I felt the humid grass beneath my body, and a ray of sunlight catching me in the face made me wake up. I was back where it all started. A dense forest spawned around me as my vision cleared. I was back on earth. I had been the one to survive until the very end.
A voice sounded in my mind...
"There you go, just as I promised," the eerie feminine voice told me.
"Yeah yeah, thanks a lot M´lady," I told her in a monotone as I had grown to talk with her, Lady Umbralia, or Umbra as I got to call her, was the goddess of Darkness and the night, the queen of the dark side and an almost forgotten goddess who was on the brink of losing her influence on the material plane...Well, at least that was the case before I had gotten her the win for once, she had barely any power in the material plane, just enough to pick one participant as her champion and send them to the battlefield, that was me this time, and for the first time, she had some semblance of power beyond her plane.
I stood up and suddenly felt dizzy, it was a feeling like being bloated, drunk, and high all at the same time.
"Easy there my champion, that body isn't strong enough to vessel your soul," Umbra said as I hunched down in disgust.
Then I felt something burn in my right forearm, I saw 7 runes appear in it and get crossed by a line that went all around in a circle. I knew what it was, each rune symbolized each layer of mana I had.
Quoting one of the great minds of our time, Mana was like onions, it had layers, mana was stored in one's soul and as I grew stronger and greater it also got refined into a more dense and powerful state, it went from the first layer being the one that all living things had, at least a tiny bit, normal people who had a little more than others often became known as natural born geniuses. Then it refined itself until the 10th layer, where divinity started, beyond that it was incompressible to mortal beings.
"You are sealing my mana?" I asked Umbra with a very unamused tone, I had worked for every bit of power I had amassed. "You have to be kidding me"
"I had to... or would you rather I let your body implode? Your real body had less than your average human, how on the dark side would it withstand 3rd layer mana? Even a little form of the 2nd layer would send you into a coma" Umbra told me with an exasperated tone, " You will have to train that body to accommodate to your soul... Or you can let me give you a new body, it has been a while. Still, I think I can give you something humanoid...ish?"
"Train the body, got it," I said as I closed my eyes and started to meditate, circling the mana through my body until I felt functional. As I circled the mana I noticed this body was weaker, like I had been in bed for months, with thin arms and long black hair.
"Hey, Umbra...how much time passed here while I was away?" I asked Umbra, I had not thought of the time outside of the battlefield, how long had I been away?
"Well... specifically for your planet...Mmm... around 6 years 2 months 14 days 15 hours 13 minu-" My sudden shock cut her off.
"6 YEARS? I HAVE BEEN GONE FOR 6 DAMN YEARS...? YOU TOLD ME TIME WAS SLOWER HERE" I panicked at the thought when I had been dragged into this battle I had been told that I wouldn't have to worry about being absent for too long, guess I underestimate just how relative "too long" meant for both of us.
"And I told you the truth! Compared to the hundreds of years of battle you lived through six years are like a speck of dust," she told me.
I started to calm myself, it was no use getting worked up about something I couldn't change, instead, I searched my clothes for anything I may have had in me back in the day, I found my wallet and my dead phone, it didn't survive getting into another plane of existence probably.
"Okay then, if six years went by then... there must be a missing report on me" I started to think, I couldn't just appear out of nowhere in my house. "Hey it's me, I got lost in the forest six years haha" Who would believe such a thing?
Thankfully my malnourished body would be of good use in crafting a believable situation, I started to rip my clothes a little and even got some scratches and then I was ready to play the lost child.
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"So... let me get this straight, you were kidnapped by some strange people in weird robes, they blinded you and took you in a van to someplace you don't remember. Then they rope you in some strange cult for six years?" the burly officer asked me, I was sitting in the police station after walking in the middle of the road for some time, people reported me and someone came for me, easy.
"Y-Yeah officer, I don't remember much... I was scared of them, they talked about the end of time and salvation" I did my part in looking like the terrified victim, with how lanky I was it was believable.
"Damn fanatics, too much of them around these parts," the officer said with a frown, thankfully it was a pretty common thing this past year it seems. "We already called your parents, they will be here in no time"
And that was the part I was afraid of, not because of the lie I would weaver but of their reaction to seeing me after six years of being missing, what if they continued their lives like nothing happened? These intrusive thoughts clouded my mind many times during the first few years in the battle. Then rushed voices got me out of my mind.
"WHERE?!!... WHERE IS HIM?!!" I heard the voice of a woman asking at the front desk, I knew that voice very well, even if it sounded a little weary it was the voice of my childhood. With her skin, a little paler than I remembered stood a woman at the door, she was a little taller than me standing at 1.81 meters tall, long wavy black hair tied back into a ponytail, and green eyes the same as mine.
We looked at each other in silence for some moments, I could feel her gaze inspecting my body from top to bottom, eyes widening as they took my disheveled form and poorly state of my body, with a shaky voice barely above a whisper I heard her say my name. I gave her a small nod.
Suddenly I saw her eyes start to water followed by her embracing me tightly, "My poor boy...what happened to you?..." she asked with a shaky voice that was on the verge of cracking. I heard my father speak to the officer at the front desk.
"I'm home... Mom" was the only thing I told her, my voice also shaking a little, I was prepared to act my way through all of this but at the last moments, I felt overwhelmed by emotions.
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All the way home from the police station my mother didn't stop hugging me, it was like she thought I would suddenly disappear, I met the eyes of my father through the rearview mirror, and just like I remembered he had a permanent stern gaze like he was an 80's action hero or something, he had a strong jaw and brown eyes, his hair short and black "You okay there son?" was the only thing he had asked me in all the way home, I just nodded at him and his eyes went back to the road.
At home both my older brother Ethan and my younger sister Sarah were shocked to see me, I didn't blame them, after six years one day I was suddenly back, seeing the state of my body they didn't make too much of a fuss, they were treating me like I was made of paper, thankfully I kept circling mana through my body so I had some strength in me, either way, the let me go to my room after telling me they would take me to the clinic the next day.
My room was just like I had left it, band posters adorned my walls, shelves with some action figures and books mounted on the walls. I quickly laid on my bed, I had forgotten the feeling of just laying on a soft bed after so many years, but I wasn't naive, the stern gaze my father gave me in the raid back home was not like his usual one, he had been studying me, searching for something in me, and I was going to know why.
The shadows of the room gathered into the tip of my finger as I whispered otherworldly chants, it started to morph and take form, and a pair of glowing purple eyes opened as the rest of the shadows took the form of a little mouse. "come on buddy, be my eyes and ears" I told him as I let it lose on the floor and it followed my orders, it merged into the shadows as it exited my room.
The shadow mouse ran through my house, running from one shadow to another as it searched for my family, they were not anywhere in the house, at least not in the rooms I knew, but the ears of the shadow mouse heard some hushed voices coming from somewhere down below, on one of the wall I could see and illusion, around a black wood door there where a lot of runes inscribed, they made it look like it was a normal wall, only someone with their Mana awoken would be capable of see through the illusion, or at least know it was there.
Diving through the shadows beneath the door the mouse passes through the illusion into some downstairs that extends a couple of meters. Then there was another door, this one was made of a strange green-colored metal that had inscriptions on it, thankfully being this close I could perceive a little of the conversation they were having.