Trapped in Another World With No Magic

Wind races by with an impressive roar, unfettered and unchallenged as the most free element in the world. It flicks violently through sun-kissed brunette hair, and the turbulence plays across softly tanned fair skin.
Zuzia knows she’s flying through the air at barely sub-sonic speeds as if she were riding a motorcycle without a helmet or any protective gear. Her clothing is also a simplistic, but comfortable dress loaned to her by the Empress younger than she is.
“Forgive me for this Zuzia,...” states an extremely deep, but apologetic voice with the grace and kindness of a noble knight.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” replies the Polishwoman as she keeps her eyes closed, enjoying the breeze for what it is. She knows in her heart what’s going on, and she knows the stakes. “I’m just enjoying the breeze in my face…”
“Yes, but what we will have to do…”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” repeats the brunette with slight irritation in her voice. “Whatever secrets you have should remain your own!”
She’s being carried through the air by a massive foreclaw. In her mind, she knows who it is, but she dares not acknowledge it.
“I swear I will keep my promise to ensure you are freed, whatever it costs me…”
“I don’t know who you are, Sir Neith. If I did know who you
I would be compelled to act against you. But, since I don’t know what you are or who you are, let me just enjoy the ride in peace for a bit.”
The dragon scoffs and finally gives up on trying to be
helpful. “Very well, my Lady. We’ll be there in a few moments.”
“Sir Neith, I do hope you’ll be careful not to tear up my dress too badly. I doubt I’ll be able to pay back her Majesty anytime soon. I don’t want to trade Yauloser’s slavery for debt slavery to an Empress.”
The dragon chuckles again, audible over the wind itself. “As a matter of fact, that’s how I met my fiancee, if you’re interested in hearing about it.”
“When we can sit down and chat in a relaxing environment, good sir. I want the full story. Juicy details, when you’re getting married, all of it. Oh, and how you plan to fend off your Emperor from stealing your girl.”
Neith lets out a heartfelt laugh. Zuzia does trust that, even if Daniel tries to turn her into one of his harem consorts, she can find a way to escape if she bides her time and makes allies. But, more importantly, she hopes he’s at least halfways decent as a person.
“This should be a safe enough area not to interfere with the firefighting efforts, as well as avoid any collateral damage as much as possible, my Lady,” declares the dragon as he lowers to the ground. She opens her eyes and can see that they are pretty solidly in undeveloped territory, though it’s mostly open plains that
be good farmland someday, just judging by what Zuzia is familiar with.
Neith sets her down on the ground, and she stumbles forward away from him. She’s not sure if she can look at him without triggering her orders, even if he’s in a different form. She technically knows he’s the target in question, but she
knows that he is truly Neith of the Fievegal, rather than a knight of the Empire who she was ordered to kill via telepathy.
“Can I ask a question?” asks Zuzia without looking at him.
The pitch of his voice has changed, taking the more humanoid tone as the knight replies, “Of course, my Lady.”
“Since I seem to be able to avoid my orders for the moment, could you just stuff me into one of those magic bags like I did with Serrentuk?”
“I can try,” replies the dragon. “But, we’re concerned about your magic resistance. Serrentuk himself was able to overtake it with brute force magic, whereas a void bag assumes the object follows normal conventions for this world. If your passive resistance drains the mana of the void bag to zero while you are personally inserted…” He trails off ominously, and Zuzia grimaces as she pictures the possible outcomes.
“I’d be lucky for it to expel me by exploding, right?”
Neith scoffs. “Yeah. There’s a reason most races who know about the void bags fear being put into one themselves. When we die, our souls pass on, or so it’s widely believed. Some believe we become part of the world, others believe in afterlives, and even Daniel mentioned reincarnation as a belief on parts of Earth. But, the void bag captures the whole, including the soul. So, if it’s destroyed…”
“No one wants to find out what happens, huh?”
He nods. “Magic can destroy or harm souls directly, and void magic, particularly, can erase things from existence, presumably, even a soul.” The dragon’s voice softens as he keeps his position away from Zuzia. He could launch a sneak attack, since it seems he needs to wear her down, but he’s being respectful even now. “I… was nearly erased by the void artillery… I only managed to save a handful of people while many more were lost…”
Zuzia wonders how many years Neith has lived, and what kinds of things he has experienced. But, death seems to be something he is even more familiar with than anyone should ever hope to be.
