Adam woke to a skull splitting headache. It felt like someone had hammered a thousand nails into his head and when they ran out of room they began to drill. He kept his eyes squeezed shut, trying his best to block out the throbbing behind his eyes. It felt like he was back in his college days when he woke up from a night out at the bars until 3am. What the hell kind of dream was that to leave him like this. There was some weird Anubis-like creature and even a crocodile humanoid… He almost thought he was in some sort of Egyptian nightmare. Maybe he had a little too much of Tim’s under the counter Rum the night before? Or was that a few days ago?
Adam groaned, trying his best to sit up, his eyes still firmly pressed shut. He strained, feeling something tighten around his chest preventing him from moving. He tried to bring his hands to his face only to find straps around both wrists as well.
“What the…”
Adam opened his eyes, blinking rapidly to clear the blur. It was dark out – the only light a slight orange flickering that illuminated a stone wall beside him and a grey stone ceiling above him. His mind raced as he realized he wasn’t on his boat. The stone beneath his back finally registering to his senses. He strained against the straps binding him, leg flaring with pain.
A loud thud sounded next to his ear sending a current of air over him. He turned his head, the only thing he found he could move freely at this point, to the crocodile humanoid from before sticking a needle into the neck of the jackal like creature. He connected the needle to a long clear tube that coiled into a satchel that hung around his neck. His movements were fluid and steady, as if he had done this a thousand times.
Adams breath caught in his throat. He held it on instinct, hoping the croc wouldn’t turn toward to him to find him awake. The events of the past day came back in a rush. He had been transported to what appeared to be an abandoned city, killed what he had always known as an Egyptian god of old, and then attacked by a freaking crocodile. And then there was the weird text that had appeared before him like notifications in a game.
As he thought it, another notification popped up in front of him.
As a newly enriched world, the Primordial has arranged guidance to help the people of your world adapt. Notifications will appear occasionally to help you navigate this new world.
The crocodile stepped toward Adam, tail flicking slightly as if in anticipation. The notification vanished as Adam looked toward him. Adam stared back at the creature, eyes narrowing. It had noticed he was awake, and he wouldn’t show weakness no matter his situation. It wasn’t who he was.
The crocodile opened its jaws wide, a deep growl emanating from its chest. “Tam facile mentiri te ac respirationem.” The words came out gargled and deep, but clearly enough. A wave of hot rancid breath hit Adam in the face.
Adam was horrified at first that the crocodile had spoken. He was sure he had imagined it before. But this time... He was even more surprised that he thought he understood some of it.
Facil…Respirationem… “Easy breathing?” Adam murmured aloud. It was Latin. Something he had taken in high school to score better on the ACT but stopped when he got to college. It was supposed to be a dead language.
The beast merely shook its head as it leaned over Adam, a needle similar to the one he jabbed in the jackals neck heading for his arm. He pushed against the leather straps again, straining to do anything other than lay there helplessly.
He wasn’t a small guy. Six foot two and built like a tank. He had played football and wrestled in high school and then spent five years in the Navy SEALs, but these straps didn’t budge in the slightest. The beast smacked him with its tail, making his ears ring and the headache flare again.
He glared at the croc, spitting a mouthful of blood at its feet. It snorted at him, seeming almost amused at Adam’s defiance. A second later he felt a sting in his left arm and looked down to see the needle sticking out, a trickle of blood falling to the stone below. The crocodile connected a similar tube to the one he had to the jackals needle to his, only this time dark red blood began to flow along the clear tubing and into the satchel around the beasts neck. He reached a hand inside the satchel and a soft hum started a second later.
Warning. An external force is attempting to drain the Primordial Energy from your body. Due to your [Essence of a Primordial] skill, no energy is able to be siphoned.
Adam stared at the message having absolutely no idea what it meant or what this Primordial Energy was, much less his supposed skill. Regardless, he doubted having his blood drained from him was any better. He strained against the bindings again, arms and legs flexing as he pushed. All he managed was to push blood into the tubing at a faster rate.
The crocodile didn’t strike Adam this time. Instead, he stared at the tubing, head cocking to the side slightly as if it was confused. He looked in his bag, reaching his hand in again and fiddling with something that Adam couldn’t see.
