The blue field appeared again as Thomas started to panic in the utter void; he felt … relief.

Thomas Bluebrim

Brawler

Legend of Wind

Level 1

0 Misfortunes / 0 Fortunes

0 Curses / 0 Blessings

70/70 Health

0/0 Mana

-2/-2 Stamina

0 Distinctions Available

11 Skill Points Available

5 Customization Points Available

Strength

Constitution

Intelligence

1

0

-3

1 Melee Damage Bonus

70 Maximum Health

6 Additional Skill Points

3 Maximum Worn Armor

0 Damage Reduction

-2 Maximum Stamina Points

0 Deflection *

12 Base Armor

0 Spell Piercing *

Wisdom

Agility

Perception

5

0

-3

5 Lores

0 Bonus Targeting

-3 Reaction Time

5 Arcane Resistance

0 Evasion

-1 Stamina Regeneration

0 Mana *

20 Movement *

0 Missile Range Bonus *

Uh. So apparently Thomas had negative stamina? The hell did that mean? And what were all the asterisks? After a moment, the blue field changed again.

Class Distinction: Hurl

As a reaction to an attack by a creature no larger than one size category larger than you, you may throw your assailant up to 5ft, subject to a contest of Constitution; if your attacker hits another creature, both become Prone; if it doesn't hit another creature, it still falls Prone

Class Distinction: Tough as Nails

You have a natural armor (Maximum Worn Armor Limits still apply) equal to twice your Constitution

Distinction: Weapon Expertise: Unarmed

Your base unarmed attack damage increases by one progression for each free hand, and your Melee Damage Bonus applies for each free hand

Thomas read through the descriptions, as there wasn't much else to do at the moment. Alright. So … whatever was going on, he could hit things harder. He was still alarmed by the negative stamina. As he worked through his feelings of panic over the interview he had almost certainly already missed, and the rent he almost certainly wasn't going to pay, the blue field, yet again, changed, with an immediate splitting headache, as it was too damned big for him to see all at once, and he saw it all at once anyways.

Please choose five lores.

Lore Detail

Lore: Locks

Your knowledge of the history and manufacture of locks, and how they have been bypassed in the past, as well as some particularly amusing stories involving broken locks on particularly inconvenient doors which would otherwise lead to particularly convenient rooms.

Lore: Traps

Your knowledge of the history and manufacture of traps, and in particular their faults and flaws. Also the ways in which ambitious young souls have completely failed to exploit those faults and flaws.

Lore: Pickpocketing

Your knowledge of the rich history of pickpocketing, famous pickpockets, and prominent failures, and the reasons for those failures - as well as the sentences resulting from those failures.

Lore: Throwing

Your knowledge of the most prominent games of skill, and the theoretical concepts underpinning the basic physical act of throwing on object, as well as what happens to the knees of those who bet more on their skill than would strictly be wise.

Lore: Magic Theory

Your knowledge of the nature and history of magic, its operations, and its most common uses, as well as its much more common misuses.

Lore: Magic Artifactuary

Your knowledge of the nature and history of magical artifacts, the most common types, their intended use, and some anecdotes which are amusing to some people, at least, about artifacts misused by those who probably should have known better, and many more who shouldn't.

Lore: Ritual Performance

Your knowledge of famous rituals, and how they were performed, as well as the underpinning theory behind their execution - and what not to do if you don't want to earn a particularly horrible death.

Lore: Ritual Disruption

Your knowledge of famous failed rituals, and how they were disrupted, as well as the theories on how best to disrupt rituals once begun without invoking adverse blowback. That would, of course, be bad.

Lore: Climbing

Your knowledge of the techniques involving in climbing, as well as the lore surrounding the act; sieges ended by intrepid souls, mountains peaked, ambushes averted - as well as its great failures, which tend to be more similar than its successes.

Lore: Leaping

Your knowledge of the history of leaping, a great sport in some places, where legendary figures are said to have traversed canyons and rivers with singular and great Distinctions - Distinctions whose attempted replication has resulted in more than a few hard-to-reach corpses.

