Chapter 1 - A Spark
“Navi… Run!”
The night was dark and the winds were cold. The moon hung high in the sky, with numerous stars twinkling between dark, looming clouds. A pair of children ran through the night sky, their faces smeared with mud and their legs tired from all the running, but they didn’t stop, they must not stop.
Trees behind them rustled, and a shadowy figure burst through from above, breaking branches and causing leaves to scatter all around. It appeared spherical, with a big red circle in the center, like a predatory eye belonging to a great beast.
It flew past trees, dodging the obstacles with calculated ease, and was rapidly encroaching on the two children.
“Roan, it’s catching up on us!” A young girl, with snow-white hair, and bright purple eyes, wearing a torn white dress covered in blood stains and smeared dirt, looked back at the floating sphere behind with terror in her eyes. Moreover, as she ran, white sparks occasionally sputtered out of her eyes and hands, as if electricity was coursing through her body.
“Go! I’ll… I’ll hold it back!” A young boy, with a plain face, black hair, and dark brown eyes, gritted his teeth and clenched his fists. The wounds and scratches on his legs and arms were dulled by the sheer adrenaline coursing through his veins. His last bits of calm kept his head cool, and he had long since known that that thing wasn’t after him—It was after Navi.
“Roan, you can’t!” Navi looked at the boy with a shocked face. “You…” Although the concept of death was a foreign thing for the two, they both subconsciously knew what would happen if the monster got their hands on them. “You’ll die!”
“I’ll manage, trust me!” Roan looked at the sharp stick in his path and grabbed it while running, gripping it tightly like his life depended on it. “You know I’ve always been the smart one between us, right? I’ll manage, like always!”
“I…” Navi bit her lips. She wanted to retort, to say they should keep running, but deep down she knew that the monster was faster than them. She also knew Roan was spouting nothing but nonsense, but the confidence in his eyes, the enigmatic calmness in his tone… It made the young girl want to believe in him, even if it was utterly impossible. “Fine!”
Roan grinned and turned around, stabilizing his position and aiming his wooden stick at the giant sphere flying after them. Its gigantic red eye didn’t even bathe a glance at Roan, as it remained glancing at the young girl running away.
“Ahhhh!” Roan rushed forward, jumping up with the wooden stick raised as if it were a spear.
Bam!
Roan tried to stab his spear into the monster’s big red eye, but it just kept flying forward, slamming right into the young boy. He coughed out loudly as he was dragged along across the air, and watched helplessly as the monster kept flying towards Navi.
He glared at the beast’s lone red eye, cursing adamantly, “You bastard… Why. Won’t. You. Stop!”
He punched the beast’s glass-like eye with every word, but he was nothing but a mere puny child. The monster ignored him completely and was mere inches away from the young girl.
“Navi!” Roan shouted in alarm.
“Kyaa!” Navi was grabbed by the robot, with a pair of human-like arms popping out of its sides.
“Traveler captured.” A cold, mechanical voice echoed. “Traveler captured.”
Navi struggled to escape the clutches of the metallic beast, while Roan desperately held onto her. He landed on the ground, trying to pry open the metallic hand and pull the girl out.
“Roan!” She winced in pain. “Go! It’s too strong! It might attack you if you keep doing this!”
“No!” Roan growled in anger, exerting all of his might to pull her out of the beast’s clutches.
This seemed to have finally gathered the monster’s attention now that it had captured its main target.
“External factor detected… External factor detected… Initiating elimination protocol to ensure safe interdimensional travel…”
Its lone red eye opened in the center, revealing a barrel of metal, with its center glowing bright red just like its eyes. A low humming sound quickly turned high pitch, and a destructive amount of energy soon gathered within the metallic barrel.
“Roan!” Navi widened her eyes, trying to push the boy away who still desperately clung to her.
“Navi…!” He gritted his teeth but was soon pushed away, falling to the ground. A beam of red light flashed across the air, zapping a big crater on the ground meters away.
“Run away, Roan!” Navi practically begged, with the white sparks around her body turning more and more bright and frequent. Her bright purple eyes glowed with arcane light, and her hair defied gravity. “You’ve always been the one to clean up after my mess… this time, I’ll be the one saving you!”
The spherical beast of metal redirected its laser at Roan, charging up another attack. Fear-stricken, Roan fearfully watched as the laser charged up, and even though he always kept his cool, the boy had utterly lost it this time.
He was shaken up by the attack, afraid of being hit, and got paralyzed by fear.
