I didn’t get any loot from the snake and cat, but I did pack up the blanket that had been on the hill. It was nice and thick and smelled like freshly cut grass, and no one knew when they might need a towel.

I checked my status while rolling up the blanket.

Health 101/110

Stamina 115/115

Mana 22/105

My health and mana both went up by about one a minute. That didn’t mean that I could survive being dropped to one health. When I’d been cut before I was aware of my health dropping by a point or two before going back up. That probably meant that the number was an indicator of health, not some ephemeral... thing tied to me.

Still, I was healing faster in this world than back home, and I didn’t have any skills associated with it, so that was probably normal.

The door to the exit hadn’t unlocked, which only left one way to go.

Before running off though, I took a moment to find a decently flat rock and a sheet of paper from my backpack and some coal with a sharp tip.

Soon enough I had a somewhat rough map of the dungeon so far. Now I couldn’t get lost! Or if I did get lost I could ask someone how to get to the exit and use the map for reference. I just hoped that zombie animals couldn’t read, the last thing the world needed was an invasion of zombie critters.

I rolled up my map and stuffed it in my sack. Out came a jar of honey and I had lunch while enjoying the surreal triple suns above for a few minutes.

Health 107/110

Stamina 115/115

Mana 28/105

“It’ll have to do,” I said as I got up. This time I faced the door equipped for battle. Flail in one hand, free hand on the knife I moved to my bandoleer, and eyes narrowed like Clint Eastwood just before he called someone a bad word.

I pushed open the door in the hedges and peeked in. There was another corridor, this one surrounded by hedges on both sides and with a cobblestone path down the centre.

No signs of the mean skeleton with the hats, or of any zombie critters.

I stepped in and looked around. There didn’t seem to be any traps, but the hedges could hide anything and the cobbles looked too much like pressure plates for my liking. I stuck to walking on the grass for now.

The path veered off to the right after a little bit then took a sharp turn. I stopped and stared. The hedges shrunk. They went from towering walls of green to being no higher than my hip in the space of three steps.

That was interesting, but what was far more arresting was what I could see in the distance. Water. An entire ocean of water as far as the eye could see.

I was on an island, with not too distant shores where the sea was smacking against stones and there was a small cottage-like home a few hundred meters away. Or maybe it was closer? It looked... off.

The hedges around me formed a short wall around a garden with flowers and ponds and large, decorative rocks. But everything was tiny. The biggest flower was no bigger than my pinkie, the trees along the edges were only a bit taller than I was and the pond could be walked over.

In the centre of it all was Maddy, sitting at a white, wrought-iron table that barely reached his shins. The skeleton held a minuscule teacup by its mouth as it sat on a chair that looked like it had been made for dolls, not people.

There were three other guests at the table. A large hedgehog, a big ol’ tortoise and a shetland pony. Each zombie had a small teacup before them.

“Hello,” I said. “Or, ah, maybe I should say ‘rarr?’ That’s in skeleton, right?”

I might have said something offensive because Maddy stood up and flipped the tiny table right over the tortoise’s head, the tiny teapot cracking and breaking across the glass with a tinkle that filled the sudden, awkward silence. He reached up into his hat and pulled out three more bits of headwear.

“Oh no,” I said as he placed one on each zombie animal’s head.

The hedgehog got a chef’s hat, the pony a bright yellow construction helmet and the tortoise had its head wrapped in ninja bandages with a forehead protector at the front, one that had a sideways chess piece on it.

“I didn’t come here to fight!” I said.

Maddy the skeleton didn’t seem to care. He got up and stomped off towards the home, arriving at it sooner than he should have. He reached way up, grabbed the handle and opened the door. A moment later it slammed shut.

The zombie animals all turned around until I could see the milky white of their eyes.

Zombie Chef hedgehog, level 2

Zombie Construction pony, level 2

Zombie Ninja tortoise, level 2

“Oh no,” I said as they started to move. The pony clip-clopped away from me before it disappeared behind a row of hedges. The hedgehog began to move towards me with a slow, waddling gait and the tortoise...

Something grabbed me by the back of the ankle, then squeezed.

I screamed and kicked out my foot, sending the tortoise flying across the garden. It had snuck up on me. Then again, it was a ninja. I was going to have to keep an eye out for sneak attacks.

My backpack fell with a clunk and I began to backpedal away from the advancing hedgehog. It was only about the size of a smaller dog, but that still brought it up to my shin, and with everything else in the garden looking so tiny it looked formidable indeed.

Kicking it seemed like a bad idea. It was missing plenty of its quills, but I was sure it wouldn’t feel good to try and punt it away.

I started spinning my flail around and around until I felt it brushing against the hedge wall behind me. “Mister hedgehog, I’m warning you,” I said. “I’m going to smack you if you don’t stop moving close to me.”

The hedgehog kept shuffling forwards.

My flail swung around and thunked unto the hedgehog with a yucky crunching sound.

