A cold wind picks up, peppering my skin with sand and ruffling my hair. I push it back off my eyes and behind my horns.

 

I have no idea how much time has passed since I left the unconscious man. There really isn’t any way to tell since there’s no sun here.

 

My mind shifts to my records:

 

v Aspect of Fertility -1-

You embody the aspect of fertility. Pregnancy speed  and chance are dramatically increased, and any racial restrictions/incompatibilities you have regarding pregnancy are removed.

 

Dramatically increases pregnancy speed, huh?

I give my growing belly a rub, tracing its silhouette with my palm.

If I was human, I would be about 6 months along. But that that scale doesn’t really apply to me. It still provides an upper limit, but I don’t think I’m anywhere near that.

With the description for Aspect of Fertility, my best guess is that I’ve been pregnant for somewhere between a week and 2 months.

Yea, it’s a pretty broad guess, but I don’t really have anything to judge it off of.

Because everything looks goddamn same here.

Uuug, why does everything have to be so boring. I shoulda just loitered around until that guy woke up, because he is literally the only non-sand thing I’ve seen in probably weeks. 

Weeks which I have to spend fully conscious because, big surprise, I am entirely unable to sleep. I have no idea if it’s just a racial trait, or just because Hel passively sustains me, but I’ve had a lot of time to myself. I don’t need to breath or eat either, which I thought would be weird at first, but it just feels natural at this point.

After (probably) a few days of walking in one direction, I realized that I shouldn’t have left the unconscious guy behind, but he was gone by the time I walked back. 

Even with the  featureless terrain, navigation isn’t a problem since I’ve got the sky completely memorized. Now if only there were places I could go.

 

In the time I’ve spent wandering, I’ve bounced more messages off of Ur to learn a bit more about the wordless language it speaks.

The language is essentially just the way minds take in information. For example, when I first saw the unconscious guy, his appearance was converted into this language and stored in my memory. 

The memory doesn’t store an image of his appearance exactly, but instead takes a description of it and attaches important features as tags to that description. I’d assume that people with photographic memories experience this differently.

It looks sorta like this:

 

That unconscious guy

This guy definitely isn’t from Hel, but trespassed into it somehow. He was wearing leather armor the last time you saw him. You fucked him once and he got you pregnant. He’s a bit scruffy looking, but not unattractive.

A little taller than you       Brown hair       Sharp jawline       Medium build

 

Yup, it’s exactly like my records, so those must be written in the same mind-language as this. I guess I’ll call it Urish for now, because Ur is the only one I know who uses it for communication.

Come to think of it, Ur is the only other person(?) I know at all, and it hasn’t even spoken to me at all since it taught me to use my records.

I think I should be feeling lonely at this point, but instead I just feel bored.

 

So what have i been doing to pass the time? Why, talking to Ur of course, or more specifically, getting it to define things from me. More specifically, the vague parts of my records.

 

v Inert

Non

Draining

 

The only problem is that things can get lost in translation. That's not what inert means.

Inert means non-reactive.

Meaning that I’m still not getting the full picture with these translations.

Despite this, I am learning a lot.

 

v Intrinsic

From

Begining

 

v Racial

Defines

Holder

 

These two only make sense in the context of being attached to a class.

 

v Hel

Ur

Domain

 

I don’t know if this means that Ur owns this place, controls this place, or if Ur is Hel’s only defining feature. Even when defined, it’s not always helpful.

 

v Crestlink

Connect

Defining 

Sigil

 

Yup. Mhmm.

Still doesn’t make sense.

Those failures really don’t matter anyway, because there was one huge success.

A massive breakthrough that should be changing my life.

 

Mind - 10 

v Lesser true Helspawn -10-

v Skills

Active 

 

• Gehenna manipulation 1

 

 

v Gehenna

Hel

Entrance 

 

This skill has gotta be my ticket outta here: it manipulates the pathways to hell!

Yes, I can finally leave! Muhuhuhaha!

I can finally have as much sex as I want to now, and no sandy wasteland can stop me!

 

Except I can't.

Why?

Because i have no idea how to use the damn thing!

I had the keys in my pocket all along, but I can’t find the lock they open!

 

Maybe if the skill had a description I could figure it out, but this is a racial skill I’ve had since birth, and as far as i know, descriptions only show up when acquiring new skills!

I might be hard to tell, but I’m pretty goddamn pissed. But I think it's warranted considering my situation.

I lived in a half-comatose state for how long? I can’t even tell at this point but it must have been years 

But when my body finally allowed me to get up, and I managed to get just a taste of ecstasy…

I managed to cockblock just because I got impatient.

And now I find out I've Had the tools necessary to leave all along, and yet I can’t use it because the education system here sucks.

Fun times.

 

The only real thing I’ve accomplished is leveling Ur’s Link to 4. Each level it gained certain statistics regarding my records, first body statistics, followed by the other two divisions . It even gave me a description when I acquired each one

 

Ur’s link raised to 2

Certain body stats are now visible

v Body

Health - 100%

A measure of how damaged your body is. The lower it is the less you will be able to physically exert yourself and the closer you are to death.