Move… Move you idiot! Go save Navi. Save her! He screamed in his mind, yet his body didn’t budge an inch.
“Don’t worry, Roan.” Navi slowly grew calm as the sparks around her body turned denser and denser. “Trust me, just this once. I think… I think I know what I’m doing this time.”
“Warning… warning!” the metallic beast stopped charging its laser as it detected the unusual phenomenon happening around the girl’s body. “Traveler is initiating a planar jump…!”
“Navi! W-What are you doing, Navi?!” Roan stretched out his hand, a spike of dread gnawed at his soul. It felt as if something bad would happen. It was as if he would never see Navi again if he let her do what she was planning on doing.
“Roan…” Navi glanced at the boy, her bright purple eyes serene as a lake. “I… I guess this is goodbye.”
The sparks surrounding her body spiked up in intensity, covering the whole area around her in bright white light. A burst of energy exploded from the cluster of white light, pushing the boy away as a shockwave dragged leaves and dirt everywhere.
Roan rolled on the ground, dirtying his clothes, but Navi was more important than the pain he felt. “Navi! Navi!”
He raised his head, expecting to see some sort of strange sight just like before… But he was greeted by nothing. It was as if the two had never existed, leaving an empty clearing in the forest. Only the burning crater and the scattered leaves and dirt were proof that whatever happened, did happen.
However, where did the two go?
“Navi…?” Roan mumbled, staring at the empty scene with blank eyes. “Navi?”
“Where did you go, Navi?” The boy fell to his knees, his eyes turning wet and red. “Where did you go…”
“Navi!” Roan woke up from his dreams, his forehead and back drenched in cold sweat. He almost fell off his bed, with his hand reaching for the empty air as if he was trying to grab onto the ghost of the past.
He breathed for air, gasping for his breath. His hands trembled for a good while before he calmed down, flopping back to his bed with his hair messy and drenched in sweat.
“Fuck…” he cursed softly, glancing at the morning sky through the bedside window. “It’s that stupid dream again.”
Roan sighed, mumbling to himself absentmindedly, “It’s that Navi girl all over again.”
The young man brushed back his hair and decided to get up. “Just why am I dreaming so much…” Roan closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “So much about a girl that doesn’t even exist.”
He still vividly remembered the day he was found out in the woods unconscious. His whole body was covered in dirt and mud, with wounds and bruises found throughout his skin. Everything from back then was a hazy memory, and even that dream felt like a blur despite how commonly it reappeared in his head.
“God, I felt like I was an insane person when they told me no girl with the name Navi was in their records.” Roan still shivered upon recollecting that memory. To find out the person you’ve been hanging out with was mere fiction? Now that was downright frightening.
That whole fiasco had messed him up big time. Roan was forbidden from visiting the countryside for so long by his parents, and the repressed trauma he had gotten from that vivid hallucination was one hell of an issue he had to deal with growing up.
However, he had gotten better. Time had healed his wounds; not perfectly of course, but it was better than that festering gash.
Just as he finished taking his shower and walked out of his bathroom, towel hanging by his shoulders with new clothes already put on, he heard a ding sound come from his phone, and a message popped up.
“Anyone up? Anyone down to play some Brannigan?” read a message from a person named Ethan.
“He woke up early,” said Roan. He raised his eyebrow and wondered if he should play as well, but the recent dream had soured his mood. The young man sighed and flipped over his phone, let his towel dry, and sat on his bed with crossed legs.
He had taken up numerous activities to try and pick himself up after that messy childhood encounter, especially now that he was getting older.
He had pursued physical fitness when he turned fifteen by practicing calisthenics in his tiny little room and vented out his anger by joining the kendo club at his school. He found the idea of using his bare body to fight stupid and instead focused on practicing the sword so that he could look both cool and be proficient with a weapon in case anything were to ever happen.
Roan favored the staff and spear more than the sword if he had to be honest, with its longer range that offered more safety, but kendo was pretty fun as well. He does lament the fact that he didn’t pick up practicing any other weapon besides the sword.
Besides that, over the summer, he had taken the habit of going on afternoon runs to clear his mind and enjoy the fresh air, to break his shut-in habits. Roan still vaguely remembered that he was an outdoor kid back then, staying most of the time outside goofing around in the countryside with his grandparents rather than staying at home all day.
Such is the aftereffects of trauma and laziness, he supposed.
However, what had helped him the most was reading books, and a silly little thing that he would much rather keep a secret from everyone else, even from his parents.
