Lofi Library

Chapter 1 The Beginning

    On Kaori's fifth birthday, she found an artifact of the old world what would changer her life and start her journey. A staff perched upon a large sloped pedestal in a room the size of a large living room. The room was thoroughly decorated top to bottom with military medals, furniture (the size of which would make a grown man feel like a child,) and letters framed in gold incrusted wood from someone important enough to have stamped with red wax with a crest that could only be described as a "royal" letter F.

    On the wall behind the pedestal was the portrait of a Rhynoid race wearing a suit of armor and holding the staff slated into the pedestal. A large plaque at the bottom of the painting read "Gen F. Rosenhorn." The staff was made of a white wood, had a pointed end, and at the top was adorn with a blue crystal disc etched with a rune inscribed on it in the shape of a magic circle surrounding another white gemmed disc with pointed edges.

    Kaori reached out her small arms to grab the staff the staff. Catching her balance she falls forward grabbing it with both hands to steady herself.

    The hair on her arms stand up as her skin turns to gooseflesh. Her head aches as if she were having a brain freeze and the ground below her frost over sending even more chills down her spine. Kaori's father, still pushing at her legs to help her ascend the slope, starts slipping back down the icy slop toward a group of zombies that were previously chasing them. Kaori gripped the staff and pulled herself up to then extend her arm to try and help her father.

    Unable to reach him, she yelled out for him to jump. Her father dug his nails into the cold icy stone but could not get a grip. His feet unable to gain traction failed to scramble back up the slope. Kaori repositioned herself upon the staff and stretched out her arm even further trying to help him. The horde below was small, with only about 12 in this group many of which were also slipping on the slope as well. Her father twists around looking at the horde. Sliding to where a zombie had been leaning onto the slope with arms out stretched, her father kicks off its skull crushing it but pushing him to the side of the horde where he tumbles and gets to his feet.

    He runs to the western side of the room next to a barred window coaxing the zombies to follow. They moan in unison, some eyes shifting form the little girl at the top to the cornered man making an excessive amount of noise. He yells out, “Kaori get out of here!” The density of zombies in front of the exit door now only two, are still intently fixated on Kaori at the top and trying to ascend the icy incline. Kaori picks up the staff that she now notices is glowing a pale blue and uses it's light to lure the remaining zombies a bit more out of her way. She then uses the icy slope to slide down and out the door.

    Staying on her feet she uses the momentum from the slide to start running down the hallway while thinking of how to try and lure her father's pursuers away from the previous room. She realizes she is too late when she hears the scream and subsequent quietness that resonated from said room. She was also too late to realize that the floor is still frozen. When a bend in the hallway takes a sharp angle, she slips while adjusting her footing, slams into the wall directly in front of her, and loses grip of the staff that was originally tightly clenched in her hands.

    "Damn it!" she says shaking her head trying to uncross her eyes as her vision doubles and pain shoots through her left temple.

    The floor around her becomes a small pool or water before it gets sucked into the dry cracked floor boards below. She lets out a painful sob, holding the left side of her head and bangs her right fist on the floor. She pulls herself to her feet to see that the horde from the previous room coming her way. She bends back down and grabs the staff. Instantly the floor becomes icy once again causing her to slip and fall for the second time.

    Her back was to a wall and to her right a horde baring down upon her, she looks at the staff and then the floor coming up with an idea. She shuffles close to the wall behind her, flipping her to place her back to the frozen floor. The horde, though slow, is at its max speed. As soon as they get 3 foot from her, she puts her feet against the wall and kicks off. This sends her sliding down the opposite hallway away from her pursuers. They crash into the same wall she had hit just a few seconds before causing it to cave, a portion of the horde now in another room.

    Before she can celebrate her escape she looks in the direction of travel and realizes she had pushed far harder than she needed to. The hallway ends in a T-intersection with a display cabinet set under a large framed painting of a rhino-man donned in metal armor holding a staff not too unlike the one she is currently holding. She slams into the legs of the cabinet causing them to snap and the cabinet crash beside her spilling another assortment of military medals into the hallway she just came from. Ribs aching and a rumbling in her ear she looks up to see that she again had dropped the staff. "Why do I even keep trying to take you!?" The floor unthaws. Her clothes are now completely soaked through from the water that has once again replaced the ice.

