Chapter 1.1

Arrival: The Warrior

Ok, don’t act like that guy, I thought to myself, though my attempt at macabre humor did little to detract from the gravity of the situation. Around me, screams rang out as the others registered the sight of the slumping corpse, the head that was blabbering on just seconds ago now lolled on the floor several feet away. Screaming incoherently or repeating some variation of “Oh God” wasn’t the only reaction, however. Many were locked up like deer in headlights, unable to move from shock or fear, and already some were retching up their breakfast, lunch, or dinner. A scant few that I saw seemed entirely unaffected, staring at the body like it was nothing more than a spilled garbage bag, their features scrunched in distaste at the mess. As for me…I found myself almost surprised at how unbothered I was. I could feel my heart pumping as adrenaline reared its head at the rising tension, but emotionally I was as flat as a board.

On the other side of the stupidly big hall we were in was the other group, who were having their own melting pot of reactions. But unlike my group, few were panicking, most of them spending their efforts in a futile attempt at calming everyone down. A minority were shouting in outrage, bemoaning the loss of one of the “Great Heroes.”

I wasn’t interested in the delusional nerds in priest costumes, however. My attention lay solely on their leader, a plump man in robes and a funny hat. He had yet to make a reaction, simply watching the rest with an impassive gaze that slowly morphed into a look of annoyance as the tension continued to climb closer to its boiling point. When the shouting became indecipherable from the din of panic, he raised one of his porky hands and clenched it.

I watched in surprise and interest both as a wave of some sort of energy imploded from his fist, quickly passing through the entire room. Instantly, it quieted, not a peep to be heard. I looked around, confused for a moment as to why, my mind suddenly feeling so very hazy. I saw the others standing around in confusion, their features nearly slack. There was one girl who was playing with the air around her, poking it with her fingers as if she was popping bubbles, while another man gazed around in confusion, but his eyes were sharp and focused. In the peripheral of my vision, I caught two figures darting in and out of the hall, grabbing something before they left.

“Welcome, Great Heroes! I beseech you to save our world!” A voice boomed out, giving me a sense of deja vu. I looked over to the source, seeing a fat guy in a weird outfit. It seemed to be some sort of priest getup, if I had to guess, and around him were those dressed in similar costumes, though theirs were far less expensive looking. “I’m sure you must all be disoriented from your arrival, but rest assured, we are not your enemies,” the man continued, his voice smooth and soothing despite having to pass through his flapping jowls. “You have been summoned by Fate itself to save our world, our very existence from a threat that cares not for either.”

My eyes narrowed at the man’s words, wondering what the hell he was getting at. The last thing I remember was… doing something. I frowned, realizing I couldn’t recollect recent events, before I felt at my face, touching the gaiter neck bundled near my chin. Air puffed out of my nose in a small snort of dark amusement as I made a guess at what happened before I arrived here.

“But worry not, Great Heroes, for you will not be mere soldiers in this fight, you will be legends, lavished under our thanks,” the fat man continued, looking over the crowd and seeing the lack of reaction, most still appearing to have just woken up. He closed his mouth, stopping himself from continuing whatever spiel he had planned, instead saying “Of course, I’m sure you are all tired from your journey. Sercados,” he addressed loudly, causing the group of cosplayers to straighten up, “Please escort the Great Heroes to their chambers.”

At his words, the group moved forward with varying levels of enthusiasm, some smiling in excitement as they looked upon us with eyes filled with reverence, while others looked just as confused and lost as the people they approached to guide.

“Great Hero, may I ask you to follow me?” A polite voice squeezed out through their nervousness. I turned to the source and saw one of the priests standing in front of me. I reared back, confused by how he got so close, but when I looked around I saw that everyone else had a priest in front of them as well despite their distance just a blink ago.

“Yeah, yeah, sure,” I replied offhandedly. I must have been more tired than I thought to be spacing out so much, and a room and bed sounded like a good way to relieve that right now.

“Thank you, Great Hero,” the priest replied with a smile, some of his nervousness bleeding away at my easy acceptance.

The man took a small bow and began walking away, leading me out of the hall. As we left, I noticed something odd on the floor, a blemish that stuck out compared to the shining sterility around it.

