Dungeon Item Shop - Chapter 2

*BAKAAAAAAW*

Her eyes shoot open at the sudden sound, as her body jostles awake. Everything is bright, too bright, and her hand flies up to shield her surprised gaze as she yelps. Feeling the sensation of a free-fall for just the briefest second, her torso falls back behind herself, her legs seemingly locked into where she is sitting, as the inside of her knees presses against some hard surface. Cold water splashes everywhere around her, her hands flail around in her panicked state of mind, before they find the same stone surface that she is laying on with her back. She presses herself upright, coughing and spluttering out fountain-water as she breaches the surface a second later.

A small fist hits against her own chest as she spits out the water, now sitting back upright on the rim of the fountain. What? Where was she? Why was it so bright?!

Her eyes scan the area around her. It was sparsely wooded, a forest maybe? Had she been kidnapped?! She jumps up and looks around. The fountain behind her is the most obvious thing to look at, but it only seems vaguely familiar. Like something she might have seen in a dream once or in any old, generic park ever. But the rest of this place?

The late morning sun shines down with warm intensity through the boughs of the gently swaying evergreen trees, each of which is moved by the supple springtide breeze. The clearing is small and surrounded by light forestation. A single dirt path leads towards the fountain that she had been sitting on. This place looks more like a shrine than a park of any sorts, she thinks as she swings her arms around, getting the wet off of her pajamas. She hopes that the pink-elephants that were printed on them would forgive her for getting them wet.

“Huh?”

She looks at her clothes. These weren’t her pajamas. There wasn’t a single elephant to be seen anywhere, let alone a speck of pink. She is wearing a dress, no, a robe. It was an off-gray’ish almost, but not quite, white tone. The sleeves are long and flowy and open wide at the cuffs. Also, the wet-front was more… generous and showy than anything she would ever dare to wear outside.

*BAKAAAAAAW*

Surprised again, she jumps and, now roused from her initial shock, looks at the fairly large bird that is running around the clearing, pecking at the dirt. It looks like a chicken. A chicken? Where was she? It looks at her. She looks back at it.

It nods to her.

She nods back. Wait, what?

*BAKAAAW!*

The chicken shouts and spreads its wings, charging towards her with a dangerous look in its small eyes. She screams in surprise and turns tail to run the other way as fast as she can. Her dry leather boots send a cloud of earth up and out behind her as she sprints, scrambling away from the chicken that is hounding her with flapping wings and high-pitched clucks.

“GO AWAY! SHOO! BAD CHICKEN! BAD!” screams the girl, between surprisingly heavy feeling breathes, as she runs from the bird that doesn’t even reach her knees. The creature wildly flaps its wings as it pursues her and chases her away from the fountain. A fork builds itself in the road before her, she hears the squawking just behind her. Not five feet! It’s close! Sweatily, wet, covered in dirt she grabs hold of a branch and makes a sharp turn to the left, one of her feet leaving the road for a moment. Her chest pounds, her lungs burn. She never did exercise much, ever at all really. But was she really this out of shape? She knew that it was absurd to run away from a chicken, but then again, she had never been chased by anything before and its beak did look pretty sharp after all. What if it had rabies? Can chickens get rabies? She doesn’t know and doesn’t want to find out.

Her gaze turns back towards the crossroads just behind her for only a second, but she sees the chicken just standing there, as if not willing to cross some arbitrary line in the sand. Then, as if having lost all interest; it turns and leaves to go back. But not before flashing her a look that she would swear was one of cold judgment.

The sweaty, frantically breathing girl leans forward to plant a palm against the trunk of a tree to catch her breath. She feels nauseous, winded. She knew that she was out of shape, but had no idea that it was this bad. Her head spins. But as she leans there, listening to the noise of the quiet spring day, clarity comes to her blood-rushed head and soon, so do the other sounds.

People. Voices.

She looks to the side, down the road and her eyes go wide as she sees the obvious sight that she had missed before in her panic. The giant stone gate, two large, regal statues stand near the entrance, as if guarding it. One clutching a fantastical sword, the other a decorative spear. Their bodies were hewn of a pristine white, but time-worn stone. The base of which was covered in overgrowth and creeping vines that tried, but never quite reached their legs. Her breath leaves her and she straightens herself upright, slowly walking towards the gate, as the sun shines down brightly onto the pale, pinkish skin of her meager shoulders.

“This can’t be real,” she looks down to her hands, but they’re real. They’re not vague or foggy like they would in a dream. She pinches her fingers against her palm and feels the slight tingle of hurt. This was real. The heat of the sun, the warmth of the kind winds. The dewy sweat on her forehead and the ache in her lungs, all of these were too real to deny. She looks down at herself, the robe thankfully not made of the kind of material that becomes transparent when wet. Though… she looks closer. Something was off.

Her body feels different than she was used to it being. It feels… she squeezes her chest. - Different. It feels different. Was this another world? Could it be? It had to be, she knew it to be. This was it, this was finally it. This was the moment her life would start, the moment that her real life could start. She was surprised in a sense, but also not. She supposes that years of lurking on dark corners of the Internet had made her numb to just about everything. Even something monumental like this didn’t phase her as much as it should have. But, nonetheless. The warmth of the sun feels intoxicating. The laughter and the sounds of people is intoxicating, they both draw her closer.

The girl’s eyes shine brightly, brighter than they had shone in so many years. The sounds of marching and of the hustle and bustle of the city makes itself clearly heard to her heart and ears, emanating out from the plaza just beyond the gate. She walks towards it, but finds her pace quickening to that of a slight jog, then to a run, even if it did ache her throat to breathe this fast. This was it. This would be it!

This would be her chance to finally have a real life to live!