Ghosts of the Battlefield

Dave waved around the spear with obvious disdain.

“What’s wrong with it?” Adam asked.

“Look at it! It’s a fucking pointy stick,” Dave replied angrily while pointing at the head. “How am I going to kill anything with this piece of shit.”

The spear in question was about a head taller than Dave at 2 meters tall and was small enough for Dave to wrap his hand around the entire pole. However, Dave’s main complaint seemed to be the sharpened point at the top of the spear, which was around 30 centimetres long. At its widest, the metal head of the spear was only about 5cm across before narrowing to its point. Tom remembered from his days at school in his beloved history class that this was probably a shorter version of a pike, something that foot soldiers had used across Europe and the Mediterranean during the times of Ancient Greece and Rome.

“It’s a spear; millions of people have been killed with them in Earth’s history. It’s probably the easiest thing to use, actually,” Tom explained to him.

“Then you use it, you can barely carry that stupid shield of yours, how do you expect to kill anyone when you can hardly move?” Dave replied as he took a few steps towards Tom and gestured to the shield with the spear.

Tom grimaced. “So what? If they come at me, I just need to keep this between me and them. You read the dungeon info, I just need to survive and make it to the end. I don’t even have to kill anything” he said defensively.

“Actually, the druggie makes a point” Adam weighed in from where he stood, taking practice swings with his longsword.

“Hey, fuck you” came the expected response from Adam. He really needed to expand his vocabulary, Tom thought to himself.

“Everything we know so far basically says that the system expects us to fight and win. You said so much yourself.” Adam said as he paced lazily over towards the two.

“I remember; I was the one who said it”, replied Tom somewhat reluctantly.

“Well, we have 50 things beyond that door that are, presumably, trying to kill us. Now, as much as I’d like to hope that they plan to attack us with 50 fluffy bunnies, I somehow doubt that’s what we are going to be going up against,” Adam pointed out. “We’re going to need everyone to pull their own weight.”

“I know, we all heard and read the same stuff,” Tom said heatedly.

He knew he wouldn’t be able to fight for long with the sword and shield. The shield with its solid wood construction, was heavy and even the few minutes of what he could loosely call practice, had left him exhausted and barely able to raise the shield.

The sword was lighter, but he had no experience with it outside of trying to replicate fighting moves from movies. His best bet was to just drop the shield and try and use the sword, but not knowing what was on the other side of the door made him hesitant without something he could use to hide behind.

He didn’t say this to the others however, he was starting to catch on to the benefits this situation had given him. Here he was with 3 other people he had never met or even seen before. He didn’t know them and they didn't know him. As much as the tidal wave of uncertainty made him feel petrified at the thought of being in an unfamilar situation in an unfamilar place with unfamiliar people, he realised that this was just what he had needed.

A fresh start.

Somewhere away from his family, where his mother couldn’t control his every step, where his dad wouldn’t look down his nose at him in disdain, and where the world wouldn’t revolve around his sister's every whim. Although the initial entry into this place had almost literally scared him shitless, the almost 45 minutes since then had allowed him to think clearly about everything, and he had come to the conclusion that he could take advantage of this.

There was, however, one slight problem with this plan.

Adam strolled over to Tom and put an arm around his shoulders.

“Look, I’m not saying that you're going to drag us all down or anything, but you’re a smart man; I can tell you’re educated, after all. I think you know that you are a little out of your depth here,” Adam said smugly. “I think we both know that.”

Adam’s words hung in the air. Tom’s jaw clenched as he looked at the heavy shield hanging from his left arm. Tom was not a fighter, and his few minutes of practice, he had to admit to himself, had made it painfully aware to not only him but apparently the others as well. As much as he might want to restart his life through the intervention of the system, he would have to survive it first.

“Look, I get it, ok. I have no idea what the hell I’m doing with this,’ He snapped as he lifted the sword up, “I can barely lift the shield, but what do you expect? I work in an office all day! I doubt any of you know how to use any of this stuff either.”

Adam tilted his head, a faint smile tugging at the corners of his lips.

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” He said, looking pointedly at Mark, who stood over to the side of the chamber swinging his axe with the same wicked grin on his face.

“Great, so one person here knows how to swing an axe, but so what? I’m not going to step out there just so the first thing we come across can gut me like a fish because I don’t have this,” Tom said, tapping the shield with his sword.

Adam waved a hand as if brushing off Tom’s concerns, his tone silky but sharp. “I’m just saying, maybe you should leave the heavy lifting to, you know, those of us who can actually do it. Maybe, if your plan is to not actually fight … I don’t know, figure out where to stand so you don’t get in the way of the people who can handle the real thing?” he said, sneering at Tom.

Tom shrugged off Adam’s arm and took a step back.

“Back off”, he growled. “I’m using it; if you don’t like it, then you can wait until we actually meet something and see how I do.”

Adam scoffed at Tom. “Alright, let’s see how the mighty warrior goes then.”

He spun on his heel and walked past Dave, who had stood with his arms crossed, watching the drama play out with a smile on his lips. He approached the door and turned to face the others.

“Are we all ready to go?” he called.

Mark halted his swinging, his grin forming a tight line as he walked across the room towards Adam, pausing to collect the brown sack that their weapons had been in. Dave and Tom followed him over. Tom was still eyeing Dave and Adam after their previous words.

“Let’s get going then”, Adam said as he opened the door and cautiously stepped through, followed quickly by the others.

The room they stepped into was dark; only the light from the doorway into the room they came from created any light. The floor was uneven stone about 3 meters across, pockmarked by small dips and pockmarks. The walls were much the same, and they curved up slightly to form a tunnel around 5 meters tall. It was a stark contrast from the room they had just come from with its perfectly flat walls.

