Ever felt like you were dying? Like, really dying. Dying-dying.
Griffin Thorne was pretty sure it was supposed to feel like anything but how he currently felt.
A comforting warmth bloomed in his chest, dulling the excruciating pain that he could now intimately feel, as even the adrenaline left his body. Then, before had even realized it, every inch of his body was suffused with that brilliant golden energy.
Griffin didn’t know how he could tell it’s color— except that he just could. Or maybe he was imagining it.
BANG!
An overwhelming force pushed down on him from above, the moment of impact so devastatingly brutal that Griffin could swear that a giant palm was out to flatten him until nothing but paste remained.
But the pain never followed.
Instead, his entire body was violently jolted with an ear-piercing sound that should have blown out his eardrums instantaneously, only for him to face plant on what felt like hard stone.
He wanted to get up and inspect his surroundings, almost certain that he had arrived in hell or its equivalent for a life brilliantly, if not the most ethically, lived.
But the exhaustion weighing down on him was too heavy for him to fight against.
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The surface beneath him was bone-chillingly cold and unforgiving to the stupor he found himself in as he lay on a flat plane, or atleast, what felt like a flat plane.
Bouts of phantom pain lanced through his body at random intervals, much to his vexation. He was pretty sure that there had been good reason for everything to hurt, except it didn’t and that dissonance between his mind’s understanding and his body’s muscle memory caused the nerves in his body to go haywire.
Then, groggily as it may be, Griffin made the effort to direct every ounce of strength his body would allow him to will open his eyes.
It was dim. The primary light source that cast a deep-purple glow over his immediate surroundings wasn’t in his line of sight, but the resultant visibility was enough for Griffin to perceive the square slab of stone he was lying prone on.
The focus returned to his gaze, allowing him to perceive the jagged, intersecting lines running across the periphery of the stone slab, the variance in their depth and thickness bearing some resemblance to the branches of a tree. Dotting the surface immediately before him were a series of individual fractals that were spiraling inwards, albeit at a snail’s pace.
There was a stir as Griffin tried to rouse himself, before he abruptly found himself immobilized out of an instinctive reaction. For the haziness that had been weighing down upon his judgment, a melange of ear-piercing screams and echoes of violence inflicted upon his vulnerable body, allowed him a brief respite.
The viscous, vividly red liquid that carried with it a distinctly metallic tang was a bit too familiar for comfort.
Adrenaline answered his call for aid, empowering him with the strength needed to roughly heave himself off the table and cushion his fall with outstretched hands.
“Aaargh!” Griffin protested as he ungracefully landed upon jet-black stone tiling, his knees absorbing the remaining impact with a painful thud.
‘Where am I?’ The thought echoed in Griffin’s mind as he tried to make sense of his surroundings.
The stone tiling beneath his hands felt cold, its surface ragged and unwelcoming to his touch. The dim glow offered by the deep-purple light source allowed Griffin to take in the roughly even-sized stone tiling, which was a decidedly odd choice of flooring.
He willed his hands forward groggily, using them as a support in his attempt to get back up on his feet.
Without any warning, Griffin felt his pulse abruptly skyrocket. The breath was knocked away from his lungs, his pupils dilating as an overwhelming rush of fear assaulted his senses. He crumpled back onto his knees as he realized what was happening.
The memories.
They came back to him with an intensity that he was woefully unprepared for. The mistake. The escape. The Auto. The thrill he’d experienced as he gunned the three-wheeler’s motor. The exhilaration he felt as he allowed notes worth tens of thousands of dollars to spill out from his non-existent window. The greed, the whisper in his mind— the possibility of him getting away scot-free, yet again.
Griffin had always known that there was a possibility that his decisions could lead him to some very painful ends.
His lanky build wasn’t designed to escape pursuit by skilled intelligence operatives. He was used to high-pressure situations, but those had been behind the comfort of a screen, shielded with a series of VPN chains, burner devices and decoys.
There was a chance that he would be captured, in which case turning over his funds to the government would have been enough to get him a greatly reduced sentence, or killed. He had known that, he really had, but…
To be taken out by a tempo truck driver in the middle of an illegal U-turn…
It was so absurd that it was almost funny.
‘Deep breaths,’ Griffin coached himself, understanding that he was in the middle of a panic attack. ‘This will pass, like it always has,’ He comforted, repeating the words his therapist had told him when he found himself in the same rut.
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He still didn’t have enough air in his lungs to utter the words, so he simply allowed himself to slip into a meditative trance.
He had dealt with panic attacks before and in his case, thoughts of the government spying on him or sending their best to take him out weren’t illogical fears.
A year of the best therapy money could buy had helped him out for him to be over the issue, but memories of actually dying seemed like enough of a trigger to cause a relapse.
He would ride it out though.
As he always had.
Griffin didn’t know if it was a few minutes or an hour that had passed him by, but he felt his pulse normalizing, the air coming to him with a simple, calm breath.
“Am I in a black site?” he asked out loud, his tone uncertain. His injuries….
