WHAT WERE YOU UP TO WHEN THIS HAPPENED!!!' my mum screamed at me. Instead of feeling happy that I was alive, she was angry that the implosion took her favorite fountain with it.
'I was asleep like every normal person would be at that time.' I matter-of-factly as I looked at the crater.
It wasn't a dream which means....
I felt around my pocket and my fingers paused when they brushed against a smooth object.
I have an alien relic in my pocket.
I thought as fantasies of me as some cool superhero kept jumping around in my head.
'Are you ignoring your mother young man?' My dad's dangerously deep voice woke me up from my daydream. I shivered as I looked at my father. Standing there in a white suit scowling at me, David Dequan was the scariest man I had ever known.
'No, sir.' I said meekly with a bowed head.
'Good. Now why don't you explain what's going on.'
'I was sleeping when it happened. I heard the dogs barking. When I finally decided to come out and check, I found this crater here.'
David obviously didn't believe a word of it but there was nothing he could do about it.
'Go to your room.' He ordered and I was glad to oblige. I walked up the stairs to my room and got the rock out of my pocket and looked at it.
I wonder what it is? I wondered as I observed it in my hand.
It was pitch black with a strange symbol etched on its surface.
Is it a tablet? I asked myself before popping it into my mouth.
(Please don't go trying this at home.....runestones aren't something you should swallow)
I immediately spat it out due to its bitter taste and looked at it, covered in saliva, in my hand.
My mind was reeling in shock as I watched it float in front of me with the strange symbol glowing with an ominous purple light.
Tell me you're a lantern core or something. I thought as I watched the rock.
The rock suddenly zipped towards the wall behind me, ricocheted off it and hit me at the back of the head and with that everything went dark. I awoke lying in bundles of hay and I stood up and looked around in shock. 'Where am I?' I asked myself as I surveyed my surroundings.
'You're in the outskirts of Traas. Don't worry, this is way before your time.'
I turned to look at the speaker and was greeted by the sight of the man who had given me the rune stone.
'What are you doing here. Aren't you like uhh dead.' I asked as I jumped off the bundles of hay.
'That's harsh but yeah I'm dead. This is just a spiritual imprint with a collection of memories that is meant to guide you through your "quest" as you humans call it.' The man smiling at me as he stood under the shade of a barn with his hands clasped behind his back.
'Why are we here?' I asked as I stood beside the man and looked out at cattle grazing a fair distance away in a field.
He looked up at the sun that hung high and determined it to be about midday.
'You're not going to overreact and scream at me to take you back?' The man said with a mocking tone.
'Will it do me any good? Would you send me back?' I asked without even looking at the man.
'No.' the man said before walking towards the road beside the barn. 'You haven't told me why we're here.' I said as I followed the man.
'All will be answered in due time. Just follow for now.' The man said.
I sighed as I followed the guy. I hate this mysterious crap.
By late afternoon, me and the man had left the barn far behind and were pacing over seemingly endless broad, flat swatches of high grass. Here and there a gentle rise reared up into a high hill topped with black rocks.
I was exhausted from staggering up and down the hills, one after another, my shoes slipping on the damp grass as if it were greased marble.
By the time they left the fields behind for a narrow dirt road, my hands were bleeding and grass-stained.
The man stalked ahead of me with carefree strides. I even began to wonder if the guy was just floating off the ground because he didn't trip even once.
Occasionally he would point out items of interest in an amused voice, like he was just walking through an amusement park.
'That is a windlock.' The man said as he pointed at a golden flower. 'It must be extinct because it needed an atmosphere like this to survive, something your current time lacks.' He said as they climbed a rise and saw a tangled expanse of dark trees stretching away toward the west, where the sun hung low in the sky. We trudged along in silence as the road curved alongside the forest for several miles before taking an abrupt turn. The trees seemed to lift away as a ridge rose above them, and I blinked when we turned the corner of a high hill-unless my eyes were deceiving me, there was a city down there. Stone buildings were demolished and the roads were covered in corpses.
I staggered back and fell on my butt. 'What happened there?' I asked as cold sweat accumulated on my forehead.
'That, my friend, is what we are here to see. Come.' The man said casually as he went down the hill and approached the city.
I, not wanting to be left behind, stood up and followed the man.
We stood before a pitch black wall that appeared to have been brought down by a wrecking ball.
The man easily jumped at least seven feet into the air and landed gracefully onto a part of the wall that was still standing. 'Come on.' The man said as he looked into the distance.
I looked up at the man and gritted my teeth before swallowing my rage and smiled. 'Oh! Wise One. How could I, a mere mortal, get up there?' I said sarcastically as I looked at him with hatred.
The man sighed and jumped back down. He landed gracefully in front of me and sat down in the lotus position. 'Sit.' The man commanded and I quickly complied.
'Give me your hands.' He extended his own hands, palms up, and took hold of my wrists.
