The pounding in my head was un-fucking bearable. It felt like a cluster of toddlers decided that inside my skull was an adapt place, and time, to practice drumming with pots and pans. A second later, the word “Awaken” slammed through my head though it came from no source that I could tell. It startled me enough that I sat straight up from my bed, far faster than I should have, and rammed my forehead directly into the metal sheet above me, blacking me out instantly. See, I was in a prison and the bed that was temporarily my home in isolation was more an alcove in the wall. I feel it pertinent to point out that I am fully guilty of the crime I committed, breaking and entering, though my soiree into iso was just due to the zero-tolerance policy that the prison had. Defending yourself was just as bad as throwing a punch in the first place.
I hadn’t been here long, a few days, before some hulk of a man decided that and I quote “Looked at him like a faggot,” I suppose he thought I was coming on to him? When he threw the punch I tried to defend myself, though when a man has over a hundred pounds on you there isn’t much you can do but run. When I finally awoke my vision was a dull brownish color. My gut instinct was that I had bled into my eye, though blood doesn’t normally come with words. “Please press the highlighted button to begin the awakening.“ Was scrawled out in the center of my vision wherever I looked.
“The fuck,” I spoke, the words bounced around my cell before fading away. “Must be dreaming,” I mused, though I didn’t recall ever having one so vivid. I shook my head, casting out any wandering thoughts in an admittedly theatrical manner though one that worked nonetheless. I pushed my hand to the button marked “Awaken.” I waited a couple seconds as nothing happened beyond the coloration fading and sighed. “Did I break it?”
“Oh, it worked perfectly well,” A voice from behind me spoke, it sounded very familiar though I wasn’t sure why.
“Who the fuck is there?” I shouted, into an empty cell as I rolled out of my coffin-like bed, arms raised. Though there wasn’t anyone there. “I’m a master of three martial arts so don’t fuck with me.” I lied, though my words must have sounded more like some school yard nerd trying to make himself feel big.
“Oh really? Care to explain why you have no listed skills in any martial arts, beyond a rank zero point two ability with karate from that year and a half back in middle school.” The voice took on a more mocking tone, which was irritating to say the least. Though the fact that it was so familiar but I just couldn’t place it was even more annoying. “Now before you have any witty comebacks let's put that aside and let me ask you a question. Does anything look off?”
“Umm what?” I responded, slightly stunned by the knowledge this voice had. I moved all over the place, who around here would know that much about my background? I was even jailed under a false identity, though now that my finger was in the system, maybe if they followed all the break in reports, they may be able to track me down to my hometown.
When the voice didn’t respond, I looked around in earnest. I almost didn’t catch it, though my years of skirting the law kept my eyes astute. My shadow was, off? It was still being thrown off me, though its arms were crossed in an annoyed manner. How was that possible? My eyes went wide, which clued in my shadow that I understood.
“See, that wasn’t so hard now was it?” My shadow congratulated me on my test of basic awareness. “I’ll start you off with the basics, there really isn’t an easy way to say so I’ll be blunt. I am you, in some sort of manner. On my world of shi’are we monitor dimensions as they collide with each other and yours just collided with a different one. Don’t worry too much about what the other one is like, you wouldn’t understand it even if I explained it.”
“Try me.” I snapped, my words cutting off my… own... shadow. God this day was weird.
“No, now shut up and let me finish, if you interrupt me again I’m not going to explain anything.” My shade said, pausing to give me a chance to dig my own grave, and when I didn’t it continued. “The basics of everything is shit’s about to get weird. You’re lucky, stats are looking solid, some core skills, though your magic is low. Which honestly sucks for you. Speaking of which, mind making a quick capital H with both of your hands.”
I complied, figuring to embrace the madness of what was going on instead of fighting it, and the coloration popped back up again, though this time it was translucent. A paragraph appeared this time, which had some interesting things to say.
Colvin, Elias
Body: Grade 0.7
Agility: Grade 1.6
Awareness: Grade 1.4
Logic: Grade 1.1
Magic: Grade 0.2
Spirit: Grade 1.4
What, is this a stat screen? I stole some Dungeons and Dragons books that looked old a while back. I did look through them, though right now the scraps I could remember didn’t explain anything. I had a fair idea what the first four were, and I couldn’t really refute the low body grade. My stats proved what my spirit said, I was slowly becoming more and more confident that this was real. I knew that I wasn’t imaginative enough to come up with all this shit on my own.
My shadow spoke up, snapping me out of my head. “The first four stats are pretty much what you think they are, body is a culmination of your toughness, physical mass, and raw strength. Agility is your finesse, given your history I hope you can put two and two together and figure out why that’s your best stat. One point zero is human average. Well, at least for the first four, the last two the normal human average is only point six. If you try to push them to the left with your right hand you’ll get a list of skills along with their rarity and mastery.”
I shrugged and followed my shadows instructions, my hand slide through the words, causing them to ripple as if they were made of water. When the rippling finally ceased, there was exactly what my mirror said would be there
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
Greater Vital Sense
Minor Shadow Step
Lesser Ambush
Minor Muffle
Moderate Darksight
Lesser Distortion
I guessed that this list didn’t end up including mundane skills, that or I had no life skills of a measurable ability. I reached out and touched greater vital sense. It caused a small chunk of text to appear, outlined in a white box.
