If she hadn’t been drawing in a breath, Marie’s scream would have echoed out of the well and drawn the attention of anything within a country mile. As it was, her gasped inhalation was the only thing that saved her from immediately drowning as something grasped her wrist and ankles and yanked her under the water.

  Everything went black.

  It was too dark. There was no light.

  Marie thrashed, feeling hands tighten where they’d grabbed her limbs. She made fists as she struggled not to yell in fright and kicked as hard as she could.

  The water surrounded her. Smothered her with its icy embrace. And the things that lived here - the things that had died here - tried to smother her in their own embrace.

  Terror lent Marie strength she didn’t know she had, and as she beat at the grasping hands with her fists and feet she felt one fall away, then another as she jerked her arm upwards. Something soft and yielding brushed against her back and this time she did scream, inhaling a mouthful of water that her body immediately convulsed against.

  That convulsion loosened the last hand that gripped one of her ankles and blindly she reached down and tore it off her, kicking for the surface with all her might as soon as she was free, arms reaching upwards for the way out.

  Her head broke the water after what could have been years or seconds for all she knew, and she took a deep, hacking cough as she slapped her hands frantically against the well wall, searching for the handholds that had brought her here before anything could touch her again.

  The moment she found them she was up, desperation and fear lending her wings as she flew out of the water and scrambled towards the dull grey circle that was the well’s aperture more than a hundred feet above.

  The skin on her bare knees and legs tore, as did her hands as she hauled herself up the inside of the ancient stone structure, but she didn’t care.

  All that mattered was getting out into the open air and away from the water.

  She ascended in record time, far quicker than the pace she’d gone down at, but she was conscious of none of it.

  The only thing that registered was the moment her hands were gripping the legs of her jeans and straining to pull her out and over the lip of the well, tearing her t-shirt and taking the surface of the skin off her belly in the process.

  She lay on the ground, gasping, half naked, convulsing as her brain replayed the feeling of the things down there…touching her.

  Then she rolled onto her side, threw up, and cried.

  —

  It was dark when she woke, and instinctively she scrambled away from the well, backing up in case something came crawling out of it, but the sound of the voice was still echoing in her head.

  [Fighter Level 5!]

  [Skill – Lesser Endurance gained!]

  [Skill - Adrenaline Surge gained!]

  [Scholar Level 2!]

  [Explorer Class Obtained!]

  [Explorer Level 2!]

  [Skill – Sure Footing gained!]

  [Skill – Direction Sense gained!]

  [Skill – Gauge Distance gained!]

  She tried to look around properly - to check for danger - but everything was blurry.

  Hands shaking, she reached for the side of the well, and patted round the ancient stones until she found the crack that held her glasses.

  With them on…not much improved.

  It was dark. Darker than it had been since she’d first woken in this cursed place, though the thin grey light that trickled down through the clouded sky above seemed to vary little.

  She must have slept for a while.

  She felt better. Physically at least.

  Sure, the wound on her arm was still throbbing - worse than all the scrapes and grazes - and the thirst was almost unbearable, but she felt as though she could move again. Could run, if she needed to.

  “[Lesser Endurance]?”

  She tried the words aloud, rolling them round her parched mouth. Was that it? More likely than the brief rest she’d had. Surely it hadn’t been the immersion in the icy water of the well…

  Her stomach turned and she resisted the urge to vomit again. She couldn’t afford to lose more fluids.

  Turning to what she knew, or at least was fairly certain of, she took stock of the situation.

  I am not dead; nothing attacked me when I was unconscious. Therefore, I am safe here for the moment.

  The thought gave her comfort, or at least room to breathe.

  But I am not in any better position than before. If anything, this is worse.

  That brought on a tinge of panic, but she forced it down with ruthless willpower.

  “No. I will not be having any of that. I have lost nothing but some time and energy…and maybe some liquids.” She suppressed a shudder as the feeling of being dragged under flashed through her mind. The grasping hands. The water entering her mouth and lungs.

