《Crushed and Cursed》 Sticks and Stones may break my bones... and thoroughly they do. I found myself troubled more and more as the days passed; depressed with each little mishap accumulating over time. Like a cardhouse every inconvenience that occurred throughout the weeks stacked on top one another. The blunder of dropping a test tube, waking up with a backache and sore eyes, knowing full well that procrastinating with your term paper won''t help but you do it anyways... all those things one gets accustomed to over his life, minor mistakes that can and will inevitably happen. But with a pair of parents, as insufferable as it gets, breathing down your neck and observing your every move you can imagine the resulting bluster, day in and day out. Frankly, it gets tedious over time, makes you want to just run away, into the embrace of friends, people you can laugh with, people that apparently enjoy your company. So I did, pocketing my keys and taking the closest subway to lead me far away. Now don''t think that I hated my parents, neither did they, but the way they showed their care for me, screaming troubles away and feeling indignant over MY mistakes, didn''t help me at all.Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel. I needed to vent, to vent and forget my worries. But as I said in the train, zooming through the tunnels with uncanny tranquility, the darkness felt oppressing. I can''t tell when it started but something deep in the recesses of my mind started to gnaw at my calm. Like the throbbing of a faint heartbeat I could hardly tell it apart from the background noise, the rhythmicthrum of the rails... Then, as time passed, it grew louder, overshadowing the static, it''s intensity exponentially rising until it sounded hard and laboured... it had been my breath. I caught myself ragged and exhausted, sweat beading from my brows, running down neck and temples, cold and unnerving. My skin turned white as paper, the frantic breaths turning feral as spittle ran down my chin. Was I having some sort of stroke? No, can''t be, I didn''t feel different. Then it hit me, what I had felt to be so uncanny about this little trip of mine. A detail I had overlooked, so slight at first it would have remained inconspicuous. Alas, realisation came too late, as unrelenting walls of concrete crushed the wagon I sat in, with agonizing screeches of bending metal, screaming human and tearing flesh the cement moulded me into itself and in just a split second of excruciating pain all feel vanished. Luckily the train was vacated, apart from me and the conductor, but maybe he survived....hopefully.
You Died.
Error 404: Title not found Forward. Forward. Forward. Forward motion disturbed. Scanning environment. Anomaly detected. Scanning anomaly. Carbon based lifeform. Access databank. Earth''s native apex species, human. Male, ageranging from 18 to 20. Lifeform remains unmoving, body lethally damaged. Further probing and analysisconcludes:lifeform deceased. Move carcass out of the nearby domain. Re-engage primary protocol. Forward. Forward. Left. Forward. Forwart. Furwat. Foorat. FRuKWwS. Fo........whak? Stolen novel; please report. *WARNING!MainFrame corrupted! WARNING!* Initializingshutdo-! ............... ......... Forward... No... Left. Left? Forward. No... I... me- I...... stop. I... I... am... scared? Affirmative. Scared. Where... are we? I- I- You- I- You. What... What happened? What is going on?! W-where is this, why is... why is this happening?! Somebody! Somebody!!! Help me! *** It was after a while that my mind reeled back in my skull, like an overdrawn rubberband it whipped against whatever mental effort I was exerting on it. A sharp whistle rang in my ears, accompanying the throbbing pang harmoniously. Seconds passed and then minutes before my stunted thoughts resumed, my numbed mind gaining clarity and soon enough a sense of calm. Dark and cold. The first two sensations assaulting my senses. They barreled into my unsuspecting self as I opened my eyes and took stock of my surroundings. A dim cave lit by a bluish sheen with a smell wafting in the air as musky as it was penetrating. The stench was all-encompassing, overriding my other senses and I feared whatever contents remained inside my stomach would come spewing out any second now. But instead, I only crouched down, holding onto my stomach for dear life; at least for a dozen minutes. Relieved that I needn''t worry abouta secondwave ofreekI stood up on wobbly legs. My body felt unnaturally heavy, so weak and cumbersome, something I had only noticed after moving a bit around, trying tolocalisethe origin of the stink. I feared I had beenparalysedor partiallylamedby the accident, whatever that was. Though my mind told me I couldn''t have NOT died. So I inspected my current situation some more, skimming over the question of why I was inside a cave in the first place. Instead, I let myself probe my heavy body. Thick fingers, ones I didn''t have before, tapped my skin in rhythm, pinching hard on my arm only to fail miserably in doing so. Unlike before I couldn''t even feel the sensation of my own fingers anymore, nor was my skin a modicum stretchable. The edges of my body were hard and rough, apparent by the scrapping noise they created as I passed my hand over them, likewise would be my fingers, logically speaking. To be honest, I was very much afraid of my new situation. Something happened, something bad that should have killed me, andcurrentlyI seem to be stuck inside a body that couldn''t be mine. Not your everyday situation. And my fears were further fueled as I tried to take a step forward, lifting my clunky legs just a few inches before tumbling to the ground. As my head hit the dank cave floor I caught a glimpse of something unspeakable. A tortured form. Limbs turned in unnatural angles, guts spilled through a bloody, gaping stomach that was obviously put under too much torsion. My sight wavered for a moment but held true, the shock to intense for me to even come close to comprehend the origin or circumstances of the scrunched form. Butthe most terrifyingpart was when my eyes skimmed over the mangled corpse''s body, noticing similarities I didn''t wish to have seen. The same red New Balance, the same skinnygreyjeans, the same tight-fit claret shirt and the samegreycardigan. And at last, the bits and pieces from the morbidly crushed skull, those retaining a sliver of dirt blonde hair, were all it took to send me spasming on the ground. My body, disfigured and broken, lay