Rewind: A Grimdark LitRPG Series (Pyresouls Apocalypse, Book 1) by James Callum (reading tree .txt) 📕

air a moment before Hal thrust out his left arm. He didn’t see any other recourse. He wasn’t a trained fighter and there didn’t seem to be any doors, so running was out.

The Assassin slapped the corpse’s still-warm hand upon Hal’s forearm. He nearly had a heart attack when the dead fingers locked tight upon his arm. Whatever trace of fear he had was washed away with the searing white-hot pain that bloomed on his forearm.

“Yeah,” the Assassin said distractedly. “You might feel a pinch.”

A scream broke free from Hal and echoed into the wide space around them.

The Assassin looked at him and chuckled. “Good acoustics in this place.”

Tears blurred Hal’s vision. Rich golden light spilled out between the dead god’s fingers.

When it was over, Hal was on his knees. The iron-like grip of the corpse’s hand was beginning to cut off the circulation to his fingers.

The Assassin poked the corpse’s arm with his pinky and the fingers blasted backward with a sickening series of cracks.

Hal cradled his arm and rose to his knees. The chubby corpse’s fingers were all bent backward at impossible angles.

“All done,” the Assassin said cheerily. Checking his wrist where a watch should have been, but most definitely was not, he added, “And just in time for tea!” He motioned over Hal’s shoulder, at the same place the man had been looking before.

Following his gaze again, Hal could see a swirling mass of autumn colors ten or twenty feet back. It hovered a few feet above the ground and made an ominous sound.

“Mind the drop,” was all the Assassin said before Hal felt a strange wrenching in his guts and was yanked off the floor like a hooked fish. The gaseous swirl of oranges, reds, and browns folded around him, and darkness closed in.

Chapter 01

Colors swirled and collapsed upon each other. Hot and cold wind blew across Hal’s face from different directions.

Before his disoriented mind could discern up from down, the ground rose up and smacked into his face.

Luckily, the soft grass cushioned the fall.

Hal wanted to lay there for a while longer. He wanted nothing more than to shut his eyes and will himself to wake up on his couch back in his studio apartment in Seattle.

This is just a bad dream, he told himself, I’ll wake up soon.

But the reality, the truth of the situation, did not allow for such wishful thinking. It kicked down his flimsy barriers of denial in the form of a snorting, snuffling animal bumping into his hip.

Hal opened his eyes and shouted in alarm at what he saw. A two-headed wild pig of some kind with a mohawk of spiny white hairs was investigating him.

Hands pressed to the grassy ground, Hal pushed himself up to his feet. He turned to keep the beast in his line of sight and backed away slowly. The strange creature regarded Hal curiously, two pairs of eyes watching him with too much intelligence for his taste.

A howling cry echoed somewhere to his left in the distance and the pig creature squealed in fright. By the time Hal looked back in the creature’s direction, it had kicked up a dusty trail and was in full retreat.

Okay, not a dream, Hal thought coughing as the dust cloud blew over him on a gust of wind. I don’t think I’ve ever coughed or felt like I was choking a dream before.

The howl sounded again. It had a discordant, ethereal quality that raised the hairs on the back of Hal’s neck. He found himself putting one foot in front of the other in the opposite direction, glad he had collapsed on his couch fully clothed. He had been too tired to even remove his shoes.

He was in some autumnal landscape. Brown sere grass crunched underfoot. Hills covered in a riot of golds, oranges, and reds filled his vision. Copses of tall trees, oaks maybe – though he doubted he could tell most trees apart – dotted the hilly countryside.

With no immediate destination in mind, Hal continued down the hill and into the sheltered valley. He climbed the next hill and felt a wave of relief when the howls sounded again but seemed farther away.

This second hill was taller than the one he had woken up on. As he pressed through the saplings that sprouted between the thick trunks of the trees, he spotted a distant village.

Not a city, nor a town, not even a suburb.

A village. The kind you’d see on a quaint tour of Europe’s rural countryside.

Questions swirled in his addled mind. Everything still felt jumbled and his mouth felt cottony.

There’s nowhere near Seattle that looks like this that I know of. It’s far too dry. Besides, there’d be a thousand hikers snapping selfies to show their followers how “outdoorsy” they are.

The only thing that reminded him of Seattle was the dreary sky. Dark storm clouds scudded across a gray, lifeless ceiling. What little sunlight shone through was muted and watery.

Pieces of recent memories flitted back to him in sharp-edged fragments. They felt like something from a movie. Only, he knew without a doubt that it had been real. He knew, too, that this place was real.

His dreams always had that fuzzy quality to them. But this was too mundane. Too grounded. A chill wind knifed through his red flannel shirt as he ventured out from the relative quiet of the hilltop to descend to the village below.

While cold, the brisk wind revitalized him. He pulled out his cracked cellphone, unlocked it, and tried to pull up his GPS.

The screen glitched and flashed. When it came back, his Maps app was blank. Usually, if he was remotely near his apartment it would still show him the general area.

There was nothing.

Hal cycled through several more apps, trying to see if anything worked. So long as it didn’t require an internet connection, it did. Photos worked, his smiling face appeared next to strangers and friends alike.

More strangers than friends, he had to admit.

As he swiped through his pictures,