I blinked. I felt no sense of time having passed, but I was obviously somewhere else. I was prone, but my body felt oddly afloat, washing in a flushed heat, and with a sense of dulled pain just at the boundary of my perception.
In the dim light I could see thin curtains, and small lights, blue, green and red. For a moment I thought I was restrained, but what I thought at first were cords were tubes connected to an IV taped to my wrist, and to some kind of machine on a moveable stand sitting next to me. Cables emerged from under the covers near my chest, around to my side, and behind me. My right arm was immobilized in some kind of brace or splint, with a sling across my body. I was in a hospital bed.
I tried to shift myself upright, but quickly failed. My entire right side ached immensely, a hundred different points of throbbing pain that forced a gasp from my lungs. I laid back, breathing heavy, even the movement of my chest seeming to come with a new round of stinging and agony. I forced my breaths shallower, trying to regroup as the pain receded.
I felt none of this while I was with the god. If that was real, and it felt as real as anything, I must not have been in my body. He had said I was in an accident. That I wouldn’t recover. My heart started beating rapidly again, my eyes searching frantically around for some proof of health or sign of impending death.
It was the rapid searching that made me see it. One part of my vision was continuing to track with my eyes, a constant presence in the periphery of my vision, like a burned-in image on an LCD screen. And similar to an eyelash or smudge on your glasses, it stayed in the same relative spot no matter where I looked. It was a short bar of light, blinking red. Another, longer green bar was unblinking beneath it. Like the heads up display of a game.
"Status," I said, though I realized afterward I didn’t need to say it aloud. I was shocked by the dry soreness in my throat, and the hoarse whisper in place of my voice. But even more stunning was the sight of a bright screen panel appearing in the air in front of my face, parallel to my prone body in bed. The display hovered in the air, glowing, but failing to illuminate the room around it:
Name: Mairead Carrigan
Race: Human
Class: Hero
Level: 1 (+)
Condition: Intoxicated
Core Attributes
Body: 30 (x1.25 = 37)
Spirit: 70 (x1.25 = 87)
Mind: 50 (x1.25 = 62)
Luck: 50 (x1.25 = 62)
Derived Attributes
Health: 3 [max 37] (+)
Magic: 0 [max 87] (+)
Focus: 62 (+)
Charm: 62
Intuition: 50
Will: 75
Fate: ??? (+)
Skills
Communion of the Soul, Appraisal, Inventory, Divine Translation, Hero's Journey (minor bonus to experience), Champion of Light (minor bonus to Body), Inner Eye (minor bonus to Spirit), Adept of Ages (minor bonus to Mind), Fortune's Favor (minor bonus to Luck), Swift Regeneration (minor bonus to Health recovery), Spiritual Harmony (minor bonus to Magic recovery), Still Mind (minor bonus to Focus recovery), Destiny's Chosen (minor bonus to Fate), Inner Alchemy (convert Health/Magic/Focus)
The information was a repeat of what I saw before with the god, from what I could tell, except for Condition now had a value of "Intoxicated", and Health, which was now "3 [max 37]", with the ‘3’ in red. So I was hurt. I chuckled wryly, then immediately regretted it as the pain in my chest and side flared up again. Yeah, I guess I’m hurt. I stared up, unfocused, as I tried to reconcile the unreality of this screen with the all too real evidence of my current situation. Maybe I was hallucinating? I probably have a lot of pain meds floating through my system. I looked back at the screen. Ah, yeah, "Intoxicated". Wasn’t doing a great job of it though, I winced as I repositioned my back.
Okay, figure it out, then figure out what to do.
