Chapter 1: Awakening

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My mind struggled to function as I slowly awoke. I felt abnormally sluggish this morning, for whatever reason. I racked my brain for a reason why. Was I drinking last night? I felt like I did whenever I was hungover: lethargic to the extreme.

I cracked open my eyes at last, finally willing to brave the morning. I expected to see my bedroom, pristine and well-kept as always. I expected to see a computer across the room, a bookshelf by its side filled with as many books as I could feasibly shove into it.

But that wasn't what I saw. Instead, the bloody and ripped corpse of several somethings lay strewn about my feet. They looked like no animal I had ever seen: a horrendous cross between a rat and some sort of scaled lizard.

I stumbled back on all fours, scrabbling for purchase as I tried to get the hell away. The beady eyes of the bodies seem to track me as I floundered piteously backward.

"What the hell, what the hell, what the hell!" I yelled, my voice abnormally scratchy. I whipped my head from side to side, hyperventilating in this new situation. I reached a hand to my chest instinctively, trying to calm my breathing and get myself under control.

My hand came back sticky with red blood. A hand that was too small; too young to be my own. Looking down, the realization scared me into a strange sense of giddiness. Blood pooled at my feet, far too much for me to have lost and still be alive.

I blinked. Oh, I realized with relief. I'm dreaming.

I chuckled a bit crookedly at my hand, the situation overwhelming me. I got to my feet, turning about. I rarely ever lucid dreamed, but when I did I felt in control in a way that was impossible in real life.

I scanned my surroundings with an exhausted sweep of my head. I was in a tall forest of some sort. The leaves were mish-mashes of oranges and reds, clearly in the middle of autumn. They stretched far into the sky, masking the sun somewhat from the forest floor. It wasn't quite like a rainforest, but semi-close, I supposed. I was in a clearing of foliage, with only the dead bodies of the rat-lizards to keep me company.

But this doesn't feel like a dream, I thought to myself, beginning to hyperventilate again. The modicum of calm I had managed after waking up was quickly being swept away by a tide of uncertainty. This felt very, very real for a dream. Too real. The scents in the air: fresh soil mixed with the coppery tinge of fresh blood, told of the recent dead. The ambient noise of a forest echoed around me. Crickets, birdcalls, and more whispered the truth of my situation to my ears.

My thoughts were stopped dead in their tracks, however, as the world darkened around me. Deep fog-like mists swirled across the ground, and the world seemed to shrink. My senses felt… muted, for lack of a better term. Dampened by the rushing of something. I grasped for sense, something to keep me anchored as I fought back another panic attack.

Maybe I was high? But I'd never done anything like LSD. I'd heard stories, of course: and this seemed like something only a man on acid would experience. The colors shifting and swapping, the mind showing you things that weren't there. But did LSD show you things that didn't exist? I didn't think so. But I could be wrong. But what would I be high on if not that? I didn't know-

"So you are the one chosen for my Vessel?" a voice asked behind me.

I spun, nearly tripping as I came face-to-face with the speaker. She looked nothing like anything I knew, either, as foreign as the rat-lizards. She was slightly translucent, like some sort of ghost. Her skin was a dark, smokey purple. Hair the color of flame stretched from her head to her midback like feathers, accentuated by a bright orange dress that seemed to float across her form. Her clothes were embroidered with a violet lining that mimicked fire. An outline of pinkish-orange light backlit her like a rising sun, creating a blazing contrast to the darkness around her.

"Pardon?" I asked stupidly. I had crossed this experience off as being a dream. If I was high, was this woman real at all? Or a figment of my imagination?

The woman walked forward slowly, with a poise in her gait that I found very intimidating. I took another wary step back, but the woman reached me faster than expected.

"I expected… more. Something– someone– competent. Someone who might be able to assist me." She cocked her head slightly, examining me in a way that made me feel very uncomfortable. Her eyes blazed like fire, and I had trouble meeting her gaze as it bore into me. "You appear to be neither."

I gulped. "Well, I'll help if I can," I said awkwardly. The strange feather-woman before me was the only thing not tinged by the strange dark hue the rest of my vision had taken on, besides my own self. "Don't know what I could do, though," I said. "I'm tripping balls really damn hard right now. Maybe ask me later? When colors aren't wonky?" I hedged nervously.

The woman narrowed her eyes, then began to circle me.

I felt distinctly like some sort of prey animal being circled by a hawk. Or maybe a vulture. I licked my lips as I turned to keep the woman in my sight, feeling well over my head. Her boots made no sound, I realized, as she stepped across the bodies of the slain rat-lizards.

