The Nameless

You know not where you are. You feel the cold of the steel bite around your arms and legs; you are bound. You attempt to open your eyes but you cannot; you panic. You try to move but find it impossible. It feels as if someone is pressing upon your limbs with all their weight. In your panic, you strain your senses, trying struggling to make sense of something, anything. You only hear the accelerated pace of your heart. The only thing keeping you from completely losing your faculties is the persistence of the cold around your limbs. You steel yourself knowing the only thing you’ll hear is the thrum of the blood in your ears; you calm your breathing and slow your heart and you feel it, the slow steady rocking; you hear the quiet lapping of the water, the low constant groan of old wood settling. You feel it a singular drip, it falls upon your forehead, this ethereal cold permeating you rejuvenating you, you feel yourself being propelled back into consciousness; it feels as if you are being catapulted back into your mind… you awaken.

Your hair stands on end, you turn away from this monster without thought, a reflex of your body trying to protect itself. You cannot breathe, you are shaking, and you hear the concise steps of this demon, this unholy abomination. It walks with such purposes as if every step has meaning. You are overwhelmed and on the verge of unconsciousness returning to that sanguine state. It matters not, as you were not fortunate enough for that to happen. As it draws near, that sickly green light illuminates the right side of your head. You feel its icy breath upon you. You hear the pursing of its lips, the inhaling of air as it’s about to speak. As it is beginning to speak, it's as if time slows. You no longer feel your heart thumping in your chest, nor the sound of water or wood settling. It speaks in a cacophony of voices all speaking in unison “Young one… we shall grant you gifts a three. The first shall be a name as they hold great power, the second shall be purpose as to not lose your way, and the third shall be awarded to you later once we deem you a success.” There is a brief pause as this thing inhales, then starts again. “The name, without one you will not exist, it is what holds ones like you to the mortal plane. For its power depends on you young one.” Again it takes in air. “ HAHAHA!” The sheer magnitude of its laugh crashes into you like waves on a ship in stormy seas. It continues “ Yes, a name young one you shall from henceforth be known as Kier.” (KEE-er) When you hear this you feel something welling up inside of you. It starts at your core. It's a burning heat yet not unpleasant that spreads outward crashing, coursing through your veins. Your essence is engulfed by it, your body begins to glow a dark crimson as the heat builds. You can now see the rippling of the air in front of you, you look down upon your hands. The skin begins to char. The noxious smell of burning hair soon follows. You close your eyes waiting for the heat to take you, but it suddenly stops and when you open your eyes once more the heat has gone. The only point of illumination is that sickly green light that is cast upon you. The thing takes a deep breath, then starts again. “ Now for your second gift, your purpose, you are low born. The church has closed its doors to you after taking your father for the crusades and leaving your mother to die of sickness. And you hate them, hate them with every fiber of your being! It is your goal to crush them, to liberate the people from that corrupt theocracy, town by town, city by city until you free all of them! Now go and know this. If you die you will not return to this place… we will be watching.”

You walk alone, cool air rushes past leaving not but falling leaves in its wake. As you glance around, you are hit with a sense of familiarity, the same cracked stone buildings. You continue to walk until you pass the old schoolhouse and then a flood of memories rushes forth. You close your eyes and remember your mother always helping you with your arithmetic, her kind blue eyes, her flowing blond hair, and caring smile. You are struck with waves of sadness and anger, you picture your mother in that pale, sickly state, and with every fiber of your being, you wish things had gone differently. You open your eyes hoping to get off this train of thought, but you are met with a figure “I-it has to be her!” You think as your mind frantically races. You blurt out “M-mother?” “But I-i thought you were dead!’ Your mother just stands there with a slight iridescent ethereal shimmer. You say “This can’t be real-” as soon as you blurt out those last words she disappears. You scream and try to reach and grab at the air where her figure once was. Your mind is a race with thought and as you lose focus the world seems to bend and twist, you collapse. Whilst in this unconscious state, you dream, you dream of a spider building a web, you watch the spider, enthralled by it mesmerized, you don't know how much time passes and soon the spider is finished with its intricate dance. You see the spider gazing up at you, its eyes a cold black, you blink and when you open your eyes you find yourself on the spider’s web. You see its hulking mass on the other side of the web. Your feet are stuck. The spider spins its round body to face you, its face grotesque and monstrous. It begins to move toward you. The web twings a low pitch thrum as it crawls. With your feet stuck you try desperately to move them, you pull up on your legs but end up falling over, getting yourself further entwined in the web. There is nothing you can do besides watch the beast approach, you look around trying to find something, anything to save you. Then you see it, some giant. You think to yourself “Are they my savior or my damnation?” As you look upon this giant, you recognize it. It is you, but it lacks any discerning features. Its face a muted flesh tone with no eyes nor mouth. It moves its head toward you silently, fluidly. The giant speaks in a cacophony of voices that are slightly out of time with each other “It seems you are… Bound by the spider’s web.” As the giant finishes speaking you notice the spider almost on top of you Hissing and roaring an unholy sound, and as it bares its fangs and is going to strike down at you, you scream out in your last moments “Help Me!”. Everything goes black.

