The first thing that happened was for Thomas to feel immense pain. It came from the hand holding the ball of glass, feeling it hurt like hell, as if a needle just pierced through his palm.
"Pain… I feel… Pain!!!"
The first thing that happened to Thomas was a heaven defying thing. He lived his life without feeling anything, and now he just felt pain.
And that wasn't all… A storm of emotions started to assault his soul the next instant. Doubt, confusion, happiness, and hesitation wrestled in his mind and soul, making him stagger a step backwards without even feeling himself.
"Watch out!" Just as he took one step back, he felt like he hit someone or something, while an angry shout came from behind.
"Don't stop the line! Just finish with your test and get going!"
Thomas heard the same voice again while feeling a little push from behind. He took a step forward, stabilised his body, before finally taking a look around.
His hand, his left hand wasn't holding the glass ball. Instead, it was situated over some sort of a weird statue. He couldn't see clearly what this statue looked like, but he could easily tell it was old.
It got rust, protruding pieces that got flattened by the passage of time, and even moth invaded its base.
The statue looked like the head of a person or a thing, but that wasn't important now. Thomas' left hand was lying on top of some sort of a holder, one that was made out of the same blue material as the statue.
For a reason, Thomas couldn't help but recall the deep blue eyes of the old lady when he saw this statue. Yet the pain he felt jolted him awake from his disturbed thoughts, when he looked closer, he found a long needle coming out from the centre of his palm, with his red blood oozing from it.
"What are you waiting for? Just take your hand back!" As he stood stupefied in front of this weird scene, the owner of the same voice who spoke and pushed him before shouted, "we don't have the entire day here! Just do it!"
"Do what? Ouch! It hurts!"
Just before Thomas would turn to face the one who kept yelling at him, he felt another excruciating pain as that needle freed itself from his palm, got itself back inside the holder and vanished.
He reflexively retracted his palm, moving it away from the statue.
"I was trying to warn you," the one who yelled at him before sighed, "you had it the worst… Just wrap it for now and wait for the results."
Thomas didn't get what was going on here. But when he turned to see the one who kept speaking to him, he was surprised to see not only a youth standing behind him, but many others as well.
It was a line, a very long line, one that moved at the side of this hill, going down to the bottom. The line even extended to the far forest and vanished inside.
Thomas didn't know why but he felt like this line would keep going till the end of the horizon. And yet he didn't get any time to think about any of that.
"What the hell is going on here?" And before he'd think rationally about any of this, he just heard a series of old rattling noises coming from the statue. He turned sharply towards it, missing the shocked expressions over the faces of those standing behind.
"He made the statue react!"
"This… Is he going to be one of the blessed?"
"Don't tell me we are going to have the first superhero ever in our history!"
Thomas heard many soft whispers coming from many. But he didn't have any mind to care about any of this. Just as the rattling noises appeared, something seemed to open from the top of this statue.
"It's… A scroll?!" Thomas felt a bit weird. In front of his eyes, part of the statue rose slightly up, then its lid slipped and showed a space with a small scroll inside.
It was just the size of his finger, not exceeding ten centimetres in length.
"It's true!"
And just before he'd extend his hand to grab it, the one behind him shouted, shouted in a very loud and excited tone that startled Thomas.
"We got our first superhero!"
"Yes!"
Just like a festival or something, many standing in the line cheered, shouting loudly, forming a chorus or something.
Thomas looked at all of them with a puzzled expression on his face. He didn't get any of what was going on here. Just minutes ago, he was sitting on a pavement in New York, speaking with an old lady who looked like a real beggar.
And now? He couldn't even tell where he was on Earth, or how he managed to get here.
"Come on bro, make us happy, make our Dante settlement proud and claim that certificate," the one who kept shouting nudged him with an elbow, while laughing in pure excitement and happiness.
"This is a certificate?" Thomas held the scroll which was sealed by a very thin red thread, "for what?"
"It's the certificate that you got it in you," the youth laughed, "you got superpower! Damn! I can't even imagine how exciting this is for you! Congratulations bro, you made our settlement known in the entire region."
"Ok," Thomas was confused, didn't know what was going on here. But he had the scroll and a long line of crazy people looking at him like they were looking at a champ or something.
"Let me try, come on, let me get tested!" the youth seemed to return to his old habit, and shouted again at Thomas. The latter didn't even stand in his place again. But just before he'd take a single step away, he hit something on the ground.
"The tree pot?!" Thomas froze the moment he saw his old friend here. It looked a bit different, as if it grew in size three times at least.
The small pot he could hold with one hand was now at the size that he couldn't carry without exerting a little force.
It was at least half a metre in height and diameter.
"Good luck," Thomas left this complimentary word behind, "if any of that is real anyway."
He found a path leading down the hill. And just as he held his tree by surrounding the pot with one arm, holding the small scroll with the other, he started to walk down that path to the ground.
The place there was filled with many people, the ones who already got the same weird test as him. Thomas just walked a few steps before he noticed something weird.
"This… Where is my suit? Where are my shoes?"
Unlike what he used to wear, there were a pair of old looking shoes on his feet. And from there, he spotted a weird looking, leather made, black trousers.
Then when he moved his eyes around to inspect himself, he found out that he was wearing a totally different set of clothes than he used to wear.
That wasn't all, these clothes looked… A bit old!
