[Ciriodhul]

Mood Music

Frowin awoke. His head felt heavy. He was lying flat on the ground. Instinctively he used his arms to lift his upper body up from the ground, only to notice long white hair to both sides of his head. Frowin paused for a moment. He was pretty sure that his hair had been short the last time he checked. Had he been in a coma for a long enough time, so that his hair had grown in the meantime? That didn’t make sense. If that were the case he would most certainly be dead. He lifted his upper body up further, until it was in an upright position, while his lower body knelt on the ground. He looked around, his eyes painfully adjusting to the brightness of a sunny day. He was kneeling on a street surrounded by old slightly overgrown buildings. And there were people. Quite a lot of people were sitting, standing up or still lying on the ground. Frowin closed his eyes and opened them again. Neither did the scenery change nor did the people vanish. There were only two possible explanations for this: He either suffered from long-term memory loss or he had been teleported in some way. The last thing he could remember was him sitting on his desk in front of his computer and trying to play a certain massive-multiplayer online game for the first time. The disorientation made it difficult for Frowin to focus on when exactly his memory ended. Logging his avatar in? He wasn’t sure. He took another look around and precisely observed his surroundings this time. His perception slowly widened and he slowly began to hear voices talking, crying and even screaming. The atmosphere was tense. Was everyone in the same situation? To his right a tall man with pointed ears spoke to a shorter woman, whose ears were not only pointed but of another species altogether. “Rabbit ears on a human?”, Frowin thought confused. He needed more information. To his left, a few meters away from him, he spotted another three people. The first of them looked like a male demon, the second like a female angel and the third like a big strong feathered man. They were talking to each other as well. All of the five people in his vicinity wore some sort of similar and plain fantasy-like clothing. Although he could not know for certain yet, all evidence pointed towards his latter explanation. Frowin had been teleported. He had been teleported into the game he had been trying to play. “Long hair. Of course.” Even though he had modeled his avatar after himself, Ciriodhul had long white hair instead of Frowin’s short white hair. The people around him resembled some of the different races he had read about before buying the game: On his right were a Faunri and an Alv, on his left an Antas, an Enoch and a different kind of Faunri.

Frowin stood up from his kneeling position and knocked off the dry dirt from the long novice robe he was wearing. This was bad. This was very bad. He could safely conclude that the people around him shared his own fate in that they had been players of this game, which meant that everyone was equally terrified. If only one of his old friends would be here. Friedrich would have immediately come up with a plan, Gottfried might have broken out into tears but still would have cheered everyone up at the same time somehow, Karlina would have defied this situation with her unmatched inner strength and Sola, Sola would have not even batted an eye as unconcerned as she was about reality in general. However, there was only a slim chance of meeting them here. He had lost contact shortly after they had graduated school, which also was the reason he was here know. Loneliness had driven him to try out an MMORPG to socialize and even find friends. Obviously that was out of the question for the time being. This was not time for socializing and making friends. Nobody wanted to be bothered by a stranger in this sort of situation. As if the game world wanted to immediately confirm his conclusions, the dampened voice of a woman made its way from inside a close building to Frowin’s ears: “Go away! No one’s here. Just move on! Please go away!” Two desperate looking men were standing in front of its door and seemingly tried to get into the building for some odd reason. Maybe they wanted to find shelter from the chaos unfolding on the streets. After a brief moment they acknowledged the woman’s plea, though, and went to another building instead.