You feel the cold of stone on your back, then a sharp pain on your cheek and a loud pop noise. Then you hear the words “hey, you alright girly?” Your eyes snap open and you are startled to find a man with a red beard and brown eyes standing over you as you lie on your back. The man then says “ Oh, didn’t mean to scare ya. You doing alright there?”. You pause for a moment then say “ Yes I-I’m alright.”. The man extends a hand out to help you up. You grab his hand after hesitating for a moment and the man hoists you to your feet with incredible ease. “ So ahh, you alright to go home on your own?” the man says in a slightly worried tone. Before you answer him, you eye the man up and down and you see that the man is wearing a blue undershirt with a stained black leather tunic and tan pants as well as having a sheathed weapon. A short sword you assume by the shape of the scabbard. “Yes, yes, I'll be fine, just point me in the direction of the nearest inn-“. The man cuts you off “Inn? With what money?” He points at your pockets which, as you just now noticed, are turned inside out. “What the hell! Did you rob me?!” “Rob you? You can’t be robbed if there’s nothing to take. And with that in mind, what are you doing out here?” You have to think for a second. What are you doing here? But then you suddenly remember. ”I-I’m looking for somewhere to stay the night.” The man lets out a rich, hardy laugh “Then you may stay with me. But you must not fall unconscious for 30 seconds.” You say “wait wait wait, I don't want to fight you, you obviously are skilled with that weapon. I felt the calluses on your hand. And you essentially picked me up with one arm. So I don’t want to fight.” The man drops low into a fighting stance with his right hand over his hilt. You take a quick step backward to be out of striking range of the sword. You say “it seems I don’t have a choice but to make it fair, no weapons. Deal?” The man gives a slight head nod then takes a wrestler’s stance with his body low and hands outstretched. It’s as if the world itself is holding still in anticipation. You copy his stance, trying to fool him into thinking you are more skilled than you are. You wait on edge for him to make a move. Each second drags on for what feels like minutes. Your eyes flick down to his feet and as you do so you see his foot twist. You look up and see he is right in front of you and his fist even closer. It strikes you with a thud right in your side, sending you toppling over falling into the dirt next to the road. You gasp for air, your side stinging with radiating pain. You quickly look up at where he is and he’s just standing there in the same stance. You quickly scramble to your feet and while doing so you grab a handful of dirt with your left hand. You think to yourself “I can’t win on the defensive, he's just too strong so ill attack.” You rush forward. At this moment you feel the adrenaline coursing through you. The tightening of your chest, your heart pumping faster, time begins to almost slow around you. You feel your pupils dilate taking in all information. You throw a punch with your right hand aiming for his face, while you throw the dirt with your left hand. The man steps forward so your punch grazes the back of his neck and with his open right hand he redirects your left hand toward the ground and you drop the dirt. As you are looking at the man, you can see he bears his teeth and his head is hurtling towards yours. Fear runs through you. There is no stopping what comes next. The pain is immense but only for a second, then the world begins to spin and everything fades to black.

