Prologue: The Graveyard.

I ran.

The soft sand was finer than dust, it contrasted starkly against the cutting rocks and bones jutting out of the surrounding wasteland. I shouldn’t have sold my bloody boots...

The darkness was lifting I saw that dawn was coming, and unless I could find shelter, death as well.

I ran.

My old aching legs were almost finished, my knee was badly put back together so many years ago. It had never come good, no matter how much healing I used on it to ease the pain. Stupid lindwyrm.

I ran.

I was in pain. I regretted selling all my clothes, I shouldn’t have sold all my levels, I shouldn’t have given everything I had.

I could have made it across the bone wastes. Maybe I could have afforded to buy another legendary trait or powerful soul-bound piece of equipment, I would need all the advantages i could get in the climb to come.

I limped.

The horizon behind me shimmered with pale light, the imminent dawn. I collapsed in a heap behind the nearest thing I could see, a large skull of some poor creature as big around as my shoulders. I started covering myself in the pale white dust to try protect my fragile skin, the sun had been getting hotter and hotter as I traveled through the Eligere's latest test put in my path, the hostile dimension was designed to sort out the wheat from the chaff.

I breathed.

It had been years since I was anything but a survivor ever moving, ever hunted, I was a man once i think. A long time ago I might have lived a peaceful life…I ached for peace now.

There was no warning, the world was unaware that it had already ended, ignorant…foolish...

I was sat at home someone... a brother...passed me a cup of tea, when there was a blinding flash of light. It consumed my vision, then I was in the open under a beautiful blue sky with a friendly yellow sun overhead...I was holding a plain hardcover book, it flipped open pages fluttering by itself.

And i read the words that changed the trajectory of humanity and began my new life, flashed on front of my eyes.

Prove your self in the Eligere.

The top one million humans will be made Delegati

Delegati will be eligible to enter

Potestas.

Any Cassa you earn will aid your start at the bottom

struggle to the top to determine what happens to the unchosen.

Struggle.

Eligere; to qualify, Delegati; the chosen, Potestas; power over life and death, to be in someone’s power. Cassa; currency.

At the time my Latin was crap, to be honest it still is. But I understood instinctively, it was a test. Climb the tower to save the princess. only in this story the princess was the majority of humanity, a whole species.

Only the top 0.1% of the world would have the chance to act, the rest would be locked away unneeded as the choice to fight or die was made for them.

Anger didn't cut it, I was beyond mere anger.

I couldn’t move.

I couldn’t scream, all I could do was stare at those few short words and burn with rage, like white hot metal bubbling in my guts my ears ringing.

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Furious.

Gods? Aliens? Horrors from the next dimension?

It never said and I never found out, over the years i realised it doesn’t matter, I just had to make the choice. Fight or die...

Would I be a Delegati? a person with agency, to fight for my family, my friends, the old lady down the road? or would I be locked away to wait? Not much of a choice.

So I fought, at first I bumbled along without information. I wasn’t even sure what I should even do to ‘Prove myself in the Eligere’ but soon I was working with the system, soon I wasn’t just surviving, I started to grow...

The sun was almost over the horizon, the bleak desert I had found myself in coming into stark relief. It wasn’t sand but ground down bone dust, as fine are flour. The rocks were beaten twisted things, sharpened into razors by the harsh wind. The skeletons of a trillion trillion beasts, monsters and men were ever sinking into the bleached white dust.

It was a terrible place, an empty place. It was a graveyard.

My graveyard.

I read.

Everyone in the Eligere gets a Codex, your Codex bound to you, a book that tells you about yourself. A character’s status from a video game, the tale of your life.

You struggle and you earn Cassa; read experience points, you spend your Cassa on improvements, levels, skills, a class, magic spells, its even got an auction page to buy weapons and other such trinkets. Almost like a retro style video game.

My Codex starts as a mark over my heart that looks like a carved piece of old driftwood, in the shape of a bird. Looking closer you can tell it's an albatross tangled in rope, does that make me the Mariner*?

Bah I hadn’t seen an ocean in decades, let alone an overgrown seagull.

When I call for it turns into a book that I can leaf through, over the years the appearance of the book has changed more and more from the plain form it began as, now its all leather, bone and driftwood its almost tribal looking now.

I laughed.

I bought a skill that changed everything fairly early on. It wasn’t even particularly useful at the start either, a cheap solution to an immediate problem. Just couldn’t see those damn Wisps.

Spiritualism

Tier 0

Level 129

Concentrate to feel nearby spiritual presences.

10: boosts proficiency

20: animal spirits are now clearer to your sense

30: inanimate objects that have developed spirituality are clearer to your sense

40: plants that have developed spirituality are clearer to your senses

50: sub skill allows user to see into the Ethereal Sea for a brief period.

60: boosts proficiency

70: Spirit Tongue: You are fluent in a language that spirits can hear and understand that echoes in the Ethereal Sea

80: you can see spiritual currents in the ethereal plane more clearly

90: Benevolent spirits are drawn to the wake that your physical body creates in the Ethereal Sea

100: skill is now passive

110: you can calm your own spiritual wake to a degree

120: the wakes and eddies of still living creatures are now barely clear to your senses

You see even in the Eligere the Ethereal Sea exists,the current under the physical world. It was the liminal space where spirits and ghosts cross to in death.

And when a Delegati dies on their climb, if they make a splash big enough, they can leave an imprint of their spirit lingering in the Ethereal Sea. With Spiritualism I could feel them swimming beneath the surface, after a while I could see them or at least the wake they left behind as they swam by, and after an age, I could speak with them and they could choose to guide me. they were how i learned how to succeed in Potestas.

The sun peeked over the horizon, it was no longer yellow and friendly like in the beginning. It was merciless and white, I had spent too long in this place, unable to overcome the hellish bone wastes. The Eligere wanted me gone.

I stood.

I was as prepared as i could be, all I would bring were the meager tier 0 spells I chose, my necklace, and my traits. All my Cassa went into the traits I had added to my Codex, my hope that I could survive at level one again...Weakened, yes..But not unskilled. My goal not incredible strength or supernatural speed from the start but the unbridled power of growth, the climb will be a marathon after all, not a sprint.

I felt all my years as I creaked to my blistered feet, naked as the day I was born. The only covering I had were my unruly dreadlocks and matted beard gone grey with age, and my necklace i had work it for most of my time here. Sadly clothes weren’t in the budget.

I had built myself up in this place for decades, a century? I couldn’t even remember.

I was alone with the crazed ghosts of the past for so long. I worried I wouldn't know how to talk to a human any more, but it was the only path to the top, no one person was ever going to be strong enough. The tower takes cooperation. The Eligere forces solitude, it was a trap.

The spirits circling me agreed. wailing at the bitter unfairness of it all...loud bastards.

I felt blood run through my mustache and pour onto my chest, staining the hemp of my necklace pink. The delicate capillaries in my twisted and broken nose bursting in the overwhelming heat. My skin blistered and cracked and I spread my arms, once thick with powerful ropes of unyielding muscle now frail with age.

I was weakened by my final gambit, I had given all my levels and stats, cashing them in for the Cassa i needed. it was my only way, the slim hope of success.

My eyes went dark as I watched the dawn, a flash of white then black, tears of blood rolling down my craggy scarred face. even now it was a beautiful sight. I smiled, thank the spirits in the deep...it was over... time to begin.

I welcomed the pitiless sun.

I burned.