Since you have a racial avatar skill, you will not necessarily die when this empties.

Stamina - 20/20

A measure of endurance. If it is low, further activity may start to drain health. Humans regenerate this with food, drink and rest.

Stamina cannot regenerate naturally for you, and must be refilled by expending spirit.

 

Ur’s Link raised to 3

Certain mind stats are now visible

v Mind

Conductivity - 100%

A measure of your mind's ability to handle mana. The lower it is, the harder controlling it will be. Losing it can have various effects depending on the circumstances, but is rarely pleasant.

Mana - 15/15

The amount of magical energy you are capable of storing in your body. Expend it all and your body will start recklessly drawing it from the environment, harming both the surrounding area and your own Conductivity.

v Soul

Cohesion - 100%

A measure of how damaged your soul is. Losing it entirely will cause you to forever and irreversibly be erased from existence.

Spirit - 25/25

The amount of surplus energy your soul holds on to. Losing too much will start to damage your soul. For humans, It regenerates naturally over time.

Spirit does not regenerate naturally for you, but must be taken from humans. Being in Hel will very slowly refill this.

 

So each domain of my records has both its own health as well as a resource.

Since I can’t sleep and presumably eat, I must use my stored spirit to sustain me, which won’t regenerate by itself either.

Essentially, once I get out of Hel, I must constantly leech Spirit off of humans. If I don’t, my stamina will drain just until I am so exhausted I can’t move, and then my body will start decaying.

Apparently that might not kill me, but it still doesn’t sound pleasant.

Of course, another thing that might happen in this scenario is that my spirit starts trying to refill my stamina by itself, which since it’s empty, will damage my soul.

And then I just stop existing all together. Sounds great.

 

However, this is only if I manage to leave Hel in the first place. Because Hel will just keep me alive if I stay.

Forever.

By myself.

…

Yea, that doesn’t sound like fun.

I want to leave.

I don’t care how dangerous it is out there, it’s better than an eternity of nothing.

.

.

.

 

Stars

 

Human

 

Spirit

Oh, that’s new. Previously it was just one thing at a time. Repetitively.

Hello again Ur, nice to hear from you again.

I know I was rather rude to you the last time we spoke, and I hope that you can forgive me. I just didn’t expect this lovely realm of yours to be so sparsely populated. I also notice that you are being far less intrusive with your mind link, this time I hardly feel uncomfortable at all.

Now that the formalities are out of the way, would it be a problem if I ask you to point out the location of the front door?

Stars

 

Human

 

Spirit 

Hmm.

Shit.

Human spirit?

I know someone who has that.

I've been searching for him for at least a week without success, which means this information changes nothing about my plans.

But i guess it's good to know that the first time wasn’t just a fluke, and that Ur is actually trying to help me. I don’t know what prompted the change in mental volume, but the messages definitely hurt less than they used to.

 

I gaze up at the stars. Supposedly they’re part of this as well,  just need to figure out how.

 

//////

 

________________

Black Sands, Entry 8

I’ve been trying to write an entry once per sleep cycle, so I assume we’re just over a week into this.

At this point, I would be long dead if I hadn’t found Terrance. His waterskin is enchanted with a compression glyph, while mine is just mundane. Still, it should be running dry in just a few days time. 

I don’t know if this will be my last entry, I have yet to speak with Terrance about our final plan. I would prefer to die of sword than of thirst. If anyone is reading this and is stuck here as well, please burn my corpse.

_________________

I close the small leatherbound book and place it in its rucksack pouch. My watch is only beginning and I had little else to do. I’ve never been the type to keep a diary, but I repurposed my notebook for it simply out of boredom.

 

“Desmond” a voice from my flank mutters

“There’s no point in looking anymore, she doesn’t exist”.

Terrance is huddled in his bedroll in the sand a few meters away. He humored my story at first, and would take shifts with me sitting on top of the tallest dune near us whenever we stopped to rest. After about two days though, he lost hope of any type of help every finding us, and dismissed my story as a hallucination.

I know it wasn’t

I can still feel her around me, and see her in the back of my mind.

I haven't been able to sleep much since, but every time i do, she shows up in my dreams.

 

Maybe I am going insane. Maybe I caught an illness and this is all one big fever dream.

 

Maybe I’ll wake up when I die.

…

I try to push the thought from my mind, there’s no way I could have imagined her.

She seemed, no, she felt so real.

 

I close my eyes to slivers and lean on my rucksack. 

 

Death by mercy or death by thirst.

Will it really end like this? 

 

Leon and Rodney are nowhere to be found. I hope they stayed behind, or at the very least, met with a kinder fate than us.

 

Just when I am about to shut my eyes fully, I see it. Just a speck on the grey horizon.

A figure with a glow of pink on its stomach.

That glow is the last thing I saw of her, the last thing that met my eyes before I passed out.

I look to Terrance, who’s fast asleep at this point.

No. 

I don’t need to wake him up.

I can prove my point later.

He needs rest, and I need to meet that woman again. 

 

I need to know if it was her who brought me here.

That's what I tell myself as I begin to walk forward, my heart pounding with the memories she left me.