Three days now, Alphonse guessed.
He limped through the suffocating blackness. He'd been in the accursed dark ever since he took that daring, desperate plunge.
He'd been lucky. The wall had curved slightly as he fell and turned into a more natural decline. The end result was less lucky. He'd slammed into an outcropping of rock and a sharp spear of stone impaled his left leg.
He had let out a long, angry scream that suppressed the catastrophic pain. He screamed for his terrible situation. He cursed his betrayer and the party members who left him behind. He raged at the realization that his chances of survival were next to none.
Alphonse remembered the stories of what happened to some of his fellow outworlders that perished during the early days on Hovestile, a time when they'd been so obtuse and vulnerable. They simply became...nothing. Their bodies vanished from Hovestile as if they had never existed there in the first place. They were never sent again from Earth to continue their work. There was no respawn -- no return. There was a grudging acceptance of it, and for some it was a fate worse than death.
Alphonse didn't want to go back to Earth. That world died long ago for him, before it started lacking resources and descended into chaos. It died when there was no longer a place for him to call home.
"I-I'm not going back." Alphonse took the final swig from his waterskin. He choked and was racked by a terrible, rasping cough as sudden bile mixed with the fluid. The heat rose in his throat, and the rations he ate a few minutes earlier splattered on the cavern floor.
"God-fucking dammit," he gasped as he wiped a hand over his mouth.
He propped himself against the wall and leaned forward slightly to assist his airways as he took deep breaths. A few minutes later, after his breathing calmed somewhat, he moved on.
The lack of weight on his person was palpable. Supplies were limited. The damage done to his armor and the missing portions of his gear made him feel naked.
When the pain in his leg became too much to bear, he sat down and started running a check on his inventory: one healing potion, a few grams of curing ivy, a short sword and another day's worth of rations. No arrows, and it didn't matter if he scavenged some since his bow had splintered after the brutal fall. His grapple was gone. It didn't work like in fantasy stories where the hook attached and detached. It was a length of rope with a piece of metal stuck on whatever it latched to. In real life, some things are a one and done deal.
In many ways, this world felt like a fantasy. He had a mana pool for magic, even though he had no spells or active skills to cast at the moment. Strange creatures wandered the world. There were stats like in video games that were still not entirely understood. They supposedly boosted a person's natural abilities, but that seemed the extent of it. Reality reared its ugly head the rest of the time.
Alphonse's eyelids went heavy as he considered these thoughts. He wanted to stay here. Even after all the hardship, he didn't want to let go.
Sleep beckoned him.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A floating orb of light woke him from a dreamless rest. In this empty place where time eluded him, even a few hours felt sufficient.
Alphonse attempted to raise his hand to shield the light but found that he was still too weak to muster the effort. His battered leg refused to obey his will. The other enervated, but healthy leg, scraped against the stone as he attempted to push himself into an upright position. The pommel of his shortsword wedged somewhere against the wall and insistently held him in place.
The outworld adventurer interpreted all these impeding factors as a cruel hint from the universe. And so, he sat there and waited.
The orb moved close enough to reveal a shape behind it. He could tell that it was something vaguely humanoid, an individual too tall to be a goblin. Far too short and lean to be an ogre. He doubted that there was an adventurer like himself stuck so deep in the dungeon. In a place like this, he could only assume it was something come to kill him.
'So, that's it,' Alphonse thought. 'I lose...huh.'
A tear trailed down his cheek. He finally submitted to his deepest fear: going back to that broken Earth.
His mind flashed to a cabin covered with snow deep in the mountains. He didn't know why, but he recalled a time when his father taught him to hunt with a bow. He had been so pleased when he provided enough meat to last them a few weeks. His contribution allowed them to survive, and he was even happier to know that his arrow had been true, striking the heart rather than the lung, which caused the deer minimal suffering.
"Dad...I..." Alphonse's fingers twitched, and he somehow managed to lift his arm a few inches before it fell over his leg.
The silhouette behind the floating orb stopped about a dozen feet from him. Alphonse could make out the shape of a head, two arms and a hand held up flexing five fingers. Every movement suggested a human, until the figure took a few steps closer.
Alphonse started questioning his eyes as a pair of ears seemed to stick out the top of the person's head. They flicked a couple times. The head tilted. The figure moved a few steps closer again.
He had a grasp of what he was seeing. It was definitely humanoid, very much akin to a human in almost every aspect. He could also tell that he was looking at a young woman, perhaps around his age. She wore a set of armor with a chestplate that shaped to the contours of her body. A fine cape was clipped to her shoulders with brunette hair trailing the layered pauldrons. A battle skirt was attached to tightly knit chainmail over her stomach. Long black, thick stockings covered her legs.
Alphonse was first drawn to her pretty face, but then the movement on top of her head seized his attention.
'Ears? Wait...cat ears?' he thought.
She pursed her lips and stared at him with hard, blue eyes; their thin pupils narrowed further as she plainly focused on his wounds. A brown tail swayed behind her and brushed the ground. If not for the ears, eyes and tail she would've looked like a regular, attractive human female.
"Native or Outworld?" she asked. Her voice was soft and pleasant, but also held a bit of a disparaging tone.
Alphonse opened his mouth to speak, but words eluded him. A mix of exhaustion and wonderment took over his senses.
The young woman frowned. "You look awful."
Whether it was his own will or her blunt tone, Alphonse wasn't sure, but something spurred him to speak, "Y-yeah. Been running." It was all he could think to say. He knew the words sounded dumb as soon as they left him, but he didn't even have the will to care.
"Where are your friends?" she asked.
A humorless laugh escaped him, and he fell into a coughing fit before he answered, "'Friends?' Ha! Left me. Used me as bait."
Her frown deepened and flashed a side of teeth. One sharp tooth overlapped her lip. "Disgusting. Pathetic."
He waited for her to say more, but she just continued to stare at him, as if he were something to be pitied. The way she gazed at him started prodding at his nerves. It encouraged him to ease his back against the wall and use it as support. He shifted his one working leg underneath him and managed to stand. He applied a bit of weight to his injured side and found that he could still bend his knee a bit without too much resistance.
The catgirl's frown reversed upon seeing this. "Well now, that's better."
Alphonse managed a tired grin. "Yeah. I assume you don't plan on killing me?"
"That would be a waste."
"Is that right?"
"Yup."
Her matter of fact tone kept him on his heels. He didn't know what to think of this girl. Questions assaulted his tired mind: What was her game? What was she doing down in this godforsaken place?
She seemed to read the look on his face and raised a hand. "Save your questions for later. Lady Rinka will answer them."
"L-Lady Rinka?"
The catgirl approached him until she was mere inches from his face. Alphonse attempted to back away, but the wall held him in place to face her.
"No questions. Save your strength," she said.
He held his hands up in defeat. "Okay, sure. Whatever you say."
She slid next to him, grabbed one of his arms and slung it over her shoulders. He almost instinctively pulled away, but the fog of fatigue suggested otherwise. Being so close to her, he noticed a spiked, tan mark that traveled along her cheek. A similar one was on the other side.
It wasn't until a few minutes later that he realized he was being saved. He might make it out of this place. The warmth in his chest built up and filled with hope.
"Thank you," he said.
"Yeah, sure," she muttered.