Frowin started moving. He had to get away from the crowd somehow. There were a lot of things he had to confirm and all these people around him made it almost impossible to catch a clear thought. He followed the street into one direction, got off it and found himself to his own dismay on a big forum, which was even more filled with players than the street he had left. Looking around he recognized this place. This was the Forum Romanum, albeit in a different state compared to the one from the real world. Intrigued Frowin made the decision to cross it and find a lonelier place only behind it. So he was truly in Romalia, the starting city of Gaia Reborn’s new expansion. Making his way to the crowd one particular group caught his eye from afar. A big human man and an almost child-like fox Faunri stood in front of an equally big human woman in company of an aquatic looking Faunri. Albeit the chaos around them, they seemed calm, to an extent even joyful in a way. For a moment the idea of speaking with them crossed Frowin’s mind. Had he been wrong with his earlier assessment? Did some people actually want to speak with strangers? Was it okay for him to burden them with his own existence? His mind was a mess. In the end he reluctantly decided to keep following his previous plan: “I am of no use right now. I have to find out, what this world is and how this world works first.”

On his way to a quieter place inside Romalia he kept observing the people around him. There was a tall Enoch looking for his even taller brother, who was apparently playing an Antas. On a bigger street leading away from the forum he saw a three-eyed woman, a female Zaria, kneeling next to a hurt kid and using some kind of healing magic on it. So players seemed to be able to use the abilities and skills of their avatar. One of the people that caught his eye seemed to hide in the shadows or rather seemed to avoid the sun not unlike a children’s game on an unbearably hot summer day. Another one ran past him with some sort of make-shift parasol above his head made of linen cloth and a tree branch. These had to be players who had picked Nozgor for their race. Frowin imagined how strange it had to be to be in a fantasy race’s body. He himself had been spared of that fate, but all those Alvs, Zarian, Faunri, Antas and Nozgor shared the additional problem of having to adapt to their new body’s physical and maybe even psychological traits. His by far most frightening observation was watching a floating giant armor murdering some players in front of his eyes, who had been about to start a violent fight on the street. “Is this some kind of security system? Maybe the real world version of a safe zone?”, Ciriodhul asked himself, after he had fled around a corner. “Are, are these players dead now?” His legs were shaking and he almost collapsed to the ground. There was no way of answering that question. It was probably best to not think about it at the moment. Still, it was good to know that attacking each other was not an option. At least not inside the town, which meant Frowin did not have to be afraid of mentally unstable players seeking a violent solution to this situation. He also noted that all players most likely carried starting equipment with them. It was unlikely that those players had already found the weapons they had used through some other way.

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Word Count: 1405
Total Word Count: 1405
Notes: This solo is trying to work in mentions to events of all [Day 1] threads. This post alone features easter-eggs to 8 [Day 1] threads and 1 [Day 1] thread to come. To my knowledge 3 are left to include in the following posts of this thread. Can you spot them all? ;b

[Ciriodhul]

Mood Music

The moment Frowin had finally reached a part of town, which wasn’t overcrowded by confused players, and had reached a lonely and quite side street, where he could be alone, he collapsed against the building’s wall behind him and slid down unto the ground. How was he supposed to deal with all of this? Suddenly being thrown into a game world, he had no previous experience with, was almost interesting. Not knowing to what capacity the game’s mechanics applied in this world was tolerable and the knowledge researchable. The real soul crushing part of all of this was an entirely different one. Now he was sitting here, away from all these players he had supposedly joined the game for: To get to know them, to befriend them. Now that he was sitting here in the lonely side street all alone, he could not hide from the truth anymore. This had never been about getting to know new friends. He had been running. He had been running away from his own emotions. Sooner or later he would have realized it. Sooner or later he would have realized that all he wanted to do was reconnecting; reconnecting with his old friends he had lost touch with. All this time after graduation he did not see. He had been blind to what actually mattered. He had spent his whole life doing what he was supposed to do: going to school, learning, reading, improving, going to university and repeating. Even the time he had spent in the hospital, so that his rare condition could be researched, he had only done what he was supposed to do. He had read all the technical literature his parents had given him, nothing more and nothing less. No. No, this was wrong. There was one thing he had done out of genuine love for it. All these fictional novels and short stories Sola had lent him and he had read under his blanket at night, he had read all of those with genuine happiness. That was the reason he was studying literature or more likely the reason he had been studying it. And now at all times he finally understood its implications. It weren’t the stories that mattered. Well, they did matter. However, the one thing that had mattered most was that Sola had been the one giving them to him. The one person he had spent countless hours with in the same room without talking much was the person he had fallen in love with. He could now feel it clearly. Why had he been so lonely that he foolishly tried to find friends inside of an MMORPG? He was lonely, because he had left all those he loved behind simply to do what he was supposed to do: not only Sola, but also her brother Friedrich, Karlina, Gottfried, Veta and Feodor. He had left them behind and had forgotten or rather he had never known how to stay in contact. Too late. It was too late now. Maybe he would never see them again. In a mislead attempt to substitute new friends for reconnecting with the old he had unintentionally made reconnecting impossible. Now he was a prisoner of this world. He had to think about the world he left behind. Was he gone there? Or was there still a Frowin identical to him but for the fact that he had not been sucked into the game? Would that Frowin reconnect with Sola and the rest? Would his friends come to his burial, when he was finally declared dead? Or was there a way to come back? “Unlikely”, he murmured, “Events like this don’t simply undo themselves.” 

