I'm going to die.
Again.
Fuck!
Such thoughts raced through his mind as he battled against the currents.
The unyielding strength of the darkness surging around him.
It wasn't water.
Caedren had assumed it was liquid because of the way it flowed.
But water should've sipped through his nostrils and clogged his lungs already.
Water would've pricked his eyes and pressed against his skin.
He should be drowning right about now.
Caedren didn't even gasp for breath.
His vision didn't burn either.
The darkness was potent but unlike any sort of matter he was familiar with.
Not air nor water.
Just an existence afforded by the canals of a Disos well alone.
đź‘˝
[Disos Well]
Ludos: Unknown
Rank: Unknown
Beasts: Unknown
đź‘˝
Now that was odd.
Either the system didn't know the rank of the well and beasts present here or the information was hidden to Caedren.
But that didn't change the facts.
The terrible facts.
He'd been consumed by a Disos well.
That had never happened before.
The beasts always broke out of the wells to do their dirty business.
No spirit walker needed to go knocking on doors to start a fight.
Until Caedren. Not that he'd had a choice on the matter.
The Disos well took him by surprise and not the other way round.
He felt weightless.
And disoriented thanks to the nature of the environment.
The darkness made sure he didn't know if he was still falling or motionless…
A harrowing scream tore through the gloom.
Caedren's heart ceased. He immediately summoned his weapon.
The sword felt like the only real thing around him. His legs were numb, his breathing hard as he squinted into the darkness.
Cold breath caressed the back of his neck. A sizzling presence enveloped his entire body with a sudden heat.
He whirled around, sword lifted at the ready to behead the culprit.
He found nothing but emptiness.
With a crackle of taunting laughter, something brushed his shoulders.
Again, he swept the sword around but met no resistance.
His frustration spiked.
"Show yourself, SOB!"
His voice sounded weak even to his own ears.
More mocking giggling in the darkness.
But no matter how much he squinted he couldn't make out any shapes…
"There once was a boy born to a world far and away. No child could be born with a worse fate. Mother fled, father abandoned him to the streets. A pathetic soul at best."
Caedren trembled from a mixture of fear and disdain.
He'd died and left that sorry life behind. He wouldn't let anyone, beast or being, take him down that lonely road again.
His teeth gritted. "Don't sound so high and mighty when you can't even be brave enough to show yourself."
A deep chuckle…snigger from somewhere. "You struggled, stived to survive. You stole, cheated, weaped in secret, prayed to unknown gods, and yet still failed. Miserably."
Caedren frowned, his mind whirring around.
The voice, deep and manipulative as it was, sounded oddly familiar. Like something he'd heard very recently.
Chilly breath tickled the nape of his neck as the voice whispered in his ear.
"Misery suits you, Zukko."
Caedren's eyes went wide as the memory flooded in.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++
On the night of his twenty fifth birthday, just a few minutes after midnight, he pushed through the glass doors of a pub and staggered into the street.
Drunk and high from cheap wine he'd spent the last of his pennies on.
His head was fuzzy, his eyes clouded.
Why am I even alive, he thought.
Light flared over the asphalt as the night sky lit up.
Over a million pieces of burning rocks each bigger than a mountain hurtled towards earth.
Zukko stared up at them mesmerized.
He'd heard news about an asteroid soaring too close to home for comfort.
But, like everyone else, thought nothing of it.
Those things never hit, everyone agreed.
Now here it was.
An apocalyptic level catastrophe no one had planned for.
The end of the world. The end of his miserable life.
Maniacal laughter poured from his chest, echoing through the eerily empty void.
"Fuck you, Earth. Fuck You!"
He opened his arms to embrace the fury of space.
"You're a strange character."
Zukko whipped around to see a smiling man behind him.
"What?"
Nothing visibly odd about the man.
Tailored black suit, tie unknotted around his neck, black shadows under his penetrating eyes.
Just any other man in his early forties.
He could pass for an accountant or CEO in training.
The man motioned to the sky.
A frozen sky, the burning rocks caught in flight, as if a great pause button had been pressed.
"In all my centuries I've never encountered anyone so happy about the end of the world. So ready for death."
A foreboding aura oozed off the man.
It sent needles crawling down Zukko's spine.
"Who are you?"
Had the man been on the street the entire time?
Zukko never saw anyone.
Where did he come from?
He appeared from thin air. Out of nowhere.
The man shrugged, a wry smile over his face.
"I've been so many things. I've been called many names. I don't have any at the moment."
Zukko's fuzzy brain couldn't wrap such words with understanding.
Even the air around him felt still.
The sky, the noise of life, all of them frozen.
Had the strange man stopped time?
The man scoffed, as if reading his thoughts.
"Time is a fickle thing. It either exists or it doesn't. Nothing special about it."
Zukko shook his head.
Could he be so drunk he was seeing things?
Hallucinating.
Yes, that sounded right.
He'd had three bottles of beer.
Was that enough to cause a blackout?
The man's face hardened.
"Your world is about to peak. You wait for the end like a starving man. You think death is the ultimate ticket to peace?"
"Well, it's better than my terrible life. Nothing can be worse than what I'm living."
"You think you have it tough, don't you?"
Zukko's jaws flexed. "I've hovered on the sharp edge of a knife right from the moment I popped out from my mother's womb. I'd rather not have been born."
His voice cracked, but he continued his rant.
"The world ending is the best thing that has ever happened to me. Let it burn!"
The man's eyes glinted with mischief as he drew closer.
Zukko flinched as if slapped.
The man's presence was overwhelming in a discomforting way.
"Cherish your last breath, Zukko. From here all bets are off. No rules. No boundaries. It's kill or be killed."
Nothing minutely warm remained on the man's face now.
"You, my friend, have been marked for misery. Misery worse than you could ever imagine."
Cold wind rushed against Zukko as time restarted.
He blinked once and the street was empty.
What just happened?
He got not even a second to ponder about it.
The lightspeed rocks touched down almost at the same time at different parts of the planet.
It released great shockwaves of raw energy and fire everywhere.
The poles shattered, the core splintered, and earth broke apart in a burst of fiery inferno.
Nothing survived.
+++++++++++++++++++
Caedren gasped, a strangled scream escaping his lips as he relived the moment of his death.
Molten magma surging from the Earth's core as the poles splintered, the street rippling and crumbling like troubled waters, skyscrapers toppling over like Lego blocks.
An asteroid debris crashing down right ahead of him. The building there raining down over his head. Raging fire. Terrible pain. Darkness.
Caedren's eyes flew open and he stumbled back.
Stumbled?
He now stood on solid ground. On a familiar street…the place where he'd died.
But the buildings, the cars, everything was gone.
Just icy wind prickling his skin, the earth under his feet, and the stretch of a starless night sky remained.
And the manly silhouette about ten feet behind him.
He took a tentative step towards it. "Who are you? Why are you doing this to me?"
The silhouette had no features. No face, no skin, nothing. It existed as a pocket of darkness in a manly shape.
A shadow about seven feet tall, broad shouldered and long limbed. The space for arms looked huge and sturdy. Muscular.
When it spoke, the voice was even deeper and more menacing but similar to that of the strange man even still.
"You asked for it."
Caedren flinched. "I wanted the end. Not…this."
The silhouette remained silent.
Caedren cocked his head, considering it from a different angle.
"Are you the Monarch?"