Griffin was pretty sure that there was something seriously wrong with the situation he was in.
He had felt shards of glass digging into his abdomen. A dislocated metal rod had punctured his right lung.
Those weren’t injuries you walked away from.
Griffin realized that he had been dreading what followed.
He closed his eyes and let his hands sweep across his body.
He was naked.
That explained why the stone had felt so cold to the touch. His hands glided from his chest to his face, then to his sides and below.
He opened his eyes, slowly inching his gaze downwards. Taking in the state of his body, he gasped.
“Does the CIA have anti-death technology lying around?” He asked again, but this time there wasn’t even a shred of dry humor in his tone.
Only horror.
Not a trace of the gruesome injuries that had been inflicted on his body remained. But the changes didn’t stop there.
He was… though the unfamiliar deep-purple light might have been playing tricks on his eyes, Griffin was pretty sure that he was younger. Fitter.
The body he saw belonged to a version of him that had clean hands, that hadn’t chosen the risky yet equally thrilling life he had.
It was at that moment.
A blue screen that should’ve been blaringly bright in the dim environment, yet was surprisingly comforting to his eyes, manifested before him.
[Apostle of Greed chosen….]
[Commencing Summoning Ritual…. Error: Ritual Target is gravely injured….Compensating…..]
[Compensation Extracted….]
[Summoning Ritual is Complete….]
If he had the excess strength to, it was likely that Griffin would have flinched back in horror and smashed his head against the stone slab he knew to be there.
Instead, he just blankly stared at the screen, taking its contents in without really understanding the subject matter.
“Apostle… of… Greed?” The unfamiliar title spilled out of his mouth, the confusion in his tone evident.
Then, the shock finally hit him.
“You’ve got to be— Shit!” Griffin exclaimed, his tone a melange of incredulousness and anger as he all but snarled the profanity. “Prototype brain-chips are going too far, man,” he angrily protested, only to be met by the same eerie stillness that had been permeating the chamber since the moment he’d regained consciousness.
There was, however, a change in the text displayed by the brain-chip— as if it had acknowledged Griffin’s address to it.
[Welcome to the Realm of Aeldfane, Griffin Thorne. The Ritual along with the remnant magic of [*****] has borne the cost of your entry into this world, thus you will not be marked as a priority target for extermination.
The Calling assigned to you, in accordance with the Ritual’s terms is: Apostle of Greed.
This Calling cannot be disavowed by any means.
Calling Quest: Welcome to Aeldfane has been completed.
Reward: Gift of tongue : Common Verickan]
“Zephis aleer van shaen?” The foreign words rolled off his tongue and for a few moments, Griffin hadn’t even realized the discrepancy between what he’d intended to say and what he actually had.
“The brain-chip has translation functions,” Griffin had to consciously will his mind to switch tracks from the freshly imprinted language, finding himself sighing in relief when he heard himself speaking the familiar language.
“Good fucking riddance, you’ve got to be….,” The anger in his tone sputtered out mid-way, because Griffin wasn’t sure who he was supposed to address his complaints to. “This isn’t the CIA,” he muttered under his breath, as his visage paled.
The technology was too far a stretch from Earth’s. Griffin Thorne wouldn’t be surprised if the government was hiding technology that was decades ahead of what was revealed to the general public. But something as intricate and complex as a brain chip was extremely difficult to keep under the wraps, for it would require widespread testing with the aid of volunteers; human volunteers, to be more specific.
And the language he had just spoken… it was no language he was familiar with. Common Verickan was no language of Earth.
“Possibility one,” Griffin spoke aloud, feigning a boisterousness that he wasn’t feeling. “I survived the accident and I’m now in a coma, medically induced or otherwise.”
The most likely possibility.
“Possibility two,” He declared once again. “This is real and my sins have finally landed me in hell. Not that I consider them sins, mind you.”
A smaller possibility. It didn’t feel like he’d landed in hell. His soul wasn’t on fire and his body had healed— even gone through a de-aging procedure.
“Possibility three,” The stress leaked into his tone as he willed the thoughts circling in his mind into speech, “The brain-chip is telling me the truth and I am really here. In a place called the ‘Realm of Aeldfane’.”
Once again, the brain-chip responded to the acknowledgement.
[Name: Griffin Thorne
Age: 18
Race: Human
Calling: Apostle of Greed.
Class: {None}
Class Skills: {None}
Gifts: Gift of tongue: Common Verickan
Level: 1 (0/100 EXP)
Rank: F
Statistics:
Physical: 1
Mental: 4
Proprioception: 1
Soul Essence: 10/10]
[A Calling Quest has been assigned to you. This quest cannot be refused.]
[Calling Quest:
Absorb 100 F-Ranked Souls within the next 540 hours. The Countdown shall begin immediately after this transmission.
Reward: Greed’s Sword.
Penalty for Failure: Death
*Fulfilling Calling Quests awards valuable bonuses and allows you to influence the class choices that will be offered to you. The denizens of the Realm of Aeldfane have their calling assigned at birth.
*Only one class may be chosen per rank. ]