Chương 1: GB - Chapter 1: Refuse The Chain

At first, there was only blackness behind his eyelids and cold stone beneath him. It reminded Luke of waking up on the floor of his grandmother's basement after the air mattress had deflated during the night. He couldn't feel his body. Trying to open his eyes he found they wouldn't move: as if they were glued shut. No scent wafted into his nostrils, and there was a faint popping noise in his ears that gave way to a static hiss after a half-second. What is going on? Luke thought, surprised by his own calmness.

That static hiss shifted and became a high-pitched buzzing noise as though there were a fly right next to his ear. He tried to lift his arm to shoo it away. Nothing happened. His arm didn't move and the noise didn't abate. Instead, it grew in volume. Was he surrounded by a swarm of the irritating insects? The unseen cloud of noisy flies continued to circle him like they were drawn to a thrown-out pile of garbage oozing away in a dumpster. Why can't I move?

A muttering of someone older, with a raspy, smoker's voice, broke through the buzz. Despite continuing to try and open his eyes, Luke's lids did not respond to his commands. Sucking in a breath, he tried to ask for help from whoever was talking nearby, but his mouth didn't move. The muttering of someone else became words.

"Rise." Luke felt his body responding to his commands, finally, though his eyes didn't want to open up. He could sit up, and he did so. But movement felt strange: his arms were heavy, his legs were slow to respond, and as he ponderously brought himself upright, he felt something squelch along his torso. Luke cautiously moved his hands across the front of his chest and felt hard metal with cracks from impacts spiderwebbing across—and it was slick.

Some type of fluid clung between his fingers in wet strands before it sloughed off with a sudden wet squelch. Scent reached his nostrils: iron, something musty, and the damp of a place with too much moisture. It reminded Luke of the archives below city hall, when he was trying to get older maps to find proof of where the problems were. He could taste the strong smell of copper in his mouth from blood, but couldn't spit it out. His tongue didn't want to obey his brain and say, "What the hell is going on?"

He was mute, imprisoned in his body, and couldn't scream. Finally, his eyes snapped open, and he took in the horror of the place he had woken up in. The room was lit with candles, yet despite the small amount of light cast from the dim flames, he was able to take it all in perfectly. He was sitting on a pile of corpses, the flies buzzing around him landing on some and eating the dead flesh of freshly slaughtered men and women.

Luke could still see blood running in rivulets toward glowing, purple symbols marked out along the entire chamber. He wanted to puke, but his stomach didn't rumble or grumble in response. All of the corpses he looked down at were wearing metal armor with a symbol Luke somehow recognized. It began to swirl and after a few seconds of staring in disbelief, became legible. One word went through his mind. Dawnbringer. Then, he thought, Wait. What the fuck is Dawnbringer? A faction, maybe?

A golden sun, half-risen over a white field, as if a gorgeous sunrise was dawning on a new day. To his right, a pile of weapons straight out of the Middle Ages—swords, spears, poleaxes—and as he panned his gaze left, he almost jumped back. A man with wrinkled, ancient flesh, wearing deep, purple and black robes adorned with silver crosses, and whose one uncovered eye was a deep green, was right next to his face, and began to speak.

"Good. It seems to have worked." He pulled his hood up, and his scrunched brow loosened as he seemed to relax as he got up from his crouch. He winced as he did so.

"Now to see if it truly took hold." The man reached into a pocket of his robe, producing a rolled-up scroll, and unfurled it to read.

"I have a list of tasks for you to complete. Let's see here…" Luke felt a pit in his gut as he analyzed the information he had access to. He had been in the neighborhood—North Lawndale—talking to a teenager, tracking down more data points he could add to his models. Shutting his eyes, images came flashing back: they were fragmented, but enough for him to put together the pieces. A flash of a door opening, and conversation about recent going-ons in the neighborhood. A shouted warning from inside.

The sound of a slide on a weapon being racked, and then a muzzle pointed at his face. BANG! And then he woke up here. He shook his head, but it was a slow, sluggish response. I got shot in the face, he thought. All because I had a clipboard and was asking questions? He stared up at the man, who was still reading from his scroll. Then, he looked around the chamber to confirm he had, indeed, woken up on top of a pile of corpses. I need more information… but at a first glance, it seems like I woke up in a corpse pit.

I died, and I'm alive again. The hooded man let out a wracking cough, and clutched his side.

"Damn my luck." He straightened up and looked down at Luke, meeting his gaze.

"On your feet. Let's see if the binding stabilized." The words 'on your feet' resonated in Luke's chest, and he felt them vibrate through his entire being. He began to stand up, to coil his feet under him, and it seemed perfectly natural to just let his body react without willing the action. A voice pounded in Luke's head, and he put both hands to his ears as if to block the sudden sound. It was deep, ponderous, filled with authority, and riveting—a gravitas that demanded obedience.

