Lukas stared at the pop-up. More specifically, his new title.

 

Apparently, he was a moss murderer now. A serial killer of luminescent flora.

“Thanks,” he sighed. “I’m flattered beyond words.”

 

...Why do I even try?

Lukas looked around. Shards of the once-robust wall smothered his campfire, leaving him at the gentle mercies of the faintly glowing moss now lying around. With one fewer wall, the place was now dimmer and more ghoulish in appearance from the pale-green lighting.

Add a little jump-scare effect and some eerie creaking noises, and you had the perfect setting for a B-grade horror movie.

That said, there was something else that he’d just noticed.

I didn’t uproot the moss, I destroyed the wall and they fell. Do indirect killings also grant me experience?

Lukas cupped his chin. This bore more thought.

Suddenly, something moved.

He couldn't see it, not with lighting this dim, but he could hear the sound of rocks crumbling and shifting in the distance. The sound began to grow louder at a measured pace. Whatever it was, it was quickly coming closer.

And then, all of a sudden, it stopped. 

Lukas stilled, goosebumps running across his arm. It was not a peaceful quiet. Rather, the anxious lull before a predator struck true.

In that brief moment, he swore he’d heard the silent plip of a water drop.

Hsssss.

Lukas could feel his heart throbbing in his ears. He idly wondered if the monster could hear it too.

This was not good. Not good at all.

Will it attack me if I run? I don’t even know what this thing—

Lukas sighed. He really was an idiot sometimes.

Analyze.

The screen popped in.

While he himself was dependent upon his senses, the screen was not. As long as the object of its analysis existed within its range, it would register.

After all, it worked even when his eyes were closed.

Exhibit A.

 

Lukas reflexively took a step back as an eerie grating sound reverberated across the room.

And in the inky darkness before him, something stirred. It started moving, crawling towards him, its slender shadow twisting and turning and extending outward. Lukas stared in muted horror at the grotesque sight that lay before him.

Chitinous scales rubbed together, languidly fusing and segmenting into each other. The more they contorted, the more they morphed into a kaleidoscope of fragmented colours. 

Tiny sharp, white protrusions began to tear their way out of the gelatinous, tubular forms, expanding into an endless spiral.

And then, its large mouth came into focus.

Cold sweat formed on Lukas’s face. Is that the— Did I try to kill this thing’s baby?

The monster bared its hundred-fanged mouth, releasing a gust of hot air, and roared.

A greater man might have stood his ground and fought, testing himself against such a perilous foe in an attempt to prove his self-worth.

Lukas was not that man.

Holding back a terrified shriek, he leapt, crouched, rolled, and stumbled his way through an unending maze of tunnels. Yet, no matter how far he ran, no matter how relentlessly he pushed his legs to keep moving forward, he could not outrun the never-ending sound of falling rocks and creaking walls.

The screen called it a ‘worm’, but Lukas assumed this was in the same way a shark was a ‘fish’, or a tiger a ‘cat’. Easily spanning over ten feet in length, the monster was covered with slime and fiber, and sported scales so massive that they looked like charred bricks. 

It made him want to find the nearest rock and hide underneath. Hollywood special effects had nothing on this creature. This... breathing, slithering monstrosity that was still on his trail.

The burning feeling in his lungs reminded him that his stamina wasn’t unlimited. Behind him, the gargantuan monstrosity continued to tear through the rocky subterrain, snapping at his heels whenever Lukas slowed down or stumbled. 

Outrunning this thing felt like outrunning a hurricane.

Futile.

“I agree.”

The sudden voice— which Lukas offhandedly registered as feminine —caught him completely off guard. He had spent days getting accustomed to nothing but a snarky screen, heaps and piles of moss, and the sound of his own voice. It was enough to make him believe he was the only remnant of civilization left.

Suddenly hearing someone else’s voice shattered that preconception so violently that, for a brief moment, his mind blanked.

Which, when you had a monster gunning for your life, was the worst thing that could happen.

A massive tail, lined with rock-hard scales covering solid meat, came from his right and whipped across his abdomen, bodily tossing him against the stone wall. His mouth filled with bile and the pain began to set in.

And yet, despite the creak in his chest that spoke of broken ribs, Lukas did not let out a single sound, nor did he make the slightest movement.

So crippling was the fear that consumed him, that it took everything he had to not simply faint.

He glanced at the beast, his gaze shaky.

Is this how it ends?

“It will pounce from the left.”

Lukas didn’t know who was speaking, or if they wanted him dead or alive. In that passing instance, he was a human, listening to another human voice, in a world full of monsters.

It was all the reason he needed.

Trusting the voice with his life, he poured everything he had into a single leap and threw himself to the right.

Just in time, too, as the space he’d occupied mere moments ago exploded as the worm crashed into it, tearing a hole through the wall.

More importantly, it had attacked from the left.

Exactly as the voice predicted it would.

As the whole cavern began to tremble, Lukas couldn’t help but feel a sense of déjà-vu. And then hundreds, if not thousands, of moss began to fall, painting the subterranean structure a radiant green.

 

 

 

 

“I was starting to believe it would never happen.”

Huh?

There was that strange voice again.

“What are you—”

As if on cue, the beast pulled its head out from the shattered wreckage of the wall and let out a fearsome roar.

“There will be time for questions later. Now, it is time for you to flee once more.”

“Fuck my life!” Lukas cursed as he sprinted off in the other direction.

---

The ruthless tyrant smiled in the darkness.

It had taken time, but her vessel had finally done it. She could sense the lifeforce flowing through his veins, a torrential outpouring of energy that he manifested at the precipice of life and death.

