Chapter 1
Reincarnated, or am I?
June Allen, a gamer first, everything else a distant second. She spent many nights inside the latest digital world, finding fun in her own way. Tonight was a serious endeavor, as June was deep into another crafting session in her new favorite MMO, Duneria Online.
The most fun she could often have came from crafting and economic systems. Her favorite moments in games were when players came to her for complicated commissions. She enjoyed spending hours plugging away at the crafting UI, making items for keen adventurers. And when an MMO allowed her to flex creative muscle, all the better. Being able to put digital art skill to work in games was a rare delight.
Today, she was making Summoning Brand templates. Summoners who wished to bind minions to their will used these. A rather simple thing to make, it was just tedious. And with that tedium came a lot of mental drag. The crafting was rewarding in-game, but was sometimes as dull as death.
Her icy blue eyes reflected the images of the game in the shadow of her room. Her muscle memory helped her carve runes in a storm of clicks.
June carved another Rune into the eighth scroll she had made that night, a simple circular pattern meant to focus the Mana of the user. This was a slow process, but not overwhelmingly so thanks to the semi-automatic process of applying Runes. The game always saved Runes you had used previously, speeding matters up.
“OK, that’s Iron and Spiritus done,“ she mentally checked off. She covered the assembly in a Binding rune. With practiced hands, she moved the Runes into an exacting position within the UI before confirming their placement with a click.
As June scrawled the fifth Rune on the current scroll, she got a familiar feeling. A heaviness pulled on her eyes and a repeated yawn interrupted her thoughts. June knew these signals well, they were a cue to pack it in—she was being told by her own body to go the frak to bed.
June finally finished with the last Rune on the scroll as the crafting bar for the item filled to completion. A blitz of blue and yellow sparks fluttered across her computer monitor, and the reward window notified her of her latest completion of the day.
Item Completed:
1x Blank Summoning Brand (Magical)
Crafted by: Vallentra
Grade: Normal
“I should let Alrice know that some of their items are ready,” she thought, popping open the friends list to prep the message she wanted to send. She found her friend Alrice and opened a PM to her Summoner pal.
“Completed the first batch of Brands for your little project, will mail them tomorrow,” read the completed message before she fired it off. “They’ll be happy to have that so soon,“ she thought. Players all across the game had been freaking out about some upcoming patch. The developers had dropped some teaser about a big new event that would bring in some significant expansion of the story and PvE content. And that led to a flurry of activity for every crafter in the game as players commissioned all kinds of gear in preparation.
The expansion only existed as a teaser right now, but the patch notes were due in only a few days, and the launch of the game’s first major update would come soon after.
Players were going crazy speculating on what the cryptic wording of the teaser meant:
The Pearl Queen was the last of the Ama’ani Empresses.
Her folly, greed, had destroyed their great civilization.
And so the gods cursed her and her people to live a half-life, a foul life. Her curse brought about an age of blood and death.
Will you follow in her haunting footsteps, or will you battle against the forces of chaos, undoing her terrible legacy?
“Pretty standard fare for an RPG,“ she thought when she had first read it earlier that day. These fantasy games sure loved dead gods and grand conspiracies. She didn't care much for the teaser, as without the patch notes, she had nothing to plan on crafting or speculating on, economically.
Done with her goals for the night, she tapped the log out button. Then, she reached down to power down her PC. The RGB lighting going out on the tower darkened the last bit of light in the room. A strand of Christmas lights hung on the opposite wall illuminated the room in a soft green glow.
As she stood up from her desk, June stretched her arms above her head. Undoing the elastic holding her brown hair back, she let her soft curls flop down to below her shoulders. June changed into a fresh pair of pajama pants and a t-shirt before crawling into the bed next to her desk.
Sleep gripped June’s mind and body, the small fan that ran in the corner of her room kept pushing the cool air around the room. The steady flow of air acted as background noise, lulling her to sleep. The blackness and slow descent gave her a reprieve from the monotony of her daily life.
Her second-favorite time of the day, sleeping, finally came. June fell deeper into the lull of relaxation as she curled up on her bed, snuggling into her pillow for a bit of extra comfort. Sleep came to her in what felt like an instant, as her consciousness faded to black, and her mind went with it.
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The usual snippets of dreams and random images aren’t what came next, far from it. The weightless sense of dreaming felt much heavier, like June was buried beneath some heavy blankets, no, much heavier, she thought. Anxiety flooded into her mind as the darkness continued to harass her. Trapped in whatever nightmare this was, June tensed with anxiety. Her mind spun with possibilities, trying to explain what this strange new feeling was.
Flashes came in rapid succession after what felt like an eternity. Bright lights dominated the flow, but what June could only perceive as pained screams floated in, cutting into her consciousness like a meat hook. In a merciful instant, they disappeared like whisper on the wind.
The next images were much more corporeal, alive. June stood in a darkened clearing amid a copse of large trees. Off in the distance was a slowly darkening campfire. The last embers of the pile of ash and cinders danced across a dark night sky. Surrounding the campfire was a pair of wooden stools.
