The Mother of Monsters

Ianna woke to the deafening silence of the tomb. Her whole body ached, and more noticeably, she was starving. She wasn’t sure how long she had been out. Hours, maybe? At times it had felt like she had been suffering through a fever. She raised her arm and sniffed, recoiling. Yep. She’d been sweating. She sighed; wondering if she should just throw herself at the Guardian and freshen herself up. Then it hit her; that wasn’t possible anymore. She took a satisfied whiff of victory and laughed.

“How did I get to this? Somehow, unable to die and it’s just… inconvenient,” She chuckled, opening her inventory and pulling out the field ration bars. She picked out the ration bar she had started eating before she began her grind against that stupid rusty piece of garbage and downed the whole thing in a few quick bites. It was soft, with a strangely sweet center that had a sort of umami aftertaste she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Energy ran through her limbs as a sensation of satisfaction poured over her. It was a little jarring, how well it worked. She felt like she’d had a solid breakfast and then some.

Breakfast.

“Man, I could go for some eggs,” She whined, stretching her arms over her head and looking over at the Guardian. It stood there in silence, waiting for her latest attempt to slap it.

“Guess I could go looking for eggs once I’m done with you,” She said, hopping over the side of the sarcophagus and letting out a breath. No point in putting it off any longer, she needed to see if immunity meant immunity.

Bracing herself, she strode toward the waiting machine. It did not wait long before it produced another flash of pale white light. The light washed over her body, goosebumps forming on her skin and a chill ran up and down her spine. It was like stepping outside in the dead of winter. Besides that, though, nothing happened. No pain. No ache. No frostbite. No rot. Just a winter wind caressing her face as she stepped out to the other side.

The golem seemed to... Pause. Was it confused? Its eyes glowed again and it released another blast, and another. The [Aurora of the Pale Dawn] crashed into her over and over as she drew closer to it. It never stopped, even as she closed the gap and found herself face to face with it. Ianna was finally close enough to look into its’ lifeless eyes. Open holes stared back at her from a near-featureless head. One limb shifted, but creaked and groaned, immobilized by the damage and rust. The other hung limp at its side, connected only by a few tubes of some rubber-like material.

Her lips formed a thin line and the knife appeared in her hand. She’d been practicing drawing items from her inventory without pulling the bag out in between deaths. That was one little way she kept herself sane while she endured the worst of it all. She drew the magical weapon up and brought it down on the machine’s neck. There was a loud clang of metal on metal and then nothing. Nothing at all. Not even a scratch. Ianna blinked at the spot she’d struck and then looked at the blade of her knife. A portion of it had been flattened.

She sighed; of course, it was a magic knife, but it wasn’t. It couldn’t cut through metal. How was she supposed to kill it if she wasn’t given anything magical to damage it with? She examined the Guardian. The very magical Guardian. an idea sprouted in her mind and a wicked smile crossed her lips. She looked down at the Guardian’s limp arm and grabbed ahold of it, moving around to its side.

“Maybe this will shake something important out of place,” She muttered, using the knife to cut through the thick rubber-like material that connected the guardian’s arm to its body. Something black and viscous poured out onto her fingers and feet. It looked and felt like oil. She sniffed- the smell was completely rancid. She sputtered and coughed, shook her head, and continued to cut, not stopping until the arm had been severed completely. It fell to the ground with a clatter, spraying droplets of the ichor everywhere. She retreated, trying dearly to force her lunch back down.

“You smell like rotten meat, buddy!” She gagged, rubbing her nose with her sleeve.

Steeling herself, she moved back in and hefted up the severed arm. It had a good weight to it. She eyed the side of the Guardian’s head. It turned, trying to aim at her, its' eyes still flashing with white light as it attempted to build up another shot of its’ lethal attack. This time, Ianna swung with all her might at the back of its metallic cranium. The two metal pieces clanged violently and the Guardian toppled forward onto its face. She brought down the arm again, and again, and again, until she was wheezing, and kept going. Her pain and misery from doing nothing but dying over and over finally burst out.

She screamed at the top of her lungs, blinded by rage as she pounded away, slamming the arm against every piece of the rusted old monstrosity’s body. Only exhaustion stopped her attack, her numb arms giving way, the arm slipping from her grip and rolling away with a loud clang. she staggered away from the Tomb Guardian. The light in its’ eyes had gone out. It laid still.

She stepped back to lean against a pillar. She slid down and covered her face; the tears came. It was over.

It took a while for Ianna to compose herself after that. Enduring on sheer force of will and spite was one thing, but she was sure the human mind wasn’t meant to experience something like this. What kept her going? Why hadn't she become a babbling mess, starving in the sarcophagus just to avoid the horrible feeling of being torn away cell by cell? Why was she dealing with the menus in her mind and honest-to-God magic forces so well? She had no answers. But she had to stop brooding about it; she had to keep going. She was still in the tomb.

She got to her feet, walking over to the remains of the Tomb Guardian. Her [OLD SATCHEL] ability had described the feature to loot defeated entities. All she had to do was touch them. She knelt and placed her hand on its cold, metallic back. A prompt appeared.

“Yes?”

Immediately, the surface beneath her fingers began to change. She watched as solid metal turned into grains of sand beneath her touch. She pulled her hand away and watched as all the color drained away from its’ copper-toned body. It looked like a black-and-white filter from her phone had been applied to the three dimensional golem. A moment later, the body dissolved into a small pile of white sand. The process took no more than a few seconds, but watching the thing that had caused her so much pain turning to dust was more than a little cathartic.

A flood of prompts appeared all at once, startling her.

She froze. What were the ramifications of losing out on that experience? What if she couldn’t fight back against another temple guardian because she had lost that experience? She shook her head and crossed her arms. It didn’t matter now. All she could do was keep an eye out for an Aspect Stone. She knew those existed. She'd seen the word used once before in the quest description listing an Aspect Stone as a reward. “What the hell even is an Aspect?”

When she didn’t get an answer from a magic voice in the sky, she sighed, resigning herself to checking out her loot. She called the bag into her hand and opened it. She could call whatever item she wanted out of it straight into her palm; but she had no idea what the items were, so her only recourse was to sort through them in case they were heavy or unwieldy. When she opened her inventory, she found several items waiting for her.

“Holy shit.”