Chapter 1.e – The Spark
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Acceptance of the Self

Book 1: Attunement of the Hearts

Chapter 1.e - The Spark

___________________ ღ♥ღ ___________________

 Erick

¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ •.¸ ¸.• ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯

 

I crash through a thicket of thorny bushes, using my leather gauntlet to keep the worst of the brambles away from my unprotected face. Apparently the plants don’t like this plan, because the branches around me start glowing green and wrapping around my outstretched arm with an unnatural strength. Shit. 

 

I focus intently, and use some of my precious remaining energy to set my entire arm ablaze with white-hot fire. The grasping branches that aren’t immediately incinerated by the inferno sheathing my limb are forced back by the heat, and I push relentlessly forward. I hack through the remaining branches blocking my path using my arm like a machete, until I finally breach the wall of giant enchanted undergrowth and leap out into a wide circular field surrounded by more jungle.

 

The warrior woman behind me explodes out of the burning brambles a second later, her scaly dragon-born skin having kept her safe from my flames. We spare a moment to glance at each other, both of us panting, on the last dregs of our strength. But still alive, at least.

 

We’d been ambushed while trying to sleep in a secluded grove of trees a few minutes ago, and I can tell by the shouts that have been hounding us that there are at least three contestants hot on our heels. They must have formed an alliance to take us down.

 

I guess it made sense, given the stakes. Only one person was getting out of this accursed hellhole alive according to the mad God who’d trapped us here. Already half of us had been eliminated, and I doubt many of the other twenty odd souls trapped here could've survived the past five days of constant running and fighting without temporary truces forming here and there.

 

“We must go, Serana!” Brita growls at me, snapping me out of my reverie with low, raspy voice. I meet her gaze and find her fiery orange eyes bore into my soul. All of a sudden, I feel my heart pounding in my throat for a reason entirely unrelated to our life-or-death chase. 

 

“Aha, um, right!” I say as confidently as I can.

 

Without further hesitation, I take off running. I have no idea how long this girl’ll put up with me before she kills me, but I'm really hoping we have a couple more common foes to fight before our little truce breaks. 

 

The jeers from behind us are growing louder, but we’re far faster on flat land than we were in the jungle. Brita follows close behind me, and we make it almost all the way across the clearing in seconds.

 

Then I hear the sounds of our pursuers spike in volume as they break through into the clearing and spot us out in the open. I put on a burst of speed, determined to make it to cover before they can fuck with us, but Brita suddenly cries out in pain and rage. I hear a heavy thud as something crashes to the ground behind me. 

 

“I got her!” whoops a gravelly voice. It's the druid's, Slade. I skid to a stop, turn, and see Brita prone in the grass. Her legs are ensnared in vines that must have burst from the ground beneath her, and more vines are fighting to get ahold of her arms as she draws her hand axe and strikes at them.

 

Without hesitating, I rush back to her side. The vines restrain her before she can do any real damage, and she roars out a curse in draconic as I kneel beside her. The damn things are far too strong for me to pull them off manually. I glance quickly at the approaching thugs, then back to the badass woman who’d gotten me this far. There's no choice in my mind, I focus intently on the spell I need, and use the last of my spell slots to summon a flaming dagger. It cuts through the vines with ease.

 

“Get out of here, I’ll hold them back,” I tell Brita calmly. I hold up my hands before she can protest. "I'm all out of magic, I'll only slow you down from here on out. You’ve still got a chance at surviving this shit, don’t waste it!" 

 

She holds my gaze for a heartbeat, eyes filled with longing and regret. Then, she quickly turns to flee.

 

“Dude, what the fuck?” the barbarian thundering towards us grumbles.

 

I frown over at him and shrug. “I’m out of spells-” I start.

 

“Come on Erick, you can’t seriously be doing this,” the fighter rushing up on my right snaps before I‘m even done speaking.

 

I whip around to face all three of them with nothing but my flaming dagger and a healthy dose of spite. Coldly, I spit back: “I’m Serana here, assholes. And I told you, I’m not betraying her.”