For a moment he just sat there leaning against the wall at its back and tried to imagine how the bookshelves felt, but there were no books and none were pressed against him from the other side. It didn’t help. He had to do now what he had actually come here for. He had to test the game’s mechanics, at least the basics. There was a pouch dangling from the belt of his robe. When he grasped into it, he could feel the rough wood of his staff and the leather-wrapped hilt of his shortsword. He took both out to look at them more clearly. Both weren’t particularly well-crafted. Even he could see that, but he also didn’t expect more from his chosen starting equipment. For a while they would be sufficient. He put them carefully back into his obviously magic bag, which served as his inventory. “What about the user interface?”, he asked himself and tried to picture how it would look like if it existed and how he could probably access it. However, after he had opened his eyes again he found his open interface directly in front of him and slightly transparent. “It is activated mentally, hm?” One after another he navigated through the different tabs. Character, inventory, guild and party settings, crafting, skill list, he found everything a typical MMORPG would feature. He also found the menu he had dreaded most: Friend list. He pressed the button and another window popped out. Empty. Completely empty. He let his chin fall down unto his breast. One irrational part of him had hoped to see his friends on there. After all, a mental connection had been established. There was no such luck, however. He closed the friend list again. It was useless. Then he stood up to try out the skills. He took out his staff and gently pressed on the icon for Barrier: Shield. Without much delay and after a short glow of his staff a crimson colored hexagonal barrier appeared in front of him. And just as it was stated in the spell’s description the barrier shattered after fifteen seconds. “This will most likely be a challenge. Timing my barriers with the interface doesn’t look too promising. Maybe I can...” Frowin closed the interface and thought about using Barrier: Protection. Another glow was emitted by his staff, while a purple pentagram appeared in front of him. “So this doesn’t only work for the interface. I have to make sure to memorize all of my spells, so that I can mentally call upon them.” 

He opened the interface again to take another look at the skill list. One skill caught his eye: Summon Spirit, the only active beginner skill of his class. Without a second thought he activated it. He was curious how a familiar would work in this world. A small figure appeared floating in front of him and being encircled by a pinkish glow. The sight of the figure made Frowin collapse a second time, this time unto his knees. His head was filled with only one thought in rapid succession: Desummon. Desummon. Desummon. When he looked back into the air, the floating figure had vanished. That the spirit resembled the shaman’s true self was part of the skill’s description, but he had dismissed it as flavor text. After all, how could a game possibly know your true self without having mined your in-game behaviour for psychological data first? He had expected something similar to his avatar or probably even something randomly generated. However, the figure that had appeared had been neither of those. Long white hair, cat ears and tail, a white collared blouse and a black skirt: Only two of these things fit into a fantasy world. The latter two not only resembled the school uniform of his high-school, they were identical to it. And the long white hair, the face, the body shape? All of that resembled Sola to a terrifying degree. Sola as a cat Faunri was certainly a very fitting spirit for Frowin, but it was also a knife driven into his heart. It was as if this new world itself wanted to mock him. He let himself fall to the ground completely and then rolled on his back, all fours stretched away from his body. He could observe the clouds move through the blue strip behind the buildings, while gravity helped with holding his tears in. There was no time to cry now. He still needed to gather more information. Otherwise he might find his early demise inside of this world, just like these players, who had been killed by the personified safe-zone.