He wore a brown vest, one that was made out of leather, looking like it was handmade or something. He even could see the thick threads the maker used to sew the leather pieces together.
It had many different sized pockets and was unbuttoned, showing an old looking shirt. It was made out of thick and rough fabric, one that Thomas couldn't recognise at all.
"Sh*t! I failed!"
Just as he stopped in his place for a few seconds, he heard the loud shout of the same youth who kept bothering him before.
"As if any of this is real," Thomas knew all the facts pointed towards one thing, he got hypnotised, and all of this was a dream.
He could feel pain, emotions, things he never felt before. He was in a place that he never visited, or even heard about before. Not to mention the weird things happening here, this test thing, the superhero and superpower stuff, plus the way people acted here.
Everything told him he was indeed inside a dream, one that old lady got him into by using any mystic methods. He kept trying to recall the different hypnotic methods he read about before while walking down the path.
Without knowing it, he reached the bottom of the hill.
"Wow! It's true then!"
"You… What kind of superpower do you have?"
"Yes, show us! Show us now!"
Just as he reached the bottom, he got instantly surrounded with many faces he never saw before.
They were all young, not exceeding seventeen or eighteen years at most. And they looked at him like they were looking at their idol or something.
They kept asking him questions like the ones mentioned above, and he felt more confusion and weirdness about this.
"It looks so damn real!" he never expected hypnosis would reach such a stage before, or even become this real.
"Easy there," and just as he got surrounded and asked many questions without saying anything, one big dude approached and spoke in a deep tone, "you all know superpowers can't manifest by this test. Let our boy catch his breath, let him enjoy his moment."
It was a middle-aged man; the only old face Thomas saw since coming into this dream world. All the youths around got themselves away from him at last, while that man stopped and looked at Thomas' eyes.
"I'm Oliver, the leader of Dante settlement," he extended his hand, said in greeting. Thomas looked at both of his hands, as one held the tree and the other held the scroll.
"Sorry, but I'm too excited about having a superhero discovered in our settlement at last, hahahaha," Oliver laughed, retracting his hand as he added, "don't worry, everything that you are feeling is normal. Just go there, take a little rest, absorb everything, and prepare yourself for the glory awaiting you in the future."
"Ok…" Thomas was still taking all of this as a dream. And so, he simply nodded to Oliver, before taking his leave towards a place that wasn't filled with many.
"Don't forget, you have to go to a town with that scroll. Open it and see where that place is, and I'll take you personally to the train station."
"Thanks," Thomas shouted in response, "at least there are trains here."
Thomas went to one side, sat on a bare rock, while thinking about what he got himself into.
"It's hypnosis, I bet it is," Thomas sat on the rock, placed his tree next to him, and examined the wound he got back there.
He didn't wrap it like that dude told him, and that let his hand be painted with his blood. The blood already clotted and formed some sort of crust over the wound.
It wasn't the first time for him to get wounded like that, but it was the first time he'd felt such pain ever in his life.
There wasn't only pain, but a myriad of emotions he never felt before. "So… This is how real people felt all the time?" After going through everything and analysing his feelings and disturbed thoughts, he couldn't help but deeply sigh, "it's a hellish nightmare! How come normal people live with all these… Distractions and noises?"
His mind before all this was like a clean sheet of paper. And now it was like a child grabbed a pen and kept scrabbling lines without any order or logic.
The worst was that he had zero experience at dealing with all this, ending up suffering a headache like never before.
"I got it! I knew that what I have was a gift, a blessing from God or whoever. Let me return, I learnt my lesson," he raised his head and shouted, as if he was trying to communicate with the old lady.
But nothing happened. He waited, and after a few long minutes, he couldn't help but start feeling something was wrong.
"I'll play with you a little longer then," he fiddled with the small scroll in his hands, before opening it.
And the moment he did, he saw a small handwriting, written in a language that he never saw before.
"This…" he touched the paper with his bloodied left hand. And as he did that, a throbbing pain appeared in his temples, forcing his body to tremble and his hand to rise up and squeeze his temples.
"I… I can read it!!" The pain appeared fast and vanished faster. Yet as he held his head with his hand, his eyes could see the weird symbols through the gaps in his fingers. And like magic, these symbols changed from being something alien to be something familiar, something he could read.
"Retto Town, in one day, meet Mr. Mark, he is your mentor. Please go there and take further instructions from him."
The scroll only got these little words and nothing else. Thomas held it and flipped it around, trying to see the alien symbols again, but failed.
"Interesting," he tried to understand what just happened, but couldn't get a clue. Everything happened in front of his eyes, and the only possible explanation was that he was confused and couldn't read these words before thanks to the storm of emotions and thoughts in his mind.
Or perhaps it was magic, and all this wasn't a dream but reality.
"That's funny, there's no way any of this is real," he took a long glance around, moving his eyes among the eyes of others looking at him. He was like a superstar, standing in the middle of all his fans or something.
And just by looking at them, looking at the world, looking at the bright big orange star that was much bigger than the sun, he felt something was amiss.
"Everything… Everyone… They all look real…"
And just as he felt more like this, he got tons of conflicted emotions inside, making him place both hands over his head, squeezing his temples again.
"What the hell did you do to me?" he muttered, before raising his head and shouted at the clear sky, "what did you do to me?"