Lore: Breaking

Your knowledge of the practical applications of reductionist theory, and the risks involved in the misapplication of reductionist dichotomies - that is to say, the art of hitting things, and breaking the thing you're hitting instead of the thing you're hitting them with.

Lore: Lifting

Your knowledge of the mechanical principles underlying the act of elevating objects beyond their resting position using muscular torsion and skeletal leverage, and the limits implying catastrophic mechanical failures.

Lore: Swimming

Your knowledge of fluid dynamics principles to the end of making yourself pointy and splashing more effectively. Fish will always be better than you. Eat a few of them. Remind them of the proper order of things.

Lore: Balancing

Your knowledge of the mechanical principles underlying acts of leverage, rotation, and other simple dynamics, simplifying the act of walking from one location to another without abrupt and unexpected death, or at least unpleasantness, befalling you, or you befalling it. Animals make it look easy. Show them the error of their carefree ways by making abrupt and unexpected death and unpleasantness befall them.

Lore: Acrobatics

Your knowledge of the mechanical principles underlying simple rotation, angular momentum, and similar mechanics, permitting you to perform seemingly miraculous Distinctions, such as controlling rotation speed by moving your hands closer and further from your center of mass, or getting six full rotations out of a single backflip, or breaking your neck by performing five and a half rotations in a single backflip. Some creatures are better at this than humans. They make for delightfully challenging archery targets.

Lore: Swinging

Your knowledge of the mechanical principles of angular momentum, gravitational force, and periodic motion, granting considerable insight into something monkeys do better than you could ever hope to. If you feel slightly bitter about it, put a fruit in a box with a hole the fruit won't fit back through, and laugh at the stupid little monkeys as they try to get it out without letting go. Then hit it on the head with a heavy stick.

Lore: First Aid

Your knowledge of simple anatomy and basic emergency care, and how to correctly treat simple conditions, as well as to recognize the limits of your skill and knowledge, and what exactly might otherwise happen if you blundered on.

Lore: Surgery

Your knowledge of anatomy and surgical techniques, and how to correctly treat internal injuries, as well as the ability to recognize when a patient is beyond your ability to help rather than harm.

Lore: Stabilization

Your knowledge of emergency care, and how to stabilize a patient to prevent immediate death, so that more in-depth treatment can be undertaken under more favorable circumstances, such as when arrows aren't still embedding themselves in said patient.

Lore: Symptoms

Your knowledge of the various conditions that afflict the human body, and how to recognize the causal patterns connecting the visible symptoms, and the underlying reason for their presentation.

Lore: Disguises

Your knowledge of the storied history of infiltration and deceit;secrets stolen, treasures taken, spies caught, tortured, and executed. Great rewards take a little risk.

Lore: Blend

Your knowledge of one of the most flexible arts in the spy's arsenal, ceasing to stand out from a crowd, and becoming one with its members, just another quickly-forgotten face. The danger, of course, is that you're generally surrounded by exactly those you'd rather not find you.

Lore: Forgeries

Your knowledge of the crisp, clean feel of good paper, the tactile sensation of the pen as it makes marks indistinguishable from the real thing, the pleasure in cashing a promissory note for somebody else's money; less delightfully, you also know the penalties for failure, least among them the loss of a finger or five, and the quite unique experience of multiple fractures of things you'd rather keep intact.

Lore: Information

Your knowledge of that most versatile skill, the ability to take rumors from one or multiple sources, and turn it into useful information. Information is dangerous, however. Be careful what questions you ask, or you'll get some very pointed questions from people with very pointed instruments.

Lore: Animal Handling

Your knowledge of the bond between man and beast, the simple language of controller and controlled, guide and guided, and occasionally, gored and gorer. Mind your fingers when giving your capricious fellow living beings treats as reward for good behavior, because punishing them immediately after for taking one off can send mixed signals.