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Word Count: 1385
Total Word Count: 2790

[Ciriodhul]

Mood Music

It appeared that gravity was only helpful to a certain extent to hold in tears while lying on the back. Slowly but surely his eyes had filled up with the salty water, which was now making its way over the sides of his face and descending towards the street. Getting up was an easier task said than done. There was something comforting about just lying there and staring off into the sky. He had never felt this miserable before in his whole life. Never before had he been this motionless about what had to be done. What point was there in getting back up? What point was there in gathering more information? Frowin took a long time thinking about these questions, but they had no answers. He could not know whether there was any point in getting back up as long as he wouldn’t do so.  

This simple truth was finally enough to help him make up his mind. He rolled on his stomach and slowly stemmed his upper body away from the street he was now looking at. An excruciatingly long moment passed and he was standing on his feet again. “Okay, what now?”, he thought. “Right, I should probably try out combat. The wilderness around this city should not be that dangerous, when this was supposed to be the starting location of all players. Let’s find a way out of this city then.” Frowin looked around as if he had any clue what to look out for to orientate himself. Then he picked a random direction and began following the next big street hoping it would lead him to an exit at some point. When he finally rejoined the commotion going on inside the city on one of the main streets, he recognized a tall strong woman from earlier. She had been chatting with that group of people on the forum. Now she talked to a considerably smaller Enoch woman. He only understood a few sentences until he had passed them, but what he had been able to understand was interesting nonetheless. The Enoch woman was wondering about her voice in a capacity that could only mean one thing: The player of this woman had been male and was now probably experiencing some form of gender dysphoria that could have never been observed until now. People not only had to adapt to new racial features and bodies, some of them also had to adapt to a new gender. Only now Frowin got a hint at the full capacity of what this event meant for all these players of Gaia Reborn; the loss of your former life, body and to an extent even the loss of your inner-most identity. He could only assume what harsh long-term psychological consequences this was going to have on many people. Compared to these problems his own were laughably miniscule and he began to feel bad about his own inabilities to cope with this situation. Nothing had really changed. He had not lost a life, because he did not have one to lose, he had not lost his body, because his avatar resembled himself, and he had not lost his identity. The only thing he had lost was the chance to make things right, the chance to do what he should have done years ago. So why did he feel this miserable? Was he even entitled to these feelings, when there were so many other players with a lot more reasons to feel this way? Most likely the answer to that question was a simple “no”, which made Frowin feel miserable about feeling miserable.  

He kept following the main street into the direction away from the forum. Not much later he arrived at a gatehouse of Romalia’s inner wall, after which he had to cross a bridge leading over a big river. This had to be the Tiber. Frowin did not have much time to think about the river, however, because he was walking directly at a great building, which was this world’s version of St Peter’s Basilica. It was pretty much as impressive and majestic as its real world counterpart. For a moment Frowin wondered, whether it was a religious center here, too, before focusing on finding an exit out of the city again. Questions about this place’s society and religion had to wait until later. They weren’t pressing issues to resolve. Combat on the other hand was important. After all that was what he and all those other players were uniquely qualified for. On this matter this world still seemed to behave like the game it resembled.  

