More water, as it turned out.

At first, Solace thought that it was merely the transportation. Sometimes it was seamless while other times it was an abrupt appearance in the middle of nowhere. But when his lungs began to burn and his eyes felt uncomfortable from looking through the liquid, he realized that he was already in this new reality.

He began to swim upwards. There was no light, so he was probably somewhere inside. Almost immediately, he hit the ceiling, a rough, rocky thing with no air pockets to breathe. He swam to the side to find a way out, but hit a sloping wall. It looked like he was in a water-filled cave. Something bumped his back and he turned to look. It was the body of someone, long hair billowing in the water. It was unmoving, and he realized that the person had already drowned.

That was when he started getting a little worried.

The cave was full of water, from wall to wall and all along the corridor leading on and on, he soon discovered. Still, he forced himself to move. Slowly, efficiently, streamlined pulls conserving every precious drop of oxygen and converting it into forward movement. It was the only thing he could do.

Internally, he felt that he had no abilities to get him out of this mess yet, and cursed Him for reneging on their deal. If he died here, he’d make Him pay. How was this entertaining? Solace would show entertaining! Sitting on the spawning island for a while to spite Him suddenly sounded really appealing, regardless of the consequences.

Solace’s vision began to go dark and his body began to have slight hiccup-like convulsions as it tried to force him to breathe. He clamped down on the instinct, knowing that the lungful of water would be lethal. More swimming. Dimmer vision. His heart began to pound loudly in his ears as he struggled onwards, eyes blearily searching for any sign of a way out.

And then his muscles gave out, unable to continue. Still resisting the urge to breathe, he floated along, waiting for the end. The sounds of his heart grew louder and louder in his ears, becoming more erratic. In his mind, he fought through the oxygen-deprived haze to curse at Him some more, coming up with increasingly wild ideas to get back at the Being. He barely even registered when something wrapped around his waist and began to drag him through the freshly made opening near the ceiling.

“I got a live one!” A female voice called out.

Solace gasped as he was pulled out of the water and onto dry ground. It took him several moments of exhaling before he registered the sounds coming from his savior’s mouth.

“What’s your name?” She asked. The figure wore plated armor that obscured her appearance.

It was words, ones he understood. That was a novelty he had never experienced. Every world he had entered so far, learning the language was always one of the earlier steps.

“He’s not responding,” the woman said.

“Give him some time to breathe,” another voice said nearby. Solace moved his eyes to find another figure in armor. “Also, they’re from The Sects. Use the translator function.”

“Right…” The woman’s voice trailed off for a moment. When she spoke again, it was heavily lilted. “Can you understand me?”

Surprisingly, he did. So he knew not just one language, but two. He focused on the knowledge to speak in the language used in “The Sects.”

“Yes, thank you for saving me.”

There was a brief pause, long enough to be awkward and make Solace wonder if he had somehow said the wrong thing.

“Yes. Now get up and walk that way,” she pointed. “Join the others.”

Slowly getting onto his feet, he looked in the direction she pointed. It was a tunnel lit by torchlight, extending beyond what he could see.

“Get going!” The male voice shouted at Solace.

He turned to see that the woman was already wading back in the water to retrieve another body. It was impressive that they could swim with such obviously heavy gear on. But rather than stay to watch, he did as he was told. As he walked, he took in details about the cave. There were other holes in the floor, with people getting pulled out of the water like he had by more armored figures. The rescuees that were alive were also being sent down the tunnel.

After a few minutes, the tunnel gave way to a large cavern. There was already a crowd filling a good portion of the space, most soaking wet like he was and speaking in “The Sects” language.

“What happened?”

“I can’t believe…”

“Dad? Mom?”

“It’s all The Corporations’ fault!”

The whole crowd was talking, voices clambering to be heard as the people argued, questioned, mumbled in disbelief, searched for their loved ones, and more. Solace merely kept his head down and listened, trying to learn as much as he could about the world that he had been inserted into.

In the end, it wasn’t much. As he had already determined, there were two groups or factions, the Corporations and the Sects, and the people that had been drowning were from the Sects. There were a lot of them too, more and more soaked people entering the cavern until there were hundreds crammed into the space. The hushed whispers or biting comments whenever someone said a complaint about the Sects worried Solace a bit, since he was ostensibly a part of that group at this moment, but he wasn’t able to ruminate on the worry for long.

There was a loud snap and then a sustained ringing that resounded through the chamber. Everyone in the crowd, Solace included, turned to the source: an armored figure floating in the air above them.

