“We're only waiting our turn

Call that living?”

- Kara Jackson

Your Name

Nature bares grief onto the world below. Trees sway with tension under the slow winds. No signal of life to be sought for or cared to. The air carries the flairs of life, souls no longer present to give its rebuke. There are no tears left to cry, as the sun breaches through to dry out any liquid dissonance.

There is a man laying unconscious on the forest plains. He wears a camel colored velvet jacket, with a white t-shirt under it, and navy jeans. His skin tone parallels the jacket, and his hair is held together by many short curls. The grass brushes his body as the breeze refuses to cease. Sunlight fights through cloud after cloud, causing light in the forest to be unreliable. After much time spent laying unconscious, reality itself seems to awake in the mind of this stranger. He sits up quickly with disorientation flooding his mind.

The first thing he feels as he looks down to his hands is: a wooden mask in his left & a strange clamshell device in his right. He looks around, trying to see where the depths of the forest may lead, to no avail. His breathing is choppy, as if he had escaped a nightmare.

He attempts to think, unable to attach any threads of memory. He feels concussed, without a ringing in his ears. Even down to his name, the stranger knows nothing.

He stands and looks around, the trees endlessly towering over him. The grass was clean cut & low, any blooming flowers stood close to the trees, and he wasn’t unnerved by the fragmented sunlight barely holding visibility. He begins walking across the flats, trying to gain composure.

Looking down at the mask, there seemed to be a minor etching into the bottom of it. Emerald. The mask was seemingly crafted to have symbols and seemingly infer some sort of message that the stranger didn’t know. Looking at the clamshell device, he opens it up and a screen seems to fill out with text.

It seems as if you were missing memories of the operating system’s functionality. Would you like to re-engage in a tutorial?

Active User: Lavender Emerald.

Below the screen held many varied buttons and switches, none of which were doing anything upon the stranger’s pressing…so he gathers the words to speak.

“Yes.” His voice came out smooth and monotone. The device began to respond with its own voice:

Voice confirmed: Lavender. Please be attentive over the course of these next minutes. Read onward.

The stranger, accepting the name Lavender, feels a sense of familiarity to this experience. He doesn’t let these thoughts process however, as he reads on.

In this world, there are cores, forms, and ways to modify both. After the efforts of Vatlaan and Charlotte came to pass, a blending of the mystical and technical came to grant magic to all. You hold quite a lot of notes on this period of time, that I advise refreshing on. But for the most immediate benefit: Use a core and a form to create a spell.

The text disappears. Lavender takes a moment to look up, making sure he isn’t walking into a tree…noticing a creature before him. The obscuring light makes it hard to pick up on all the details, but Lavender is looking up into the eyes of this beast. It seems to share physicality with a horse, yet it has antlers.

The pure shock has Lavender throw his device out of his hands, but he rushes to pick it back up. The monster holds still, just keeping a dense glare at Lavender. A user interface appears on the device, not on the screen he was last looking at. He steps back to try to get breathing room from this beast…as he feels a breath down his shoulder. He tilts his head to see the beast up close. A burning red flame lit in the eyes, the facial structure of a deer, spikes wrapped around its neck. Lavender, unable to process any other move, begins sprinting ahead of him.

He slides the mask on his face to free up a second hand for the device. Trying to understand further about what it was trying to communicate. Lavender looks up again mid-sprint to see the creature spinning around to aim its hind legs at him. The horse launches the kick as Lavender dives into a nearby bush, clawing out of it to rush forward further.

Stolen novel; please report.

Lavender slides through a bunch of screens, presses buttons rapidly, until at one point, he feels something click. The device sticks onto Lavender’s arm and within his palm appears a orange plasma-esque substance. He grips down onto it and feels tangible contact. He slows his pace and turns around to look behind him. Lavender gets into a strong stance as the beast glares with hatred and aggression in its expression.

The beast charges Lavender, leaving burning horseshoe marks in its wake. Lavender grips tight onto this sphere and presses his palm forward. A laser the size of a missile emits from Lavender’s hands, cutting through the ever present breeze and pressing against the beast, a loud wail distorts the calm of the forest. Lavender feels a sense of control and focus, continuing to fire off this singular concurrent beam onto this creature. He begins stepping back, trying to once again get some distance on it…the beast begins to repel the laser. He ends the beam and then turns to sprint behind him again.

This time the beast is assaulting the environment as Lavender hears tree branches being clipped off, sizzling noises growing louder, and a towering set of hooves crash onto the grass. It feels as if the world shakes more and more as Lavender tries to process the device. Lavender avoids colliding into a tree by diving out of the way, the beast cutting through the tree, having the log fall.

Lavender turns to face the creature, a bright blue laser bursting from his palm and the space between his fingers outward toward the beast. The beam has a freezing essence that attaches to the ground. The freezing begins to hold the beast to the ground. Lavender stands up, a force in his hand and an aggressive stance.

“I do not know why you seek out my death, strange beast, but I must live on.” Icicles form in dense packaging around the hooves of the beast, rising up its legs. He quickly stops the firing and turns to make an ice road to move faster away from the beast, Lavender already assuming it won’t hold it for very long.

Lavender begins sliding on the ice as he says, “I hope we don’t go for round three, please leave me alone.” During that moment of inattentive sliding, Lavender slips and lands on his device, deactivating his spells and giving a crash of pain onto his side. He groans in pain as he gets up and continues running, with less stamina to manage.

The overcast of the trees make the sprint feel as if he was running on a treadmill, gaining no strong distance anywhere at all. No ambiance of birds or wildlife to be heard, no distinctive features to the environment…Lavender just keeps running in hopes that running matters at all.

Lavender trails into thoughts, passing by the foliage. Why is it only me? Me and this beast, sprinting in this cage. No matter how far I run…no perception of time, no sign of this ending, and…nothing is sticking together. Come on…I must be Lavender, but even that sounds strange.

A new voice cuts through Lavender’s thoughts, “You must be the poison to be drained!” The shadow of a full bodied soldier shrouds Lavender. A sword is unsheathed and Lavender moves out of the way of a plunging strike. A tall, bulky man in chain mail holding a lengthy broadsword crashes onto the ground.

Lavender holds out a hand to keep the man away as he says, “I don’t have time to analyze your nonsense, please stop your assault!”

“This damn forest is trying to hold me in and there’s no end in sight!”

Lavender tilts his head behind him to hear the beast quickly approaching.

“I woke up to this forest with a sword in my hand and nothing else! I don’t even know my name, stranger!” shouts the soldier.

Lavender looks back toward him, “Look, I’m not any sort of poison but there was a large monstrous beast after me. I don’t need you to kill it, but I do know now that we are together, it’s our problem.” Lavender begins walking toward the man. “Do you have a spare weapon on you?”

The man hesitates, looking over Lavender’s form and figure. He notices a strong fear and sense of concern in his eyes. A small dagger is thrown toward Lavender, landing on the ground.

“I do not know why I have ease in trusting you, but I do see fear in your eyes. Even if of me, do you see yourself cutting me down?” says the soldier in a confident tone.

Lavender grabs the dagger from the ground and turns around to face where the beast will come. The footsteps grow louder and louder, red eyes glowing bright even at a closing distance.

“Oh not at all. I’m more the scholarly kind.

I think.”