“Many called him a monster, others wanted to impose on him the burden of saving us, there are those who alluded to his eyes as evidence of his royal blood to demand the responsibility of being the hero we needed. The truth was that he was my son born without a crown and unaware of palace life, he was a child like any other who had to face a changing world and hostile towards him” – Memoirs of Lady Eleanor
Chapter 1: Duality
Pov :?
The magical sphere of white color above my head illuminated my path, through the spiral stairs that seemed to descend into the abyss, if it were not for this only light I would be wrapped in the absolute darkness that reigned in this place, and if the humidity Wasn't it trouble enough, the screams and cries and pleas echoing through the rooms carved into the stair wall would have driven me insane before I could resurface.
Now that he thought about it, how long had he been descending? I had lost count at some point between half an hour and a full hour, making quick calculations I figured it should be between 6 thousand and 9 thousand meters below the castle floor. Actually, I was aware that I wasn't paying attention to my surroundings and I couldn't have an accurate data, but I didn't care.
All she wanted was to try not to think about the screaming and crying and begging, but mostly about the place she was descending to and the man she had come to see, Grand Maester Dalmart . Of course, the title of Grand Master had been rescinded by the Cathedral of Knowledge.
"You're going to see him right" The hissing voice made me jump in fright, hitting the outside wall of the staircase.
" Tell him that I believe him " Again the hissing and ethereal voice gave me a scare, but this time I was prepared forcing my control over the sphere of light illuminate the interior wall of the staircase just to see a black iron door with purple veins that were beginning to light up, at the top of the door two eyes with golden iris like newly forged gold and with a pupil as black as the darkest night looked at me as if I were their last hope.
Taking note of the cell number to report on the way out, I ignored the man who was starting to babble once more and quickened my pace, the further down the stairs I got and the closer to the bottom of the stairs the more black iron doors were illuminated with his purple runes.
However, when I reached the bottom of the stairs, what awaited me was a door made of dragon steel, with runes as big as an outstretched hand all drawn on the door, but none of them were lit. He would have to report that too, when he got out.
With extreme care I inserted the key to the door, igniting the charms to hold the man I had come to see. The dragon steel door opened slowly revealing the interior of the cell.
A man in a white robe sitting in the center of the room with his legs crossed with his face turned upwards and his eyes a pure white greeted me. He could see how small clouds of mana escaped from his control, turning into thick white smoke spreading a terrifying cold.
“Have you come to look or do you want to tell me something?” the man's voice had such a sonority that for an instant I felt tempted to say everything I knew and my darkest secrets , his voice was soft, light, with a tone of depth and wisdom, but with the weight of those who belong to the strongest.
" Well... " he inquired.
"Mr. Dalmart , I have been expressly sent by His Most Holy Majesty "The Lord of Light" King Delkar to speak with you."
"You have been sent as a sacrifice to appease me and prevent me from leaving here, and perhaps I am in the mood to leave you alive to let you know her whereabouts."
The fear at those words got into my bones and fell into the depths of my soul, the man in front of me exuded such power that even when he was under the influence of multiple medications to destroy his power and hundreds of runes that sought to contain him even was capable of provoking such a reaction. Instinctively I wanted to run away, but strengthening my will I took the medallion that signified his holiness and looked at the man once more.
His eyes had returned to normal and without moving anything other than his face remained immobile, now he could see those eyes with double iris, the eyes of royalty.
"His Holiness told me to tell you that your time is up that because of your stubbornness in revealing the whereabouts of your daughter and her stupid lover and would-be knight all your relatives will be labeled as traitors to the kingdom."
A chilling smile marked the face of the man in front of me, his gaze changing to that of a predator looking at his prey, "My grandson has been born" before the words came to my mind to comprehend them, I could see a headless body slowly rising in front of me. to me, the medallion that hung on my neck was now on that body flying through the air and behind the body the dragon steel doors were closed illuminated in blood red.
----------------------------------------
A long time ago when I got my doctorate in natural sciences and I was unaware of the darkest part of my family I thought I had known the lowest that humanity could become, it had been my first deployment after being hired as a scientific advisor and the scene I found upon arriving in that town it was the decomposing bodies caused by the same weapons that I had helped to create.
I had convinced myself at the time that my actions were justified since they were terrorists or allowed terrorists to live with them. That was until I found out about my mother's father's actions and felt like the world was closing in on me.
