Rise of Tempest Merlin

Chapter 3

I wake as if it's an emergency, as if sleeping had become a dangerous thing. My heart beats fast and there is a buzzing in my brain and together they are as panic with jump-leads. Only now my brain is as a flat battery, the exertions of the night being a marathon of erratic problem-solving. And so this day will pass as if I am hungover, not from drink, but from the nightmares that demand solutions.

As my eyes open my limbs flex in shock. There is a liquid in them, around my entire body too. Tubes run up each nostril and all that meets my skin is the warm glass that surrounds. There is binding on my limbs and around my neck. Without a conscious thought, a choice, my body does what any must to survive. Every muscle is stronger than it should ever be and there is no mental restraint on the force I can use. Snapped bones are preferable to death. In this way my captors have underestimated my strength. The liquid rushes out of the newly shattered glass and I step out, bindings in place but their anchor points free.

I want to stand but for the moment my legs have given way to gravity, shaky, weak. The retching goes on for so long I lose track of time and then I realize what the stench is. This isn't water at all, it's a preservative of some kind. I blink, blurriness fading, surroundings more crisp. The coldness of the air is more apparent, stealing the warmth given to me by the foul concoction that has swept over the grey floor. I want to use all my senses, get a feel for whatever this is, but the foul odour dominates the air and the chill freezes my skin and the little brain power I can muster.

“Finally!!! At last the prodigal one is awake,” comes a snippy voice from my one side. From which side I am not even aware of that. Pain is shooting from every single nerve endings and bundles which are covering all my body. I raise my head weakly and see a girl in a weird costume and my brain could not take any more and I lost consciousness again.

Eyes raw and blind, a warmth weighed on her chest, her lungs buttery soft. “Father, stay.” How soft and meaningless her voice seemed now. Without the reins, without direction, she was a ghost. But his voice was silver, a flame of white and frost. She left her body to follow, left that lifeless, coarse flesh to rot as it may, but something snagged. A searing pain gripped her throat, ripped her from the light she so desperately craved and wrenched her back into the distortion of an eternal night. A lifeline was not to be toiled with. Soul was bound to body as long as the person may live. She could only ever listen, watch sometimes depending on the strength she could occasionally muster to pull on her leash. Nowadays, that leash had grown tighter, stricter, dragging her toward a darkness she could no longer deny was just the blank space behind her eyes. And so she would do as her father had told. Sleep and wait.

And suddenly I was up and awake and I realized that I was sitting up. The scream that I wanted to cry out of joy gurgled back in my throat when I saw the group of humanoid creatures standing in front of me.

“You really think that she is the one that we have been waiting for? That she is the one who is going to lead us to battle and let us end these quests?” asked another voice. It was a huge male figure looking like a brute only with a handsome baby like face and clear bright cerulean eyes.

“Shhhshsh…duffer…she can listen…she is awake now,” came another voice. It had a slight twang to its voice making me feel that I was listening to someone from New Orleans speak English. I raised my head to look at them.

“Where am I?” I asked and I was damn scared.

“You have been awakened from Cryogenic Chamber suddenly. We have been waiting for so long for you to wake up that I don’t even know what year this is,” said another man. He had a huge axe slung to his back and he was wearing loin-cloth with a golden sash covering his waist. It was like he was wearing the costume of an erstwhile Greek warrior and it seemed like I was speaking to a cartoon figure.

“Please tell me that I am dead and this is all just nothing more than hallucination before I go to Heaven!” I cried and another woman came forwards. She had white hair and her eyes were a shade of glacial blue and she stared at me with such intensity that I shivered inside.

“You are inside a game, zolotse,” she said. She was Russian, no doubts about that.

“What game? I mean, I am not playing with any remote and neither I can see any screens here. All I can see are cartoon figures so I am pretty sure that I have lost all my marbles,” I said and then suddenly I realized that I was feeling the pain all over my body. But that was not possible. I was a quadriplegic, I should not be able to feel anything below my chest.

“Grecian Quests,” said the blue-eyed boy. I looked at him in confusion and he replied with a sigh,” It is the game that we are Avatars in. I am Creontiades. It is the name of my Avatar, but I like it as well, so I am keeping it.”

“But I was not even playing that game when….” And that is when it all started coming back to me. Those bastards!!! I immediately stood up and almost stumbled back down,” Be steady now, mi Hermosa,” said the girl whose skin was mocha brown and her eyes were a warm dark black which made her look so beautiful.

“What is your name?” I asked.

“My name is Lilith, and so is my character’s name. It was this game, where I have been sucked here and I am trying to learn the ways of the game. It was told in the rules that until all the characters, I mean, Avatars, come alive we would never be able to begin playing. And now you are here, you were the one we were waiting for,” said Lilith and I nodded. It did not make a lot of sense but at this moment not a great many things really did.

“The daylight had dwindled to a barely perceptible lightening of the gloom. Each wall of concrete was identical to the next without an identifying marker of any kind. Standing in what could be any part of the labyrinth, Jasper realized his folly. He had been so certain he could do better than George, that he would be in and out in half a day or less. There was no reason that left would be better than right, or ahead better than doubling back. He considered sitting until the dawn, but who knows what would come when he was made blind by the night. And he had died in that labyrinth. It is the labyrinth created by Daedalus himself,” said Volga, who was clearly describing something which had already happened earlier.

It was just another way of describing

“How long have you been all here?” I asked.

“That is not thee important part. The important part is what is your name and who are you and why are you wearing the clothes of a maid in a Quest game,” said Volga in her Russian voice. She was clearly the logical one of the group and I sighed,” You are ones who keep on telling me that you were all waiting for me so I am sure I shall be good for something, washing your clothes or polishing your weapons!!”

“You are kidding right?” asked a voice from one corner. I had not noticed him until now.

He had the kind of face that stopped you in your tracks. I guess he must get used to that, the sudden pause in a person's natural expression when they looked his way followed by overcompensating with a nonchalant gaze and a weak smile. Of course the blush that accompanied it was a dead give-away. It didn't help that he was so modest with it, it would make the girls fall for him all the more. I stared at him like he was an animal at the zoo which had been newly put on display.

“I am not kidding. This is the first time in my entire life that I have been able to move myself and use my limbs successfully only to come to know that I am in a game. I just want to get out of here!” I exclaimed looking at him.

“Well too bad. We all do, freakshow. But until we finish the game none of us can leave,” he said and the small glimmer of hope that I had blooming in my chest just went out like that.