Lore: Scavenging

Your knowledge of the ways of nature - where to find berries, which berries are safe to eat, what to do when you eat the wrong variety of berries. More broadly useful, of course - knowing what foliage to look for can tell you a surprising-to-a-layman amount about what kind of minerals can be mined, and where shallow springs can be found.

Lore: Shelters

Your knowledge of the intricate act of turning a few bug-ridden piles of brush into a single larger bug-ridden pile of brush that will keep the rain off your head and curious creatures from doing too much investigation. The wrong kind of shelter, of course, is just a meal wrapper for the right kind of fauna.

Lore: Scouting

Your knowledge of the trails man and beast leave in their wake - camp garbage and footprints, broken twigs and torn scraps of fabric or thread, disturbed leaves and twigs, scent, blood - and how to use this information to seek or evade an impromptu meeting, and thus how to set the terms of what meetings must take place.

Lore: Hiding Places

Your knowledge of the small places, the dark regions, the borders on the edge of notice that mankind, oft to its detriment, grows too complacent to monitor, for they are myriad and man's time is short; mind that you hide well, lest your time be made shorter.

Lore: Sneaking

Your knowledge of the darkness, the silence, the creeping moonlight that obscures rather than illuminates, and how to insert yourself without disruption or ripple, like a skull slipping into a pool of purified mana.

Lore: Losing Tails

Your knowledge of the shadow, of the hunt, of that which pursues; you move as starlight, disappearing even as illuminated, and hardest to see when seen directly; the hare is quicker still, however, and but for a moment's inattention is but an unwitting meal.

Lore: Concealment

Your knowledge of the darkest colors, the bodings, the penumbra that hides all around the umbra; your knowledge, not just of disappearing, but leaving no hole where once a thing was to draw the eye, being careful not to disappear too thoroughly from this world.

Lore: Spotting

Your knowledge of the subtle ways in which a thing may be made invisible without hiding at all; switches within pictures, eyes watching from between books in a library, a limping bird drawing notice away from its young; of course, such knowledge comes with the great mistakes, such as Hensil Mar, who walked off a cliff face while insisting the walkway was camoflaged to appear as the cliff wall behind.

Lore: Listening

Your knowledge of the subtle ways in which noises may be concealed; the creak of a door concealing the snap of the line of the trap it is triggering, a squirrel throwing an object as it runs in another direction, steel oiled to sound like leather; you also know of some of the great misidentifications, such as Talime the Farsighted, who walked into a dragon's cave thinking the breathing to be a snoring bear.

Lore: Hidden Things

Your knowledge of the subtle ways in which a thing might be hidden entire; a loose floorboard, a carriage wheelbox, a false exterior; you also know how this knowledge can backfire on one who uses it not wisely but too well, such as Vade Scintille, who knocked a support wall out in search of a hidden room.

Lore: Following

Your knowledge of the subtle ways in which even a watched person may disappear; slipping into a crowd, ducking into an alley, swapping hats in a moment's distraction; you're also aware of pursuits turned foul, like Riesh Nocherre, who tackled his king, who had taken to walking in plain clothes throughout his own city.

Lore: Myths

Your knowledge of mythology - from Oakheart's Ascension to the shadowy god-kings of the Otherworlders - and all its implications.

Lore: Common Knowledge

Your knowledge of common things - from how shaving is properly done to the best spices to take the mana taste out of silvertusk flesh - and all its implications.

Lore: Iconography

Your knowledge of iconography - from the symbol of the Door key to the ever-moving sigil of Thaumaturgy - and all its implications.

Lore: Languages

Your knowledge of the nature of languages - from the common roots of Northking's Tongue and Sibilese to the types of conjugation that exist in Perriul - and all its implications.

Lore: Working under Pressure

Your knowledge of minds, and your own mind in particular; how to deal with time constraints and stress, and what happened to those who couldn't think faster than the rocks coming at them.

