A Record of Ash & Ruin: The Grieving Lands

Chapter 2: A Choice

I sojourn now in blessed lands of the Rawesan for a time, the birthplace of Her church. Many are the prophets who venture into the deep deserts in search of guidance, but few return with the divine scripture. Those who do are often blessed with the gift-spark and write on parchment, paper, or vellum the instruction of the divine that others may know greater communion with Her.

- The Fanciful Travels by Beron de Laney 376 A.C

As suddenly as my soul torture began, it stopped. I sensed a shift and I was no longer there, but elsewhere. With a sudden sense of vertigo, I fell face forward into what felt like earth and grass. Curled in a fetal position, I whimpered as the aftershock of pain played across my mortal body. Shadowy purple tendrils continued to whip across my consciousness, yet fainter now, slowly replaced by a plethora of error messages. I kept on begging for the agony and torment to end before exhaustion finally claimed me. I fell into a nightmare-fuelled sleep filled with visions of the deaths of everyone I had ever loved or known.

I awoke naked, gibbering nonsense to an uncaring universe. Dull sunlight mercilessly pounded my senses as I tried unsuccessfully to raise myself on fever drunk feet, retreating instead 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 that it was a grey and dark day, 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 semi-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 place known only to my madness.

Memories from another place smashed into my consciousness, a high trilling of sound flooding my senses. I wrapped my head in my hands and closed my eyes, willing the world to go away.

As inexorable as time itself, a message played across my inner eyes in a bold script;

CHOOSE YOUR CALLING

Flustered I could not help but be drawn to the message, and 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 flashed static across my vision and there was a ringing in my ears. The ‘Student’ option had changed to display ‘Acolyte.’ Could I get any crazier? I felt instinctively 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 class. Those were usually harder to play 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 explain the choices in front of me, I mentally chose Acolyte.

I heard a rumble from within as text blazed and imprinted across my mind. A rushing sense of power filled me, a feeling of completeness.

STATUS

Calling$%^& Level 1 Acolyte ([email protected]% Strength8 Dexterity8 Constitution8 Intelligence8 Wisdom8 Charisma8 Luck8

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 that I would often play. 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 this, new numerical markers blossomed in the lower-left corner of my vision;

Health5/6 Stamina16/16 Mana2/6

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 can not be real..." I felt my mind teetering once again on the brink of insanity, sibilant whispers reassuring me that it was real, 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 just out of sight.

The pain proved this was genuine, I must be here. Was this really the place of my dreams? An escape from the meaningless doldrum 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 awaits me in such a world? Love? Immortality...?

As I contemplated the bewildering scale of my circumstance, the next message appeared;

New Quest: First Steps

My being was once again hammered by the importance of the message. Finally forcing myself to my feet, I drew with leaden steps to the tree on the hill. Barefoot, step by painful forced step I made my way to the place of revelation. Arriving after what seemed an eternity, I drew a long breath and looked at the scene before me.

A majestic tree that looked like some sort of acacia but with bladed green leaves, with branches that rose from its great trunk like an accusation against the heavens. A smell of strong pine mixed with lemon blossoms saturated the air around it. Beneath its generous boughs stood a crude stone altar. At its foot, fallen from its place, lay a stone carving of a female figure, a crude facsimile of the goddess. “Avaria...” I croaked, 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 laughter.

“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. 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.

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,” spoke a motherly voice, exuding gentle authority.

New images were brought to my mind. A man bleeding by the road only to be saved by a blue light, a dying man coughing blood only to rise again. A hope to rectify a little of the pain and hurt of the world.

I felt the budding feeling of real, true hope. Like a game I was being given my initial class skills, I enthused to myself, my heart growing a little lighter. With these I could grow to be a mighty paladin, slaying all who stood before me, advancing in strength and making the world a better place.

Then something very wrong invaded the last notes of tranquillity. A sense of uncaring, of change and hunger that knew no bounds. Shadowy tendrils once again played against the edges of my mind, but this time demanding attention as they pressed firmly against my consciousness.

“I am Rust...” a voice uttered in a sibilant gravelly voice behind me.

I turned around finding nothing, met only with dark hollow laughter. Images assaulted my senses, violating my sense of self. A sword forlorn, rusting as a grave marker to a forgotten soldier. Its serrated blade marked red with blood, corrosion failing 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 a gift horse in the mouth. Another skill, this one a little more dark and edgy, probably a debuff that reduced enemy weapon damage I thought to myself as I applied my gamer logic.

“But first...you must look...must look!” thundered the voice, now sounding a thousand strong. I felt the shadowy tendrils force my attention to the places at the edges of my vision.

Curse of En^r*<> -20% all starting attributes.

Gilt in black 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 sabre.

“What is my name?” the legion cried again in savage demand. They had grown ever more unrelenting with a wrath that spoke of the last death throes of a supernova, the echoes of the silence of the grave. Visions of the dead, rotting flesh and the slow decay of alien civilisations filled my consciousness.

“I don’t know!” I wailed to the uncaring voices, my voice harsh as I screamed with all my might.

“What is my name? What is my name? What is my name?” again and again, each utterance a hammer blow to my psyche. New visions now of the cosmos, explosions of light, the scattering of the stars, the cruel end of all things. The heat death of the universe.

I saw that my Health was failing as it plummeted. A flash of inspiration struck me then, fuelled by utter desperation. “...An endless spiral of lost energy to chaos”, a fragment of a half remembered communion with the ultimate end of all things.

“Entropy...you are Entropy!” I cried in a last gasp bid to live.

Impressions of a smile, a tear in reality a galaxy-wide, as the true name of my curse was revealed;

Curse of Entropy -20% all starting attributes.

A myriad of new system messages then flashed 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 claimed one of their own;

Quest Complete