The young Polishwoman murmurs softly, “I… had to kill Serrentuk with my own bare hands… And, the worst part is… It was… so easy…” She wants to look at Neith and speak to him face to face. She wants to share her feelings with him, and to see his thoughts and how he reacts. She wants to connect, since she has few friends in this world, and she has endangered or harmed all of them herself. But, she can’t. The moment she does, she will be compelled to launch a full attack on him.
“Not the willpower to do so, mind you. It took everything in my soul to carry out the attack Serrentuk and I planned together… The only way to free him from his own master’s grip… Because he’s such a powerful mage. But…” She closes her hand into a fist, looking at her metaphorically blood-soaked hand.
“I consider him a friend,... and my fist passed through so easily.”
She looks partially over her shoulder, distinctly avoiding making eye contact with her only ally in the moment. “I don’t want to regret how easily my hand will pass through you, Sir Neith.”
She can hear footsteps approach her, and she looks ahead at the plains before them. It’s nighttime now, though the moonlight bathes the rolling hills quite well. And, in the distance, she can see the faint white glow on the horizon through the crystal-clear air not yet tainted by smog.
A hand lands gently on Zuzia’s shoulder, and Neith says from directly behind her. “I don’t intend to make it easy on you, Lady Zuzia. If my math is correct, we have a few more minutes before your other order kicks in, which means we begin regardless. I would rather you be locked onto me so I can buy time.”
“Buy time for what?”
“Well, if all goes according to plan, I win the fight, you fall unconscious, and I take you back to the Citadel. If I last long enough, reinforcements will arrive to help me make that happen, and in a worst case scenario, they catch up to you before you reach Yaulander.”
“He’s going to be looking for me…”
“We’re handling that, too. He may see through our plan, but until then, we just need to delay or defeat you.”
“It feels like a whole Empire is trying to save little ol’ me…” jokes the brunette.
Neith chuckles. “Two, as a matter of fact. Whether you like it or not, you are the equivalent of a superweapon in this world. No one with the power would merely leave you in the hands of their enemy. Right now, while Yaulander has very little control over you, may be our only chance to break you free.”
“Sir Ecklevon said something similar…”
Zuzia places her hand on Neith’s saying with a slightly playful edge to her warning tone, “I told him, but if either you or Daniel try to add me to your harems, I will enjoy killing you. And, on Earth, it was a fantasy to eat dragon meat. Don’t think I won’t just because we’ve had a conversation.”
Neith laughs, gently shifting his thumb to interlock with hers and reassure her. “I am committed to my fiancee, and at most, will provide my essence to produce more dragon children, since our population is woefully small. If I outlive her, I will figure it out then. You are visibly pleasing, for a human, but there are a lot of humans to choose from if I was so inclined.”
Zuzia smiles and nods. “Alright. That’s a good answer, I suppose. As thanks, I’ll let you have the first punch, since we’re running out of time. If… If you really can bring a person back, I… Please bring me back. Free, of course. I want to live, but… I don’t want to be a tool of evil.”
“If that’s the case, I won’t hold back, my Lady. But, I swear I will not fail you.”
She nods, feeling a bit of fear start to fill her heart. It’s probably an even split between the thought that she might actually die and the fear that she might kill Neith instantly.
“I’m ready.”
Neith’s hand leaves hers and her shoulder, and she closes her hand in faint disappointment. She trusts him as much as she can, but she has little other choice. That said, his words, his tone, and his sincerity all seem genuine, whereas she knows Yaulander can flip on a dime.
Neith whispers, “Do not be afraid, my Lady. I don’t intend to let either of us die today.”
She nods and closes her eyes, doing her best to relax. If she braces herself, she might break his fist if he really does go all out. Though, she has heard that drunk drivers tend to survive more often than they should in accidents because-...
All thoughts, sense, and the presence of the world itself that any person relies on to know they are awake dissolves into a soupy mess of turmoil and swirling like a rainbow put into a blender with gravity and light all stirred together. The dizzying sensation only starts to clear as Zuzia feels the ground crater under her from a devastating bounce that sends a cough through her lungs in the way a swift smack in the back would have on Earth, even if it wasn’t necessarily painful in and of itself.