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“Welcome back to your daily meditation session…” A calm, soothing, almost lulling voice echoed from his phone as he sat cross-legged on his bed. He leaned back on the wall, hands on his knees. “As usual, close your eyes, get into a comfortable position, either by sitting down or lying on your bed, and take a big, deep breath.”
“I look so goofy right now.”
…
Time quickly passed during the weekend as Roan finished his menial tasks for the day. He cleaned his room, fixed his stuff for school tomorrow, and did his usual morning workout. The young man contemplated if he should train in kendo today since he was getting a little rusty with it but decided not to.
Instead, during the afternoon, he did some advanced reading on the curriculum for his final year at high school, taking up notes for lessons they would take next week. Roan did find it a little boring, but considering this was his last year before going to college, he decided to take his studies more seriously than before.
It wasn’t that he was doing badly at school, far from it actually, but he could do a little bit better than he already is. Maybe he might even have a shot at becoming valedictorian if he put his mind to it.
“Valedictorian?” Roan snorted as he scribbled the last of his notes. The video he was watching on Metube finally finished and he stretched out his hands to the sky, yawning as his back arched. “Who am I kidding? It’s not even worth it if I had to be honest.”
Glancing at the bedside window, he was greeted by the setting sun. The sky was slowly turning a darker shade of orange and red, with clouds drifting with the wind. He checked the time, finding it already well past 6 pm.
“I should take a run before dinner.” The adolescent teen didn’t want to do his daily walk deep into the night. The thought kind of scared him, as if trees would spring up from the ground and a giant metallic sphere would come chasing after him again just like in those dreams.
The night was spooky. It was cold. He might even get robbed or kidnapped. There was also the problem that he would want to eat more after finishing his walk. Instead, going on his jog now would be better.
He quickly tidied up his learning materials, closed his laptop, and switched his pants for shorts. Roan considered bringing along an umbrella just in case it would rain, but in the end, he didn’t. He did bring a retractable baton, which he neatly hid right beside his phone and wallet.
A baton. Roan sighed while putting on his shoes. I might just be a little bit paranoid.
This wasn’t even the worst thing he had done. Heck, the main reason why he liked walking outside more with those long-ass umbrellas rather than those that can expand, like his baton, was because he could use them as a makeshift blunt weapon. Roan once even brought a butterfly knife because of recent news about people getting kidnapped in the local area.
The funny thing was that his parents approved of his decisions, and they were even the ones who bought him the retractable baton. The butterfly knife though? It was his own money.
“It is kind of useless with its shorter range. A baton is a way better weapon.” Roan stood up and grabbed the door knob. “Mom! I’m going out now!”
“Sure, Roan!” A woman’s voice echoed from the kitchen. “Text me if you’ll come home late for dinner! Be sure to be back by 9!”
“I will!” The young man opened the door and closed it on the way out. He touched the firm rubber handle of his baton, felt assured of his safety, and thought of where he should go this time. “The park? Or that grassy place near the river? I think the river would look better.”
A river ran downstream near the town where he lived and would stretch on for miles. It was a five to ten-minute walk away, and would easily be a five if he jogged. From there, he could do a full lap and jog around a few kilometers straight. He might take a while to walk back home, but considering dinner was an hour away, he had plenty of time.
Welp, no better time than the present. He finished stretching his legs and warmed up his body. Summer was already coming to a close and he could feel the cold winds of autumn.
“Autumn and spring are just fantastic seasons.” He considered them even better than winter. It wasn’t too cold nor too warm in those two seasons, providing him with the best weather conditions.
He started his walk for the day, passing by familiar houses and unfamiliar streets. His mind slowly lulled into a sense of peace as he focused on his breathing and the sound of his every step. Others jogging just like him smiled at him when passing by, which he then returned with a smile as well.
The sun settled on the distant horizon as the night slowly came. The stars already began to twinkle in the sky, the shadow of the moon vaguely forming amidst tall buildings and clouds.
His breathing stabilized as he found his rhythm. His steps were neither light nor heavy, just at the right amount of force to keep going forward. Winds caused nearby trees to rustle, spooking him for a bit, but he pushed down his irrational fears and continued jogging.
Soon enough, a river came into view. The waters were clear, having taken on a dark-bluish hue as the sky transitioned into twilight. It stretched on for miles, with slanted slopes of grass and flat ground beside the body of water to comfortably jog on.
“Why haven’t I gone to this place before?” Roan was mesmerized by the sight. He quickened his pace and stepped onto the firm dirt and grass, enjoying the sweet fresh air of twilight. Stronger winds messed with his hair and helped his warming body to cool down.
