Mack opened his eyes, or at least he tried, but still could see nothing in his sight. He was in a completely dark space, with not even a speck of light.
[Congratulations human, you activated the runes and your first trial is about to begin.]
"Where am I?"
[You are in front of the Tower of Chaos, where your next trial will happen]
"What trial? How I can hear you in my mind?"
[To pass this test, you need to be able to feel the surrounding essence. When that happens, you will see a door. That is the door to enter the Tower of Chaos.]
Mack could not understand what was happening, it was foolish of him to make tattoos out of those things from the book, but that alone was not supposed to make him vanish from where he was and appear in this fully dark place he was now.
Seeing that this voice in his head would not give him any decent response, Mack asked, "Can't I just walk around and stumble on the door and enter it? What if I don't see that door?"
[Well, if I were you, I will not just walk around. If you could see with your own eyes where you are, you will not do so too. Humans are fragile things.]
"So I guess there are traps or something dangerous around me. Were you not supposed to tell me that before?"
[...]
"What if I don't see the door? You didn't answer me, and how am I supposed to see something with this essence thing you talked about?"
[If you fail, you will die, or do you see any food or water? Right, you can't see anything, I forgot about that…... You are a clever human, you will figure out the rest.]
"So bitter..."
[...]
"You will not help me?"
[To feel the essence, you need to use the breathing technique that was taught to you.]
Mack then remembered about the yoga thing on the last page of the book and understood what the voice in his head was talking about.
After a few seconds of absurd silence and seeing the thing talking in his head would not give him any decent response Mack seated, not sure where but looked solid to him, closed his eyes, no one knows why, since he could not see a thing even with them open, but he still closed them,
Feeling comfortable, Mack begun to breathe in a rhythmic way, and while he breathed, he did a very peculiar movement in front of his mouth with his right hand, while his left hand stayed close to his solar plexus, doing another movement.
The right hand looked like Mack was trying to tell to someone to stay quiet, except for his pinky finger that was a little raised, and his left hand looked like he was doing the same but pointing to his lower parts. It really looked like some hippie stuff.
Mack's thorax raised with air inhaled to his lungs and after one minute he exhaled while his body flowed along with the motion of his lungs.
Then…..
'Nothing happened'
'I guess this will take some time.'
"How long is this supposed to last?" Mack asked, not sure if he was talking with a person or a machine, but Mack was sure it was female.
[I'm not a thing, I'm an Arcane Legacy]
"Ohhh, so she talks? How long will this last?" but deep in his head, Mack realized something even more important, that thing, could read his thoughts.
[Depend from person to person, there is no fixed rule, and yes... I can read your thoughts.. fully well.]
Mack was not sure how to react to that, he never even thought that those things were possible, and he was now in a dark place with someone talking in his mind and reading his thoughts, forcing him to 'feel' some 'essence thing' and worst, if he didn't do that, he would die.
~Sigh~
"Here we go, another shitty day ahead." Mack said to himself.
He was not sure what was happening, but he was a very practical guy. If he had to feel that essence thing to survive, that's what he was going to do.
Having made his mind, Mack closed his eyes and started again.
...
After a few hours of meditation in complete darkness. Mack got bored, super bored, bored as hell.
"I will take a break. I can't feel if I improved or not, it's really frustrating." Mack said, standing up and stretching his sore muscles, but without taking a step forward.
"Why do I need to do this here? Could not I do this back where I was? Even that volcano was better than this dark place."
[You couldn't. This was devised by my creator to improve the odds of succeeding, here the Essence concentration is several times more than the world you came from, also, it serves as a measure, if you can succeed before dying of starvation it means you have potential. ]
"The world I came from? I'm not on Earth?"
[No, you are on a small planet far away from the planet you came from.]
"Essence. Is it like mana in the games?"
[I'm unfamiliar with those terms. It could take days to explain the concept of Essence to you. It's better to just follow the instructions and see for yourself.]
"Care to explain why am I here? I mean, what was the goal of your creator? What was his name?"
[You don't know why are you here? No one in your family explained?]
"No. My father died a few years, while my mother, well, I never knew her, not sure if she is alive or not, my father always avoided talking about her... and I don't have any other relatives"
[I see.... I will open an exception for you, Human. I'm an Arcane Legacy, meaning, for generations, I was responsible for testing all your family members for a suitable person to inherit the knowledge of your first ancestor, my creator. He devised this tower, the Tower of Chaos, and at each gate of the tower there will be trials, trials that will test you but also teach you. My creator devised the tower this way because he didn't want information about it to spread on your world.]
"How do you know that I'm a relative of your 'creator'? I could just have made those tattoos by a fluke."
[That's because your family DNA differs from other humans on any other planets in this dimension]
"So I'm an alien. Tsk. Wish I had at least some wings. Tsk. Tsk."
"What would happen if no more people from my family came? I mean, I don't have a child. The book is hidden, and I doubt there are any other relatives of my father alive. I may be the last one."
[In that case, it would be a lonely eternity for me.]
"I see."
"Did my father came here?"
[No. The last one that attempted was centuries ago in your world time. His name was Hew Draper]
"Oh. It was my father's grandfather. I once researched about him....and.... right.... they captured him for doing witchcraft, but he disappeared one night before his execution. That makes sense now..... "
[He was indeed a bright man by your world's standards. Unfortunately, he failed.]
"Was he able to see the door?"
[Yes. In a record time, but he failed in the next trials]
"Thanks. I appreciate you talking to me. My family was always a mystery to me and this helps a little...but..."
"... I can't understand why if someone fails they need to die..... After all, is his family, no? The family of this creator of yours? What was his name?"
[He had several names in his life, but was mainly known as 'Warlock']
[He did this way to avoid leaking the knowledge to a non-qualified heir, but also to avoid his descendants to be hunted because of this same knowledge.]
"It was everything for nothing then because here I am, probably the last one of this cursed family." Said Mack, while thinking of all the information that he gained about his own family's past.
A few seconds later, Mack sat again and started meditating.
He was probably the last one in his family, but for some reason, the responsibility and the weight of needing to finish this cycle of suffering only seemed bigger.
His family had paid enough. It was time for some payback.
For Mack, seemed unbelievable that there was no one targeting his family from the shadows. After all, his family was always been hunted in some way or another, be it with allegations of witchcraft or terrorism, or robbery.
Mack himself was hunted all around the globe for fraudulent allegations. This started way before he even had age to do anything.
Every day that passed, Mack was more sure of this. There was someone hunting his family for the book that his father passed to him. The question was, who?