Rather, the hit she just received, which now has her sailing through the air in an arc that would be lethal on its own when she lands were she still on her homeworld, actually starts to burn in her cheek and jaw where the blow struck. The ache spreads quickly, but her vision is already clearing. Her instincts kick in, and she braces herself for her landing, which doesn’t hurt at all, in spite of her tumbling across the ground a little further. She once heard that a human body can bounce from a fall a maximum of three times, though it doesn’t make a ton of sense, since a fall with enough energy to bounce three times is more likely to leave a wide stain on the ground, rather than produce a bounce. That said, if the body is borderline indestructible, then it comes down to the water content absorbing the shock, and she has a lot of horizontal momentum, rather than a simple fall.
Her graceless landing ends with her sliding across the ground looking up at the moonlit sky. All three of Zenkon’s satellites are visible, with the ‘Mother Moon’ being the largest and most notable, since it appears as a larger version of Earth’s moon, though with textured color under the right lighting conditions to suggest it might even have its own ecosystem. It’s not as vibrant as orbital photos of Earth, but it is a beautiful touch to the painting of the sky, especially when the white of the lesser moons and the darkness of the sky help create the perfect contrast to make the Mother Moon shine.
“Zuzia?” asks Neith’s voice from rather far away.
“Sorry, Neith. I’m still conscious. Just appreciating the moons of this world for a moment.”
“I see… Then…”
There’s a loud crunch that reaches her a slice of a second before the man himself, as if he’s some sort of anime character returning to the offensive. She doesn’t have time to avert her eyes and try to drag out her avoidance of her order to assassinate him, and she catches a glimpse of Neith in the same armor he was wearing the whole time she has known him.
Time seems to slow down significantly for the brunette. She feels terrified, and her heart still feels like it’s racing faster than normal in spite of the illusionary distortion of the universe’s least understood constant. Never is the fickleness of time more apparent than moments of the greatest joy and the deepest terror, the latter of which has hold of her now.
She is no longer as afraid of dying as she was.
Instead, she is growing more and more afraid of the growing certainty that victory is upon her.
That victory is defined by the death of her newest acquaintance, and someone she would gladly welcome as a friend.
She can feel the magic taking hold. If she weren’t paying attention for it, she would be little more than a machine. Thankfully, she has no real fighting skill, but what she lacks in technical ability, she makes up for in sheer, devastating force.
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If Neith is the hero of this particular anime battle, then Zuzia is closer to the antagonist requiring a contrivance to defeat.
Her fist is already in motion like a pile bunker proven capable of obliterating a dragon as the draconid knight closes in on her with his own balled hand moving forward with far less velocity than hers.
It is through sheer force of will that she avoids the inevitable and steers her deadly blow off course, metamorphing an instant kill into an unbreakable block.
Neith’s fist collides with Zuzia’s forearm. The impact is like an artillery shell, creating a pressure wave from the supersonic clash of armor against flesh.
Unlike the bracer Zuzia borrowed against the rakehorn, Neith doesn’t possess the strength to crush his own gauntlet even slightly.
Even so, her back crunches the ground, compacting the dirt with enough force to ‘splash’ the soil and any rocks upwards briefly. Neith’s second precision strike intended for Zuzia’s head has failed. And now, her orders, which were predicated on ‘creating’ a self-defense scenario are now in full effect, since he has literally attacked her and created the scenario himself.
And, he is none other than Sir Larven of the Empire, a disguise worn by Sir Neith of the Fievegal.
He is the man she is bound by magic enslavement to kill.
Even deflecting her arm a little off course tightened an invisible noose around her neck, or even reached a hand into her chest to grasp at her heart like parasitic roots digging into a tree. It’s the ‘forgiving’ part of the enslavement magic, which allows her to back off of defiance before becoming more severe and debilitating.
Zuzia swings her right hand across, rather than clubbing the dragon, and though he flinches back successfully, her deliberate avoidance of offense tightens the ‘noose’.
Zuzia groans as the internal pain starts to ramp up. Already, just triggering her collar is more painful than the most powerful surprise hit Neith could land. It’s a different kind of pain, true, but in the way a burn compares to a punch, the burn is winning quickly.
And, it’s unlikely it’ll drive her unconscious before hijacking her body’s agency.
Neith skillfully sweeps a kick in, and Zuzia flinches to the side out of instinct or compulsion, bracing against the impact that hits behind her right ear with another thunderous crack, and she rolls across the ground again.
