Chapter Text
Waking up is… hard.
The first thing I become aware of is the pain, my body aches, and my head throbs with needle sharp agony.
As the pain pulses through my skull, I feel a memory trying to shake itself loose in my mind… but then another wave of pain drives it back down, and causes me to let out an audible groan.
Honestly it’s enough to make me want to go back to sleep.
But the next thing that comes to me is enough to end that little fantasy.
I’m not on my bed, I’m not on a bed even, Instead, I’m lying on cold, hard, stone. That realization is enough to make me open my eyes, out of curiosity if nothing else.
I’m… Am I in a church?
I was never a really… religious person, neither was mom, or dad. But I had seen churches on TV and in passing, and this seemed somewhat like what I remembered.
But it was… wrecked. There weren’t any lights that I could see, the stone floor was dirty, covered in dust and cobwebs, chairs were scattered and out of order and often outright broken, a frayed and faded red and gold carpet stretched across the ground beneath me.
I could even see stalks of some sort of plant poking up through the stone floor!
You don’t live your entire life in Brockton Bay without learning the tattletale signs of a building long abandoned.
How did I get here? And why?
The last thing I remember was… Walking into school, there had been a crowd, and this… awful smell.
Laughter, a shove… pain , pain in my skull, then nothing.
Did fucking Emma and her friends do this? Knock me out and drop me off in some abandoned church?
Why? This is a bit beyond even them, what’s even the point?!?
I grumble under my breath, at this latest… Is it really still a prank? This seems to be going much too far for that…
It doesn’t matter, I need to figure out where I am, find someone willing to let me borrow a phone, and… I guess, call dad to come and get me?
I Push myself up onto my knees, and, after looking down at myself, I see the point of this prank.
I was in my underwear, along with a few tattered strips of cloth that might have been my clothes at one point that hung off of me, but for the most part, I was only wearing my bra and panties.
That’s… That’s messed up!? Is this what they were planning? Forcing me to run around through the city, nearly naked !
That’s… that’s… I don’t even have words for how fucked up that is! Those three… they have to know what could happen to a girl wandering the streets of Brockton Bay like this! Streets full of junkies and thugs of all sorts…
But, I suppose they wouldn’t care if I- if something bad happened to me.
Those bitches were probably hoping for it even!
My vision blurs slightly as tears well up at the bottom of my eyes, what the fuck was I supposed to do?
I can’t just leave this building and go out into the city like this… That might as well be suicide.
But what choice did I have? I couldn’t stay… wherever this was.
I have to get up, I have to leave and find someone to help me, find a phone, find something…
So, that’s what I do.
I pull myself up onto my feet and start to walk. I can see a door, just on the other side of the room, and there doesn’t seem to be any others.
It’s as I’m walking towards the door that I notice something, or someone.
They’re lying against a wall, it’s hard to make them out in the dark dusty air, but they don’t look like deranged junkie or anyone else that you would expect to find in an abandoned building like this…
I want to ignore them, I want to just keep walking, open that door, and try and figure out how to get home and leave this entire accident behind me.
But I can’t. Maybe this person could help me, or maybe they need even more help than I do… Either way, I should check, shouldn’t I?
So, instead of just leaving, I slowly make my way towards the sleeping… well I think it’s a woman, her clothes are long and flowing, so they remind me of some sort of dress, and her body seems a bit too small and soft to be a man.
Then… Then I get a closer look.
I was right, it was a woman, dressed in a long white robe and an odd hat… she reminded me of a nun.
Then I notice the blood. A deep bleeding wound in her stomach, a delicate hand still pressed up against it, to try and stop the bleeding.
She isn’t breathing.
She isn’t breathing.
She’s dead!
Fuck no! No, No, No!
In that moment, I don’t feel anything but a need to get away, away from this empty dark dusty building, and away from this dead body.
I can’t think, so I just run!
I smash into the large doors blocking my way out of the room, they’re heavy enough that my shoulder hurts from the impact, but I ignore it, and keep going, and sure enough the doors open, and on the other side?
It’s night, the air is dark and cold, the wind is whipping at my bare skin, and somewhere far below me I can hear the crashing of ocean waves.
And in the far distance, shining in gold and impossible to ignore… is a great golden tree, looming larger than anything I have ever seen, and filling the sky
As the sounds of howling wind and breaking waves fill my ears, and golden rays fill my vision, I collapse to my knees.
Where… Where am I?!
I’m struck dumb for a moment, by what I’m seeing in front of me, and it takes some time for me to get my thoughts back on track.
This… this couldn’t just be a prank, no matter how malicious. A school prank wouldn’t explain the giant fucking golden tree, it couldn’t explain the dead body inside the church… and it couldn’t explain how i got onto an island, in the middle of an ocean, suspended far above the surface!
