— The Fanciful Travels by Beron de Laney, 376 AC.
As suddenly as my soul torture had begun, it stopped. I sensed a shift, and I was no longer there, but elsewhere. Vertigo overtook me, and I fell face forwards into what felt like earth and grass. Curled in a fetal position, I whimpered as the aftershock of pain pyed across my mortal body.
Shadowy purple tendrils continued to whip across my consciousness, but fainter now, slowly repced by a plethora of error messages. I kept on begging for the agony and torment to end, until exhaustion finally cimed me. I fell into a nightmare-fueled sleep filled with visions of the deaths of everyone I had ever loved or known.
***
I awoke naked and gibbering nonsense to an uncaring universe. Dull sunlight pounded my senses as I tried unsuccessfully to raise myself on fever-drunk feet. Failing pitifully, I instead retreated to curl on a soft bed of grass. Rocking back and forth to a rhythm known only to the mad, I chanted, “Not real, not real,” to myself. Over and over, a litany to a world that did not care.
Looking across the sea of green, I saw it was a gray and dark day with clouds, pregnant with rain, on the distant horizon. At the edges of my vision, the hint of shadowy things scuttled back into the recesses of my mind. Across from me in the near distance, I saw a picture from what felt like a lifetime long past: the imposing tree on the hill. I was vulnerable, naked, and alone in a pce known only to my madness.
Memories from another pce smashed into my consciousness as a high trill of sound flooded my senses. Willing the world to go away, I wrapped my head in my hands and closed my eyes.
Then, as inexorable as time itself, a message pyed across my inner eye in a bold script.
CHOOSE YOUR CALLING.
Flustered, I could not help but be drawn to the message. As my awareness brushed against understanding, new text was shown to me.
INITIATE, and below, another choice, STUDENT.
Just as I was musing on the incongruity of “Student,” the text fshed static across my vision and there was a ringing in my ears. The “Student” option had changed to dispy “Acolyte.” Could I get any crazier? I felt in my bones that I had to choose quickly or there would be dire consequences.
I knew in my gut that the “Acolyte” must be some sort of hidden css. Those were usually harder to py, but tended to have some real endgame advantages if you could master their skills. With nothing else to go on—no wikis, guides, or even friends to expin the choices in front of me—I selected Acolyte.
I heard a rumble from within as text bzed and imprinted across my mind. A rushing sense of power filled me, a feeling of completeness.
STATUS
Calling: %^& Level 1 Acolyte (v@ri%
Strength: 8
Dexterity: 8
Constitution: 8
Intelligence: 8
Wisdom: 8
Charisma: 8
Luck: 8
SKILLS & PROFICIENCIES
Pain Nullification (lvl.1)
SPELLS & MAGIC
-
GIFTS
-
Experience to next level: 0/100
It looked like the user interface, or UI, of one of the many games I would py. What was this? Pain Nullification? Shock and indignation rose to the fore of my mind with this notification of a skill. Before I could fully comprehend it, new numerical markers blossomed in the lower-left corner of my vision.
Health: 5/6
Stamina: 16/16
Mana: 2/6
Feeling vulnerable with my nakedness, I pinched myself to make sure this was no dream, then pinched again harder to draw a little blood. This must be a game. This cannot be real, I thought.
My mind teetered once again on the brink of insanity, sibint whispers reassuring me that it was real, which were followed by a far-off scream of a distant divinity. At the edges of my vision, I could sense the impression of dark, shadowy tendrils, ever moving and just out of sight.
The pain proved this was genuine, that I must be here. Was this really the pce of my dreams? An escape from the doldrums of a pedestrian life? The idea both disturbed and thrilled me. Looking at my hand, I curled my fingers into a fist before straightening them again. What power awaited me in such a world? Love? Immortality?
As I contempted the bewildering scale of my circumstance, the next message appeared.
New Quest: First Steps
I was once again struck by the importance of the message. With earnest effort, I rose to my feet and trudged towards the tree on the hill. Each step was heavy and painful as I made my way barefoot to the pce where the revetion had occurred.
After what felt like an eternity, I finally arrived and took a deep breath, gazing upon the scene.
