Amnesia

'Cold, very cold, heavens! Why is it always cold'?

It wasn't actually cold, Chris just always felt the cold, like a mental cold, a feeling he could never get used to but had slowly become a norm for him, a feeling that made him wish selective amnesia was an option… funny, selective amnesia was the least of his problems.

That was because about two weeks ago he woke up in an unfamiliar but familiar condo apartment or that's how he preferred thinking about it, and no, not the condo, the unfamiliar familiar feeling about everything he came in contact with, was it the beauty sleeping beside him who never introduced herself?

He felt a groggy and dull kind of pain while trying to remember something, but he kept hitting a painful wall, it was like the more he tried to think, the more the pain increased.

So he gave up on thinking all together, wondered why he had to push himself, especially with the pounding and banging he was experiencing.

He remembered thinking of how much he did not want to be thinking, how the act of thinking was making his head hurt all the more and how he just wanted it to end. He was very sure he wasn't being suicidal but he really wanted the pounding and the banging to stop…

It felt like whatever he was experiencing went beyond the physical, he wasn't sure how to explain it, but it felt worse than anything with a mundane cause.

'Mundane… what did the word even mean and why would I use it instead of mortal?'

' .. '

"Aughh!!!"

'Why is my brain still functioning?'

"Maybe I should do a hard reset" he muttered to no one

Chris groaned painfully, before ramming his head straight into the wall by his bed… hoping it would knock him out.

*Thud!

To his dismay and more pain, he was still awake with more pain than a conscious humans threshold should be able to bear, if ever asked about that days dark history he was never going to admit to the accusation of diving head first to a pillar like a fool, and … Crying? He would rather have fallen from a cliff than admit to crying. He was a man, and men don't cry.

'g …'

Picking up and heading to the bathroom through a side door in the bedroom, Chris stood in front of the sink looking at himself in the half-length mirror

'I'm not old huh, then why's my head heavy like an old man?'

Raising his very dark grey hair from his forehead to look for any signs of bruising there may be due to the wall crashing into his face, he couldn't see any on his way above handsome pale porcelain face.

With his ever changing coloured eyes twinkling in surprise and glee, mostly at the fact that he did not have to make up an awkward answer to anyone and that his face was free from scarring … even if he looked a little bit like a pretty boy.

'DING'

… sad.

"Aughhh!!!"

Bang! Crash!! … Thud!!

With a low scream Chris collapsed to the ground in a fit of what he could no longer describe as pain, nor agree was pain, it no longer felt passive. Now it felt like it was a deliberate action taken by the universe, for a perverse, grievous and a most heinous of sins that he knew he must have committed or worse.

Because even the most despicable of sinners should never be subjected to this kind of pain, it felt like his soul was being ripped in two halves by unseen hands, now he truly wished to die, no … he wished to simply stop existing because that was the only way he felt, no, believed this pain could possibly end.

Chris could only let out a mental cry, he wasn't sure if he was crying or screaming, he was already disconnected from reality, all that was left, all he was begging for now was a disconnection from his soul and body, with that much pain, he was mortified that he was still alive

For hours he was on the marble floor, from an outside observation he looked like a spasming wreck of flesh with no control, like an epileptic but worse.

Chris let out low growl which sounded closer to a whimper.

A while later when he was calm enough to somewhat understand the genesis of his unnatural pain … he crawled towards the edge of the bathroom and rested his back against the wall.

Looking at the mess of which he held full responsibility, and once again being marvelled at the fact that he was uninjured yet again, not even a scratch from all that trashing around.

When his mind was clear enough to focus, in his sight, everything was darkened a little with same view like a status window, he could see golden characters in front of his eyes which were of no impediment to his vision;

Name: Chris #@$%&#

Origin Name: #®©¥¥¢¶#

Life Level: 1st Mystery

Rank: Bone Refinement

Soul Class: First mark. [80/100]

Talent: {Unknown??}

Attribute: {Formless Instinct}, {Kismet},…

Focusing on the only things that he could access after trying at the rest, surprisingly hidden text were revealed

{Unknown??}.

