Bound to Darkness

Awakening (Chapter 1)

I shot awake, panting heavily. My body was trembling uncontrollably as I vainly tried to remember moments before, the weird dream that I had. But nothing came up. Absolutely nothing.

“Uh… hello?” A soft voice came from my right, making me jump. I turned, arms raised to protect myself from the man with a big bushy mustache. He held his hands up innocently, backing away a step.

“I…” I lowered my arms, unable to stop the tremble in my shoulders. “S-sorry… habit?”

“Do you get… attacked often?” The man walked forward, shoving his hands into his black dress pants pockets. He looked ragged, white button-up shirt untucked and jacket shoved back.

I shrugged helplessly, not… not actually sure. No memories of mine were coming to mind, it was blank. I knew nothing about myself, or this person, or… anything.

The man took my silence as an invitation to step forward, lowering his hands slowly. I noted he had an iron sword tucked in his belt, and a helmet that sat crooked on his head. I felt suffocated by the red sweater that I had on, especially since I had no idea where it came from.

I got a glance around the room I had woken up in to see it was a simple wood house. It looked like planks mingled with leaves to make a treehouse, wherein chests were littered about and disorganized to the extreme.

“My name’s Mumbo,” The man redrew my attention, his hand held out to me. “Myself and my friend Stress found you nearly a week ago. We thought - well, she did - that you had glitched out.”

“Glitched… glitched out?”

“Yeah. Y’know… the code messes with your body?” Mumbo seemed to be trying to get some kind of information out of me. Information I didn’t have. His hand dropped as his smile did.

Yet the term Glitched Out sounded familiar. Like a forbidden term, or… something. Truly, I had no idea what this man was talking about.

“Well… basically, we’re made of something called Code. Everyone is. But sometimes, when entering doorways to various worlds called Servers, our Code can… glitch. It’s a deadly curse that is rare, but not rare enough.”

I nodded, following along the best I could. It was all extremely confusing, but also like something I had already known.

“What I wanna know… how did you get here?” He looked at me for a long moment before it clicked. I was supposed to answer him.

“Well if I knew that, I would be glad to know something.” I felt like… like I could trust this person. Something in me resonated with this guy, bonding us in a weird sense. “I don’t really know… anything. No memories, thoughts, nothing. I don’t even know my name.”

“Oh… oh, that is strange.” Mumbo turned away, pacing the length of the small treehouse. He pulled up a holographic screen from some kind of watch on his wrist, pressing various buttons. “I’m gonna ask X and Iskall to see if they would know anything about memory loss…”

“So you don’t know me either?”

He glanced back, hesitating a moment. His face scrunched up in concentration for only a second. “No… no, I don’t think so. Your tag on this server says Grian, if that helps any.”

I shook my head, jumping at the sound of loud cracks from outside. A window behind the bed showed a person gliding down on some kind of silvery metallic wings, armor crafted from blue gems covering their head and lower half. They pulled of their helmet, showing another man.

Except, unlike Mumbo… this man looked to be half robot.

“Iskall got here fast,” Mumbo smiled, vanishing into a hole in the floor. I glanced back out the window to see him running to the man he called Iskall, talking to him about me judging by the way he glanced to my face in the window. I pulled back, sitting on the bed anxiously.