Colour pooled into the river of darkness around me, my vision blurring against the stark white that took its place until the darkness finally receded.
I found myself standing in a wasteland of snow that stretched in every direction, the cold arriving almost immediately after it did and sinking through my clothes, through my skin, and into the very marrow of my bones.
My whole body started shaking. I could not even tell whether it was the cold or the pain still lodged inside me from before, perhaps both of them working together.
"F-fuck. T-too cold..."
My teeth chattered, the words barely making it past them as pale wisps escaped my trembling lips, while I wrapped my arms around myself in a pathetic attempt to keep any warmth in.
My mind scrambled for some kind of sense in what was happening.
Trials were not supposed to be like this. I had not written them to be like this.
If you died, that was it. You failed. That was how it worked for everyone, and the fact that I knew it so well only made the cold certainty crawling beneath my skin worse.
So what the fuck was going on here?
I forced myself upright, my legs wobbling underneath me, and then the same runes appeared before my eyes, dragging me straight back into the pit I had only just managed to crawl out of.
YOUR FATE
THE MAN SLAUGHTERED BY WHAT THE SNOW HID
My eyes travelled over the empty expanse, over the snow rising in distant uneven hills beneath a bright haze that made the world seem endless, and still all I could see was white.
Fuck. What did this trial even want from me?
I tried to think, and only one idea stayed at the top of everything else.
I had to break fate itself. That was the point, was it not? Meaning I needed to survive.
It sounded simple when put that way. Deep down, I knew it was anything but.
Dammit, there was far too much open ground here.
I started moving, my feet sinking deep into the snow with every step as I forced myself forward, telling myself I only needed to get out of it somehow, to find anything that was not this endless frozen field.
The problem was that I had no idea where I was meant to go, and the snow gave me nothing in return for the effort except cold legs and the growing certainty that I was walking exactly where it wanted me to.
I had barely covered a dozen metres when I heard it.
There was a small ridge to my right, little more than an uneven rise beneath the snow, and for one second I thought it was exactly that. Then it moved.
The ground thundered as the thing beneath it rose, snow sliding from its body and falling around it in heavy sheets, and by the time I understood what I was looking at, my mind had already reached the reasonable conclusion that I was absolutely fucked.
What in the holy name of abominations was that?
It looked almost like a gigantic worm, except calling it a worm felt insulting to every worm that had ever existed.
It was the size of a full bus, its front ending in circular rows of teeth that shone beneath the pale light, while its entire body was so white that it could have lain beneath the snow a few feet away from me and I would never have known until it had decided to eat me.
Then there were its limbs, if they could even be called that. Nearly a dozen slimy tentacles ran along either side of its body, some planted beneath it to support its weight, while others moved slowly through the air as though tasting it.
It turned towards me, and every one of those tentacles went completely still.
My heart dropped.
The sight of it was too gruesome, too inhuman for my mind to make proper sense of, and for a moment I could only stare at it while something inside me insisted that this was not happening.
No. No, this could absolutely not be happening.
Some part of me had not even processed what I was seeing, but another had already turned my body around and sent me stumbling through the snow, my arms swinging wildly at my sides as I tried to put every bit of distance I could between us. Find the original chapter at novelping . com.
The thing let out a shriek that tore through the whole expanse. It passed straight through me, scattering whatever thought I had left and blurring the edges of my vision, yet I did not turn back.
I only ran harder, my chest heaving and burning at once while the cold bit into my lungs.
Fuck. Move, you piece of shit. Faster.
The ground trembled beneath my feet, and some part of me did not want to know what that meant.
I had taken barely another step when the snow ahead of me burst upward, the earth below it shaking hard enough to throw me onto my back, and then it emerged before me through the falling haze.
I tried pushing myself to my feet, but I already knew how futile that was.
What the hell was this trial? What was I even supposed to do? How was I meant to fight something like that when I did not even have a damn sword?
A second later, it was on me.
Two tentacles came through the snow haze and wrapped around my arms before I could do more than flinch away, their skin coated in some slimy substance that burned against mine on contact.
I screamed as they wound tighter, pressing hard enough that I thought they would tear both my arms away from my body before the creature had even decided which part of me to eat first.
Then its face appeared before me as the haze settled.
