The Putrid Smell of Victory

Covered in shit, struggling to get to my feet, and about to be swarmed by enemies.  That is my life in several nutshells. At least I had my sword that I could prop myself up with and I did, finding my footing I faced the mouth of the cave where the reinforcements would be coming. And come they did (no this is not meant as a sexy innuendo).  They were all grey skinned and partially clothed (and also had the marks on their foreheads from where they too were connected to things).

I tried to conjure fire and it worked, it worked too well actually.  See I put way too much effort into the fire because I felt I wouldn't be able to use it (because of the weakened state when I tried it when I was connected to the plant creature).  So instead of just an orb of flame, I projected a wall of flame that burned the floor in front of me (thus incinerating the shit and urine into a lovely cocktail of smells I call awful) it pulsed forward and incinerated the grey skins coming in from the cave. It also murdered the Caravan people (well they were pretty much dead anyway right... Look I said I freed them I didn't say they were still alive and if I did I plead liar err ignorance) and the plant growth with its tentacles.  Basically everything not me got burned to death in that small cave and the smell that lingered is best left to your nightmares.

So I dealt with my most immediate concern, killed some innocent people (well they were caravan people, so only partially innocent I'm sure they ripped off people all the time), and wounded a gigantic plant creature that was now more determined than ever to kill me.  I'd make the joke I make all the time about this being pretty standard for me, but you know even I tire of saying the same things... Also I think I said it yesterday.

In the Caves of Slightly Horrible Things

"Hrughk." The sword was buried up to its hilt in the former gate keepers chest, his eyes rolled back into his head and he collapsed to the ground, dislodging my sword from his disgusting flesh and coating the ground with black blood. I know you are thinking you were tied up! To which I reply, I still had my sword and my enemy was an idiot who just charged at me.  I tell you if he didn't attack me in my sleep this entry would have been considerably shorter to begin with (to whit "Weird creepy grey skinned man came to assault me, killed him little trouble want something with potatos for dinner").

I was of course still suspended but with a slice I was free and I collapsed to the ground with a thump (always a thump never a whisper).  I felt how tired I really was, having exerted no actual ability the past moments I was struck by how difficult it was to just try and stand up (or indeed try and stand). I was also struck by the weird brain sucking monster not actively trying to attack me, indeed it kept mulching away at the caravan people while its sliced off tentacle had just shriveled up like a dead plant (because thats what it actually was, a freaking plant).

I did notice the floor was covered in feces and urine, which was nice not being able to get out of immediately (look people had been suspended who knows how long they have to go to the bathroom somehow). And so the struggle to get to my feet became a very necessary thing immediately (and to take a shower and clean my clothes thankfully I hadn't been suspended long enough to wet myself). It was during this struggle I heard it, a low whining noise that reverberated throughout the cave slow at first and then deafening.  I knew than the plant creature knew I'd killed its caretaker and whatever other defenses it had were about to find me.

And yet the first thing I could think of was getting out of shit, amazing how that works out isn't it?

Cut Off

I didn't know much at the time, I knew that I was dying.  I knew there was a pain in my head from what appeared to be a specific wound point, and I knew my magic was utterly useless (thanks magic way to fail me unlike all those other times you saved me from certain doom, YOU SUCK!).  I knew I had my sword, and figured it was still actually connected to me (I figured). So I drew my sword up and swung in the area of my head (because again I didn't feel I was just in my own mind, I knew somehow I could interact with "reality").

Immeadiately things changed, I wasn't in a rotting inn I was in a cave. I wasn't standing I had been suspended, and the pain in my head was some sort of tentacle that had been attached just above my right eye (the source of my pain, the sucker thing fell off after I sliced the tentacle connection).  In the cave I wasn't alone.  The members of the caravan were there, and they looked the same as they had in the "afterlife" they also had tentacles attached to their heads. The tentacles lead to a central growth in the cave, just a glob of green and tentacles that pulsated with disgusting pukish sounds.

I had been suspended at my waist with what appeared to be a rope, oddly my arms and legs were not restrained.  I guess because of the tentacle connection the creature wasn't worried I could get loose? My pistol and general camping supplies weren't there, but my sword was in my hand, I figured because the of the earth god connection to the sword (it seemed to repel ugly things under the earth crazily enough and yet Val seemed unaffected... YES IN YOUR FACE PERSON WHO DOESN'T READ THIS!)

The creepy thing was I knew the creature couldn't have put me there.  Because there was also a lit torch nearby and an exit from where I'd and most likely the caravan people had been brought. This was also confirmed when the Gatekeeper himself emerged.  His skin was sickly grey and he had a spot on his forehead where he himself had a tenatacle most likely recently attached (which spoke to some weird symbiotic relationship).

"YOU!!!!!!!!" When he opened his mouth it was full of gangly yellow teeth, what little of them were there. So I was in danger, I felt weak still, and I was suspended with a rope and my eyes hadn't yet really adjusted to the darkness (despite my descriptions I was hazy as all get out when I "woke" up).  Needless to say it looked like my day was about to suck worse than it had been, despite it looking awful to begin with! So a normal Lorentino situation.

DickKeeper

"This is not the afterlife!" I tried to make it as loud a pronouncement as I could, but my voice was failing me, it came out like a meek child asking a parent for extra food. The gatekeeper's appearence looked off, where he once was clean and gentlemanly looking, now he looked vicious and his suit tattered.

