Have you ever been prompted with the hypothetical: How many eighty-year-olds could you take in a fight? Annabell Smith had. And the answer, as she had just discovered, was: Not as many as one might hope.
Though, in her defense, this particular eighty-year-old was a rather lively undead.
***
“Fine,” Annabell got out between gasping breaths, looking down from her precarious perch atop Rotting Phil’s wardrobe—her latest in a series of defensive formations. “You win. Congratulations. Now, do you mind if I leave so we can try this again later? Or, preferably, not at all.”
As it turned out, the elderly zombie did mind. He minded very much. He made this quite clear by continuing to snarl and crawl about, dismantling his own bedroom in an admirable display of undead dedication. The rug lay in crumpled defeat. The furniture bore the unmistakable battle scars of an enemy who had opted for violence, and sometimes moist gumming. And the rest of Phil’s once-pristine porcelain collection—imported from faraway lands (but mostly garage sales)—lay in fractured tribute to Annabell’s aim.
Unfortunately, that particular ammunition supply had now been exhausted, leaving Annabell with little more than the wardrobe itself, her dwindling patience, and a growing awareness of her own mortality (which, frankly, felt a bit unfair given the circumstances).
Rotting Phil, meanwhile, was in no hurry. When one has already outlived the warranty on one’s own bones, what’s another few minutes?
Having just finished his latest crawl toward the nearby bookcase, he now rose with the deliberate menace of something that had all the time in the world and precisely no knee cartilage left to lose.
His previous attempt at getting to his feet had been cut short by the plate Annabell had Frisbeed from her vantage point, clocking him clean across the noggin.
Their epic battle had brought him down to 3/11 HP, which was something. The combination of silver cutlery, teacups, and one particularly well-aimed dinner plate had done their work. Unfortunately, her own HP wasn’t looking much better at a feeble, blinking 2/9.
1 HP she’d lost when she discovered that cartwheeling into a dinner table at full speed was, in fact, not an effective combat maneuver.
Another 2 had been sacrificed to the noble art of “frantic scrambling” as she collided, knees-first, with every available surface before escaping atop the wardrobe.
The final, most humiliating loss had been self-inflicted. Apparently, when one uses a skill called Shiny Acquisition, one should first check whether said acquisitions are dangerously sharp or not. As it turned out, when magically propelled at high speed, forks had a distressing tendency to behave less like useful implements and more like angry, airborne porcupines.
For now, Lady Coin-Flip had made a solemn vow: she would stick to coins. They were less aerodynamic.
Which brought her neatly to the present. 2 HP remaining, one furious undead pensioner, and no more plates to throw.
With a gurgling moan, Rotting Phil finished pulling himself to his feet, and promptly began his customary stagger across the room—straight towards her. It had already been firmly established that he couldn’t reach her up here, but Annabell still preferred it when he wasn’t testing structural integrity with his fists.
For an old, withered undead, Phil was surprisingly strong. The wardrobe she’d entrusted her life to was beginning to form serious concerns about its future. And cracks, for that matter.
“I think we got off on the wrong foot, you and I,” Annabell tried again. “Have you never heard the old adage: if you eat me, you’ll have food for a day. But if you don’t eat me, you’ll have a friend for life. How about that?”
Phil gave a groan, leaned forward, and used gravity to increase his momentum. He staggered the last few steps toward the wardrobe and promptly headbutted it with all the force of someone who had never learned a single lesson in his entire unlife.
CRACK.
“ALRIGHT!” she yelled, grabbing the wall for support as her makeshift fortress wobbled, Phil recoiling from the impact. “Here, I have something even better for you.”
Rummaging through her hoodie pouch—the sacred repository of all emergency sugar-based rations—she pulled out a handful of Toxic Jellybeans.
“I don’t mind sharing if you’re feeling peckish. You can have half of them, as long as—”
Phil had already begun his next charge.
Annabell did the only thing left to do: she tossed the jellybeans down in sheer, desperate hope.
There’s a universal rule that when one sees candy, one’s immediate instinct would be to pay attention to the candy rather than, say, continuing to hurl one’s own skull at a wardrobe. Right?