The words were accompanied by a visual message that snapped across Luke's line of sight, blocking sight of the hooded man briefly with flowing letters of black on faint gold. [Title: Refuse the Chain.] [Trigger: An entity has attempted to instill control over you.] [Objective: Resist hostile control and remain self-willed.] [Reward: Level 2, Basic Class information, Rank increase (Aspect), System integration.] The words stopped and vanished from Luke's vision.

He was standing up fully, and lowered his hands as he looked at the hooded man. The hooded man frowned.

"I did not tell you to clutch your head. Perhaps…" he put a hand to his own temple.

"Ah, resonance signature. That makes more sense." He winced, and Luke saw redness on his left side—blood that had stained his bottom layer and looked fairly fresh, though no longer actively bleeding. It was a recent injury, and not life threatening.

"Listen to my commands," the man uttered, and Luke snapped his gaze back up to the man's eyes—not out of compulsion, but because he was talking, and Luke was raised to always make eye contact in a conversation. Plus, Luke wanted to play along until he figured out more of the situation at hand. He nodded.

"Good," the injured man said.

"First, I need to see what you can do. Activate your Arts." I have no idea what that is, Luke thought. He turned to his right, and walked to the wall. There was nothing to do art with except for blood, so he knelt, put his hand into the blood on the ground within the carved groove, and began finger-painting on the floor. His body felt heavy and sluggish, taking a half-second longer than it should have to respond to his brain's commands.

He felt like he was moving through thick molasses, and the world felt fuzzy, as his fingertips buzzed like they were on the edge of falling asleep. Just gotta play along, Luke thought. I'll figure out more info from playing along— This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"What is this?" the man said. Luke turned to look at him, and thought, What? Isn't this art? The man put a hand to his side and sucked in a sharp breath.

"No. No, that's wrong. You shouldn't be this empty." The hooded man's gaze narrowed, and he turned to his left, grabbed a sheet from his pocket, and began scanning the words. The way he leaned over and favored one side told Luke that his injury was painful, and Luke knew that if he had to come to blows with the old man, he would need to focus on that injured side to keep an advantage. Especially since his body was responding so sluggishly. Luke thought, I need more information… so I'll just keep doing what he says…

for now. The man scoffed.

"Something went wrong." He looked at Luke, panning his gaze up and down.

"Mistbrook, then. Living vessels this time. I'll just rip souls out directly." He waved his hand at Luke in a 'shoo' fashion.

"I do not need Undead Creatures who put such a strain on my ability to control them. I dismiss you from my service." Luke nodded slowly, and again the movement felt slow, as if his body was struggling to keep up with his brain. He sat down on the pile, and then leaned forward, listening intently, but pretending like he had collapsed over on himself. He was upright enough that he could move at a moment's notice, but not fully prone: the right mix of being able to portray himself as… dismissed.

But, while his body acted, his mind raced. Undead Creature? Am I… am I not a living person? Wherever I am? The man's voice echoed as he began to incant, "By grave, chain, and emptied soul—rise hollow. Rise mine." Luke stayed put, unsure what to do. Should I just look up at him? he thought. The man muttered, "Strange. I had enough mana for many, yet they do not respond… you, stand."

Luke assumed the man was talking to him, or that some external indicator of him still being conscious was present, so he stood up and looked at the only person who could give him answers. The man had pulled his hood down. He reached into his cloak pocket, and grabbed a talisman that he pulled up and shoved in front of Luke. It was a six-pointed star made of silver, with a skull in the center, with black gemstones for eyes. Luke felt his gaze drawn into it, and was transfixed, unable to rip his gaze away.

The eyes on the amulet just sucked him deep, as if he was falling into a trance to revisit old memories, or reaching a very deep state of meditation and inner peace. His body felt calmer, and the tingling he felt across his extremities vanished. The man muttered, "Just one… my mana must be quite low." He began to push the amulet to Luke's chest.

"This will nail the leash into place until I have enough power to permanently tether you." The amulet exuded some force, some type of impulse to obey, and it flared with a black-purple light that put Luke on edge. The feeling of 'obey' that washed over him felt like the moment after a school teacher had shamed him for misbehaving and he was following their instructions after the fact. He felt pressure against his temples.

An incredible headache that made him groan aloud and double over, like the worst migraine he had ever experienced.

"What?!" the Necromancer shouted, then coughed, and a globule of blood spattered onto the ground in front of Luke's swimming vision. Pain pounded through Luke's skull as the pressure grew even greater. He had never dealt with agony like this. He sucked in a sharp breath and pleaded, his voice finally able to escape dead lips.

"God—Make this stop!" No one listened, or if they were listening, they chose not to hear him, as the pain continued onward. He'd dealt with migraines before, debilitating ones that kept him shut up indoors with a white noise machine on to deal with the symptoms. But this was easily twice as potent as that. The authoritative voice from earlier pounded through the pain. [The soul is sacred. Do not let him control yours.] Luke felt a coolness spread from the center of his forehead.

