Warm.

I could feel the warmth on my body telling me to wake up, so I did.

When I opened my eyes, I saw brilliant sunlight flickering through the tree leaves above me. Blinded for just a moment, I forced my eyes shut again to adapt to the light. The morning dew and the smells from the fauna and nature around me tickled my nose as I breathed in the cool air. The wind’s warm breeze soon brought the forest to life with sound and movement, causing the world around me to dance. It felt so peaceful and calming.

My eyes, now adjusted to the light, stared in awe. Scattered all around were great, thick, full trees. Their wide tops hung out to their sides were large leaves kissed the branches they were attached too. All the while, the sun was casting beautiful beams of light through the canopies.

I then looked down lower and noticed small bushes littering the ground at their feet. Some with colors that ranged from the green from above to the brown of the dirt below. Those areas not filled with trees nor bushes were sprinkled with green growing grass and other foliage.

My hands grasped the ground feeling the warmth that radiated out of it. I was in awe of the beauty around me and the serenity that it held.

I didn’t know when, but I had found myself standing in this wonderous world of life. The wind brushed up against me as another warm gale hit my legs. I looked down to find myself wearing a pair of green pants, a greyish-green shirt, and brown boots. It gave off an earthy tone that fit well with the environment I had found myself in.

I noticed that my body was lean and fit well into my clothes. My height barely met the middle of the trunks of the trees around me and my hands were soft and youthful. I began to smile as I took in the world around me.

However, at the moment I felt the beauty and serenity of the world around me arc into a crescendo, I found myself assaulted by unimaginable pain. Because at that moment, that’s when it all came back to me.

The time spent in the white, the conversation with the blue screens, my panic and fear over who I was and what was going on, and information that made no sense to me; all of it was being burned into my brain. It all hit me like a train, practically splitting my mind in two, and brought me to my knees silently screaming in horror.

It was an unbearable amount of pain. I passed out from the agony only to be brought back out of unconsciousness by the unending torture in my mind. I couldn't stop it. I could only endure. I don’t know if I was screaming, crying, or wailing, all my focus was on the pain. As I laid on the ground, cradling my head in my arms, the peaceful world around me continued on like nothing mattered.

It didn’t stop for a long while. My sense of time began to skew while under the unrelenting pressure of pain.

When it all thankfully stopped, I let go, completely spent. My sweat soaked clothes and ragged breathing showed all that was left of the pain that I felt.

I laid there unmoving, trying to recover, my steading breathing, and tear-stained eyes were all that showed that I was still alive. I could feel the sun’s rays move over me as the sun moved across the sky.

It wasn’t until I gingerly sat back up and wiped the sweat, tears, drool, and snot from my face that the blue screens appeared before me again. This time though, I was terrified of them.

The thought that they would bring me more pain and agony terrified me so much that I wanted to throw up, so I panicked and fell on my backside, my arms rapped around my head, trying to shelter myself from whatever torture the screens would bring.

I waited for the pain to come. Seconds soon turned to minuets. But when I felt no surge of pain assault me, I grew nervous. I peaked my eyes open, just a little bit, only to immediately slam them shut again. The blue screen was still there, in front of me, menacingly!

After a few more moments of nothing, a different emotion began to build in me. My fear quickly found itself being replaced with hate and anger. I then decided that I would not let this thing hurt me again, I would fight back. So I tried to jump on the screen, slamming it with my fists, kicking it with my feet, and biting it with my teeth, trying to cause it as much pain as it caused me.

But my hands phased right through the screen like it was nothing, my kicks found no purchase, and my mouth only bit the air. All the while, the screen stayed at a set distance from my face no matter how much I moved, attacked, or hid from it, like it was mocking all my efforts.

Exhausted again as my rage bottomed out, I gave up, accepting my fate, and deciding to just glare at the screen. However, my glare quickly turned into wide eye amazement and confusion.

The blue screen had scribbles on it that I couldn’t understand. The same kind of scribbles that I saw on the blue screen while I was in the white!

It was but a moment, nevertheless, a sharp pain hit the back of my head before leaving just as quick. I had no time to react before it was gone. I quickly turned my head around, looking for what hurt me, but found nothing. The blue screen followed my gaze as I moved, to stay where it deemed was where it was meant to be, in front of my face.

Exhausted, sweat soaked, and extremely parched, I sat with my back against a tree and looked at the persistent blue screen. However, what I saw was completely different from what I had seen earlier. Now I could understand the scribbles on the blue screen, just like in that white space!

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Congratulations! Transfer successful!

Welcome to the Death Gate!

ERROR. ERROR…

All participants must be from the same world…..

World unavailable…..

Necessary participants found in the waiting room for Death Gate...

Death Gate Activated….

Total necromancers on tutorial floor, 5.

Thank you for participating in the 2nd Necromancer Tutorial.

Good Luck Participants!

Once I finished reading the screen, like it knew that I had finished reading it, another took its place.

Once you complete the tutorial floor you will be transferred back to the real world where your companions, friends, and family will be waiting for you to celebrate your successful completion of the tutorial floor and entrance into your new world.