Wrong.
What either she or Phil failed to consider, however, was that, structurally speaking, Toxic Jellybeans were round.
And round things were slippery.
As a sock-clad foot made contact with the first of the treacherous things, Rotting Phil’s world performed a very undignified backflip.
With a somersault that would have made even the most seasoned of acrobats pause and say, “Well, that was unexpected,” the elderly undead crashed buttocks-first into the wardrobe.
This time, the furniture did more than just wobble: It surrendered to fate.
Sensing the inevitable, Annabell flung herself into action. With a last-second Emergency Escape, and at the cost of half of her remaining HP and a highly dignified scream, she avoided the full impact of the disaster, landing with a tumble, a small hop, and a triumphant, “Safe!”
Stolen story; please report.
Rotting Phil, on the other hand, was neither safe nor, for that matter, particularly Rotting Phil anymore. The wardrobe, having come falling down like a ruthless guillotine, had thoroughly redistributed his remaining HP across the floor.
Instance Boss Defeated!
Achievement Unlocked!
First Instance Conquered: You came, you saw, you cartwheeled your way to victory. +25 XP
Achievement Unlocked!
Falling Menace: Having crushed your second adversary with a carefully laid trap, you’re on your way to greatness! Those crushing victories were planned… right? +10 XP
Achievement Unlocked!
Near Death Experience: A little bit close there, pal. Maybe take it easy next time? +15 XP
Loot Acquired:
- 2 Copper Coins (Small and slightly sticky for some reason.)
- 2 Zombie Teeth (Let’s not think too hard about where he was keeping those.)
- 1 Mysterious Key (Possibly important. Possibly decorative. Possibly both.)
Curiously, the loot had ended up on top of the fallen wardrobe rather than underneath it, which defied several known laws of physics but was, in Annabell’s professional opinion, highly convenient.
Now, she pounced upon her newfound wealth, cackling like a true villain. Three shiny copper coins! That probably made her the wealthiest Gremlin in town. Possibly in the entire region. Rich beyond measure. A true mogul of mischief.
Perhaps even wealthy enough to finally afford the Wafu-Wafu Chibi Earrings.
Unfortunately, before Annabell could properly bask in the glow of the capitalistic venture of zombie bashing, an ominous message rudely imposed itself between her and financial euphoria.
Battle Over:
Calculating Current Status…
- HP: 1/9
- Critical Condition!
It was as if some unseen force had pulled the plug on Annabell’s life support for a second time (also commonly referred to as the WiFi).
She could feel her will to live draining in real time, leaving behind the emotional resilience of a damp sock. With a wheezing gasp, she clutched at her chest.
“Need…” she croaked. “Need… energy booster…”
With desperation, Annabell rummaged through her hoodie pouch and retrieved the last remnants of her emergency rations—half-melted chocolate bars, a few rogue jellybeans, and something that might have once been a caramel but now had the structural integrity of an eraser.
She shoveled them into her mouth, chewing determinedly as a cascade of notifications popped up before her eyes like overly enthusiastic salesmen.
Rolling for Boon...
Rolling for Boon...
Rolling for Boon...
Rolling for Boon...
Warning! Boon Count Exceeded!
Endurance temporarily reduced to 0.
Long rest required.
Annabell let out a groan, her brain already succumbing to the inevitable.
“Ah, my mortal enemy… Sugar Crash,” she slurred through a mouthful of regret and artificial flavoring.
The syrupy blanket of lethargy swept over her. With the last ounce of her remaining strength, she staggered toward Rotting Phil’s bed and collapsed in a heap of victory and exhaustion.
Somewhere, in the depths of Annabell’s old world, the Dungeon Core quietly updated its records, and the gears of change gradually began to turn.
First Boss Battle: Won.
First Critical Sugar Overdose: Also Won.
***
Needlessly Long Rest (13 Hours) Complete
Temporary Boons Removed
Health Restored → 7/9
Annabell knew something was wrong the moment she awoke. It was the kind of instinctive, bone-deep knowledge that came from years of experience in detecting the presence of nonsense.