It had no eyes in that twisted head of its own, and still it felt as though it were staring at me, mockingly, while I thrashed beneath its grip and the rest of its tentacles curled through the air around us with a sick kind of excitement.
This fucking bastard.
It pulled at me from both sides, lifting me until my legs dangled beneath me, and I kept struggling even though there was nowhere for that struggle to go.
"Aghhh..."
The sound tore out of me as my arms burned beneath its hold, my entire body feeling as though it were being pulled apart from the middle, and somewhere between those choked screams a manic laugh started forcing its way out in broken, ugly fits.
"Is this it?"
The words came out cracked, half-lost beneath the laughter.
"Is this the best you have?"
I screamed it at the thing, at the snow, at whatever was listening.
"I wrote you!"
"I wrote all of you! Every last fucking one of you!"
"So go on, then. Do it."
Turning my head, I looked at the tentacle around my arm and leaned closer to it, bringing my mouth as near as I could despite the way it kept pulling me apart. Then, with one desperate jerk, I bit down.
The corrosion burned through my tongue and the inside of my mouth, but I did not let go. I dug my teeth in harder and harder until something hot and putrid leaked over them, and for the briefest second there was a savage, childish satisfaction in knowing I had hurt it too.
I had no time to enjoy any of it.
The pull on my arms only increased, so sudden and violent that my mind did not catch up before the pain swallowed everything else, and then my eyes dropped to the shadow beneath me, to the shape of my own body being ripped into two.
Darkness rose from every side, taking me into it again.
I fell to my knees in the dark expanse, my chest heaving as my body shuddered with pain that should not have still been there, my fingers clawing at wounds that were no longer there, while my mind desperately tried to understand what I had just gone through and failed.
Only one question stayed with me.
Why?
Why the fuck did I have to go through this?
I had written it. I knew it better than anyone. No trial had ever been supposed to work like this, and I could not understand why the world I had made was now breaking its own rules just to keep killing me.
The darkness rippled around me again before I could find an answer, taking shape once more as colour bled through it. The cold vanished. Beneath me, the ground shifted hard enough to make me catch myself with one hand.
I was standing on a ship.
Water clung to my skin, the sky above me was dark, and relentless waves crashed against the hull hard enough to throw me down onto the deck before I had even found my footing.
The ship looked ancient, its wood swollen and worn by the sea, and there was no one else aboard it.
The runes appeared before my eyes again.
YOUR FATE
THE MAN DROWNED BY WHAT WAITED BENEATH HIM
Seeing those words, some part of me wanted to scream at whoever was listening. My body was still shaking from the pain of the last death, and the trial did not seem to care in the slightest. The next one had already begun.
"This is, this is fucking insane," I yelled between ragged breaths, my voice almost hoarse. "How the hell am I even supposed to fight something like that?"
Then I stopped.
I read the words again.
Drowned.
Not killed. Not torn apart the way the last thing had done it.
Drowned.
A man could not drown if he never went into the water.
My eyes went to the mast before the thought had even fully formed.
Old, frayed rigging ran most of the way to the top, and I was moving before I could talk myself out of it, my hands closing around the ropes as I dragged myself upwards, away from the deck and the black water below.
Near the top, I found a length of loose rope. I pulled it around my waist, then around the mast, then around it again, tying the knot off as tightly as I could before testing it twice with shaking hands.
Nothing was pulling me off this thing.
For one moment, high above the black water with the wind cutting against my face, I actually laughed.
I had done it.
I had found the gap in it.
Then the ship shifted underneath me.
I felt them before I saw them, enormous tentacles wrapping around the hull as the wood splintered beneath their grip. One dark limb curled over the edge, then another followed, and another after that, until one of them drove straight through the ship from beneath and emerged barely inches from me.
Then they pulled.
They did not tear the ship apart. They dragged it straight down.
The deck disappeared first, swallowed beneath the water, then the waves began climbing the hull towards the rigging, and I understood exactly what was happening long before the sea reached me.
My fingers went straight to the knot.
It had swollen with water.
I tried to unfasten it with shaking hands, but it would not move. I clawed at the rope while the sea rose up the mast towards me, and before I could free myself it was already at my chest, then over my mouth, leaving me thrashing and choking as I pulled at the knot I had tied myself.
The ship kept sinking, and it took me with it, exactly as I had made certain it would.