Unlike the first time, where she had not yet triggered her compulsion to assassinate ‘Sir Larven’, she is ‘activated’ like some sort of brainwashed sleeper-cell agent or, even worse, a body puppet. Even without a readily apparent puppeteer using magic over her blood, Zuzia’s body is moving in ways that directly conflict with her normal autonomy.
During one of her tumbles, she acrobatically angles herself to kick upwards into one last aerial flip that lets her land on her feet. Immediately, she is in a dead sprint towards the dragon knight trying to help her in one of the most paradoxically-necessary unhelpful ways possible. Her dash closes the distance in two long bounds that blasts wind across her face and through her hair, arriving arm’s reach from the armored draconic knight in what feels like seconds, but might have been far less with how fast she moved.
Neith manages to lunge back, but the only thing that actually saves him is Zuzia’s willpower as she catches her own right forearm with her left hand, halting her own offensive power as she stumbles off to the side away from the dragon. She calls out, “Please hurry, Neith! I can’t stop myself much longer! It hurts!”
“I’ll try to be quicker,” replies the dragon just before Zuzia is slammed in the back of the head by a spinning wheel kick.
In spite of the loud booming smack that echoes into the distance from the titan striking her, Zuzia is only dropped to her hands and knees this time, rather than launched across the ground. She felt it, and the kick rang her bell a bit, but there was hardly anything that could be considered pain.
And, she’s obviously still conscious.
Zuzia cries out as she loses the will to overcome the actual pain; the strangling burn of the magic slave collar. Her body is in nearly complete auto-pilot now, and she springs to full offense against the dragon knight.
As quickly as he put her on the ground, she springs back up, divoting the soil where her hands just were. The air cracks as if it’s made of solid stone being broken by her fist all but literally breaking the sound barrier. She can feel the roar through her fist as it travels up her arm. The sonic boom deafens her ears painlessly, and the compression cone rips outwards away from Zuzia’s fist as her heart pounds like a jackhammer with merciless beats to remind her that time is neither slow nor is this some sort of fantastical nightmare.
The roar turns into a more distant boom that echoes deep into the distance, sure to return many times over before the seconds-long execution is complete.
Except, Neith is still alive. He managed to avoid the first strike, but Zuzia’s second punch is right behind the first, following the dragon on his sideways arc to dodge her opening attack.
The grey knight proves to be far more nimble and quick than he initially let on, avoiding Zuzia’s hits as if he’s a leaf flowing with the wind around her. The hurricane-force gusts seem to only emphasize this more.
The lower front of Neith’s helmet opens to reveal his mouth and the underside of his nose. He gives a grin as he avoids punch after punch, ducking under her swings, leaping back, and even pivoting swiftly in quick circles that show his back.
“What are you smiling about!” complains Zuzia over the air-rupturing attacks. She tries to back-swing her right arm like a club when Neith ducks outside of her punch, which restricts a follow-up from her left, a maneuver he has already used several times now since the barrage of attacks started. “You’re going to die! Please, just escape! I don’t want to kill you!”
“I told you, my Lady,” starts Neith in response. Before he finishes, there’s a click reminiscent of the igniter of a grill lighter, but on a larger scale. Without warning and as soon as Zuzia is facing him with her next punch accelerating, a burst of fire flashes out of Neith’s mouth with a bright blue-white intensity that explodes directly between their faces.
Even under contract, Zuzia is still human, and her instincts for self-preservation can’t be completely suppressed by the collar, especially because they are only momentary.
That said, even as her supersonic fist cuts through the fiery blast with the residual momentum of the sonic-boom, a shape sweeps through the fireball and cuts it in half from the other side. The limb sweeps directly over her arm, and with a contrail extending from the scaled, rounded tip, Zuzia is rocked by yet another superhuman impact.
The dragon just employed two of his most distinctive traits separating him from a human; his fire breath and powerful tail.
With her ears boxed by the popping-boom of Neith’s own supersonic attack and her brain rattled by the jarring force with an even more concentrated point of impact than his fist, Zuzia stumbles off to the side. Her body keeps itself on her feet, but a moment of dizziness hits her as pain burns her cheek. She drops to her hands and knees briefly, coughing once before spitting blood out of her mouth.