 

Brita makes it into the woods behind me as my three enemies come to a stop before me, just as I’d hoped. The barbarian in the middle of the group throws his arms up and shouts into the skies: "Please tell me you're not going to allow this."

 

“Brita manages to escape as you four face off,” the skies respond with a lazy drawl, "but this was a pretty stupid last stand, Serana. You’re outnumbered and outgunned.”

 

It’s true, my spell only created the dagger for a few minutes, and I don’t even have the skills to use it. I smirk, and raise the flaming blade anyway. “I’m not exactly banking on surviving this. If Serana dies here so that Brita lives, that's good with me.”

 

"Oh come on," Bob growls, "the whole point of this is to actually duel each other. You're dying for a fake girl who would've killed you eventually anyway!"

 

"He's got a point," Slade the druid says, standing stonily a little off to my left. “You could at least try to--”

 

"I rolled a seventeen, that hit?" the fighter in the middle interrupts cooly, not bothering to acknowledge the banter. 

 

I give Derek a curt nod across the table. That bypasses Serana’s armor rating by a wide margin. Still, she manages to survive the scimitar hit to her collarbone, barely.

 

cw: death

 

 
 

Carl seems to get Derek’s idea. The barbarian player shuts up and rolls his dice. In the clearing, Bob's mace goes clean through my characters' skull before she can even try to dodge it.

 

  

end cw

 

Serana passes beyond the veil, and I am left without my mask. 

 

I retreat back to myself fully, letting my imagined world of the game fade. No point in thinking too hard about what happens in the rest of this session. 

 

I lean back in my chair, just a regular guy sitting around a cheap folding table while six other dudes move on from that scene and start hashing out which of the surviving players are going to run into each other next.

 

I tune them all out pretty quickly. I know most of them are annoyed with my choices, my style of playing dungeons and dragons. They live for the combat and the riches, but I just don't super care about any of that. I play with these guys because my best friend loves coming here and I love spending time with him. Usually I even have a good time hanging out with the nerds in this group, but not tonight. Instead, one of the two new players had started the night off by spouting sexist bullshit and immediately pissing me all the way off. The DM had shut him down quickly, but it'd been pretty clear the newcomer wasn't at all ashamed of his actions.

 

I’d done what any sensible person would've in this situation: I'd rolled up a badass sorceress, hunted down the misogynist prick, and kicked his ass in the very first round of player versus player combat. He's still off skulking with a few of the other guys who’d been knocked out of the game early. 

 

I hadn't really cared about anything in tonight's game aside from knocking that bastard out of it and giving him a little taste of my unending rage. But the dungeon master had actually managed to make Brita interesting enough for me to care about her, which is not something our DM, Brandon, does very often. So I'd stayed in the game for three more hours trying my best to keep her alive. 

 

Now freed of that responsibility, I spend the rest of the session sitting off in a corner of the room and staring at my phone. I occasionally glance over at the table to see how my best friend, Matt, is doing. His cleric girl seems to be kicking all the ass, and he even teams up with Brita at one point to take down the three other players who’d killed me. 

 

A couple of the worst guys try to give me shit for sacrificing myself for an imaginary friend during one of the pizza and drink breaks, but I shut that shit down firmly. Serana would never have left Brita to die. They gave her no other choice but to sacrifice herself, so that's exactly what she did. I didn’t ‘lose’; I told the story I wanted to tell. 

 

---

 

An hour later and we’re outside Brandon’s huge house, grouped on the driveway as some of the guys argue about where to go for an after-session dinner. There’s a fierce battle between the dude bros who want Denny’s and the clique of english majors who try to sell the group on a local taco place. 

 

I’m not participating in the discussion. I stand a few meters away, fiddling with my phone. I’m not feeling super social, and honestly I’d rather buy a ride share home than spend more time with these people tonight. Which is saying a lot, because existing near my parents sucks on the best of days.

