The damn chest had to eat the hydra’s body before we could leave.

My exit was underneath it, because of course it was. So I stood there and watched the mimic chew through the corpse for hours while slowly getting less pissed off and more bored and antsy and hungry the whole time.

I ended up heading down the tunnel while it was still stuffing its face. Because fuck this, it was such an ass. It could follow me if it wanted.

Which was great… right up until I got to the dungeon exit and realized it led back to the general area outside Hooham.

… Shit. I did not think this through. I sat down on the floor and thought. Unlike the entrances Revside, once I was inside the dungeon the exit was locked to the area I entered from. Which meant I was stuck.

 

The mimic showed up thirty-odd minutes later. It thumped over to me and settled down close by, folding up on its feet. I didn’t feel like talking to it. I was still mad. So I just sat there, contemplating how fucked I was from my own poor decision-making. I felt it staring at me.

“Fuck off.” I said, still looking at the green hills beyond the shimmering exit. “I don’t want to talk to you. You’re a dick.” It stared harder. “Fuck off!” I said, more emphatic. I’m busy— oh shit.”

There was a woman in the distance— or a guy with long flowy hair, I guess— walking towards the dungeon entrances.

The mimic’s stare intensified.

“Still with the being a dick.” I hissed, inwardly panicking. Should I back up from the exit? That would make it go back to cycling outside on Revside… right?

Fuck, this is why I should have paid attention during new adventurer orientation.

The mimic turned towards the exit, which shimmered. And then I wasn’t looking at the same countryside.

Instead of green hills there was hard-packed sandy dirt all around. Deep cracks ran through it, like a dry lakebed after a drought. The land was flatter here, a wide plain.

It looked like the shitty part of Arizona I’d driven through a couple years back. The part where you make sure you have extra water jugs in your car and a full tank of gas.

I stared. “You can’t be serious.” I said.

It tilted forward twice rapidly. A nod. “You can’t be serious.” Because, just. “I was just telling you not to eat that plant monster back there. You killed him anyway. You ate him.”

It stared at me, blasting emotion. It might as well have held up a sign: it surged out waves of apathy. Dismissal. Condescension.

“Not helping, dude.” It grew one of its three-fingered hands and pointed. “You can’t just order me to—”

A hand on my back shoved me through. I stumbled onto hard-packed rocky dirt.

It stepped through as I was shoving myself upright. The dungeon exit shimmered, faded… and disappeared into the air. Behind it was hard-packed dirt for miles, and desert mountains on the horizon.

I breathed out hard. I looked the other way.

There was a signpost maybe a quarter-mile out.

I stood up, looking back behind me. There was no sign of the dungeon entrance. Aside from a patch of dirt that looked maybe less dead and dry. It was gone.

“Well, fucking great.”

I could have gotten into a fight. I could have started screaming at the stupid chest. I wanted to. But I needed food, and the signpost might point me to food.

I could be mad later. I was mad now, but I could be mad later, too.

I headed forward. The mimic followed at my heels.

The wood grew in my vision until: a narrow board that read “DUNGEONS” on top. Below, a board pointed in the opposite direction and read “ZOM.” Below that, pointed the same direction as Zom, a board that read “ZEECHT.”

I paused. Zeecht? What the fuck?

That was a whole-ass other country, where the hell was I? (Also, that was how you spelled it?)

I must be near the border. That was… Zeecht and Wibbldoo weren’t really supposed to be… friendly… to outsiders.

I could… probably pass for a local? Yeah. Yeah, I could do this. As long as I kept my mouth mostly shut and tried to sound all… proper and old-timey and Revellionan. Whatever. I’d manage it; I wanted some damn food.

I turned to the chest. I sighed and opened my mouth to start negotiating. Before I could make a sound it transformed into the coin pouch again.

I stared at it, uneasy-like.

Now it wanted to be cooperative?

 

—

 

Zom looked rough. Hooham had struck me as cute and medieval and green and alive. A real picture-perfect place. The kind of spot so achingly beautiful that I’d be all for moving there if they had DSL Internet.

Zom was… not doing so hot. I guess at some point they had a wall— but that shit was long-gone, probably before I was born. Half the structures I could see were more rubble than structure.

I’d seen people; I knew it wasn’t abandoned. But… it looked abandoned. Zom was the burnt-out husk version of Hooham that started going downhill at least eighty years ago.

The town wasn’t empty; most of the activity was around the “market square,” which wasn’t marked out with a sign like in Hooham. Its ‘roof’ was a couple of rotting wood beams in the process of turning to sawdust. Most of the stalls were vacant— just standing empty shells.

The few stalls operating had either nobody there or long slow lines. The most popular two were food relief and seed grants. Almost no one else was out selling.

A single open meat cart parked in a derelict lot had exactly no one in line. The man tending it looked both pissed off and resigned. He had two thin rabbits strung up by their legs and two signs. One read “Barter: Vegetables Wanted.” The other read “Stew by the Bowl — 3 (Any) Crate or Equal Trade Harvest.”

I did a double take.

 

Well, I wasn’t buying that food. Not with all my crates stuck back in Hooham. I guess I was using the food relief stall.

Both the government stalls had lines long enough to be half the town’s current residents between them. The food relief line was moving faster, the seed grant stall bogged down with tons of paperwork for each applicant.

I got in line. The woman in front of me had a baby hanging off her boob. And a lean figure. She turned her head back towards me and gave me a look.

I almost smiled at her before blanking my expression. No smiling at strangers. Stupid. That was an American thing.

I tried not to think about how emaciated both of them looked. I was trying not to stare; she was… she was very thin. Did she even have milk? Was she just keeping the kid quiet? Jeez, that was…

…Not my problem. That wasn’t my problem. I just needed to get some food and leave. Zom was… Zom was depressing. Holy Shit.

The food line was faster than the seed line, but still slow. Every time the line shuffled forward, the guy behind me basically bored a hole between my shoulder blades.

Yeah. Awkward.

Panic set in a little as I got close to the relief agent. They were asking for names and statuses or jobs before distributing rations. It had to be obvious that I wasn’t from here. Shit. Shit! Of course.

I needed to make some shit up. But it had to be reasonable-sounding shit, the kind of lie that would pass a fast bullshit test.

Okay. Okay. I got this. The capital. That was an actual city, right? The biggest in Urghis. The biggest in all of Revellion, probably. Big enough that I could be from there and not get called out on the lie today.

I tried not to look visibly nervous as the line shortened in front of me. I couldn’t see what they were giving out yet— whatever it was, it was hot; I recognized the gauzy brown cloth. My stomach growled again.

Too-thin mom in front of me got her ration, and then I was up.

The guy at the stall looked at me. “Name?”

My mind blanked. Utterly blanked. “Janice Holston” I said on autopilot, like the world's biggest idiot.

“A strange name.” The agent remarked. “There is no Holston family in Zom.”

“I was dungeoning.” I said quickly, trying not to wince. Fantastic. Just digging myself deeper.

He froze and gave me a look. So— like a moron— I kept talking.

“It wasn’— I was not supposed to come here.” I said. “I actu— I came into the dungeon from—” I finally managed to shut my mouth before I said something about Hooham.

He looked me over. “Where do you hail from, maiden Janice Holston?” He asked, turning and grabbing a brown cloth package, placing it between us.

I froze at the familiar smell. No. Please, no.

“Potatoes.” I replied, unable to keep my mouth shut.

He gave me a perplexed look. “—T—My Thanks.” I said. “For the ration. Of potatoes.” I took a breath, willing myself to just shut the fuck up already and answer his question.

“I hail from Sandwich.”