Chapter 1: The Demon Jungle
Happiness, fulfilment, and emotional satisfaction, those are all things I think about often as they are all fruits that I don't get to partake in. All my life I've always been kind of isolated from others and have never really had any friends, or what you would call friends at least. I live in a small village on the outskirts of nowhere but with just enough connection to other places to make it desirable to live in despite the foul-smelling air and the majorly inconsistent weather. My mother was always out of the picture and my father was barely around, either on business trips or too tired from all the work to stay awake much after he got home so I was often by myself, he put me in some martial arts classes since I was young and I turned out to be quite good at, from being able to recognise the opponent's patterns and reading their body language to know what move they would do next and prepare a counter before they could even move.
I would like to say that I'm an outgoing and friendly person but those statements hold thin against the emptiness, the void that has fully permeated every fibre of my being as I attempt to hold myself together to avoid my inevitable inwards collapse that would be the end of me, not to say that I have depression or anxiety or whatnot but the lack of outside stimulus altogether. So I used academics to distract myself, devoting myself to understanding and applying knowledge to understand how the world works, making me among the top in most of my classes. However, what I failed to notice was that in doing so it drove away any other potential friends I could have made.
But now that compulsory education is over and further education is far over the horizon, I lack the distraction I once had and now the vicious expanse of the abyss is permeating into my last layers of defence and closing in.
Coming home from a walk through the woods I once again entered the personal domain that is my bedroom and landed on my bed with a loud thud. Looking around my room I noticed a thick layer of dust covering the books on the old bookshelf that was across the room. I get back up and head to the bookshelf and clear off all the dust before returning to my bed and I just find myself staring at the ceiling. I feel myself sinking into my bed and I close my eyes, finding myself in a void, no thoughts, no imagery nor any imagined landscapes, just void, an oppressive tyrannical malevolent void that surrounds me on all sides as I let go of the sensations received from my body leaving me solely present in mind.
Feeling the oppressive force from the endless expanse, darker than the dead of night, I look around to try to find out why, why is this void so oppressive, and why is it present. And after looking around for a while I notice something, that this void, this oppressive malevolent void is mine. I've been rejecting it all my life without asking why, why have I let myself be eroded by this devastating force rather than accept it and channel it to my benefit? And at that thought, I called out to the void,
"Hey, you know what? I'm done rejecting you, you are this omnipresent everlasting source of conviction and power and because I now recognise that, I'm now going to accept you as part of my life, as part of me, as part of everything I do on the conviction that you are under my control and command, to improve my life, to create fulfilment, happiness, challenge and intrigue. Now, do we have a deal?"
Then from the void came an unexpected sensation of agreement before the void took hold in the one place that it could not before. However as I go to open my eyes, I open them to find darkness wrapping around my body and my vision as I find myself unable to move. Instead of beginning to panic, I remain calm as logically I should return to normal soon and the fact that I feel the most sleepy I've ever felt in my life, so it should be alright to take a nap, shouldn't it?
As I begin to drift off, I feel myself drifting further and further into the void as the void continues to enter my body and mind, but for some reason now that I've accepted it, it feels oddly comfortable. Over time all sorts of violent and evil thoughts begin to fill my mind as I drift into the void, constantly confronting them and accepting them as a person I have the potential to become but choose not to be as I understand and comprehend the demons within me. After some time however, I start to feel a pull in an unknown direction, as the pull starts to intensify it feels like it is pulling my very essence as I find myself being transported to some other place and after what seemed like an eternity later I see a light piercing into the void. Not only that but it appears that I'm falling toward it with a high velocity and as I approach the boundary of dark and light I suddenly blackout.
Waking up I see a bunch of strange people around me that look to be much bigger than me speaking in a weird language as I seem to be getting passed around, this scene caused me to subconsciously feel fear that caused my body to start crying out no matter how hard I tried to stop. This caused everyone around to have expressions of fear and concern as most of them came over trying to make me stop before one of them that was the last over raised his hand and a purple circle with an intricate pattern formed and after a few seconds, something came from the circle and headed straight for me. After it hit me I felt something strange permeate my body as I suddenly fell silent and after a moment of confusion I begin to fill with curiosity that apparently was visible due to the muffled chuckles that came from a few of the people there before the man said something to the person holding me before walking off.
As others scatter some stay around and start to "play" with me or at least that's what I think they are doing as I notice the surrounding that I am in. It seems to be a makeshift camp with weird-looking tech in the middle of a jungle or that's what I could tell at least as the trees stretch way into the sky with the canopy only parting to reveal a blue cloudy sky above the small clearing we were in. I was drawn back to what the others were doing as the person that was holding me got up and headed into what could be described as a medical tent, I got passed off to someone else and put in an open container and left there to rest.
Looking around within my limited scope of vision, I saw some injured people laying on some beds looking like they had been in a fight with a giant bear or something. At that moment I heard a strange robotic voice in my head that said [Innate Talent: Chanel Master (SSS) received]. Though before long three people came over and I recognised one of them as the one that put me in here in the first place holding a piece of paper or something similar and then held it over me as the two others pull out a card of their own placing it over the paper before another one of those intricate circles appeared on the paper before slightly fading and being stored somewhere. Soon after that, I fell asleep once again.
Over the next week, I was in and out of consciousness multiple times at all hours of the day and night, still unable to make a sound. However, there was always someone there watching me, all the others talked to the two people from before, before approaching me and talking to me and showing off what I could only perceive to be magic as well as constantly saying Alexander or something extremely like it. The thing that has piqued my curiosity however, is that after that voice in my head, all of the weird circles and stuff started seeming logical to me somehow like it's obvious that they would have those effects which piqued my curiosity even more, along with the faint pretty patterns that it leaves behind.
The next time I woke up I found myself strapped to the front of one of the two that seemed to be in charge of me as I looked out to see that were all moving through the jungle with the sounds of birds off in the distance as well the sound of the plants being moved aside as everyone made their way through the landscape. Occasionally everyone would get quite tense and start making those magic circles, however, I never saw anything directly as I was turned away though I could hear growling and hissing and panicked shouting during that time leading me to only imagine what was happening behind me.
Eventually, after a few days, they found a place to set up camp again and began making preparations as I was passed off to a lady that had always had a particular interest in me always prodding me with devices and putting me under things all the while looking at her devices or what I assume them to be at least but always with a confused expression on her face. After some time I was taken from her before being fed and put back into the medical tent in the clear container they put me in before.