Engineering Ludus 1, prologue

This is the prologue for the first book in a new series, the continuation of Engineering Ludus!  For those who have read the Surviving Ludus Anthology, you are likely aware of the story.

Either way, I told the author we should have a synopsis before the new book begins, so here we are. :)

*Note -- I'm going to put this on Facebook too in my reader group, but the rest of the chapters will be here.

I'l also be adding a few links to the author's patreon and other ways you can connect with him.

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My name is Zac Riggs. If you ask my sister, it's Zac Riggs-tam, but my parents back on Earth named me Zac Riggs. How I got the extra bit is part of the story, so hold your horses. I'll get there in a minute.

So, like I said, I was born on Earth. Nice place. Internet, monster-free wilderness, steel tools, food that doesn't taste like the bastard lovechild of a septic tank and brussle sprouts. Sure, humanity has managed to screw up its fair share of the planet, but on the whole it's a decent place to live. Especially the part I grew up in.

Imagine my surprise when one second I'm hiking in the Colorado Rockies, and the next was in another world. For a while there I was pretty sure I had been abducted by aliens… Huh. You know, I guess I really was abducted by aliens. Never really thought about it like that before now. Zac Riggs: Alien Abductee.

After wandering the forest a while I had my first encounter of a nearly fatal kind. Back on Earth, we don't have much in the way of monsters. Which was why I was completely unprepared when I ran across this absolutely hideous mole-ape hybrid. Beady eyes, a flat snout, massive teeth, nasty claws, and big bat ears.

I called her Fuzzy Wuzzy...and she tried to eat me.

Wait.  Hold on a sec.

Gazra-tam just reminded me again the correct name for the thing was a mole-faced-bat-eared-ape-demon. As far as I can tell there aren't any moles, bats, or apes on Ludus, which is just dumb. Oh, right, I don't think I've introduced Gazra-tam yet. She's my sister and she's an Ocelot-race Mo’hali. Yes, I'm a human. Yes, she's a Mo'hali. Yes, she's my sister. No, I'm not going to jump ahead.

Fuzzy Wuzzy knocked me around like a toy and made enough noise to attract Gazra-tam's attention. To this day I've never gotten a completely straight answer on why she chose to throw that spear, but it saved my life. She crippled the monster and gave me the chance to get in a real lucky hit with my trusty e-tool, and that put it down for good.

Of course, we didn't speak a word of each other's language at the time. It's actually real tough to properly thank someone who saved your life by grunting and pointing. But we muddled through introductions as well as could be expected and she liked me enough to let me tag along back to her place.

Her place turned out to be an underground labyrinth filled with some really nasty death traps. You might even call it a dungeon. Nice place to camp, actually. Temperature controlled, indoor lighting, and a killer security system. Gazra-tam let me stay with her for weeks while she showed me the ropes and taught me Luda. Enough to get my point across, anyway. And once we got past the very basics she started to fill me in on my new world, Ludus and the rabbit hole I'd apparently fallen into.

Then I learned about Dolos, his prohibition on electricity, orbs, the other races trapped here, and, embarrassingly, how anything with iron in it will rot away in hours. I'm not sure how Gazra-tam put up with my incessant questions. I couldn't have asked for a better guide to Ludus. She was and is absolutely amazing. 

I spent about four weeks absorbing everything I could. And during that time Gazra-tam and I got to be pretty close. You live with someone that long with someone and generally wind up either best friends or mortal enemies.

Our camp was relatively safe, but I wanted to move on, see more of the Ludus than a forest and some deathtrap of a dungeon. Besides, for all I liked camping back on Earth, I was a city boy and I wanted to find what passed for civilization. Gazra-tam, on the other hand, made it clear she wanted to stay far away from other people, end of story. Literally, she refused to talk about it.

It's a good thing I knew better than her. Yep, less than a month on Ludus and I was an expert! And when I used my amazing grasp of Luda to explain that I'd be going to the nearest city and why she should come with me, Gazra-tam came right around to my side. Wait. No she didn't. She stormed off.

Yeah, I'm an idiot sometimes.

Which was why I was all by myself when the first humans I'd seen since being transported to Ludus walked through the front door. Thankfully my instruction from Gazra-tam left me with a healthy streak of paranoia, so I stayed out of sight long enough to piece together that they weren't exactly nice people. Then Gazra-tam made that abundantly clear when she nearly killed one of them.

Four against one, and teeth and claws against wood and bronze and she still might have taken them if their leader hadn't pulled a gun. Well, an airgun. It couldn't have had any steel in it, and there's something funky with gunpowder around here, but his airgun was enough to do a number on Gazra-tam before I got off my dumb ass and got her out of there.

This was the most terrifying moment of my life. There I was, dragging the possibly dead weight of my only friend on the planet to safety, dodging pressure plates and tripwires left and right with an armored woman hot on my heels and her boss trying to draw a bead on me. Obviously, we lived through it, but at the time I was sure we were both going to end up shot, stabbed, and left for the monsters.

Well, we managed to escape deeper into the dungeon. The woman chasing us wasn't watching where she was going and stumbled into an arrow trap, and the leader didn't like his odds. But before he left he announced they'd be back, with friends. Probably more interested in loot than revenge, but if we were still there when they got back they'd roll right over us.