His fingers were smooth and seemed delicate, but his grip was iron-hard. Sitting so close, I could smell him, an ozone scent with a touch of vanilla. 'All right,' the man said. 'Now, if it helps, feel free to scream.'
My heart slammed in my chest. Anticipation, I thought, is always the worst part. The moment before the doctor puts the needle in your arm is much worse than actually feeling it go in.
Then the man did something. Nothing I could see or hear but I felt it nonetheless. Something invisible leaped across the space between us. It settled over my face like a mask, scrabbling at my skin like a living thing until it found the corners of my mouth and flooded inside me. I could feel it spreading out, like I'd inhaled a mouthful of hot gas, down into my lungs but also up, filtering through my sinuses and out through my skull until it found my eyes.
It was then that I realised how wrong I'd been been. The pain was worse than the anticipation, worse than anything I'd ever experienced or imagined.
It felt like someone had pushed jagged shards of glass into my eyes and was twisting them back and forth in my sockets, sending searing tendrils of pain all the way down my body. My toes curled and my arms jerked, ready to claw at the offending orbs, but the man held me in a firm grip. My vision had gone black, but I could hear someone screaming, a pathetic shriek of terror and agony. I'll never admit that it was me.
It was over nearly as soon as it began, a single telescoped instant of mind-numbing suffering, but it was a few moments more before I could form a coherent thought. The man's voice broke through the phantom agony still echoing in my skull, the gentle monotone of a hypnotist. 'Russell. Listen to me, Russell. You're all right. It's all over, and you're all right. Just listen to me. Listen to my voice . . .'
I drew a ragged breath and shuddered.
'You're all right,' the man repeated. 'Can you hear me, Russel?'
'I can hear you,' I said. My voice was a croak.
'It's all over. You never have to do that again.'
'That sucked,' I mumbled, realizing that the shriek had been my own. 'You did well,' the man said. 'When I did it, I bit my tongue so badly, I couldn't speak for three of your human days.'
'Really?' Russel asked. 'Nah. I took it in silence like a man. Now. How do you feel?'
'I'm . . . all right.' Tinges of pain still came and went, but they were fading. 'Open your eyes, then. Be careful, though.' The man said.
I hadn't realized my eyes were closed, or even still intact. When I opened them, my breath caught in my throat. The pitch black wall was gone, the strange man was gone. Even I myself was gone. When I looked down at my lap, there was nothing to see, as though I'd turned invisible.
My hands clenched tighter on the man's wrists.
In place of the black wall on barren brown soil was an enormous starry vista, utterly dark except for tiny pinpricks of light scattered both above and below him like grains of sand on black velvet.
They weren't like the stars of the real world. I couldn't see any familiar constellation and they lacked the friendly twinkle of the stars I knew. 'You are still here,' the man said in a calm monotone. 'Sitting on the ground in Traas, with me. What I have done is taken control of your vision and trained it in a new direction, a way you've never looked before. Not up or down, but inside. This is a half of what you can do with the power inside you, looking inside and seeing the essence of things. Now, don't be alarmed.'
My field of vision began to rotate, as though I were being turned in place. Something huge came into sight, and soon it filled the world. It looked a bit like a fanciful drawing I had seen once of a comet a blazing fireball, trailing a long tail, except that the tail continued on and on, into the indefinite distance, and the fire was brilliant blue.
It seemed to be coming directly at me, or I was moving toward it, and my breath caught in my throat.
It seemed almost close enough to touch, but I felt no heat. I felt nothing, in fact; as far as my body was concerned, I was still sitting on beside the wall with the strange man. 'What am I looking at?' I asked when he found my voice.
'Your mind,' the man said. 'Or the energy representation thereof. Your essence. Your soul, if you like, though I wouldn't read too much into the religious side of things. What we see here is very much shaped by our preconceptions, so one shouldn't leap to draw any deep conclusions.' 'My . . .' I swallowed hard.
'What I would like you to do is look closer, at the center of It. There's something etched onto it, do you see it?'
It took me a few moments.
'I see it,' I said. 'Some kind of letter like symbol.' As I looked at the symbol, I noticed that it spilled small purple tendrils of electricity that wound around the comet all the way till the end of its tail, wherever that was. 'This part is a little tricky.' The man must've felt me tense because he quickly added, 'It doesn't hurt, though. I want you to reach out and grab one of the tendrils of electricity it's producing.'
I nodded gamely, but when I released his grip on the man's wrists, he held my arms tightly.
'Not,' he said, 'with your hands.' I opened my mouth to protest, then thought better of it.
Instead I focused on one of the ever moving tendrils of electricity, staring intently, trying to will it closer to me, or myself closer to it.
I was surprised to find that I could reach out, extending myself in some dimension completely unlike the usual three. My grip closed around the tendril, and I felt a shock travel through my mind.
It was like holding a metal with a very low current traveling through it. 'You've got it.' The man sounded satisfied. 'I should've known you would be a quick study. Now, hold on to it, and I'll let go of your eyes.' Something flowed out of me, down from between my lips like a whispered breath.
