‘ it’s so dark...am I going to die?’
A sickly pale young boy with disheveled black hair and blood pouring from his mouth slowly opened his dark brown eyes as a light drizzle begun.
Gray gazed up at the dark clouds that rumbled with thunder almost as if …almost as if the gods were laughing at his misfortune.
A grin split his bloodied face.
‘ death in reality instead of death in my dreams…after all I am already infected by Fate…so only death would await me if I was not already dying.’ He thought trying to comfort himself…trying.
‘Fate in this sense at least is not the thing that enforces destiny, fortune and misfortune without mercy or remorse. Here Fate is very much alive, very much conscious, some could say it has a sense of humor even. It is a sort of disease if you will, a very…very deadly disease.
Once contracted for unknown reasons one starts to have flashes of memories they’ve never experienced, after that said person will eventually have a Trial… sounds cool right?, dreams of the past, ancient pasts that should not have existed. Even on other planets and with other races, but no…you see it’s not really a dream, it’s more of a nightmare.’
Tears begun rolling down Gray ’s face as he kept trying to smile but to no avail, someone once told him that the least he could do was smile even when shit hits the fan, a smile makes everything a little bit lighter. A little less bitter.
‘ well I think something in my face is broken’ thought Gray closing his eyes as more tears begun rolling down his already wet face but slowly a pale smile forms on his face.
“ Good bye world….good bye Snow…..i hope-‘ but he didn’t get to finish the thought as the light in his brown eyes faded and dulled, his life. His life had ended….or at least it should have.
Gray’s eyes sparked back to life as he took a deep breath before he begun to cough up chunks of blood and saliva!
He rolled onto his side with a heavy groan in the puddle around him his ears flooded by the pour of rain.
A small incredulous smile came on the young man’s face as his hair clung to his scalp.
“hahhahHAHa” A manic laugh left his mouth as tears flowed down the side of his face.
‘I’m alive…’ he whispered the words with floods of emotion behind his dark brown eyes surrounded by their red and yellow whites.
He was happy..relieved…disappointed.
‘it seems miracles are real after all.’ He thought to himself as he sighed before slowly lifting his head to look at his body, his legs were no longer broken!
And his left arm had healed but the other one was just hanging limply. His cheap black clothes were ripped up but not too badly, just that they were soaked in blood, probably from his ribcage cracking inwards and the broken pieces piercing through his skin. But it had all healed, Gray shivered remembering how much worse the pain had been.
‘ so this is what Fate had planned for me? This was not the end to my useless suffering? oh Fate are you merciful or kind?
Would you have been merciful to end my suffering now?..or are you kind to let me live to see hell tomorrow?...why the fuck am I being philosophical?’
He slowly got up into a sitting position grunting at the pain. He looked around and spotted a large black armored Jeep crashed into a buildings alloy foundation. This was the truck that hit him as one of it’s tires had failed. It was turned over in debris it’s back wheels still spinning.
‘How come their still there? Shouldn’t the ambulances already be rushing to rescue their precious Citizen?’ Gray asked in a mocking tone. He was from the slums, the underground of the Great Alter City , one of the Four remaining major cities on earth after The 3rd and 4th world wars. These cities officially came up after we survived the Gates, and the invasion of the Dream creatures, horrible and stupidly powerful monsters that came to do all manner of vile atrocities to humans.. The year 2865, The 25th year of true peace for man kind and the 89th year of fighting of the horrors of the Forgotten realm…the place where dream creatures came from….
Any way as you could imagine things for the poor got worse as such places like the outskirts, the undergrounds were made in the shadows of those grand thriving cities that shone with the light and hope of humanity... While the citizens were treated with a lot of care and respect and the rest are..well you know..
It was funny, the cities and nations that still survived did so by promoting hope in humanity and development.. blinding themselves in their own light as they moved onwards in development yet they allowed ignorance and greed to leak out and corrupt their silver cities… those filthy things leaked and pooled behind these “marching” cities and formed the shadows of poor and helpless people who could not survive off of the little we had.
And the governments never paid these people any mind..never gave them any attention out of fear that they would dim their golden light that had blinded them so to the harsh reality…that there wasn’t enough…
Even with the population dropping by half in the terrifying wars and invasions of the dream creatures, humans still had too little land. They had only four things that counted as nation, the great cities…a grand name indeed. Although in terms of land space they were simply very large countries but the cities that covered those spaces deserved to be called grand.
Massive cities that even took advantage of the underground in order to accommodate the four billion human lives that fought against the trials of Fate. But still the land that they had not claimed was for good reason…Gray had always been a bit sharp and thoughtful…but this was something he had learned from his mother.
