A Rough Start

I'm not sure which came first, the darkness or the pain.

The pain was a deep, pervasive ache a full body beating that went to the bone with patches of molten agony here and there that my mind instinctively flinched away from examining too closely.

The darkness, conversely seemed all the more barren and empty of sensation, an impenetrable gloom so lightless that I failed to realize my eyes were open untill I felt them strain in a vain attempt to see.

"this is wrong." I think to myself, the unfamiliarity with my situation sparking a moment of panic. with a convulsive jerk I lever myself into a sitting position..., or try to at any rate.

My vertical ascent was rudely and abruptly interrupted by something a few inches above my head that my freshly abused noggin informed me was rock solid.

As I abruptly laid back down, with a groan, several things happened near simultaneously.

The sudden pain in my head seemed to trigger a flood of strange memories, , foreign tasting memories of a scared, brave, and kindly boy who was betrayed and cast down into hell. Who, crippled in body and soul succumbed to despair and died while his body still lived.

As I was reeling from the flood of memories, and trying to maintain my identity amidst these alien emotions and thought patterns something even more peculiar happened.

A single drop of moisture fell past the lips still parted from my groan of pain and hit my parched toungue, and as it did things shifted abruptly.

The flood of memories that were were as loud and cacophonous as several orchestras tuning their instruments in my head just switched to background noise, overridden by a cool neutral voice speaking.

"High concentration of excess energy detected in host body. system startup initiated. 1%...10%..75%...100% Boot up successfull. congratulations host on successfully binding and booting system without having your life force drained completely!"

"ding! new title acquired.

"1%: Description= they say it takes a special kind of person to be a 1 percent-er. too bad this title describes the survival rate of awakening a system .

effect: gain an extra 0.01 Luck per 1 hit KO."

reeling, I grabbed my head in my hands to try to steady my whirling thoughts.

Correction. In my HAND.

panic rising inside me like floodwater, I fumbled my right hand across my face, my shoulder and down my bicep to where it abruptly ended in a slightly tender stump.

realizing that the small dancing points of light were, in fact a byproduct of the hyperventilating i was doing, I sqeezed my eyes closed and forced my breathing to slow .

.after a few moments of concentrating on my breathing and letting my thoughts settle, I was supprised that the alien memories settled in near seamlessly.

I took a moment to scan through them, and as I did my eyes popped open despite the pitch dark.

" you have gotta be f^cking kidding me!?!"