“That… hurt…” murmurs the Polishwoman in disbelief. The contract is swirling through her body, and though she doesn’t have a strong sense of the ‘strings’ causing her unwilling movements, she can feel her limbs move, her muscles tense, and her weight shift. It’s an extremely strange sensation, not unlike being drunk without the buzz itself, or possibly even something similar to sleep paralysis. Zuzia, like probably most people, has had a run-in or two with zmory in her twenty nine years of life. And, what she’s feeling right now is very similar to a visit from a zmora.
Neith takes a breath and exhales, showing that the effort is taking a noticeable toll, since he has been striking Zuzia impressively hard, and so far, he has only gotten a small amount of bloody saliva.
Zuzia, taking the chance during the lull of the contract’s compulsions, touches her cheek, wincing in pain. The worst she had experienced on Earth was being slapped by another woman for getting frustrated with her flaunting wealth that came from divorcing her husband, and Zuzia told her ‘[I guess that means I have a shot at them cheeks, now, huh?]” with the most masculine, aggressive approach she would never want to receive herself. She wanted to freak her out and shut her up, but the brunette received an open-hand slap in exchange.
The next worst pain in her cheek comparable to this was a snap-back from a thin branch that Zuzia was trying to break, and it whipped her in the face. Her Grandpa scolded her for not being more careful, since the whip mark showed plain as day that the switch missed permanently blinding her in one eye by only a couple of centimeters.
What Neith’s most powerful strike so far has managed feels like what she imagines a sucker-punch would be like. It has left a deep pain in her cheek flesh and even in her bone, but in spite of an actual dragon swinging his tail at full force, the
he has managed is a non-K.O. slobber-knocker.
“If you knock out one of my teeth, Neith, I’m going to help myself assassinate you.”
The dragon sighs as he rolls his shoulders and keeps his feet light and mobile. “So many rules, my Lady. If you’ll show me mercy on that front, I’ll personally take responsibility for ensuring your beauty is restored and you live a comfortable life. Without being a harem-consort for anyone.”
Zuzia’s body wobbles and lumbers back to her feet, and she feels a bit like a zombie, since she’s basically got her own cognitive control over it in ‘neutral’, meaning the contract is on its own. If she
the enslavement magic, such as racing towards the Imperial Palace, she has a lot of agency in accomplishing the task, as long as it is within her orders. If she resists, she experiences quickly intensifying pain. And, if she does nothing, she can feel her body move on its own, like a marionette. Just like a true marionette, she can’t feel the strings, but only because there are no tangible strings.
“Betray me, and I’ll steal your fiancee or wife from you, Neith. Whichever she is at the time.”
He chuckles, noticeably going on guard as Zuzia’s body faces him in a combat ready stance again.
He may be quick and agile, but the inhuman knight was already being pushed to his limits
in the fight. Zuzia knows it’s not a video game with discreetly quantifiable HP and stamina, but if it were, she’s almost certain that almost all of her stats, including defense, attack, and willpower, likely outrank Neith’s. At best, he probably has her beaten in magical power and intelligence, or maybe wisdom. But, since he can’t just roll a D20 to make use of those stats, her compelled body isn’t giving him time to strategize against her.
Zuzia’s puppeteered body launches itself forward in an unnatural way with her torso pitched back. Zuzia knows she looks wildly unbalanced and uncoordinated, since she
that way from her body threatening to fall over. The slave collar is taking ‘zombie’ to the next level, but she realizes too late what’s going on.
Zuzia cries out as the gap closes, and Neith starts to shift in anticipation for her
, “Neith, your legs! Watch out!”
The Polish brunette’s body has abandoned all pretense of self-preservation, just like a narcotics-fuelled Crystal junkie. A pure zombie charges forward like either a mindless monster or a wildly starved predator.
A junkie can be that and more, and just as she feared, her feet pivot even before they land, and her torso snaps forward to pull herself to the ground in a pounce-ready posture already following Neith’s direction of avoidance.
She tries to hitch her own muscles, but the pain ramps up and she yelps, unable to stop herself as her body dives forward. She momentarily loses track of the motion because her possessed body moves blindingly fast in its attempt to ensnare the dragon. His advantage is that he has avoided her, and even her seemingly mindless body, which may actually be using some part of her own brain, has figured it out. It’s adapting to its enemy, and Zuzia is losing what little shreds of control she could exert just to extend Neith’s life for moments longer.
Her body claws and even growls in animalistic exertion, since her own frustration is bleeding through. But, her hands don’t find armored legs, boots, a leather belt, or a reptilian tail.