Once I had finished reading the screen, it moved on again and another one took its place.

This floor is known as the Goblin King’s Lair. To complete this floor, you must complete your quests, defeat the Goblin King, and exit through the gate to leave. Good luck!

Current Quest: Kill something.

Congratulations you have unlocked the skill Pain Resistance!

Pain Resistance has risen to level 2!

Pain Resistance has risen to level 3!

“...........what? Death Gate? Tutorial?! Quests?! Kill something?!?”

My thoughts were a jumbled mess. Rightfully so.

First I was in a white area with nothing around me. Then I found myself in a wonderous forest of life. The next thing I knew, I was in pain. Then the scribbles that, just a moment ago were nothing more than scribbles, became words that I could understand but not know how I understood them. And now I find out I’m in a Death Gate?

I couldn’t stop myself from sighing in frustration as my mind continued to try to unravel and piece together what was happening. It took some slow breaths, a small relaxing breeze and the chirping of small birds to bring my mind back to calm and focused tranquility.

With my mind and body calmed, I decided to do the only thing I could do, start from the beginning and work my way to where I was at. I went through all of it, everything I could remember in the white, the blue screens, the forest, and the blue screens in the forest.

With a puzzled twitch of my brow, I quickly began to realize a few things. One, the blue screens ruled my life. Whatever they said went. They could change the world I was in, if I was in pain or pleasure, and could control things I couldn’t even hope to understand.

Two, I was now in something called a Tutorial. A place to train me and prepare me for what the screens called, the real world.

“!!!”

My eyes immediately shot open. As my mind came to that point, I suddenly realized an incredibly important fact I had been overlooking and wouldn’t have even thought of if I hadn’t started back from the beginnings of my memories.

Before the white I didn’t know anything.

Now though, there was information swimming through my head that, previously, did not exist in my memory or my mind.

Information that gave me basic knowledge to understand the things around me like the trees, the sky, the sun, clothes, ect. All basic information about a human being, that I know I am, I know. All except the one thing that I realized mattered the most to me, information so precious to me that my mind started to shake and my insides twisted trying to find the answer in my subconscious. Information that is the center of who we are and what we build our lives around. Information that connects us to everything we love and care for and helps us make ourselves whole. Information that we think is so seemingly normal, that to live without it can shatter even a strong man’s mind and bring him to his knees. And it all starts with a simple question.

Who am I?

I scrunched my brows trying my hardest to come up with an answer to that question. I tried to piece together anything I could remember about myself. Events, thoughts I may have had, people that I knew, places I had been to, even my own name! I knew none of it.

But I could feel it. There were answers to those questions, but they were hidden from me by a wall, a wall of smoke and fog and steel that I could not get past. They were just outside my reach, but I couldn’t get to them.

After spending so long in my head, I turned back to the screens, the only source of information I had, but like the wall, I could not gather any other information from it. I asked it, begged it, pleaded with it to tell me something about myself until I had tears in my eyes, but my words found me no mercy from the blue screens that floated before me.

Slumped under a large oak tree, information that means so little to me now but is some of the only information I knew, I sulked.

With a thought, I pushed all the screens away and leaned my head back against the hard bark of the tree in defeat.

‘…I am alone and unknown; the wind has more names than I…’

My mind drifted as the warm morning air slowly turned to a slight burning and mind-numbing heat. As I watched the day go by, I wished for answers, but the only companion I found was a blank screen full of useless words and pain.

Brows furrowed; a small thought wormed its way into my subconscious. A thought that began to grow, and grow, and grow, until I had found that it had filled me with urgency.

Bringing the screens before me again with a thought, I scanned them with a glint of hope in my eyes.

‘where was it…where was it..’

After careful review, I finally found it. My hope.

A screen that I had previously not given a second glance to was now a screen that I found to be eagerly reread with glee.

Once you complete the tutorial floor you will be transferred back to the real world where your companions, friends, and family will be waiting for you to celebrate your successful completion of the tutorial floor and entrance into your new world.

The smile I felt on my lips strained my face as tears fell from my cheeks, but I didn’t care. Out of all the pain, despair, and hopelessness that threatened to consume me, finally, finally, I had found a path into the light.

“HAHaha! I knew it! I knew it! I’m not alone! There are people waiting for me, people who know me, people who care about me, people who can tell me who I am and explain all that’s going on!”

The dark cloud of hopelessness was shattered by a single ray of joy and hope. It was small, and if I hadn’t thought back to it, I would have missed it, but it was there. My hope.

All that was standing in my way was this Tutorial and these damned blue screens.

Taking a deep breath, I focused.

I could see it now. My path stretched out before me into the fog and the darkness. Already the unknown’s nipping whispers came to scare me, to break me, to tear my determination down, but I didn’t listen.

Because I knew the truth.

And the truth is, nothing could scare me more than the feeling I felt before. The confusion, the hopelessness, the pain of not knowing who you were, and the realization that you were alone, and no one cared.

I didn’t want that. I never want to feel like that again, so I stood up. I gripped my fists tight and I stepped forward. Forward, onto the path I would walk. To the place where all my answers would be found.

To the end of the road.