Arc I- Welcome Party

  Chapter 1: Coming To, In an Unfamiliar Land

  In all our studies, we have found only a few planets that contain a population that are called upon to be travelers, and none have as many travelers as Earth. Some suspect that Earth’s lack of any magic makes humans unpredictable. It is true that most humans have prodigious magic growth upon arrival, but normally, the cost to escape the magical void of Earth takes a staggering amount of magic. It would make far more sense to find travelers on planets with high concentrations of magic so they could fuel the significant cost of traveling. So why, then, are travelers not focused on planets that have high magical capacity, human populations with high mages, or human populated planets with portals not controlled by the guild?

  -Musings from a Traveler’s Guild librarian

  I wake with a start, heart beating rapidly in my chest as I take in deep, gasping breaths. The dream was so surreal and vivid. The Olympians, I think in wonder. I had read about the Olympians in grade school. They were a bunch of superpowered beings who did terrible things. The dark image of the Greek gods is not dispelled by what had happened in my dream. Most of the dream I remember had been from the point of view of Hera. Normally, I wouldn’t think much of a weird dream, but something about it feels different, almost too real. I shiver as I remember being able to almost hear her thoughts as she looked down on everyone as inferior beings needing her strong ruling hand.

  I take stock of my appearance, seeing myself covered in black ash and dirt from where I was sleeping on the ground. I try to spit as much out of my mouth as I can while brushing clumps off the side I was sleeping on. As sleep recedes from my mind like the waning tide, the memories from last night trickle back in. I snap my head down, fearing how gruesome the impaled wound will be, but when I look down at my side, I see a tender cut that is pink, not quite healed but fully closed. Not a drop of blood leaks from the wound. There isn’t even dried blood on my side. I look around me to find I’m no longer in a cabin; in fact, I’m no longer inside any building. The first thought is I was brought out into the woods and left to die. I should have died with how big the scar on my side is.

  I take in my surroundings and see a small crater in the dirt with candles and robed figures splayed out around me. The dirt crater beneath me is blackened with ash, and warmth radiates in the pit like a spa—except instead of warm mist there is the smoke of burning hair and cooked meat. Alarm cuts through my foggy mind at being surrounded by prone bodies, but none of the people are moving. It looks like they are all asleep. Mentally freaking out, my eyes catch on the one woman not cloaked like the rest. Only a few feet in front of me, the woman lies lifeless with a deep red cut across her throat.

  I see the blood dried on her neck and chest, where it poured out from her. The blood is poured into arcane lines dug in the ground in a language I don’t recognize. As my eyes scan around, I see some of the blood from the woman leading to the figures in dark robes. It’s clear that at least one of the robed members had cut her throat. The eerie scene cuts through my fugue, sobering me up, but whatever mental focus I was gathering is a poor dam to stop the rising tide of fear. A slow-dawning realization comes over me: Everyone around me is dead. There is an unnatural stillness to them I recognize as rigor mortis. Ice runs through my veins as shock sets in, and my mind struggles to come to grips with the scene around me. Before the shock can fully take over, my flight or fight instinct kicks in. I frantically look for anything I can use to defend myself should whatever killed the woman come for me.

  A glint of light reveals a steel dagger on the ground, covered in flaky, dry blood. I run over and grab it with both hands, turning as I try to see every direction and leave no room for anything to sneak up on me. If someone was willing to kill the woman or the others, there’s no telling what they would do to me while I’m naked, defenseless, and left for dead. With the dagger in hand, providing some feeling of safety, I run over to the girl and hold her neck where the wound is. Despite the cold feel of her skin telling me she’s gone, I try to shake her or get a reaction out of her. I feel her cold, stiff shoulders under my hands, but my eyes look for any sign of movement on her face.

  “Hey, hey, c’mon, wake up. Don’t let this be how you die,” I say as desperation creeps into my voice unbidden.

  Slowly, my medical knowledge and training sinks in. I know that her cold body and the massive amount of blood point to no way of recovery. Despite the logic whispering dark realities in the back of my head, I refuse to do nothing. I slow my efforts and start to think about what I should do. My brain refuses to accept reality, and I shake her more fervently. Soon, it’s hard to see, and I see water dripping down from my face onto her. I try to move her closer to shield her from the rain, but then I realize there is no rain, I’m crying. I wipe my face. Why am I crying? I didn’t even know her, but something inside me aches at seeing her dead.

  “Why are you crying?”

  The softly whispered monotone words cut through my inner turmoil, causing me to jump. I turn around to find a woman standing behind me. I grasp for my dagger and hold it out between us. She looks down emotionlessly at the dagger shaking in my fingers. The woman is in a tattered woolen clothes like the woman on the ground, but she looks to have a much paler complexion. She’s probably the sister of the girl with the slit throat, out to seek revenge. I reach out to touch her when my hand goes right through her. I look up at her and furrow my brows. I’m not sure what to expect, but she doesn’t react to my hand going through her. She patiently stares at me, waiting for a response.

  “I—well, I don’t know. Who are you?” I say while fighting my shaky voice. Keeping the dagger between us, I swallow before speaking again. “What are you?”

  She looks back without much emotion. “I don’t remember. It feels like I am dreaming and any moment I will wake up and remember who I am, but it keeps fading back into the fog.”