Which left us with a bit of a problem. Gazra-tam's rib had stopped the low velocity bullet, but she wasn't going anywhere, at least not safely. As far as medical training goes, I can put on a bandage and some ointment and then call someone who's trained for that sort of shit. I did what I could and managed to wake her up for a bit.

I also realized something, or I guess it sank in for the first time. But every single person I cared about was back on Earth. Family, friends, casual acquaintances, everyone--except Gazra-tam. And I really, really didn't want to lose her. Even if it meant living in a dungeon for the rest of my life.

Apparently she felt the same about me because she took the opportunity to… adopt me? I think? We've both been so busy since then, I need to ask her exactly what this all means. I get the feeling it's more significant than just changing my name. But I'm getting way off track here.

Because I was determined not to leave Gazra-tam, I… left Gazra-tam. To be clear, I left her at the camp while I went deeper into the dungeon. She couldn't move, not with a shattered rib and who knows what else. There was nothing that could help within miles of camp. I had to roll the dice and hope that the dungeon's treasure room had something helpful inside. That meant picking my way through a gauntlet of traps capable of killing me in all sorts of new and interesting ways. We'd mapped some of it, but never figured out how to get into what we thought was the central chamber.

By some miracle, not only did I manage to figure out the puzzle, but there was a healing potion mixed in with the rest of the loot. More than that, there was an orb. Yeah, that's right, there was a Dolos Orb inside.

Orbs are very powerful ways for normal people to become super powered, but unfortunately, I think there might have been something wrong with it.  This one didn't let me shoot lasers out of my eyes or lift boulders with my pinkie finger. What I can do is telekinesis. A bit, anyway. Really, I thought magic powers would be stronger than an anemic five-year-old, but it has come in handy.

Once I woke up from my orb-induced coma, Gazra-tam and I straightened a few things out. We wouldn't be running and hiding, we were going to stick around and kill every one of the bandits that poked their noses into our dungeon. And, yes, I did say bandits. These guys, well, mostly women, did worse than just rob travelers, though. They wiped out Gazra-tam's clan. Killed or captured everyone but her. And the ones they captured--the dead may have been better off.

We never really expected to fight all these hardened killers?  I was never delusional enough to think I was an action hero.  The plan was to use our environment.  The dungeon was already packed to the bursting with death traps a-plenty to do that for us. We just needed to give them the opportunity to shine.

Before I came to Ludus, I was studying to become an engineer. Around here, I understand that involves building and construction work. On Earth, it meant a lot more. Give an engineer enough spare parts, and they'll solve any problem you throw their way. And with my new orb-granted TK abilities I could turn a trap into spare parts in record time.

When the bandits showed up we were about as prepared as possible for us to be. Gazra-tam's job was to hang back, pick off stragglers, and generally do ninja shit. She's insanely good at that sneaky stuff, and actually had real fighting experience. Something about growing up in a caravan that traveled through monster infested wilderness. 

Meanwhile, I led the main group on a little chase through the tunnels. They were prepared for basic traps and a few desperate scavengers. What they got was every dirty trick and nasty surprise a Terran engineer who grew up with scary movies, old cartoons, and a tub full of legos could dream up.

Slaughterhouse is a good word for what we turned this dungeon into. A slaughterhouse for sentient beings. I used poison, swinging scythes, acid sprays, explosive clouds, deadfalls--anything I could hack together. And when it all got to be too much for these hardened killers and slavers and thieves they broke and ran...right into more of the same.

To  be honest, it was too much for me, too.  I have nightmares now.  A lot of them.

Justice is looser out here in the Ludan wilderness than back home. What we did here would have probably gotten me the death penalty on Earth. According to Gazra-tam we were solidly in the right, and I guess I agree with her. The people we killed got what they deserved. They'd done worse to travelers on the roads, and they would have done the same to us if they had the chance. But I still had to look the survivors in the eye as I finished them off. I had to listen to them beg for mercy that I just couldn't give. And I'll have to live with it the rest of my life. Was it justice? I don't know. But the thing that scares me the most is I know deep down I know I'd do it all over again if I had to.

Fifty bandits broke into our dungeon. Eight reached the treasure room. Seven are still there, and will be forever. They saw the loot and their greed killed them when a multi-ton block of granite sealed them in.

But there'd been one left--Fancy Pants--the big boss, himself. Complete with designer suit and British accent! Yeah, an accent, here of all places. Let me tell you, he sounded really weird speaking Luda, which seemed to be an affection. Apparently he was a transportee like me from a while back and wanted to sound “eccentric.” More importantly, he got an orb when he showed up on this rock, and then went and found himself a spirit stone to go with it, making it stronger. And unlike me, his orb was good for more than party tricks. It made him into the goddamned Flash! Or close enough. 

It was a good thing he liked the sound of his own voice because it gave me time to concoct a plan so complex, so devious, so awe-inspiringly brilliant that it still gives me the chills.

I tied his shoelaces together.

Imagine that. The guy could move fast enough to dodge a freaking bullet, but was undone by a bit of TK and the kind of prank a five-year-old would play. Two shattered ankles later Gazra-tam was on top of him and it was all over.

So, yeah, that's my story. Now it's just about time for me to get some sleep. In the morning Gazra-tam and I are off to parts unknown. To do what? Well, I'm not entire sure I know.

At this point I'm just rolling with the punches.