A wave crashes over my head as I open my mouth to yell for my brother. It hits me like a punch to the jaw, and I’m sent reeling, spinning beneath the waves, bubbles crackling in my ears as I flail for the surface. I come up and gasp in a lungful of air, then hack and cough as saltwater splashes down my lungs.
“Álvaro!” I scream. “Álvaro!”
Behind the roar of the ocean, I can hear an answering call. “Nye! Nye, I’m here! Help!”
I lunge in the direction of his voice, even as the waves continue to throw me back and forth like flotsam. Panic is all that’s keeping me going, thrashing against the cold and the burn of saltwater in my throat. I take a breath and hold it, ducking under the surface as another wave collapses on top of me. I breach, panting from the exertion, but still manage to summon the energy to call for my brother again.
“Here!” he responds, his voice hoarse and weary. “Here, Nye!”
Finally, the waves part long enough for me to catch sight of him. Water has plastered his hair against his skin, his head barely kept above the surface. He looks exhausted and terrified.
That makes two of us.
By some stroke of luck, the waters let me close the gap before the next wave crashes over us. I grab the front of his shirt to try to hoist his head up higher, treading water with one hand, and he latches onto that arm like a lifeline. I have to kick extra hard to keep us from both going under.
Weariness pulls at me like an anchor.
“I’m sorry!” Álvaro cries. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to go so far. The rip tide—”
“Doesn’t matter,” I pant, whipping my head around. Which way is the shore? “Let go of my arm. Help me tread. We need to get back to land.”
“I know,” Álvaro sobs, like he’s nine instead of nineteen, but he lets go. “I know. I’m sorry. I don’t want to die.”
“We’re not going to die.” I’m relieved to have found him, but the absence of that anxiety just makes room for the exhaustion to hit even harder. My bones feel like they’re made of lead. “Can you see the shore?”
“No,” Álvaro says, looking around frantically, eyes wide. “We’re lost. Oh god, how did we get so far out?”
I don’t waste my breath responding. We need to figure out which direction is our best bet and start moving. We can’t survive out here much longer, even if our family knows to look for us. I glance to the sky, searching for birds, but only the storm rages overhead. Where had it come from? It had all happened so fast.
“Nye, watch—”
It’s the only warning I receive before the wave crashes into me. My brother’s shirt is ripped from my grasp as I slam into the water. I try to gasp in a breath, but I inhale a lungful of water instead. My body convulses, every muscle acting instinctively to expel the lungful of water. The same instinct forces me to draw in another breath, hoping for clear air. But I’m still underwater.
My mouth and nose and eyes burn from the salt. I writhe against the pain and wrongness, fingers clawing at the ocean, my throat, mind screaming for air. I kick my legs, desperate to reach the surface, but I no longer have any sense of up or down. I struggle and gasp and flail senselessly, terror overcoming every other thought and feeling.
I’m only semi aware that I’m fading as the darkness closes in.
----------------------------------------
The darkness changes. It becomes more disorienting, less physical, and I still think I’m drowning for a long time as I struggle and fail to understand where I am or how much time has passed. The very idea slips away from me as I try to grasp it, and the disorientation sends my mind spinning. Yet, I’m thinking more clearly now than when I was before.
Álvaro? I call. But I can’t make a sound. My call echoes out into the void. I try to move, but I can’t feel my body. Nor can I feel the ocean. I can’t feel anything anymore. Álvaro? I call again, trying not to panic.
Hello? There’s another voice nearby, though it isn’t my brother’s. What’s happening?
I don’t know, but that doesn’t frighten me as much as not knowing if my brother’s okay. I push past the strange new voice and keep calling for my brother. Álvaro? Álvaro?
There are more voices now. More… presences. I can’t make sense of it. They’re all afraid or confused. Some are clustered together, as if that could stave off the surrounding abyss.
But it’s not exactly an abyss. There’s another consciousness here, which I’d missed at first, because it seems to be everywhere. It’s wrapped around us like a net. Abruptly, it tightens, snapping around us with malice so intense, it seems to be a physical pressure.
Some of the voices scream and struggle. The darkness is eating us. Biting into our very essence, stripping bits of us away. Like the others, I’m scared, and I try to escape, but it only hones my panic down to one idea: My brother. I need to find my little brother.
Nye?
Hope washes over me as I hear—feel—the voice. It’s Álvaro! He’s close. Like we’re swimming through the ocean all over again, I struggle against the force of nature that’s trying to drag me down, colliding into the mind of my brother. I want to hug him. I want to tell him it will be okay. But I can’t do either.
