Jack sat in the library’s backroom, hunched over a book laid out on the table. The dim lights of the room cast shadows around the room like ghosts. This was Jack’s favorite part of the library. This was the actual library. There were no young adult books about wizard schools or girls fighting for their freedom in some corny Fortnite rip-off; this was where the real books were. The books in this dark, dank room were about ancient beings and even more ancient powers. The books in this room dabbled with the occult and the supernatural. It almost felt wrong to be back here, considering the knowledge and power that could be obtained from reading these tomes. If Jack was going to find the answers he sought, though, it was going to be here.
Most people believed immortality was a myth, but Jack knew better. He simply had to find the key to unlocking it. He didn’t know exactly what he was looking for, but he knew it would be here. Where else would one find the key to immortality but a poorly lit room in a library surrounded by old books? With a determination only seen in a college kid cramming for an exam after a long night of drinking, Jack continued to pour through the book.
The book was one of the oldest he had found, and as he scoured the pages, he couldn’t recall exactly where it was he had found it. The more time he had spent in the back of the library, the more it seemed to grow. Deep within the shadows, he had found long-forgotten shelves containing books with inches of dust, untouched for countless ages. This particular book might have come from one of those ancient recesses, or maybe he had found it on the shelf next to the doorway that led to the back room; he couldn’t be sure. Something deep inside him, though, told him that this was the one. The words within this book were the missing piece that would unlock the power of eternal life he yearned for.
Jack's eyes darted back and forth as he quickly scanned the book’s pages in a fevered search for answers. Page after page turned until his frantic eyes spotted the phrase he was hunting for Vita Aeterna. The words were bold and adorned the top of the page. Below was a series of incantations. Jack knew what this meant. He had found what he had spent the last years of his life looking for. The key to immortality lay before him.
Jack has always been the nerdy kid and was treated as such. Jack the nerd, Jack the loser, Jack the creep, his classmates had a million and one insults prepared for him. They never hesitated to launch their verbal attacks toward him whenever the opportunity arose. After the living hell that was high school ended, Jack assumed that college would be better. It was a new town and new people, a fresh start, if you will. Jack couldn’t have been more wrong, and the insults and abuse followed him. It seemed like no matter what he did, Jack was destined to be an outcast, that was until he found the library.
The building stood at the very end of the campus, and he had stumbled across it one summer day while out for a walk. The building was old and in need of repair; it looked like it had come right out of a horror movie, but the sign on the front door said open, so Jack wondered inside. The library’s interior looked even older than the outside, but it was filled with all the trappings of a library, complete with the creepy senior librarian behind the counter. Everything contained within appeared to be normal except for the one corner. That corner held a door that led to the back room. It was in this room that Jack began his search.
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As Jack spent time looking through the books in the back, a constant theme kept appearing in the books he read: immortality. It couldn’t be true, though. Eternal life, beings of immeasurable power, that was the stuff of fiction. The more Jack read, the more he thought he might be wrong; this might be something he could actually achieve, and if it was true, imagine the possibilities. He could take revenge on all the people who had wronged him over the years, and it wouldn’t matter to him. Hell, he could kill them and spend a lifetime in prison or go down in a hail of gunfire, and none of it would make a difference. He would still be here, living. So it was that Jack dedicated himself to stopping man’s greatest fear, death. Now, here he was, staring at the words that he knew would change his life forever.
Jack began slowly reading the words from the book aloud. His reading began as a whisper and grew louder and louder every time he repeated the words on the page.
Di tibi veteres dent potestatem.
Da mihi vitam aeternam.
Da mihi potentiam tuam et spiritum tuum.
Mundo deus inter homines ambulo.
Over and over, louder and louder, Jack repeated the words. He wasn’t sure if this was doing anything other than making him look like an idiot in the back of a library, but it felt like the right thing to do. As his voice rose to a shout, the old woman stood from the desk and made her way toward the back of the library to tell him to keep it down. The book began to shake, and pain shot through Jacks's left arm, and yet he continued to chant.
The pain in his arm grew to an unbearable level. It felt as if someone was carving into his flesh with a hot knife. Grabbing his arm, Jack stopped chanting, recoiled back from the book, and screamed in pain. It had become too much, and he feared he had not completed the spell. Jack was too weak to finish the spell and would be doomed to live an everyday life. This was yet another failure in the never-ending list of failures that was his life. At least, that’s what he thought until he looked at his forearm.
He looked down at the spot on his arm where the pain was coming from only minutes before and gasped as he saw the brand that now occupied his body. The words Vita Sanguinis had been branded into his arm with what appeared to be a health bar from a video game next to it. Jack didn’t have time to process what he was seeing on his arm before a flash of light erupted in front of him. It took a second for his vision to return, and Jack was able to see the burning scroll floating in front of him.
Written on the scroll in way too fancy old English was Quest: Kill a Minor God. Do you accept? Below that were two options, Yes or No. Jack had no idea what any of this meant, but he could hear the librarian approaching and figured picking an option was better than having to explain to an old woman why there was a magic scroll floating in her library. Without hesitation, Jack reached out and pushed his finger against the scroll where the word yes was written. The scroll vanished as quickly as it had appeared, and he was left standing alone in the back room of the library.
A faint yellow glow appeared in the corner of Jack’s left eye. He had no idea what any of this meant. Maybe digging into ancient magic books in the back of a college library wasn’t such a great idea. Jack wasn’t sure of much, but he knew that scroll had said it was a quest, and he intended to complete it. He was one hundred percent sure that was the right book, and that whatever was happening now would lead him to his true goal of eternal life; first, however, he had a librarian to deal with.
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