"You do not know where you are," she said, the blunt statement settling into my disrupted mind. The woman stopped, facing me once more. "What is the last thing you remember?"

I opened my mouth to respond, then closed it with a click. My eyes widened as I finally focused on my memory.

I had been driving back from something –I couldn't remember what, exactly. I was with someone, I think. It was late at night, and I was on the winding country roads that I was intimately familiar with. But something had gone wrong. I remembered a blaring white light, the face of the oncoming driver, the sound of a horn–

"Oh my god," I said, my legs giving out from under me. I gripped the grass with hands too young to be my own. I vomited onto the ground, the acidic taste of bile lingering on my tongue. I heaved several more times, my mind taking reprieve in the action before nothing remained in my stomach.

"I died," I whispered, staring numbly at the dark vomit, the colors tinged by the strange effect on my vision. "I should be dead. Nothing could survive that kind of crash."

"No, not dead." the woman said nearby. "Not anymore."

I raised my head, still resting on my forearms and knees. "How?" I asked, confused and more than a little bit scared. "I-am I in the afterlife?"

A frown crossed the woman's face before she banished it back to her normal stern expression. "No. I had a need for a messenger; someone to fulfill my needs. But my grasp into the aether seems to have been… for naught." Her face shifted into an expression I could not grasp. "Agrona wins, then. Unless I can make something of you."

My eyes widened. "Agrona?" I asked, spitting out the taste of acid so I could speak more easily. That name was familiar. Dreadfully familiar. "Agrona Vritra?" I said again, incredulous.

The woman cocked her head again, looking at me like a bird. Her feather-red hair ruffled in an unseen breeze. "You know of him?"

I fell onto my back, the implications a thunderstorm in my head. If Agrona Vritra existed, then that meant I was on Dicathen. Or Alacrya. Or Epheotus. I was in a world that should be fiction. The Beginning After the End was a book series, after all.

I revisited the possibility that I was dreaming once more. In a desperate test, I slammed my hand down hard onto a nearby rock, cutting a jagged slice across my palm.

Pain lanced across my hand, a telling sign of my true situation. This wasn't a dream.

I laughed aloud madly, cackling at the absurdity of my situation. The woman watched with the same stern, disapproving expression as before all the while, only feeding my laughter more.

I was either the highest a man had ever been or I had the world's greatest prank being played on me.

I remembered the flashing headlights again: the giant truck slamming into the front of my tiny sedan–

Or I was reincarnated into a world that should be fiction. Shouldn't be real. Shouldn't have me.

Fuck.

After what could've been minutes or hours, I finally quieted down from my raucous laughter. My situation began to finally sink in as I stared up past the autumn leaves into the sky, which looked like it was in perpetual dawn due to my tinged vision.

"Am I on Alacrya?" I asked numbly, not bothering to look at the ever-patient ghost woman. If she was musing about Agrona, chances were I was in that hellhole.

"Yes," she responded curtly. "You are on the continent of Alacrya, in the Dominion of Sehz-Clar."

I sat up, feeling empty. I turned to the woman, who I now could begin to recognize. "You're a phoenix?" I asked, finally recognizing the coloration of her skin and strangely platted hair.

She looked mildly surprised by this question. "I am," she said. "Or… I was," she cocked her head once more, reminding me once again of the bird that she no doubt used to be. "I did not expect you to know of this world. It is unprecedented."

The implicit question was obvious. I slowly struggled to my feet, noting the worn appearance of my brown trousers. Slashes and tears stretched across the surface, but it was wearable. "My world had… knowledge of yours," I said numbly, taking in my appearance as best I could. My shirt was a lighter brown than my trousers, but no less rugged. A large tear stretched across the chest where the splatters of blood stained it. My hair was short, but without a mirror, I wouldn't be able to tell much more about this… new body. "But this world shouldn't be real, " I said tiredly, scanning my surroundings once more. What was paranoia and fear had faded to a dull resignation.

"But it is real," I heard the phoenix say, a note of iron in her tone. "And now you are a part of it. And whether you like it or not, lesser, we are bound together. We make do with what we have."

I snorted again as I brushed off my pants. Her derisive tone implied much of what she thought of me. "I know nothing of mana, phoenix. I don't know if there is anything I can do to affect this world for the better. Or if I can even live through what is coming."

The phoenix walked back into my vision, her steps so smooth it seemed closer to gliding over the earth. "But the previous occupant of this body did," she said smoothly. "They knew mana well. And so should you, now that their control has been relinquished."

Disgust welled in my throat as I looked down at my hands once more. "Did–did I take this boy's body?" I said with rising horror. "Eat his soul or something? Subsume him?"