I’m here, I say instead.
There’s movement all around us. The… thing that has us trapped has turned its attention elsewhere, but that doesn’t take the acidic pain away that’s slowly dissolving my sense of self. I can almost see something. A distant spark of light. Muted voices. Sea salt. Flashes of emotions pulse through us: anger, indignation, hunger, triumph. And smaller flickers too: fear, concern, regret. I don’t understand. Who’s feeling these things? Why are we being made to feel them?
Some of the sounds finally resolve into words. “...I don’t plan to die today.”
They fill me with renewed defiance. We’ll make it out of here, I tell Álvaro. I promise. Even if I don’t know how, I’ll find a way to do it.
There’s movement. A struggle. It’s all the rest of us can do but endure as we’re whipped back and forth, more fragmented bits of reality reaching us.
Then, a flash of light. The minds around me vanish in an instant, including my brother’s. No, I cry, reaching into the nothingness, desperately grabbing for someone who’s no longer there. No!
This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.
I don’t have much time to be scared for my brother, for the next moment, pain lances through every atom of my being. I scream, writhing against the malice which seems to have stabbed through my very soul, and I feel myself crumbling around it. Being consumed by it. This time, I’m fully aware when I realize I’m dying.
And then it’s gone, and I’m gone, and I fall back into reality.
----------------------------------------
When I awake, everything is dark, and when I try to gasp in a breath, I discover it’s because I’m lying face-down. I groan, spitting grit and sand, as I roll over onto my back and stare up at a beautiful night sky. A warm breeze passes over me, and stars twinkle overhead.
Had that all been a dream? Some horribly realistic nightmare? I can almost still feel that hatred eating into me, and I shiver at the thought. It had to have been a dream. There’s no other explanation.
Then I remember what had happened before. The riptide. The storm. Álvaro.
“Álvaro!” I sit up with a jolt. That had been real. What happened? Have we washed up on shore? But as I look around and start to process my surroundings, my mind only spins with more confusion.
Despite the low light, I don’t have much issue being able to see what’s around me, but that does little to settle my disorientation. I’m at the bottom of a hill, I think—no, a crater. The base I’m sitting in seems to be rock and clay, but all around me the walls are made of sand. Like some sort of impact blew a hole in a playground. How did I survive whatever left this crater? In fact, as I continue to look around in bewilderment, I realize I’m not alone.
[New user recognized. Populating stats.]
I flinch at the voice, so close it feels right in my ear. Nearby, a man groans, shakily crawling to his hands and knees. He looks around frantically, and his gaze quickly lands on me.
“What was that?” he asks, his voice shaking. “Was that you?”
“What?” is all I can manage to croak out, thoroughly baffled.
The thing is… I’m not entirely sure the person I’m talking to is human. His skin is gray, and his ears are pointed, and through his grimace of fear, I can make out two fangs where his canines should be.
[Compilation complete. Role assigned. Displaying stats.]
[Name: Nye]
[Species: Dhampyr]
[Class: Guardian]
[Level: 14]
[HP: 125/125]
[Mana: 40/40]
[Role: The Knight]
I whip my head from side to side as the voice speaks, determining it’s not coming from the man across from me; at the same time, the words appear in my vision.
The man yelps, swatting at the air in front of him. “What the hell is this? Dhampyr? Level? What’s happening?”
Took the words right out of my mouth.
“I don’t know,” I admit. “But it looks like it’s happening to both of us.” Now that I’m speaking in complete sentences, my voice sounds strange to me. I clear my throat as I push myself to my feet, mumbling a few trial words to myself. I’m pretty used to pitching my voice slightly lower on a daily basis, but when I try to do that now, my words sound too deep. Weird. Maybe I’m coming down with a cold.
I start to dust off my pants, then stop. I’m wearing clothes, but they’re not mine. Black boots, trousers, a shirt and a scratchy cloak—but it’s the bits of leather strapped to my arms and legs and across my chest that have me tilting my head in curiosity. They look like pieces of armor, I think. The man across from me is wearing something similar. There’s a dual crescent moon-like symbol etched over the chest plate that I don’t recognize.
“No,” the man is mumbling to himself, still on the ground. “No, no, no. This can’t be happening. This isn’t real.” He moans, clutching his head.
I raise a skeptical eyebrow at him. I mean, yeah, this is all very strange and confusing, but that seems a bit dramatic. I decide to address the most pressing issue first.
“Álvaro!” I call, turning in a slow circle to survey our crater. “Are you there?”
