You find yourself standing in front of a small wooden cabin. The warm orange light from inside the Cabin beckons you to warm yourself after your long journey.
Clearly though, someone resides in this cabin, and it would be improper to barge in uninvited.
So, you knock on the door, and soon after hear a cheery voice shout “Be with you in a minute!” followed by the sound of paper rustling, glass breaking, cursing and approaching footsteps.
You question if this is really the best place for you to rest.
Then the door opens. too late to back out now.
In the doorway stands an odd man in a slightly tattered robe wearing an odd mask.
“Welcome, come inside, you must be frozen stiff out there.” he says as he steps to the side and beckons me in.
Too late to back out now.
You come in, and in minutes you somehow find yourself sitting in a cozy armchair in front of the fireplace with a blanket over your lap
“It’s been a while since I last had company. Tell me, would you mind if I shared with you my collection while you warm yourself up? Think of it as a favor to me in return for letting you spend the night.”
Nodding your head, you agree.
“Great, I‘ll start immediately.”
He then reaches over to a small shelf by the armchair he sits in where a few books are piled up.
His fingers skin over a few of them before stopping on one and picking it up, mumbling to himself. “I suppose this is as good as any to start with.”
He then explains.
“This is my collection of Fragmented dreams. All are incomplete, yet I have found them interesting enough to keep. I do hope you enjoy.”
Clearing his throat, he opens the book and begins speaking.
—
This dream takes place in a world with quite the irregular set of rules.
Every 1 in every 100 people is born with a channel.
This channel gathers energy from the surrounding and pours it into the body of the person.
When the energy has gathered energy to a certain point, it will trigger the awakening of that person’s ability.
This may be something like physical enhancement, or magic manipulation, but they all have some use.
After the ability is awakened, the gathered energy will then serve as the resource for using that ability.
Usually, people with a channel will not team up due to the reduced efficiency of energy gathering, as there can only be so much energy in a certain space at a time.
This is the case unless there is someone with a source.
1 in every 1000 people are born with a source.
These people constantly produce energy in their bodies at a constant rate, which then leaves their body and replenishes the energy in the surroundings. They are rare and hard to find, as their source only becomes active after the person has gone through an intensely stressful situation, but if someone has an appraisal related ability, they can identify a person with a source ahead of time and notify them so they can be put through a stressful situation.
Now, people with a source are highly sought after, due to the increased energy gathering speed of people with a channel nearby.
Usually, a team is formed of one source and four channels, to maximise the efficiency of the energy gathering.
This still leaves 6 out of 10 channelers without a source.
The channelers had to treat their sources very well to keep them in the team, because they were so rare.
But one day, a channeler with the ability to create slave collars appeared.
So, channelers started to turn sources into slaves and there was no more need to treat them to expensive things or treat them nicely.
There is a third thing people can have, that is known as a ‘soul forge’
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one In a million people are born with a ‘soul forge’. The soul forger would have to gradually use the energy in their bodies produced by eating, but no one has succeeded in utilising this method.
Legend tells though, of someone born with both a soul forge and a channel. They said that the person was able to use energy to create abilities and pass them on to others.
This story is about a boy who was born with a soul forge and a source, Mak
—
I and all of the other kids lined up inside a big building.
We had all been taken to the city to be identified.
We all couldn’t wait to be appraised because there was a chance of us being identified as a channeler.
Everyone wanted to be a channeler, because they could use cool powers and fight monsters!
On top of that, they were all treated really well and were rich!
Suddenly, one of the boys ahead of me was appraised as a channeler!
Lucky him!
He was then escorted off to the side.
Eventually it was my turn.
The old man appraiser put his arm on my arm, and I was so excited!
After a light shined from his hand, he made a signal to one of the armored men to his side.
The armored man then pulled me aside.
Ooh! Did this mean I’m a channeler?
But it’s weird that he didn’t say it out loud.
—
It was then that the armored man pulled out a slave collar and put it around the boy’s neck.
The slave collars were disigned to suppress a person’s higher thought processes, leaving them as a walking, eating vegetable. It also dulled most emotions.
So, Mak went on to spend several years as a source slave.
Being traded between a few channeler parties, traveling the lands, all while being abused left and right by everyone that met him.
One day though, a stray arrow nicked the slave collar, ever so slightly scratching part of the inscription on it. The channelers present weren’t even able to see the damage due to how small it was, and discarded the notion that any problems would arise.
But this small, tiny scratch was enough to weaken the slave collar’s hold on his emotions, allowing some to slip through.
