I was driving home on what the rest of the world would come to call Eldritch Night - the Night of Terrors. It began peaceful enough, the heat of day gradually lessening into a cool spring night. The backroad and the empty fields around me were illuminated by a full moon in an empty sky. I loved these long drives at night. I didn’t have to worry about studying, or what the newest gossip was. My phone was turned off and placed in the seat behind me. No distractions, it was just me and the road.

That peace didn’t last long. I looked up at what appeared to be a shooting star that was gradually getting bigger and brighter as it descended, shading my eyes with my hand as the light became more intense.

The sky shattered like a kaleidoscope on fire, lighting up the dark road ahead of me with intermittent flashes of golds, purples, and reds. The strobing light gave brief flashes of a mass of churning darkness that consumed most of the night sky. It was both beautiful and terrifying. Tendrils spun out from the center of the darkness, each one dancing and writhing independently of each other, with no apparent pattern. The dance of shadows was mesmerizing, and it burned itself into my mind in a way I can never cleanse. The darkness spun, as it still does in my dreams, a wreath of death upon the sky.

I stared up, transfixed, and the darkness gazed back. Folds of shadow twisted and retreated to reveal an eye - massive and red, large and bright as the burning sun. The world froze, and I believe I had lost my mind for a moment. To describe what I saw as I gazed into that eye would be to put a name to the unnamable. My mind retreated in defense as I tried to comprehend the horror and the images that swam before me.

I came to as the sky lit up once more, this time in brilliant white and gold as bright as day. The sudden change in light was blinding, which is why I didn’t immediately notice the world literally coming apart around me. Asphalt and gravel swirled around my truck as the road crumbled beneath me, and yet I kept moving forward, suspended by some invisible force. In the distance I could see trees and rocks floating upwards, it was as if gravity itself had joined the madness and rebelled.

I never really heard the crash, I felt it like a wave of force moving through me, pulverizing everything as it went. My bones vibrated and were pushed out of place making room for my organs and limbs as they repositioned themselves. It should have been painful, but it felt as if it was happening to someone else. Like a dream, or a memory played back in slow motion.

I could hear screams, probably my own, but they were muffled and sounded far away as if I was underwater and the voice was coming from the surface. I tried to reach out to grab onto something, anything, but all I could find was smoke, acrid, and bitter, as it forced its way into my lungs and eyes. I remember the heat and the quiet beauty of the flames as they danced around me. Inch by inch, in a painful, agonizingly slow march they crawled ever closer.

***

Congratulations!!

“…The fuck,” I summarized. I awoke to a voice in my head and a translucent screen that was visible even with my eyes closed.

His hunger knows no bounds, and you have awoken him, but fear not! The Old One, Crimson Hunter of the Void, has been delayed! Your world has been selected by the Hegemony of Worlds and has been accepted as a provisional Tier 4 Planet. Your world, and you with it, will be given the opportunity to grow and develop to meet the coming challenges.

For more information, please think “menu” and then select “guide.” Good luck.

System loading…. Basic stats package prepared! “Stats” can be viewed by thinking "stats" or “status” at any time.

Augustus Finn

Class: N/A

Level: 1

Health: 18

Stamina: 16

Mana: 19

Vitality: 10

Endurance: 6

Strength: 8

Agility: 6

Reaction: 6

Intelligence: 11

Will: 8

Perception: 10

Focus: 5

P. Resist: 1

M. Resist: 1

Congratulations! You met your new life on the brink of life and death, and yet you persevered through sheer determination and adaptability. New feat(s) unlocked – Reactive Adaptability Ⓛ! All resistances +1!

Congratulations! You have unlocked your first feat! Random common skill(s) unlocked –

Arcane bolt © 0/10!

Congratulations! You have entered your first dungeon!! Every adventure begins with a single step, and this is yours. As a Dungeon Delver ® you have earned the right to choose a class. +1 unallocated stat(s) per level!!

You currently have three (3) unallocated stats.

I stared blankly at the floating screen in front of me, before looking down to find that I was lying in a puddle of my own blood. My body, however, was surprisingly intact. I even felt good. Really good, like I could deadlift a truck or deflect bullets with my chest. My own truck, however, was gone, or at least mostly gone. The bed and the driver's side of the cab were missing, leaving only the passenger seat and a few pieces of twisted steel that must have once been part of the frame. There was no trace of the rest of the wreckage, or the flames and smoke I remembered from before passing out.