Lore: Holding Rituals

Your knowledge of the nature of ritual, and how best to preserve it against subtle mistakes and gentle interferences, and what happened to those who couldn't maintain their calm under the baleful gaze of a barely-contained mad god.

Lore: Conducting Power

Your knowledge of the nature of flesh, metal, and magic, and how they interact at the edges; you know exactly what happens when flesh keeps conducting and metal ceases, moreover.

Lore: Meditation

Your knowledge of the nature of harmony, and how it is sustained - as well as how it is not, and the nightmares that tear free of the mind that lets itself wander unguided through the aethersphere.

Lore: Volcanoes

Your knowledge of the desert, the magma, the lava, the world of the ever-burning embers, and the memories of dried-up husks of those who thought they, too, knew the land they traversed.

Lore: Glaciers

Your knowledge of the ice, the glacier, the white-out blizzards, the world of the ever-blowing wind, and the memories of frozen screams of those who thought they, too, knew the land they traversed.

Lore: Hurricanes

Your knowledge of the howling wind, the screaming tornados, the shuddering strokes of lightning, the world of the storm, and the memories of those who thought they, too, knew the land they traversed.

Lore: Survival

Your knowledge of the placid pond, the babbling brook, the silent meadow, the world of the endless peace, and the memories of the gutted, half-eaten corpses of those who thought they, too, knew the land they traversed.

Lore: Biomancy

Your knowledge of the nature of Biomancy, its origins, and some of its great feats; the Ascension of Oakheart, the purging of the poisoned river Eul, the restoration of the Desert of Souls.

Lore: Conjuration

Your knowledge of the nature of Conjuration, its origins, and some of its great feats; the Summoning of Arathao, the closing of the Maw of Far Reaches, the defeat of the offworld demigod Seizrul.

Lore: Elemental

Your knowledge of the nature of Elemental magic, its origins, and some of its great feats; the Eternal Pillars, the defense of Iasrune, the Great Bombardment.

Lore: Enchantment

Your knowledge of the nature of Enchantment, its origins, and some of its great creations; the Blade of Ages, the Eternal Shield, the Utterly Ordinary Spear.

Lore: Focal

Your knowledge of the nature of Focal magic, its origins, and some of its great feats; the Haunting of Sivil, the Purge of Names, the Heartarrow of Vin.

Lore: Illusion

Your knowledge of the nature of Illusion magic, its origins, and some of its great feats; the Forgotten Mountain, the Fell Giant, the end of the Siege of Falice.

Lore: Necromancy

Your knowledge of the nature of Necromancy, its origins, and some of its great feats; the Lord of the Undying Realm, the Fungal Bloom, the theft of Oakheart's Soul

Lore: Planar

Your knowledge of the nature of Planar magic, its origins, and some of its great feats; the Great Seal, the discovery of The Underplanes, the creation of the Door Key.

Lore: Thaumaturgy

Your knowledge of the nature of Thaumaturgy, its origins, and some of its great feats; the Wall of Lights, the Terrible Undoing, and the Charm of Lakes.

Lore: Viviomancy

Your knowledge of the nature of Viviomancy, its origins, and some of its great feats; the creation of the Fountain of Life, the resurrections of Vin, Crell's Last Stand.

Lore: Creature Type: Ocean

Your knowledge of the flora and fauna (mostly fauna) of the ocean; the majestic crab, the adorable mermouse, the malignant puddle...

Lore: Creature Type: Reptile

Your knowledge of the reptile kingdom; from the Frost Drake to the common Alligator to the deadly Aether Dragon, you're familiar with the anatomy and nature of them all

Lore: Creature Type: Beast

Your knowledge of mundane and magical beasts; Brown Wolves surprise few, Rhinos surprise more, but you know all the legends even of the Ursanova.

Lore: Creature Type: Bug

Your knowledge of the creepy and crawly things that go often unnoticed, as well as the larger specimens, far from civilization (or busy consuming it), whose nature and names are rarely encountered.

