1. I Am Here_A Game of Hedrons

Its light hit me first, a blue glow cutting through the empty blackness, gradually brightening as I fell towards it. Then the shape that gave off that light, an enormous sphere, glass-like in transparency.

Eventually, I landed on the sphere. The first thing I noticed was the landing. No bounce, no pain, despite the incredible distance of the fall. The second thing I noticed was the sphere; or rather, how it distinctly wasn’t a sphere. The shape was instead trillions of faces, a polyhedron with so many facets that it appeared spherical until observed up close.

“Greetings, traveler, what is your name?”

The voice, if it could be called a voice, came from the pseudo sphere, a vibration that shook the space around me. What was my name? That shouldn’t be hard to answer, but for some reason, it was. I cycled through several, discarding each in turn – too long, too complicated, too strange, didn’t sound right. Yet time was incalculable here, minutes were not a thing I could measure, seconds were skewed by perception.

I took my time thinking it over, finally settling on something – simple, but not too common sounding.

“Greetings, Nezz. We are…in need of life.”

The surface under me shifted, the light sharpening in places, falling to shadow in others. No longer curved, the ground became flat, the light a feeble new-born Sun illuminating the end of a massacre. The dying and dead were strewn across uneven terrain of rock and scraggly grass, marionettes once at war, now with their strings being cut. Somehow I understood – one of these would become the template for my new life. I saw elves, giant bugs, ogres, goblins.

Eventually, I came across a dying figure. It held no weapon, and wore little armor, but its eyes, his eyes, focused on me, unlike the rest. A hand reached out, a boney, scarred hand. I moved closer; whether I was floating, walking, or crawling, I could not tell. This was different.

“This should not have happened,” he whispered. “It…” he stopped to take a ragged, laboring breath, made wet and raspy by the blood in his lungs. “It was a trap.”

Eyes closing, the man let his head fall back to the bloody stone. I reached out, instinctively feeling for the core of him, making it my own. It wrapped around me, pierced me, molded to my mind and my shape, becoming me as much as I became it.

Words flashed passed my vision, there for as long as I desired them to be.

“You are a level 1 human, Nezz.”

The battlefield vanished with the words, and I once again stood atop the impossible shape in that impossible place. The voice seemed to have been replaced by the words, another phrase appearing.

“As a human, you are capable of gaining a bloodline, a heritage that will influence your skills, statistics and path. Would you like to view the list?”

I nodded, although I felt as if that was unnecessary. The voice had been able to read my thoughts before when I had decided upon my name.

The list was long, but I read each option and its short description, methodically working my way through. Descendant of dragons, elementally imbued, demonic bloodline… I continued scrolling, until I hit the end of the list. The option there made me grin.

“Unlocking special bloodlines…

Unlocking rare bloodlines…

Unlocking ancient bloodlines…

Choosing Randomly…”

Several seconds passed before the text was replaced with a single word:

“Done.”

The screen vanished, replaced by a large rectangle of reflective black metal. Although my surroundings, now a perfectly square room, were reflected in a strange, distorted fashion, I was not.

At first, I saw nothingness where I stood, an anthropoid mass of mind-shredding emptiness. I blinked, partially out of confusion, partially from a desire to stop looking at the nothingness, and it was gone. I stood in its place, just how I thought I looked. Perhaps I was what I thought I was, in front of this mirror. I appeared tall, with light skin and short, straight black hair. Not very strong, average in most regards, save for the eyes, which were silver, like the man whose fading essence I’d taken. Within the depths of the mirror, lines of silver fire shown through the black cloth of my shirt, but, looking down, I could not see them on my person. They burned an intricate glyph over my chest, set within a circle of similarly bright silver starting above my sternum and ending at the space just below the gap between my clavicle bones. The shirt itself was tucked into pants of slightly thicker black fabric, tied up by a narrow belt, to which was clipped a sheath, made heavy with the weight of a plain iron dagger. The boots covering my feet looked sturdy. Raising a hand, I noticed the thin black glove that covered it. I flexed my other hand experimentally, feeling the fabric of the matching glove stretch around it, before nodding, satisfied.

Reality broke apart once more, reforming. This time it felt different, more solid, less something I could influence through mere thought. It flickered back on with me in waist-deep, limb-numbingly cold water, turned grey and turbulent by the cloudy sky. There was no easily accessible shoreline in sight, but there were cliffs, the rock of their ocean-turned faces pitted with holes – conveniently useable handholds for climbing – and crusted with salt and growth by centuries of seafoam.