He wiped the sweat on his forehead and neck and enjoyed the sound of roaming waves to his left. It was a pleasant, monotonous sound, that reminded him of the same peace and calm he felt back then when wandering the forests in the countryside.
Rustling leaves, chirping birds, swaying branches; it was so beautiful, but now, he could only look back at those memories with the haunting visage of a metallic sphere chasing after him in the night constantly replaying in his mind.
The river though? There was no metallic beast to haunt him this time.
BZZT!
A loud sound akin to buzzing electricity screeched from the air, bringing the man out of his trance-like stupor. He had already been jogging for well over thirty minutes and the twilight from the sky was barely illuminating the river area, but as a bright white light erupted from the empty air beside him atop the river, forming a large jagged crack, the whole world seemingly slowed down.
What? Roan stopped in his tracks, his blood running cold.
Before he could react, a figure rushed through the crack in the air, crash-landing on the ground right in front of him. The figure wore a strange yellow robe, with dark bronze-colored skin, unruly red hair, and an unnaturally bright shade of red for her eyes. She appeared bleeding from her forehead, arms, and legs, and her presence felt magnetic as if a palpable pressure could be felt from her.
“A kid?” She stared at the boy with wide eyes, not expecting someone else to be there, but she couldn’t be bothered to pay attention to Roan anymore because another figure burst through the crack.
It was a familiar sight. A haunting sight. One that made all of his repressed traumas and nightmares surface.
A body made of black metal; a gigantic red eye in the middle that held cold apathy to everything. Its metallic surface appeared damaged, but most remained intact. Holes formed on its body, revealing barrels of futuristic guns.
The yellow-robed woman hastily rolled out of the way, smearing mud, dirt, and grass on her body as lasers rained on where she previously stood. She growled and waved her hands, causing a whole array of fiery lights to flicker into existence.
“Ha!” She grunted with a raspy voice, manipulating the fireballs to fly forward at breakneck speeds. They exploded upon contact, causing the metallic monster to fly backward.
However, despite the huge firepower, the beast only received partial damage. Its exterior had melted off and parts of its underlying structure were revealed; a messy system of wires, metals, and circuits.
The beast wasn’t deterred by the attack and flew at a faster pace, hounding in on the mage. She used a haste spell, speeding up her legs so she could dodge with finesse.
Red flames gathered around her hands as she formed a claw, plunging it into the exposed parts of the metallic sphere. Its red eye glitched out for a moment, turning black, then red, then green, then blue, then back to its normal red.
“Warning… Warning…” It was the same haunting voice as before. “Damaged circuits. Damaged circuits. Priority: Capture the traveler. Requesting backup-“
The woman mumbled something in a foreign language, one that was full of anger and mockery. If Roan had to translate her words based on intent, it should sound something very similar to “Oh no you don’t!”
More flames burst into existence from her hands, but the metallic beast was far more resilient. It turned its body around, with a mechanical arm forming from its side to grab the woman.
She tried to dodge, but a web made out of glowing red threads unexpectedly shot out of the hole in the creature’s palm, catching the woman off guard.
Watching from a distance, Roan felt his heart skip a beat upon finding the woman trapped. The hand rapidly closed in, grabbing her by the waist as the web transformed into a binding string that wrapped around her tightly.
A memory flashed in his head.
“Move, you idiot! Move!”
At that very moment, Roan’s mind was on the brink of collapsing. It was as if everything he had gone through was erased, leaving only a single memory replaying in his mind over and over again—the sight of Navi disappearing in a burst of white light.
However… However, despite all that, despite the echoing voice of his past self desperately urging his body to move, Roan didn’t.
His eyes held a cold, mechanical, almost chilling calm. He had long hidden himself behind a boulder and waited for the events to unfold without interfering.
Roan wasn’t a dumb, stupid child.
He knew for a fact that if he tried to help save the woman right now, only death would await him. The memory of that laser barely missing his skin made his skin crawl.
No. He hadn’t spent thirteen years of his life fixing his fucked up mind just to waste it all trying to valiantly save a woman from some robot. This wasn’t some goddamn fantasy, this was reality. An absurd one, but one where he would die with a casual mistake.
So, he watched. He watched without once blinking his eye, as if imprinting the scene into his mind and soul, making sure that this time, he wasn’t hallucinating, that he wasn’t just making up things in his head, that he wasn’t… insane.
“It’s all real…” He mumbled through bated breaths as the woman was raised to the air with the robot’s giant hand. She struggled like a writhing worm, screaming out curses and grunting as she exerted all of her strength to escape the robot’s clutches.