Lore: Creature Type: Offworlder

Your knowledge of the beings from beyond, whose study has occupied many for many hundreds of years and resulted in no small number of deaths. Crevogs are a name familiar to you, as are the Esrule, and the Mantlesquid.

Lore: Creature Type: Bird

Your knowledge of the bird kingdom, both big and small, from the elephant-devouring Roc to the rat-devouring Seerhawk.

Lore: Creature Type: Elemental

Your knowledge of the elementals of the world, who hold sway and derive power from its primal naturalistic forces, from fire to fortune, from sea to storms.

Aw, hell no. He could barely read the damned list, and started selecting at random.

Lore: Enchantment

Your knowledge of the nature of Enchantment, its origins, and some of its great creations; the Blade of Ages, the Eternal Shield, the Utterly Ordinary Spear.

+1 to Arcane Resistance Thresholds of Enchantment spells you cast

+1 to Arcane Resistance Bonus against Enchantment spells

Lore: Swimming

Your knowledge of fluid dynamics principles to the end of making yourself pointy and splashing more effectively. Fish will always be better than you. Eat a few of them. Remind them of the proper order of things.

+2 to Grace when swimming

You know the difficulty involved to swim across a difficult area or at a given pace

Lore: Disguises

Your knowledge of the storied history of infiltration and deceit;secrets stolen, treasures taken, spies caught, tortured, and executed. Great rewards take a little risk.

+2 to Spycraft when preparing disguises

You know the difficulty involved to pass basic scrutiny under disguise

Lore: Shelters

Your knowledge of the intricate act of turning a few bug-ridden piles of brush into a single larger bug-ridden pile of brush that will keep the rain off your head and curious creatures from doing too much investigation. The wrong kind of shelter, of course, is just a meal wrapper for the right kind of fauna.

+2 to Woodcraft when preparing shelter

You know the difficulty involved to prepare functional shelter against the local elements

Lore: Volcanoes

Your knowledge of the desert, the magma, the lava, the world of the ever-burning embers, and the memories of dried-up husks of those who thought they, too, knew the land they traversed.

+2 to Endurance when navigating extremely hot environments

You know the difficulty involved to go without injury in a given hot environment

Okay, mostly randomly. Volcanoes had caught his eye as he randomly focused on sections of the massive text field with a sense of intending to choose, which had worked. The smaller list that replaced it was more mentally manageable.

Inserting avatar. Please stand by.

Inserting what now?

The blackness gave way to a bright white light, which gradually faded … back into black. Uh. Thomas tried looking around, and was startled and pleased that – his head actually turned. Well, the blackness didn't change, but the accustomed fielding of muscles moving, and tension in the tendons, asserted itself, and his sense of orientation with respect to the rest of his body shifted as well.

And then the smell hit him, all at once. He had encountered that particular smell only once before, at a campsite restroom when he was a teenager, and his parents had driven them across the country; they had been too poor to afford hotels, and had camped out each night instead. It wasn't the smell of sewage, exactly – it was the smell of sewage that was left untreated in a container for weeks or months on end in hot conditions. And that smell at that campsite had been the little brother of the smell that assaulted him now; the same smell, but so intense he felt like he had been punched in the gut.

Thomas found himself on his hands and knees on a cold, rough surface. Warmth splattered across his hands as he heaved the contents of his stomach out. The smell just kept … being there, getting stronger if anything, and his eyes watered, his nose ran. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve, struggling not to throw up again, pulling his shirt up over his face to try to filter out some of that awful goddamned smell.

It didn't work. Thomas dropped the shirt as he started trying to vomit again, dry-heaving painfully into the air. His sides ached, his abs spasming uncontrollably. Slowly he fell to the side, his face landing in hot, wet liquid. The smell of the vomit was, if anything, a relief. He curled slowly into a ball, suddenly finding warmth running down his face, tears dripping into the puke. What the fuck was going on?