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Half swimming, half wading through the water, I pushed on towards the cliffs. I felt weak, my muscles bogged down with fatigue, despite the fact I’d just started playing. There was a narrow ledge just above water level, protruding half a foot from the cliff side, which I used to rest before my climb, pulling my legs out of the sea.

The water had been icy and the weather was similarly cold. So I wasn’t surprised when the familiar blue text flashed across my vision.

“You have been affected by chill.

-20% to dexterity

-5% to strength

-25% cold resistance.” The text appeared for less than a second, but somehow I understood every word of it.

I huddled closer, drawing my knees to my chest, and folding my arms around my knees in an attempt to remain warm, made futile by the driving wind against my face, and the damp stone on which I sat. Trying to climb the cliff with this debuff might be fatal, but what other choice did I have? I wondered if I could somehow view my stats. The thought was synonymous in time with the blue text.

“You are Nezz, a level 1 human adventurer:

No gold, no silver, and no copper.

Your strength, which is being reduced by chill, and constitution are poor.

Your dexterity, which is being reduced by chill, and wisdom are average.

Your charisma and intellect are very good.

Luck: 52%.”

And skills?

“You have proficiency in the following skills:

Swimming 10 (7)

Athletics 5 (2)

Cold resistance 8 (6)

Rune lore 10

Void affinity 20

Magick affinity 10

Dagger fighting 15 (10)

Precise striking 10 (6)

Orienteering 35

Literacy 35

Nggelu language 40

Enael language 25.”

I didn’t even have the climbing skill. This was definitely going to be dangerous. Even still, I braced myself for the cold and stood up, almost slipping off the water-slick ledge and turned to face the climb, grabbing hold of two large crevices in the rock. I idly wondered if the tide had risen some in the last couple minutes.

My numb fingers were not the best for climbing, so I used my dagger to widen gaps, chipping away at its durability, but the iron was good and it made the climb easier. I still cut my knees and scraped my palms on jutting shards of rock and craggy cliff. My stamina wasn’t the best. I’d called up the window with my vitals only a few feet into the climb.

“Vitals:

Life: 50/50 (100%)

Stamina: 28/30 (93%)

Magic: 40/40 (100%)

Psi: 0/0 (you don’t currently have any psychic capability).”

Hours of climbing and resting to regenerate my shitty stamina made me hungry and dizzy with strain. The arctic wind blew against the cliffs, cooling my sweat before it even started dripping. In the end, however, I made it to the top. I staggered about a meter away from the edge, and collapse to my knees, then, with a sharp inhalation of breath, on my side, the pain in my arms and legs finally registering, along with several bars of blue text.

“Physical exertion has fought off the chill in your body.”

“Your efforts have increased your dexterity slightly.”

“Your efforts have increased your strength slightly.”

“Your perceptiveness has increased your wisdom very slightly.”

“Your focus on the task at hand has increased your intellect very slightly.”

“Sore muscles:

-5% strength

-5% dexterity.”

“Repetitive dangerously high levels of exertion have wounded your body:

-2% max hp.”

“You’ve made it to the top of the cliff. Very lucky...”

“You feel more experienced after surviving the brutal climb:

+50 (50/500) xp.”

“You have discovered a new area; you have a surge of new-found purpose.”

SO the system was smart, it would store messages and display them at a suitable time, Based off of thought patterns, no doubt. I let my eyes slide shut almost involuntarily. I knew this probably wasn’t the safest place to rest, but moving was definitely out of the question, and the game was likely to punish me if I tried resisting the fatigue after hours of stress. I did take one last glimpse at my vitals and statistics, however.

“Character information:

Vitals:

Life: 8/50 (16%)

Stamina: 6/30 (20%)

Magic: 40/40 (100%)

Psi: 0/0 (you don’t currently have any psychic capability).

You are Nezz, a level 1 human adventurer:

No gold, no silver, and no copper.

Your strength, which is being reduced by sore muscles, and constitution are poor.

Your wisdom is decent.

Your dexterity, which is being reduced by sore muscles, is decent.

Your charisma and intellect are very good.

Luck: 49%

You have proficiency in the following skills:

Swimming 10 (9)

Athletics 5 (4)

Cold resistance 9