Cold, darkness, and a sudden, overwhelming silence.
I was sinking, dragged down into the depths of the foul, murky moat.
It was quiet down here.
I vaguely registered the female zombie still clinging to me as the arrows lodged in her body ignited, sending streams of bubbles and flame dancing upward through the thick, polluted water. Some of the heat licked at my face and shoulders, but it wasn't as agonizing as before. I instinctively pushed her flaming figure away, my newly beefed-up body easily propelling her upwards. I felt oddly detached from it all as I watched her burning form drift toward the surface, her body twisting and writhing in the water as if it had one final fight left in it. I really didn't want her to go, but there wasn't much I could do for her now. Maybe the water would overpower the flames, or maybe it wouldn't. Regardless, I was already sinking too fast to see the outcome.
Sinking into the cold darkness of the abyss below.
Why was it so cold, anyway? I didn't need to breathe, I didn't have a functioning circulatory system, and my body temperature probably hovered closer to freezer chicken nugget territory than anything warm-blooded.
And yet, somehow, I felt the chill down here.
It was…nice, somehow? I'd spent days—if not weeks—shuffling through that creepy forest, feeling nothing but dread, despair, and the sinking realization that I was utterly screwed.
Then there'd been that godawful pain from the flaming arrows that nearly reduced me to a pile of ash.
But now, there was just this cold, quiet darkness. Peace.
It was nice to feel something other than pain and existential horror for a change.
So…now what?
Well, for one, I could finally think clearly for the first time in what felt like an eternity.
That clarity brought with it a flood of questions.
First on the agenda—where was I? As in, where was I in the grand cosmic scheme of things? Because my current physical location was pretty obvious—near the bottom of a moat filled with something that might generously be called water along with a side of zombie soup. But big picture-wise? I hadn't a clue.
Or maybe I was starting to have one. That floating interface window from earlier was pretty hard to forget, and it definitely screamed RPG mechanics. Sure, it wasn't blue like the typical RPG interfaces I was used to—it had a much darker, crimson hue, almost like it was written in blood—but the similarities were enough for me to make some assumptions. Namely, the kind of assumptions every gamer with a triple-digit Steam library would naturally make in this sort of situation. Clearly, this world operated on some kind of game-like system.
Meaning, what, virtual reality? Some kind of elaborate simulation? Sword Art Online type scenario? Hell, maybe I was still back on Earth in a coma, drooling all over myself while Mom was wiping mashed potatoes off my chin and dreading the next diaper change. That mental image was oddly comforting in a twisted sort of way. If I was just a vegetable plugged into a hospital machine somewhere, at least it meant there was still a chance I could wake up and leave this nightmare behind.
Then again, wake up to what, exactly? The crappy nine-to-five job I hated? The overpriced shoebox apartment with a leaky faucet and neighbors who thought 3 A.M. was the perfect time for karaoke?
Wait a second, had my life seriously sucked so bad that I was actually considering this mess as an upgrade? God, what a depressing thought. I was literally contemplating staying in a literal zombie apocalypse—as one of the zombies, no less—over returning to my mundane, mediocre existence back on Earth. The fact that this was even a debate probably said more about my previous life than I cared to admit.
I watched the flailing zombies sink slowly toward the murky depths with me, their movements even more comically sluggish underwater. We would never die down here. We didn't need air, food, or warmth. I supposed we would slowly lose more and more of our flesh until we were nothing but skeletons, though even then, who was to say we wouldn't retain some semblance of awareness? Floating forever in the abyss as undead skeletons, minds trapped in eternal, silent darkness.
Yeah, screw that.
The moment my feet finally touched the bottom of the moat, I squatted down (rather awkwardly, given my mismatched legs and wobbly zombie knees) and launched myself upwards with all the strength I could muster.
I rose a measly few feet before gravity—and my own lack of buoyancy—dragged me right back down to the muck. The impact sent a cloud of silt and god-knows-what else swirling around me, obscuring my view even further, though not as much as I would have expected given the gloomy water conditions. In fact, I seemed to have gained some form of enhanced vision. Some kind of undead night vision, maybe? Everything had a faint, eerie greenish tint to it, like I was looking through military-grade night vision goggles.