  She could only pray that she hadn’t caught anything. Those hands had felt…fleshy.

  Disregarding that experience, the last time she’d drunk anything had been…the night before? A mostly liquid dinner. Was it twenty four hours? How did time even work here? It was supposed to be three days wasn’t it? Without water…

  As if to punish her for bad choices, her stomach chose that moment to growl and clench. But compared to the discomfort in her arm it was bearable, for now.

  “I have lost some time, but I have also gained.” She reviewed the notifications she’d received in her mind as she’d slept. “I am an [Explorer] now?”

  She needed something - anything to help her out of this situation. Whatever this place was - whatever she was getting from it, she’d use it.

  So she tried it.

  Glancing over at the partially-collapsed tower next to her she began to estimate - and the answer popped into her head instantly.

  “Nine feet away. Seventeen feet wide at the base. Twenty-eight feet three inches to the current highest point.”

  She blinked.

  “Well that is useful.”

  But the question was, did it work like her [Swift Blow] Skill?

  A quick glance and thought back down the hill gave her the answer.

  “Two hundred and four feet, give or take.”

  More vague, but that seemed fair. She hadn’t been thinking of a specific point. It was hard to focus on one part from that distance with fractured glasses. Which gave rise to another question.

  Bracing herself, she got to her feet and approached the well. Cautiously, she peeked over the rim and down into the depths.

  “...more than a hundred feet?” She held her glasses with one hand and the lip of the well with another, squinting down for a few moments before giving up. “I guess if I cannot see it…”

  Struck by another thought, she closed her eyes for a second and asked a question. Then, when nothing happened, she opened them and tried speaking aloud.

  “How far to the nearest village? The nearest town? The nearest people?”

  ...

  ...

  ...

  Nothing.

  Well, it had been a long shot, but it seemed she had to be able to see the place to gauge the distance.

  She turned to the east and began to survey what little of the city she could see in the dimming light.

  Wait.

  The east?

  Another of her skills made itself known in the moment, and Marie felt one eyebrow raise.

  “Okay. Distance and direction. That is useful.”

  There was the other skill too. Well, the one she was willing to test out now.

  But before that, she needed to dress herself.

  Her jeans were currently the driest thing she had to her name, but without anything to towel herself off with she had to resign herself to being wet and cold. A poor combination, but one that at least soothed the worst of her injuries.

  As long as it does not bring illness.

  Wincing, she pulled the jeans up over the scabbing cuts on her legs and knees. It was unpleasant but bearable. She certainly wasn’t about to go clambering around without the thin layer of denim to protect her again.

  She straightened up from re-tieing her boots once more and only then did she notice the weight against her injured arm.

  She flinched away from the unexpected pressure at first, but her heart stopped racing as she saw what it was.

  The loop of the leather pouch must have caught on her arm as she’d thrashed about in the water. It was a miracle she hadn’t lost it.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  Even more of a surprise was the weight of it.

  Carefully, avoiding touching the gash in her arm as much as she could, Marie drew the string up and over her hand, and looked inside.

  Water.

  The pouch had scooped up some water.

  Almost a can of coke’s worth perhaps?

  And it hadn’t all spilled.

  She stared at the cool, thirst-quenching liquid for a full minute.

  Then another.

  The temptation was almost unbearable.

  Her tongue was thick in her mouth. Her wounds cried out for cool relief.

  But the memory of the hands. What was down there…

  Fighting her desire, Marie tipped up the pouch and emptied the water on the dry, stoney ground, watching as it trickled down into the earth beneath.

  It wasn’t worth chancing.

  She stood staring at the damp spot on the ground for long moments in dejected silence.

  “I could not risk it…”

  The words were almost a whisper.

  After another minute a chill breeze made her shiver, and that made her move.

  A brief search in her bra returned the coins and stone she’d almost forgotten about. It looked like they’d all made it, though she couldn’t recall how many there had been to begin with. She reunited them with the pouch and secured it in her pocket, and turned to the task she’d set herself.

