Chương 113: Thoughts Before Sleep

Lloyd crossed one leg over the other and sank fully into his thoughts, staring up into the darkness of the ceiling, toward where, in the dim, flickering light of the candle stub, that same long, branching crack was just barely visible, running across the whole ceiling in an uneven, winding line. The thin blanket had already warmed his chilled body, and the exhaustion of the past few hours was washing over him in waves, blurring the line between waking and half-sleep.

"Still haven't really figured out one of my skills. Honestly, I don't fully understand the second one either." Suddenly Lloyd heard snoring coming from behind the wall — thin as cardboard — a deep, rolling sound, interrupted every so often by a strange, gurgling wheeze that would then give way to a short mutter in some unfamiliar tongue.

The walls in this place were so thin that sounds like this had long since become something familiar to him, almost background noise, like the patter of rain or the creak of unoiled hinges. Waving off this irritating accompaniment with a short, annoyed sigh, he fixed his eyes on the crack above him again and continued his silent monologue.

"What's even more important — since my hometown emerged from the Veil a year ago, no gate ever appeared there. Which meant I had to move to another city, hundreds of kilometers from home. So now I'm in a different world on top of that, and unfortunately there's no signal here. Not even going to mention the internet."

He let out a heavy sigh, feeling this simple list of facts press down on his chest with an almost physical weight, as though some unseen hand kept stacking one heavy stone after another onto him, and all he could do was silently watch that intangible but ever-growing pile keep building.

"Honestly, sounds pretty grim when you put it that way." Somewhere outside the window, muffled, came the sound of someone's hurried footsteps on the cobblestones, followed by a short, sharp bark of a dog that quickly faded back into the night's silence. Suddenly a faint, crooked smirk crossed Lloyd's face, tugging up one corner of his mouth.

"But, let's move on to the positives. I got into a Guild. This Guild, as far as I know, was the very first one, and it's official too. The pay here is garbage, and they won't give you any advice or the best quests for leveling up. But on the plus side, any riffraff can join — like me." Lloyd scratched his nose, but couldn't hold it in and sneezed loudly, the sound echoing through the small, cramped room and briefly drowning out even his neighbor's snoring.

Brushing himself off, he went on listing his dubious "achievements," staring off toward the window, draped in a thin, partly torn curtain, beyond which the gray, starless haze still swirled. Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

"And I got pretty lucky that they've got a gate right in this region of Oblivion." He turned his head toward the window for a moment, where, far off in the swirling gray mist, the silhouette of one of the countless other floating islands drifted slowly by, briefly blocking out the already dim, blurry light outside before dissolving off to one side, giving way once more to the monotonous gray.

"This place is one of the most dangerous territories, but the monsters here are low-ranked. I figure I can level up here as fast as possible — I don't exactly have a ton of time to spare." The board beneath him creaked as he shifted slightly, settling into a more comfortable position, and the springs of the old, sunken mattress answered with a faint, strained groan somewhere deep inside.

He couldn't help but let his gaze wander over his shabby little hovel, more closely resembling a cramped storage closet than a proper room for the night — scuffed, peeling walls, a lopsided, creaky wardrobe in the corner, the candle stub trembling in a barely-there draft, casting flickering, restless shadows over the whole dreary scene.

"Though, honestly, I'm already starting to regret this a little." Smiling at his own thoughts, he rolled onto his side, wrapping himself even tighter in the thin, scratchy blanket, pulling his chilled knees up to his chest and drawing the edge of the blanket up almost to his chin, breathing in the faint — if no longer quite as off-putting as at first — smell of mustiness and old wood.

"But all that, I guess, can wait until tomorrow. Right now I..." He let out a long, loud yawn, automatically covering his mouth with the back of his hand, and the yawn immediately brought unbidden, watery tears to his eyes, which he hastily, almost self-consciously wiped away with his knuckles, as if someone might actually be there to see him.

"Right now I just want to sleep. For as long as possible." Outside the window, somewhere far below, the muffled, almost soothing hum of the sleeping city went on — the occasional voice drifting from the nearest tavern, the creak of someone's heavy footsteps on the cobblestones, the distant, lonely bark of a dog cutting through the silence again, and the steady creak of that same loose shutter somewhere on the floor below, swaying in the wind with a monotonous, lulling regularity.

The candle stub on the nightstand, meanwhile, was burning down, casting weaker and weaker, more trembling shadows on the walls, until the flame shrank to a tiny, barely glowing point.

Lloyd closed his eyes, feeling the weight of the day slowly but surely spread through his whole body as a pleasant, heavy exhaustion, his mind gradually clouding over, sinking into a drowsy, blurred state right on the border between sleep and waking, where fragments of the day's events — the mushroom wolf's snarl, the guards' cold stare at the gate, the Guild clerk's saccharine smile — began blending together, losing their sharp edges, dissolving into something thick, incoherent, syrupy.

After a while his breathing evened out, growing deep and steady, the candle on the nightstand finally went out, plunging the room into near-total darkness, broken only by the dim, gray light seeping in past the curtained window, and Lloyd himself finally sank into the arms of the realm of sleep, leaving behind the creaking, decrepit little room and this whole long, trial-filled day, along with all its worries, hopes, and doubts.