You’re awakened to the buzzing of pain that centers on your forehead. You open your eyes to find yourself on a soft bead covered in tan blankets in a candlelit room. You think to yourself “ I’m getting pretty sick of being unconscious.” You sit up and further scan the room, you look to the right and you see the shadows of the chair and table dancing on the walls in the flickering candlelight. You spot a door on the far wall of this small room. You gather your strength and prepare to stand, as you do not know what lies beyond that threshold. And just as you were going to stand, the door swings open and you are blinded by the rays of light that come streaming in. You wince and cover your eyes with your hand. You hear a high-pitched shrill voice say “Are you alive?” as your eyes adjust you see a short figure with long hair. “I think I am.” The figure steps in and slightly closes the door behind. You see the young girl’s hair almost brown with hints of red, as it neatly falls to her shoulders. Her skin pale as freshly fallen snow and spotless. You gaze into her eyes and are almost startled by the contrast. Her eyes are a dark purple, they glitter like gems of amethyst. “Hey! You know staring is rude!” the girl says as she furrows her eyes and crosses her arms. You apologize then get out of bed. The girl quickly spins on her heels and opens the door and begins walking. As she does, she says “Quickly now, father's waiting.” You walk out and find yourself in a small clearing in the woods. As you look around you notice the trees are incredibly close together almost like a sort of natural wall. You continue to look around to see if there is a way out of this place. Then you spy it, a single winding path at the end of the clearing leading off somewhere through the forest. But sitting on a rock next to your escape is the man that kidnapped you, quietly sitting on a rock drinking a cup of something. He looks up “Ah, hello sleepy head. Did ya have a nice night?”

You respond with a glare. He shoots you a smirk “ Do you want the rest of this Karlanma, we may be here a while.” He then gestures to the girl. You think to yourself “at least I know her name.” The girl hurriedly runs over and drinks what's ever in the cup. The man stands cracks his back and then his knuckles. Now that you see him in the day you can see he is quite stout and a good six or seven inches taller than you. The man looks over at Karlanma “Alright we train then we eat, same as always.” She shoots him a thumbs up. The man looks over at you “ We train only on defensive and nonlethal strikes.” He inhales then starts again. “No, I’m not going to answer why, yes if you want to run you’ll have to make it through Karlanma, and no she is not an easy fight.” “I can take on a kid.” You say in a slight demeaning tone. “Hey, I’m not that much younger than you!” “Enough. Karlanma you’ll be working with our guest here... That reminds me what Is your name?” You pause for a moment thinking if you should lie or not. “My name is Kier.” “Well, it’s nice to formally meet you, Kier. This is my daughter Karlanma, and you may just call me Odak.” “So Kier, what's your weapon of choice?” Odak says. “Uhhh, I don’t have one.” “So we’ll train unarmed for today then you can pick from the weapons I have lying around.” “So I guess I’m working with K?” says Karlanma. “My name is not even that long.” You say annoyed.

Odak gives her a head nod, and she moves behind you. “Alright, the rules should be fairly obvious. First, don’t hurt anyone too bad. Second, there is no countdown either you or I make a move. Third, use your abilities as long as it’s not too dangerous, but if you don’t use It I will want to know what it is later. Alright, with that settled let’s do this!” Karlanma backs up even further behind you, Odak gets into a proper fighting stance with his right foot in front and his fists up. You breathe in and copy his stance. You hear Karlanma from behind you say “Ok let’s do this!” Suddenly you feel this cold breeze and you see gently falling snow and the sky alight with beautiful colors. And while you are distracted you hear Karlanma yell out “Watch out”. Your eyes snap forward and you see Odak throwing a punch straight for your head but you feel this strength in your legs and you deafly dodge his punch. “That’s Karlanma’s ability for ya, it even allows unskilled fighters like you to put up some fight. It adds all of her physical and fighting prowess to a person. So all that means is I just have to switch targets.” He looks past you to Karlanma. Sensing the moment you attack. You lead with your left foot and wind up a punch with your right arm. “With this speed and strength I just have to hit him once.” It’s as if time slows and before his head moves, you see his eyes dart to you. And you are hit with this crushing fear as if death its self was staring you down. It feels like if you were to hit this person nay this abominable fiend it would spell your demise. So you jump and slide past Odak slide on your butt and kick up to your feet. Reeling you feel like you’ve felt this fear before somewhere deep down. “Hey, what are you doing!? Are you trying to lose?” Karlanma yells. You drop back into a fighting stance, your body trembling and your breath shaky. “Good instincts, you would not have won that clash.”. Odak advances your mind in a flutter “A punch, a kick, what is he going to throw?” in this moment, time seems to slow. His right-hand pulls back so you throw up your hands to block. It was a feint he threw a punch with his left. You'll never be able to dodge or block now. “CONCEDE! I concede,” you shout while bracing for impact. “Let’s eat then!” Odak says cheerfully. “Aww man, we could have got him.” Karlanma says while walking toward you and Odak. And they walk down the lone path as if nothing happened and after a moment you follow behind.

