The Story of Patchy Hats

Awakening

Where am I? I'm face down on the... ground? It's cold a coarse. I can taste dirt and dried blood, I think? I open my eyes and it's dark, few seconds pass and my eyes get used to the dark. A little bit too well. I can see in the dark.

What happened? My head hurts. There are bodied around me, they're all charred. But I don't smell smoke. I finally stand up, my legs hurt. I'm inside a cave, there are dead bodies around me, I look down, a beard, a large black bushy beard, I guess I have a beard. I move my beard out of the way and I'm wearing rags, they're singed.

From a first glance I can tell that there are over 10 bodies on the floor. There are two items at my feet, a hat made out leather patches and a pristine handaxe, its handle has a basket hilt of all things. It's a beautiful weapon and the cleanest thing I can see in this cave, but there's something more, something glints to one end of the cave.

I put on the hat, grab onto the axe, and walk to that glint. It's still dark so I can barely tell, but it's cold to the touch, I can barely make it out, a mirror? Glass? It's reflective, that I know. I hear something behind me.

One of the bodies on the floor is standing up, its eyes glow maliciously red, it growls. A monster? It looks humanoid, but it's completely charred, I can't tell what it used to be. What I do know is its intent, it wants me, dead. Its hands are charred to the bone, and those bones look sharp.

It shambles towards me, I hold my axe tight, and before it can attack me I swing my axe wildly. I strike the creature, but my axe bounced off of it. The creature must have some protection against physical attacks perhaps. I quickly move away, the creature is still advancing towards me, growling, almost shrieking.

It becomes quicker, I stumble back, it stabs its fingers into my chest, I scream in pain. Between the piercing pain in my chest and that damn creature trying to bite me now, I realize, my scream is the first I remember hearing my voice since I came to.

"Get off of me!" I yell as I push it away. "Your magic, give me your magic!" the creature growled that at me. What magic is it talking about? Can't be the axe, or else it would actually hurt this thing.

The creature opened its mouth wide, wider than it should and it started to inhale. I'm dumbfounded, what the hell is it doing? Then energy came out of me, red wispy energy. "Son of a bitch!" I gasped "I am magic!" feeling a little bit dizzy all of a sudden, I quickly think of something.

"Well if that's the case, and if you're so hungry, can I use my magic like this?" then instinctively I gather some of that energy into my fingertips, point my hand at that creature and like it's a reflex I shoot four bolts of red energy directly to that creature's face.

It gasps, it crumbles, it's no more. But then a roach the size of my hand crawls from under the corpse, it has a shimmering skull on its back, it looks over to me and begins skittering opposite to me. I throw my axe at it and thankfully the roach is not resistant to it, it gets squished under the weight of my axe.

"Magic huh?" I whisper to myself. I have magic then, I am magical? And that roach thing, was it controlling the corpse. I have no many questions and not enough answers, where am I... Awww shit, who am I!? I just realized I have no idea who or what I am. But if I am magical maybe I can...

With a snap of my fingers I make a ball of light appear in front of me, "Son of a bitch! Let's see if I can find a way out of here!"

Now with a light source I can really tell those corpses are all charred, disgusting, but surprisingly enough none of them smell, I was expecting some hideous odor permeating from so many charred bodies, but thankfully they don't smell, I wonder why.

To one side of the cave I can see that the cave continues through a tunnel, but before I venture forth, why not? Maybe they have valuables that could help me. I take some time to check every body that's around me, I find many gold, silver, copper, and platinum coins, too many to sit down and count at the moment. Five fancy looking rings, a silver diadem with a black gemstone, and a steel crown with five incrusted rubies. While searching and wondering how I'm going to carry all of this, I find a backpack full of provisions, very full of provision, like all these provisions shouldn't be able to fit inside this backpack. Must be magical, and to test this theory let me just grab all the valuables I found and see if they fit inside the backpack without any issue.

The valuables fit in there comfortably. The backpack, even though it's filled with provisions and valuables barely weighs anything. But no better clothing, everything else is charred, charred weapons, charred armor, charred shields, what the hell happened here and what the hell happened to me.

Before I forget I pick up the pretty handaxe, and the shimmering skull of that roach thing, might come in handy, who knows. I start walking off into the tunnel "The mirror!" I remember, I turn around to see that cold glassy thing now that I have a proper light source.

And it's a mirror of some kind alright, and I can see myself, in all my dirty glory. A patchy hat on my head, a beautiful axe by my side, a magical backpack in my back, my face almost covered in a big black bushy beard, and I have long black hair too. I look stout, kind of short, "What a minute" I tell myself, "Stout, short, beard, axe, son of a bitch!" it suddenly hits me "I'm a dwarf!"

And how the hell I know what a dwarf is, but don't know where I am, who I am, or how I got magic, are questions that I imagine will plague me for a while. For now, let's see if I can get out of this damn cave, my legs hurt.