    Looking at her pruned hands she starts to realize her body temperature is plummeting as she starts to shiver. The door to the left of the shattered display starts to rattle rhythmically. Remembering the rumbling in her ears, she realizes it's not coming from her imagination or her pounding headache but from heavy and fast footsteps coming from behind the door. The rattling stops. All she can hear is the ever present moans from the hoard now starting to bear down back upon her. She has an awful feeling, grabs the staff, then blindly kicks off the cabinet. She starts sliding again on her back across the floor frozen once again down the third hallway away from the door. Kaori looks back to see the door cave in as a mass of flesh barrels through it. She can almost not believe the sight as the thick doors splintering into glass sized fragments simultaneously sending one of the the metal hinges ricocheting past her face. This is a type of zombie she has never seen before but has heard of. Her father had told her of one he called a "hurler." He had encountered it the last time he and her mother had tried to investigate this fort. Her initial reaction to the name was thinking of old horror movies where a zombie vomits to try and infect those unfortunate enough to be in its way. He explains that it throws itself at its target and to try and squish it. This one is not human despite that being the case with the rest of the soldier looking zombies. In this case it seems to have been a Rhynoid in origin. He hadn't seen it while scouting and thought that it was either gone or was stuck somewhere. He and Kaori had both done a small bit of reconnaissance over the past week and had not seen it once. It looks similar to the one pictured in the staff's room except that the horn had been sheared off and smoothed over and the size of its body was more toned than the bulky image presented before. What ever the creature had been wearing at the time of transition into zombie had long rotted away leaving only minimal leather parts that were also threadbare to the point they may fall off at any point. As the dust clears, the hurler's eyes moved down the hall and spots Kaori. In the next instant the hulking figure had already bent down and thrown itself towards her. It makes it half way down the hall, hits the ground, and continues to slide while shortening the distance to her. Still sliding, Kaori looks towards the end of the end of the hall to see an open door just a few feet before it ends in another right turn. Just as the hurler closes the distance, Kaori throws the staff inside while unsuccessfully trying to catch hold of the door frame to pull herself in. The floor starts to defrost causing Kaori and the hurler to start to tumble. It awkwardness of the hurler's figure causes it to tumble over the top of Kaori landing on her wrist then both of them slamming into a door at the end of the hallway. She slams into its back and quickly jumps to her feet cursing and grabbing her wrist. ----

    The hurler may be fast as it throws itself but is slow to get up. It stumbles to its feet and turns around. Kaori moves as quickly as she can inside the door where she threw the staff. She finds it next to a window on the other side of the room. She picks it up and looks back to see the hurler in the doorway. The inhales and lets out a guttural yell. Kaori kicks off the wall toward the beast. At the same time it lunges forward. Kaori slides underneath it. The hurler hits the floor face first a few feet behind her and continues to slide until it hits the wall below a large window. Its upper body hits the wall and causes his lower half to fly up breaking through the window above. It pushes up its upper body causing its lower body that was hanging out the window to pull the rest of the body with it. Kaori was on the fourth floor, but with high ceilings it would roughly be the equivalent of 7 to 8 stories up. ----

    The old floor beneath Kaori starts to moan. The floor splinters and she falls onto the top of a bookshelf three foot down and rolls off the side, but she grabs onto the top shelf catching herself. Her backpack falls to the ground spilling its contents of a journal and a handful of pencils her father had gotten her last year. She now realizes that quickly freezing and unfreezing something wears away its structural stability. The bookshelf may only like 3ft down from the floor but the bookshelves themselves are almost 15ft tall and her hurt wrist causes her to fall the rest of the way landing on top of her journal. The air instantly gets pushed from her lungs and her vision fades. ----