How innocent I was, maybe I could tell my younger self... maybe older that I could be calm that I still didn't know the abyss of despair.
What idea could my version of myself have had in my original world of what it was like to die and what that might entail?
My thoughts once again turned to the path of self-loathing and commiseration, without Jasmine to help me wake up before falling down the bottomless pit, it really was getting harder and harder for me to connect with my current surroundings.
After all, it wasn't that my surroundings helped me much by allowing me any distraction from reality or from my own mind, the only thing I could see was the wooden plank ceiling above me, and a glimpse of a somewhat cracked stone wall.
This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Unable to move my body at will or correctly, and even unable to move my head in any movement that wasn't an absurd imitation of assent. I spent the last week like this, and every second something was more evident, I was going crazy.
The worst thing was not seeing myself even more reduced in my movements than before, or even the inability to communicate, even the jumble of emotions and mood swings might still have been bearable. What I couldn't stand was that when I heard the language of the people around me what my ears heard was a variation of the nonsensical language my mother's family used whenever they could and in private.
In other words, during this week he had learned some things, first he had died and that was a fact, second he was in a world other than earth, where magic existed, third most likely this new world was where the contract came from and the manuscripts that had caused so much pain in the world and in my family.
My first day in this world had been to say the least an event to forget. After seeing the tree with the flames, which he now assumed should have been souls, and going through the feeling of being burned alive to the soul, Literally.
I had lost all my senses and the next thing I knew I was in a damp place and I was drowning, after being dazzled by the light from outside I was forcefully pulled out by some giant hands vomiting in the process all kinds of liquids, drinking The biggest breath I remember ever taking.
I opened my eyes and my surroundings had left me so absorbed in the impossible and absurd that I swore that everything that was happening was a dream, unfortunately the giant woman who was holding me had decided that my silence and introspection deserved punishment because the next thing I What I knew was that my buttocks were on fire after a spanking that I'm pretty sure was harder than necessary.
After a scream from the pain, I heard a beep that at that moment I didn't really understand since I spent the next few minutes in the purest terror of realizing that whatever was happening to me was not a dream, mainly because the pain in my ass it was real enough to deny reality, I vaguely remember being placed in hot water, having my umbilical cord cut and being cleaned with a rather rough cloth.
When I began to regain self-awareness I began to listen to what people were saying around me and I panicked, the language these people were using was not English, Chinese or Spanish... in short, it was not any language on planet earth, it was a twisted and distorted version of the language my mother's family used.
At this point, although I was refusing to believe what was happening, I had already understood that that last night with Jazmín had been the day of my death, and I was still not processing that fact when one last thing broke my hopes of maybe and only maybe having dead and reborn on earth.
The woman who had helped in my birth gave me to who I supposed would be my new mother, something that shocked me inside, but that my body instinctively longed for and desired, when my new mother took me in her arms several things happened at the same time First, it was the feeling of security and love when being in the arms of this woman, second, the woman who helped in my birth extended her right hand towards me, and after saying a few words, a white light illuminated my face.
The fact of seeing the magic performed on my own face was a clear sign that I was not on earth and the instinctive feelings of happiness at birth, of the physical fatigue that being born meant, of the mental fatigue that the body of a baby should be enduring newborn with the mind of a 30 year old man trying to figure out what was going on. It all came together to give me a wonderful stress sleep.
When I opened my eyes I was in the arms of my new mother, if I'm honest she wasn't a super model, but she was really quite beautiful, her hair was fiery red, and her eyes were yellowish green, the outer part of her iris She had a golden hue, and her skin was a light tan color, I couldn't tell her height, but her chest without being too big was something that any woman on earth would be proud of.
Being in the chest of my new mother I felt calm, safe and happy, so I was able to observe my surroundings outside of the feeling of panic that I had at birth.
I was in a room about 5 meters wide by 6 meters long, the ceiling was made of wooden boards, it didn't seem elegant, if anything pretty, but more intended to be functional, the walls were carved stone in the shape of a bricks, there were multiple wooden pieces of furniture in the room, the bed was quite big and on the edge next to us a black-haired man with streaks of red peeking through his hair, who I assumed at the time was my new father was asleep with one of my new mother's hands on her face.
