The Tears of Kas̆dael

Jasper awoke screaming, phantom pains tearing through his chest. He leaped to his feet, surprisingly agile for a man that had just had his heart ripped out, and his breathing slowly calmed as he realized that his chest was shockingly unblemished. What the hell was that? There’s no way the game’s allowed to torture us. That's got to be illegal, right? Screw it, I’m out of here.

Taking a breath, he prepared to eject himself from the game only to realize that there was no interface. He tried every command he could think of: “Eject! Status! Profile! User! Logout!” Nothing worked, as he grew increasingly frantic.

“Crap, crap, crap!” With a scream of frustration, Jasper flopped on the ground in utter defeat. Panic coursed through his veins, combatted only by the adrenaline still flooding his system after his heart-stopping encounter. I've got to calm down. He forced the panic from his mind and took ten deep, measured breaths. As a fragile calm settled over him, Jasper tried to take stock of his situation. Sitting up, he looked over his body and was both relieved, as well as a bit disappointed, to see that his avatar was pretty much identical to his real body. Including his need for glasses, which he did not have. Unfortunately, he was missing far more than glasses - he was entirely naked. Great, so I’m probably in the game with no starter equipment, no weapons, no clothes, nothing. So much for the best game ever.

Jasper shook his head, willing his spiraling thoughts away. Gotta stop with these negative thoughts, man. It’s just a glitch; I’m sure they'll fix it. And then it struck him. Those rumors - the people that supposedly disappeared with the first game. What if it wasn’t just an urban legend, what if that’s what happened to me? What if I’m…dead? He thrust himself off the ground, shaking the dust off of his hand. “Nope, nope, nope; I’m not going down that path. This is just a game, just a bloody glitch, nothing more.” Refusing to even consider the grim possibility, Jasper scanned his surroundings.

He was standing in a ruined courtyard. Although the courtyard grounds were sandy, almost as if he was in a desert, beyond the ruined walls he could clearly see what appeared to be a jungle, and rising up the trees a series of mountains. Crap. I was hoping to start in the north near Celestia. Jungle and mountains mean I’m probably somewhere in the south. If I'm far enough south the game probably gave me a fey heritage.

On one side of the courtyard a large, ornate stone building rose up, five stories high, adorned with rows of windows bedecked with countless crumbling statues in a style that reminded him slightly of Angkor Wat back on earth. On the other side of the courtyard, however, was a small stepped pyramid that would have looked more at home in the jungles of the Yucatan than those of Asia. Alright, building or pyramid? He glanced down at his naked body. A building seems like a better place to find clothes and hopefully a weapon, so building it is.

Jasper walked towards the building, keeping an eye out for monsters. The original Corsythia had a respawn mechanic, but it was built around their religion. New players would be sent to the halls of the Progenitor when they died, but once they formed a contract with their personal deity, they would be sent to their deity’s realm before respawning. He had a sinking feeling that he already formed his deity contract, and he was in no mood for chest-bursters round 2, so dying was definitely on his Big List of Things to Avoid.

As he drew near to the building, he was surprised to find that there was just one entrance. A colossal pair of double doors, flanked on either side by a statue of what appeared to be a man-like creature with six wings, holding a sword wreathed in flames, was set into the walls. Unfortunately, he soon discovered the doors would not budge, no matter how hard he slammed his shoulder.

Stepping back from the doors, he rubbed his aching shoulder, scanning the building for another point of entry. Could try the windows. The windows looked a bit high, and while Jasper certainly had the height to play basketball in high school, slam dunks had never been one of his skills. After several futile attempts to jump high enough to get a hand through one of the broken windows, Jasper was forced to admit defeat. His last hopes of entering the building crushed, he turned his attention to the courtyard walls. But the walls were apparently crafted from a single smooth piece of rock. Although there were several ruined portions along the top, none were low enough for him to reach, and there were no cracks or crevices in the lower portions that would allow him to climb up.

Reluctantly, Jasper was forced to turn back to his last option, the pyramid. There was something about the pyramid that felt vaguely off-putting, just the faintest sense of danger. Pyramids were tombs, after all - at least on earth - and the idea of exploring a tomb, naked, didn't exactly thrill him. But he shook the feeling off. The pyramid was his last option. His only option.

The ruined building had cast its shade over the part of the courtyard where Jasper had been standing. But, as he passed out of the building’s shadow, Jasper realized the heat of the day was quickly rising. Wincing in pain as the increasingly hot sands scorched his bare soles, he dashed across the sand towards the pyramid. Two sets of stairs rose up the pyramid leading to what appeared to be a small covered temple at the top. At the bottom, in-between the stairs, lay a large dark doorway. Desperate to get off the hot sand, he headed straight for the lower door. Relieved to step off the hot sands on the cool, shaded stone, he was surprised when words again floated before him.

You have found the tomb of High Lord Ishka, guardian of the secret flame. Will you enter to claim his inheritance?

Normally, Jasper would have been elated to have found an inheritance. These trials were one of the best ways to earn a rare heritage or class, if you were fortunate enough to discover one, or rich enough to pay for one of the trials that gave out a steady stream of inheritances. Of course, normally, he would also have had some armor and a weapon.