The phoenix raised a hand with fluid grace, pointing at my chest. "No. The boy was nearing death anyways. I gave him a choice. He could bleed out after a hopeless last stand, or give up his body to another, who would use it for a better cause."

I looked around at the slaughtered creatures–mana beasts?--which surrounded me. There were less than half a dozen, all with small chunks in their bodies. The one closest had claws washed in blood–my blood.

The phoenix noticed my hesitation. "Regardless of circumstance, you will need magic to escape this forest alive. Without it, the mana beasts will sense you and rip you apart, as they once did."

I squeezed my eyes shut. "How?" I asked shakily. "How do I access my mana?"

The phoenix stared for a moment, seeming to come to a decision. "Look inwards. Focus on the power within you; it should be second nature. Your blood knows it now. Your soul knows it."

I looked up at the sky, a million questions near to bursting from my mouth. But the phoenix was right: I couldn't afford to stay in this forest, wherever it was. And if I wanted to make it out alive with this second chance of mine, I needed to use whatever magic this boy had originally.

I sat down in the grass, closing my eyes and peering 'inward' as best I could. I had never taken to meditation well, but it was the closest thing to what I guessed I needed.

I was surprised when I almost immediately latched onto something within. I couldn't see so much as feel the shape of my core; its color and purity. It was a strange sensation. A stream of mana pulsed from my core to my lower back, connecting to a rune there.

A crest, I knew from some phantom echo. A crest of Telekinesis.

The knowledge felt as if I was dredging up some old memory. It took mild effort, but I was able to press mana from my core to the rune. The experience felt natural; like I had been doing it for a long time.

I opened my eyes, focusing on a nearby pebble. With a force of will, I pushed it with my mind. The area behind the rock flared white, then the stone shot off into the woods, impacting something with a dull thud beyond my perception.

I blinked.

"Huh," I said dumbly. "That works."

"Indeed," The phoenix said from nearby, her inferno eyes tracing where the rock had shot off. "And none too soon, lesser. Dusk approaches, and mana beasts will be on the prowl in force. I suggest you move."

A wave of indignant irritation rose in my chest at being called lesser, but I was too tired to care. Carefully, I patted myself down and searched my pockets. My efforts were rewarded when I retrieved a small pouch.

Within were several coins, minted copper with a stamp of what I assumed was Agrona's head, considering the elk-like horns stretching from the figure's scalp. An aged metal key was also present, but the real gain was the crumpled piece of paper I retrieved.

Unfurling it revealed a letter written in neat letters.

To Toren Daen:

We regret to inform you that your relative, Norgan Daen, succumbed to their injuries on the 4th of October, 1736 SR. As next of kin, all of Norgan's property and personal possessions now belong to you. As is customary, Norgan's body will be released to you upon request or tended to as you see fit. We send our condolences for your loss.

Sincerely,

East Fiachra Healer's Guild.

Emotions pulsed in my gut: foreign emotions. They fluctuated with a mix of anger and despair as I read the note, pieces coming together in my mind. I grit my teeth unconsciously, feeling the emotion the previous owner of this body must have had.

I understood now, at least somewhat. My name in this world was Toren Daen, and it seemed that one of my relatives–a parent? A cousin? A sibling? Sibling felt right to me, like it fit a puzzle piece in my soul--had recently died. The despair was enough to drive this young man into a suicidal trek into these woods.

The emotions were muted; distant in a strange way, but if I pressed I could feel them more acutely.

I crumpled the piece of paper in my hand, then shoved it back into my pocket.

Toren, whoever you were, I thought solemnly, I hope you can have your own second chance at life. I am grateful that you granted me my own.

I turned to the phoenix, who waited patiently as I reviewed my inventory. "I'm ready to go," I said. I furrowed my brows. "Does the sun set in the west in this world?" I asked.

The phoenix tilted her head, her reddish hair rustling. "Yes, it does."

I took a deep breath, looking up at the sky and using the setting sun to angle myself. I didn't have an exact memory, but I had a sort of gut feeling that to get out, I needed to head north. That was another thing I was grateful to Toren for.

As I took my first few steps, I halted in my tracks. I turned slightly to the shade that followed. "What should I call you?" I asked. "It feels rude to keep calling you 'phoenix' in my head."

A slight upturn of the asura's lips was the closest thing I had seen to a smile on her face. "I am best known as Lady Dawn," she said smoothly.

The restrictive tinge to my vision wavered, then vanished as if swept away by the wind. Color returned to my perception, and the dulled sounds and scents assaulted my senses as they returned to their prior strengths. Lady Dawn was nowhere to be seen.