  The risk of climbing the tower was one she wouldn’t have taken earlier, but now…

  “It has stood for hundreds or thousands of years like this.” The surety in her voice did little to convince her. “It was built here for a reason. I need to find food and water and shelter. And I have [Sure Footing].” She hesitated. “It will probably not collapse any more than it already has…”

  It had to be said that Marie was a practical woman.

  Once she’d made up her mind, her course of action was the only thing that made sense to do. She couldn’t go back down the well, and even if she stumbled across another there was no guarantee the same danger wouldn’t be waiting inside. She needed to scout out the area properly - find multiple spots to try in case the next went as poorly.

  Approaching the ruin, she picked through the rubble and found herself moving with ease.

  It wasn’t exactly like walking down a paved road but it was almost as simple. She felt as though she could subconsciously sense where to put her weight and, even when the broken rock and pulverised stonework began to pile high, she could pull herself up with little more effort than climbing stairs. It was the work of moments before she was perched just below the highest point of the ruined tower like some kind of two-legged mountain goat.

  “Okay. C'est très cool.”

  From her vantage point she could see out over most of the city, without the broken shells of buildings blocking her line of sight.

  Not that she was surveying the whole area; she kept her gaze firmly to the east, picking out what points she could in the growing darkness.

  Fortunately, the sorts of places she was looking for were big enough to see even in the pale gloom.

  City squares or forums - marketplaces where many would gather, though the potential that they would be full of the undead was a real risk. Military posts or barracks - fortified places likely to have their own source of water, but skeletons with armour might be a problem there. Manors and villas - places where the rich would live. That would be her best shot. The rich had everything.

  She began to form a mental map as she squinted through the one good lens of her glasses, marking large gaps where markets would be, thicker structures that might be military or important enough to have their own water source, and larger places separated from the surrounding buildings. At worst the last would be warehouses or storage facilities, and if she was lucky a place of wealth, or worship. Either could be promising. And with her [Sure Footing] Skill, she might not even have to worry about following roads!

  The map took shape, growing until she couldn’t hold any more points and directions in her head. Her [Gauge Distance] Skill didn’t seem to have a limit on how much she could use it, and her [Direction Sense] was like having a tiny compass constantly in her awareness, so the only restriction was her memory.

  But underneath the hope and excitement lay a single thought. One she gave voice to as she finished her observation.

  “What if all the wells are tainted?”

  It was an undeniable possibility, and one that could be fatal.

  An alternative lay a couple of miles off - where the edge of the destroyed civilisation gave way to barren wilderness.

  It was impossible to make out any details from here but it didn’t look like there was shelter out past the ruined buildings. Surely the chance of finding food and water and people was greater though; but how far off would those things be?

  All options were bad, but there was one place she knew she could find a brief respite, if only she could locate it.

  There were three large open squares within a mile of her location; surely one of them was where she’d come into this place.

  Another thought gripped her.

  What if there is a way back?

  With that possibility breaking through, she made up her mind.

  Marie scrambled down from the tower with all the nimbleness of a cat.

  Three marketplaces arcing roughly north to south. She felt sure that she’d come from the middle one but the safest option was to start at one end and make her way through in one pass. No doubling back. There was a thick-walled and partially standing structure that looked as though it could have been some sort of barracks or garrison if not a fort; that bore checking out, but the presence of the ruins of - if her analysis of the layout of the structure was correct - a noble’s walled manor towards the south gave her the route.

  “Start north, sweep south past the… garrison? Find my tent. If I cannot, then seek shelter in the old manor.”

  And look in every well she came across.

  —

  It had taken her the best part of an hour, as far as she could tell, to make it to the northernmost square. She’d been keeping low and moving as stealthily as she could, but she’d taken detours as she’d spotted things that merited the distraction: one well, which had collapsed in on itself, and a giant stone tank set partially into the ground. The latter had been cracked and covered in scorch marks but more or less intact. Marie had felt a rising hope, which had been dashed when she’d climbed some crumbling steps to see inside.