A majestic tree, looking like some sort of acacia but with bded green leaves, stood tall, its branches rising from its great trunk like an accusation against the heavens. The air around it was saturated with a strong pine scent mixed with the sweet fragrance of lemon blossoms. Beneath its generous boughs, a crude stone altar stood. At its foot, fallen from its pce, y a stone carving of a female figure, a crude facsimile of the goddess.
“Avaria,” I croaked, caught somewhere between desperation and joy.
There was no answer. Yet, I thought I heard again the screaming of a distant female voice. Shaking my head, I wondered what madness on top of madness was possessing me.
There, an echo. A tinkling echo of joyful ughter.
“Who are you?” I asked in a quiet, hopeful voice to no one.
“I am Power Strike.”
Impressions of a female voice tickled my mind, a resonance close to my ear that left me shivering in excitement. Renderings of war and conflict, the press of the melee, an image of a peasant bringing down a cruel warlord, and an unsung hero alone atop the battlements unleashing savage blows against unspeakable horrors—all of this pyed across my inner vision.
A solemn note entered my mindscape. A soft choir of angels. A cry of anguish and salvation. The music built up to a crescendo until there was a new voice.
“I am Heal.” The voice was gentle and authoritative, with all the kindness of a mother.
New images were brought to my mind: those of a man, bleeding by the road, only to be saved by a blue light; and a dying man, coughing blood, only to rise again. They were a wish to rectify a little of the pain and hurt of the world.
I felt the budding of real, earnest hope. Like a game, I was being given my initial css skills. With these powers I could grow to be a mighty Padin, sying all who stood before me, advancing in Strength and making the world a better pce.
Then something very wrong invaded the st remnants of tranquility. A sense of uncaring, of unbridled change and boundless hunger. Shadowy tendrils began to py against the edges of my mind once again, demanding attention.
“I am Rust…” a voice uttered in a sibint, gravelly tone behind me.
I turned around and found nothing, met instead with dark, hollow ughter. Images assaulted my senses, vioting my sense of self. They were of a forlorn sword, rusting as a grave marker to a forgotten soldier. Its serrated bde, marked with red rust the color of dried blood, was so corroded that it had failed to cut through the hide of a majestic beast.
Then a pause, pregnant with all the future of a dead promise.
Shaken but undaunted, I optimistically chose not to look past the gift. This was just another skill that had appeared before me, albeit a little darker and edgier. Applying my gamer logic, this was probably a debuff that reduced the damage of enemy weapons.
“But first… you must look… must look!” thundered the voice, now sounding a thousand strong. The shadowy tendrils forced my attention to the pces at the edges of my vision.
Curse of En^r*
-20% all starting attributes.
Gilt in bck was an error message, the name of my curse.
“What is my name?” demanded the voices, insistent and wheedling.
I coughed blood as I was struck by a blow as sharp as any saber.
“What is my name?” the legion cried out again. They had grown increasingly unrelenting, infused with a wrath that spoke of the death throes of a supernova and echoed with the silence of the grave. Visions of decaying flesh and the slow decline of alien civilizations flooded my consciousness.
“I don’t know!” I wailed, my voice harsh as I screamed with all my might.
“What is my name? What is my name? What is my name?” The question rang out again and again, and each utterance was a hammer blow to my psyche. New visions flooded my mind: of the cosmos, explosions of light, the scattering of stars, and the cruel end of all things. I even saw the heat death of the universe.
In the bottom left of my vision, I saw that my Health was plummeting. A fsh of inspiration struck me then, fueled by utter desperation. An endless spiral of lost energy to chaos… read a fragment of a half-remembered communion with the ultimate end of all things.
“Entropy… you are Entropy!” I cried in a st-gasp bid to live.
Impressions appeared of a smile that was a tear in reality, a gaxy wide, as the true name of my curse was revealed.
Curse of Entropy
-20% all starting attributes.
A myriad of new system messages then fshed across my vision with the cessation of the pain. Finally, I saw a simple line of text at the end that made me smile in satisfaction as darkness once again cimed one of its own.
Quest Complete