Description: {No holds barred Essence core must be Pure; can absorb and merge other core abilities as secondary attributes. *Note two/life level}

Attached Abilities: (Aura of Darkness: Darkness is your closest friend) ---

{Formless Instinct}.

Description: {I can do it; }

{Kismet}.

Description: {Reward for your troubles; anything that can go wrong… will go wrong}

…

Waking from his thoughts Chris shook his head as if that was going to make the memories of that day fall off, but he knew it was a futile effort.

It had been two weeks and a few days since then, and he was finally outside and under the dark sky, it was morning, well for him it was a late morning it seemed, it was past 11, almost noon, looking up at the sky, he had the odd feeling that something was wrong with the picture of the sky. It gave him a caged feeling, though it was necessary he did not like barriers.

'The light runes must have been poorly etched'

He kept walking and looking around, he could see a lot of people out and about, dressed in weird battle robe fashion, with almost everybody walking along with a purposeful gait, almost everyone had a dangerous look. It almost felt like they were cogs in a wheel, not counting the odd ones that could be seen here and there, he included.

Everywhere he looked he saw giant structures looking like a cross between medieval and modern with some artistically but unscientific implementations not that he had any problems with the novelty of it all, he felt like he was seeing everything for the first time, at the same time like everything was familiar in a weird sort of twisted way.

'Food market or tavern" he wondered out loud

Chris was close to his destination, before he got in, he saw a man or what he assumed was a man in a white hood with a helmet on his head on a hex hover bike, moving too fast for what the human eyes can see, which made him wonder how he could see it at all, it had gone by for almost three seconds before he heard the sound and felt the aftershock of its impossibly fast motion.

'Fast, why don't I have one of those?' he grumbled inwardly while glancing at his feet

He looked on in envy at what was no longer at the end of the intersection, wondering how its rider could control and manoeuvre his hover bike at such speed..

He stepped in to what looked like a cross between a classical and a contemporary setting, with a futuristic and ancient feel to the tavern named SKY TAVERN.

A simple yet grand name he had seen on the bright yellow foggy thick glass shard that looked like it was cut with a blade relying more on its owner's strength than on the sharpness of the blade itself with its name written with what looked like fresh flowing blood than red paint.

There were a few sectioned booths with diverse looking occupants, some looking fierce, some calm, some others looking melancholic, there was also a long opened table with 8 seated occupants dressed in amour components, with their leader or at least the one seated at the head of the table whom he assumed was the leader missing an arm from the elbow holding a mug and staring straight at him like everyone else was doing at that moment making him feel awkward a little.

"Ahemm" clearing his throat while Looking around Chris noticed a singular lone figure seated right in the middle of the tavern, also noticing the lack of people in this figures immediate environment, not because of a design flaw, but because it seemed like no one wanted to seat next to the figure.

He could see in the dim soft lightening of the tavern that the figure was gabbed in full body black hood, and from the little he could make out, he could tell it was female and that she was a female with class and beauty, there was something beautiful about her presence.

The way she held herself felt as though she alone existed and the rest of the taverns occupants were a figment of his imagination, looking round he could see people of both gender throwing inconspicuous glances at her and looking away as fast as possible like they were scared of being caught.

There was a range of emotions in their eyes, from fear, mirth, anxiety, worry, distress, to annoyance, arousal, excitement and even…

'Reverence?'

Looking closer the annoyance seemed to be directed at him, looking at the bar counter at the edge, at the person behind, the only person who seemed not to care about himself nor the female at the centre of the tavern.

He looked like a man in his early forties with majorly dark red hair with little bits of whites here and there, with a stocky build under his white and black referee looking big shirt, holding a yellow rag and cleaning a glassware with too much focus than was required.

He made to head towards him when he noticed from his peripheral view the lady with her hands up signalling towards him asking him to come over, he looked back to see if there was someone else behind him her beckoning was meant for, but sadly, there was none.