  “What does that mean?” I ask. She approaches, and I try to pull back the blade pointed at her so I don’t impale her, but she ignores the dagger as though it’s not even there. I look over to see her pass through the blade and kneel in front of one of the robed figures.

  “I feel I should be mad at her. I don’t know why I should, and I can’t even muster the anger.”

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  My eyes flick to the woman on the ground. I see a slender heart-shaped face, unmoving. My eyes focus back on the woman, or maybe a ghost, standing in front of me. Realizing something is wrong, I start to notice things. At a glance, she just looks like a very pale woman, but there are some details that are off. For one, she has a mark on her throat like the dead woman. On closer inspection her edges seem fuzzy, and her body has a smoky quality.

  “At least tell me your name,” I say as I continue to study the ghost woman.

  She turns to me and shrugs. “I don’t remember it.”

  “Oh,” I mumble, not sure what to say as I look down at her dead body. Maybe it’s for the best she doesn’t remember. A dagger to the throat is not the way I want to go.

  I look around the clearing at the charred and dead bodies, searching for some clues to what’s going on. It looks like a bomb has gone off, but then why was I in the middle? The ground has a crater, the kind I imagine would come after an artillery shell. Most of the bodies have suffered burns or are missing parts, but the parts I can see take me aback. The taller humanoids have pointed ears like I’ve seen on cosplayers, but when I touch them, there is no prosthetic. The smaller humanoids are green and look like images of goblins from fantasy games I’ve played on the computer.

  “Do you remember what happened here?” I ask the ghost woman, but she shakes her head no. I take another moment to look around when I have this sinking feeling that there’s something important I’m forgetting. I see a faint red flash at the corner of my vision and try to rub it away. I look around again at the fantasy creatures and wonder if this is like those stories where a person is transported to another world and gains abilities. Despite feeling foolish, I give it a try.

  I feel the hairs stand up on the back of my neck as I mutter, “Show messages.”

  A blue box appears in my vision, and my breath catches.

  The pop-up of so many windows is a visual overload. I slam my eyes shut, but the windows are still there. I wave my hands to ward them off, and they start to fade away one by one. I open my eyes again, but the windows don’t come back.

  I let out a breath of relief. “Oh, good, I’m dead. What a relief. I’m no longer in the reality I was born in. I’m in a gaming afterlife; things aren’t so bad,” I say, trying to rationalize what I’ve learned while looking around at the scene surrounding me. I just ignore the fact that I’m looking at a ghost in said afterlife. “A very real virtual reality game. If this is like a game, then there must be a menu.”

  I mentally pull each message back up, examining them one at a time. My first thought is, what kind of name is Hortus? I sound out the word a few times. It sounds similar to the word horticulture, so maybe it has something to do with plants. Not sure what else to make of the message, I dismiss it and pull up the next. A quest to get away from the dangerous situation? As if I would be doing anything else. Still, the reward line has me wondering if I’m in some kind of afterlife guidance system or something entirely different. I close the holographic window, ignoring it for now, and move through the rest of the messages.

  The “darkness affinity” is ominous, and I wonder if I awakened it by dying or by waking up in a circle surrounded by dead people. I’m not sure how to feel about that or what that says about my future. I’ve read many fantasy books that have characters who are necromancers. I have always liked the way they utilize their unique skillset to overcome problems. I have nothing against a good pyromancer solving everything with a fireball, but I always enjoyed the mental puzzle of indirect combat a bit more. As much as I enjoyed reading the stories, now that I am the necromancer, I’m unsure about delving into the power of darkness and wouldn’t mind having the ability to shoot fireballs at my enemies.

  My eyes flash to the girl on the ground, and for a second, all I can think about is how it might be me lying there soon. Despite the ominous nature of the darkness affinity, I feel a conviction form in myself: I will use everything I can to survive. Of course, I’m sure that’s what every necromancer says before taking the first steps on a path that leads to creating a horde of the undead that threatens all life. The uncertainty of having a link with the darkness affinity creates a pit in my stomach, but at least I have magic. If I can figure out how to use it.

  I don’t have any new inherent knowledge of how to use this magic or suddenly feel some new sense as the mana inside me is revealed. I know I will need to figure that out soon. While I’m excited to learn magic, I’m also a bit perplexed by the magic given to me. Necromancy is a form of magic that isn’t suited to fighting an enemy directly or protecting the caster, at least in the tabletop games I played in my childhood. Hopefully, I’ll learn more before long.

  I glance over to one of the bodies and raising my hand, I shout, “Raise dead.”

  What follows is definitely not an embarrassing ten minutes of me doing everything imaginable—dancing, singing the spell’s name, posing as an overdramatic dark lord laughing in my evilest laugh—as I command the dead to rise. Even if it was, no one living was around, so there’s no proof it ever happened. I feel extra crazy as my ghost companion looks on with growing confusion on her face. To my credit, I did ask her if she could help me or knew anything, but she shook her head no.

  After carefully contemplating the nature of death, and definitely not making a fool of myself for ten minutes and seeing no manifestation of dark powers, I let out a breath in defeat. With no other ideas about how I will activate my mana, I decide to leave it alone for now. Pausing to swallow nervously about what I’m about to say, I utter a word that will change my life forever: “Status.”