Eld was the first to arrive at the old fort. Dawn broke before John arrived, and Eld tsked, unsurprised at John’s tardiness. He felt bad about sneaking out before his parents could wake and say goodbye, but it was better than his last memory of them for the next few years being of a bitter fight. As he looked around the old fort, he realized some younger kids had taken it over. The construction was better than the last time he and his friends had played there, and a few planks nailed into a corner tree had turned it into a “wizard’s tower.” Eld smiled as he imagined the little play fort expanding and improving with each generation of youngsters to find it.

  The smile faded when he saw the splintered trio of trees he’d hidden in that fateful day. He couldn’t believe how small the hollow was. It had been his safety just long enough for Hauthis to save his life. Eld wondered if John would finally tell him how he’d survived a whole night in Emorin.

  Eld pulled a knife from his rucksack and started carving his name into the hollow that had been his temporary shelter. He was halfway through refreshing the letters when he heard a rustle and saw John stepping out of the woods.

  “Hey there,” Eld called to his friend, and John came stomping over through the deadfall.

  “Always the early bird,” John commented wryly, a smile still on his lips.

  “Someone has to be.” Eld laughed. “Check out what I found.” John looked over his shoulder and waited silently as he finished carving his name. Just as he was finishing up, Eld felt the world suddenly invert. His vision blurred, and he thought as he tried to right himself… Why am I on the ground?

  Then, the pain bloomed in the back of his skull, and Eld moaned as he tried to reassert reality. He heard John speaking, but was struggling to make out the words. Were they under attack… from who? Eld’s mind raced. He’d been a little scared that the bandits Micah and Jesse worked for wouldn’t let the twins go after investing so much in their training, but how had they snuck up on him so quickly? He struggled to right himself, and as he did, John’s words came into focus.

  His voice was gentle. “Eld… let me know when you can hear me again, ok.”

  Eld realized John was standing over him with his heavy oaken shield in hand. His weight pressed down on Eld’s knee, and as the throbbing pain in his head subsided, the pressure applied to the knee was slowly becoming more intense.

  “What’s going on…” Eld managed to mumble out as he looked around the hollow for threats, the world clipping slightly as it spun around him. Maybe if we hide in the fort, John can hold out until I recover, Eld thought. He tried rolling over to crawl towards the fort, but pain from the pressure on his knee bloomed, and Eld was unable to move.

  “Hey, look at me, Eld. We’ve got to talk.”

  Eld looked up at his friend and saw him smiling back, as if nothing was amiss. With his friend’s smile calming him, Eld started to breathe regularly again as his fight-or-flight instincts calmed. Why, though, was John standing on his leg?

  “There he is,” John said, his smile widening as Eld’s focus returned. “You’re probably pretty confused. Don’t worry, I’ll clear things up for you.”

  John raised his booted foot into the air and slammed it down on Eld’s knee with a sudden ferocity. Eld screamed as the bone snapped, and John continued stomping. His breathing was harsh, and his movements wild as he pounded it over and over again until Eld’s yell became hoarse with the scream.

  John stopped eventually and waited for Eld’s rasping yell to subside before he continued speaking over his closest friend’s sobbing moan. “You just couldn’t give up, could you?” John asked, still breathing heavily from the exertion of crushing Eld’s leg. “You failed, Eld, you failed. Everyone else got the skill they wanted. Everyone else is going to be useful.”

  “What are you talking about?” Eld blubbered through snot and tears.

  “I’m talking about your… lack… of… grace…” John lay into Eld’s side, breaking ribs as he slammed his steel-toed boots into his friend’s unguarded body.

  “You made me do this, Eld, you made me, because I’m the leader, and this is what leaders do.” He wiped the sweat from his brow and calmed his wild voice to something more sane and reasonable. “This is the burden of leadership, Eld. Our team is going to be something someday, and we’ve got almost everything we need to make it happen. What we don’t have is a mage. What we don’t need is some half-baked dough weighing us down.”

  Eld only whimpered as John’s raving continued. “You should have just bowed out, but noooooo, you had to make me the bad guy. But I’m not the bad guy, Eld. That’s you, I’m the hero, I’m the one protecting our friends from your weakness!” Spittle struck Eld’s face as John screamed into it.

  “You could have just said no when I asked…” Eld wailed. He looked down at his ruined leg in despair and disbelief. How was this happening? Why was John doing this?