The group started slowly edging forwards, the light from the doorway extending outwards to reveal that the tunnel began to curve to the left, about ten meters from the door. Mark moved ahead of Adam, his steps quiet and solid, as he approached the curve. Keeping his body close to the left side of the tunnel he slowly crept around the bend, keeping his head slightly tilted forwards to see in front of him.

Tom and the others hung back, it was clear to them that Mark knew at least a bit about what he was doing. The quiet man hadn’t been upset at all by any of the events that had so far transpired, and he looked to be perfectly comfortable creeping forwards in the darkening tunnel.

Mark quickly twisted his body and walked out of view of the other.

“Hey, wait!” Tom started to call out before Adam held up a hand, silencing him.

A few moments later, the light in the tunnel vanished, leaving them all standing in complete darkness.

“Oh, for fucks sake”, came a voice from Tom’s right.

That could only be Dave, Tom thought to himself. The angry man’s vocabulary, or lack thereof, makes itself known again.

A sigh in front of him revealed that Adam was still there, too. Tom was about to say something when an orange glow appeared in front of them, coming from beyond the bend in the tunnel. A minute later, as the light grew steadily brighter, Mark reappeared carrying with him two sticks, the tops of which were on fire.

“Found these,” He said, handing one to Adam. Tom caught a whiff of rotten eggs as the torch burned in front of him, casting a yellowish light around them and giving off a black, sooty trail as it moved through the air. Oddly enough, he remembered from his high-school history lessons that many torches in ancient Rome had used pitch or pine tar mixed with lime and sulphur to create a torch that could burn for an hour or more and was even strong enough that you could stand in pouring rain without it going out.

Tom turned around and looked back at the way they had come. The light from the torches highlighted a solid rock wall where the door they had just passed through had once been. He pointed this fact out to the others, to mixed reactions: more swearing, another sigh and a shrug of the shoulders.

“No going back now I guess, at least we have these” Adam said as he twirled the lit torch above his head. “They should be able to get us through this place, hopefully.”

It was at this point that Tom had to break the news of his high school memories to the group, with predicatable results.

“Well, aren’t you just a bundle of good news” Dave responded sarcastically. “He can’t hold a shield for shit, but he can tell us that we’re about to run out of light again.”

“Hey, it not my fault, would you rather we run out of light suddenly during the middle of a fight then?” Tom said defensively.

“Hmm, can we put one out?” asked Adam, ignoring Tom and Dave’s outbursts. “That way, we only burn one at a time and double the length they can burn for?”

“With what? He said they can burn in the rain and I don’t see any water for us to use” said Dave.

“No, but if we used our clothes, we could smother the fire and put it out that way, starve it of oxygen, like covering a firepit with dirt,” Tom explained.

At this, Mark took off the shirt he was wearing and put it over his hand. He grabbed the tip of his torch, covering the entire lit head with one meaty paw. The shirt instantly produced some dark smoke, but Mark wrapped the head up with the shirt tightly until the smoke turned to a light grey and slowed to a thin stream.

“look at that; he is a genius after all!” Adam chuckled as he stepped over and clapped Tom on the shoulder.

“Let’s go; not much light is left on that,” Mark said, pointing to the torch in Adam’s hand before turning back and starting to walk back around the bend in the tunnel. The others followed him quickly, with Mark in the lead, Adam with the torch next and Tom and Dave bringing up the rear.

As they walked, the tunnel started to twist and turn, but it remained the same uneven, featureless grey rock walls for the most part. Occasionally, the group came across a simple iron banded sconce embedded into the wall, sometimes with an extra unlit torch and sometimes not. Tom had asked Mark if the torches he had found had been lit when he had found them, to which the big man had stopped and turned to look at him with a blank expression and a raised eyebrow. It had taken Tom a couple of seconds to realise how dumb of a question that had been. Other than Tom’s momentary brain fade, the group had continued in silence. The sound of their shoes and boots slapping on the rocky floor echoed around them. After twenty minutes of following the tunnel, the group had gathered another 3 torches, which they had kept unlit for when the first two eventually ran out.

Ahead of them, the narrow walls of the tunnel suddenly widened, as they entered into a domed chamber with 3 other branching paths. Tom could barely see the other side of the chamber from the light of the torch, but before he could start to inspect anything, he nearly walked into the back of Dave as Mark halted the group with a raised fist.

Adam stepped to Mark's left as the larger man hefted his axe in his right hand, holding it midway down the shaft. Tom stepped to the right to see past the others. He froze and gasped as he saw the thing that had made Mark pause.

A figure stood in the centre of the chamber, swaying slowly and making the odd clicking noise. However, it wasn’t the figure per se that had caused Tom to react the way he had. Gleaming white bone turned slightly yellow as the flames from the torch reflected off them; they were unnaturally sharp and clean, and not a shred of flesh, muscle, or fat remained on them. The ribs were prominent, hollow spaces where organs should have been. Its skull was the most unsettling part—its jaw hung open slightly, crooked, giving it a perpetual, sinister grin as it slowly opened and closed, making clicking and clacking sound with each movement. Dark, empty eye sockets stared out at them, except for where the pupil should have been. Two glowing purple irises flickered to life, burning faintly in the depths of the bone. The eerie violet light was cold and unnatural, casting a ghostly glow that made Tom’s breath catch in his throat.

A skeleton stood in the centre of the chamber, staring at the group and clutching a rusty sword.

Without a noise, the skeleton raised the sword, which it clutched in its right arm towards them, and charged.