Survivor: Definitely Not Minecraft

Gastard and I went forward cautiously. My sword was at my waist, and I had my arm through the straps of the shield so I could grip the haft of my spear with both hands. I tossed a torch toward the dark passage as soon as we entered the room, but the troll did not immediately reveal itself. As we came under the arch, we could see that it had come to rest at the bend.

It was on its side, and its labored breathing was audible from the other end of the passage. It knew we were there. The troll glared balefully at us out of its one good eye, not bothering to rise. The rocks may have been more effective than I had realized, or it was screwing with us.

We walked side by side, expecting it to jump up at any moment, but even when we came within a few paces of its heaving form, it remained on the ground. Its snout and skull resembled that of a canine, and now that it wasn’t actively trying to kill me, I felt a little bad for it. My favorite part of many movies and books was the monsters. Not that I wanted them to win, necessarily, but they were what I went to see. A part of me would always yearn to be a Pokemaster.

“The neck,” Gastard said. “Now is your chance.”

Putting aside my misgivings about killing this minion of darkness in cold blood, I took a quick step forward and thrust the tip of my spear at the exposed skin under its chin. The troll’s hand snapped out, grabbing the haft of my weapon just as its point began to sink into its throat. Its hands looked even bigger at close range. It squeezed, and the shaft snapped like a dry twig.

Gastard didn’t waste any time. He lunged forward, bringing down his sword in an overhead arc. The troll shifted, absorbing the blow with its broad back, suffering only a long scratch. It hooted, swinging its fist in a backhand to ward off Gastard, and rose to its feet as I was still fumbling to draw my sword.

Gastard slipped in again, attacking the monster’s face. It was unsteady on its feet, fighting with one arm while the other hung awkwardly from a misaligned shoulder. Holding my shield up, I stepped in to slash at its throat, and it caught me with the edge of its knuckles. Even a grazing blow was enough to knock me off of my feet. The wooden circle over my arm absorbed most of the shock, but I still felt the impact jolting my joints. Surprisingly, my health bar didn’t pop up. Shields were awesome.

It didn’t pursue me, having its hands full with Gastard, so I could rise again a moment later and attempted a lunge. My form was not peak, and the tip of my sword scraped along the top of its leathery chest.

The troll bellowed, busy defending itself from Gastard’s assault, and threw itself forward, putting the knight on his back. The monster was overtop of Gastard, supporting itself with its good arm, and its open jaws lowered to bite off his face.

I shouted something, I have no idea what, and brought my sword down where its neck met the back of its skull. The cut wasn’t deep, but it got the monster’s attention. It shuffled over Gastard, pinning him with its legs and bad arm, turning to roar at me.

It was terrifying, but I acted on instinct, driving my sword up into the soft palate exposed by its open jaws. The troll punched me in the chest, and I felt my brand-new breastplate dent as I was thrown back into the wall.

It was the most damage I had taken from a single attack, and I didn't want to consider what the result would have been if I was still wearing a leather tunic. The troll couldn’t close its mouth, there was a sword there, and the monster stumbled off of Gastard, swaying like a drunken ape, until it came to the corner of the bend.

I tried to catch my breath and found that I couldn’t. All the air had been punched out of me and didn’t seem to have any intention of moving back in. The troll ripped the sword out of its mouth, and dark blood poured from its jaws. It looked back at me, seemingly more confused than angry, before dropping to the floor.

Gastard levered himself up, retrieved his sword, and drove it into the troll’s remaining eye.

He straightened and took a long, steadying breath. “We have become templars in truth,” he said. “No man has slain a koloss in the Free Kingdoms in living memory.”

Gradually, the pressure in my chest eased, and I could finally take a shallow breath. My ribs hurt. All of them, and getting up caused a fresh spike of agony in my sternum.

“I need a snack,” I said.

Gastard looked at me like I’d just ruined the moment. “What?”

“My food heals me,” I said. “I’m hurt. Are you okay?”

He nodded. “We go back for now, then explore the rest.”

Esmelda flung open the door as soon as we reentered the Stargate chamber. She rushed to meet us and put her hand over the dent in my breastplate.

“You’re hurt,” she said. “Do you have bread?”

“Beets,” I said, grimacing. It would almost be worth keeping my insides bruised not to have to chew through as many of the hard, bitter vegetables as it was going to take to fix me.

I sat on the dais and slapped a beet into my hand. Contemplating its glossy purple exterior before taking a big bite.

“Is the troll dead?” Esmelda asked.

“It is,” Gastard said proudly. “Will has the courage of a knight, if not the skill. It would have killed me if not for his quick action.”

“It takes two,” I said through a mouthful of disgusting root.

The pain eased, and it got easier to breathe. My health bar started to fill back in. After two whole beets, I was still sore, but the damage was gone. When I was hungry, it didn’t take much to satisfy me, but I hadn’t felt truly full since being reincarnated. I wondered if there was a limit to how much I could eat if I was ever wounded badly enough to need to down a basket full of vegetables, or if I could keep munching forever like in the game.

“We should wait until tomorrow before going any further,” Esmelda said. “We’ve been down here for hours.”

I glanced around the chamber. It was too large for me to reliably illuminate it through the night, and I didn’t want to risk breaking the glowstones, or whatever they were, on the corners of the dais by trying to mine them with the tools I had. There was, however, another option.

Mining out the crawlspace had provided me with a fortune in basalt. Covering over the glow stones was a minor investment in stone, and it plunged the chamber into darkness apart from the remaining torch.

“You can both stay with me in the safe room tonight,” I said, “as long as you don’t mind sleeping in the dark.”

“Agreed,” Gastard said. “It will save us some of the morning.

We ventured back up to the entrance of the mine and saw that there was still some time left before sunset. Gastard mentioned a nearby spring and set off to refill everyone’s water pouches, which left Esmelda and me to set up the safe room. The coffin wasn’t necessary, but I was loath to break it down, just in case. I crafted grass mats for everyone, and we spread them out in the small room.

The lack of ventilation would have made a proper fire problematic, and we would have had to douse it soon anyway, so we made do with the light of one half-spent torch. Esmelda had let her hair down, and it reached well below her shoulders. It made her look older, less cute, more beautiful. It was hard not to be struck by the dreamlike nature of our situation. Magic powers, sure. Monsters, of course. Being legally married to a woman as attractive and capable as she was, green card wedding or not, was somehow harder to get my head around than all the rest of it.

“Esmelda,” I said, “is our relationship entirely professional?”

She was in the middle of fluffing her travel pack into a makeshift pillow, and she paused, turning to look at me, her eyebrows bunched together. “What are you asking?”

Admittedly, it had been a weird way to phrase the question. I hadn’t had a girlfriend since I was a teenager, and I had never seen myself as someone who was very adept at navigating the male-female dynamic. “I know that we got married for practical reasons,” I said. “But I am attracted to you and I, uh, wanted to make that clear.”

Her mouth quirked. “You are not unattractive yourself,” she said, “though we may have to procure more soap for you if we are going to make a habit of sharing a room in the future.”

I sniffed myself. “Yeah, that’s fair.”

The torchlight caught the silver edge of her mother’s comb as she tucked it into a smaller bag she had placed beside her mat. “If what you meant to ask was whether I love you, the answer is no. My people live long lives, and we can be slow to give our hearts to another. But I see you as someone whom I could eventually come to love. If that was not true, I would not have married you, regardless of the necessity. It would have been an affront to the goddess for me to do so.”

I swallowed. “I also see you as someone I could come to love.”

“Oh,” she said, her face coloring slightly, “well, good.”