  “The moment you asked to stay on was the moment you made this necessary. You Eld, not me, YOU! Thelia was never going to leave you behind; it was your job, your job to cut her off. Can’t you see how much better off she’ll be with a real mage in her party? Can’t you see past your own arrogance and see how much safer she’ll be? No, your inane question was a trap. It was a trap to make us accept you or risk losing Thelia. Well, I didn’t fall for it, did I!? No, no, no, I’ve escaped your trap and solved the problem.”

  Pain and panic began to well up in Eld’s heart as John ripped the carefully packed bag from his back. Eld tried to fight, but the pain made him weak.

  “Where’s your money pouch?” John barked as he began to take apart the bag. Eld couldn’t answer; only agony was left to him. It didn’t slow John down as he dumped the contents of every pocket onto the forest floor.

  “Don’t you worry, Eld, I’ll make up for this little mistake. I’ll tell them you came to me this morning and confessed that you couldn’t bear to drag us down. I’ll say that I tried to convince you to stay, but I’ll make a big deal about how your choice to sacrifice yourself for the team makes you the greatest hero among us. Don’t you worry, Eld, you’ll become a symbol for us all, and your ‘Sacrifice’ will be the beating core of our team. You’ll see, Eld. You’ll see. When this is all done, you’ll be a worthy footnote in a tale of legends.”

  “Are you going to leave me here to die?” Eld sobbed.

  John froze then and winced as he looked down at Eld’s leg. “You’ve certainly got a hard fight ahead of you,” John stated, confirming Eld’s worst fears. John was going to leave him here, where no one could find him, almost a mile from the nearest road.

  “If you get through this, I’ll be sure to buy you a new magical leg when we come back through town in a few years.”

  “Please just take me home,” Eld wailed.

  “Sorry, Eld,” John sighed with a distinct lack of remorse. “Too much to do today, I’m afraid.” And with that, John walked off before traveling too far, though he turned around and returned. He bent down to ear level, and Eld stopped pleading to hear what his best friend had to say.

  “If you tell anyone what I’ve done, or contradict my story in any way, Eld, I’ll kill you when we come back through. Not just you, either. Thelia, too, and Jesse. If you make me out to be the bad guy, you’ll leave me no choice but to become the bad guy. Don’t doubt for a minute that I won’t, and I’ll make it way more painful than this. You won’t get in my way.”

  As Eld stared into his friend’s eyes, he saw an unbridled rage looking back at him. Why is he so angry? Eld thought as he fell into a pain-fueled unconsciousness.

  When Eld awoke, it was not a gentle thing. With a ragged gasp, Eld coughed a mixture of mucus and blood from his mouth. For a moment, he believed that he was waking from a poorly written nightmare. The sharp ache in his leg banished that illusion as he slowly became more awake. Eld looked down at the purple-black knot of twisted flesh he used to call a knee, and flinched. He was no herbalist, but he’d spent enough time helping Thelia study to recognize when a wound wasn’t recoverable. Whether he made it out of this wood or he didn’t, the leg was gone. Maybe if an ascendant healer happened to be traveling through town, he would have a shot, but that had never happened, and Eld wasn’t going to count on it. No, Eld realized what needed to happen.

  Decision one: Remain in pain and wait for death, or stop the pain and have a chance to live.

  Obvious as the solution might seem, the reality of action felt impossible. Eld’s resolve firmed quickly.

  He found his pack sitting next to him. It was missing his gold and food, but his knife was still there, and so was the runed firestarter. Eld used the blade to cut away the backpack strap and tied it around his leg just above the injury. Using a stick from his childhood fort as a lever, he twisted the fabric strap around and around.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  He groaned in agony, but the fear of losing his life kept his grip firm. Using one of the many knots he’d learned to tie alongside his ex-adventuring team, Eld secured the tourniquet and waited as feeling slowly drained from the leg. Eld winced and moaned as he felt the limb slowly die beneath him. It took fifteen excruciating minutes for it to numb. Enough time for Eld to reflect on the permanence. As the pain subsided, and the horror of what that meant settled into him, Eld turned and puked onto the ground. With an immense force of will, Eld pushed it from his mind. He needed to live. With the pain and nausea gone, Eld was finally able to think straight. His life was on the line, and every decision from this point forward could mean death. Some of his options might get him just enough breaths to make it out of this. The betrayal of his best friend, the disappointment in his class, the shame he felt for allowing John to do this to him, all of it had to be pushed away and dealt with another time. Every decision became simple. The goal clear. How to maximize the number of breaths he gets to take in this life.

  Decision two: Stay or Go?

