Hey, so, I don’t expect anyone to see this… ever.

I’d imagine when most people say that, they think they’re gonna die.

Sadly, it’s not that simple right now.

Needless to say, writing in this notebook isn’t gonna help with my… anything, really. It just helps me think.

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I don’t know what to say here.

I guess I should mention where I am.

As far as I know, I’m dead.

I know, I know. “If you’re dead how are you writing this,” I don’t quite know either.

Best guess right now is I’m in the afterlife, or high off my ass.

I should start with the beginning, though.

Hello, potential reader, my name is Elias Bones.

As of right now, I am currently sitting down in the middle of space with a being calling itself a “God.”

As weird as it might sound on paper, that’s just how my day’s been going.

Honestly, at first, I didn’t know what to think about this guy calling himself a God, but I kinda believe him.

The first piece of proof, he...she...it, I don’t know what to call them. They kinda look like a mannequin, completely featureless. Makes it hard to tell. I’ll go with it. It just kinda… poofed… this notebook into existence.

It kept saying the same thing over and over, something about a “dungeon collapsing” and how “without my help millions of lives could be lost.”

I’ve been dealing with telemarketers for years. I know how to spot a bullshit salesman.

Writing has always helped me to think, so I just kinda whispered under my breath about wanting to write, and now here we are.

Side note, everyone I’ve ever met has been surprised about my enjoyment of writing. I never understood why.

Either way, the second piece of evidence… well, I’m in space.

I said it earlier, but yeah, I’m just kinda sitting in the middle of space right now.

At first, I kinda just thought it was a weird greenscreen trick or something.

Looking back on it, that’s not how greenscreens work. I think.

In any case, that thought was thrown aside when a fucking meteor blew past us.

I know you aren’t supposed to be able to hear shit in space, but I swear I hear it roaring past me.

Whatever the fuck is happening, I’ve lost track at this point.

The thing, God, whatever, is just standing a few feet away from me, seemingly waiting for me to finish.

I think it’s gonna wait for me to finish writing before it speaks up again.

I think I’m gonna make this my will, I don’t really have much else to do.

Nevermind then, it just told me, and I quote, “You’re time to die may come after you’ve fulfilled your duty.”

It’s kinda spooky you know… it can’t see what I’m writing, how did it know I was talking about my will.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Welp, fuck me then, nevermind. It’s not reading my words, it’s reading my mind. Great.

Well, whatever.

Uhh, what haven’t I talked about yet?

Oh yeah, I haven’t talked about me yet.

Well, I mentioned it a few lines ago, but the name’s Elias Bones.

Quite like my name, it helped me set up a good rep whenever I got to a new city.

You learn pretty quite not to mess with the guy with the last name “Bones,” especially when he was known to break quite a lot.

I was quite a cool guy If I do say so myself.

My folks died when I was six or so. They were going to visit some cousins in Germany. The plane crashed over the ocean.

Everyone always said that I changed after that, but I don’t know what I was like when I was younger, so who’s to say?

I went to live with my grandparents till I was fifteen or so. I wasn’t doing great in school, and a lot of people always wanted to fight me.

Everyone would always come up to me and just start yapping about whatever they think is interesting, and this would go on all day. If they didn’t want to fight, then they must’ve been fucking stupid.

A lot of people think I have anger issues or problems with being patient. As usual, when it comes to this kinda thing, they’re dead wrong. All it is is that I have a very low tolerance for bullshit and stupidity.

Annoyingly, I was always surrounded by stupid people, and I usually ended up just fighting them to get them to fuck off.

During my sophomore year of high school, I was being threatened with expulsion. I’d done nothing that would warrant it. I always completed my work, even if it was a bit shitty, and I just kept to myself most of the time.

Well, one of the fuckers who annoyed me the most, some annoying fuck by the name of Jeffery Tartal. He would always come and yap at me after school, and it’d usually just end up with me telling him to fuck off.

Well, I don’t know why exactly it happened, but apparently, he died.

Honestly, I don’t believe that even nearly ten years later. I’d hit him much harder in the past, and all I did was push him on the sidewalk.

I honestly think that people just had it out for me, and had me framed.

Don’t know, and don’t care all that much either.

Getting called out for murder charges is a sure good way to get sent to juvie though, and that’s what ended up happening.

