ] To landmark.​

[ ] Ruins.​

[ ] City.​

[ ] Mountain.​

[ ] Plains.​

[ ] To villages.​

[ ] Toward the ocean.​

[ ] Toward the city.​

[ ] Toward the mountain.​

[ ] Toward the plains.​

[ ] Stay.

[ ] Explore surrounding area (choose two).​

[ ] Plains.​

[ ] Beach.​

[ ] Shallow ocean.​

[ ] Move on, into the deep waters.​

[ ] Combative stance (will defend self violently).​

[ ] Diplomatic stance (will try to escape or make peace).​

Spoiler: Status Change

-3 hours

 

[LonesomeTomb773]

[X] Get out of the water, get a hold on yourself.

Snip Sixteen:

No, you can handle this. You just need to get out of the water. Maybe drying off will help. It's a long shot, but it's really the only thing you can try. You stumble out of the water, your bones shedding liquid in sheets. Once you step foot back on dry land, you can only stand there, dripping wet.

It's not helping.

You still feel weaker than you should be. You still feel the power rippling underneath, the pressure on you, the slow but constant wearing away of your mind. You feel the power leaking from you, drop by drop, as you consume life essence to keep moving.

You clumsily climb up to the top of a nearby cliff. You constantly expect your limbs to be longer, for your hands to be too big for certain handholds for your weight to bring down certain ledges. But they don't. Nothing happens. You're too small. You're so small. It's agonizing.

Sitting down on a patch of grass, you instinctively try to absorb the life essence of the world around you. Maybe it will help? But no, there's nothing there. Only plants, and they contain so little as to be almost nothing.

Leaving a perfectly circular patch of dead grass, you try to search the area for something to… to kill. To absorb. To assimilate.

But there's nothing. Not even a rodent. There's just nothing.

There's nothing.

You stop. What are you doing? Searching for something to kill? What if you came across a person? Would you be able to control yourself? Or… would you…

No, you can control yourself. You know you can. Concentrating with all of your strength, you manage to rein in your pain. You have it under your control, for the most part. It still hurts, but you can bear it.

You can hold it in.

You can.

Cursing your lack of lungs to take deep, calming breaths with, you lay down in the grass, almost falling in a way. The life around you soothes your mind, though it stokes your hunger. It's encompassing, healing. You feel, not content, but less pained.

But what happens next?

Fate is malleable at this point. Make your choice.

[ ] Silence fills the air around you.
[ ] A roar shakes the ground as massive waves begin to splash over the cliff and onto the plains beyond.

 

[LonesomeTomb773]

Snip Seventeen:

Silence fills the air around you. Wait, silence?

Suddenly, a thought comes to you. Where are all the animals? You aren't the most experienced person in the world, but even you know that you should have encountered something on your hike here. In fact, now that you're thinking of it, the only non-plant life that you've seen since those knights was the eel-fish thing that you killed earlier. With how far you walked, there had to have been some bird or snake or something, but you can't recall anything.

First the undead, then dirt fortresses, and now plains empty of animals? What the hell is wrong with this world?

You shakily stand, looking around you, only just now taking in the fact that the only thing that you can hear is the faint crashing of waves and the rustling of the grass in the wind. No bird calls, no insect noises, absolutely nothing.

Where is all the life? Now that you're paying attention, it's unsettling. Have you been scaring away all the living things. Or is there something else?

With great care, you turn your head from side to side, taking in every little detail you can spot. There's nothing in plain view; there's only grass, shrubs, and the occasional tree. No mysterious dark silhouettes, no strange discolorations, and no weird patterns in the plant life. There's nothing that could even hint at something more sinister.

But it's so quiet.

You want to know what's going on. But… you have a limited lifespan. You can't put an exact number to it, but you don't feel like you have more than few days to live. And on the third skeletal hand, you felt like you were going to explode the last time you 'ate' something. You remember reading something about undead becoming more complex with more magical energy, but you don't know if that was referring to that feeling, or to your ridiculous growth in past few hours.

[ ] Search for animal life.

[ ] On land.​

[ ] In water.​

[ ] Other? (Write-in)​

[ ] Hunt.

[ ] On land.​

[ ] In water.​

[ ] Write-in.

Spoiler: Stat Change

-15 minutes

 

[LonesomeTomb773]

AN: Sorry about the lateness. High school and college apps had taken up my life, and then it took a while to get back in the mindset of writing a quest (it's a very strange one, for someone who's used to writing fiction).

[X] Search for animal life.

[X] On land.​

Snip Eighteen:

There has to be something alive around here. If you search enough, you'll have to find something.

You look around, hoping to find a hint of something around. And then you notice something. Off in the distance, past all the vast plains of grass and short, twisted trees, there is a forest. In fact, this forest appears to be around you in all directions, except toward the ocean.

You're willing to bet that the plains form a near perfect circle, too. A circle centered directly on that ruined building that you had been in before. It all seemed to click. If you remember correctly from your book, enchanted things consume life force faster the more complex the enchantments are. Could it be that the building was sucking the life force out of the area around you?

Hm, you wonder why the grass seems to be fine. Could the temple be ignoring it for some reason?

Regardless, you feel confident in your conclusion. If you just head over to the forest, there will be animals there. The shortest way seems to be just to follow the coast, so that's what you decide to do.

The thought that that place might be draining your life just speeds up your pace.

---

Arriving at the massive wall of trees, you feel more confident in your conclusion. The trees in front of you just seem to stop at some point, going from a fully wooded area, to a grassy meadow, with no transition area.

Bird calls emanate from the forest, calming your nerves. You hadn't even noticed it after so long, but the silence was really starting to freak you out. The birds sound a bit weird, but you dismiss it. It's probably just a species native to this strange world.

You don't see many furry animals crawling through the undergrowth, but you hadn't thought that you would, either. They're probably hiding from the hulking, skeletal monster that just walked up to their home.

Now that you've confirmed that there are animals in this world, you feel very relieved, but you also realize that you don't know what to do next. You could hunt for some life energy, perhaps? It might be wise to stock up on as much as you can get.

But that would put you over the edge again. You shudder, remembering that feeling of power, of life overflowing your body. You want it again, but you're also worried about the pain, about the damage it could possibly do to you.

You could also visit a village. You've passed several already on your trek. Could they possibly not have a thing against the undead, or at least not one strong enough to kill you before you can talk? It sounds unlikely, but you would also be able to speak to another person again. It's only been a couple hours, but you're already feeling the desire to be around people.

Maybe you could just head into the forest? It might be risky, considering you have no idea what kind of animals or mythical creatures could be hiding in there, but you wouldn't have to deal with the dangers of human society.

You look up at the sun, checking the time. It's still only late afternoon, so you'll have a while before nighttime. What to do?

[ ] Enter the woods.

[ ] Continue in the direction the coastline is following.
[ ] Go perpendicular to the coast, along the edge of the forest.
[ ] Head deeper into the forest.​

[ ] Head toward a village.

Which village:​

[ ] Close village.
[ ] Far village (on the other side of the ruin).
[ ] Coastal village.​

Which approach:​

[ ] Spy on them before approaching.
[ ] Just head up to them.​

[ ] Hunt a creature.

[ ] Large animal.
[ ] Small animal.
[ ] Bird.
​

Spoiler: Stat Change

-30 minutes