Gradually, choking and hiccuping, his tears stopped flowing. He felt unaccountably exhausted, and let himself collapse into something that wasn't quite sleep. Sleep was more restful than whatever this half-conscious, miserable haze was.

A grating noise drew his attention, and he sat up, looking around for his alarm clock in a sudden flickering yellow light. A narrow band of yellow, a few feet away. Something was shoved in, and he scrambled for the light, but with the same grating noise, something slid sideways across it, and the light was gone. Thomas felt around, finding an object, with a smoother texture than the floor, albeit still rough; his fingers, exploring, touched something else, cold and rough, sitting in a cold liquid. A bowl? He carefully picked it up, sniffing at it. All he could smell was the pervasive scent of sewage. He put the bowl back down, not feeling in the mood for food.

His face was sticky. He didn't really want to think about what it was sticky with. Where was he? What had happened to his room? This felt almost like … a vague sense of dread stole into him. That slat. The bowl of food shoved in. He had seen movies with prisons that looked like this, medieval prisons, only in the movies they were always well-lit. And the characters in those movies didn't seem to be bothered by the smell. But then, movies never really focused on where people took a shit, and you had to have light to have a movie in the first place.

Okay. So he was, what, in a prison. A medieval prison. Okay, so this was, what, a prank? No, this would take way too much effort for his roommate to pull, and he didn't know anybody else well enough. This must be a TV show. Thomas looked around the darkness. Using, what, infra-red? Whatever.

“Hey! Fuckers! I don't consent to whatever bullshit this is! Get me out of here, I want to see the … uh … the producer!” He shouted, and the noise echoed back at him. He waited for a moment, and then shouted again, “I'm going to sue the shit out of you, get me the fuck out of here!”

The echo in the apparently small room was his only reply. He curled up again, starting to shiver. What is going on? Fear stabbed at him, a sense of panic and anxiety. He needed to move, to run, but he couldn't see. He started crawling around the ground, until his head collided painfully with a hard surface. He reached out and touched a wall, then stood slowly – and hit his head on the ceiling, and ducked down again. He moved around the room.

It was about five steps across in any direction, roughly square. Thomas guessed the walls, floor, and ceiling were stone; one wall had a door, a smoother rough surface that didn't feel as cold to the touch. He found the hole – for shitting and pissing, he guessed – when a foot slipped into it, and he fell to a knee, hard, but in something he wasn't sure he was pleased to find … squishy, and cold.

The ceiling was an arch – he could stand in the center of the room, barely, but it sloped down as it approached every wall but the one with the door. Thomas moved back to the door, and felt around it. There was no handle, no knob, nothing at all but a seam where it met the stone, and a rectangle running most of the length of the bottom of the door; the slat where what he guessed was food had come through; he had spilled the bowl exploring the room, stepping on it and cracking it apart; it felt like the same, probably-wooden material as the door. The door wasn't set in a recess, sitting nearly flush with the rock. He couldn't find hinges, so it, what, swung outward?

Thomas sat back down near the door. Okay. He was kind of getting accustomed to the smell, somehow. So, what did he know? He was in some kind of shitty … no, this didn't feel like a reality show. Had he been kidnapped and put in someone's … what, sex dungeon? Was he some kind of sex slave? Or maybe … had a serial killer captured him and locked him in a basement?

What had been up with that weird blue field with the text, then? Maybe he had been dosed with some kind of hallucinogenic drug.

Escape. He had poked around at the hole – with the toe of his shoe – but he wouldn't fit through it even if he wanted to, which, given the smell, he really didn't. The walls were rough stone, surprising well fitted – he'd found slight seams in irregular shapes, examining them with his fingertips. The floor was either cut stone, or tiles, or concrete; there were larger seems, with a rough sandy material, maybe grout, connecting the stones.

He tried using pieces of the probably-wooden bowl he'd stepped in to dig up some of the maybe-grout, but without light, he had trouble telling whether or not the work accomplished anything. After enough work to make his hand cramp up, he couldn't identify a difference in depth; there was grit, but there was grit everywhere on the floor.