A second later he kicked Adam in his side and muttered something else in Latin that he couldn’t make out. Adam grunted, his body straining against the straps as he tried to curl up by reflex but was held back. The croc put its foot on his chest, pressing more weight onto him. For the first time Adam noticed the beast wore sandals, the kind he had seen in movies the ancient Egyptians used to wear.
“Dimitte industriam tuam, humanam” The croc said, staring down at Adam.
“I don’t know what you want from me. I can’t understand you.” Adam said through clenched teeth. “I…” The beast stomped on his stomach, blasting the air from his lungs.
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“Dimitte industriam tuam. Humanam!” It said again. More forceful this time.
As a being infused with Primordial Energy, you have access to an inherent translator. Would you like to activate this function?
“Yes” Adam wheezed aloud. He would have curled in a ball on his side if he could have but instead ended up just barely lifting his head. He had no idea how to interact with whatever this Primordial Guidance system was and only hoped his audible confirmation was enough.
Translator activated
The crocodile kicked him and asked the question one more time, this time Adam understood it as if he was speaking English.
“Release your Primordial Energy, human” Oddly he recognized that the beast was speaking Latin even as he understood it as English.
Adam stared back at the croc, unflinching beneath its gaze. He had been tortured before. Tied up, beaten, humiliated, and worse. There was nothing this croc could do to him that he hadn’t already lived through. Other than eat him perhaps.
“Even if I knew what you were talking about, what makes you think I would do anything you said.” Adam said back, voice cracking as he tried to work some moisture into his mouth.
The croc snorted again. “You lie as easy as you breath.” It responded, its tail slapping on the ground in a clear threat. “I don’t know how you are blocking the siphon, but I can make this much more painful.”
“It’s some soul skill that’s doing it, not me. So, I couldn’t stop it even if I wanted to. You mind as well do whatever you’re going to do because when I get out of here I’m going to turn you into a nice pair of boots and –“
The croc leaned down, snout pressing against his chest as it took a deep breath, its scaly hand covering Adam’s mouth and cutting off his empty threats. It pulled back again, yellow eyes taking in every part of him. It reached a long nailed finger toward him. Just before it reached his chest, the beast slammed its tail into the ground, flinging itself to the side.
The movement sent a bag over his head, leaving him now blinded and only able to hear. A sharp clang rang out beside him where the beast had just been. Adam tried to wriggle the bag off his head but was wildly unsuccessful as it just seemed to settle further onto him.
Growls and grunts filled the air as there was clearly a struggle happening behind Adam. He heard the sound of the crocs tail slapping against stone, rapidly shifting around the room he was in. The attacker was far more quiet, the only noise Adam could make out was a soft grunt or the clang of something metal striking stone. The struggle continued for a minute until he heard deep breaths through an eerie silence in the aftermath of whatever fighting had been going on.
“This isn’t over.” Adam heard the croc say. The other party didn’t say anything in response, only giving what sounded like a dismissive grunt.
A minute later Adam heard the soft thuds of feet walking toward him. He continued to struggle against the straps holding him down, though his struggling was in vain as he ended up just wiggling on the ground in what he imagined was the sad interpretation of an inchworm.
The bag was pulled from his head a second later, bringing him face to face with a human that looked like he had been chiseled from stone. The man staring down at him had an almost bronze complexion, shoulder length curly brown hair and chiseled jaw that looked as if it could rip through steel on its own. His eyes were a sharp grey interspersed with flecks of bright white. He wore a simple sleeveless brown leather jerkin and matching brown leather pants. Most striking were the tattoos on his forearms that wound up from his palm to his elbows. They looked like mountains, but it almost appeared to Adam as if they were shifting on his skin.
The man studied Adam, his eyes flashing over him quickly. He frowned as he saw his orange swim trunks. Adam gave a helpless shrug as if to say how was he supposed to know he would be transported to some lost city where he’d be fighting Egyptian gods.
“You do that.” The man said, nodding his head toward the humanoid jackal beside them, its head still caved in, though it had stopped bleeding. The man’s voice was deep and seemed to reverberate in his chest.