While lying there I noticed something I hadn’t thought about while I was in the gods' space – my vision was blurry. Even in the dark, I could tell everything had a kind of hazy fuzziness around it. That means I wasn’t wearing my contacts, like I usually do. I suppose the doctors or nurses removed them or something while I was unconscious? Except – the screen in front of me was as clear as day. I considered it for a moment, thoughts swimming upstream. I must not be using my eyes to see it, then. I closed my eyes. The screen persisted. Okay, that was weird. Leaving aside the question of whether my contacts were in place during my ‘vision’, or if that was proof I was somehow hallucinating, or if souls don’t need contacts, I considered what to do.
Journal. Eyes still closed. The screen before me shifted, filling up with rows of words. I checked the most recent few lines:
Day: Jan 13
03:27:14 Me (Hero): Skill active: Swift Regeneration.
03:27:14 Me (Hero): Low Health: Health at < 5%.
03:27:14 Me (Hero): Awakens.
03:29:47 Me (Hero): "Status."
03:29:47 Me (Hero): Status active.
03:30:14 Me (Hero): Low Health: Health at 10%.
03:32:22 Me (Hero): Journal active.
So it’s 3:30am on Jan 13. It was Thursday when I went into the office and…everything happened. So that was…Jan 12th? 11th? I couldn’t remember. It seems I’d been here maybe a day? I looked higher in the entries, but the last one before the timestamps started working was that god, Metam, firing me a second time. Dick.
Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.
I thought about scrolling up, and the prior few entries came into view, with Iter and me, all the way up to the very beginning when the "Divine Communion" or whatever was accepted. Nothing before that, and nothing in between. So was the log not working when I was unconscious, or did no time pass between the gods’ space and now? No way to tell. It certainly didn’t tell me anything about the accident or before Iter showed up.
I focused again at the bottom. "Swift Regeneration", hunh? I switched back to status, and saw that my Health was now "8 [max 37]". That’s good, it’s going up. I did feel like the pain had lessened a bit? A let out a sigh of relief I wasn’t aware I was holding in. It’s going up, I’m getting better. I’m not going to die.
Actually, that’s kinda fast, right? Up five points from earlier, or ten percent from earlier, if the Journal math was to be believed. And if the Journal has the time right, too, that’s what, one point a minute? I’ll be at full health in a half hour. I looked at my arm, sling pressed firmly against my body. Someone’s going to be surprised when they come by to check on me later.
✦ ✦ ✦
I spent some time going back and forth between Status and Journal, watching the numbers rise and the message log grow. At somewhere around 30 minutes, my Condition changed from "Intoxicated" to "Normal". I’m not sure if that was because the meds wore off naturally, or if one of my skills had something to do with it, but I did feel more awake and alert. Magic never changed from 0, though. I guess there really was no magic in this world. And that was additional evidence I was back in my own world and not some other one.
My health was now at "35 [max 37]", and I expected it to be completely full in a couple minutes. The pain had almost entirely receded, and now all I felt was an itching sensation all down my right side, like dry skin peeling. All my appendages and digits seemed to work fine. I still had the IV needle in my wrist and the sling and brace on my right arm, but I had a feeling they weren’t so necessary anymore.
With my recovery, came more questions. First, the gods – that had to be real, right? Either that, or I’m still out cold somewhere and dreaming about my recovery. But assuming I'm fully conscious, this Status/Communion thing was there. A skill had activated, and healed me. So if that’s real, then the gods are, too. Other worlds. Magic. Heroes.
I was never really religious. Went to church when I was younger, but never really could get into the whole faith and belief thing. If God exists, why does He care whether I believe in Him or not? I figured I’d keep an open mind to the whole thing, and either God cared about belief, in which case that’s kind of petty, or He didn’t, in which case it didn’t matter. I’m sure my Mom would be praying extra hard for me if she heard me say that.
But these self-described gods didn’t seem to care about belief. Only one of them seemed to care about me at all. And based on the way things ended, I probably won’t be hearing from them anymore. So gods or not, they left me with some goodbye gifts.
