NOVEL FROG Chapter 3 - Embrace That Which You Fear
Eric howled with something beyond terror at his own imminent death, beyond fury at the callous way uncaring fate had made his world the plaything of incomprehensible forces, inhuman abominations, and land-hungry homicidal humanoids.
His heart pounded with desperation. His sharp sense of direction and internal map not only of this ruined hellhole of a city above, but the sewers below, tormented him with a madman's desperate hope as he dared to jump in the fire pit, chasing his sister into damnation as the orcs above roared with fury, pain, and delight at yet another human tragedy playing out for their enjoyment.
Yet no matter how many crazy videos he had seen of people calmly walking upon a bed of white-hot coals, all he felt was pain.
Pain as he screamed for his sister, her hair already ablaze, desperately trying not to breathe the superheated air as he lurched across the bed of coals with a strength he didn't even know he had, far beyond what even enhancement drugs and constantly training to exhaustion should have given him. Damn if his mother hadn’t made an action hero out of her talentless hack of a son, no matter all the health risks he would have faced later in life.
At least he now had the strength to pull off this act of absolute madness.
Even if for only a few more seconds.
In that awful endless moment, his flesh screamed, licked by flames. The world became a nightmare heat haze as he charged through the coals, claimed his stunned sister in a fireman’s carry, and scooped up a few red-hot embers in the palm of his glove. He then raced for the orc pitmaster gazing at him in disbelief at the lip of the ramp.
Eric was a dead man running, covered in flame, so filled with hate it choked back the screams. He glared at the smirking pitmaster about to lance him with the tongs in its hand as Eric desperately raced up the ramp, before the creature squealed like the pig it was, a handful of red-hot coals striking the orc right in its beady little eyes.
Eric's palm might have been scorched to a mass of charred flesh, his crossbow glove completely burned through, but it was a small fucking price to pay. He could now use the full weight of his sister to shoulder check the screaming pitmaster, sending it stumbling back as Eric raced up the ramp. He goal wasn’t to force the squealing bastard into its own death trap, just knock it off balance for the precious moments needed to break free.
Which made the sound of the orc’s agonized shrieks as it did, in fact, fall right into its own bed of hot coals all the sweeter. A nearly blind Eric, still ignoring the torment of his scalding flesh, finally gasped sweet gulps of cool air as he leaped free of the pit ramp. He tore past the one nearby orc gazing at him with stunned disbelief as a lone javelin thrown his way from the far side of the fire pit plunged into the ground where he had just passed.
What he was doing was impossible, and he didn’t care.
His skin was charred to ash, and he had only one hope of salvation.
Darting down the narrow alleyways he had been so carefully traversing less than an hour before, Eric sprinted for all he was worth across the final street separating him and his sister from salvation in the desperate hope that no orc retrieval party, scavengers, or giant rats waited to ambush them.
Yet the street was perfectly quiet, the final alleyway exactly as he had left it.
Eric was too exhausted even to sob with relief when he finally dove through the wedged dumpster with a false bottom hiding so many lifesaving secrets.
The twins plummeted, splashing into the stream of brackish runoff water flowing in the far corner of the otherwise dry and deliberately slanted storm tunnels. Contrary to popular belief and his own references to sewers, this one wasn’t filled with raw sewage at all.
Only the hissing sounds of charred meat being abruptly cooled, echoing with the shrieks of a young man no longer hiding his agony. Shrieks that turned to sobs as Eric used his one remaining good eye that hadn’t been baked shut to gaze down at the dying form of his sister.
Blisters covered her face, and her hair was a singed bob. By some miracle, she wasn't the charred mess of flesh Eric knew he himself was.
But she wasn’t breathing.
She wasn’t breathing!
Eric whimpered, quickly feeling for her heartbeat, ignoring his own growing weakness and dizziness, dragging his sister with arms steadily weakening as he approached the secret those tunnels hid so well. A secret that had terrified him and his sister both when they realized the risks, the peril, having nearly given in to the siren call that seemed to echo through their souls just the night before. The real reason Eric had been so desperate to hunt topside with a spear in the first place. Not just to get some perspective, but to increase his chances of actually surviving temptation if he dared surrender to it. Because for all that he had been chanting the 90 percent mortality odds like a mantra, it was Eric, not Elonia, who had to be dragged back from daring the roots of the pod.
Eric froze, his one still-intact eye widening in a sudden epiphany of understanding. The girl dying in his arms had risked so much, not for her own sake but to shock Eric to his senses. Her insisting on playing the lookout, knowing she was topside, had forced him to take a more cautious approach, and maybe it had helped him better think through and strategize his hunt. Such that when the giant rats had nearly ambushed him, he had been prepared, his hunt successful. And he would have had Elonia’s back when she was ready to do the same.
It should have been a triumphant end to their little expedition topside.
Before some slimy asshole lowlifes had nearly cost them both their lives.
Now his twin was about to die because he had been so desperate for his hunt, and his sister had refused to let him risk himself without any backup at all.
He hung his head in shame, fighting back a hoarse sob of despair.
Yet the soft light that had so enticed him when it had first called out to them both just a few nights ago was now their only hope of salvation. Because the key to leveling up and surviving any injury was the glowing vegetative mass of roots, stalk, and alien sentience before him. Black Cat and Four Dog’s interviews had made that much damn clear. With very few exceptions, everyone who entered a pod came out disease- and injury-free no matter how fucked up they had been before entering. And, even if only a select few, like the Advanced Classers, actually came out looking like they had just turned eighteen again, everyone who dared the pods could still gain superhuman vitality and perhaps longevity as well. Some even went so far as to claim that their biological clocks would at least halt, if not reverse, if they managed to level up and boost the right stats.
