Chương 2: Chapter Two: The Dark and Its Contents

Darkness, and then… she became aware of rain. Not the droplets themselves, but the sound of them against cobblestone. Tap. Tap. Tap. Humid cold had settled into her from all sides as if she had spent hours out there in the weather, but it couldn't have been more than minutes. Her eyes felt heavy but she could hear clearly, and not just the rain. Footsteps too, fading.

Someone walking away at an unhurried pace, heels clicking on wet stone, growing quieter and then quieter still until she couldn't separate them from the rainfall. Then a voice, just before the footsteps went past hearing.

"Sweet dreams, dear girl." Cora opened her eyes. An arch of stone stood above her. Not the ceiling of a hospital room in which she was having a strange dream, as she had expected and hoped, but bare stone. She strained her eyes. The most she could see beyond it was a narrow black strip of sky between buildings with rain falling through in thick threads, reflecting light from somewhere she couldn't see yet, warm and uneven. She couldn't yet say what was strange about the light, but it was… definitely strange.

She was on the ground in an alley she did not recognise, wearing clothes soaked through, and seeing clearly through eyes that did not seem to require glasses. Cora sat up, or attempted to, before the world tilted sideways. She put out a hand, caught the stone wall, and waited for the tilting to stop. It did, mostly, after a moment or two. Much too tall, she noted as she stood fully. That was decidedly weird but she had spent the past eight months treating dissociation like a competitive sport.

She could pretend not to freak out for a few more minutes. The hands were wrong too. Thinner, more bone than flesh, the weight distributed in ways she had no muscle memory for, cold registering harshly in joints she was entirely unfamiliar with. There were scars she had never earned. She could feel the difference between her hands and these hands and… What was going on? Wrong place. Wrong body. And from the colour of the light falling at the end of the alley (was that gas?), wrong time.

The smell confirmed it: coal smoke and the cold mineral edge of a river somewhere close. No traffic noise. Just quiet. A terrible quiet. There is no way, she thought, wondering whether this was what psychosis felt like. She looked at the alley. Narrow. Twelve feet long, roughly. The far end opened onto a street where she could see the base of a lamp post and wet cobblestones. A doorway to her left with a step she had apparently been propped against. Nothing to her right but the wall. There was something else, too.

A bright light at the edge of her vision, rather like the notification indicators in video games. She stared at it. It didn't go away. Oh, well. Cora decided to move anyway. Was that generally a terrible idea when you were potentially hallucinating your surroundings? Yes, of course. But she may or may not have just been killed by a stalker after deciding to die of cancer during a vacation in Portugal, so she had earned the right to enjoy the hallucination while it lasted. She turned toward the far end of the alley.

And found it there. The first thing she registered was that she had no idea what it was. Fist-sized, roughly, but with no fixed form. Shape itself seeming to be a suggestion it chose not to commit to. The only reason she could distinguish it from the surrounding dark at all was the lamp post behind it, throwing it into relief, though the light didn't seem to touch it. Every time she blinked, her eyes insisted there was nothing there.

She had to look twice, then again, each time catching only an elongated aberration of limbs. Too many of them. Occupying space in a way that felt wrong, as if it had learned about the relationship between position and object from a description rather than experience. As if the laws of physics meant nothing to it. Cora stood very still. You have encountered a [Flicker Demon]. New Sub-Quest: [Off With Her Head] You are not supposed to be here. The world agrees. Do something about that.

"What a ridiculous–" This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it It crossed twelve feet in half a blink. The impact hit her collarbone and drove her back a step; teeth bit into her shoulder before she could do anything at all. She grabbed for it but it released and caught her hand in the same motion, biting just as deep. She didn't scream. She had no time to.

The bite was horrendous for exactly one second before it dulled into a throbbing ache as her shoulder and hand went numb. She was losing feeling in her arm. Do something! Cora told herself, over the noise in her head. She swung her arm hard into the wall, hoping to dislodge it. She failed to account for the fact that the arm was not hers, thinner, much less force behind it than she'd calculated. The creature skittered sideways and onto her back.