    She is awoken by the sound of a loud thud and wet feeling to her left. She opens her eyes to see a number of zombies looking down the whole caused by weathering effect of the staff. She sees a second whole and looks to her left to find a zombie that had fallen and crushed its head on a table near her. She looks around to find the door as another zombie falls through the floor crashing into a bookshelf knocking it over. This gives her a line of sight to the door behind it. Getting up and gathering her belongings she darts toward the entrance of the room. Getting to the door, she hears the ceiling above her moan and collapse with the weight of the horde she was initially being chased by. They land on the book cases causing them to fall. A domino effect sends a bookshelf at Kaori. As she gets through the door a bookshelf slams the door shut behind her blocking the way by the weight. On the other side of the door Kaori finds the tower that her and her father had entered through. A spiral staircase set in the tower with windows facing the western side of the fort. She finds the branch from a near by tree that she and her father used to enter the fort from outside a window near the top of the stairs. After she wraps the staff in cloth taken form her backpack, she easily makes her way outside without slipping and tumbling to her doom down multiple branches of the tree. ----

    Her father's nearest safe house is 15 miles away. After all of that she is exhausted. It's getting dark and her water pouch is frozen solid. She will make due by setting up a tree hammock about half a mile away. She can't start a fire. The light will attract unwanted attention. So she'll have to wrap herself up as snug as she can. Walking away from the entrance, the body of the hurler is roughly 10 foot away from the building. Kaori finds a machete around its belt. She thinks to herself, "This is good because my father had the only knife. Though this probably qualifies as a sword in comparison to my size. That's right. I need to give my father a proper funeral." She may have been born as his daughter, but she felt somewhat of a disconnect. She felt as though he may have blamed her for the death of her mother, but never said so. Being older mentally, it did seem weird to consider someone younger as her parent. She also still had all of her memories from her previous life; so even being born in this world was surreal. She thinks he was probably in his early 20s when she was born. In comparison, she died when she was 28. That would make her 33 today. However, She can't say she won't shed a tear. He has protected her despite the contempt and lack of real social interaction. It took Kaori until she was 3 years old to learn this world's language. It's safer to be quiet in this world anyways, but she bets I sounded really weird using an adult ways of speaking while also being in her tiny body. She thinks to herself, "Good for me I don't look all too human..." She sighs," I'm avoiding thinking of him." She knows she can't focus right now and is holding out that he may be alive. She justifies this by saying, "I didn't see anything. All I heard was a scream." Ignoring the conflicting feelings inside her, she sets out to find her nest for the night. After Kaori makes note of the layout of the fort. She makes her way back toward the safe house looking for a tree that is bushy enough to block sight from the bottom. Along the way she decided to find some food. She spotted a rabbit and decided to try something. She didn't have supplies to set up a trap, but because she had a staff that caused the ground to become frozen she thought of a way to use it. She found hunting to become extremely easy using the staff. On dirt the staff creates a smooth and slippery surface when frozen. As long as she gets a running start, she can touch the staff and slide all the way to her prey. While the prey does end up seeing her, it ends up scrambling and falling to the ground unable to understand why the dirt is slippery. Her new sword hits its mark easily. Fifteen miles through thick forest makes the trip takes quite a bit more time than normal. She makes if about 3 miles before finding an appropriately camouflaged tree. Keeping the staff wrapped is key for her journey and her drinking water. She does test and finds out that any liquid within about 15yards not within a living body freezes. Large quantities of water don't thaw quickly, and she gave herself quite a scare the first time beside a river. She was curious as to what would happen. The resulting wave threatened to take her along with it. Dirt and other surfaces that were frozen tend to thaw in less than a second. The air around her would also become cold. [The end of spring is coming soon. The summer heat will be brutal. I'm glad to have this. Air conditioning is one of the few things I've missed the most. On top of that I would say premade soap. I've been able to make do with the natural soap using some of the plants near streams. How in the world did I not learn about different herbology in my graduate classes? Wouldn't that help me understand why different people lived in different areas? In dig sites you very rarely find traces of flora used. Understanding their uses might help determine why nomadic groups ended up settling or why they moved to certain areas during different seasons. My father has taught Stme a lot. I wonder how much of this he picked up through my mother.