Whatever it was, I could see better than the murky depths should have allowed, which quickly made it apparent that my attempts to leapfrog out of the moat were utterly futile. Not only was I working with a body that was about as aerodynamic as a soggy bag of potatoes, but the surface of the water was getting clogged with more and more zombies, effectively forming a fleshy barricade between me and the open air. To make things worse, it seemed I was a particularly dense zombie (physically, not intellectually, of course) and I didn't have the buoyancy to float like some of my more bloated comrades.
With nothing left to do, I began shambling along the bottom of the moat, moving closer to the settlement walls despite having approximately zero plans on how to proceed once I got there. The traffic jam behind me in the form of accumulating zombie bodies meant there wasn't really much choice in direction anyway. I couldn't exactly head back the way I came, unless I wanted to get pinned beneath a mountain of undead flesh.
As I trudged forward through the mucky underwater abyss, I couldn't help but notice how massive this moat was compared to the height of the walls above. I wasn't a history buff or anything, but even I could tell that the proportions were a bit off. Did they run out of materials halfway through constructing the walls and decide, "Eh, let's just dig a bigger moat instead?" The water was deep—deep enough that I couldn't see the bottom in certain places, and I didn't see a river or natural spring feeding into it, which begged the question of where all this water had come from in the first place.
Yeah, this place definitely screamed medieval fantasy world with questionable OSHA compliance. No way a modern civilization would have designed a moat like this. I couldn't even imagine the logistics of maintaining such a ridiculous structure, especially with the added complication of decomposing zombies clogging it up. Obviously sanitation wasn't high on the priorities list around here.
Another fellow bottom dweller shuffled past me, sluggishly moving in the same direction I was. This guy was freaking huge. Two heads taller than me, with arms like tree trunks and a barrel-sized torso.
It seemed like I wasn't the only zombie in the horde with some extra perks.
For a moment, I debated actually trying to get his attention, but the clearly dumb look in his milky eyes suggested that he had all the brainpower of a potato battery. He wasn't awake like I was, or like the female zombie I'd seen earlier.
I really hoped she had managed to escape the worst of it. I wasn't holding my proverbial breath, but something about her sticking around felt important. If I was a dude from Earth who woke up as a conscious zombie in some weird medieval fantasy world, then it stood to reason that others might have experienced the same thing. Not to mention that she was screaming something that sounded like real words earlier.
Yamero, Itai yo…I let the words echo in my mind, tasting their syllables like a half-forgotten memory. For some reason, the most distinct mental image that formed was of an anime protagonist dramatically shouting in pain during a climactic battle scene.
Anime?
Hundreds of hours spent watching anime came rushing back to me. It was almost like a jolt, as if my brain was being jump-started back into remembering all the useless trivia I'd accumulated on lazy Sunday afternoons. Around half of the sum total of my entire memories was now anime plotlines and snippets of half-remembered Japanese phrases.
The female zombie was Japanese?
Before I could process that revelation any further, the steroids-fueled zombie tank ahead of me suddenly collided with an enormous, slimy mass that seemed to materialize out of the shadows. It took me several seconds to process what I was staring at.
The underwater base of the settlement wall was a mass of zombie bodies fused together in a gross, writhing mound. Every surface was covered in twitching limbs, gnashing jaws, and vacant eyes that glowed faintly with a sickly green hue. 'A living wall made of zombies' was my first thought, but then I realized that my earlier zombie ladder idea wasn't so far off. What I was seeing was simply the end result of countless undead piling onto each other in a poor attempt to scale the walls, while the crushing weight (and the passage of time, I guessed) had melded them into this disgusting underwater amalgamation of flesh and bone. The fleshy "ladder" scaled the entire height of the settlement walls, and I could already see the tank zombie beginning to clumsily climb the abomination like it was some kind of hellish jungle gym.
There was no way I was going to follow him up that thing. Why would I even want to? Reaching the top of the wall would just mean more flaming magic arrows, rock slides to the face, or whatever other medieval death traps the defenders had up there waiting for us. I'd played enough tower defense games to know how siege defense worked, and trust me, being on the receiving end of a well-prepared garrison was not where you wanted to be.
Yeah, fuck this.