Other figures are scattered over the nearby ground, besides the man experiencing a mental breakdown. I step toward the nearest one, but it doesn’t respond. In fact, it doesn’t move at all. I frown, wondering if I’d mistaken a boulder or bush for a person in the low light.
[Check,] the voice appears again. [Human remains. Skeletal.]
A chill runs down my spine. “What?!”
[Check,] the vaguely robotic, vaguely feminine voice repeats. [Human remains. Skeletal.]
I probably should have clarified I meant, ‘What the hell?’
I take a step back from the bodies. Because as I glance around the crater, I can now tell that’s what the rest of them are, too. “Who are you?” I say aloud. “Why am I here?”
[This unit has been designated Echo,] the voice in my head says. [The user’s second request is unidentified.]
I guess it’s not big on the existential type questions. “What are you?” I ask instead.
[This unit acts as an audiovisual interface between User and System,] Echo says.
“System?”
[The variegated arcane network which governs select neuromagical advancement.]
Yeah, that all makes complete sense. I turn back to the man who is still whimpering on the ground and wonder what his deal is. Once more, Echo is happy to oblige.
[Name: Hans]
[Species: Dhampyr]
[Class: Brawler]
[Level: 19]
[HP: 135/135]
[Mana: 50/50]
[Role: Beast Tamer]
Some notable similarities and differences. We both have around the same numeric stats, but different classes and roles. The same species, though. Wait. What does that mean about me?
I look down at my hands. Even in the reduced light, I can tell there’s something wrong with my skin. No longer brown, all the pigment’s been leached away to a dark gray, like I’m a living black and white photograph. I touch my ears, and find them slightly pointed at the tips. Running my tongue over my teeth, a prickly nervous sensation runs through my body when I discover the small fangs in place of my canines, just like Hans.
I nervously run my hands down my arms. Things just went from disorienting to unsettling. Why isn’t this my body? I guess that explains the change in voice. And I don’t hate it, exactly. This body is muscled, lean, and a couple inches taller than what I’m used to—which is to say, still on the short side. But I feel strong.
I feel like I should be freaking out more about all this. Maybe not Hans-level of freaking out, but something weird is happening, and I’m completely in the dark.
Right, dark. I glance at the stars overhead. Maybe this new body is why I can see in the dark, too.
“Hey,” I say, heading over to Hans. “Pull it together, alright? We need to figure out what’s going on here.”
He’s still mumbling to himself, so I lean down and put a hand on his shoulder in what I hope is a comforting gesture. It isn’t until I’m close that I can make out what he’s saying.
“I died, and it’s going to kill me again. I died, and it’s going to kill me again. I died, and it’s going to kill me again.”
I pull my hand back reflexively, his words giving me the willies. “We’re not dead,” I tell him. I mean, at least I don’t think we are. I don’t feel dead. But how had I gotten from the ocean to here? I thought I remembered drowning, the water in my lungs, but… I mean, if I died, I wouldn’t be here, right? And where’s Álvaro?
I shake my head, trying to dislodge the string of uncomfortable questions. No point in dwelling on them. I don’t have the answers, anyway. I try to refocus on more immediate concerns.
“What do you think is going to kill you?” I ask.
That stops him, and he cocks his head. “Can’t you hear it? The whispers.”
“Echo?” I wonder. She’s definitely strange, but her helpful (if not blunt) commentary doesn’t strike me as murderous.
Hans shakes his head. “No, no. The whispers, underground. They’re hurt. Mad. They’re coming.”
Another shiver goes through me. I can’t help it, this guy just knows exactly what to say to give me the creeps. “Then maybe we should get out of here,” I suggest.
Hans looks up at me in despair. “It’s too late. They’re already here!”
“What’s here?” I ask, nervously glancing around the crater. The skeletons haven’t gotten up and wandered away, so that’s good, I guess.
He frowns, in concentration or worry, I can’t tell. Then he looks up at me with wide, earnest eyes. “The cactus.”
I can’t help it. A laugh bubbles out of me. “Cactus? A cactus is coming for you?”
Seeing I clearly am not taking him seriously, his gaze drops back to the ground and he starts mumbling to himself again, scratching his fingers through his hair. “I don’t understand. I don’t understand what you want!”
I’m beginning to think this guy might be one crayon short of a full box.
“Okay, well, while you worry about the murder cactus, I’m going to climb out of here and figure out where we are,” I say.
Hans begins rocking back and forth. “Requirement? What requirement? I can’t do it. I can’t!”
“Right,” I say, drawing out the word. “Well good luck with—”
And that’s when the murder cactus bursts from the ground.