A Skeleton

Water. Something wet dripping, for what felt like an eternity something wet was trickling down your forehead again and again, as you regain consciousness from whatever haze induced state you were in, the water had managed to clear your mind a little, your vision returning to you as everything slowly regained its opacity. You can make out a stalactite above your head, the water droplets dripping down from the roof of the darkened cave onto your forehead.

That was peculiar, you're in a cave and could not make out a light source, yet you can see just fine, not only that, as your vision returns to you, your other senses came along with it, you don't feel quite right, your body feels small and frail, you can't feel the flesh on your skin or the organs inside your body, you feel empty and lacked the sense of warmth, if you're cold or hot, you couldn't tell anymore. You bring a hand to your face to inspect it but froze when you see the appendage you've just elevated to your face.

It was a skeletal arm, nothing but bones, it lacked most features of a humanoid hand, no fingers, thumbs or wrist joints, it was like a sharpened spear end, hollowed at the tip, like a knife edge it was indeed sharp. You inspect it with shaky arms, coming to terms that perhaps the cave-in had torn your arm from the elbow up maybe? If so why didn't it hurt, and why were you alive at all? So many questions and so little answers.

You dig your spiked arms into the ground and try your best to lift your still awakening body from the rocky floor, in doing so you bend your elbow joint under the weight of your body, refuting your previous conclusion that your arm was ripped off during the cave in. Just what were you? You've little time to ponder as you look down to your midsection and saw nothing but clear white bone, a skeletal figure with no muscles, organs or flesh to speak of. This realization freaks you out far more than your arm had, you open your mouth in a panicked scream but no noise comes out, you lack the muscles and organs required for speech so you just stood there for what felt like an eternity, raising and lowering your jaw in a wordless and torment filled confusion. You have no mouth and you must scream.

After a while you managed to calm down, if nothing else, John Dweller is a survivor. Studying your body you start playing around with your anatomy, flexing your elbow joints, watching your spear like arm maneuver and twist as you'd imagined a normal human arm could. The same range of motions as a humans but the bones seemingly held together by magic, as no ligaments or flesh could be seen. Looking to your feet you notice you've only got three toes, they were all long and claw like, sharp but not too sharp, clearly meant for digging into the hard rock surfaces of caves for a better grip.

It was then that you look to your side and see a stalagmite growing, it was either an extremely large stalagmite or you're just smaller than you used to be, you bet on the latter being true. John Dweller the 6ft 3 all American miner had become this midget skeleton with spears for arms. The thought was depressing but being depressed wouldn't grant you the answers you desired, only pushing forward would. Always forward, that was your motto.

You walk around in the apparently spacious cave room, everything was silent except the occasional drips of water from atop the cave ceiling, and as he walked those sounds were drowned out by the sound of flowing, no, gushing water. You made your way to the corner of the room where a small underground lake had formed, the water flowing in from a crack in the roof poured down like a waterfall.

You see the crack and looked like you could maybe fit through it, maybe that was a way out of this cave? You tested this theory by wading through the shallow water, feeling the wetness cover your bones but still couldn't feel the cold, approaching the waterfall you begin to wade through deeper waters until you're completely submerged from head to toe, trying to swim you find that you couldn't. Of course you couldn't, you lacked any fat or lungs to create buoyancy, your bones density caused you to sink to the bottom of the small lake.

While submerged you notice you don't need to breath, well of course you wouldn't, you don't have lungs either. But this sudden realization meant that climbing to the top of the waterfall using your sharp shiv-like arms and claw like feet, climbing the waterfall would be pointless. Just as you were about to leave you see a fish swimming in the center, all on his own in this small pond-like lake, he must of been washed in from above somehow and was now trapped. You approach it slowly and swiped at it but that seemed to startle it as it dodged your attack rapidly. You concluded that you probably didn't need food, but wanted to test out your hunting skills nevertheless, if you were to ever get into a conflict down here, you wanted to know what you're capable of.

You swing your hand at the fish once more, but missed by a large margin giving yourself pause for thought as to whether or not is was possible for you to even kill the fish, it was simply too fast for you, or were you just too slow? 'Stupid fish' you think to yourself, swinging again and like before missing the fish. 'stay still you fucker' You put more into your thrust but ended up sending yourself hurtling into the floor of the lake bed on your hands and knees, the fish swam in-between your ribcage, mocking you. 'just you wait you little cunt'. You manage to get back up and locked back onto your target, now it was war.

After a half hour of many failed attempts to skewer the fish, you manage to corner it close to the shallow edge of the lake, and with an accurate thrust you pierced the fish's scaled body all the way through. You're very pleased with yourself, but that didn't manage to last long as words began to form in front of your stunned eyes.

Gained 1XP
Pick up raw unprocessed salmon? Y/N

You're confused beyond belief, you just sat looking at those words for a time, you don't know how but instinctively you knew how to choose an option, you focus your mind on the letters in front of you and selected 'yes' as if making a decision in your head. The fish that had previously been dangling off your sharp spear like appendage dissipated into thin air, startling you slightly, but at this point you weren't sure if anything could shock you anymore. As you're concentrating on this previously hidden ability, you notice some other things that you could only notice now that you were aware of it. Status? Inventory? Skills? Your eyes scan over these words and like before, you focus on the word and select it. 'Status' you choose.

Race: Jabber
Level: 1/10
Gender: Male
HP: 20/20
Armor: 0
Mana: 10/10
Strength: 3(+0)
Agility: 4(+0)
Speed: 4(+0)
Intelligence: 5(+0)
Wisdom: 2(+0)
Luck: 8(+0)
EXP: 1/10

What did this all mean? Strength, speed and maybe even luck spoke for themselves but the rest was just guesswork, you have absolutely no frame of reference for any of these words and numbers. deciding to move on you picked the word below it. 'Inventory' and another interface popped up. There were categories for all kinds of item types, from weapons to armors, to potions, ingredients, materials and so on, but only the food section was occupied.

Raw unprocessed salmon

The item read, focusing on it you notice more options appear in a drop down box, you can choose to eat it, fillet it, or discard it. Deciding to pick the fillet option, the Salmon reappeared out of thin air just as before, dropping to the floor as you lack the opposable thumbs to grasp the fish. However, like an automated process, you get to slicing and dicing the fish as if you aren't in control of your own body anymore, once the fish had been sliced, the fillets had been returned to your inventory now titled 'Raw fish fillet *2'.

You shake your head and then your body as you regain bodily autonomy once more, that crafting feature had been really strange, like an alien was controlling your actions. Moving swiftly on you select the last option. 'Skills', this caused yet another new interface to appear.

Skills:
Stab lvl 1 - does 5 base damage, using agility and strength as a multiplier. 20% chance to apply the bleeding debuff on successful strikes, bleeding for a total of 3 damage over a 3 second period.
Abilities:
Observe lvl 1 - the ability to observe and identify your surroundings
Hard Body (passive) - Piercing attacks damage are reduced by 60%
Poison Immunity (passive) - 100% immunity to all poisons

Stab was straight forward, your body was doing it naturally when you were lunging at that fish, Hard Body and Poison Immunity were understandable as well, but Observe? Did the observe just equate to eyesight? What did it mean? You pondered that thought for a time until you decided to try something out. 'Observe' you think the words aloud in your head, just as before with the menus. Words begin cropping up all around you, all of it mundane and obvious information, the wall was titled cave wall, the rocks on the floor were titled rocks, the water was labeled spring water, and so on. Nothing you didn't know already, Observe seemed to be a pointless ability.

Brought out of your train of thought you heard something approaching the cave rooms only exit tunnel, you prepare yourself for the worst as you ready yourself.