He thought about it for a while, mind slowly returning to the blue fields; specifically, the one that had said something about being better at unarmed combat. Supposing, for a moment, that they weren't a hallucination – just supposing – then he could do two additional “progressions”, whatever that was supposed to mean, of damage. Alright. Don't overthink it.

Thomas moved carefully over to the door, moving in a crouch, one hand touching the floor in front of him while the other groped at the air, until he felt the smoother material beneath his fingers. Alright. It had something about hands; did he have to punch it for the effect to apply? No, try kicking, first. If he was losing his mind, at least his shoe would protect his foot somewhat.

He positioned himself carefully, trying slow, fake kicks first, until his knee was mostly, but not completely, extended – kick past the door, right? – when the heel of his shoe connected. Alright, time to try this out. Taking a breath, Thomas kicked out at the door, as hard as he could, with a sharp crack.

The floor hit his back a moment later, pain shooting through his shoulders. Fuck. Ouch. Ouch. He propped himself up on his elbows, moving his head around; his neck hurt a bit, strained from instinctively tucking his head forward as he fell backwards, but – but he swore he had felt the door give a little bit under the blow. Alright, so – kicking had worked, a little bit, but physics was a bitch.

He got to his feet – and one hand – and felt his way back over to the door, feeling it. Yeah. The wood felt rougher, and there was a definite section that – fucking hell, splinter. Thomas smiled, rising slowly. Time to try a punch or two.

He went light on his first punch, and was immediately glad he did, as pain radiated across his knuckles. He tried again with his palm, the way he had seen martial artists do it in movies, and that felt much, much better, but still hurt. A few more experiments, and he settled on a strike that used the meat of his hand, instead of, basically, slapping it really hard.

He leaned forward with the next palm strike, putting his shoulders into it, and drove hard, with a satisfying crunching sound. His feet slipped back a little bit, but his palm remained against the door, holding his balance. A stinging sensation, but it hadn't hurt-hurt.

He started alternating hands, striking as quickly as he could without falling over, which wasn't too terribly fast. The door crunched, cracked, and creaked. And then, with a sharper crunch and splintering sounds, his palm went partially through the door.

Partially, and then he was cursing aloud, pulling his hand back and yanking out the large chunks of wood stabbing into his hand from almost every angle. Hot blood poured down from the torn skin, and Thomas sat heavily down on the ground again, cradling his hand to his chest. Suddenly he was glad he had sat down, because he felt woozy, and probably would have thrown up again if his stomach weren't so thoroughly emptied already. Shit shit shit. Was he bleeding out?

After a few minutes, he determined that no, he wasn't bleeding out. The flow slowed, then stopped. It wasn't really all that much blood, once he calmed down a bit and thought it through; he'd hurt himself worse many times before, but not being able to see the wounds was making him come to the worst possible conclusions.

He slowly got himself back under control, and stood shakily again, moving to the door, and tentatively exploring the hole he'd made. It was small – maybe twice the diameter of a quarter. The door itself was, what, an inch or two thick? He tried ripping the wood apart with his hands, but it was surprisingly strong stuff, for a material he'd managed to, basically, punch a hole through. Alright, one piece of evidence that the blue fields hadn't entirely been an unwilling drug trip.

He started, carefully, striking the door again, this time spreading the blows out across the surface. The noise was loud, and he was giving himself a headache, but it wasn't like anything else was going on at the moment, so this is what he was going to be doing. It took either half an hour or half a day – his arms and shoulders burned, his palms felt numb – but the door finally just … gave out, falling apart into multiple pieces. One struck his leg, and he had to yank out another chunk of wood.

Okay. So it was dark on the other side too. That probably should have been obvious from the moment he'd knocked the first hole in the door, in retrospect, but it still came as a surprise to him. He moved carefully over the rubble of the door, tapping down with his foot multiple times, and, feeling his way, moved through the door, and started following the left wall. The ceiling was higher here, thankfully.