Now being at peace and safety I began to think about what had happened and what it meant to me . The first thing was that I should have died, but since it happened in my sleep it didn't really produce any sensations or emotions, instead, being burned alive to the soul, had literally left me with a lingering fear, being born out of nowhere somewhere else. It was something that he still had to process, but if he wanted to get something good out of all this, it was that in this new body he would no longer suffer from a terminal illness.
Actually, my initial warning, leaving out the panic of living your own birth, came from the fact that in some part of me I knew that the crazy things that my great-grandfather had done and the atrocities that my grandfather did, although unjustifiable and no matter how bad and wrong they were, they were, in the end they were right that this place existed.
The following days of my first week turned into a bad swallow for my mind tired by everything that was happening, between having to accept a new life that although grateful for it, I couldn't help but leave a bad taste in my mouth, added to a new experience to the growing list of traumatic things that I was sure my subconscious would soon work overtime to erase or block from my memory, the experience of shitting yourself and being forced to cry until someone comes to clean you up.
At least of those times I found out a couple of things, I found this out on the afternoon of my first day, I had a sister, to be exact, I had a twin sister, unlike me she cried all the time so it was pretty obvious that There was another baby in the house, but it wasn't until my mother fed us, something I won't even describe in my own mind, that I understood that we were brothers.
Our father had been jumping back and forth between my mother, and my sister, no, it's not that I was jealous or felt displaced by the ball of snot. I simply highlight the fact that they needed much more attention than I did.
Feelings aside… My father was quite a tall man, using everyday objects as a reference he would be something like 197 cm tall, and his body exhibited a significant amount of muscle, perhaps the closest would be what you would expect to see in a professional boxer or an MMA practitioner.
His eyes were blue and his irises were extended with small golden streaks much more widely spread than mother's, his square chin crowned with a well-groomed beard and his fair skin but tanned by constant exposure to the sun, made my father a good match. .
If we ignored how absurdly clumsy he was trying to take care of two babies at the same time.
When I began to reflect on my situation and those around me, it gave me time to remember the beep after I cried out in pain at birth, a week had passed, in which I had been thinking about it, after all I couldn't move so i was confined to my own mind, getting back to it, the beep had sounded like a congratulations in that strange language that seemed like a twisted variation of the one i knew.
Putting my attention on that, I remembered being able to make out something about the state…
%# ? &”$&()”#$|° ? ? ???
$@|&¬°% ?? ? ?? %”#!'&/<^> ?? ? ?? =#+@ ?? ? ??
$%&@*! ?
`~#$*@%^ ?
@|/&”$~>@!?* ?
^#+`~ ?
@|&%”#!' ?
The moment I thought about it, a floating text like an excel table appeared in front of me, "what the hell" being reborn in a fantasy world wasn't the last thing, was I also born with a system? would he have to fight to the death with a demon lord or something? was he in a video game?
After an awkward time calling the system, invoking the golden finger, and some other ideas that were now in retrospect stupid, I went back to how the letters had appeared, clearly it was the foreign language, the words weren't quite right, almost like when you hear the multiple accents in the same country of the national language.
"..."
Really all this time what I've been thinking of as a twisted version of the language I knew was actually a small-town accent or something? Or was the accent that I knew something similar to what the British accent is for English?
Putting aside the wandering thoughts of a neophyte in linguistics, I spent my seventh day since my birth trying once more to summon the state. Thinking of the status once again it appeared with that unreadable form, at first I couldn't really fully understand it, but understanding that it should be some form of weird accent little by little I was able to read it.
LV : 1 Experience : 0/100
Health : 51/51 Stamina : 23/23 Mana : 255/255
[Attributes]
Strength : 1
Dexterity : 1
Constitution : 5
Mind : 25
Senses : 5
Attribute Points : 5
[Skills]
It was my status sheet, I really wasn't sure if my attributes were a lot or a little, if it was normal for a baby to have 25 minds or 5 senses, but I hoped that soon I could learn more about it, I tried to stretch my hand over the letters, and moving it passed through the letters as if they were a hologram.
Unfortunately for me, all of a sudden all my aura of a frustrated and depressed thirtysomething who discovers a new toy Literally went to shit.
I started crying to announce my misfortune and my twin sister decided it was fun to join in the show so soon the house was invaded by the crying of two newborn babies. And so began my first week in this new world.