The ringing subsided as the figure spoke. Her voice was not the one from before. “Because the Sects were performing an illegal operation in the Hegora Corporation’s territory, we are confiscating everything here as compensation. Now, Commander Amon Dai, generous as always, has graciously decided that anyone below tier three is not culpable in this act of subterfuge. In addition, he has extended a once in a lifetime opportunity. You may return to the Sects unharmed or…

The figure snapped again, and the wall behind her exploded. Solace, distracted by trying to find more information through context, was snapped out of his reverie to marvel at the casual usage of power as well as its tight control. Not a single piece of debris flew anywhere dangerously, everything having been crushed to fine dust that slightly covered the sunlight pouring through the newly made hole.

“Join the Corporations and enter the naturalization program. Walk through or stay to make your decision. You have five minutes.”

Once done, the figure flew away, leaving the crowd to their devices. And, to Solace’s surprise, was it divisive.

A percentage of people, about only one in five, immediately rushed to get out. There were clamors of outrage by those who weren’t moving, and he swore that some were holding the people that wanted to leave back.

“What are you doing?” A male voice nearby cried. “Let me go!”

“And let you abandon our glorious Power?” A zealous voice replied.

“Our ‘glorious Power’ just flooded the tunnels to kill us because we were witnesses.”

“Better to die a part of the Sects than join those weak, greedy merchants!”

Once Solace heard this, he stopped trying to piece together the other bits of information. Tiers, Powers, and merchants were far less important than the fact that the group he was supposedly associated with had tried to kill off their own people to remove witnesses, and that some of the victims were zealous enough to be fine with it. That made his decision really, really easy.

Solace began to make a break for the entrance. Someone grabbed at his clothes, and he immediately turned to the person.

“Don’t you—”

Solace punched them in the nose, as hard as he could. The man that had grabbed him gasped and loosened his grip on Solace, and he continued his dash to the entrance. He had been at the back to begin with, so he knew he needed to hurry. The press of bodies was annoying, but not impossible to navigate. Most everyone was emaciated — another point for leaving too. The main issue he had was the others.

“Help!”

“Let me go!”

Others trying to leave were similarly being accosted by their “compatriots,” though Solace winced at the term to describe them. As he ran, a part of him began to tear his focus towards those other people being held back and… he hesitated.

Leaving the crazy group was only available for a short time, and he knew he should hurry. But seeing the others struggling to get out rubbed him the wrong way. Sighing, he stopped his straightforward direction to make detours.

The first was an older lady unable to make it through the crowd. Though she called out for them to move, no one heard. Or if they did, very few complied.

Solace tapped the lady on the shoulder to get her attention. “Get behind me if you want out,” he said. She nodded and he forged onwards.

The next person he helped was a teen held back by what he assumed were relatives. A well aimed punch to the jaw of the strongest looking person and then stomping on several feet at the pressure point was enough for them to involuntarily let go of the boy. Solace pushed the boy behind him and repeated the same thing he said to the older lady. They quickly lost the relatives in the shuffle.

He helped a handful more people in this manner, not all of them but the ones that he felt he could. Like the prow of the ship, he parted the crowds, often having to shout, punch, push, elbow, stomp feet, and sometimes even poking eyes to force his way through. He also sometimes looked behind him to make sure no one was lost in the shuffle.

By the time he and his little procession were near the entrance, he had also learned an interesting fact. Some of the people were inordinately stronger than their physique suggested. Twice as strong, sometimes four. It wasn’t enough to stop him, because all of them were clearly not used to any sort of fighting and rather malnourished to begin with, but it did mean that he stopped pulling his punches. Better them hurt than him or the people that wanted out.

There was a slight bottleneck from others making their way through, but it was much easier to join the exiting people as they all were moving in the desired direction.

Some of the individuals Solace helped thanked him while others hurried to press through the hole. Solace made sure everyone made it before he took a deep breath and joined the exodus.

As his eyes adjusted to the sunlight, he took in the outside world. It was lackluster, a dune-like surface but made of rock instead of sand. A cloudless sky and few stars were visible. The only eye-catching thing was the vehicle roughly a kilometer away. It was a massive thing, sleek and futuristic but a design that wasn’t quite suited for air travel. He frowned. Were they going to sail away or…

Space.

It was probably a space-craft. The first he had ever actually seen. Some worlds had science fiction, but he had never personally visited a reality with futuristic technology. An unexpected twist to this whole thing, after seeing the rather archaic armor and torches that lit the cave.

Eagerness crept up inside him as he made his way down the slope and joined the long line leading towards the ship.