She screamed at that, because she hated being touched from behind, and hit the wall with her back repeatedly until it screeched and jumped clear. It landed on the wall to her left. She punched. And missed. Her knuckles hit the stone and she groaned. It launched at her again and she threw her arm up as a barrier; it bit into the back of her hand, cold spreading quickly. She ran for the alley's exit to get space. That was the only thing she could think of.

Three steps before she reached it, the creature dropped to her leg and bit. She went down to one knee, threw her fist at it. It jumped clear, and though Cora was ready to slap it away, she knew the angle was wrong and it would miss again. But it didn't miss. Somehow, she made contact with it however and it crashed into the wall with a loud screech. She was not in a position where she could afford to think clearly. She tried anyway, as it moved in a frenzy all over the wall, clearly very angry.

The creature had avoided her kick, but then moved mid-air to meet her attack head on for some reason… Her eyes caught on the light on the floor. She was partway through the lit part of the alley. If it hadn't moved as it did… It's scared, Cora thought, as she watched it move up and down the wall but not one step closer to her, s cared of the light! Cora stood up. She was losing feeling in her leg even faster than the arm. She looked at the lamp post. The open street. The light. She could run.

That was the sensible thing. Run into the open and shout for help. But Cora didn't want to run. She wanted to kill it. She couldn't have explained this clearly to anyone, including herself. Maybe it was the blood loss or whatever venom the creature was using. Maybe it was the fact that she had almost died twice in the space of an hour. Maybe it was something older than that, the same thing that had made her swing a bottle at an armed man, instead of screaming or running. Cora was tired of things happening to her.

She wanted to make at least one thing happen. She stepped deliberately back into the dark. It jumped on her immediately, teeth wide, locking onto her half-numbed arm. She let it bite and tried to dissociate from the pain. She then kept hold of it with her other hand before it could let go. Then she walked straight into the light. It screeched. Convulsed. Tried to work its teeth free and pull away, but she held on, gripping as hard as she could, and turned so the whole of its formless body faced the glow fully…

Suddenly, she wasn't holding anything. Her hand was empty. Small wisps of cold mist escaped through her fingers. And the numbness stopped. Not faded, just stopped, all at once, the way music cuts when you pull out your airpods. As if it had never been numb or cold at all. The only cold she could feel was the ordinary cold of a wet night in a city she didn't know. She almost sat down on the cobblestones. Then her vision detonated with screens.

That was the only word she had for it: a flurry of notices arriving all at once, stacked, white text on translucent gold, layered over each other and over the alley and over the street and the lamp post and the night sky. The world was still visible only at the edges of them. [Flicker Demon] dispersed. Combat event logged. Sub-Quest: [Off With Her Head] advanced. Congratulations. The bar was survival. You cleared it.

Progression threshold met. You have levelled up.

Main Quest: [Alice's Adventures in Wonderland] advanced. Titles granted.

All prior races unlocked. All prior classes unlocked. All prior attributes unlocked. All prior skills unlocked. All prior conditions unlocked.

"How…" she said, breathing heavily, "... ridiculous." The adrenaline left and the vertigo arrived properly, and she crumpled under the streetlamp like a puppet with its strings cut. Nausea and lightheadedness followed, and then pain she had been too busy to notice… the bites, yes, but also… She looked down at her middle, and touched it carefully. Her hand came away red. This body had a stab wound too.

Since when, she thought, and stopped, because the answer to since when could wait and the answer to am I about to die a second time probably could not, and she only had so much mental capacity remaining. The sound of footsteps interrupted the inner panic. A constable turned the corner from the north end of the street, moving at an unhurried pace and cursing the rain under his breath. Dark uniform, brass buttons, the bearing of someone who walked these streets every night and was bored beyond tears. He saw her.

Cora felt tears slip down her face as exhaustion arrived all at once.

"Please. Help me," she said, her voice barely above a whisper. She didn't have the energy for anything more. Then the world turned to nothing, once again.