And the irony for Eric and his sister was that it no longer mattered that most who dared the pods above came out as walking horrors and a feast for the orc fire pits. It didn’t even matter how hideous the sights above had been.
And maybe, just maybe, there was some truth to Eric’s desperate hunch that the roots held the key, its light far more soothing and sane than the predatory madness above. Everyone knew you fed nutrients through the root system, after all. Only carnivorous plants took in nutrients by the leaves and stalk, and maybe the gentle roots before him were the secret to a gentle ascension, not a forced evolution into whatever zombie plant hybrids writhed and roasted in the coal pits above.
Of course, that was probably sheer desperation talking, but it didn’t matter.
He and his sister were dead no matter what they did, unless they could actually survive the zombie-making horror before them.
Eric did his best to calm his madly racing heart, consoling himself that at least the gentle susurrations emanating from the pale, fleshy white roots of the massive pod really did seem to sooth the terror in his veins. It basked his dying sister, whose heartbeat grew ever more erratic, in a cool green light.
And Eric was finding it increasingly difficult to suck in life-giving oxygen.
His sister had felt like a feather in his arms just a minute ago. Now, she felt like a ton of lead weights he refused to drop no matter how much his heart raced and his muscles screamed.
As much as his dying body cried out to be wrapped up in the gentle, rustling music of the fleshy pod before him, he didn’t dare touch it.
Not until his sister was safe.
And never had he regretted leaving the tunnels more than he did at that moment. They were both likely to die here and had no excuse, having forsaken a wonderful shelter any of the refugees above would no doubt kill for.
It had been no vault, but with access to clean water, beds, furniture, clothing, and at least a year's worth of food, Eric had had no complaints. It even had a constant supply of fresh air completely free of the taint of charred wood, burning flesh, or damp stone. And it had power. Power! And there was no power, except for the occasional oddly flickering tunnel light, anywhere else in the city!
Eric trembled, not even sure why he had never thought too deeply about all those anomalies before this very moment. Not that it mattered. It had served as the closest thing to the survival shelters of his favorite games, and he had been grateful for every day they were able to live peacefully there with what felt like a library’s worth of hardback novels, history books, and encyclopedias to distract themselves with, or they could just train in the tiny gym.
They even had board games!
They had been well fed and safe, their mother’s only stricture to never go topside without her.
Yet they had done just that.
An act of folly that had nearly killed him and his sister both.
And their injuries would still kill them, if he quit puttering around and ACT! Before it was too late.
“I’m sorry, Elonia.” Eric’s voice was little more than a wheezy whisper as his heart hammered painfully in his chest. Maybe he had taken a gasp or two of superheated air after all, despite his best efforts. He struggled not to be overwhelmed by his growing dizziness and the fiery throb over every inch of his body. Terror and fury were draining him dry, making it clear that he wasn’t long for this world, either.
“I can’t think of what else I can do,” he gasped. “This pod is our only fucking hope!”
His voice cut off with ragged coughs, and he spit out gunk he refused to look at, was terrified to look at. His heart raced as if he had sprinted harder in the last few seconds than the whole time he had stumbled through that pit of hell.
An awful wave of dizziness and a shivery tingle overcame him. He was about to hurl like mad, tasting the black edge of spasms and death just beyond.
So, he bit his charred lip until it burst against his teeth, biting back his screams as sudden clarity and a final shot of adrenaline gave him the strength to press his sister against the root system of the massive pod.
He pretended it didn’t sicken him, how ropy tendrils of vegetative matter caressed his dying sister before slurping her up, like giving birth in reverse.
He winced and shuddered, and that proved too much for the tingling nausea flooding through him. Eric suddenly retched and spewed bile, meat chunks, and blood, sobbing as his throat burned from the acid almost as badly as every inch of his flesh did. His blackened skin cracked to reveal raw pink flesh that he was terrified even to look at. He sobbed and trembled in an agonized huddle, gasping for air that just wouldn’t come.
He coughed up a constant stream of fluids while gasping for air, desperately struggling just to breathe as he shivered upon the damp stone floor before the massive pod.
He prayed it was a good sign that his sister hadn’t been immediately rejected. A sigh of relief eased from his cracked lips as he tasted the edge of oblivion, knowing he was just seconds away from finally passing out. He would be free of the hideous pain that ratcheted up every moment, already worse than he had felt for those brief, awful moments he had dared to race across that hellish fire pit.
With luck, his sister would survive and emerge from the pod healthy and whole, possessing gifts it awed Eric even to think about, able to level up in ways wondrous and grand, just like in all the progression novels he used to love spending quiet afternoons reading.
Maybe she really would become the hero of her own life’s tale.
He smiled at the thought of her becoming a just and noble queen, just like she had portrayed on the silver screen. And truly, he was grateful for the release of oblivion as it wrapped him up in its soothing embrace, finally allowing him to let go of the throbbing agony that his entire body had become. Slipping into darkness at last, his final act was a warm smile for the adventures he and his sister had shared. This was the beginning of what would be a truly magnificent saga lasting a lifetime.
His only regret was that he wouldn’t be there to join her.