At the edges of the campfire’s light, the moon cut like a blade through the shadow of the surrounding trees. Not a sound could be heard within the leaves and branches, only the crackling of the fire echoed through this dark forest.
June’s legs pushed her forward, and she sat herself on one of the logs. As June sat, the surrounding shadows stirred, as if a slow fog had quickly rolled into the clearing. Past the trees came a tide of rolling umbra. The fog coalesced around the log opposite her, and a mix of negative emotions consumed June. In just a couple of seconds, the rolling shadows consumed the log, with the mass growing by the second.
The smoke and fog boiled and twisted, curling in on itself. The ash and cinders from the fire rolled into the mysterious mist, adding a sinister glow. Large bubbles formed in the mist, enlarging and popping as the seconds ticked by. The thick black ichor scattered upward and back down, forming a small mound of goo.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
Over the next few seconds, time seemed to slow, and a jet black figure began to form out of the ever-increasing pile of mutated shadow. As the figure formed out of the boiling mass, it took a vaguely humanoid form. No, it was much too large to be a normal human. June was a tiny ant across from a giant. Every hair on her body was standing on end.
The figure was stuffed into a black robe that seemed to be stitched haphazardly together from multiple ripped fabrics. A mix of black and blue shades dominated the hanging garment. Ragged fabric was sprawled over the head of the figure, with no hint of its features visible to June. The robe seemed as if a child had made it, slapped together with great haste out of whatever had been lying around. To June, it was almost an insult that the garment appeared unsettlingly ugly and slapdash in its color choices. For a brief instant, that thought was all that she could focus on, before snapping back to the moment, as a pop from the small fire echoed around the otherwise silent scene.
“Focus,” she heard her voice echo in her own head. She needed to get the hell out of here, wherever here was. But for some reason, she couldn’t force her body to move. Her muscles were ground to the spot, frozen.
The campfire seemed to disappear from her consciousness, the soft glow of the flames fading from her awareness. A strangling feeling of cold consumed June. An oppressive shiver ran over June’s body. The silence that hung in the air for an eternity choked out all other noise, but finally the being across from her spoke. The creature spoke softly, barely above a whisper. She heard the voice of a man creeping into her ears, but it sounded far away.
“You don’t know me, but I know much about you,” rasped the robed figure. “Everything I could ever want to know.”
June nodded slowly, her body responding on its own. Her mind spun with the possibility. Why would she be having this dream now? What had prompted it? What the hell did it mean? The compulsion felt alien and overwhelming. Something about this entire situation kept June planted to the spot, but she couldn’t place it. The only thought filling her head at the moment was a desire to run, but she couldn’t will her legs to respond.
“Let me dispel your ignorance, girl. This is no dream,” the figure said. The creature’s head remained turned away from June, but if it had been looking at her, fear would be written all over her face. “You have a great purpose ahead of you, something far better than what you’ve left behind.”
“Wha—” The response froze on June’s lips. The cold turned to ice in the pit of her stomach. The muscles of her limbs knotted, weighing her down even more. Apprehension gripped her mind and pushed itself deeper into her emotional core, burrowing in like a termite and eating away at her stability. “Screw that, I don’t want to be part of some grand plan,“ she thought.
The chuckle that came from the void beneath the figure’s robe sounded like it was ripped from the depths of a corpse’s throat—like a somber death rattle. “Just listen, child, what I have to say is important, and I have precious little time. You must accept a new existence.”
“A new life awaits you,” a nebulous intent dripped off of the way this creature enunciated ‘life’, putting June even more on edge. “You will learn more when you prove yourself, and when we meet again. For now, you need to move on,” finished the shadowy abomination.
His voice echoed across the night like a taunting whisper. “Your life will be one of strife, but you are special, something to be forged into a beautiful weapon of war.“ The breath of the creature beneath the hood slithered out like a heavy fog. It wasn’t cold, but their breath still turned the air into slivers of mist and ice. "There are secrets I wish to be uncovered, and you will help me with this," rasped the creature.
The words hit June’s mind like repeated hammer blows. Did she want this, she still didn’t even know what ‘this‘ was. Internally, June screamed against the force holding her in place. It had formed something like a wall of ice around her heart, and June beat against it. Her inner curiosity burned against her fear, melting slivers of her fear away. “Speak, say something!“ June screamed at herself.
The firelight glinted in her icy blue eyes, and as she stared at it, she let her mind wonder, hoping for some insight or way to escape. In a fit of anger, June imagined this horrifying creature catching aflame. An ember would carry onto its rotten robes and immolate them, setting her free. She found a tiny amount of reprieve in imagining this bastard being turned into a pillar of flame.
Silence hung over the scene for several beats, as June continued her struggle to get away from whatever this nonsense was.