  Hundreds of bodies, swaying, ankle deep in sludge so old that any stench had long since dispersed.

  Come to think of it, the whole city was like that. There was no real smell beyond her own body, which was foul.

  The detours weren’t what slowed her down though; ducking into a house every other minute or scrambling over collapsed walls to avoid roaming gangs of skeletons was what made the journey both slow and tense.

  What’s worse was that the marketplace had been swarming with the undead. They seemed to come even more un-alive as the light faded. She’d seen something there that could conceivably have been a well, but given a few hundred skeletal bodies lay between it and her, she’d elected to move on.

  Typical.

  Although the sky was ominously dark, the city didn’t descend into pitch black. It seemed to have stabilised at some point between her leaving the watchtower and reaching the first market. The dull, barely-luminescent glow that seemed to emanate from the low clouds above was just about enough for her to see by. She wouldn’t have wanted to try and read a book, but for navigating streets and collapsed buildings it was sufficient - at least with her [Sure Footing] Skill.

  “Another hundred yards.” Marie whispered to herself as she looked back for the fourth time since leaving the marketplace, forming the words to help cement it in her memory. “That is almost a quarter of a mile now.”

  With her internal compass providing a constant directional focus, all she needed to do was track her progress with [Gauge Distance] to navigate to her next waypoint: the barracks.

  At least, it would get her close enough.

  After another ten minutes of nerve-wracking sneaking through narrow alleyways and across the wreckage of houses, creeping through what once might have been gardens, Marie caught sight of a corner of the structure and stopped behind a half-destroyed wall.

  The sound of air rushing through her nostrils told her how on-edge she was, and with an effort she slowed her heart rate, forcing a measure of calm with long, deep breaths.

  A score of skeletons in ancient armour holding battered weapons clanked past on the other side of the road.

  Do they retain some memory of who they were? Of what they were?

  Whilst most of the skeletons unadorned by the trappings of war shambled round aimlessly, many of the ones that seemed to have come from military bodies moved with a sense of purpose.

  But did you live here, or were you the ones that did this to these people?

  There were a number of theories popping up in Marie’s head as she crept through the city and saw more of its…inhabitants. Partially to provide a distraction as to her situation but mostly because she couldn’t help but wonder.

  Who had they been?

  What had happened?

  What might they have become had calamity not befallen them?

  They were the same questions that had led her to pursue history and then archaeology as a career, except here the past was… not alive, but in motion.

  Terrifying, fascinating motion.

  Moving to the shadowy corner of a collapsed house across the wide street that surrounded the garrison (and she’d continue to assume its function until she was proven wrong), she waited to see if one of her theories held wat…held any substance.

  She kept time in her head as the patrol disappeared from view, then sat, catching her breath, massaging the muscles of her legs, until the telltale clatter of bones and metal announced the presence of another group of skeletal soldiers.

  Except it wasn’t another group. She was sure it was the same one. Almost a quarter of an hour had passed by her count, and there were the same number of them, and even in the meagre light she recognised elements of the bodies that were the same - that one held a small metal shield, a buckler of some kind, with a series of notches in the rim; another held the hilt of a sword though almost all of the blade had snapped off at some point over the years.

  Fifteen minutes later, or as close to it as to make no difference, she watched the same group go past again.

  As soon as they’d turned the corner she broke cover and ran for the garrison.

  With each step she worried she’d be spotted, but she wanted to get in, scout out the place and get out if anything went wrong, she wanted time before the undead patrol returned.

  The one comfort she had in the moment was that she hadn’t used her [Adrenaline Surge] Skill. If it did what she thought it would it'd be her ace in the hole. That and her trusty spade.

  A rock clattered as she skidded to a halt in the entrance of the place, and she stifled a curse at the noise.

  She gave herself five seconds to scan the rough quadrangle that greeted her, open to the sky, though she couldn’t be sure if it had been built that way or lost its roof in the damage.

  Nothing moved, and she breathed a sigh of relief, which caught in her throat as she saw a circular structure in one corner of what surely must have been a yard.