Then it caught on fire. I pulled my flail back and looked away from the mess it had made of mister hedgehog. Zombies were not very tough, not even zombie hedgehogs

Ding! Congratulations, you have cooked Zombie Chef hedgehog, level 2!

That was nice and good, but now I had to deal with a flail that was on fire. Swinging it around only seemed to make it worse, the cord that made up the chain of it burning more and more. Soon it was going to burn up completely and I’d be left weaponless. The pond! I just had to--

That’s when a spinning green disk flew out of a hedge and cracked against the back of my knees.

I fell onto my back with an ‘oomph’ and saw the tortoise crawling away at a tortoise-y pace to go hide under a hedge.

“Not, nice,” I coughed as I got back to my feet. That had hurt, but it hadn’t injured me, at least.

A glance to the side showed that my flail wasn’t much of a flail anymore. The showerhead was warped a bit, the stone within cracked and the rope was still burning, what was left of it, at least. I had taken out one of the three zombies, but at an incredible cost.

There was a distant clunk-clunk sound that had me getting up a whole lot faster. Just in time too, as a rock the size of my head landed where I had been laying.

I started looking around, trying to trace the source of the sound. It was probably why I caught the tortoise slowly sneaking up behind me with a gardening trowel in its mouth. A very sharp-looking trowel.

“Oh no you don’t!” I said as I ran over to the ninja tortoise and jumped.

Both feet crashed into the tortoise’s back, squishing it flat before I bounced off. A quick spin around and I got ready to do the same thing again when, with a poof, three more tortoises appeared.

“Clones,” I growled. I was getting very very miffed about all this running around and trying to kill me stuff. It had stopped being funny. I took a running leap and stomped first one clone, then the next, then the next, bouncing from one shell to the next like an Italian plumber.

Three of the clones poofed away, then the final tortoise began to fade into motes.

Ding! Congratulations, you have assassinated Zombie Ninja tortoise, level 2!

Two down.

It wasn’t a nice feeling, knowing that killing these poor zombies was becoming so routine. Well, not routine, but common. The ghosts were different, less tangible and more obviously evil. These critters were kind of cute if I ignored the smell of rotting meat around them and the more zombie-ish parts of their anatomy. Cute animals missing an ear were still cute. Cute animals with hanging entrails... not so much.

Something went ‘clunk-clunk’ again and I dove to the side. A moment later a rock flew past where I had been standing, impacted the ground with a dull thud, then bounced into the pond with a splash.

I looked in the direction the rock had come from and saw a wooden pole swinging back down behind a hedge.

“I saw you!” I said as I ran over. I had my knife out, but really, really hoped that I could talk to the pony because stabbing a cute little zombie pony would be like stabbing my childhood and that just wasn’t cool.

I rounded a hedge and skid to a stop.

The pony, yellow hat and all, was standing next to a trebuchet, and before it, pointing right at me, was a ballista.

I never backpedaled so fast in my life.

The ballista fired with a ‘twang’ and a blur shot past me and into the distance. “Look, mister pony, I don’t want to hurt you, but you’re not giving me any choice here,” I said.

The sounds of what I suspect was a ballista being reloaded filtered over to me. No good.

I wasn’t about to run back around the hedge, which left up and over the only option. With a running start, I charged towards the hedge and leapt into the air. My skill must have helped, either making my legs supernaturally strong or telling gravity to mind its own business for a moment, because I moved as if I had just bounced off a springboard.

A wide-eyed pony looked up a moment before I crashed into it feet first. By the time I had recovered from my jump the pony was only a memory.

Ding! Congratulations, you have demolished Zombie Construction pony, level 2!

Part of me wanted to cheer, to jump and skip and be super happy that I had won another fight. I tamped down on that little voice, stood back up and bowed towards where the zombie pony had been. “I’m sorry,” I said.

Being happy over the death of something, even something already mostly dead, wasn’t cool.

I looked around the garden once I was done paying my respects and found that my efforts had been rewarded. Where the zombie ninja tortoise had faded away was a hat. It looked like an old British soldier’s helmet, with a dome in the middle, a large flat brim and a turtle-pattern all across its surface. A pair of leather straps under it showed how it was meant to hang on to the wearer’s head, and the inside was padded with more leather.

“Thank you,” I said to the zombie tortoise, even if it couldn’t hear me.

Shelled kettle hat, new.

My new hat was quite comfortable once it was strapped down nice and tight. I’m sure I made for a dashing figure. I wiggled my head a little to make sure everything was neat and fit right, then hopped on the spot a few times to make sure it wouldn’t just fly off my head. It seemed nice.

Which meant it was time for me to continue on my adventure.

A bit of exploration around the garden revealed that the entrance had locked behind me already. There wasn’t anything else on the island except for the massively oversized house in its middle.

Health 110/110

Stamina 115/115

Mana 39/105

Not nearly as good as I wanted, but it would have to do.

I picked up my backpack, holding it by the straps, then reached up and turned the door handle.