Alice was rushing through the last meters and the inner fire was still fueling her body when the whole cave shook from high-pitched shrieks. The girl didn't need to have eyes on her back to feel centipedes' desire to claw onto her heels. Step, breath out, jump! Already in the air, Alice grabbed an arrow from the quiver and forced it into a crack as she crashed into a wall. Not wasting a moment, she tossed herself up and got both arms inside the tunnel.

Something soft hit her legs just before the girl dragged herself inside. Alice then jumped and bolted straight through the passage, never looking back. Through ringing eardrums, every sound strangely intensified. She heard and discerned every individual monster. She smelled weak sweat the dungeon must have erased traceless. Felt vibrations with her feet, knew it was clatter up the wall.

Colours, so many colours. So many details. So many...

Biting pain sank into the girl's thighs. Alice screamed, tumbled down, barely transformed a dangerous fall into a roll, gazed once. It was steaming liquid covering her pants, eroding her skin, her flesh. Acid! – a single word flashed in her mind. The girl clenched her teeth, got back on her legs, wailing and dropping tears.

Control! Go, go!

The acid was eroding the legs and stirring insufferable spasms, yet Alice forcefully picked up a bit of speed. With a trembling hand, she retrieved a red potion from her pocket, teethed the cork, drank the essence. Heal, she begged not the system's alchemy, but her own body. You can, heal! The mysterious energy pulsed again. I am sorry to fear you, Alice begged.

She heard a spurt behind and immediately ducked away. A jet of acid missed her by an inch. A hunter centipede – of course – resumed the run after having stopped for a shot. Five meters, Alice counted hatefully. Four meters. Faster. I need to be faster.

The corrosive wound wouldn't disappear yet, but Alice prevailed over the pain.

This is not what my status promises me. Three meters. Faster!

The girl had barely entered the tunnels and the hunter was already reaching her. Even if she dealt with it, there would be more monsters... she couldn't stop. Her numbers were good, but was she really using them? Speed of an Olympic champion; strength and endurance just one step behind; perception so acute it was almost supernatural...

Two meters. Use acid again. Use acid, please! Not a coherent thought, but a wish, hope, plea.

Faster! Her brain was telling her no, your status is lying to you! You are still a weak girl!

FASTER

Claws clacked, late for her leg by a single step. One grab, one push, and Alice was dead.

 

Thinnest rays of light touched her eyes. Tiniest of sounds entered her ears. Subtlest scents and flavors tickled playfully and winds caressed her skin.

 

Myriad sensations entered her mind's depts...

 

...for one finest infinity all but evanesced...

 

Huh?

Why the ceiling was so close? Why was she drifting through the air?

I jumped?

The ceiling grew too close and Alice focused at once. She lifted her hand, touched it softly, pushed herself down and felt rocks scratching her fingers through the leather. She flew faster and faster. No, time was resuming its eternal march while Alice had to deal with a tunnel turn. The girl side-flipped in the air and stepped onto a wall naturally. She treated the turn as a slope and simply climbed it while simultaneously stepping down due to gravity.

Apparently, she couldn't yet defy physics.

The girl looked back for a moment, still dumbfounded. The centipede was there, untiringly rowing with its legs through the dungeon. The last hunter centipede was just behind, and the girl could hear more behind a zigzag further off. The pain was also there, it just wasn't a concern anymore. Unpleasant, hateful, yes. Interfering, no.

Alice believed the world would be painted in white, but instead, it was veiled by red.

Light like a feather, the girl got off from the wall and dashed through the passage back to safety, easily outrunning the centipedes. Alice might have fought them if she had not lost all the arrows with the jump, leaving her with a sword and no skill for it. She also felt funny in the head and there was blood in her eyes. After another turn, the girl tasted metal on her tongue, sensed hot stream from the nose making up her lips. Scarlet drops from the ears were drawing lines on her breastplate. Alice knew, despite strength filling legs and fire pulsing through veins, she would faint very soon.

When the last acid spit almost reached her back, Alice avoided just barely. Her muscles screamed in agony as the girl exerted just two steps to stop entirely.

Alice utilized the last of the momentum to spin, her hand on the sword, the grey mist of the Node #8 safe zone a finger away. A level 7 hunter centipede bent half of its body up, clawing at her neck menacingly. The blade flashed, tearing through its body, cleaving the creature between the carapace's segments and then flew out from between the girl's fingers, cut the air, carved sparks from a cave's wall.

Looking over the last blurring hunter with cold eyes, Alice plummeted backward, out of the dungeon, in the embrace of darkness.

 

---

 

I know this place.

Scarlet waters washed her bare feet. Skulls were staring from the underwater in a timeless grin.

Why... did I forget?

Every thought was a whispering word. Every word was a thundering thought.

For how long had I traversed this world?

Seconds, the skulls answered silently. Centuries, echoed her heart. Come, join us, they beckoned. The waters are fresh and cold, they lured.

Yesterday I saw this dream for the second time. When else? Just when?

She looked up at the sunless sky.

When I died. Many, many years ago, when my heart stopped. I died, was saved and miraculously cured. Why, I did ask many times. It was wrong. By whom?!

Instinct emerged she must reach the end of this world. So she walked, every step of hers covering a mile.

 

Unknowing how soon or how late, she saw a dark horizon line. Thousands of steps and miles behind, it grew into a black mountain chain. Innumerable rivers were flowing down through clefts and rifts, carrying red waters, nurturing the endless ocean. Instinctively, she chose a small stream, feeling its water was denser than the rest.

From now on, she couldn't tread anymore and had to climb warm rocks.

In another time, she reached a cave, entered the scarlet stream, dove into the dark, brightened only by ruby shine. The walls were warm. They pulsed. They breathed. Later she saw pictures, ancient engravings of warriors and sorcerers. Some were humans, others were not. They held the widest variety of weapons, simple, ancient and advanced in one, two or multiple pairs of hands. Rarely, the number of limbs was even not equal.

By and by the pictures were filled with liveliness, with emotions. They seemed to be ready to walk down from the walls and into their last marsh.

The last...

She sensed their strives, their hopes, and their sorrows.

The last war.

Following the stream, she saw warriors capable of cleaving mountains, she saw mages conjuring fire, lightning, and void.

The cave breathed. It was alive.

She saw...

 

Leviathan

 

Lacking evilness or malice, the destroyer. She crashed the worlds with the innocence of a child stepping on a colony of ants. The last wars for her were just a passing breath, a careless touch. The latter would leave falling skies and burning continents. The first would rekindle dead and attract demons.

Now she was lying in eternal slumber. Dead... yet alive. Sharing her most unimportant memories, the memories that wouldn't extinguish body and soul.

Am I here to inherit the will of an ancient warrior? Somehow, she doubted. She knew this growing aura of life, this bloody blaze.

The artery widened as she entered a bright cavern. The heart so enormous it had clouds plowing the inner sky. The blood was thick, very thick. She swam to the center, fearing nothing for how familiar it felt. Once, she turned back to look at a myriad of skulls and sinister whispers.

 

Curse her for slaughtering our loved ones...

Curse you for not joining us...

Curse the heavens for not having mercy...

Curse the gods for giving up...

Curse us for being weak...

 

She looked away, surrendering to invisible pressure, not having an ability or right to banish, to curse back, to forgive. Before vanishing, she silently thought-whispered back,

Rest... your foe is no more.