The only remarkable thing about the stone cave was the glowing moss, not something native to most caves. It covered an entire wall, the moss creeping up from the floor to meet the drip of water near the ceiling of the cave. The rest of the room was empty, or it was until it wasn’t, the center of the cave suddenly occupied by a young man, naked as the day he was born. One moment there was nothing, and the next a man was lying down flat on his back, eyes closed, hands by his sides, appearing as if asleep.
Opening his eyes, the man sat up, feeling the caress of cold air flowing across his skin. He glanced around, seemingly confused as to his surroundings. He didn’t remember going to sleep on a stone floor, and he usually slept with some form of clothing on. But neither his location nor his state of undress caused him alarm. He knew there was a reason for it. He hadn’t quite worked out what that was yet, but he knew he was where he should be, wherever that was.
Sitting up, he ran his hands along the cool stone floor. At first he thought he was in cave, but he didn’t remember natural caves being this smooth, the stone below him reminiscent of an ancient streambed, washed smooth by generation of water. That combined with the glowing moss meant someone had likely put him here. He wasn’t sure who, but he was here for a reason, a purpose. What that was he wasn’t quite sure yet, but he thought he could figure it out if he waited for a while. In the meantime he just sat on the floor with a vacant look on his face and stared at the moss covered wall in front of him.
A short while passed like that, the man sitting on the cave floor with a glazed look in his eyes, drool threatening to spill from his slightly open mouth. Then his eyes lit up, full conscious thought returning to him. Tormacc, that was his name. It meant he who conquers, although he wasn’t sure why that was important, but it was. Standing up, Tormacc glanced around the room he was in with wariness. He still wasn’t sure where he was, but he had a feeling it wasn’t safe. He was missing most of his memories, but now he knew he should be. They weren’t missing, exactly, but someone had taken them and locked them up somewhere inside his mind. And he had consented to it. It came with doing what he was doing, and he was definitely supposed to be doing something.
After confirming that there wasn’t anything dangerous in his immediate vicinity, he concentrated inwards, taking a mental inventory of his physical condition. Tormacc was a fit young man, with muscle definition clearly visible under his light brown skin. He had mahogany colored eyes, dark hair, which was currently cut short, as well as a few days stubble. He had no trouble moving his body, and everything was as he felt it should be, except for one thing. There was a strange feeling in his head that he didn’t remember being there, almost as if he had another limb he had never used before.
Narrowing his eyes, Tormacc tried to move this new phantom limb, trying to trace the feeling to its source. It felt like trying to wiggle your ears. He was sure he could do it, but every time he tried something else moved instead. But this phantom feeling was clearly important, and he wasn’t someone to give up when things got hard. He had a hunch this sensation in his head related to what he was supposed to be doing.
It happened suddenly, one moment he was scrunching his nose and waggling his eyebrows and the next he felt something new in his head. It felt like part of his body, but he knew it wasn’t there yesterday. He would have remembered if he could feel a wheel inside his head. He wasn’t sure what to call it, but a wheel was a close comparison.
The wheel was definitely inside his head, but he thought it wasn’t a physical thing. More of a mental image that was strangely solid. Visualizing the wheel in an imaginary mind space, he examined it more closely, finding some writing on it. The wheel, basically a solid disc, was made of all one material but had some inscriptions in the center section. In the very center was a circle with the number ten in it. Surrounding that circle was another circle with four sections, one on the top, bottom, right, and left, which was where the writing was. Three of those sections were further subdivided into two more sections. The two parts of the top section had the words Utilization and Description, the right side had Inner Strength and Impact, the left section had Meditation and Force Ball, and the bottom section was fully taken up by Starter Kit.
Tormacc felt he should know what all of it meant, or at least he had the knowledge somewhere. The strange disc was definitely related to his situation, and the more he examined it the more he felt it was central to his current circumstances. As he got used to the feeling of examining the disc he noticed he could click on the different words. He was about to try selecting one of the sections to see what would happen but stopped. There was more to this. He knew something would happen if he selected a section, although not what, but he had a feeling is wasn’t a choice he could undo.
Turning his focus back to the outside world, Tormacc paced around his small cave, his bare feet sliding across the smooth stone floor as he pondered his current situation. What did he know? He had woken up naked in a likely man-made cave, but he was supposed to be here. He had something he was supposed to be doing, but he didn’t know what. Yesterday he didn’t have anything in his head, but he now had a strange disc. The disc was the key. He had first noticed it from the unique energy it gave off, and even now he could feel it pulsing in his head.