I tried for a while to remember some other abilities Iter talked about, but couldn’t recall anything beyond the whole Demon Lord shtick. Then I cursed my stupidity and called up the Journal. I scrolled up past the "Low health" messages, back to my conversations with Iter. Beyond Status, Journal, and Translation (which was apparently how I was reading the screen), he mentioned Location, Storage, and Appraisal. That last one seemed to be a skill, as it was listed there. I also saw "Inventory", which was maybe the same thing as Storage?
Inventory, I thought. The window changed, and I saw:
Equipped:
Hospital gown [Body] (capacity: 0)
Wrist brace [Right hand]
Sling [Right arm]
Hospital wrist band [Left arm]
Along with the text, I saw a stylized graphic representation of a figure (presumably me) wearing a simple gown, with something covering their left and right arms and right hand. I hadn’t noticed the hospital wrist band since I was focused on the IV, but I looked and there it was.
Well, that’s kinda lame. I was imagining games and fantasy stories where the protagonist had cheats like an unlimited storage capacity to put anything they wanted inside. Some even froze time for things in the storage space, so things would remain unspoiled for as long as they stayed in there, or stayed hot and fresh, or something amazing like that. It didn’t even consider the IV part of my inventory, even though the needle was still in my hand. Maybe I could try it out some more later, when I had some clothes or a backpack.
Feeling let down, I tried the next one. Appraisal.
Nothing.
Oh, maybe I needed to focus on something to appraise it. I thought about the bed. Appraisal.
Rom-Hill P8000 Pulmonary ICU bed
Okay, that was interesting. I focused on the TV mounted against the far wall.
GL 28 inch LED Smart TV
Hmm, not really more informative, but accurate I suppose? How about the IV bag?
Riverside IV bag, 0.9% Normal Saline, Dilaudid, and sterile water.
I guess if I want to know the brand name and model of something, Appraisal will show me? Also, Dilaudid? I'd had that before when I had my kidney stone. That's a strong opioid narcotic. So now I've confirmed why Status showed Intoxicated earlier. I must’ve been hurt pretty bad. I guess I knew that already, but this reinforced how serious it had been. And that Swift Regeneration must be stopping me from getting re-intoxicated, if Dilaudid is still in the bag. Interesting.
I looked around and learned the brand names and models of a few more things in the room before getting bored. I turned my attention to the next skill: Location.
The image in the screen before me shifted to a simple wireframe diagram, with a number of light blue dots roaming around, with one golden arrow in the center. A top-down map. This was looking better. I could see the room I was in, with simple representations of beds, furniture, curtains, and a doorway. In the hall just outside my room, a pair of blue dots were passing by. At the same time I heard muffled voices and a couple of shadows pass by in front of the soft light filtering in from the other side of the curtain. So this was showing me not only my location, but the locations of others in real time. I watched the blue dots to see if I could learn anymore. I found I could zoom in and out pretty far, but at a certain distance all the blue dots and lines started to blur together and became hard to tell apart. I zoomed in really close, and could see more details of the items and equipment in my room, but nothing else. If I thought about it, I could even move the center around, but it was easy to get lost, and it became hard to tell where on the map I was. Fortunately, it was easy to re-center by thinking about it.
Hmm. My phone app was more informative at larger distances, but the real time tracking of individuals and interiors were a step up. I suppose if I were a thief or spy, this would come in pretty handy. Well, a career change was in my future anyway, I suppose, but I couldn’t really see myself as some kind of master thief or secret agent. I could too easily see the consequences to other people of that kind of activity. I’d be an awful thief.
Which brought my mind back to earlier yesterday, both getting fired, as well as the altercation with that contractor. I wasn’t a thief. So why did they act like I was? I wish one of these new semi-useless abilities I had now could help me figure it out. I looked at the Status screen once more, and then closed it all with a thought and settled back down in my bed. The sun was starting to lighten the room through the exterior windows, though it still seemed to be a few hours from rising. I gazed up vacantly at the ceiling tiles.
"Hero, hunh?"