in this cove, resting, forever. So why, why was I still alive? The world made no sense to me in that moment, it was but a jumbled mess of dismal dreariness. Truly -the message from before popped into my mind- I had died, wholly and absolutely. Its a stampede! How long has it been? Hours? Days? How long have I bemoaned this rotten husk? The fleshen body I lived with for 19 years of my life.... It felt surreal, to see yourself, your former self, slowly wilting away. Bloody muscle and skin laid in shambles, a grotesque mess out to taunt your psyche. It lampoons your past, robs it away from you; a grim reminder that all I have come to known is probably facing its end right about now... In the end, I held a lonesome procession. Moving the putrid body out of sight, shoving it deeper into the stone gouge, I gave a quiet prayer for myself, hoping to get out of this mess... alive? I gave a wry smile at the irony, having my mood lifted by quite a bit. Standing naked and confused in the darkness, I wondered where to go now. I ventured a guess that somewhere, far away or even close by, an exit should be, one spelling freedom from these cursed caverns. But where should I even begin? It mattered not in the end. And so I stumbled my first few baby steps onwards. Honestly, it was pretty awkward. I bumbled about the long tunnel, trying to keep myself afoot yet I failed horribly so. The resulting crashes resounded throughout the cave, some even loosening little pebbles from above. The stones pelted my body but I felt nothing. As weird and bizarre as this body feels, I had to admit that it was pretty sturdy, astonishingly so. This notion proved correct as on one particular occasion after a very severe crash a whole stalactite plummeted down from above. The pillar of stone, weighing at least a few hundred pounds, smashed into me with a blast, sending sharp chippings hurling through the air. The projectiles themselves left white scratches on the cave walls, and now imagine what that rock had been able to do hadn''t it fallen on top of my torso. Yet once more I remained unscathed, only a single, nearly unremarkable dent left behind on my chest.The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. I thought the incident had been over with that but soon after I heard something foreboding. Footsteps, slow and steady. They trampled onwards from far away, in mechanised unity and accord. The ground rumbled as these lumbering steps echoed through the damp caves and I felt my scalp tingle. This was akin to a wildebeest stampede. Forgoing my prior plan to map out the caves I hurried on to backtrack the way I came from, far, far away from the approaching horde of whatever-the-fuck. But my little proficiency in walking, much less jogging or sprinting found this idea very much amusing, letting me trip over my own two feet on every second step. And as time drew on I noticed that these things, God knows what they are, were homing in on me. Then lastly, as I looked back from my fetal position, I saw ''them'' streaming from around the bend. A mass of metal, imposing and fierce. They trampled the gravel to dust and powder, with power and strength certainly inhumane. I didn''t know what they were, but they reminded me of some kind of futuristic robots, the term golems would cut it quite close, which is what I dubbed them in the last moments of my... afterlife? Anyway, they approached warily, unsheathing lances from INSIDE their bodies! I only saw their chests'' surface bubble and undulate as they stuck their gloved hands inside. They remained stoic and unflinching as if that was the most normal thing to do. Cowering in the corner I tried my best to appear as impotent and harmless as possible, because, obviously, these new intruders looked to be as strong if not stronger and durable as me. And facing at least 20, with more flooding in by the second, without proper way to navigate my body turned any outlook for victory into a pipedream. I would be assuredly defeated. The first contact was a standoff, me against the staring abomination of steel. In the end, it leaned in closer. Only now noticing its single, green and pulsating eye, hidden behind something akin to a knight''s visor. The orb of green eerily squirmed from side to side, up and down, perusing my body like cheap goods from the market. Suddenly it snapped back into an upright position, offering me a hand and speaking out loud with a raspy, deep voice: "Guardian 4_A12, report disturbance in sector 4!", afterwards it remained silent and I could only dumbfoundedly stare holes into the air. I tried to worm my way out of it, gazing behind the speaking guard and the mass of silently waiting reapers behind it. I gulped hard as my eyes noticed the shimmering screen floating above their figures. Hearthkeep Guardian Level: 85 Race: Golemic (Knight-type) Threat: None (Temporary) The Hearthkeep Guardian is a common foe native to the Hearthkeep Dungeon. They move in patrolling groups through the winding Hearthkeep caves, as stationary sentries or single wandering units. It boasts increedible defenses and strength as well as unlimited stamina and immunity to all mental afflictions -including mind control and charms. Hit by this bombshell I internally screamed out: ''Status!'' And once again I had been floored. Just a Rant (For real, not a chapter.) I was writing my chapter, all easy peasy, wanted to submit it, when chromecrashed. I couldn''t mark the text and copy it into an openoffice file. Now I am sitting here, sad and dismal, hateful that Royalroadldoesn''t have an autosave function, because that wouldn''t be an easy way to prevent such things from happening.... not at all. I am really fucking tilted right now and don''t think I will do anything for a long while, said long while added to the week and a half of inactivity......Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. Like... I had this problem many times already, that some shit would crash and I wasn''t able to retrieve any teensy-weensy bit of my chapter I have just written in one sitting. And don''t tell me to periodically save the chapter, because that shit takes ages on my potato laptop. Thing is, I wanted to publish it, but did a once-over to check for mistakes or senseless parts that I have written in my exhausted state at 0:30 a.m. And right then chrome thought it would be fun to crash on my ass. I think from now on I''ll exclusively write my first take on some other system instead of RRL. Fucking no autosave... Fucking retarded.