How did I even get up here? There wasn’t any sort of lift or anything to bring people up from sea level, so It couldn’t have been by boat…
Was I dreaming, had I never actually woken up from blacking out? Did Emma drug me or something, and I’m just hallucinating all of this?
A chill went down my spine…
Or was this something worse than that? Was this some sort of parahuman thing? It would be the only way to explain the giant glowing tree and… Was… was that a castle on that cliff on the other side of the ocean?
What the fuck was I supposed to do about any of this?
I… I don’t have an answer to that question.
XXXX
It takes me a while to get back up and start moving about again.
But just sitting around in one spot isn’t going to fix anything, and it’s become pretty clear that, if this is some sort of dream or hallucination, it’s one I won’t be waking up from anytime soon.
Also it’s really cold out here, and I’m not wearing nearly enough to keep warm.
I’m still not willing to go back into the building I was in though, considering what I’d have to share it with.
Moving forward is the only thing I can do.
I take a moment to really look at my surroundings as I pull myself up off my knees, this whole… Island? Plateau? Whatever it was, it was full of crumbling stonework, resting upon bare earth that was coated in gold grass and shrubbery, and just a little bit away, I could see a large statue, depicting a woman, her arms spread to her sides… like she was hanging onto something, or maybe it was some sort of invitation?
Judging by the church I’d left behind… she must be like… a saint or a prophet, or maybe a goddess even? For whoever had built this place…
It doesn’t really matter to me, but it might come in handy to know something like that if I ever meet someone who actually lives… wherever this is.
Someone had to live here right? No one would just build a church, and a giant statue, out in the middle of nowhere, and then just leave it alone.
But then again, I had already seen someone who had been here… had been. Who's to say that the dead woman hadn’t been the only person in this place, some shrine maiden or something?
I shake my head, to ward away those thoughts.
There had to be someone else here, all I had to do was find them, and then maybe, I could finally figure out what was going on.
There wasn’t anything else to do then, other than to keep moving…
That statue seemed as good a place to start as any.
So I make my way down and away from the decrepit church, feeling my bare feet trod upon moist earth, I walk past a large structure of some sort, an obelisk maybe? It didn’t seem to have an entrance… I don’t know much about architecture or stonework, so I’m just going to call it an obelisk.
I make my way past the obelisk, and then under a large stone archway, and down a small stone path that leads up to the statue…
What was that?!
For just a moment I hear something big moving, and then there is a crash, and a boom like thunder as something hurtles through the air to land in front of me.
I try to get a look at it, through the cloud of dust that had been kicked up.
What… what the fuck was that?!
It has to many legs, too many arms too many…
Then, the thing, that awful mismatched frankenstein looking thing moved .
A terrible screech filled the air, and then.
Pain.
I try to scream but can only let out a wet cough, something warm and thick dribbling down my chin.
My stomach hurts, it hurts worse than anything I’ve ever felt, and I can’t help but look down at it, to find out what was wrong.
I don’t like what I see.
I see something long and shining with a dull golden sheen stabbing my stomach, and a pale, corpselike hand still gripping onto it.
The world shifts as that decrepit limb yanks on the blade in my stomach with impossible force.
My feet come off the ground, and I find myself suspended in the air, impaled on the thing’s golden sword.
Then, with a contemptuous flick of its wrist, it swings the blade, and me, to the side.
I let out another wet scream as I feel the blade being yanked out of me,and I continue to scream as I go sailing through the air… and off of the island entirely.
I’m falling, and falling, and screaming and hurting…
And then, as I finally hit the churning water below, I feel something break inside of me.
I gasp out one last cloud of blood into the sea brine as my vision goes dark and my world becomes an all consuming haze.
XXXXX
“Don’t worry Tor…”
W-what happened? I can feel something.. Warm air, On my face…
“ We found her here…”
I can hear… a voice?
“... To seek the Elden Ring…”
Is someone there? I can’t, I can’t move… please… help.
“Even if it does violate the golden order.”
The voice goes quiet, the warmth on my face vanishes, and I sink back into the murk, a black haze of pain and fatigue…
But, in that dark place between sleep and wakefulness,, I see a light, a small golden light, far far away, across the fog.
It is so very distant, and tiny, and I’m not sure if there’s even a reward to be found for following it.
But… It’s all I have to guide me, and so, slowly, painfully, I drag myself towards it.
It takes a long time, and every moment hurts, but as I move towards that light in the distance it grows larger, and larger, and warmer and warmer, and that just spurs me onward, somewhere deep down in me, I know have to keep going, that I have to grab at that distant light, that I can’t stop yet, that I can’t rest yet.
There are, so many things I still need to do. That I still want to do, and the only to do them, is if I keep moving.
Eventually I make it to where I need to be, and the light once so small and distance is now looms large in my vision, covering up everything else.
It becomes brighter, and brighter, and soon enough it blocks out my sight completely.
Then?
Then I’m awake again.
I’m alive again.
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