Honestly, it wasn’t even that bad.

People bothered me the first day I was there, but just kinda beat them all down and they fuck’d off from then on.

Eventually, apparently, they got a profile of me done. I thought it was kinda rude of them, but hey, what can you do.

In any case, even these fucking professionals were fucking stupid, and thought I had something wrong.

They ended up bringing me in for some testing, and discovered I had something they called an “IED.”

I never really bothered to learn what it was, but considering I already knew that I had nothing wrong with me, I just kinda stopped caring.

One thing they did that confused me, though, was that they ended up letting me out.

Like, I know I was innocent, but they didn’t. It never really sat right with me that they just let me out, but I just kinda let it go after a while.

I mean, I was free, so had nothing to complain about.

I didn’t have any close relatives to me, my grandparents died while I was still in the slammer, the examiners all claimed that they both died of heart attacks.

I didn’t buy it. I mean, I already knew I was framed for murder, I wouldn’t have put it past the fucks to have killed my grandparents to get to me, for some reason.

I didn’t matter all that much.

I ended up heading to the bank, to check to see if they left me any cash. Turned out, they did, and it was quite a bit too. Close to two hundred thousand.

I was kinda lost at this point, though. I had nowhere to go, nothing to do, and I was just kinda bored.

I ended up just kinda wandering the country for the next few years. Going from town to town, city to city, trying all the fun things they had to offer.

Probably my favorite was still vegas though, that partially on account of me winning a pretty penny there.

Now we get to the recent times.

It all started about two weeks back, I’d been wandering along the east coast for a while, and I stumbled upon a pretty big town. I never really bothered to learn its name, but it was one of the more active towns I went to.

I’d been barhopping for around a week when I heard about a pretty spicy rumor.

There was a drug cartel in the town.

I never understood why people were always so against drugs.

In any case, I wanted to check out what they had, so I decided to go looking around.

After asking around for a bit, I heard one of their fronts was a bar a liked visiting quite a bit, so I already knew where it was, and decided to head straight there.

And lo and behold, when I got there, some big goons were standing just outside the door.

Everybody should be able to recognize a goon on sight. Big, burly, and stupid looking.

I knew I had found the right place, and that something was happening right at that moment.

As should be obvious, I wanted in. I knew how goons like these operated, you’d walk up, they shoo you away, and after you fuck them over, they end up letting you in.

That’s some good advice for free, by the way. Usually, beating someone down is an effective way to get what you want out of them.

In any case, I got inside the bar, and lo and behold, I had come at the perfect time.

There were two fucks standing on opposites ends of the table, and right in the middle of them, was a big ol’ hunk of meth.

I figured it was law of the jungle, and that since they saw me fuck up their guards, they wouldn’t bother me. It’d happened plenty of times in the past.

Well, turned out, they were kinda stupid as hell.

They started asking me questions like, “Who the hell are you?!” And, “How did you get past the guards!”

Their yelling was starting to get annoying, so I decided that I would shut one of them up.

Well, I kinda didn’t expect the taser.

Yeah, let me tell you, reader. Don’t get tasered, not fun.

To sum up the rest of the story pretty quick, I got thrown off a bridge as a power play.

They kept saying things like, “We got a reputation to keep,” and “This isn’t personal, kid.”

I’m still pretty sure I’m older than them, so the second one confused me.

What followed is the most interesting part, though

As I was falling, as best as I could describe it, I heard a crack.

It sounded similar enough to glass breaking, just with a lot more reverb.

The best comparison I can think of is to imagine you hit a glass gong, and it shattered.

At the moment I didn’t know what to think of it, ‘cause, you know, actively falling to your death is a pretty good cause for being distracted.

And, well, I guess I fell into that whatever made that cracking sound, and now I’m here.

I don’t know quite what I’m gonna do now, but I don’t think I have a choice in the matter either.

I’m sitting in the middle of space with a thing calling itself a God, who can read my thoughts, and didn’t even react when I punched it.

I’ve never really been the religious type, the exact opposite really, but even I know enough about it that pissing off a God is a seriously bad idea.

And what’s the worst that can happen? I die again?

Or, I guess, die for real this time?

Whatever the case, I’m sure I’ll be fine.

I’ve never met someone who can stand against Elias Bones, the Marauder.