This was an incredibly small amount though, and if it were any other source there wouldn’t have been a problem even if the scratch had been twice the size.
But in Mac’s case, the small, ever so slight amounts of stress, sadness, rage, hate and the desire for freedom began to build up.
Eventually, one night, those emotions coalesced and fused with a great amount of energy and formed an ability.
That ability, was
It was an ability that had a few different uses.
Its most common use among the people who had it was to overload their bodies to temporarily gain more strength at the cost of damaging their body slightly.
How Mac instinctively used it though, was to overload the collar around his neck.
Now, every time he used overload on the collar, the effect constraining his emotions strengthened and he would stop using the ability, but every time, the collar became ever so slightly weaker and weaker, to the point that he was able to think again.
This though, only served to increase his torment, as he could now process the pain and think about the betrayal he had suffered at the hands of the old man who had identified him.
It also allowed him to come up with a plan.
He would wait to finally break his enslavement when it was night time, then he would get revenge on every single person that had abused him in the past 10 years of his life.
—
The night had come, the slave collar was barely functional and even when overloaded, it would only impede the speed of his thoughts, so he overloaded it one last time, and then it stopped functioning.
Granted, it was still around his neck but he’d get it off later.
He then left the camp.
He had observed the party he was with for the last few weeks while his slave collar was being eroded, and had found that they were incredibly strong.
He knew he had no chance of defeating them as he was, and decided that leaving the camp in the middle of the night was the best course of action.
So, he left.
—
As he was running through the forest, he began to grow thirsty, hungry and thirsty. Of course as a slave, he had only been given the bare minimum to survive.
As the need for food, water, and rest started to impede his ability to run, he realised that he had not run far enough, so he used overload on his body to continue moving.
This only seemed to exacerbate the problem and he felt the needs grew and grew, to the point of being unbearable, but then at some point they began to decrease.
In that moment, the growing feelings of hunger, thirst and exhaustion gathered, coalesced and combined with a portion of the energy produced from him and formed an ability. This ability was called
Of course, the user still needed to eat to gain the necessary proteins and vitamins, they still needed to drink in order to obtain the necessary minerals and they still needed to sleep eventually, but the ability would lengthen the time the user could go without eating, drinking or sleeping.
So, Mac continued running and running, before he tripped and fell down a hill, knocking himself out in the process.
—
Mac woke up prone on the ground.
As he tried to move, his leg flared with pain.
He looked down and saw that it was broken.
He had seen one of the people he was with have a broken leg before, and knew what to do.
He bundled up a little bit of his shirt and bit down on it.
He then grasped the two areas around the break and quickly righted them.
He spent a short time suffering from the pain he had caused himself, then looked at his leg.
To his surprise, the leg, although slowly, began to visibly mend itself.
In the moment when he endured intense physical pain, his mind emitted an intense desire for the cause of the pain to stop, and that desire, along with the pain, coalesced and combined with a portion of the energy being emitted from his body.
It then formed an ability known as
After he saw that his leg was sufficiently healed, he observed his surroundings, and found a pond with some berry bushes.
He then drank a bunch of water and ate some berries.
He continued walking after that but began to feel sick.
His gut felt like it was swirling in circles and his mind began to do the same, but then the feeling began to recede. (poison berries and unclean water smh)
This time, he had gained the ability
Iron gut just makes the user’s guts better at dealing with stuff that’s eaten. Someone with this ability can eat raw meat and only get slight stomach pains.
He continued walking, thinking all the while and he came to the conclusion that he needed to get stronger. He had overheard at some point that most strength increasing abilities only acted as multipliers, with the exception of the ability
He also noticed how every time he needed something, he would somehow get an ability that mitigated the need or outright fixed the problem.
So, he got an Idea and quickly set to it.
He thought of the need to become stronger, to condition his body to be better. He focused on this need more and more until it combined with a portion of his energy. It turned into the ability
He then began to feel a small tingle in every part of his body, followed by a small, dull ache that went away quickly. Then the tingle came again and the process kept repeating.
The ability
---
"Ah, it seems that this is where the dream cuts off. What a pity, just as it was getting interesting."
"in case you were wondering about the fate of the boy, from what I could tell, the boy went on to become immensely powerful, make some friends who he also made immensely powerful, start a revolution, abolish slave collars and then settle down with one of said friends. Truly an uplifting ending, to be sure. Well, on to the next one shall we?"
you nod your head a little as he pulls out another book from the shelf.