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He had the option of leaving the cave and ignoring the disc, but he felt like that was the wrong thing to do. He needed information, and the disc had answers, he could feel it. Turning back inwards, he once more contemplated the words on the disc, debating which section to select. The disc seemed to be part of him, and after feeling it for a while, he came to the conclusion that there was some sort of energy contained within, and that energy could be channeled into any of the four sections of the disc, or maybe more accurately the seven sections, as he could only select one of the subdivided sections. From what he could tell, he only had one choice at the moment. He could only light up one of the sections.
He needed information more than anything else since he was missing most of his memories, and with that in mind, selecting either Utilization, Description, or Starter Kit seemed to be his best options. The first two seemed like they were viable options at first glance, but as he mulled over it more he realized that Starter Kit was the obvious choice, and it wasn’t the words that decided it for him. The sections were all subdivided into two except for the bottom, and if the disc worked how he thought it did, selecting a section would light it up and something would happen. By selecting the bottom section with Starter Kit he would be lighting up the largest section, which seemed meaningful to him, although he had nothing to back up that gut feeling.
Satisfied with his reasoning, such as it was, he spent some more time trying to see if he could notice anything else, but finding nothing that would affect his decision, he used his new phantom limb to click on the bottom section of the disc.
The change was immediate, and Tormacc could feel as the ten in the center of the disc ticked down to zero while the bottom section marked with Starter Kit lit up. As soon as the entire area finished glowing he felt his head fill with information and, with a popping noise, a box sprung into existence in front of him, settling onto the stone floor with a dull thunk.
It only took a scant few seconds for him to digest the information, as he had already known it before. It was more like his memory was unlocking than him learning new information. With the flood of memories he got back he now knew his purpose and where he was. The place he was in had many names, but it was most commonly called The Tower. And his job was to climb it, accruing achievements for his people back home, although he still couldn’t remember who his people were. This was his sacred duty, and what he had been training for his whole life.
The disc in his head was called a Fate Wheel, and by absorbing Essence he could light up different sections, obtaining special powers, knowledge, and abilities. The number in the middle of the Fate Wheel was Essence, which was currently sitting at zero after he unlocked his first section. He could get more Essence by absorbing it from his surroundings, a very slow process, from special resources, or by killing living things.
The base Starter Kit came with two things, basic knowledge, and the box in front of him. Opening it up, Tormacc found some leather clothing, boots, a small dagger, more of a cooking knife than a true weapon, some flint and steel, a small pack, some dried food, and a water flask. Trying the clothes on, he was pleasantly surprised to find out they fit him perfectly. Apparently it wasn’t a one size fits all deal, which he was grateful for. He had a feeling he was taller than most people, although he couldn’t be sure without his memories.
After addressing the contents of the box he then moved on to the last and most important thing the Starter Kit gave him: a short message. Every other person who unlocked the Starter Kit would also have access to the information and the care package, but the third thing it offered was unique to each person. It wasn’t random, and he had actually been the one to decide what else he got before he entered The Tower. He wasn’t sure exactly how it all worked, or what else he could have received, but if the message was right, the knowledge he told himself was by far more valuable than anything else he could have gotten.
Acting on the message from his past self, Tormacc sat down on the floor with his legs crossed. After taking some deep breaths to steady himself, he raised his left hand to his mouth and bit the second section of his pinky finger, drawing blood. He then stuck out his tongue as far as it would go and with a slow deliberate stroke smeared a line of blood on his tongue from the back to the tip. Then he waited.
It took a couple of minutes, but as he sat there breathing in through his nose and out through his mouth his tongue started to burn. It started out as small pinpricks of pain where he smeared the blood before spreading to his whole tongue, and after that throughout his entire body. From the message he had received he expected pain, but it was more the pain of overworked muscles than true pain. It felt like his body was coming alive, each pore expanding and pulsing, drawing in energy and super charging his physique.
The power continued to build within him, and once it reached a certain threshold he could feel it making strange patterns, engraving lines of power into his bones, muscles, and tendons. And then it happened again. And again. The pattern of energy being drawn in before being channeled into his body continued nine times, and on the tenth time, Tormacc could feel something was different. This time instead of the power being channeled into his body, it was channeled inwards. At first he wasn’t sure where it was going, but then he realized: it was going towards his Fate Wheel.
Following the flow of energy, he watched in fascination as it twisted together, forming a current of power that was steady being absorbed by his Fate wheel. The stream grew and grew, and as he watched, the number in the middle of his Fate Wheel ticked up from zero to one. And it didn’t stop there. It continued to grow, slowly at first, but as the flow of power expanded the numbers increased, five, ten, twenty, thirty. At thirty he could feel the energy slowing down, and when his body finally stopped pulling in energy his Fate Wheel had a total of thirty-seven Essence in it.