Backwoods Dungeon

Epilogue Two

Knight Errant

Todd

I wandered. It must’ve taken me ages to get out. Days. Weeks? I lost count. Water was plentiful in the caves but food was less so. I had to eat dead spiders. The imps were completely inedible. I knew. I’d tried. I’d rather starve. The spiders, though… weren’t so bad.

I remembered seeing the portal stone that dropped that first day in the dungeon, but another never dropped again for me, even after I’d escaped. I killed loads of spiders and what must’ve been hundreds of imps. Even a few of the Gorilla things, though I tried to avoid those. A swarm of them could probably overwhelm me. Still, none of them dropped a portal stone.

I thought about my Dad a lot. What would he think of me now? I’d surely missed the first day of classes by now. Had school started? I didn’t know. I was sure he’d be pissed, though. Well. If he weren’t worried sick about me.

“All of that damn nerd rot is gonna poison you! Keep your eyes on the prize. You’ve got a great future in football, I’m telling you, son. Riches, fame, glory, it's all in these talented little hands of yours. You sit in front of that screen, and you’ll be just like a million other stupid-ass kids wasting their lives. Trust me.”

I remembered the words. He was right. I was sure he was. Even if it wasn't, that didn't matter. He’d been mortally offended when he saw me playing computer games.

It was a practical view. He’d always wanted me to succeed. It was only a few years ago that I realized he was trying to get me to succeed where he’d failed, but that didn’t mean his dream was outside my reach.

He hadn’t been wrong. I was talented. Very talented. Maybe not good enough to go pro… but maybe. A scholarship to Mizzou was no small thing.

But…

I’d loved playing those games. Richie, one of the nerd kids who I’d never really hung out with before, had showed it to me one evening while we were working on a group project back in Junior year.

It was so fucking cool. We’d been unlikely friends ever since, and I’d taken up the damn ‘nerd rot’ in spite of my dad’s warnings.

As it turns out, that game made sure I still had a life at all.

Not that football hadn’t been useful, either. I couldn’t imagine trying to make it out of there if I were someone like Emily. Or Richie, for that matter. Smarts had helped me survive more than once, but sheer brawn had brought me through just as many situations.

I’d needed both. If not for the games, teaching me how to allocate my new stats and what abilities would best get me out, I’d have died to the first Booyagh I met. If not for football and all the training I’d done there, I wouldn’t have been able to come close to overpowering one of those gorillas.

But I had done both.

And now I was finally out of the dungeon, but the world felt wrong. I didn’t quite know how to put my finger on it, but I was certain that I was nowhere near home. The sun… felt like it was rising on the wrong side. I didn’t know how I could tell, but it was.

I’d been wandering for days through a dense forest that covered tall mountains and deep valleys. I didn’t think they were the Appalachians and they certainly weren’t the Ozarks. There were unfamiliar trees, and bugs, and wildlife that also felt entirely foreign. I'd seen a deer with fucking tusks. I’d never heard of such a thing.

I wore a breastplate now, as well as metal leggings and gauntlets. I hadn’t managed to find a helmet yet, but I didn’t think that mattered as much now that I’d finally found a way back to the surface. After having worn them for so long, I’d kinda grown used to them, and I didn’t have anything else to wear anyway. My original clothes had long since been torn to tatters.

I carried a sledgehammer in one hand and a shield in the other. What would my dad think of that? Hah. Every time I thought about it, I realized I looked like one of those larpers he would always mock. It felt like renfaire cosplay at first, worn out of necessity. Now, it felt natural. Almost right.

The snap of a twig behind me suddenly cut through my musings.

I whirled, ducking just beneath a fireball that whizzed by my head and impacted a bush, setting the thing ablaze.

I growled.

The Booyagh. The same damn one.

I’d killed several of the caster imps while I was in the caves, but this one was different. It was smart, and it used guns to supplement its casting.

We’d encountered each other more than once down in the caves, and each time, both of us failed to manage a fatal blow before the other escaped.

I drew my hammer and activated my favorite aura. Thorns. Any time the Booyagh did damage to me, a portion of it would be dealt to him. I had a lot more constitution than the Booyagh, so it had to be careful not to use any of those damn overkill spells in its arsenal lest it kill itself.

I charged.