 

“I’ve got to get home early tonight, sorry guys,” I cut in during a brief lull in the conversation, my voice carrying clearly across the cool autumn air.

 

Nobody looks surprised, and nobody objects. There’s a few muttered “Okay, see ya.”s, and then it's back to their argument.

 

But I notice Matt catching my eye and stepping away from the circle. I straighten up a little, feeling myself daring to hope that maybe I won’t have to go home alone after all.

   

“I’ve actually gotta get going too. I can drive you home if you want, Erick?” he says smoothly, quirking an eyebrow at me.

 

My heart swells with joy, though of course there’s a chorus of halfhearted complaints from the others. Matt’s one of those guys who’s able to be friends with just about anyone, even if they kinda suck as a human being. He waves off the folks asking him to stay and makes his way towards me.

 

“I’d really appreciate that Matt, if it’s not too much trouble,” I say, unable to stop myself from smiling at him.

 

He rolls his eyes as he walks over to me. “We live like five minutes away from each other, dork,” he retorts.

 

I scratch the back of my head and shrug a little awkwardly. It’s his car, and I hate imposing on others unexpectedly. Or expectedly, for that matter.

 

Matt grins a goofy grin, likely because he knows this very well. He yanks a white, blue and pink striped lanyard out of his cargo shorts’ pocket with enough force for him to let go of it and snatch the keys attached to the end of it out of the air in one smooth motion. 

 

He does shit like that a lot, and usually it leads to him flinging stuff across the room. But every now and then, he nails it, and this time it’s perfect. I whistle in appreciation, unable to stop myself from being ever so slightly impressed.

 

“Damn dude, nice!” I say.

 

He does an exaggerated bow: spreading his arms wide, bending down deeply, and hitting a button on the key fob. A little car parked a ways down the street beep!s in response, and I can’t help myself from smiling more genuinely.

 

“Our chariot awaits, oh mighty lady Serana,” he says with a theatrical flair, craning his neck slightly to look up at me with that dumb grin still on his face.

 

My eyes widen a little at the use of my character’s name. It’s dark enough that I hope he can’t see it, but even still I can’t hide the tremor in my forced laugh. My ingrained instincts are to roll with the shift in perspective, so that’s what I scramble to do.

 

“Uh, ha, right. Thanks, peasant cleric Tiana,” I reply, trying to recover my cool. I put as much haughtiness into it as I can, as Serana had been a princess before the deathmatch. It still takes a considerable act of will to calm the nerves that've been rattled by the handsome boy suavely calling me a girl’s name like that.

 

Matt holds my gaze for a few tense moments, looking entirely too observant as I struggle to hide my feelings. He doesn’t say anything though, just turns around with a flourish and starts leading the way to his car. 

 

“This way princess,” he calls over his shoulder. I can hear the smirk in his voice, and it makes me feel equal parts annoyed and pleased.

 

“Aha, right,” I reply. Weird. This is weird. I stare hard at the back of his head, trying to figure out what’s going on. I thought I'd caught a serious undercurrent to Matt’s remarks, but why would he make a point of getting into character? 

 

As I move to follow him, I find myself wondering if it’s because I'd joined him in playing a character of the opposite gender in the game tonight. I’ve done that a bunch of times since I joined this group a few months ago, though, so why would he be emphasizing it now? It’s not like it’s unusual for guys to play as girls in games like this. Why wouldn’t we? Exploring new social situations is one of the best parts of role playing!

 

Our walk to the car remains silent as my thoughts churn away. I reach the passenger side of his little silver hatchback, still lost in thought. Strangely, I feel a little distant from my body. It feels like I'm moving sluggishly as I turn and reach for the door handle. I don't pay much attention to it, instead finding myself going over all the reasons why it's completely natural for me to role play as a woman. That takes a few dedicated minutes of internal reassurances. Then I feel my fingers finally closing on the door handle: an action that should've taken a fraction of that time, what the hell?