“I uhh. Well, it kinda just happened.” Adam said as he studied the man, trying to figure out what was going on in his head. He could tell he was speaking Latin as well, but he didn’t seem to be with that crocodile creature.
“You didn’t feel like finishing the job?” He said, sounding annoyed at Adam for some reason.
Adam had no idea what he was talking about and was honestly growing sick of being expected to just know everything that was going on.
“Look man. I have absolutely no idea what is going on here. One second, I was diving to get a crystal I saw from my boat and then…” Adam stopped, realizing he remembered what he was doing just before being sent here. His mind spun as he went over the events. The crystal. The blinding pain. The weird notification that he had gained something called a soul skill and now had access to Primordial Energy.
“And then?” The man prodded, still standing over him.
“Could you please just get me out of this thing?” Adam replied, refusing to give any more information until he was free.
The man studied him a second longer before he reached his hand to the side. His eyes glowed blue for a second as a light flashed in his right hand. A jagged sword appeared an instant later. Its surface shimmered slightly with hues of blue and white that danced along the shifting edges of the sleek blade. Adam studied the sword, his hair rising on end as if in response to the pure power emanating from the weapon. He felt as if he was looking at lightning made solid. Before Adam could admire the blade more, the man brought his arm down in a swift motion that cut through the straps binding Adam. It was done with such speed that Adam didn’t even have the time to realize a sword had been mere centimeters from slicing off his hand.
Adam rubbed gingerly at his wrist where the bindings had dug into his skin while the strange man walked over to the humanoid jackal. In a motion just as a rapid, he brough the sword down across its neck separating its head from its body in one clean slice. Small arcs of blue lightening flickered across its body.
Adam flinched back, shocked at the sudden display of unnecessary violence. “Why… why’d you do that?”
The man looked back at him, clearly confused. “Because you didn’t kill it.” He said matter of factly. “Did the other Eldari get to you before you could?”
Adam stared at the decapitated beast, not sure how it couldn’t have been dead from what he had done. A few moments passed and then the body began to disintegrate rapidly before his eyes. Black particles that shimmered in the air began to float up from the disappearing corpse. They were… beautiful. It was as if he was staring at the substance that made up the very essence of the universe. He watched the little motes dance in the air feeling like the longer he looked he was about to grasp something just out of reach.
The particles were pulled from the air before he could appreciate them any longer. Sucked in a vortex into a cannister at the other man’s belt. Just as quickly, the feeling Adam had that he was about to discover something was gone.
Again, Adam stared at the strange man, no idea what to say or where to go from here. He seemed to realize what Adam was thinking as he shifted his weight and cocked his head to the side.
“You really don’t know what’s going on here? Do you?”
“No!” Adam replied, a little more forceful than he meant to. “Like I’ve said multiple times. Why no one chooses to believe me is beyond my comprehension. Apparently, I now have access to something called Primordial Energy. There’s such a thing as skills which are apparently magical abilities like in a game. There are freaking creatures that are half person half animal that can talk and don’t seem to like humans too much. And on top of all of that, I’m somehow fluent in Latin now.” Once Adam started talking, the words just flowed out of him, and he found it difficult to stop.
“What kingdom are you from?” The man asked, completely ignoring everything Adam had said.
This only unnerved him even more as his jaw hung open, his eyebrows knitted together. “Kingdom?” Who spoke like that? He thought of saying Florida, but if the man was from another planet - which he had to be from everything Adam had seen, that or Adam was going crazy. Well crazier than he already was. The Haldol injections were supposed to help with that but never seemed to do the trick.
“Yes. How did you end up in this trial? There were very specific requirements and this Kingdom only reached minimal threshold of Primordial Energy a few hours ago.”
Trial? What the hell was this guy talking about? “Umm. I guess my Kingdom would be Earth?” Adam said, his tone more questioning than sure.
The man paced back and forth, arms folded across his extremely broad chest. “I was wondering why we hadn’t seen Ellis’s tracker pop up.” He said aloud. “Nothing to be done about it now, I suppose.” He turned back toward Adam and walked up to him, extending a hand. “The names Caius Arconius. If you have any interest in surviving more than a few more hours, you should come with me back to my team.”