'Status'
[Name: Arcus]
[Age: Eleven years and three months]
[Gender: Male]
[Status: Orphan - Having lost both your parents and with no other living relatives, you were taken in by the people of Walden. You are now living at the orphanage along with the other children and Maria the caretaker]
[Health: 30/30 - A measure of your life force. The left value indicates the current while the right value indicates the max value. Once your health reaches zero, you will die]
[Strength: 3 - The power behind your physical attacks, as well as the weight that you can carry. Strength is a measure of your body's ability to exert force. ]
[Agility: 4 - Agility is a measure of running speed, attack speed, reflexes, and balance. High agility will allow you to run faster, dodge attacks, attack faster, and perform difficult maneuvers.]
[Constitution: 3 - Constitution is a measure of your stamina as well as your body's resilience to various types of damage. Constitution also affects your stamina recovery speed, health recovery speed, elemental and physical defense, and resistance to various pathogens and poisons. Higher levels of constitution will allow you to fight for days, recover from wounds in seconds, and become impervious to blades and arrows.]
[Perception: 4 - Sight, hearing, taste, touch, and smell. Perception dictates the strength of your five senses. Higher levels of perception will allow you to detect things from further away or from a long time ago, It will also allow you to reveal secret doors, buried treasure, and hidden compartments. Individuals with high levels of perception sometimes develop a new sixth sense.]
[Willpower: 4 - Your resistance against mental attacks, as well as your ability to be unaffected by pain. Higher levels of willpower will allow you to be calm in dangerous situations.]
[Spirit: 5 - Determines the strength of your spells. Spirit is a measure of the affinity you have with the mana as well as your control over it. Spirit also indicates your level of concentration.]
[Charisma: 5 - Charisma is how attractive and persuasive you are. It also affects your aura. High charisma will make you seem more attractive and will allow you to tame beasts easily. Higher charisma will also increase the chances of people following your orders.]
It had been just two months ago when Arcus started to have strange dreams. A peaceful world filled with towers of metal and roads paved with rock. The people there knew little of war and everyone seemed so happy and carefree unlike the people in Aspir. There were no monsters, no cultists, no hunger or cold.
At that time, Arcus thought he was merely having a good dream, a great one even, however, the dream persisted. Every day after it would be the same world but differently. He would go on a walk around the park, or visit a park filled with humongous metal beasts called 'rollercoasters'. It seemed strange to have similar dreams so frequently, but Arcus enjoyed it, it made his bleak reality all the more bearable.
Everything was great up until two weeks ago. The dreams started changing. The sky shattered, an aurora of orange and purple covered most of the sky. Monsters invaded, and the people were helpless. The metal towers fell, their steel birds burned and crashed into an inferno. Death was everywhere.
The next day it was the same scene only it was slightly different. The world was already in flames. Arcus had been following the few survivors as they hid and scavenged for whatever resources they could, but every expedition would lead to more deaths. One time, Arcus got to experience the feeling of dying as featherless leathery birds dragged him into the sky and ripped his body to shreds in midair. Their horrible screeching echoed in his ears for days after.
Arcus tried to stay awake after that. He avoided going to sleep for as long as he could.
But despite how hard he tried, once it was midnight he would fall asleep immediately.
Convinced he had been cursed, Arcus had gone to Maria, the caretaker of the orphanage, and told her about his dreams as well as his nightmares. However, he was dismissed and told it was just a nightmare. Despite how hard he tried to convince her otherwise, she would not listen.
One time he stood on a chair and waited until midnight, that way if he fell asleep his body would fall, and the pain would wake him up.
However, that didn't work either.
The next morning, the other kids found him knocked out with a pool of blood around his head. He was confined to bed for two days and scolded terribly by the caretaker for being reckless. Even then he was not taken seriously, if anything it only cemented the idea that he might be going crazy.
After that event, the other kids would avoid him and even Maria would treat him differently.... like he was a burden.
The nightmares continued and day after day Arcus would see people, who were previously living their life full of joy, die one after the other. He started to lose weight and space off in the middle of chores.
The other kids would go on to avoid him even more, or gossip about him not too far off from where he was.
'Maybe I am going crazy.'
Things continued to spiral down until last night.
The monsters had completely covered the world, death was everywhere, and a lone survivor sat in a chair underground. There was a letter on the desk, written in characters Arcus had never seen before. Tears flowed from his face as he placed his pen down. He opened the drawer and inside there was a key and a small metal tool.
The person's tears stained the paper, his pen rolled off the desk, and Arcus could hear a restrained whimper from the survivor.
Arcus could feel it.
He was sad.
Helpless
Hopeless
Angry
Sad again
He tried hard to resist the urge to break down and cry. His back hunched, he pounded his fists until they turned red then purple then red again as blood flowed from the torn skin.
'AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH'
with a loud cry, he rose up.
The survivor grabbed the keys and the metal tool and left the room.
He passed door after door until he arrived at another desk filled with blinking bright lights and knobs and switched.
He flipped a couple of switches
Pressed some buttons
and spoke words, Arcus could not understand.
Lastly, he took the key and inserted it into a hole. He turned it, and Arcus could see an array of characters appear on the screen in a blinking bright red.
Then he gripped the metal tool, placed it in his mouth, and squeezed with his finger.
The world went dark after.
That would be the last time Arcus would have a nightmare.
At least for now.