 

I give the handle a gentle tug, and it feels like there's several seconds of lag between what I'm willing my body to do and what it's actually doing. It’s vaguely similar to being tipsy, and I assume I'm just getting hit by the exhaustion of the long day. It's as I’m in the middle of drawing breath to ask Matt to unlock the door that the strangest thing happens.

 

One moment the air is quiet, with only the sound of distant crickets chirping in the bushes, and wind whistling through the trees lining the street. But then, as if from a great distance, I hear what sounds like a crowd of people spread in a circle all around me shouting and cheering. I flinch at the sudden intrusion of noise, bending my knees a bit and looking around in confusion for the source of the yelling. I feel my anxiety spiking sharply as the jeering from the crowd gets a little louder. They’re not speaking any language I can understand, but somehow I have the sense that they’re pissed at me specifically. 

 

I whirl around, trying to catch whoever's making this racket. There’s no one but Matt and I visible on the street though, and I don’t see any lights on in the homes around us. I do see Matt looking at me with confusion, clearly puzzled by something.

 

“Do you hear that?” I ask him urgently.

 

“Hear what?” he replies, his voice loud enough that it draws my full attention back to the street. Suddenly I can hear the soft whistle of the wind and chirping of the crickets around us again, as if I’ve taken out an earbud that'd been playing the noises of the bizarre crowd. 

 

“The, well, the people cheering?” I say, taking a few steps away from the car and back onto the curb. Weirdly, it feels like the noises move with me. I take a few steps parallel to the curb along the grass, but the faint noises of the crowd don't change direction or volume in the slightest.

 

Matt’s shaking his head slightly, a hand cupped to his ear as he listens intently. “I don’t hear anything at the moment," he calls over to me, "Is it getting carried to you by the wind or something?”

 

I frown back at him, and start walking around in a wide circle back towards the car. 

 

“No idea, but it’s definitely pretty loud over here.”

 

As I focus on the sounds of the crickets chirping and my shoes hitting the grass and then the pavement, I notice the cheers growing fainter. I stop before the front of the car and close my eyes, trying to see if I can turn my attention back on to the foreign-sounding voices. 

 

They grow louder almost immediately, nearly overwhelmingly. I feel my awareness of the world around me grow distant, as if I'm only dreaming of standing before Matt’s car listening to this crazy yelling. I feel off balance, as if I’m standing on uneven ground, and it sort of feels like there’s heavy clothing weighing my body down. Strangely, I feel like I can almost understand the words being shouted at me now, at least enough to know the people are not happy with me. 

 

Then, before I can make out anything more, a burst of pain shoots through my mind. I snap back to reality as a wave of dizziness hits me, stumbling forward and putting my hands on the hood of Matt's car to steady myself. 

 

“Ow, fuck!” I exclaim, slapping a hand to my head as the deep, pulsing pain shoots through my mind a second time. What the fuck is going on?

 

“Shit! Are you ok?” Matt asks with concern. His footsteps hurry to my side.

 

My eyes are shut tight against the reverberating waves of pain knocking around my skull. It's like a mix of the dazed pain from crossing my eyes together for too long and the dull throb of a head freeze from too much ice cream. It’s sharper than either of those sensations, though, and seems to radiate out from a point somewhere deep near the front of my brain.

 

I suck in a shuddering breath, trying to push past the pulsing pain, and manage to reply, “No idea, I’ve got a hell of a headache though. Got any painkillers in your car?”

 

“Of course!” Matt says, his footsteps immediately reversing direction. I hear the driver’s side door open, followed by the sounds of him rooting through the hollow center console.

 

I steel myself further, focusing on getting myself into the car. I haltingly put one foot in front of the other as I edge around to the passenger side. I get the door open, and am preparing to step into the car just as Matt’s perking up and holding out a little white medicine bottle towards me. 

 

I sit down cautiously, take the bottle, and relax into the padded seat. I actually sigh with relief as the pain recedes slightly.

 

“Thank you, seriously,” I say to Matt. 

 

I force the child-locked lid on the pill bottle open, dump a few pills into my hand, and throw them back, dry swallowing as best I can. The taste sucks, but I’m used to ignoring it. I need my head to stop pulsing with weird shit.