The movement was slow going, enough to make him think that there was some kind of identification process at the front of the line. Some of the armored people were posted at intervals while others wandered the line to make sure no one caused trouble.

“What you say? I help you get first in, you let me in?”

Or at least, that was probably what they were supposed to do. Solace watched with a frown as one guard accosted a woman several people ahead of him. The guard’s translation function or whatever was terrible, and yet the armored man’s sleaziness was still coming through.

An exchange of favors, an expedited process for an inappropriate reciprocation.

The woman looked uncomfortable. Clearly trying to refuse without offending the man, but he wasn’t taking no for an answer. The armored figure eventually grabbed her and started dragging her closer to the ship.

“Hey! She said no.” The words escaped Solace’s lips before he completely thought it through.

The guard stopped and turned around. “Who said that?” He snarled.

The people between stepped a bit to the side and pointed at Solace, and he mentally cursed as the armored man stomped towards him. It was one thing to bully away unprepared individuals with ruthless moves to escape, it was another to antagonize a person in combat gear, trained to fight, and probably with abilities he didn’t understand to boot.

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Fantastic.

“What you say?”

Solace lowered his eyes, pretending to shy away from the man’s gaze. “Sh-she said no.”

“She maybe say that. But what you say?”

Solace didn’t reply, allowing the silence to say whatever the man wanted him to.

“Well?” The man circled around him.

“…”

“Then I tell you! You say garbage! You stupid, moronic…”

The man went on and on with his tirade. Insulting everything about Solace from his intelligence, to his skinny frame, to his slightly graying hair of all things. The yelling drew a lot of attention and some of the other armored figures started hovering closer.

Solace for his part pretended to quake in fear while internally laughing at the debacle. The man’s strutting revealed how poor his footing was and the arrogance highlighted a foolish, egotistical mindset. A fighter? Maybe. A winner? Probably not often against prepared opponents. It didn’t help that the man was speaking with broken grammar.

At some point, the line began to move around Solace and the man, which irritated him a bit. At least the originally harassed woman had slipped back into the line, so there was a tiny silver lining.

“You get a chance to join our Power and the first thing out of your mouth is disrespect for us! Do you know who I am?”

The man all but shouted, at some point switching to the other language, “The Corporation’s” without realizing.

More shouting, more circling. Until the man concluded with one final thing.

“And you’re lucky I don’t do worse than this!” The man shouted while behind Solace. There was the sound of something unclasping, a snorting sound, and then something wet landed on Solace’s neck.

The armored man had spat on him.

That… really irritated Solace for some reason. More than having his arms blown off. Without thinking, he shifted his weight just a bit, nearly imperceptible, guising it as him cringing from the saliva. Then, against Solace’s better judgment, when the man passed by to stomp away, when there was a tiny blindspot due to the close proximity, he flicked his foot just enough to mess up the man’s stride.

The man tripped, falling onto his hands and dropping the helmet in his hands. With the headwear off, Solace took in the man’s appearance: a surprisingly younger face, clean shaven, a pointed nose, and slightly shorter than shoulder length brown hair. As the helmet clattered on the stones and rolled, several of the other armored individuals snickered. Solace didn’t smile himself, but to say that he wasn’t a little pleased would be lying.

That was when it all spiraled out of his control.

With a snarl, the man launched himself at Solace in a low tackle. The man was inhumanly fast, and Solace was only able to sidestep due to how obviously the attack was telegraphed. Solace shoved the man as he stumbled by, sending him sprawling onto the ground again.

The snickers from the others turned to outright laughter.

“Go get him, bloomer!” Someone called.

Solace frowned, what was a bloomer?

In the brief mental hesitation, the man pushed off the ground and charged at Solace once again. Because there was very little space between them this time, Solace couldn’t react to the speed. The man grabbed both of Solace’s legs in a bone cracking grasp and threw him to the ground. Solace winced as a rib cracked, but he forced himself to roll with the momentum and try to get up. Unfortunately, the man was already on him once again, the moment Solace’s head went up, a fist connected with his face, knocking him back down. Solace felt a crushing weight on his abdomen as the man sat on him, pinning him to the ground.

The rest, as they say, was history.

Punch after punch, a pummeling that a weaker Solace could not stop as an inhuman man beat him to try to regain whatever pride was lost in the perceived slights. Solace tried to use his legs to throw the man off, but wasn’t able to buck the man off. He tried to block the attacks to his face with his arms, but the bones were powdered until he couldn’t move them anymore.

“Stop! Omein stop!” Someone ordered.

