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

The whole affair couldn’t have been more than ten seconds. Not that he could check. His watch and his phone were gone. Along with whatever else he had in his pockets.

The longer he was in this strange place, the more ephemeral his thoughts felt. Like rapidly vanishing mist, he was having trouble making sense of things that should have been fairly obvious.

Groggy and still reeling from what happened, Hal got to his feet with the aid of the nearby splintery wall. People walked by, a few glanced his way but were quick to mind their own business.

Did nobody care he was just mugged?

A fire lit in his belly and bruised as he was, he rushed out from the shadows of the two buildings and onto the dirt road in pursuit of his mugger. It should have taken him seconds to realize he wouldn’t find him with all the foot traffic.

Instead, he spent several fruitless minutes searching until he understood the futility of it. Why couldn’t he think clearly?

With no money, no ID, and no means of getting home, his only hope rested with a police officer or a sheriff of some kind. If this was a ren faire, they would have one, wouldn’t they?

In the back of his mind, he knew something was wrong. With himself, with this place. There were too many crazy things that had happened to him to refute. And so, like the rest of the well-to-do Williams family, he blocked it out and shoved it into a dark corner of his mind.

Once he was safe, alone, and had plenty to drink, then he could try to face it. But not until then.

That was the Williams’ way, after all.

A tall, broad-shouldered man with a mop of greasy black hair stood watching the crowd of people go about their business. A guard, he guessed judging by the stained dark-blue uniform he wore.

This part of the village looked better than the rest. With dirty, pitted cobbles that shifted underfoot and buildings with signs on them. It was a definite step up from muddy streets.

Somebody had changed the lettering to some archaic font, to the point he couldn’t even read it.

But the images that were carved and painted alongside the words served well enough. There was a tavern, an inn, some kind of general store he guessed to be the gift shop, and another shop he couldn’t identify.

Hal approached the guard. The man’s deep-blue tunic sported tarnished brass buttons that had clearly seen better days. The sword he had belted on his hip looked old and dirty with several deep nicks.

No smile from this man, no form of greeting. Hal cleared his dry throat, remembering suddenly that he had been walking for a couple of hours without food or water.

Hiking a thumb back the way he came, Hal meant to say, ‘I was just mugged over there! He stole my phone and my wallet.’ Instead, what actually came out of his mouth was, “Dirty man do bad thing.”

What!? That is not what I said!

He cleared his throat once more and tried again, except this time his voice jumped several octaves until his words came out as a shrill, “VERY BAD MAN TOOK PRECIOUS!”

Hal just stared blankly at the man, hoping he was having a stroke and would just die already.

The man looked down his long, many-broken nose and squinted at Hal. He spoke in a strange language he never heard of. It sounded like a cross between French and Arabic.

Hal shook his head and spread his arms out wide, trying to mime that he didn’t understand him. Which meant he immediately started doing the chicken dance. Tucking his hands under his arms and flapping them like little wings.

What the flork is wrong with me? Wait. What? I didn’t say flork, I said flork. Oh come on, I can’t curse? Florking wonderful!

The guard reacted to the display with immediate prejudice. Hal could hardly blame him.

Before Hal even noticed the movement, the guard grabbed his left arm and squeezed painfully hard on his wrist as if feeling for a hidden dagger.

Confusion passed over the man’s face. He gave a casual yank on Hal’s left sleeve, the hearty flannel ripped as easily as tissue paper.

And out from that rip came a faint golden glow.

The guard’s gray eyes were dazzled by the display. He gingerly parted Hal’s torn sleeve to view the golden tattoo in full. His eyes went wide and he began to gibber incoherently.

The man’s voice was pitched high in abject terror.

A dark stain spread across the guard’s pants. His lips flapped uselessly trying to form words but only a stream of babble came out. Hal was frozen by the display, unsure how to take the sudden turn.

Their eyes met. Hal’s dark brown to the man’s light gray. The man shook and stepped back, his hands flew from Hal as if suddenly burned. He turned and fled, wailing and laughing in turn.

Confused, tired, and afraid, Hal hurried away as fast as he could.

At first, he walked. But the many stares and pointing fingers of those that had witnessed the strange display followed him. He wanted to be gone from this horrible place. So he ran, and shortly put the scene and the growing crowd behind him.

Hal continued to jog, wheezing the whole way, as he broke into the low foothills with a thick forest of dark trees. He only stopped once he had crested the second hill.

He leaned tiredly against the bark and tried in vain to catch his breath.

It didn’t surprise him as he looked down toward the village he had just fled from and spotted tiny flickering torchlight heading his way in the darkening afternoon.

A storm rolled in soon after Hal began his continued flight into the wooded foothills of that horrible place. With no idea where he was and no help forthcoming, Hal was forced to rely on his survival skills.

Of which he had none.

He didn’t know which plant to eat. Which