For starters, there was no familiar crunch of discarded wrappers beneath her as she rolled over. The mattress was level, which was unnatural in the same way that a completely untouched jar of peanut butter was unnatural—something was supposed to be there. And, worst of all, the air smelled like detergent.
Not the faded, once-upon-a-time detergent of a shirt that had been near a washing machine at some point in its life, but the real, active kind of detergent, the kind that suggested someone had actually intentionally engaged in cleaning.
Annabell sat up, clicked her tongue, and let out a heavy sigh that was halfway interrupted by a yawn.
“You really didn’t have much of a life before you died, did you, Phil?” she asked the quiet room, shaking her head with great solemnity. “Wasting your precious moments left on this earth with pointless things like cleaning and doing your laundry.”
She paused, glanced around at the perfectly tidy space—well, the parts she and Phil hadn’t completely wrecked in their epic battle—and felt something deep within her rebel.
“Here,” she continued, throwing herself into a series of overly-enthusiastic twists and rolls upon the bed, transforming the sheets from their shamefully pristine state into a masterpiece of tangled fabric. “Now that’s how a proper bed is supposed to look.”
Feeling significantly more at ease, Annabell hopped to her feet, stretching contentedly, only to realize she was hungry. Unreasonably so.
Apparently, magical restoration of your health wasn’t so magical, after all.
Diving into her hoodie pouch, she rummaged for breakfast, her hands sifting through the depths with all the desperation of a gambler who swears they had a winning ticket in here somewhere.
Nothing.
“Out of emergency rations, huh?” she said, frowning deep. This was an issue. An emergency, even.
Letting her gaze wander in search of a solution, her eyes landed on the fridge sitting in the corner of the one-room solution that had, until recently, belonged to the late—and now considerably flatter—Rotting Phil.
“Well,” she continued, fetching a copper coin from her pouch. “Heads says you don’t mind me eating your food, Philly Boy.”
With a flourish that suggested absolutely no regard for ceilings, Annabell launched a copper coin skyward. Gravity, being rather old-fashioned and deeply resistant to surprises, brought it back down anyway, where it landed neatly in her palm.
She glanced down at the coin’s face and was met with an angular eye, staring unblinkingly at her from a lattice of interconnected nodes. It looked suspiciously important.
“Yep, that’s heads, alright,” she declared with a sage nod.
Turning toward the toppled wardrobe, she gave a solemn bow.
“Thanks for the grub, Phil.”
As it turned out, her gratitude was wildly premature.
Upon opening the fridge, Annabell was greeted not by a treasure trove of forbidden snacks, but by a bowl of overnight oats and a half-finished cup of coffee. Both equally strange.
She eyed the oats with the expression of someone contemplating an unexploded mine.
She poked them. They jiggled ominously.
Summoning the courage of one who has far too much faith in the universe, she took a cautious bite.
Rolling For Bane…
Yucky Stuff Obtained!
The flavor of this overnight nightmare shall haunt you for…
00:59:59…
00:59:58…
Despite the alarming speed at which Annabell spat it out, it was too late. The taste had already happened to her. It was inside her memory now.
Frantically, she dashed to the sink, scrubbing her tongue like it had personally offended her. It didn’t help.
This, she decided, was how ghosts were made.
Eventually, after much muttering, gagging, and general despair, she consoled herself with a victory far sweeter—an unopened box of sugary cereal, hidden away in one of the cupboards like a forgotten relic of a happier time.
Slumping onto the bed, crunching away her sorrows, Annabell finally let her eyes drift upward.
She squinted.
A new message hovered in the air. Which, frankly, might have been the true source of the wrongness she felt as she awoke.
XP Threshold Reached!
Level Up Available!
Rolling For Bonus Skill Points…
Where one animation showed a series of rolling dice, underneath, an endless list of potential Level Up bonuses was already springing into existence, scrolling by faster than her mind could keep up with.
Annabell narrowed her eyes at the glowing options.
“Well, well, well,” she mused, licking cereal dust from her fingers. “And what exactly are you up to, cryptic floating words?”
The floating words, as floating words often do, declined to respond.
Which was rude, really.