Chapter 14
Always Be Aware of Your Surroundings

Yeah, I was happy for the shield, but dude, did it take some practice!

First off, it's big and bulky and it blocked my vision. I couldn't just carry it all the time if I didn't want to trip over something. Second, once I raised it for cover, I couldn't go any faster than a crawl. So that meant escaping was out. And third, raising it for cover meant I couldn't use my sword at the same time. I had to switch between attack and defense, which was a whole new, much more demanding, style of fighting. No more blind bashing. Now I had to think about each blow and calculate the timing of attacks. I guess that's what real armored warriors must have done back in my world. Like me, they probably complained at first, but like me, they also probably stopped complaining after their first battle.

That battle came after my day of training aboveground. Venturing back underground, I came out into the cave and right into the targeting gaze of a skeleton. It raised its bow. I raised my shield.

BONK!

My hand vibrated with the impact of the deflected arrow. Just a fluke? I wondered, looking up to see the bonehead reloading. Poor aim and a lucky—

BONK!

Another shaft glanced harmlessly off.

"No fluke," I said, as a third arrow fell to my feet. "No lucky angle or lousy aim on your part."

Grinning from ear to flat, barely visible ear, I strode slowly toward my foe. "This shield actually works! It totally, absolutely, legitimately…" I stopped pontificating the moment I peeked back up over the top.

The skeleton, still shooting, not only began to retreat, but did so in a side-to-side, kind of frenzied oval. "Are you afraid?"

Unable to answer, unable to do anything more than fire fecklessly against my mobile wall, the bag of bones clacked crazily around. I blocked another shot, waited for it to reload, then swung down hard with Protector. The skeleton reeled, then took another shot. Again I blocked, and again I struck. Back and forth to its inevitable end.

"A hearty thank-you," I told the new leg bone, "from my carrots and wheat."

"Uhhh…" came a howling moan, ending my witty, one-sided banter. Looking up, I spied an approaching zombie. Raising my shield, I absorbed the first blow without injury. Just like the skeleton, I told myself, and lowered the shield to strike.

POW!

The punch took me right in the jaw.

"You're s'posed to pause," I barked angrily, and raised my shield again. After taking the next blow, I tried another slash.

"Oof!" I breathed through dented armor and bruised ribs.

"Guhhh…" groaned the ghoul, assailing my battered board. Retreating under a torrent of blows, I realized that shields didn't work in close combat. Whereas the skeleton had been a well-timed dance, this was more of a boxing match. "Just like we used to," I said, backing up a few paces.

Sliding the shield into my backpack, I shouted, "Time to change back!" and gave my attacker a good slash across the face.

With renewed speed and agility, I tried to keep just a few paces away. "You're tougher," I admitted, "which means I gotta be smarter." Step in, strike, knock it back, then retreat and wait for it to advance.

"Adaptation," I crowed, giving the ghoul another slash. "Isn't that what some wise old guy once said? Something about the key to survival not being strength but the ability to change?"

In a fitting response, the lumbering bruiser kept doing the only thing he and his kind had ever done: make a slow plodding path right for me. "That's why my ancestors conquered my world," I preached as Protector knocked him back, "and that's why the sabertooth cats and the giant bears and all the other stronger, tougher killers ended up in museums."

"Gruhhh," snarled the zombie, recoiling with another chop.

"And that's where you'll all be," I boasted, raising Protector for the coup-de-grâce, "when I finally conquer this—"

"Gahhh," gasped the ghoul, as my next blow knocked it out of sight.

"Uh?" I asked, sounding just like the creature I'd slain and taking a step forward to investigate. The zombie didn't disappear; there was no puff of smoke. This time it'd actually fallen out of sight, downward, and had nearly taken me with it.

"Whoooa!" I warbled, stopping short at the edge of a cliff. I hadn't been paying attention to where I was going. I'd been too focused on the fight.

The zombie battle had taken me farther and farther down the cave, past my torches and around a narrow bend. I didn't notice that the temperature and humidity had risen, or that there'd been a light up ahead. Only when I'd knocked the zombie over the edge of the cliff did I finally stop and stare.

Before me lay an underground canyon: deeper, wider, and just, well, grander than my tiny island up above. For a moment, all I could do was stare in awe at this subterranean world. Now I saw the source of the growing heat. Streams of red-hot lava poured from several openings in the cliffs. These long bright columns fell into a vast, boiling lake. I could also see water, thin blue lines falling from walls and the ceiling, crashing down into the lava, turning the air into a stifling steam bath. Just looking at the spectacle below made me dizzy, and imagining one misstep was enough to pull me way back.

Venturing a few careful peeks, I thought I could see some dry land at the edge of the lava and water. How could I not investigate? Nothing wrong with curiosity, right?

Of course not, I reasoned, as long as it's careful curiosity.

I started to dig a descending tunnel just behind the cliff wall. Every few steps I opened a window to get my bearings. I broke out onto uneven but safe ground and stared up in amazement. The canyon made the first cave I'd discovered, which had once looked so monstrous, seem like a rabbit hole.