I turned around and began limping back the way I came, only to stumble weakly and nearly collapse under my own weight. The shivers hit me next, sending involuntary spasms rattling through my undead body. If I'd still had a working digestive system, this would have been the point where I threw up all over myself. Instead, I dry-heaved, my body convulsing in a way that felt wholly unnatural even for someone already dead.
The water.
It was toxic. The cold wasn't just a byproduct of the environment; it was a feature. I'd been unknowingly subjecting myself to whatever vile concoction this moat was made of, and now it was finally catching up to me.
I had to get the hell out of here before I literally dissolved into zombie sludge.
The tank zombie was making surprisingly decent progress scaling the writhing mound, which gave me an idea—potentially the worst idea I'd ever had, but at least it was an idea. I quickly grabbed onto a flailing limb protruding from the zombie amalgamation and began my own desperate ascent, using the last of my rapidly deteriorating strength to haul myself upward as fast as inhumanly possible. When I reached a relatively stable section of the mass, stepping on someone's ribcage and grabbing what might have been an ear for leverage, I braced myself and then launched upwards toward the tank zombie's back. The leap had all the grace of a drunken walrus trying to scale a cliff, but somehow I managed to latch onto the tank zombie's broad shoulders.
It didn't even notice. Thank God.
I clung to the massive zombie's shoulders like a parasite, my skeletal fingers digging into its moldy flesh for dear life, praying that it wouldn't suddenly decide to shrug me off like an inconvenient bug. Somehow, I managed to hold on as the tank zombie continued its climb. Apparently it was too brain-dead to care about the additional weight.
A minute of awkward piggybacking later, we breached the surface of the water together. We didn't gasp, we didn't cough, and we definitely didn't exchange triumphant high-fives. We simply stared dumbly up along the short stretch wall that remained to be scaled, covered in zombies clambering over each other and trying to reach the top.
We kept gawking and moaning right until the defenders above us released a torrent of boiling oil that came cascading down like the wrath of an angry god.
"ARRRGGHHH!" both me and the tank zombie howled in unison, though his roar was more of a deep bellow while mine sounded like a squeaky car engine trying to start on a snowy morning. Thankfully, I had some cover in the form of my unsuspecting tank-zombie steed, who bore the brunt of the scalding oil. Fleshy chunks sizzled and peeled away as the tank zombie writhed in agony, but to my amazement—and mild horror—it didn't stop climbing. It only hauled ass faster, as if the pain had triggered some kind of berserk mode.
We exploded over the lip of the wall like a scene straight out of a low-budget zombie action movie, crashing into one of the guards standing at the edge and sending her screaming off the parapet.
I was on the battlements now, sprawled in a heap of flesh and scorched bone atop the massive tank zombie that had carried me up.
I was surrounded by dozens of blond women dressed in mismatched gear, wielding an array of makeshift weapons ranging from rusty knives to broomsticks reinforced with nails to what looked like frying pans held with the kind of determination that said, "I've bashed in heads with this before, and I'll do it again. Just try me!"
There were only three archers in the mix; two men, the only men I spotted, and a woman who looked like she could've modeled for an ancient Amazon warrior statue, complete with muscles so chiseled they could probably deflect an arrow on their own. The trio was far more professional-looking than the rest of the ragtag group, wearing actual armor and wielding gracefully curved bows that gleamed ominously in the fading red sunlight.
"Wait! I'm friendly!" I tried to yell, but of course, my jaw was still barely attached and my vocal cords were about as useful as a wet paper towel. It came out as an incoherent series of growls and gurgles, which only made me appear even less "friendly" and more "savage undead monstrosity ready to consume all flesh within reach."
The grandma wearing a flour-stained apron and brandishing a rolling pin clearly wasn't buying it. She shouted commands in a language I couldn't understand (though the overall vibe was something along the lines of "Kill it! Kill it with fire!") then stepped forward with a look of grim determination that promised no mercy, whacking me square in the face. Her second and third swings were equally well-aimed, leaving no doubt as to who was in charge of this particular section of the wall.
[Awaken, Chosen of Lilith]
As a mark of your initiation, you may select the second of five blessings granted freely by the Dark Mother.
Choose your second blessing (2/5):
[1] Language.
[2] Divine Insight.
[3] Memory Restoration.