  Looking at the shape of the fort, he saw that some new kids in town had taken over their old hideout. There was a chance they came here to play. Nothing he saw, though, communicated whether the changes were days old or months old. He couldn’t count on anyone coming to save him.

  He also hadn’t told anyone where he was going—stupid. His brain tried to yell, but he ignored its taunt. Everyone thought he was going adventuring with his friends, so… no one was coming to find him. Go then, he decided.

  Decision three: Walk or crawl?

  He looked around for a limb that could support his weight and saw none. Walking was faster. Even with a dead leg, he could make it to the field outside of town in an hour. The risk was high also. He might waste time looking for a stick to support him, only to still never find one. Falling would also be a problem. With his leg flailing loosely behind him, he doubted he’d have the coordination to make it through the forest without a few falls. Falls that could cause greater injury or cause him to lose consciousness again at a crucial time.

  Crawl. He decided. With a grit of his teeth, he pulled himself out of the divot in the ground and began the journey home. Arm. Arm. Kick and drag. Arm. Arm. Kick and drag. The cadence and rhythm were the only things he could hold in his head. Eld knew if he let his mind wander, he’d be done for. Instead, he focused on the pattern. Arm. Arm. Kick and drag. Arm. Arm. Kick and drag. Over and over again, he did it. It was his heartbeat; it was at the center of everything, and after hours of repetition, it wasn’t enough.

  Eld dragged himself frantically up the final hill before leaving the forest, but the light had already faded from this side of the mound, and in a panic, Eld scurried, hoping to get just a few more minutes of light before darkness fell. His struggle was in vain. As he crested the hill, the sunset completed, and he was left with only the light of the stars and a faint sliver of purple of the mage moon.

  Eld watched in horror as history repeated itself, and a veil passed over him as twilight collapsed, and reality melded with Emorin, the plane of monsters.

  Eld felt at his arms and legs. His hands were bloody and torn from scrambling through the underbrush. The well-made adventurer’s tunic he had worn to start the day was shredded from wrist to elbow, where his constant crawling had worn it away in the first hour, leaving his skin exposed. Blood and dirt caked onto both limbs, doing nothing to dull the pain.

  “Stopping won’t make anything better,” he mumbled to himself as he pushed on through the forest that was slowly coming alive. The night was too similar to Eld’s nightmares after getting stuck in the Yedda woods, but somehow worse because at least in those dreams Eld had been able to run through the woods, not crawl through noisy underbrush.

  Every moment he dragged his broken body forward was another moment a beast might spot him and attack, but Eld persisted in his relentless escape. Arm. Arm. Kick and drag, his mantra repeated over and over again until, in a moment of relief, he felt the shade of the canopy recede, and he was finally beneath the stars and within range of the road that led to town. The fields weren’t secure with wards like the walls of town, but beasts almost never ventured too far from the Yedda woods.

  For the first time since realizing John had betrayed him, Eld felt he could escape. A feeling replaced by fear as he heard a small rustle from behind him.

  Eld looked down the hill through the shadowy trees and saw the moonlight reflected in the stalking eyes of a spider the size of a wolf. It wasn’t moving yet, but its presence asked the fourth question.

  Decision four: Fight or flee?

  With only moments to decide before the spider made the decision for him, Eld recalled a detail from his nightmare. He remembered the way the spider had lunged at the deer, grabbing its leg and pulling it backward into its nest. If this spider does the same… his tortured hand drifted to his belt and the metal firestarter held there.

  The spider lunged, and Eld made his decision, passing the firestarter to his non-dominant left hand. He forced his eyes to stay open, and against every hardwired survival instinct in his body, Eld proffered his left hand holding the runed firestarter to the beast, and as it bit down, Eld screamed but began to cycle.

  “Ti-bi-tuh Ti-bi-tuh Ti-bi-tuh Ti-bi-tuh Ti-bi-tuh” Eld exclaimed through the pain as he cycled mana into the mangled arm he could still feel gripping his old friend. The spider backed up quickly, raking Eld’s body over branches and scraping his already weathered skin across rough stone. His rhythm never ceased. “Ti-bi-tuh Ti-bi-tuh Ti-bi-tuh Ti-bi-tuh Ti-bi-tuh” he shouted as he cycled. For a moment, as the spider viciously yanked him toward a mound of earth at the bottom of the field, Eld worried he wouldn’t make it in time, not before he was yanked into the beast’s lair and mauled, not before its bite cleanly severed the broken left limb, not before the beast let go. He didn’t stop. He was already committed to the play; there was no other option. Either his heart skill saved him, or it was truly worthless, and he died right then and there, lost in Emorin.