It was futile though. Those robots seemed to have been made to capture people like her, and its success was inevitable.
The woman cursed before her eyes shone with resolve.
“So be it!” She spoke in an alien tongue, her eyes glowing bright red, with the center of her pupils turning a fiery orange. “If you want me, you can come get me in the pits of hell!”
“Warning... Warning!” The robot noticed what the woman was trying to do and tried to stop her, but it was too late. Its circuits have been fried from the inside and many of its functions were already dysfunctional.
The woman grinned madly, with a bright orange flame erupting from her eyes.
“Die, you fucking robot!” She screamed, and her magic peaked.
An explosion of flames and magic swirled into a blazing inferno, trapping the two in the middle as everything within it burned to cinders.
Roan licked his dry lips, with cold sweat dripping down his forehead and back. The fiery pillar continued to burn for a solid ten more seconds, before finally dimming down and wisping away. Only drifting ash, charred dirt, burnt grass, and molten metal remained in the aftermath of her self-destructive spell.
The young man stared incredulously at the empty lot, his tight grip on the boulder loosening as he found the magically dangerous duo having disappeared completely.
“It’s… It’s finally over.” He collapsed to his bum, wiping the cold sweat on his forehead as the strange scene ripped straight out of fantasy was finally over.
“It’s all real…” Roan glanced at his trembling hands. “All of it, everything is real.”
He struggled to keep his head calm as he tried to organize his messy thoughts, but everything turned silent when he noticed the faint disturbance ahead.
From the ashes of the yellow-robed woman, white sparks slowly coalesced into existence above her corpse. The white sparks gathered into one single light, eventually transforming into a single mote of bright white light that radiated infinite energy.
“This…” Roan stared at the strange object, and all of his thoughts seemed to disappear. He slowly stood up, his body moving forward on its own as he approached the floating white light.
It was as if the light was calling out to him, urging him to grab it, touch it, make it his.
Should I really grab it? Should I really grab something straight out of fantasy land? How do I know it’s not dangerous? I might even die just by grazing it! He tried to argue in his mind, yet just a single glance of that light dismissed all of his worries.
And so, mesmerized beyond words, Roan threw his caution to the wind… and grabbed it.
The spark drilled into his hand upon contact, coursing through his flesh and blood, illuminating his veins underneath with white light. He cried out, a mixture of pain and pleasure dulling his senses. He struggled to stand as he fell to his knees, his chest and eyes glowing the brightest.
What… What is this? He felt his mind ascend to a higher dimension, his senses split across all of space-time. His figure slowly shifted out of place, with white sparks intertwining around his body.
Roan cried out loudly as the white sparks exploded with endless brilliance. In the next moment, he opened his eyes to be greeted by a vast infinity of impossible geometries, indescribable colors, and incomprehensible sights.
Countless spheres were stacked upon one another. Cubes twisted into spirals then into pyramids of colors and gas. Infinitely large clouds of cosmic dust traveled between an endless expanse of nothingness.
His body felt light like a feather, weightless with no mass. He appeared like a white star that illuminated the suffocating darkness of nothingness, with the breadth of fathomless worlds presented to him with no secrets.
Then, gravity pulled him in.
Roan was like a man drowning in water with no idea how to move. He helplessly swung his arms around in a desperate attempt to not be pulled into a distant chaotic bundle of fleshy labyrinths that stretched on for infinity towards the sky and ground.
Fuck, fuck, fuck! He gazed at the incoming gargantuan something and braced for impact.
Bam!
Everything turned white, and his dulled senses returned. He felt his heartbeat, the sensation of grass and dirt on his palms, the feeling of his lungs expanding with every breath, and his vision turned from a blur to somewhat clear.
Roan groaned as his whole body felt exhausted, and he adjusted his glasses. He stared at the mossy ground beneath him, wondering what the fuck just happened, and looked up.
“Huh?”
He was greeted by a whole cavern of rock and moss. Rocky walls stretched on for a seemingly endless distance, with glowing moss illuminating the road ahead. Strange plants grew from the side, ones that Roan had never once seen on Earth. The air felt thick, yet clear at the same time, with the refreshing scent of plants wafting in the air.
In one moment, a battle between a mage and a robot had just finished and he grabbed a strange white spark; in the next moment, he was in a strange cave with alien plants foreign from his world.
“Where… Where the heck am I?”
AN: This chapter has 4721 words.
(June 22, 2024 - 940th day of writing)