 

I hear Matt getting settled into the driver’s side seat, and we both close our doors. I lay back against the seat with my eyes closed, and already I feel a little bit better.

 

Despite my better judgement, I don’t stop myself from trying to tune back in to the now-very-faint sounds of the crowd. I need to know what's wrong with me. I’m prepared for another burst of pain, but it doesn’t come. It takes significantly more concentration to hear the noises now, though the people still sound very amped up about whatever the hell has them so excited, they're just much farther away now. The headache actually starts to calm down as I concentrate on listening, the voices don’t even feel like they’re coming from the air around me anymore. It’s more like I’ve somehow mentally tuned in to a bizarre radio station by accident and I'm moving out of signal range.

 

I open my eyes after a few more moments, my brow furrowed, and glance at Matt.

 

“I think it’s gone now? But, so, you didn’t hear anything weird this whole time?” I ask him quizzically.

 

“Nope, nothing,” he confirms, shaking his head. “But you say it’s gone now?”

 

I nod my head a little, frowning. “It’s sort of there, just very faint. It doesn’t even feel like I’m hearing it the same way I’m hearing you. It’s more like... I dunno, like a random bunch of people have started yelling in my head in a language I don’t know.”

 

I put my hands in my lap, almost too embarrassed to say anything more, but I figure if there’s anyone I should tell about this, it’s Matt.

 

“It’s really weird. When I tried to focus on the noise, it got a lot louder and more detailed. Like, I could hear the words they were saying more clearly, and even though I didn’t know any of them, I felt like they were angry at me, like I’d pissed them off somehow?”

 

I shake my head, staring out the window. “It was... fucking weird as hell, man.”

 

Matt whistles softly. “Damn Erick,” he says, “that sounds trippy as fuck. How are you feeling otherwise?”

 

I shrug, running through a mental checklist of my emotions and kinesthetic senses. “As far as I can tell, I feel almost fine now. The headache’s almost gone, and the voices are fading. Even if I concentrate on it I can barely hear them. I’m mostly just freaked out right now, to be honest.”

 

I catch him looking worriedly at me as I turn back to him. “That definitely sounds scary,” he says empathetically. “I’m sorry it’s happening, or that it happened. Can you think of anything that might be causing it? Like, are you super anxious or something? I know my brain has cooked up weird shit in the past when it gets going on the panic train.”

 

I think about that for a moment, and reply, “Honestly, I feel fine.”

 

My mind zeroes in on our exchange before we got the car though. And I feel obligated to add, “Er, I guess I was a little nervous when you were calling me Serana on the way over to the car, but I got over that as soon as the noise started. It really doesn’t feel related?”

 

Matt quirks an eyebrow again, but doesn’t comment on that. Instead he asks, “Okay, anything else you can think of that might have caused this? Has it ever happened before?”

 

I can tell he’s got his problem-solving brain turned on, and to be honest, that sounds like exactly what I need right now.

 

“No, nothing I can think of. Unless someone like, drugged my drink or something?”

 

His expression darkens at that. “I’ll kick their ass all the way to the police station if that's the case.”

 

I smile slightly. “Thanks. I’m not sure though, wouldn’t a drug last longer than this did? I guess I’ll wait and see if it comes back.”

 

Matt nods. “That sounds like a good idea. Do you want me to start for home? If it’s not drugs or anything external, I bet sleep won’t hurt.”

 

“Yeah, that’s a good plan,” I agree, “Thanks again for driving me man, I really really appreciate it. And not just because I’d otherwise be going out of my fucking mind right now in the dark waiting for a Lyft to show up.”

 

Matt’s smile grows kinder, and there’s a warmth in the expression that I find extremely comforting.

 

“Of course, Er,” he says gently. “I’m honestly really happy to be here for you.”

 

Then he shifts the car into drive, and we begin the journey home.

 

 

End of

Chapter 1.e - The Spark

 

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