He sighed as he remembered.
“ do you know why we are stuck outside here?...” a beautiful woman whose face had been blurred by time of memories asked a young dark haired boy.
The little boy shook his head no older than four..
“ It is because there is no space…” she said, as they walked under the shade of a dying tree whose leaves fell one by one, dying as seconds passed gazing at the towering buildings in the distance that came to life with light as night fell onto them..and even further still one could see a line on the horizon…a line that signified what kept them safe from the things outside.
“ Why?” the boy asked curiously and the mother smiled with teeth that were oh so very white, much too pristine for someone who dwelled in the slums.
“ It is because they do not have enough.” She said as she pulled the boy through and into the door of a simple brick building and closed the door turning on the light that flickered before stabilizing. The boy’s mother was a genius. She had made a solar system for their house and even a mini reactor that made sure they had light the whole night.
“ But they have food all the time and they have movies and..and..” the boy was confused as he sat down on the floor of the small room that acted as a living room.
“ They have enough only for themselves my dear. You see if a man had a bag of rice and a sack of meat to fed his family every day, he could be happy and content, but what if he had to feed all of his neighbors children as well? He would still receive food everyday but would a kilogram of meat feed thirty people and keep them alive?..it would not…”
“ So they don’t really have that much food?” The boy asked and the woman smiled.
“ Yes, they only appear to have enough but in reality, they don’t..they have only enough weaponry and soldiers to fight and kill and claim, they have enough engineers and works men to fill the land with wonderful buildings and roads. But the works men have not the material to work upon this feat…they have not the alloys, the carbon fibers and titanium…therefore they cannot build the houses upon the land. Therefore their resources are spread thin protecting land they cannot build upon, land that is too much work to farm upon for it has been tainted by corruption…
Thus they provide what they have for themselves first..then the scraps for us later. They are selfish but they are also kind and at the end of the day we cannot blame them for ensuring that they live…while the rest of us survive.” she finished with a sigh as she led the boy to the shower.
“ So we are the unlucky ones?” The boy asked with the na?ve innocence one could find so easily in a child.
The woman smiled again, a dashing smile that made the boy happy. She ruffled his hair and laughed.
“ Good Gray…my little boy is clever. So remember. Do not hate them for this…they are not to blame for the way that they are..that fault lies on the ones before them, blame not the children who were learned to kill but-“
“ the parents who raised murders.” The boy finished as he removed his shirt revealing his small frame that was thin from under feeding but was still much better than the other children he grew up with…his mother was doing her job.
The woman smiled but this time with her eyes…she had never told him that yet the child finished her thoughts as if they were his own.
“ Yes my little Gray. Remember , never blame a society for their mistakes but only individual for their choices..thus you must strive to be different..to be better…”she said as he smiled, she had taught him to always smile and nodded she closed the door to the shower and sighed as she raised a hand to wipe a tear.
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Tonight again there was no food so it was a night of hunger, but their solace was each other, a clever boy and a brilliant mother.
Gray snapped out of his daze as he returned his gaze to the overturned unit.
Gray wanted nothing to do with such people as he was from the underground so he wanted to avoid all this and head straight to a police station as is required by the law, he assumed because the transport was at the edges of the city it was probably coming back from the city’s walls.
He stands up with a pained expression feeling his legs creak under his own weight, Knowing the miracle simply pulled him from death’s door but that was it he wasn’t getting any full recoveries.
‘tough luck guys, I’ll at least tell the police once I get to the nearest one’ Gray thought as he looked at the wreckage.
He turned to limp away but heard something, coughing, He turned to look at the wreckage.
‘is someone alive?’ Gray thought as he hesitated on what to do.
The door creaked, then a bang comes from the inside. Then another and another as the alloy of the huge truck begun to groan and bend outwards.
Gray froze, should he help them? Should he leave them?. Memories of how such people would treat the likes of him surfaced in his mind
Just before he could decide, The bangs became louder until another bulge suddenly appeared on the back seat of the car, then another hit followed as the metal groaned.
‘how!!, aren’t Transport cars reinforced with at least a few layers of alloy?.. is it a Dreamer?’
Dreamers are the champions who are chosen by Fate sent for their trials..and return alive…they return with superhuman strength and abilities that allow for them to fight off the horrid Dream creatures.
The door suddenly flew of it’s hinges hitting the ground and sliding a few meters away scrapping against the tarmac of the road in a small spray of sparks. A man with long dark hair , a handsome face and an athletic build In a black body suit was revealed. In his right arm was a girl with blonde hair in expensive clothes. He pulled her out and collapsed to the ground with her falling nearby. His bright indigo eyes scanned the area until they fell onto Gray who was still standing there in a daze.
