This wasn’t going well. At least it was a magic sword, and weapon availability was a god-send. I didn’t have much faith in going out and punching things. That was reasonable in contact sports because of gloves. I’d punched a wall in frustration exactly once in my life and broken my hand whilst doing so. All of a sudden feeling returned to my ears again and caused me to mentally hit the next shiny tab in hopes of avoiding yet more creepy surround-sound whispering. It said ‘magic’.

  There were three categories of magic; cantrips, low magic, and high magic. Both low and high were greyed out, but cantrips showed a single-item list and a blinking ‘choose new cantrip’ button. The System treated me to another involuntary reading session. Spells were cast by thinking about them. The same had been true for summoning a sword. At least it spared me from saying shit out loud.

  I centered myself for a moment as the speed-reading started getting to me, or maybe it was the dissociation and accompanying lack of sensation, or the world ending. The insanity of recent events once again broke through to the forefront of my mind, only to be whisked away back down with surprising ease, which allowed my consciousness a return to the main event.

  My class afforded me a single chosen cantrip. It was Dungeons & Dragons terminology for infinitely repeatable and essentially free spells. This confused me a bit as [Create food and drink], was also a D&D spell but not a cantrip. It had a cost of ten energy too. Despite the forced selection, it felt like a good one to have.

  The orientation message outright said things weren’t the same anymore, which probably meant no supply-chains and so forth. I’d never gone deep on researching any food industry but mass starvation seemed extremely likely. The thought rekindled another realization as it became clear none of my family was going to survive the week if that was the case. Dad was on life support while grandma needed a whole laundry list of medication to keep her going.

  She also hadn’t been much of a conversationalist for the last five years. Dementia did that to a person. I didn’t need the System’s help to repress the rationalization. It looked like I’d be making my way through the post-apocalypse the same way as before, mostly alone.

  For a moment I wondered if my kittens had survived, they hadn’t even been given real names yet. A deep loneliness broke through, which the System remedied by reminding me I had company, again. The whispers had been repeating themselves for a while now.

  “Choose.”

  ‘Fuck off’ was the first thing which came to mind. I wasn’t a very mature person unless something called for it and perhaps somewhat stressed at the moment. The System really wanted me to get on with it though. As always, my powers of deduction were impeccable. Shame I had a problem with authority.

  “Choose.”

  ...

  “Choose.”

  This fucker could really benefit from a lesson or two on user-friendliness, and a better color scheme.

  “Choose.”

  I almost said Pikachu. Fine. It hadn’t given me a list to select from or anything reasonable like that. It wanted me to ‘vocalize’ a keyword and my mouth had unfrozen some time ago.

  “Choose.”

  I tuned out the incessant whining and had myself a thinking session. Instincts wanted to say ‘light’ but fortunately my gut reactions were less of the ‘always listen to’ and more of the ‘here’s an idea for a shitstorm’ variety. A furtive glance at my surroundings had shown my vision was surprisingly clear for someone in a completely enclosed space with no light-source.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  Doubly so considering the fact my contacts were currently somewhere on the floor and I wasn’t effectively blind for some reason. Oh, well at least I wouldn’t have to pay the mortgage anymore. Too bad the house was probably gone too.

  The thought calmed me down a little. I tried to remember what D&D cantrips and first level spells existed but it wasn’t going so well. A few ideas sprung up however. First thing which came to mind was ‘message’... or rather ‘sending’. The gaminess of everything so far and the lack of good design philosophy made me a doubtful whether ‘message’ would be interpreted as ‘send a text’ or ‘leave bad advice on the ground’. If this worked out I’d at least have a chance at contacting friends.

  First-second idea was healing, although I hadn’t seen anything suggesting it was a thing in the class list. Second-second idea was ‘mending’. Clothes were a bitch to make pre-industrial revolution and if I accepted the premise here then not walking around in rags would be a big win, especially if time equaled power.

  Third and so on was just a list of poorly remembered utility cantrips – mage hand, prestisomething, all more cool than useful. Offensive and defensive cantrips were a thing too, probably had that angle covered with the magic sword and prospect of becoming superhumanly fast though. Okay, sending, healing, mending, rethink.

  “Sending.”

  “Invalid cantrip.”

  Damn.

  “Healing.”

  “Invalid cantrip.”

  “Mending.”

  "Cantrip chosen: Mending."

  Yes!

  “Orientation complete. Think: close interface.”

  An intrusive thought did.

  Shades of color returned to the world. Then it hit me all at once. My ears rang with worlds’ worst case of tinnitus, like someone punched me in the face, repeatedly - swollen lips and all. I fell to my knees with my hands on the floor, again. My vision clouded and rising bile nearly caused me to throw up. An urge to cry never made it to the surface, replaced by habitual dead staring.

  My head spun. Everything was fucked. Future? Gone. Everything I worked for? Gone. The thoughts looped over and over again in my head. I heaved while catatonically opening and closing the interface in the vain hope it would fail so the bad dream could end. Yet as my mind circled the drain of despair, it suddenly flushed away to make place for… a feeling I didn’t recognize. Something changed before it could be picked apart.

  Errant detected. Closing interface.

  Odd rickety clicks and scraping echoed. My eyes snapped up and I backed off towards the wall opposite the hallway in what must have been the most adrenaline fueled scurry of my life. It still took me a second or two to really focus on the creature. Partly because I had to wipe my eyes and clear my airways, partly because it just came out of the shifting shadows. It was some kind of skeletal abomination, or maybe a metal-album cover come to life.

  A quadrupedal monstrosity, with four arms too – an inhuman mish-mash of skeletons. It reminded me of the Vitruvian man drawing but with a spine made out of skulls fused together at odd angles and no head. A few of the skulls looked human, others animal, some were unrecognizable. Everything else suggested unnatural interwoven cords of bones. Two of the legs were vertically oriented and taking lanky, unbalanced steps towards me. The other two legs were doing much the same, but each on opposite sides of the wall like it was bracing itself in the hallway.

  It had an unnatural gait, slowly sliding towards me with four appendages outstretched and grasping at air. There was all kinds of nasty looking shit at the ends, a pincer of lower jawbones with teeth and all on one. A collection of pointy bone shards adorned the other. The third waved mismatched talons around while the last snapped with a single big claw. A snort finally cleared my airways. The air smelled stale aside from a whiff of cigarette smoke. It was a big bastard, bear-sized maybe. As big bastards were won’t to be, it was slow. Really slow.

  The human mind worked in a funny way. It put labels on everything, all filed into categories according to patterns. I considered this thing a bone golem before even consciously taking in what it looked like. Another funny thing about humans was that we had a built-in combat mode. We weren’t at the top of the food chain without reason.

  I had already frozen, couldn’t flee and just finished fawning. The last remnants of catatonia faded away, replaced by a rising anger, perhaps even hatred – wasn’t really the type to hold a grudge but this warranted an exception. Errant detected… Errant projectile… Kill the Errant.

  For the first time today, the System and I were in perfect agreement.

  I straightened up and placed one foot forward and the other foot back, then bent my knees a little. My hands came together, spaced in a two-handed grip on an imaginary stick.

  Summon sword.

  Some part of me went “what the fuck do you think you’re doing?’’ but for once never listening to that particular internal voice worked to my advantage. As usual, I preferred the other one instead and it sang, urging me to take this fucker apart.