  Then, through all the pain, Eld felt the heat in his palm, and he knew the rune was burning white hot inside the spider’s maw. Eld didn’t stop; he couldn’t. The spider did, though; its jaws opened, and it tried to cough up Eld’s arm by shuffling backward, but Eld took the knife in his right hand and jabbed it between two plates on the spider’s hairy neck. He wedged the blade into flesh layered like rotting paper and held himself there as he screamed. In seconds, the pain in his hand was gone. Eld had learned enough to know this wasn’t relief but rather the nerves dying as his skin melted off. Still, Eld did not relent. He felt his connection to the rune was still active, even if his arm was damaged beyond his ability to feel it. Even if his bone was slowly becoming ash, it would not be enough to stop Eld as he cycled fire into the bucking beast’s mouth.

  Eld wasn’t sure when exactly the spider died; he didn’t have time to think about it as the toll of the fight became clear to him. It wasn’t the bite that was going to kill him, he realized. The flames from his firestarter had left his arm cauterized at the elbow, with nothing but a blackened bone sticking out of it. That would keep for a few hours. What would kill him quicker was the blood leaking from his chest. Eld couldn’t even remember where it had come from, but he felt himself wheezing, trying to breathe, but he couldn’t exhale, his lung wasn’t working, and that was a death sentence without immediate healing.

  Eld looked up at the top of the hill he had fought so hard to climb and despaired. It was so steep, and he was so tired. His body begged his mind to surrender and just die. Eld knew it would be so easy, so painless, to just fall asleep. So thorough was his exhaustion that Eld knew even the incredible pain he was in couldn’t stop him from slipping away. The internal rhythm he had carved into his every muscle refused to give up, though. His mind pushed his body through the familiar pattern of the day. Arm. Arm. Kick and drag. Arm. Arm. Kick and drag. Arm. Arm. Kick and drag. He began to scream the pattern as he pulled himself up the hill, inch by bloody inch, until he reached its summit. Muscles burning with the effort, Eld pushed himself over the top until he saw the true distance that still awaited him. He was out of the woods, but stretching out before him was a mile of empty farmland before he could make it to the gates. Basically, the entire distance he had just crawled through the woods, and likely only seconds left alive as he wheezed what he knew would be his last breaths. Eld threw himself into a roll down the hill. If he escaped the woods, he would most likely escape the veil of Emorin. He wept as he rejoiced that his mother would at least have a body to bury.

  As he rolled to a stop and waited for the end, he felt the passageway in his heart begin to twist, and Eld was presented with his fifth and final option. The translation to knowledge was inherent and immediate as Eld was offered a class by the system.

  [Uncommon Class Gained: Survivor]

  Choose from among the following skills to gain the class:

  [Play Dead] To all observers, you become almost impossible to separate from the dead.

  [Vigor of the Dying] As long as your will persists, you cannot die, no matter how broken your body.

  [Hardy] Your body requires less of everything to survive.

  With only seconds to think, Eld selected the only option that would keep him alive, even if it was only for a few more minutes.

  [Class Acquired – Rare]

  Survivor: May the knives of your enemies be blunted by the strength of your will and the unrelenting endurance of your body.

  [Attribute Adjustments Applied]

  Mind Memory: +0 | Acuity: +0 | Mana: +0

  Body Fortitude: +2 | Power: +0 | Agility: +0

  Soul Creativity: +0 | Presence: +1 | Will: +5

  [Skill Gained: Vigor of the Dying]

  [Level 2 Acquired]

  [Attribute Adjustments Applied]

  Mind Memory: +0 | Acuity: +0 | Mana: +0

  Body Fortitude: +2 | Power: +0 | Agility: +0

  Soul Creativity: +0 | Presence: +1 | Will: +5

  Eld – Current Status

  Health: Critical

  Mana: Depleted

  Stamina: Critical

  Conditions: Dehydrated, Exhausted, Maimed, Dismembered

  Heart Skill: [Rune Crafter]

  Class 1: [Survivor] – Level 2

  Skills: [Vigor of the Dying]

  Class 2: [Empty]

  Class 3: [Empty]

  Ascended Class: [Locked until all classes reach capstone at Level 15]

  [Attribute Totals]

  Mind Memory: +0 | Acuity: +2 | Mana: +4

  Body Fortitude: +4 | Power: +0 | Agility: +0

  Soul Creativity: +6 | Presence: +2 | Will: +12