I stared mournfully for a moment at what remained of the sky-blue pickup, before noticing that folded neatly and placed perfectly in the center of the remaining chair was the only other thing that my father had left me, an old and beat-up bombers jacket. The image of a Valkyrie holding a spear above a burning biplane and a golden roman numeral “XIII” adorned the back of the otherwise faded brown of the leather jacket. I picked it in ash stained hands and for a moment the memories distracted me from my reality, but I was quickly brought back as panic set in.

“..Shit, where am I,” I said. “Hello, is anyone there?” The echoes drew my attention to the fact that I was no longer outside, but in in a cavern with a domed ceiling that was almost impossible high. I could barely make out curved, smooth walls to my left, but nothing but darkness met me as I turned to look in all other directions. In the distance, I could hear flowing water, as well as the smell of earth and something faint and musky. Above me was a canopy awash in faint green and blues reminiscent of bioluminescence, providing faint illumination for the cavern.

“Hello,” I shouted again. I tried to listen for a reply, or for any signs of life around me, but all I could hear was the rhythmic pumping of my blood in a steady drumming that drowned out all else. I continued to scream louder even as my throat grew tight and my voice hoarse. I went on like that for at least the next thirty seconds, but no one answered.

I stopped and tried to address my situation. I took stock of my surroundings and options to try to quiet my frenzied mind. I was alone, underground and surrounded by darkness following what I hoped were hallucinations brought on by a lifetime of bad choices, and too little sleep. Those messages couldn't be real, and that thing I saw in the sky...

I had to treat it as real, no matter how dreamlike it felt. I had to find someone, hopefully someone friendly, who knew what was going on.

The first thing I needed, however, was to find food, water, and shelter, so I moved towards the sound of flowing water. The faint green light only allowed me to see a few feet, no more than a meter, in front of myself, so I moved slowly and carefully. After nearly an hour I couldn’t see anything around me, the wall of the cavern had long since disappeared into the darkness, and the sounds of water seemed no closer than before. I stopped and looked around, finding nothing but the cold smooth stone beneath my feet. At that moment a crazy idea took me, and for the first time I thought that everything that happened to me might be real. I might not be crazy. The idea was too stupid, but I tried it anyway. For science.

“Arcane Bolt,” I cried out with anticipation as I pointed forward with my left hand. I didn’t expect it to work, but I had to test it at some point.

A small sphere, a barely visible wisp of blue light, shot out from my outstretched hand and traveled into the darkness leaving behind a faint glowing trail that quickly dissipated into the smell of ozone. It did nothing to alleviate the gloom, but I hardly noticed as my mouth literally fell open in shock. “Magic, I did fucking magic.” My grin was almost painful as I yelled out three more times.

The next two arcane bolts went off perfectly, but the third fizzled into sparks on my fingers tips.

“Arcane bolt!” I cried out a fourth time, but nothing happened. I didn’t even get sparks that time, just nothing. “Damn. Arcane bolt!” I shouted four more times. Still no reaction.

“Dammit,” I yelled. I began focusing on the word “menu” to try to get a look at this “guide”, but I was distracted by the clicking sound of carapace on hard stone. Something was there. The air around me seemed a little bit cooler, and the skin on my arm prickled as my hairs rose. I couldn’t see them, but I could feel something watching me. The shadows around me felt darker and less empty. I could sense movement out of the corner of my eyes, but when I swung around nothing was there.

“Hello,” I called once more. “Is anybody...,” but the air was knocked out of me before I could finish.

A crushing weight forced me to the ground. Hairy limbs, many, many limbs, wrapped around me. The embrace pulled me closer to a pair of extremely large fangs on a face that seemed to be made entirely of eyes. Large orbs of reflective black showed me my own distorted face as the fangs sank deep into my shoulder. The pain was intense, but I was unable to scream as my body stiffened and contorted. I could taste copper in my mouth as the metallic smell of blood mixed with burning flesh flooded my senses. My limbs went numb as I quickly began to lose consciousness.