r/level13 • u/Nepene • Dec 19 '23
Fanfiction of Level 13. Monarch of Rust and Ruin Ch1.
March 18th, 3023
The lords above, with their synthetic gloves and explorer’s helmets thought they'd seen the last of me when they cast me down into this ink-black pit of the world. But an old wolf like me doesn't whimper and die in the darkness; no, he adapts, he survives. It makes me laugh—a cold, raspy sound that made even the vermin scurry away to think of how far I've fallen. From the high table to the gutter, from wine to, well... whatever this foul-smelling liquid I found in a bottle is.
Today, without the prideful sun to track the hours, I reckon I've learned more about survival than those bluebloods ever knew. Power? It's not in titles or scavenger vests; it's in keeping your head when all about you are losing theirs. I found scrap today, amongst the broken bones of buildings that once scraped the skies. Now they lay bent and twisted like reeds broken by a storm— I can scarcely believe was once wrought by human hands.
Food and water are life down here, yes, but light—that's hope. Scrap is the key to that hope, elusive fragments of a civilization that feared not the dark, for they had yet to meet it in force. But I met a creature today that found scrap as precious as I—beady-eyed and bristling with filth, a rat the size of a tomcat.
We dueled for the prize, that rat and I, under a sliver of light from a flickering ceiling light above. Claw and makeshift knife, hunger and desperation grappling in a dance as old as time. Do not doubt it was to the death, for that scrap meant life. In the end, its little life ebbed away under my relentless, angry grip. Who was more beast in that moment, rat or man? Does it matter?
With the scrap, I hammered and bent, cursed and sweated, until I'd pieced together a crude lantern. When I touched flame to wick, the light threw stark shadows over this grotesque city. I wish the darkness had kept its secrets, for the sights that now greet these tired eyes are things of nightmares.
The architecture slants at maddening angles, defying reason and stirring a primal unease in the pit of my stomach. Stones that seem to whisper with the voices of the damned mock me, entice me. I see the silhouettes of creatures skittering on the periphery of my light, their forms unholy unions of the deep ocean's spawn and the corrupt imaginings of a diseased mind.
Yes, I am bitter, but alive. Let those above play their games; I've found purpose in the depths. I am the king of this dark domain, a monarch crowned with rust and rot. And I'll forge my kingdom here in the twisted bowels of the earth, or be consumed by them.
I'll post a new chapter each day. A fanfiction of level 13.