It did take quite a while to reach the outer walls and on his way there, Frowin began studying his skill list via the interface. Additionally to the two barrier skills he had already used he was able to cast a healing spell named Healing Prayer. The other skills of his were mostly unsuitable for combat. Holy Mascot was basically a passive without any party member fighting with him and he really did not want to summon his spirit again for the skill to even work. Undying Servitude was even more useless in his current situation. How was he supposed to find a master he could play the housekeeper for? Especially when nobody possessed a house yet. Drug Mastery would surely be useful later on, but wasn’t of much use in a fight against beginner monsters and without any healing potions. His only option for attack was using basic attacks with his staff via the beginner skill Auto-Attack. And after the fight he would be able to use Call of Home to teleport back inside the safety of the city. It seemed that Romalia was already selected as his home city for now. “This will not be easy.”, Frowin thought after closing the interface again. Being of a support class and having started without any form of damage spell he would have to whittle some monster’s HP down slowly, while he would have to use his support spells to keep himself alive. Weapons of the Ritual would help with that, but not to an extent to actually make it a lot easier. And then there also was the possibility that Frowin would not fight at all today. Since this seemed to be the world of Gaia Reborn, he expected to find evil monsters in the wilderness. However, it could also very well be that no monsters existed in this world and it could also very well be that the monsters, which existed, were not evil. This meant he most likely needed to tank the first hit to test whether he was justified in fighting the creature he may find. “Well, if anything goes terribly wrong I should still be able to run away.” 

While Frowin went through the gatehouse, which was occupied by visibly confused guards, he passed two player women coming from outside the city, one heavy-chested Alv and one Faunri or Nozgor. Frowin could not decipher whether those bat-like attributes came from an animal or a curse. Either these two spawned outside the city or were already coming back from an adventuring trip. Most likely the first was true. Frowin didn’t find it plausible that these two would have immediately gone outside the city directly after having found themselves in a new world. Outside he gazed upon a perimeter of farmland around the city behind which the trees of a big dark forest gazed back. In the distance he could make out another player heading into the general direction of the forest. From what he could tell it was a towering man wearing heavy armor. Frowin picked up his pace. If anyone would be willing to converse with him it would be him. From afar he looked exactly like a player with a class, which could only benefit from a support. But as hard as Frowin tried to reach him as futile were his attempts to close the distance. Finally he ended up in the forest, where he lost sight of the man between the trees. Frowin sighed and his eyes watered up again against his will. The one chance to not be alone anymore went by him without him being able to even reach out to it. He wiped the tears out of his face with the sleeves of his novice robe. It was not the time for emotions now. He had to look around and find out, whether there were any monsters, and whether these could be considered evil. Frowin ventured further into the forest not caring much about getting lost. Call of Home really came in handy for his plan. It stripped him at least from one of his sorrows. 