Greater Vital Sense.
Rarity: Purple.
Mastery: 0
Bounded site: Eyes
Bound change: Eyes will turn a bright red coloration and give of a soft glow.
Primary Stat: Sense
Secondary Stat: None
Effect: Allows a user to see the cardiovascular system of a target he or she views. Up to a range of one hundred and seven feet. This will also highlight any vulnerable spots a target may have at a range of ten point seven feet. Equation for distance is 32^(1+Awareness/4) feet Vulnerability is one tenth the normal sight range.
Well that was a lot of information to sort through. If the rarity worked like most games purple was fairly high up the ladder. What was that catch phrase, “when grandma burps, patrick obeys?” White, green, blue, purple, and orange. Though some games varied from that model and I really didn’t have any proof that our world would work within the same rules as games so everything was just a long shot. That equation was messy as hell and math was never my strong suit, though even I could tell that vital sense would scale like hell off of my awareness stat. With a push into the words the excess information disappeared, just leaving the list behind. I opened up the remaining ones.
Minor Shadow Step
Rarity: Green.
Mastery: 0.
Bounded site: Feet.
Bound change: Skin coloration of the feet will turn black.
Primary Stat: Magic
Secondary Stat: Agility
Effect: Teleports the user between two shadows with a cooldown of nine point four seconds and a maximum distance of six point four feet. Equation for cooldown is 11-agility and for distance is magic*32 in feet.
Lesser Ambush
Rarity: White.
Mastery: 0.
Bounded site: Hands.
Bound change: Tattoos of daggers will appear on the hands
Primary Stat: Agility
Secondary Stat: Agility
Effect: Dashes to a target within ten and a half feet with a bonus multiplier equal to your agility. The cooldown is six seconds. Equation for range is 6.5*agility in feet and the multiplier is agility.
Minor Muffle
Rarity: White.
Mastery: 0.
Bounded site: Legs.
Bound changes: Legs will feel soft to the touch
Primary Stat: None
Secondary Stat: None
Effect: When activated this skill reduces the noise made by the user by half for the next thirty minutes, this skill has an hour long cooldown.
Moderate Darksight
Rarity: Green.
Mastery: 0.1
Bounded site: Eyes
Bound change: Eyes will turn black
Primary Stat: None
Secondary Stat: None
Effect: The user will be able to see in mundane darkness though the user will become blinded temporarily by bright lights.
Lesser Distortion
Rarity: Orange.
Mastery: 0
Bounded site: Soul
Bound change: Bind change is stated in the description and is only active when the skill is in use
Primary Stat: Spirit
Secondary Stat: None
Effect: When active the user will appear to randomly bend his shape an make him harder to attack. This allows a user to add his spirit to his defense. This effect lasts for eight seconds and has a cooldown of twenty-two seconds.
“Jesus you take forever to read through it all. Any questions or can we get this show on the road?” My shadow asked, it looked almost as if it took a seat in the alcove that was just my bed.
“Honestly, I have a fuck ton of questions. Though I’m not sticking around in prison if I can teleport now. Even if it has shit all for range.” My stomach rumbled a bit to my surprise. I must have been out for a while, I ate before getting thrown into here. “So, I’ll narrow it down to three. You mentioned knowing a skill in martial arts earlier, why can’t I see any skill that are mundane? Second, skills have a slot; can I use both my eye skills? Finally, what’s the difference between spirit and magic?” My questions were followed by another ten or so that were kept in my head. I had time to thin
“Hey, you asked questions I can answer, though I’ll add an explanation of one more tiny thing before I need to report back. Still going to answer your questions so let’s start with that. One”, my shadow stuck out a finger ticking off the questions as he answered. “Your mundane skill list is something that you can’t see. I’m technically not supposed to tell you anything off of it, though bustin’ your balls seemed like a good enough reason to break the rules a little. Two, no you get one skill per bind, feel free to take them out and re-slot them. Third, magic is harnessing the energy around you while spirit is the energy within. With your stats you’re not going be to throwing fireballs or cones of cold. Though with a high spirit, skills that modify your body are going to come a little easier to you. Also, it’s the reason you got a guardian assigned to you, that’s me by the way. Most people can’t handle one.”
“Alrighty, I’m with you so far. What’s that last thing you wanted to let me know?” I said, only half paying attention as I tried to activate darksight, which I found was already active. Then activated all my other non eyebound skills. I felt my body shift as they each turned on, changing to fit their descriptions.
“Be careful, this state what you could call the spearhead of the collision. This was the first area to shatter so the walls between realities are the weakest here. To put it simply, there be monsters here.” His voice started to fade until it was simply gone, my shadow disappeared.
“That was ultimately useful but completely unhelpful.” I sighed, having more questions by the second. Though that was for another time. If what he said was true, I needed to be careful. My head tilted to the door and then I realized I had no clue how to activate any of these abilities. “Shadow step Go!” I shouted as if I was in a children's action show though the result was just me feeling a bit silly. I exhaled, a long sigh of frustration. I hadn’t been in isolation long, but it was still well, isolating. I just wanted to leave and when that thought crossed my mind I vanished.