I blinked, and when I opened my eyes again the brilliant comet and the starlit night were gone.
There was only the man still holding my wrists and smiling.
'Still got that current?' he said.
I nodded. It tingled in my mind, a phantom limb holding a phantom live wire.
The man let go of my wrists and sat back.
'Try giving it a little tug. Pull it towards here, towards yourself. Just a touch.'
'All right.' my hands ached with cramps and cuts, but my mental grip was still strong.
I pulled on the tendril, tugging towards myself.
It resisted at first, then gave a little, and there was a pop inside me.
I felt a sudden rush of energy and saw small electric sparks jump and coil all over my skin.
'Whoa!!' I exclaimed before jumping to my feet.
'Nice feeling, isn't it?' The man asked as he gracefully stood up.
I paid the man no heed as I turned on the spot and marveled at the world through new eyes.
The world had gained a sharper contrast. It was like everything was blurry till that moment. The was a white mist that filled the air and converged at a point behind me.
I turned and saw the mist revolve around the man and entered his body through his orifices.
'The mist is energy in its pure state. You'll learn how to convert it into the forms you need later. Now, let's go see what we came here for.' The man said as he leapt onto the wall with the same grace he had before.
I looked down at myself and saw that I too absorbed the energy.
I breathed in deeply, but unlike the man the energy didn't intensify. 'Use the energy from the rune.' The man said from the top of the wall. I remembered the current I was holding and gave it a small tug in my direction.
I felt a rush of energy flood my body and I let out a roar of excitement as I basked in the feeling of power. 'Here goes nothing.' I shoutef as I squatted to accumulate power before leaping.
The spot on the ground that I was standing on cracked as I soared through the air and.......crashed into the side of the wall.
The man sighed and grabbed the back of my shirt and pulled me up onto the top of the wall.
'AAAHHHHH!! MY NOSE. FUCK. AAAAHHH!!' I gingerly held my nose as I let out a torrent of curses.
'Pain like that and worse will become a normal thing. Now, come.' The man said before leaping off the other side of the wall. I let out another torrent of curses before tugging a little on the current and leaping off the wall.
I retched right on the spot when the smell hit me.
It was a putrid stench of rotting corpses and faecal matter.
The ground was littered with corpses of humans and creatures I had never thought could exist.
They looked to be about eight feet tall. They were bony and had thumb nail sized pitch black scales all over their bodies.
On their heads was silvery white hair and they had claws about three inches long.
What I would give to be back there.
I thought as I looked back at the black wall looming in the distance. I pushed thoughts of returning out of my mind and focused on not slipping in gore and mud.
'What happened here?' I asked as I stepped over a brutally mutilated corpse of a human child.
'Isn't it obvious? There was a battle here now keep quiet and focus on following me.' The man said as retched yet again.
You can't blame me for the weak stomach.....you would be like this if you were here.
After a few minutes, we reached a place that looked to be the city square.
I was horrified by the number of corpses.
He couldn't even see a patch of the ground on which the corpses lay. I stared in shock at the center of the square where there was a small hill of human corpses with one of the strange creatures atop it feasting on them.
'Watch closely.' The man said as he looked towards the western side of the square. I looked where the man was looking and saw a boy in leather armor, just about two years older than me, prodding through the bodies. Probably searching for survivors.
'HEY. YOU THERE. RRRUUUNNN!'
I shouted in warning as the boy slowly and unknowingly approached the creature. 'He can't hear you. I thought I told you this was a scene from one of my memories. We can't affect anything here and they,' he said as he pointed at the boy and the creature, 'can't hear or even see us.' The man said.
I watched in horror as the boy accidentally knocked over a large cauldron thereby alerting the creature.
The creature leapt off its hill of corpses at the boy who responded by drawing his sword from its sheath. Before I could even blink, the creature was already upon the boy. The creature and the boy exchanged attacks that left my jaw hitting the ground, figuratively of course.
I had never thought that a human could move at such insane speeds as I watched the boy defend himself.
The creature clawed at the boy's chest and a trail of blood followed in the claw's wake. The boy clenched his teeth and slashed at the creature's retreating arm. The boy seemed to be gaining speed with every wound he inflicted onto the creature. Claw marks and sword slashes appeared on the walls of buildings and on the ground as the creature and the boy exchanged attacks that sent debris and pieces of flesh from the surrounding corpses flying. The boy dodged an underarm swipe coming for his neck and twirled on the spot, decapitating the creature from the back. After a hard earned victory, the boy fell to the ground and ceased all kinds of movement.
The scene faded and the man and Russel reappeared on the hill from which they had looked down on the city of Traas.
'I brought you there to see what a battle of people of our power level looks like. I also wanted to give you a glimpse of what you'll be battling about three years from now. This was all to kill any cockiness that may have arisen with your newly acquired power. You're not infallible. Now, it's been long. I should send you back. See you next time.' The man said before everything blurred before going black altogether.