"Oh figured that out did you? My my Mr. Lorentino I guess you aren't half as idiotic as I thought." His voice twisted taking on a deeper tone.

"I'll kill you." My voice cracked, the pain in my head escalated, I gathered up what magic power I could but it sputtered the flames just sparks like if I'd struck a rock against a flint.

"No you won't, in fact you'll know exactly what the afterlife is like shortly, and how does that feel Lorentino? To know soon enough you'll be amongst the dead? Those fools out there I'm draining them slowly so slowly they hardly notice, but you? You I'm taking fast, I want your life." He came around the desk and the entire cozy cottage theme was falling apart, it had aged a hundred years automatically, everything was rotten and falling apart. I attempted to strike the now deforming gate keeper but he disappeared in a puff.

"You bastard."

"Such a fool Lorentino, enjoy the rest of your life all few minutes of it you have." The voice boomed in my head along with the pain.  So there I was being drained of my life, stuck in some kind of meta dream world hell, and my head felt like eight pounds of pain.  How did I survive? Well you'll just have to read the next entry!

Ain't that a Pain in the Head

As things progressed in the "afterlife" the pain in my head escalated.  At first it was a dull pain, like when your eyes get tired and you should stop looking at whatever you are but you just can't. Then it escalated, to that pain you have when you get hit in the head like with a hilt of a sword or the butt of a pistol (and if you don't know that pain, be thankful).  I was better than the caravan people, they were mostly out of it from the pain, crippled and laying about. Whatever this was it wasn't the afterlife, that gate keeper was a liar.

I knew that, but then again there something preventing me from really thinking too hard on it.  On top of the pain I could feel something asserting itself in my head.  And it was getting stronger with the pain, I could feel physical weakness settling in on me.  Like upon waking up I felt strong, but having walked around a little bit my body had been weakened. Focussing on it was getting harder and harder though.

So I knew I was in trouble, I wasn't actually in the afterlife, but I'd be there shortly if I didn't do something fast, but I didn't know what I could do.  I feared my normal method of just hurting myself because I didn't believe I was in my own mind so much as not seeing the world as I really should be. All in all it wasn't fun times!

Afterlife? More like Boringlife

"So who are you?" I realize it seems like I was standing in that opening room for hours, but in reality it was just a few minutes I just like dragging things out.

"I'm the gate keeper."

"You aren't standing in front of a gate? That's an odd statement." He wasn't and it totally was.

"This entire place is a gate, you are not yet in the afterlife, this is the way station on the way."

"Where am I supposed to go?"

"Not for me to say Mr. Lorentino, you will have to find that out when you move on from here."

"Well that's delightfully vague, so whats outside of this door? Eternal damntation?" I opened the door and it was just a village, the kind of village that hasn't existed in the real world for hundreds of years, there were people in it, though they all looked like used up flesh husks sunken eyes and all.

"Or a village full of people who look like their last meal was a year ago."

"Those are the other people currently awaiting the afterlife." They looked horrible, I mean I've seen ugly before these people looked worse.

"They were a caravan that got stuck in the mountains they turned to canibilism but as you can see it did not work."

"Well thats pretty horrible." I say this as a person who does the spiritual equivilent of cannibilism. I walked outside, the gate keeper said something behind me but I cared not for whatever garbage he was spewing. The weather was non existant, as in it wasn't cold, it wasn't hot, it wasn't anything. The sky was just a white space of nothingness.  I approached one of the caravan people but he murmured and said nothing.  It seemed pretty awful to die horribly and then get stuck in that horrible existence in the afterlife (like whats the point of dying if you still suffer? Which again should have been another indicator something bad was going on). The only thing the shambling corpses of the caravan could tell me really was how much their heads hurt, and I could symapthize because my head was killing me.  The gatekeeper tried to make it seem like it was from the gunshot, but why would people who died from eating each other A. Look so gaunt and B. Suffer from the same headaches.

So I was slowly catching on things were not as they appeared. Which was better than those idiotic caravan people! If I hadn't done anything they'd well probably all be dead, in fact they might actually be dead now because they are that stupid.  I tell you the children of this world are very good at dying, its like their one skill in life.

Dead Again Again Again?

"Where Am I?"

"You're dead Mr. Lorentino." It was kind of a shocking thing to hear, I mean it made more sense than other things, but still to hear I'd died without even being aware of that death? Disheartening (I'd always figured I'd go out with my bones snapping in a creatures mouth not in my sleep).

"How?" It was a good question I was not physically old and I felt no ill health other than a piercing pain in my head (so even dead I can't catch a break).

"Your associate Mr. Mordere figured you would be a danger to him after the fact and he killed you while you slept, shot you in the head if I'm not mistaken." So that explained the head wound, well it didn't actually but that was the lie I was being told to make up for the wound (more on what is really going on as this whole story plays out, yes I wasn't actually dead, no you probbaly can't guess what is really going on... STOP TRYING YOU JERK!) It all made sense, well as much as being told you'd just been killed by someone you thought was sort of an ally and then wound up in some kind of bed and breakfast of the dead makes sense.

Look you guys need to understand my life is one big cosmic joke and I'm the punchline. That's what I'm saying.