“Hey, priest guy,” I began, making the man stop and turn around, his head tilting in curiosity. “What the hell is that?” I asked, pointing to two puddles on the floor, separated by several feet. I knew it was blood from their color- a dark red that was already starting to congeal - but I wanted to know why they were there.

“That is…strange,” the priest answered when he noticed what I was referring to, his features scrunched in consternation. “My apologies, Great Hero. I will have someone clean it up right away,” he promised, making me shake my head.

“No. Just bring me to my room. I don’t care about some mess,” I replied, motioning with my hand for him to keep walking. He seemed conflicted for a moment, glancing between me, the puddles, and somewhere in the distance, where I found the fat man watching us with narrowed eyes. When he noticed that I noticed him, his lips peeled back in a smile that I didn’t buy for a second. “Come on, go” I urged the priest, my head feeling even woozier now.

“Of course, Great Hero,” he reluctantly complied, renewing his steps forward.

I followed him through what looked to be the corridors of a castle, my feet moving on autopilot as I seemed to teleport between blinks from one corridor to another. Eventually, he stopped in front of a door with the number 21 above it.

“The key, Great Hero,” the priest said, both hands extended in offering.

I swiped the silver key with a grunt of thanks, sliding it into its slot and twisting to hear the satisfying click of the door unlocking. I stepped inside, letting the door swing close behind me. The room was ancient, but opulent, as if it was taken out of a history museum displaying the quarters of nobles. There was a large bed, a desk, and even what looked to be a bathroom off to the side. But that wasn’t what had my attention. My interest lay in the window, or rather what shone through it. Two beams of lunar light caressed the glass with their soft luminance, and I peered out into the night sky to see two full moons, two pale disks of uneven size.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

I pinched myself, trying the old idiom, but the image remained the same. I began to laugh, the sound echoing off the stone walls in a humorless symphony. My cackling continued until I had no air left to give, tapering off into a drawn-out sigh.

“Who knew Hell would be so clean?”

—————————————————————————————————

I was woken up the next morning to breakfast in bed, a scantily clad maid delivering me my food. After shoveling the sustenance into my mouth while ignoring her annoying questions and light touches, I was led to a courtyard marked with the same number above my room, a large field of grass in its center. The entire area was empty, the maid having left as soon as we arrived, and so I sat on the grass to wait.

I didn’t have to wait long, only a few minutes passing until a man appeared a dozen feet in front of me. One moment the courtyard was clear, and the next he was there. The man was dressed in a strange suit of armor, so unlike the smooth and curved sets that Caelum had seen pictures of. There were numerous spikes and small, jutting blades along it with bestial imagery carved on the breast. The man’s gauntlets had similar additions, ending in metal claws rather than being shaped as simple fingers.

“You are hero?” He irritably rumbled out, his sandpaper-like voice characterized by a Slavic accent, matching his appearance. He was an older man, his long salt-and-pepper hair swept back like a mane. Despite his age, he was broad and tall, still filling out his armor with bulging muscles. Spattered around his rugged face were numerous scars, but only one stood out. There were four, unevenly long vertical lines marking his features, as if he had been swiped at by an animal. In addition to his scars were his ears, swollen and lumpy from years of abuse. I immediately perked up when I noticed, knowing he had to be a fighter of some kind.

“Most people call me Great Hero, actually,” I flippantly replied, hoping for a reaction, but his stony face didn’t even twitch at my attitude.

“You may call me Ser Voin. I have been forced to be instructor,” the man stated with clear annoyance at that fact. “You are now student.” He began to stride forward, closing the distance between us.

“And what are you going to teach me? Bad English?” This time there was a reaction, though I don’t know if he would have done it regardless of my words. The man reached down to grab my shirt and pulled me up with one hand as if he were lifting a tennis ball.

“I will teach you combat. Perhaps manners as well,” he growled out with a snarl on his face. I had to suppress a smile at the sudden shift, violence now just oozing out of him.