“Hey Kid!” he called out but Gray remained frozen.
“ Hey KID!!” the man shouted again trying to get Gray’s attention.
“ look I need help, please, I can’t move anymore my spine is cracked! Just help me get this girl to a police station, please.” The man said while looking at the girl with a grim expression.
Gray’s face folds to a grimace as he turned to face the man.
‘Nothing good ever comes from helping these people, they crashed into me and didn’t even notice.’ Gray grit his teeth frustration rising.
The man scanned Gray’s clothes before thinking, ‘an outskirt kid, all the way here?...wait.’
“ I’ll give you credits, a thousand, no ten thousand, just help her please, she’s bleeding!” he says desperation leaking into his voice.
Gray stops and slowly turns around, he sees the man’s sincere eyes before looking over at the girl and she is indeed bleeding around her stomach.
Gray hesitates before asking, “ why not just call the medical units?” he finishes as he started walking over.
The man grits his teeth before saying, “ It was an attack, all our comms are down and even if the sensors picked up on us they’d get here too late.”
‘well that reeks of suspicion..’ he thought.
Gray grits his teeth too and slowly crouches feeling pain course through his body he then starts trying to pick up the girl who proves to be heavier than he thought.
“ Wait did you see someone else here, we hit someone after the car lost control.” The man asks as he moves his head around the empty streets here at the city edges.
‘wow!, how thoughtful of you. Can’t your dumbass see the blood all over me?!.’ Thought Gray with a heavy load of sarcasm as he stares at the man with a deadpan expression as his hair keeps on getting wetter and wetter.
“I don’t think anyone else is here” Says Gray while keeping a level voice. Lying was his forte.
“….” The man stared at him for a moment before choosing to stop asking.
“ look I’ll help you but first tell me where the police station is, preferably one with the means to deal with a person infected with Fate. “ asks Gray while trying to pick up the girl which was without a doubt difficult for his malnourished body.
‘The fuck do they feed these kids?’ he thinks as he’s finally able to lift her off the ground and let her lean on him, luckily she wasn’t so out of it as to need full support. She tried to carry as much of her own weight as possible.
“Your infected?” the man asks with a strange expression.
Gray notices this and shrugs , well tries to shrug which almost goes unnoticed due to the extra weight.
“ yeah… marching to my death basically.” He says as he starts adjusting to the girls weight.
“ I’m sorry. The next station is almost straight ahead barely a kilometer, Alex is also infected with Fate , tell the police that you’ve both been infected. Tell them that her name is Alex Fors, It’ll take me about thirty minutes to heal…she won’t make it that long.” he says in a somber tone.
‘ is he feeling bad?. Makes sense. Finding an outskirts kid basically going to his death who you hit with your car! and then asking him to take some rich girl to the hospital..Wow.. fate is a bitch.’ Thought Gray as a small smile appeared on his face.
“ Right..” Gray says as he turns in the direction the man had signaled to and starts limping through the rain.
There was no point in saying anything else as he was beginning to feel sleepy, a bad sign since once he fell asleep he was gone.. the trial would begin.
The girl leaning against him had long blonde hair, and her skin was pale, probably from blood loss, her soft body was pressing against his which would normally be a distracting thing for most boys but today Gray’s life was on a thread and he was fighting the urge to fall asleep as well. He hadn’t slept for two days! , needless to say he was exhausted.
The two walked for 15 minutes in silence as the roads started to get less empty, with the occasional car speeding by, but there were almost no people, the police station mentioned was probably the only place where Gray would start seeing citizens but the rain continued to pour, so much so that Gray was beginning to think that the people just couldn’t see them.
‘ Pain…all I know is pain…. Wow singing songs in my head at a time like this?, I might be crazy, hah…why isn’t any one stopping to help out, like two kids limping and covered in blood at the edges of the city, where is the sense of camaraderie that the government so much advertises?.’ Gray thinks as he passes an empty café with grey walls and a desolate interior visible through the glass display…well visible was a strong word, the rain still fell with fury before a storm.
‘okay I understand me, an underground kid..poor, no citizenship, blah blah but the pretty blonde girl in expensive clothes should have caught their attention!, why is everything so hard…..” thought Gray as rugged breaths escape his mouth. The girls eyes slowly start to open as Gray sees a large reinforced building with the police badge on top of it. A blue figure of a man on one knee with a sword, a gun, and half a wing made of iron on his back.
His name was Ascended Raziel …no actually Gray had heard rumors that the commander of the police had Transcended leaving the shackles of humanity behind. This would basically make him a Demigod…such strength was far beyond Gray’s understanding…he could only envy.
