Chapter 2

Carhartt overalls, thermal underwear, backpack, rope, hammer, pitons, rolled up wetsuit, dried food for a week, water canisters and the rest including a first aid kit. I had searched the net to make a list of what the soldiers took with them when exploring the Portals. There wasn’t much real information on the net, but some did filter out. Gear being one of them.

Since I couldn’t take a set of regulation army protective gear, I settled for football and soccer pads over sturdy winter clothes.

I hadn’t had a good look at the hovering Black Axe since the first day, but I guessed that a fire Axe was a suitable replacement for training.

The two weeks encompassing long days of practice in my garage with the fire axe I purchased for practice, passed by unnaturally easy. I spent more time adjusting to my new way of axe fighting, than I did learning to fight with the heavy weapon from scratch, something I felt was foolish. My magically-granted ability to wield a fire axe, or any two-handed axe, during my exercises and shadowboxing felt both right and wrong at the same time. It was as if my body already knew what to do and how to move, yet my brain didn’t understand why that was so.

Chop, hack, block, hammer spike, every move seemed to flow into the next. The use of my lower body, thighs, footwork, torso, swiveling, was nearly instinctual.

Too easily, the fighting flow came to me.

My makeshift agility course that I set up in my small back yard got plenty of use too. What my seen, but never spoken-to neighbors, thought of my training regimen, I had no clue, nor did I care. My body was moving and I was sweating. The pain of the burn felt great. Not since my injury had I worked so hard for so long, physically speaking. The hour-a-day regular workouts since my physical therapy ended, had only paused on the extra-long double days which led to work weeks of more than 90 hours.

I was in okay shape before the Weapon repaired me. Now, I felt like I could take on the world, just like when I was young and dumb.

Grin

Taking a deep calming breath, I took in my new, perfectly healthy body; it was better than new after the ‘Morning of Weapons’ or ‘Awakening Morning’. One week was all I had needed to perfectly heal my ACL. I knew that others reported the same after encountering their own Weapon or, in some cases, Weapons.

We were healed in preparation for entering the Portals. Someone wanted us to go inside. Making us healthy was the perfect incentive. Since freshman training camp at Northwestern, I had not been in this good of health, and maybe not even then. I had never noticed how many little tweaks and pricks that my body felt on a daily basis until they all disappeared.

I counted down from twenty-five in my basement, fully geared and ready to explore the unknown, “4... 3... 2... 1 ... Here I go.”

Stepping into the Green lightning, I experienced a momentary disorientation. Blinded with sparks of brilliant green light even seconds later, I waited until my vision cleared. Standing straight, I looked around at the top of a dimly lit, six-foot wide, nine-foot tall, (exactly two by three meters, I found out later) stone staircase.

My Black Axe appeared, hovering three feet in the air before me. Thirty-inches tall, with a foot-and-a-half of the handle wrapped in leather. The dual-headed spiked axe had, from tip to tip, a six-inch crescent-blade that looked razor sharp, and which extended three inches from the shaft by a thick bar of the same black metal. Opposite the blade thrust a square flat-head hammer end. The short, squat, two-by-two-inch hammerhead provided a great counterweight to the crescent cutting end.

The uncovered section of pitch-black shaft, beginning where the black leather-wrapped handle left off, was inscribed by etched blood-red Runes. Both the hammer and blade shoulders too were inscribed with the in the same deep red as the Runes on the shaft.

After finishing admiring my new toy, I checked all of the items in my pack and double-checked their placement. All was in order.

Taking a chance, by suggestion of the net, I called out aloud, “Status.”

It worked.

Before me, a twelve by twelve, green CRT glowing screen appeared, as if it were a floating sheet of letters and numbers with no glass behind it or plastic frame supporting it.

Jason Blakely. Axeman: Level 1 (0/1000)

Title: N/A

Status: N/A

Strength: 7

Force Multiplier: 1

Agility:7

Endurance: 7

Pain resistance: 1

Speed: 7

Intelligence: 7

Health: 27

Mana: 1

Skills:

War Axe: Level 1

Equipment:

Krell’s Rune Axe:

Locked.

Money: 0

Inventory: 0/100

“Status,” the window disappeared with the only residue was a faint green glow in my eyes in remembrance of it ever being there.

I’d play with the inventory once I picked up something, I hoped that my Axe could be stored and retrieved, but that was a test for later.

I knew how good of shape I was in in college, and really, if my Ability scores were ranked at 7s across the board, I wondered what would happen if I raised any them even one single point. What would happen if they were increased by three or more? Would I be the strongest person in the world? What about the other soldiers that had a three-month head start? How far had they advanced above other humans?

