Chapter 4: No Choice at All

Chapter 4: No Choice at All

A skeleton was slowly walking down the center aisle of the old stone temple.

If Jadis had to rate the kinds of monsters she found most threatening or terrifying, skeletons would have to be near the bottom of the list, maybe beating out bedsheet ghosts by a slim margin. What exactly was supposed to be scary about a skeleton? It was just a collection of bones, a natural part of any person’s anatomy. Nothing about any depiction of undead skeletons had ever seemed like anything other than a joke to Jadis.

The shambling mass of mismatched bones that slowly stalked down the dimly lit aisle towards her was nothing like the playfully spooky images Jadis had seen in cartoons and movies.

Dozens upon dozens of bones were stitched together in an asymmetrical jumble. It had three heads, clustered in a triangle at the top of a stubby bone torso, each of them from some different animal clearly unlike the others. One large arm ending in a club-like limb swung from the creature’s left side, four smaller arms with human-like hands sprouted from the right. It had two legs, each with more knees than a human leg could accommodate. A tail swung behind the abomination, balancing it as it leaned forwards, moving with the slow and deliberate steps of a hunter that had spotted prey.

Jadis hesitated for a few heartbeats as the bizarre amalgamation of bones took a few more clicking steps towards her. Stunned by the appearance of an actual undead monster walking before her, she voiced the first unthinking reaction that crossed her mind.

“You aren’t one of D’s priests, are you?”

The bone beast vibrated its disparate skulls together in a startling clatter before charging towards the dais.

Jadis stopped hesitating. Working solely on instinct, Jadis shot her arms forward and sent the wooden lectern flying at the monster, the crumbling piece of furniture slamming against the skeleton in a loud crash. She didn’t stop to see the result, however.

Before the bookstand had even struck bone, she was already running to the side. Without pause, Jadis dove through one of the broken windows and tumbled to the ground outside.

“Fuck that, I’m out of here,” she panted under her breath as she rose to her feet and began sprinting away from the temple and out of the skeleton-infested dead village.

Jadis had agreed to D’s pitch of living a life of adventure in a fantasy land, which did imply fighting monsters was going to be a thing. She was on board with monster slaying. One hundred percent interested in fighting epic battles against undead, demons, dragons, goblins, or anything else that could be reasonably expected. Hell, she’d be down to fight a dire rat or two, no problem.

But not when she was fucking naked.

Jadis ran full tilt into the darkening pine forest for a solid five minutes before slowing enough to take a look over her shoulder, certain the shambling travesty unto anatomy couldn’t possibly have followed her so far so fast.

The skeletal creature was a few dozen feet behind her, sprinting on arms and legs in eerie silence.

“Shit!”

Jadis redoubled her efforts into running away, no longer certain which direction she was even going anymore as the forest shadows grew longer and the light dimmer. She had to get away from the monster, put some distance between her and it and then hide.

Maybe she could climb a tree? Or maybe even find a cave to huddle in until the sun rose again and then she could get the hell away from the haunted dwarf village whose resident welcoming committee was trying to eat her skin.

Still sprinting, Jadis risked a glance behind and saw movement between the trees. The abomination was still chasing. The ache in her legs and lungs was telling her she couldn’t outrun the persistent monster forever. Since it was made of bone, would it ever tire? Would it chase her endlessly, or at least until she was an exhausted mess lying on the ground, unable to flee any longer?

Jadis had to turn and fight.

Before she attempted to defend herself, though, she needed to select a class. She hadn’t chosen, hoping to learn more about her options from someone with knowledge of what she was getting into. Now, with a bloodthirsty skeleton snapping at her heels, she didn’t have the luxury to wait. Jadis was certain having a class, any class at all, was better than having none.

Gasping out a prayer to her patron god, Jadis focused on her menu and mentally accepted the only class that looked remotely capable of combat.

“D, you better not have fucked me on this one.”

Choosing a new target, Jadis slammed the rock down on the bone-club arm, aiming for as near the shoulder as she could. It took a couple tries, but eventually the bone shattered and she tossed the now dismembered arm away. With no arm on the left side of the creature anymore, that half of Jadis was free to attack the wildly flailing tail.

A much harder target due to its constant movement, eventually she managed to break the tail off and toss the bony whip to the side.

Jadis continued with her methodical deconstruction of the monster’s limbs, one of her bodies holding the creature down while the other smashed bone with stone. Once the arms were all gone, she broke off the legs as well. In the end, all the was left was a densely packed mass of bone that represented the creature’s torso lying on the ground, still slightly rocking back and forth as it struggled to move without any appendages.

Jadis sat back, sweat and blood dripping off her skin, bruises already forming all across her pale flesh. She was tired, sore, and rapidly coming down from the adrenaline high that had kept her going.

She looked up, staring at herself as she sat on either side of the wriggling skeleton pile.

“What am I...?” she murmured simultaneously from two mouths, a stunned expression mirrored on both faces.

Jadis was starting to become inured to traumatizing mental experiences. First and foremost, she’d experienced the mind warping chaos of The Between. Then, she’d sat and had cookies and milk with a god. After that, she’d been given an entirely new body with a penis, something she’d definitely never had before.

Yes, the last item was something she’d asked for, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t a significant mental adjustment to overcome.

So, with all of those experiences under her metaphorical belt, was having two bodies at the same time actually all that difficult to comprehend?

Yes. Yes, it was.

“So, that Mirror Knight class literally doubled me? Literally?” She talked to herself, a habit she’d been indulging in ever since she’d first arrived on Oros since there was no one else around to judge her. Except now, she was literally talking to herself.

Both of Jadis spoke at the same time, words synchronized and inflections identical. She couldn’t even tell which one was the original body, since she was consciously within both bodies.

“Is this permanent?” She again spoke aloud, tilting her head to the left, which gave her an odd kind of vertigo since tilting both heads to the left did not mean her heads mirrored each other while she was facing herself.

Suddenly, a flash of dark blue light emanated from the lumpy skeletal torso. The light was by no means blinding, which meant Jadis could see perfectly well as strange occult symbols appeared in the air around the torso briefly before disappearing a moment later.

In response to the blue light, a few pieces of bone that were closer to where Jadis rested started rolling across the ground, snapping onto the creature’s central mass like magnets.

“Oh no you don’t!” Jadis double shouted, grabbing the rock up off the ground and quickly smashing the newly attached bones off the mass.

After the deed was done, Jadis noticed that she hadn’t had to think about which of her bodies to use to grab the stone; the one closest had done so naturally, the same way her closer arm would reach for a pen on a desk.

“This is just too freaky,” she said, standing up on wobbly legs. “I need a minute to gather my thoughts.”

She frowned in annoyance as she continued to speak from both of her selves at the same time. Making a conscious effort, she willed just the one still holding a rock to speak first.

“It’s getting dark and I need to find someplace to hide in case more of these... things, shows up.”

Her other self nodded in response and said, “Maybe bring this thing with, though? I could try and figure out how it works, maybe a better way to kill it?”

Somehow, talking to her double felt stranger than when she was just thinking aloud. Speaking to a second person that was also her felt a million times more deranged than just talking to herself normally. Still, as the dark settled in around her, the sun dipping low enough to hide behind the mountains, talking to someone else was a huge comfort.

Pretending she wasn’t alone might be crazy, but what about her situation wasn’t utterly insane? Might as well roll with it until better options presented themselves.