It did not take long to find a monstrous creature. Behind a few trees in front of him, Frowin could make out a blood red muscular boar. He took his one-handed sword out of the magic bag and closed the distance while staying intentionally visible for the boar. When the red monster finally realized him, it immediately lowered its head and charged in Frowin’s direction. Frowin on the other hand almost dropped his sword out of fear. He painfully learned that there was a huge difference between being theoretically prepared for combat and being emotionally prepared. Fear overwhelmed him and he froze for the first half of the boar’s charge. Then he screamed “Barrier: Shield!” in the last possible second. The boar crashed directly into the crimson barrier, which shattered with a loud and almost deafening glass-like sound, the tusks a mere arms width away from his stomach. Frowin was thrown of his feet by the impact and flew a few steps backwards. With a better fighting stance he might have been able to withstand the recoil; however, he hadn’t taken any fighting stance in time. One moment he checked his stomach area instinctively for any wounds and wondered what would have happened, if the boar had been able to pierce into it with his tusks, the other moment he rolled to the side to frantically dodge the boar’s second charge. Disorientated he jumped back on his feet and looked for his foe, which was now behind him. In the corner of his eye he could see on his HP bar that he had taken damage through the barrier. This was not going well for him. Frowin decided to use Healing Prayer to recover his HP. He remembered that this skill had a long cooldown, so he should use it more proactively. He folded his hands in front of him and small green magatamas and bells started to float around him. At the same time the boar charged a third time and Frowin could only watch silently, when the boar’s tusks hit him, while he was still casting his healing spell. His HP bar lowered a considerable amount and was now accompanied by two status effects under it: Bleed and Daze. Frowin’s head felt heavy and his sense of balance was shaken. He tried to hit the boar with his sword but missed and he could feel another painful strike of the boar’s tusks hitting him. The heaviness of his head wore off and he could think and move more clearly again. There was only one thought echoing in his mind: “I have to retreat.” Frowin was obviously outmatched, but he had already learned quite a few things about combat in the most painful way possible. He turned his back towards the boar and started sprinting away. In the real world he would have not stood a chance at outlasting an angry boar and would have faltered after few hundred meters due to his real life body’s bad genetical condition. This was not his real life body, though, and he was surprised how it felt to not be immediately exhausted after only a bit of physical work. He kept darting sideways to shake his pursuer off and tried to dodge the trees in his way as narrow as possible. The boar nevertheless came nearer and nearer, until Frowin’s maneuvers finally worked and the boar crashed into a tree Frowin had only narrowly avoided. Alarmed by the impact beneath two large ravens left the crown of the tree the boar had crashed into. Almost immediately a black cross appeared above the head of the boar, more and more ravens flew out of the treetops around them and started to pick away at the monster with their beaks. For a moment Frowin was relieved; then he realized that this was his opportunity to use Call of Home and get into safety. His HP was down to about half of its maximum amount and running into another monster did not seem like a promising event. His relief did not last long, however. Only a moment after he had started channeling, he was interrupted by sharp pain on his head. He looked upwards and saw a flock of ravens rushing towards him behind another big black cross. In his haste to get back to Romalia he hadn’t realized that he had been inflicted by another status effect called “Omen”. Instinctively he threw his arms in the air to cover his head from the incoming raven attacks. “Barrier: Shield.” The first attack was stopped by another one of his crimson hexagonal barriers. “Barrier: Protection.” The ravens were now picking at everything they could reach of him. He was able to stab one of them with his sword, so that it flew away, but it was instantly replaced by two other ravens. He could slowly watch his HP reaching zero, while he felt as if he was rolling around in a bathtub filled with nails. Then his lifeless body fell into the soft embrace of the forest’s floor. 

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Word Count: 2292
Total Word Count: 5082

[Ciriodhul]

Mood Music

Finally the nails inside his bathtub vanished and were replaced with pleasantly warm water. Frowin could feel how his body was stripped from the weight pulling it down. “Is this death?”, he asked himself out of sheer curiosity. There was no point in fearing it anymore, now that his corpse had become food for the Romalian ravens. Only moments later the water around him suddenly grew cold and a strong suction pulled him under. Frowin tried to gasp for air, but only discovered that he couldn’t and didn’t breathe anymore. It was both a very interesting and terrifying sensation and almost felt like opening and closing your eyes in a lucid dream during which you could feel your eyelids on your eyeballs at any given time. Similarly the reflex to breathe was satisfied without any movement of the lung. “A pure mental state of existence with an imagined body”, Frowin concluded while being pulled backwards through this vast and cold space of nothingness. Whatever this kind of afterlife was, he wasn’t in control of it.