The beating continued, Solace rendered unable to move to defend himself and unable to see as the blood on his face fell into his eyes.

The transition from concussed consciousness to unconsciousness was seamless.

—

When Solace awoke, his entire body was in pain. Which was good. Well, the pain was bad, but being able to feel his whole body was good. The pain also meant that he hadn’t died. He quickly twiddled his thumbs and flexed several muscles to confirm motor control before sitting up and inspecting his surroundings.

He was on a small and thin mattress with a wire taped to his left wrist. His view of anything else was obstructed by sheets hanging from the ceiling on each side to give him privacy. It looked like he was in a medical bay of some sort.

Rather than making a move to leave the bed. Solace took a moment to reflect on his defeat. The fight itself had been fine; he could recall no blunders combat wise. No, the mistake was in allowing a fight to break out at all. In hindsight, attempting to face an opponent in an unknown world when he knew that there were powerful abilities was completely stupid. He had gotten overconfident after helping those people in the cave and after seeing the unimpressive intimidation he had made an assumption that the man’s bark was worse than his bite which had led to spectacular failure.

Even if he hadn’t yet had the workings of this reality explained thoroughly, there had been enough facts for him to make much, much smarter decisions. He spent several moments mentally beating himself up before letting the matter go. Live and learn. In his case, sometimes even die and learn. There would be no more fighting until he understood enough about everything, like how such a terrible fighter was impossibly stronger than Solace.

“Oh you’re awake. Good,” a male voice said, deeper than the others that Solace had heard so far. One of the sheets was parted by the speaker. He was tall and broad framed, darker skinned and with short cropped hair. “Can you stand?”

He briefly hesitated before realizing that there was no reason to not comply. Solace slung his legs over the bed and found that he could. The wire fell away as he stood up.

“Good. Raise both arms.”

Solace did so.

“Lower one arm. Move the other to be parallel to the shoulder…”

Several minutes passed as the man made sure that Solace was in relatively good health. Beyond the aching, not a single thing seemed off.

“Everything seems fine,” the man said, confirming Solace’s self-evaluation. “You’re lucky I was around. A five tier difference is massive. Getting healed by someone less skilled could have left you crippled.”

Solace frowned, there was that tier thing again. He needed to figure out how to learn more about it without giving away that he didn’t know.

But before he could come up with any questions, the man came up with his own.

“What’s your name? Mine’s Sloan, Sloan Orroya,” the man extended an arm.

“Solace,” he said, shaking Sloan’s hand.

“Solace…” Sloan said, dragging the name out a bit. “That’s not a common name in The Sects.”

“Well, my parents wanted me to stand out,” Solace lied.

“I guess they were successful then,” Sloan replied with a chuckle. “You’re a bit of a celebrity now.”

Solace blinked. “Is a one sided brawl that interesting?”

“It is if an unawakened can floor someone thirty two times stronger than them!” Sloan ducked out of the sheets before quickly returning with a tablet in hand. The healer pressed some buttons before handing it to Solace.

Looking at the screen, Solace saw that it was the recording of the fight. The angle perfectly caught the man, Omein’s, face as he tripped the first time.

“It’s gone a bit viral,” Sloan said.

This recording worried Solace. He had assumed Sloan meant “celebrity” in the sense that the onlookers would remember him. A recording meant that Omein would be far more likely to want revenge.

No good deed goes unpunished.

“You did well for someone who’s unawakened,” Sloan continued. “Why haven’t you advanced?”

He had no idea what Sloan was talking about.

“I wasn’t allowed to,” Solace lied once again.

A pause.

“Oh… oooooh,” Sloan said with a nod. “That makes a lot of sense, and it would explain the brand mark.”

Solace frowned. “What brand mark?”

Sloan merely pointed at Solace’s right hand, causing him to raise it and look.

Oh, that.

There was a burn mark in the shape of a feather on his palm. It had always been there with him whenever he restarted and he had honestly almost forgotten about it at this point.

“I couldn’t heal it, so I knew it had to be something to do with the spirit,” Sloan said. “It makes a lot more sense given your past situation.”

Whatever the healer had just assumed, Solace was fine letting it stand. Sometimes, having someone else fill in the details themself made a lie more believable, because they’d think up the scenario most logical to them.

“Well, it won’t be like that here in The Corporations,” Sloan continued as he tapped a few things into the tablet. “And… I just finished your registration forms. You are now a provisional citizen.”

“Really?” Solace had expected a bit more questioning. At least an age and his origins.

“Yes, a lot of the stuff is optional and I figured it would be best for your situation if we kept it to the bare minimum.”