The heat down here was merciless, tropical. I could actually feel my lungs baking with each breath. I could also feel the sweat collecting under my armor, running down my back into my boots. And yet, as I took a few sloshing steps across this stifling sauna, I didn't feel the least bit of thirst. Well, at least this world won't let me get dehydrated, I thought, blinking away stinging drops, and I don't seem to smell when I sweat, which is pretty cool.

Cool…If only there was a way to beat the heat down here.

I noticed that the nearest waterfall ended barely a few paces from my feet. Maybe dipping said feet for a few minutes could…

"Bad idea!" I yelped as the current tried to wash me into the lava. Half running, half hopping, I got close enough to the fall's tipping point to contain it with a ring of cobblestone.

As the blue surge subsided, I gawked at the material it revealed. These were smooth black stones that I'm creatively calling "blackstone." I think by this point, we've established that I wasn't a geologist back home. Whatever their real name was, these rocks were beautiful to look at, and just for the sake of a souvenir, I tried to mine up a block. And trying was as far as I got, because my pickaxe's iron blade was about as effective as my bare hands had been against standard stone.

"Well, you ain't goin' nowhere." I shrugged at the shiny black surface, then froze when it answered with a "Guhhh."

I snapped to attention, sword and shield at the ready. Of course the blackstone hadn't groaned back at me. Something else, something stinky and very familiar, was somewhere down here with me.

I spun in a full circle. All was clear. Nothing by the light of the lava lake. "Guhhh," echoed another groan. Was Mr. Deadhead behind a rock wall? Or…

I crept over to the edge of the lava lake, trying to see if I could find him on the other side. Big mistake. Peering across the roiling soup, I heard an omnidirectional "oomph."

I thought I was being careful. At two blocks away, it's not like I was actually at the edge. No chance of accidentally falling in, right?

"Grahhh," came a snarling growl, then…

BANG!

Festering fists bashed me in the back, throwing me forward and toppling me into the lava.

All I could see was red, breathing it in, choking on liquid fire. It is an indescribable nightmare, the feeling of burning alive. First came the shock of adrenaline, then the worst pain I'd ever felt. I'd been beaten, I'd been bitten, I'd even been partially blown up, and yet, all that suffering could not hold a burning candle to boiling in molten rock. Imagine every cell across your body, every nerve ending, every sensor capable of feeling suddenly rising in one wailing chorus of hell.

And yet, it was the total immersion—the complete, body-wide attack on my system—that ended up saving my life. As the pain receptors under my skin literally burned away, I was left with one numb nanosecond to move. And move I did!

As the flames licked up before my blinded, sizzling eyes, I swam with all my might for the blackstone bank. I don't know when I climbed out of the scalding stew, or if I continued to burn on land. Whatever was left of my rational mind locked on to the memory of the waterfall. Stumbling…fumbling…

Mercy! I was bathed in soothing, quenching salvation.

BANG!

Rotting fists stabbed right through the water, knocking me back toward the flames. I swung wildly, eyes just beginning to hyper-heal. They caught a flash of rotting green. Protector swung, the impact of flesh and bone vibrating up through the blade.

Sight and mind cleared in time for me to see the reeling zombie and to realize that, by sheer luck, its back, not mine, faced the roiling lake. On instinct, I charged, smashing my shield into its body.

"Gugh," growled the ghoul as I dug in my heels, ground slowly forward, and pushed it into the incinerating sea.

If only I could have celebrated, or just watched it burn, or done anything, anything in the world except teeter backward as regenerating pain receptors swamped my brain. Grunts. Screams. Howls. I threw myself back into the waterfall for the briefest shred of relief. All I got was the sense memory of drowning.

Eat!

Wolfing down fish and bread, I could feel my body reform. And just as my physical nerves were putting themselves back together, my mental nerves fell apart.

Never again! I swore, fleeing for the safety of the tunnel*. Never go underground for any reason again!*

Stripped of my courage, traumatized to the core, I made it halfway up the stairs before another "Guhhh" stopped me cold.

They're waiting for me! I thought, sword shaking like grass in the wind. They're everywhere!

And then the voice came, not from my ears but from my head.

"Moo."

That calming, doofy call floated in through my memories. Somewhere above me was a pal who'd stuck with me through all my trials and triumphs. What would she, and my sheep friends, have to say about surrendering to fear?

Courage is a full-time job.

Nerves returning, sword straightening, I ascended the rest of the stairs. And saw, for the first time, that the cliff walls around me were practically riddled with tunnels. I'd been so preoccupied with the size of the canyon, so entranced with the awesome spectacle of lava, that I never noticed these mundane but nearly fatal openings. In fact, the zombie I'd just heard was growling at me from another cave opening across from mine.

"So that's where your friend came from," I said. Looking down, I could see another hole, just above the waterfall and just big enough for one of those reekers to slouch through.

"That's what that 'oof' sound was," I continued to the other ghoul, "him hitting the ground just before he pushed me in."

"Uhhh," moaned the monster as I shook my head with shame.

"At least I've learned something," I said with a sigh, "and now it's burned into my brain, so to speak. Always, always be aware of your surroundings."