They find grass and dirt that are torn away from where her hands slash and claw at the terrain, and her double-edged pounce flops her belly and chest on the ground like an over-extended fish.
Whether his instincts alone are that good or his reaction time to her words is that impressive, Neith is hovering in the air with his wings having emerged from behind the split grey mantle flipping behind him like a secondary set of flight-granting appendages.
For the briefest moment, Zuzia feels relief, but her body continues to surprise even her, since the contract is using brute force to fight. In a feat of acrobatics Zuzia wouldn’t normally associate with herself, since she’s a regular old hiker, not a true freerunner or parkourist, her body all but
forward onto her hands, which is certainly only possible with her fantasy-world strength. From there, she springs into the air feet-first in a continued aerial flip towards Neith.
Naturally, the dragon is the superior in the sky…
…
the only contest were the ability to fly.
Zuzia’s hands race forward with contrails forming behind her fingers. She braces herself as she tries one last desperate shout, “Neith!”
Her fingers tear the air apart, and her palms threaten to smash any air molecules that fail to escape into crystalized air as they come together with more force than anything Zuzia has risked doing so far.
She hurt her hand a bit when she punched the unyielding form of Sayrdarralouche in Serrentuk’s Gate void.
She feels like she might’ve just sprained her wrists as she strikes with thunderous power rivalling Thor or Perun themselves.
The massive overpressure from her superhuman clap explodes forth like a flash, excavating or crushing the terrain in a distorted crater well before the centered target of her attack is spirited into the ground with a suddenness like he was simply teleported into the heart of the newly-formed crater itself.
Neith coughs, and a black smoke puffs out of his mouth while Zuzia falls feet first at a much ‘slower’ velocity, driven slightly backwards by the force of her own demigoddess-like power. She calls out, “Neith! Neith, please be okay!”
She curses her own helplessness to stop her own body. She is not the most pious nor orthodox Christian in the world. She has faith and tries to live righteously, and she believes God has a plan.
That said, she can’t help but request his mercy.
“Dear God, please grant me the strength to hold back, or grant Sir Neith the power to defeat me. Please. No, please take away the strength you gave me. I don’t need it. I was a fool to believe I could control such power. Please, just protect Sir Neith…”
During her prayer, her body lands on the ground hard, with her ending up in a runner-like ‘starting’ position. Her body accelerates in a more casual pace this time, jogging towards the dragon who is still on his back and partially dazed.
But, given the distance between them and the dust obscuring her vision, it seems even her auto-puppeteered body is being cautious. The enslavement spell is acting like some sort of simple AI program, able to control her even in the absence of a master, and she continues to watch in horror from the absolute front seat to this particular waking nightmare.
She wholly understands why Serrentuk would rather die than to continue to exist in this state. He hoped to be revived, but the elf would still have taken the alternative over continuing to be a passenger in his own body while it is used as a weapon.
And now, Zuzia’s machine like mission to execute the man trying to help her has her picking up speed to close in on the vulnerable, dazed dragon.
Neith is sitting up as she clears the immediate visual obscurity caused by the dust, and her fist rears back. Neith turns his head, but it’s already too late.
Tears start to form in Zuzia’s eyes, and her heart has only now started its final living beats.
In a moment, she will truly cross the line and cease to be Zuzia entirely.
Zuzia’s fist strikes down on the immobilized dragon like Mjolnir enacting the will of the mighty Thor.
She is the hammer of the god of thunder, and she can’t help but beg the God she believes in for time to turn back, to stop, or for his own fiery lance to strike her down before she becomes a terrible sinner.
Pain sears through her body as she tries to stop herself, but her own flesh-and-blood weapon of mass destruction strikes true.
With a thunderous boom of finality, one of the worst moments of Zuzia’s life so far has come to a close.
***
A/N 1: “HP” is a common shorthand symbol for the gaming term “hit points” or “health points”, which is typically a numerical representation of a character’s quantifiable remaining ‘health’ or ‘life’ to facilitate how the damage done by another character or player moves them towards unconsciousness or death. More complex gaming systems might enact effects to add realism to declining HP, but an HP of zero typically means defeat for that character.
A/N 2: Zmory (Singular: Zmora) are a type of sleep demon or “tormenters of sleepers”, like sleep paralysis demons.