It slowly trickled out, almost like he had dunked his head in ice cold water and it was slowly permeating through his brain like a porous sponge. The headache faded and was replaced with crystalline clarity: a full understanding of his situation. This bastard was trying to control him. Luke had spent years watching systems grind people into numbers as commands and orders came down from people who would never see the results of their actions.

He had witnessed people across the socio-economic spectrum obliterated by an unfeeling machine that mushed them into a paste of human misery and suffering—lost hopes and forgotten dreams dashed before they ever had a chance to even start on the path of fruition. Luke had escaped a life that would've led to him being a statistic, and he wouldn't let it happen here. The old man took a few steps back, huffing out.

"No—down. Down!" [Title: Refuse the Chain.] [Quest Completed!] ["Chains could not bind a will returned through Death."] [Reward Granted! Your reward is suppressed until you are no longer threatened.] [Sub-Quest granted - Title: End the Desecrator.] Something in Luke's body told him, screamed at him, to kill this man, and the words that flashed into his vision that declared he was being threatened were just extra fuel to the fire.

Luke's body moved with something like muscle memory or instinct that didn't belong to him, as the movements were unlike anything he had done before. He took a swift, slide-step forward, toward the old man, who had swept his hood back. Luke saw the old man's hands begin to glow with a black-hued-purple light. Something in his body urged him to act quicker, and Luke flung himself forward, knowing that whatever this hooded figure was about to do was going to be extremely painful—it was a gut reaction.

He closed the three-foot gap between the two of them and swung with a haymaker that the man ducked. Luke went off-balance from the wild swing and barely recovered his footing before the hooded villain wheeled around. That black glow grew brighter, and elongated into a point that stabbed forward. Luke's breath caught in his throat as he felt a cold burn spread through the spot he had been stabbed—right in the guts. Looking down, he saw the spike of black, sparkling energy sticking out of him.

Oddly enough, the pain wasn't immense—almost like a stomach ache—and that feeling of touching raw skin to ice faded away. His body reacted, grabbing the hooded man's extended arm, and pulled him closer—it was a stiff movement, and Luke could feel how slow he was to respond—but he was strong. The robed man's injury must have made him quite weak, as he was yanked forward, and Luke's right hand clumsily shot out, fingers digging into the wound.

The old man didn't get a chance to recover from the grapple, and he was paralyzed by pain as Luke's fingers found ribs to latch onto and use for leverage. As if by reflex or the body's natural responses, Luke hip-threw the man onto the ground with a tremendous smack. Something else went crack, and Luke knew he broke some fragile bones—perhaps something in the spine.

His right hand came away with a rib that had broken off from the rest of the cage, and a burst of blood accompanied Luke's ripping motion as he flung the bone aside. The old man's breath exploded out of his lungs, and Luke got on top of him, pinned him with his body weight, and moved his hands up to the neck. He was able to encircle the neck with his fingers.

The dying man's other eye was exposed, and Luke saw an empty socket and what appeared to be chunks of flesh hanging loose—tangles of skin hanging down and splotchy in some places. He had a terrified look on his face. [Fulfill the Quest.] Another black spike materialized in the man's hand and stabbed into Luke's left side, digging deep. Once more, Luke could feel the pain, but it spread slowly and then distilled down to a throb.

It didn't feel like a knife wound—he'd been stabbed before so he knew that sensation—but again, like the one that was shoved into his guts, it was like a deep ache. The Necromancer's remaining eye bulged, and he shoved the amulet into Luke's chest. Luke felt his entire body lock up, and that incredible calmness from earlier washed over him. His hands let loose for a split-second, and the hooded man coughed out, "Be still!"

The words were like an axe, and the wood being split was Luke's willpower as the utterances cut deep into his thoughts. His hands loosened a little bit more—still around the neck, but not squeezing. His body was, of its own volition, refusing to let go farther than that. The robed man looked panicked as Luke stayed put, there, stock-still on top of him. Luke felt his fingers begin to open against his will, and his mouth began to open as he inhaled.

The word "Yes" was on the tip of his tongue, and he was about to say it, but his mind broke through the silence, and his will to not just be another number drove him to push back, bite down the word, and let his body's muscle memory guide him. His grip tightened down. He squeezed, the metal gauntlets on his hands cutting into the old man's skin.

The flesh felt malleable and there was some resistance from the trachea itself, yet Luke's fingers dug in nonetheless, probing into the muscle and finding purchase along the harder flesh beneath the topmost layer and muscle. The old man writhed against Luke's grip, but couldn't do anything against him. A fist came weakly slamming up into Luke's chin, but he barely registered the hit—whether from the old man's frailty, injury, or the life leaving him—Luke didn't really care.

Again, as if his body wasn't fully under his control, or responding to muscle memory, Luke cranked the neck sideways, and with a tremendous snap, the spine was wrenched to an unnatural angle, and the body stilled. Words echoed through Luke's head as he let go, and they filled his vision once more. [Title: End the Desecrator.] [Quest Completed!] ["Souls shouldn't be meddled with."] [Reward Granted!]