Keenly aware of his nakedness, he snorted in wry amusement. Looks like I’m starring in my very own episode of Naked and Afraid. He threw a last, longing glance back at the courtyard, to the firmly closed doors of the building, and sighed. Guess I don’t really have a choice. There doesn’t appear to be any other way out of this courtyard, and somehow I have a feeling it’s no accident that I spawned right in front of an inheritance. Squaring his shoulders, he stepped through the arch. There was a brief feeling of resistance, almost as if he was walking through water, and then he popped through.

A vast, sunken hall stretched out before him, far too big to possibly fit in the small stepped pyramid. A long flight of stairs wound down into the hall below, while the ceiling soared above in graceful arches whose final peaks were obscured in darkness. In the sunken hall were twelve giant sarcophagi, six on each side. Each of the stone coffins was many times larger than what even the largest human would need. Shaq would look puny next to them. The lids of each coffin were adorned with enormous sculptures of fiery horses, each sculpture unique and painted so beautifully that it appeared almost life-like. At the far end of the hall, another staircase led up to a colossal statue of an enthroned man. The only light in the hall came from torches glowing with an eery blue flame, casting a writhing mass of shadows on the gleaming sarcophagi below.

Jasper cautiously surveyed the hall below. After a few minutes of observation, he was sure that there were no enemies walking about in the hall. But, there was no way that he could just walk up to the throne. Heritages weren't handed out like gifts on Christmas morning - you had to do something to earn them. I bet if I get close to those sarcophagi, whatever is in there is going to wake up. It’s gotta be an undead theme, right? But those sarcophagi are massive. How can I possibly hope to fight something that big with no class, no armor, and no weapons?

He lingered on the edge of the steps for a while, hoping that any hidden danger might make itself known. Finally, he was forced to decide to just risk it and sneak past the coffins. There’s no way but forward. Before leaving the apparent safety of the stairs, Jasper quickly searched the area to see if there was anything that could serve as a makeshift weapon. He ended up having to settle for a slightly sharp stone that fit in his hand reasonably well. He tossed the stone in his hand a few times, feeling its heft. Guess that will have to do. And now for the adventures of the Caveman in the Lost Tombs.

He descended down the stairs as quietly as possible, crouching low, and keeping an eye out for any sign of traps. With no skill to help in detection, Jasper just had to hope that any trap would be visible. Reaching the bottom of the stairs, he slowly shuffled through the middle of the hall, keeping himself as far as possible from the sarcophagi on either side of him. He had almost gotten past the first set of sarcophagi when his left foot suddenly sunk ever so slightly into the ground with an audible click. Suddenly, the massive lid of the sarcophagus to his left, with its large equine statue, was hurled through the air, smashing into the distant wall. A thunderous howl echoed through the room, as something massive emerged, and the lids of the other sarcophagi were also flung asunder.

Jasper froze and, paralyzed for a second by the dreadful howl, dropped his makeshift weapon. Recovering his sense, he twirled around to make a dash back to the stairs and promptly tripped over the stone he just dropped. A second later, a blade whipped through the space he had just been. Perhaps his sudden stop and drop had triggered some long-forgotten fire safety training, for Jasper quickly rolled on his side to the edge of the sarcophagus, and hastily pulled himself round the corner just as another attack landed in the dust by him. With a wild glance, he saw the stairs just ahead and desperately threw himself forward, expecting at any moment to be torn asunder by his as-of-yet unseen opponent. But as he clambered up the stairs, he realized the attack had never come.

Reaching a platform halfway up, he turned around to view his assailants. Where the hall had been empty before, twelve giant guardians now filled the space. Due to the sheer size of the hall, it was hard to estimate their size, but he guessed they were at least twenty feet tall, monsters in every sense of the word. Their skin was a sallow grey, their body much like that of a man’s, but their heads were like all manner of wild beasts: lions, birds, deer, even a few human heads, each one unique but marked by the same black, empty voids where their eyes once were. Yet it was their six sweeping skeletal wings and the gleaming urumi they wielded that drew his attention the most. A shiver of fear ran down his spine, a cold chill that in other circumstances would have offered a welcome relief from the sticky jungle heat. For some reason, they weren’t pursuing him up the stairs, but there was no way he was sneaking through there now. Even if he could somehow outrun them, the whip swords’ wide area of attack would surely slice him to shreds.

Climbing back up the stairs, he paced back and forth, trying to think of a way out of his predicament. If he wanted to kill the giants to get to the inheritance, and hopefully, unlock a path out of here, he really needed some sort of projectile weapon. What was he supposed to do with no weapons? All he had was a few small stones and some very large undead giants. He ground to a halt. Wait a minute - small stones and giants - I’ve heard that one before.

His spirits buoyed with his new plan, Jasper searched through the rocks to find the sharpest one possible. Then he headed back to the courtyard. Thankfully, the worst heat of the day had passed, and most of the courtyard was once again shrouded in shade, so he was able to easily cross the sand over to one side of the courtyard where a few palm trees were growing. Using his small stone “hand-ax,” he stripped the leaves off a spot, and then painstakingly peeled off a mat of the tree’s fibrous trunk.

It took quite a bit of experimentation before he finally succeeded in twisting the fiber into a useable rope, and by the time he had at last crafted a semi-passable sling, the stars were high in the heavens. Jasper gave the sling a test whirl, but grimaced in pain as his badly chaffed hands rubbed on the rough rope. Looking up at the dark skies, he decided to try to sleep before testing out the sling on the giants. Maybe my hands will feel better in the morning. Back in the tomb, he found a corner near the stairs to curl up in, and within seconds, was asleep.