Never Insult the Healer

[1] [Backstory Archive 1 - The Game Begins]

Dreams are a funny thing.

Strange concoctions of memory layered upon layer, unbound by the rules of the waking world. A true menagerie of the mind.

On rare occasions, one might dream too deeply and the conscious mind finds itself present and believing the world it perceives is the true one. Who is to say it isn't?

I was having one such dream, where the borders of reality and fiction blurred. I woke slowly, my mind muddling through the fog of the fragmented reality it had now realized was false. And when my eyes finally opened, I wasn't sure the world in front of me wasn't also a part of the dream.

Who would believe this situation to be anything but a dream?

The first thing to register is the noise, sounds of confusion and escalating alarm. The second is the weird sense of vertigo, heartbeat pounding in my ears. I stumble, or rather my body tries to. But neither my legs nor my arms move. Then comes the panic, snapping me awake as adrenaline forces its way through my veins.

I was standing, straight and still as a board. Bound by some unknown force. My head can move, so I can scan the area, but no other part of me would budge an inch no matter how much I strain my muscles. Nothing I could see was binding me, no ropes or tape, but I was immobile, frozen in space.

I've been in enough rough situations in the past to know something very not good is happening, but as to what exact flavor of "not good" I'm still unsure. Moving my attention outward, I scan the nearby area, trying to find clues or a reason for what was happening to me.

It is a strange cavernous space. Smooth well-polished dark gray stone under my feet and roughhewn walls around me. Each wall was roughly 200 feet away from where I'm placed, somewhere roughly in the middle of the room. Scattered around in seemingly no discernable pattern, are broken pieces of furniture of all different designs and materials, along with what appeared to be a hoarders' collection of strange and random items. Weapons are the overwhelming majority, but most are rusted, broken, or visibly used. Armor, shields, and racks of clothing line the walls in age-worn wooden shelves and cabinets. Hanging from the ceiling is an equally strange collection of chandeliers all alight with burning mismatched colored wax candles. I'm so confused by the bizarreness of the situation that I almost miss it, but my eyes find a strange discoloration on the floor; my heart sinks, blood starting to race. I've been in enough altercations to know what dried blood looks like, and there is a noticeable stain of dark brown on the floor.

Forcing myself away, I focus instead on the other people in the room. All of them are also unnaturally stiff, and there seemed to be no obvious rhyme or reason to the gathered. There was an older gentleman to my left dressed in an off-white fuzzy robe with thin wire frame glasses perched on his large nose. He was snoring softly, eyes shut and body lax, somehow asleep while standing up. To my right is a little boy who couldn't have been in high school yet, dressed like it was his first day of school, with a pressed polo and a stuffed full backpack. The poor kid was glancing around wildly, fear clear in his eyes. My heart lurched, he reminded me of my younger brother, Benjamin, who I had just dropped off at school for his first day of- Wait.

Quickly I glance around, searching the crowd for a familiar face. I don't remember anything after dropping Benjamin off, but I know I wasn't alone in the car. Where is Zeke? The panic was rising higher in my throat threatening to cut my air if I didn't calm down, but how could I, Zeke was missing, how could I not panic? Zeke my brother, my other half, my twin was-

"Uh, lady?"

Immediately my attention shifts to the right, where the kid looks equally startled by the sound of his voice, face scrunched in shock, before he shakes himself out of it and gives me a weird stare, concern poorly hidden, "are-uh-are you okay?"