  She almost sprinted to the well in her eagerness. Like the others there was no lid to it; any wood would have long since disintegrated.

  In the darkness she couldn’t tell how deep this one was, but she tried her trick from before and found a shard of rubble and dropped it into the opening, closing her eyes to focus on the sound as she counted.

  One. Tw-

  A wet thwack, audible but faint echoed up the inside of the well.

  Her heart sank but she grabbed another stone, then a third to test it.

  Both the following stones sent up the same damp sound at about the same time.

  Mud. Not water.

  Marie felt her teeth bare in frustration.

  Expecting water tables to remain the same over hundreds of years was optimistic at best, or perhaps it was the season? Either way, unless she wanted to drop into the well and dig and hope for a trickle of potable water… this one was out.

  A last resort perhaps, if it came to that.

  She hadn’t taken much time to reach the conclusion. She still had twelve minutes or so before the patrol came back, so Marie picked out one of the two doorways in the place that seemed to lead to intact rooms and hurried to investigate.

  The first one was a bust. Or, rather, it was bust. The roof had partially caved in and crushed most of what had been beneath it - the dangers of stone floors she supposed, but it did have something she hadn’t seen before; something that made her put down her spade for the first time since the watchtower.

  Pottery.

  Shattered pieces of red-clay earthenware were scattered over the parts of the floor she could see past the rubble. For all Marie knew, there was more under the rubble.

  She held her breath as she knelt down.

  It was one of the oldest types of crafting in cultures she’d studied, but it had been used for thousands of years because it worked. She grabbed a few of the larger fragments at hand and turned them round to study all the sides.

  “A kitchen perhaps? Or a pantry? A storage room?”

  They were worthless, in a monetary sense at least, but if she could study them there was a chance she could see some of the culture’s history or mythology depicted. It wasn’t uncommon for scenes to be painted on pots, dishes, bowls and amphora from the ancient world, and even if they had simply decorated them with patterns there were things you could infer.

  It was faint, and the dark and her half-shattered glasses didn’t help things, but there was the hint of an image on a couple of the pieces.

  She scanned the ground for other bits that might fit. She’d always dreamed of finding a pot and putting it back together, like a jigsaw of history. There were a few more bits that seemed promising but as she realised she had nothing to carry them with she cursed and started to look round again.

  There was nothing of use in the room.

  Heading back out into the courtyard, Marie stepped quickly over to the other doorway, realising she’d lost track of the time as she’d been studying the shards. Surely she hadn’t been more than a few minutes though?

  No more than…four. Five?

  She barreled through the doorway, looking for anything she could use, and was greeted by the sight of an almost entirely intact ancient armoury.

  And the armed and armoured skeletal soldier standing guard in the shadows inside.

  Marie’s first reaction was to go for the head with her spade…until she realised she’d left it standing in the corner of the store room.

  Not only that, but she didn’t have any large stones within reach.

  She squeaked as the skeletal solider showed no sign of hesitation and lunged at her with a rusted short sword.

  The blade missed by inches as she threw herself to one side, colliding with the wall in a bone-jarring smack, and reached out to grab one of the spears in the closest weapon rack.

  A spear was basically a shovel with a different sized head. There was no real change in how you might use it in a fight. If anything, the spear would be easier to use - lighter and no less deadly.

  Apparently Marie’s [Basic Proficiency: Improvised Weapons] didn’t realise that, and she found out as she swung awkwardly for the skeleton’s head. Fortunately, as she began to panic, she felt one of her other skills reacting, and [Swift Blow] took effect, the tip of the spear whistling through the silent air, crashing down over the skeleton’s head.

  The force of it shattered the ancient, brittle haft of the weapon and it disintegrated in her hands.

  The skeleton barely took a step back.

  She looked down at her hands - empty except for a few splinters and wood dust.

  She looked back at the skeletal soldier, almost imagining a faint glow of anger coming from within its skull.

  She looked round at the perfectly unusable weapons, and swore.

  “Merde.”

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