Convenience for once. And all it took was a potentially huge misunderstanding.

“If you’re finished here, he needs to be with the others. Landing is an hour,” another voice spoke up.

Solace turned to see a figure in armor. Though there were no distinguishing features, he could tell by the voice that it was the lady who had flown and crushed a wall with but a snap.

“Ah, I’ll escort him then,” Sloan said.

“No need, go heal the others. I’ll bring him back myself,” the woman replied.

“But—”

“Follow,” the woman ordered Solace. Her tone brooked no argument. Turning with a quick about face, she began to walk away.

Solace looked at Sloan, who appeared to want to say more, but merely sighed and waved. “That’s that, then. Good luck, I hope your life is better here than it was there.”

Solace nodded before quickly hurrying after the woman. A short dash later, and he was a stride behind her as she led him through what he assumed was still the spaceship.

The halls were wide and long, the walls made of metal while the floor some sort of marble-like material. Solace wasn’t paying much attention to his surroundings, however, keeping his focus on the woman in front of him.

She was a leader figure, which had a decent chance of being an indicator of strength depending on the reality he was in. Solace tried to find something in himself, whatever abilities He had given him, to try to “feel” for anything.

Of course, he sensed nothing. He suspected that it had something to do with the fact that he was “unawakened,” whatever that meant. He felt that he was pretty close to grasping the basics, but was a few bits of information short.

“I’ve always been fascinated by the Sect’s language,” the woman spoke, interrupting Solace’s thoughts. “The calligraphy, the pronunciation, the multifaceted meanings, it gives off a sense of profoundness. Do you understand what I mean?”

Solace didn’t, not really. He racked his brain for a satisfactory answer but decided on telling something close to the truth. “No, I’ve never had the opportunity to learn that sort of thing. I’ve had very limited opportunities.”

“So you understand better when it’s simple,” she said. “Then allow me to spell this out for you.”

To Solace’s surprise, she spoke the last bit in the other language.

She knows.

Before he could even react, however, an inexplicable pressure began to bear down on him. It was like gravity but worse, pushing on him in a way uncomfortably and unwantingly familiar.

“The only reason you're alive right now is because of the fact that a Chosen took interest in your well-being,” she continued.

He recognized what the familiar feeling was like. It felt like when he had to fight off true death, and it made him realize what she was doing. She was putting pressure on his very soul.

“Since you were from the Sects, I thought this lesson wouldn’t be necessary, but your actions suggested otherwise. So let me make sure you remember this.”

The unseen force grew stronger, making Solace’s knees almost buckle. Immediately, Solace tried to fight the pressure. Shoulders tensed, knees locked, he resisted physically.

The force increased, weighing greatly on his soul, making it feel like some kind of liquid being compressed past its properties. It was the first time he had felt his spirit while alive, and his mind had a crazy idea while being hampered by the pressure.

He tried to control it.

To his surprise, it responded to an extent. His spirit, or whatever was actually being pressured, molded like dense clay. He began to try to create a wedge which to drive against the pressure, but quickly stopped himself.

He might be able to resist, but then what? He could feel that the woman was so much exponentially stronger than him right now that nothing would be gained by this small victory.

So he let go of his control on his spirit, gasping at the headache the pressure had brought on as he allowed the force to take him to his knees.

Blood poured out of one of Solace’s nostrils as the pressure vanished, but not the pain. What happened after was a blur. The woman pulled Solace to his feet, stuffed a rag into his hand to deal with the blood, and made him continue walking.

By the time his head was clearer, the bleeding had stopped. Still, the woman did not say anything.

Eventually, Solace could hear the loud murmuring of voices and saw the corridor open up to a large room.

“Join them,” the woman said, her voice fading.

Solace turned to see that she was gone.

What was the point of that?

His mind was on fire from the remaining pain and from thoughts.

Perhaps the woman was trying to put him in his place as she saw it, by cowing him with overwhelming power; or perhaps this was her twisted way of teaching him the flaws in his current approach to fights.

He had always faced things, if not head on, then with the intention of always beating whatever adversary was in front of him by any means necessary. Here, in this reality, he’d have to learn to circumvent issues if he didn’t have the tools to deal with them. Hitting harder and smarter wasn’t enough if someone was a literal factor times more powerful.

Maybe it was a mix of both, who knew? One thing was for sure, he hated that feeling of weakness. In most of his memory, he had been many things, but helpless was not one of them. Feeling that oppressed felt aggravating.

Waiting a moment for the blood to dry and for his temper to cool, he stuffed the rag into a pocket before joining the crowd.