The building had an arched design and stood at the end of the road with turrets on it’s roof and large mechs stationed at both sides of the entrance.
“where am i?” the girl asks weakly and if Gray was not so close he wouldn’t have heard her over the rain.
“ Relax were going to a police station, you got into an accident and got hurt, the guy with you told me to take you to a police station.” Gray says simply, trying to avoid wasting his breathe and it was indeed getting harder to breathe..his lungs hadn’t fully recovered and he was beginning to pant from the strain.
“ Amar?.. where is he? Who are you?”
‘ how are you this full of questions?..” Thinks Gray as he almost stumbles but gains balance.
“ Look, he’s fine…well fine might be pushing it, but he’s alive, he said he’d be able to catch up and that I should take you with me to the police station, as for who I am I’m just some nobody helping a beautiful girl.”He said regretting saying so much when he was already struggling to breathe.
“.. do not try to make light of the situation..your breathing is irregular and your eyes are laced with exhaustion, you’re… not much better …off than me” the girl had already fallen back into half consciousness.
‘ how did she notice there was something wrong with my breathing…’ Gray asked himself as his eyes glanced at her own weakly heaving chest.
“almost there.., come on!’ Gray thought as he finally gets to the large double doors in the shadows of the giant mechs.
He reaches the door and pushes against it with his body with no other way of it opening since he’s left hand was dislocated. To his surprise the door moves inwards with surprising ease.
Inside is a simple blend with an empty reception hall , a desk with the badge and some turrets in the ceiling. The man at the desk looks up and sees the two as his expression goes from agitated to slightly concerned. He had brown hair and a well kept beard
He stands up and approached them.
“ what happened?” he asks, with his attention mainly on the girl.
‘probably cause she’s bleeding.. but so am I..’ thought Gray in a disappointed tone.
“ They had an accident. I was told to bring her here, we both need treatment and we’re both carriers of Fate.”
As Gray finishes the man’s face darkens and takes on a grim expression.
He then pulls the girl away from him and supports her by himself before saying, “ Hurry come this way.”
Gray then proceeds to follow the man into another hallway behind his desk. Limping along the way choosing to ignore the obvious disfavor being shown to him
“ How long have you been infected?” he asks picking up his pace.
“ I don’t know about the girl since I… yawn..just met her but I’ve been having the signs for three days.” Says Gray simply as he struggles to keep pace with the man.
“shit, you have any training kid?” he asks
“ no, I don’t…” says Gray in a low tone.
“ …Okay listen then, when you have your first Trial, you’re going to be thrown into any world. It’s not just the past of earth or of the forgotten realm. It could even be of planets in other solar systems, the important thing is to survive, to do that you most likely have to kill or just escape from the enemies around you.” He says while turning down another hall way and starts descending a short flight of stairs.
“ I know some of that” Gray replies as he knew some of this information before hand.
“good, now once you get there don’t forget not everything should be solved with violence, hell if you’re really lucky all you may have to do is escape a current situation and you’d finish the vision, but that’s second, the most important thing to remember is that the things there are fake , even the people. So don’t hesitate to kill them if It means you stay alive.” He turned to a heavily armored door and puts his card against the scanner and it slides open.
Inside in a large room with three pods standing upright. With a turret gun in the ceiling aiming at each of them.
“ Now remember once there check your runes, just think about them and they’ll show up, you’ll see the ability given to you, those revolve around your affinity’s and such these are usually offense ability’s but don’t be down if you have a utility aspect those are useful too as long as you use your brain, you have a fair chance of surviving, after all Fate isn’t executing you.” He says as he opens a pod and gently places the girl inside.
Gray wasn’t going to ask if she needed such an explanation because she was a city kid, all this was covered in their schools, ‘he was explaining to me cause I was a slum kid.. oh wait..’
“ Ah her name is Alex Fors, they said I should…tell you that” He posed to yawn. He was just so sleepy.
The man’s face went a little pale.
“ thank the gods you made it in time then, the pods system should start treating her over a period of time, now get in.”
He climbed into the pod and the transparent cover started going down.
“ Remember, aim to survive, that’s the best you should do….if by chance it’s a really bad situation survive as long as possible at least until a Dreamer can get here. I assume you know what happens if you die.” He said but at this point Gray was just too tired, he heard the man’s words but couldn’t reply..
‘this.. is it.. my first trial…’
Then all he could see was darkness.
[Welcome Gray, to your first Memory, from %^7 @#$% $^&# %&*#&&… prepare for your trial.] a voice as sweet as honey and soft as silk whispered in his ears and then he was gone..lost from this world.