“Watch the claws, big man.” I slowly put a hand on his extended wrist and stepped back, Voin allowing the movement by not maintaining his grasp. “This shirt is from the future, and you just damaged it.” I pulled my shirt up to demonstrate the tears in its soft cotton cloth. “The loom that made this is worth more than your armor.” Voin tilted his head, staring at me as if I were some strange creature made to spew nonsense. Then he lifted a hand and clenched it in a fist, and I watched in surprise as the claws at the end of his gauntlet retracted, the metal flowing like mercury to his knuckles. “...Or maybe not,” I conceded, just before he punched me in the face.

I recoiled back from the weight of his meaty fist reinforced by metal, his armored hand more effective than any brass knuckles. But when I stepped back and raised my arms, I didn’t feel the coppery taste of blood in my mouth; I didn’t even feel much pain, if any. I’d been punched a lot in the past couple of months, by bare fists, by fists with rings, by brass knuckles, and I knew what it felt like and what it did. What I was feeling was not that.

“The hell was that?” I questioned, almost annoyed that his punch didn’t work on me.

“Interesting,” he hummed to himself. “So the heroes’ gift remains same after so much time.”

“Start making sense, old man,” I demanded. He glanced over to me, irritation writ up his face.

“Fine. I will demonstrate, impatient child.” Before I could even react, my arm was seized by his unclawed hand and pulled taut between us. He raised his other hand up, fingers splayed to strike, and I felt laughter bubbling up at the man’s absurdity. My laughter died in my throat when he brought his hand down, raking through my forearm, and yet not a drop of blood was spilled. Instead, a red, pixelated barrier appeared at the area of impact as his claws seemed to phase through my flesh.

“Huh,” I articulated.

“Do you see meter? One red, one blue?” Voin asked, letting my arm flop to my side. His words made me glance around in search, before two rectangles in the corner of my vision caught my eye. Despite being in my peripheral, when I focused my attention on them they didn’t move in tandem with my roving eyes, allowing me to inspect them. As Voin stated, one was red and one was blue, though the red bar had lost almost half of its color.

“I do, yeah,” I muttered back. When I concentrated on the red bar, text appeared.

Health: 57/100

“Why do I have a health bar?” I asked Voin, my itch to fight him smothered by the curiosity I was now feeling.

“It is unique magick of heroes,” he answered. His words should have been nonsense, would have been just a day prior. But looking at my unscathed arm and recalling the image of two moons, they weren’t.

“So I get a magick shield that runs out? That’s lame,” I summed up. In my world, it would have been cool, but seeing some dude wearing armor that flowed like liquid while moving at speeds I couldn’t even react to diminished it in comparison.

“It is not,” he refuted matter of factly. “But that is not greatest gift. Will the world to show you your ‘Status,’ and you shall see.” I cocked an eyebrow at his words, but gave it a try.

Status, I intoned.

Name: Caelum Aarde

Health: 59/100

Mana: 25/25

Strength: 1

Agility: 1

Fortitude: 1

Acuity: 1

Capacity: 1

Suddenly, my vision was overlaid with text, easily readable despite having no background to demarcate from the rest of the world. I looked over the ratings skeptically, all of them equally at one. Glancing between my somewhat-toned, but lean arms and the numbers, I concluded it was just a starting point. But more important were the two fractions representing the rectangles ever present in my vision.

So blue is mana, is it? Whatever that is…

I waved my hand through the text clouding my sight, making it fade out of view. “I assume I can improve the numbers, right?” I asked Voin, causing him to nod.

“This is what I was told,” he answered.

“So magick, measurable growth?” I hummed in approval. “Guess it makes getting drafted worth it.”

Voin tsked his tongue at my conclusion. “Many people get drafted. They get starved and killed, you get free food and power. You are not victim, you are lucky.”

I stared at him for several moments, waiting for his facade to crack and shout “Gotcha!”, but he never did. He just stared back at me with those flat, dead eyes of his, an aged mirror of my own, though an earthy brown compared to my sky blue. “Can I improve my numbers through fighting?” I suddenly asked.

Voin nodded, though his eyes narrowed a fraction in suspicion as to where I was going with this. “You can.”

I smiled. “Good. I’m going to punch you now,” I announced before snapping my leg out in a head kick.

Voin easily caught my extended limb despite my trickery, though rather than be upset by it he instead seemed to approve, if the twitching of his lips was any indication.

“Clever,” he rumbled out, and thus the one-sided fight began.