The figure raised its arm and pointed at the dying fire. The next instant, the last few cinders suddenly extinguished. A force washed over June’s stilled body like a tidal wave. But instead of knocking her to the sodden ground, her senses were sent crashing into nothingness, overwhelmed. Before the darkness took over, June had an image in her mind of a rotten finger pointing at the fire.
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June had grown used to the sound of knocking early in the morning. A quick series of thuds on her bedroom door from her mother was her usual late-morning alarm clock. Or more often over the last few months, a signal that she had spent another sleepless night at her PC. June jolted at the noise, getting a sense of uncomfortable closeness, as if something unknown had closed in around her as she slept.
Then, another series of knocks. This time, though, the knocks sounded more distant. These thuds were sluggish. And then she realized she wasn’t in her bed, and the room was much darker than she remembered, pitch black. As June adjusted to the cramped quarters, the hardness of whatever she was lying on struck her. This definitely wasn’t her bedroom.
June reached up, finding a heavy object blocking her reach. Panicking, she pounded on whatever was fixed above her. The slow rapping on the door began again, this time much more urgent. And it didn’t sound like flesh hitting wood. The deep thuds sounded more resonant, like a hammer striking something particularly substantial, at least compared to a wooden door.
The next instant, a loud scraping sound overwhelmed her hearing. Thankfully, the scraping was the large object being removed from her path. Her vision filled with two things. One was a giant red face, the other was the dimly lit stone ceiling beyond.
“What’s your name, grunt?” asked the menacing red face hanging above her.
The face above her definitely wasn’t human, owed to the reddish skin and black horns ringing its head. The next clue was the blackened tongue that snaked out of its mouth, wrapping around its teeth and jaw before darting back into its toothy maw. Its eyes glinted like black gems, spent embers trapped amid a field of fire.
The red-faced being stuck its head down, close to June’s face. Through narrowed eyes, the face repeated its hurried prompt. The jagged teeth filling its mouth were more visible now. “Answer me, you sack of bones!” roared the angry-looking demon.
Out of pure shock, June wanted to slap the figure away. But as hard as she wanted to will her arms to strike out, they stayed put, locked in place.
Darting her vision around, June avoided looking directly at the creature. She wanted to flee, but had nowhere to retreat to with the hard surface at her back. The darkness may have retreated from her vision, though the tight quarters of the coffin were still holding onto the edges of her consciousness. Laying supine on something extremely cold and hard, she wasn’t able to compel her limbs to carry her away.
“June,” came the meek response.
The face of her antagonizer regarded her with cold eyes for a moment, before retreating out of her vision. “Well, what are you waiting for? Crawl your carcass out and join the rest of us,” came its next shouted words.
“What the fuck, did this thing just call me a carcass?” she wondered.
As the threatening fiend howled the new command, June’s upper body lurched upward, entirely of its own power. Climbing out of the tiny space, she finally got a look at her surroundings. While her limbs moved of their own accord, at least she took solace as the rest of her remained uncontrolled.
The first thing she fixed her gaze on was what she had crawled out of: a freaking coffin! In a panic, June glanced around, trying to do anything she could to get her bearings. The room itself reminded June of any generic fantasy dungeon, the type of place she had explored in countless RPGs. The room was entirely carved stone, with a low ceiling and sparsely decorated walls.
Torches and braziers burned with a sickly green flame around the room, bathing everything in a strange light. The coffin she had crawled out of had various Runes emblazoned upon it, but before she could inspect it, other details caught her peripheral vision. Like a large metallic vase sitting at the end of the coffin she had risen from. She caught her own reflection in the vase. Gawking back at June wasn’t the blue-eyed brunette wearing pajama pants she had expected. The realization that the demon’s ‘sack of bones’ comment was very on point stunned her. SHE IS A SKELETON! And now that she looked around, this room was utterly stuffed with skeletons, zombies and other undead.
“This has to be a dream, just one long nightmare,” thought the now panicking skeleton. In her mind, battled her current emotions and the statements of the ghoul back at the campfire. The realization came crashing down, burying her awareness in dread. The bones that made up her jaw went slack.
The next yell from the demon compelled June forward even more. Her shoulders wanted to slump forward, but a compulsion to keep moving overwhelmed that desire. The entire room around her closed in, she could only stare off into space, dissociating in this strange moment. “Stop gawking and join the others before I lose my patience,” came her newest command. Before June even had time to register this newest compulsion, her feet moved under her.
A glimmer of anger burned in June’s heart once more, this time directed at the thing currently shouting at her. June felt yet more satisfaction at this prick burning alive.
As her feet carried her forward, she moved toward a large arch in the room. As she walked past various other undead, they all seemed to spawn out of the coffins dotted about this smaller chamber. The demons, all differing skin colors, shouted commands, and the undead shuffled off to comply. “Run,“ her mind tried to compel her body to go anywhere but here. June still had control of her sight, but her body carried her into an undead tide too quickly for her to get her bearings. Some undead, dozens of them, filtered slowly but steadily toward a massive stone arch at one end of the room. Her feet carried her towards the arch, towards some unknown future.