This was a challenge too good to pass up.

I walked the hundred steps down, ignoring the blank stone wall behind me. I already knew that there was only one exit and one exit only. My destination was at the other end of the dungeon, along with the means to journey down to the next floor. Unless this floor was overwhelmingly easy, I planned on returning to the real world after completing it.

Standing on the bottom step of the staircase, I was met by a curtain of darkness. I guessed that the staircase was a safe zone, and a one-way zone at that. Poking my head through the wall of darkness, my body instantly followed. A small group of trees abruptly surrounded me in the early morning sunlight. Insects buzzed and birds chirped in the distance. A pig oinked nearby, then another. Standing still, I waited and listened. More and more pigs started making a ruckus, there had to be a dozen of them.

I should see if I can make bacon...

Suddenly a voice barked at them, in an unfamiliar language. The voice was deep and harsh. In the dungeons of the other Weapons holders, the explorers had found giant ants, giant spiders and giant centipedes. No one had mentioned pigs.

Or deep, intelligent, masculine voices.

The pigs didn’t listen to the harsh voice, and kept with their complaining.

The voice barked out again, sounding like the owner was approaching my hiding spot, shouting something else.

*SNAP!

Suddenly, a harsh, dark-green face appeared through the bushes and shouted something in that same unknown language. On seeing me, the Lord of the Rings type of Orc, swung his sword at me only to get caught up in the foliage.

Reflexively, I jabbed my new Axe at the Orc, to push him away, forgetting that it was spiked. The three-inch spike penetrated his chest, along with the tip of the crescent of the Axe blade.

Gurgling blood, the Orc, who was half a head shorter than my 6’3”, slumped.

Freezing in place from fear, I watched the Orc bleed and die before me.

I knew I would have to kill, but that Orc, THAT ORC, was all too real. All too human. All too scary. All too alive. I tried to justify to myself that he swung first. THAT Orc wasn’t a bug or a zombie; undead had been rumored to be found in the Indigo Portals. The internet had reported rogue dungeoneers encountering them, along with a half a dozen more fanciful creatures which held even less credence than the zombies.

Dragging the dead Orc’s body further into the small copse of trees (I thought that was what tree groupings were called), I searched the all-too-humanlike dark-green-skinned creature. The Orc had a leather pouch with three small silver nuggets and a foot and a half, five-inch high, thick brass machete and a leather skirt, no shirt. I didn’t find anything else of value. Not that I searched very hard.

A dead Orc with bladder issues didn’t encourage me to stick around.

Holding the Machete in my left hand, “Store in Inventory.” I called out. It disappeared. (I’d learn better ways to move items to my Inventory in the future.)

I opened and closed my hand a few times while staring at my palm in disbelief. I couldn’t believe that actually worked. I checked Status and it read 1/100. When I called out ‘Inventory’ again, it showed ten rows of ten empty boxes with only just that one box filled. That box held a small picture of a brass weapon; an exact 2D miniature pictured replica of the machete that the Orc used.

All the while, the pigs were squealing like mad. The smell of blood probably drove them to distraction. A minute later, I heard another Orc bellow the same thing that the first one said.

I guessed that it was Orcish, for ‘shut up’.

I rattled the bushes a bit, and waited. I heard stomping in my direction. A face appeared in the exact place as the first one. (I kid you not!)

With my Axe at the ready, I thrust again, aiming at the same area. The second Orc was a little shorter and broader than the first. The Axe tip went through his Adam’s apple. Feebly reaching for the shaft, the second Orc crumpled in place. When I removed the spike from its throat, the wound blew bubbles for a minute, before stopping. He didn’t thrash near as much as his friend while dying.

The second dead Orc was also pulled deeper into the copse of trees and searched. Their combined stench was terrible, their bodies must have relaxed, expelling their built-up waste. (Orc poo at its worst!)

A money pouch with two small silver nuggets and a near identical brass machete to the first were all that I found. The second had almost identical loot to the first Orc. Money and nuggets stored. I checked my Axe, no blood, dirt or anything remained on the blade or shaft. I double-checked and there was no blood anywhere on my new weapon in the slightest, my gloves had a little red blood spatter, yet none on my very cool new magical Axe!

The pigs kept squealing. Though they were putting less effort since they had been at it for five minutes straight and it didn’t seem like anyone cared.

Exiting the safety of the trees, I walked carefully toward the pigs. A small dirt and straw hut stood at the other side of the pig pen. Skulls on an ivy rope were hanging on either side of the blanket-guarded entrance. Yellowed human skulls hung on a rope. Six on one side and five on the other.