Fear was, after all, the greatest of teachers.

The lifeforce was meager, almost negligible for someone such as herself, but nonetheless acceptable for vermin.

She approved.

Frankly, she had not expected to interact with him so soon. But time was of the essence, and she’d not allow a suitable vessel to perish so easily.

Not after all that she had done to keep him alive.

This would be interesting. After all, when was the last time she had communicated with a mortal? Or with anyone, for that matter?

Euphoria flooded her mind at the very thought. She was free. She had found a host. And soon, she would set foot upon the realm once more.

Her smile twisted into a cruel grin.

The world would not know what hit it.

---

For Lukas, it was like running on autopilot. 

The big, bad monster was right on his heels, leaving behind a trail of destruction. Sometimes, it would dig deep into the ground and come out at a different point, tearing through the rocky crust like a hot knife through butter. It would lash against the walls on either side with its massive tail, reducing them to rubble and killing countless flora— and possibly fauna.

“Run, bitch, run!” Lukas whispered to himself, pumping more lifeforce into his legs and forcing himself to move faster. At this point, he was past wondering how he— with at least three ribs broken and several more bruised and battered —was able to not just run, but duck, spin, and generally be more acrobatic then he was ever capable of.

Quite naturally, his evasion only served to make the khorkhoi angrier. After all, people normally fell down when they splintered their rib cage. They weren’t supposed to start running faster.

Lukas winced, as the very first of what would likely be many hits registered in his mind. The errant stone fragment had gotten him below the clavicle, and judging from the jolt of pain, it likely had a sharp tip.

“Turn right.”

By now, he was well past caring. Who this feminine voice belonged to, he had no clue. How she was communicating with him, he had no way to tell. Figuring out the particulars would have to be put on hold.

At least, until some miracle managed to save his ass from the current predicament.

“A miracle.”

Was that amusement he sensed?

“It is not impossible for you to be saved. But miracles come at a price.”

“Unless you’re interested in a torn piece of pants,” Lukas coughed, stumbling before picking up the pace again, “I’ve nothing to pay you with.”

“Nothing to pay me with…” The voice seemed to consider it for a moment. It was surreal how despite his heart throbbing loudly in his ears, he was able to hear the voice with absolute clarity. “By the way, you should duck.”

Lukas wanted to ask why, but he liked living more. Pushing a little more lifeforce into his legs— he still had no idea how he was doing it, just that he could —he lunged forward, falling towards the floor.

A gust of wind buffeted Lukas’s hair as a thick tail swung over him, cleaving through the space his head occupied moments earlier.

He gulped.

“Tell me mortal, do you wish for your pitiful existence to end here?”

Mortal? Lukas filed that word away for future consideration. Before he could reply, the voice spoke again.

“Do you even have a reason to live on?”

…What?

That was an odd question. 

“Of course I want to live,” Lukas shot back, as he got up and began to flee once more. He had no clue where all this stamina was coming from, but he wasn’t going to question it. Instead, he’d add it to the enormous list of questions he was making earlier, before he was rudely interrupted by a life-threatening chase.

“What is it then?” the voice went on affably. “Why do you wish to live?”

Lukas was beginning to get irritated. “Do you need some kind of special reason to want to live? I want to live because— because I want to. I want to survive. That's it.”

The voice laughed uproariously— it was simultaneously one of the most beautiful yet most terrifying things he had ever heard in his life.

“As good a reason as any, I suppose. Very well then, mortal, I shall offer you a bargain.”

“A— a bargain?” Lukas looked back at the monster that was slowly getting closer and closer.

“I will grant you the power to exterminate this vermin, and in return, you shall fulfill a request of mine before you leave this anomaly.”

The budding lawyer in him screamed not to accept any terms without fully understanding them, but his apprehension and fear were slowly eroding his common sense. Besides, whatever sinister wish this entity had in store for him couldn’t possibly be worse than getting squashed by a giant worm.

“Alright,” Lukas gasped out even as the monster slammed into him, tossing him against a wall, painfully shattering his ankles. “Whatever you want.”

“So you agree to the condition I have set forth?”

The khorkhoi whipped at him again.

This time it was his right cheekbone that shattered.

“I do, I do,” Lukas blabbered desperately as the fanged monstrosity loomed over him, its head raised and folded out into a facsimile of a hood, oddly reminiscent of a cobra. “I accept your bargain, just please!”

It swooped down at him, jaws protruding outwards and dripping with corrosive, violet venom.

Lukas screamed, clamping his eyes shut and bringing both hands in front of his face to—

“Then we have an accord.”

The monster’s scaly tubular forms crashed against the crust, impaling through the rocky terrain and throwing up a mist of dirt and sand.

...Right where his body had been a moment ago.

“...”

I’m not dead?

He opened his eyes. The pain in his cheek was overwhelming him, as was the bruise on his left knee and his lack of functioning ankle bones. He was littered with multiple contusions and fractures that, if left untreated, would likely handicap him for life.

And yet—

Wait. I’m—

He looked around, or more specifically, below.

I’m floating?

There, several dozen feet below his legs, was the khorkhoi, angrily looking around on the floor, searching for its prey. All the while Lukas was floating in mid-air, his entire body levitating in a way he could not explain.

And yet, there he was.

What sorcery is this?

The voice in his head laughed. “Did you really think I’d renege on my promise, mortal? My word is my bond, an iron-clad promise that will be fulfilled, even if the earth crumbles and the sky collapses. Now, prepare yourself. It is time.”

“Time for what?” Lukas couldn’t help but ask.

A terrible smile gleamed in the darkness.

“Judgement.”