He found an inside corner, and kept moving. The progress was slow, as, after thinking about the possibility of falling into another hole, he started tapping his foot against the ground as he moved, checking the floor for any sudden holes or gaps. He found another corner, this one outside – no, convex. The inside corner was concave. Maybe. He wasn't certain he remembered those words correctly. But as he started to follow it around, his foot kicked something hard.

He felt around with his foot, and found that it was a step. He stepped up it. He found another immediately. Alright, stairs. They were shallow, and wide, but they were stairs. He ascended them, sticking hard to the left wall, his only guiding light – ha – in the darkness.

Or it had been; he was gradually aware that he could, in fact, start to see; it was getting brighter, as he moved up. Light! He moved more quickly, and more quickly still, as he moved up the – yes, cut stone stairs. The walls were indeed rough stone, fitted exceptionally well. The ceiling was more cut stone, however. He was vaguely aware of the air getting fresher. How far did this staircase even go? How deep down was he?

The light just kept getting brighter. His eyes already felt like they had been given a thorough sanding, however, and his body ached from a dozen scrapes and cuts and bruises anyways, so it was just another discomfort on a pile that kept getting bigger. His headache, which had become an incessant pounding, started to ease, at least. Shit, what had he even been breathing down there? The place had probably been full of radio gas, or whatever it was called. Probably radio gas, he remembered hearing radioactive gas leaked from the ground in basements. Radio, radioactive, stood to reason. Hey, did his car stereo give him cancer? No, no, that wasn't important. Later, when he got out of this serial killer's … damn this basement was big. Where the fuck even was he?

The source of the light became evident; a bright ball of light, a bare lightbulb, far too bright to look directly at, hung in a room at the top of the stairs. He slowed as he approached it, thinking quickly. Alright, there was a crazy serial killer somewhere up there, unless he had gone to the barber's or grocery store or something. There might be a crazy serial killer up there. Thomas had a mean punch, now, but if he got stabbed or shot, that wouldn't do him any good. He had to be … aw, shit. He'd made a lot of noise getting out.

Alright, if the axe murderer or whatever hadn't already come to see what was up, he probably wasn't in the room, or at least hadn't been when Thomas had been hammering his way through a door. Ok. Quietly.

And as quietly as he could – his teeth clenched against the scraping he absolutely couldn't stop from doing as he placed one foot in front of the other, painfully slowly – he climbed the last dozen steps up towards the room. And froze. Well, it wasn't an axe murderer. At least, not exclusively.

There was a battered wooden desk in the room, with an equally dinged-up chair sitting behind it. An odd book sat on the desk, as well as – was that a fucking inkpot and quill? But that couldn't hold his attention long, because his eyes were pulled towards the wall behind the desk, where a fucking arsenal of very battered, very used-looking medieval goddamned weaponry was hanging in neat rows from wooden … holding things. A dozen swords, one of which looked to have been snapped in half. Three of the spiked metal clubs – maces? Or were they scourges, or flails? He wasn't really sure what any of those words actually meant. But three of those, with some of the spikes broken, others bent. Two absolutely mammoth axes with chipped blades.

Christ. This guy must've killed a hundred people, to do that kind of damage to the arsenal. Or he had used them to excavate his crazy sex-murder dungeon. Shit, maybe he was a cannibal? No, no. Thomas still had all of his bits, he'd already checked. Unless maybe he liked to make people watch him eat their bits, like that movie, or that other movie, or … Thomas swallowed.

He forced his gaze away from the implements of murder, to the door on the far side of the room. He'd get the hell out of here, is what he'd do, and get the police, and they'd shoot this crazy fucker full of holes. Yeah.

He took one step, and then froze again. There was a sound from the other side of the door. Voices, more than one. Images of a family of cannibals eating his leg while he was forced to watch flashed through his mind. And the door handle … turned.