The suction ended with Frowin being thrown upon a hospital bed. He looked around, but could only make out another bed far off into the distance. Someone was sitting in it, leaning against the big pillow at the bed-head and reading a book. “Sola?”, he immediately thought and a weird mixture of joy and sadness overtook him. He swung his legs out of bed and jumped on his feet. He wanted to run, but something in his right arm held him back. A small transparent pipe stuck out of his skin and was connected to a plastic bag hung on a movable post next to his bed. Frowin remembered the scientific terms and chemical designations written on it. He had stared at them countless times. They referred to some kind of experimental medicine the doctors had used to research and cure his genetic condition to no avail. However, he had no time to waste. He grabbed the catheter with his left hand and ripped it out of his forearm. With pain sharpening his senses, he started running towards Sola’s bed and after only a short distance he collapsed to the ground. His pathetic endurance from his real body had returned and taken him by surprise. Still on his knees he could feel his muscles burning and screaming for help. Was this really death? He told his muscles to shut up and stood up again. Although his legs were set ablaze, he made one step after another. He had to reach Sola, before it was too late, before she would be out of his reach again. Step after step he could see her more clearly. Step after step he came closer. Sola was not alone. Their doctor stood at her side, clipboard in hand, and a nurse was talking to her. He was sure, that he could make it, when the bed, the doctor and the nurse got suddenly lifted up onto a second floor. Now Frowin had to climb a staircase, although his legs had almost been reduced to ashes. It didn’t matter. Stair after stair he pulled his body upwards with his arms alone, until he reached the floor Sola was on. He opened the door to her room and crawled inside, but only found an empty bed and the nurse. “Oh, did I wake you up?”, the nurse said in a soothing voice, “I’m sorry, but we had to take her to an important examination. She told me to give this to you. She already finished it. It’s called ‘!(&,-./{=+#’.” A book was held out in front of Frowin’s eyes and he gladly accepted it only to watch it burn in his grasp. His arms and hands had unknowingly caught fire, which now ruthlessly ravaged the bound paper and ink in front of him. He desperately flipped the book open to catch a glimpse of its contents; however, there was nothing left to read on the crumbling burnt pages. Again suction pulled him under.

Bright light shone upon him. When he opened his eyes, he found himself in some sort of church or cathedral. He was lying on an altar submerged in sunlight which was falling into the room through a big ornate window behind him. The space in front of him was empty, but the walls were covered in religious paintings and reliefs. Looking down at his clothes, he recognized the starter robe he had worn before he had died in this weird world, into which he had been sucked against his will. “Did I just respawn?”, Frowin muttered in initial disbelief and left the altar. His body felt strangely invigorated and he could not find any of the wounds the boar and the ravens had struck. “Only one way to make sure.” He slowly made his way to the room’s door in front of him and opened it. On the other side was the plaza in front of St. Peter’s Basilica; the same plaza, he had passed on his way to Romalia’s outer wall, which meant he had indeed respawned. It appeared that in this world, at least for players like himself, death wasn’t a constant. Since this world resembled the world of an MMORPG, Frowin safely concluded that he didn’t just have more than one life. He was most likely immortal and would respawn time and time again, no matter how often he died. Not even death was an escape from this world. Right, when his mind centered back on Sola and how it was even more unlikely now that he would see her ever again, he remembered for some reason, he could not fully understand, the day she had lent him her first book. In the middle of the night the doctors had taken Sola to some special examination and had caused such a commotion that he had woken up. After Sola was gone, the night nurse had realized that he was awake and had given him the book Sola had been reading the day prior. She must have told her to give it to him, when she was taken away, as if she had predicted how lonely he would have felt in this very moment. He let out a quiet sight, while he was entering the plaza behind the door. Then it hit him. What book did she lend him? He could not remember. He had forgotten the title and contents of the one book he had read countless times by now, the one book that had made himself Frowin. He froze in terror at the thought of what other memories he might have lost. Did he lose them, while transferring into this world? Unlikely. It must have been his death. Although he might have respawned, there was something incredibly important that had died within him.

“You don’t look so well.” A seemingly young Enochlian woman approached him. “Are you okay? A lot of you just appeared on the streets today.” Frowin didn’t know what to answer. “Your hair is all messed up.” The winged woman reached into her own hair, untied it and offered him a white hair ribbon. “Take this. Idios teaches that tidying up your body helps tidying up your mind. What’s your name?”

“Thank you”, he finally replied and accepted her gift. “My name is Ciriodhûl, it’s nice to meet you.”

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Word Count: 1227
Total Word Count: 6309