SETTING CHANGE POPE'S CHAMBERS

The room is massive with gilded pillars adorned in silvers, and the way the light scatters off them is breathtaking. The sealing is covered with a mural of God gifting the world light. He approaches the throne. Its draped with rosaries, the fabric a vibrant red. They look down and clasp their hands together. “Your Holiness, we have found him.” The man says in a shaky voice. The being on the throne speaks in a way that’s almost smooth words flowing like a river every sound, syllable, pause they all have meaning. “Do you know what love is?” The man just stares at the ground, his body slightly trembling. “Love is following his commands, love is letting him guide your hand, love is God. Do you think one who loses his love deserves mercy?” “N-no your Holiness!” The being on the throne speaks again “Thy shall be beaten with rods of iron so thy may find love through the pain.” The man nods his head “Yes, I understand your Holiness.” he then heads for the door. The being on the throne speaks once more as the man is about to leave “And may they experience much love!”

SETTING CHANGE TAVERN

The tavern is full of people eating and the sounds of merriment and the delicious smell of food. “Hahaha, you’ve never had a pancake before?” Odak says surprised. “No, I haven’t. And what do I do with this brown liquid? Do I cover them in it?” “That is exactly right,” Odak says. You cover these admittedly delicious-looking slabs of dough with this viscous brown liquid. Odak and Karlanma watch with bated breath as you take a bite. And it's incredible the crisp yet fluffy inside combined with the sweetness and its delicious. You quickly finish your plate after pouring more syrup on them. “Ok that was good, but why have that as breakfast isn't that more of a dessert dish?” “Wait Kier’s right, why do we eat them during breakfast?” Karlanma says while looking at Odak. “Hmm I don't know, but would you rather not eat them?” “No never mind forget Keir asked!” Karlanma says frantically. “Alright on a more serious note, Keir we’ll take you back to the forest camp and do some more training. It will mostly be me giving you instruction while Karlanma here” He pats her on the head ”will be using her ability on you to make things easier and ingrain the moves into your muscle memory. Shortly thereafter you all make your way to the forest camp, but on your walk there Odak says “Oh I forgot to ask” he looks at you “what’s your ability?” You pause for a moment “I-I don’t know.” “Have you not had a dream of awakening?” Karlanma asks. You say “No, I don’t think so… what are they like?” Odak responds “They depict you using your ability in the future.” Abruptly Odak says “Karlanma run ahead and put the pot on.” She says “Ok.” Then runs ahead. Odak then turns to you and says in a very serious tone “Where do you hail from Keir?” You can sense the danger in the air and find it best not to lie. “I’m an orphan, nothing more nothing less.” He stares at you and you can feel the tension in the air. He reaches a handout and places it on your shoulder and says “I’m here if you ever need to talk and don’t worry about the ability stuff I’m sure you’re just a late bloomer.” As he says those words the tension melts away. Shortly thereafter you arrive at the camp and very quickly learn about 3 years of technique in about five hours having it become ingrained in you almost like your muscles know what to do before you do. “Alright now the hard part… knowing when and where to use the techniques you’ve learned. As of right now you know the words in the language but don’t know how to string them together to form sentences.” In a shrill voice, you hear “Can we go home now I’m tired!” “Yes we can go, just tell Keir goodbye first” he then looks to you “we’ll be back first thing in the morning, and if you get into trouble run into town.” Karlanma suddenly runs up and hugs you “I’m sorry.” She says “for what?” You ask “well your body is gonna hurt tomorrow. The way Odak explained it was that when I use my ability on you you're using strength you don’t have. So you’re gonna hurt tomorrow.” “Oh no that’s gonna be awful” Karlanma hugs you tighter “I’m also sorry that you’re gonna lose when we spar tomorrow!” “When I win I’m gonna make you do 1000 pushups.” You say oozing confidence. She smiles at you then leaves. “Goodnight Keir,” Odak says. “Night night,” Karlanma says. You wave to them as they leave. After you can’t see them anymore you walk back into your small room and collapse onto the bed. Your body feels as if it’s on fire every muscle in your body, every fiber of your being is in extreme burning pain. And you dread tomorrow as they said it will only feel worse. So you struggle to fall asleep through the pain as even breathing hurts. You wake up to a bright light and a voice you recognize “Up, up, up! I want to eat!” she says before quickly leaving. You are very careful not to move fearing the pain. But as you lie there you notice almost no pain at all so you quickly get up feeling stronger than the day before. You examine your body and notice more muscle definition but not a lot of volume gained. After you straighten yourself up you head outside. “Oh, look who can move!” Odak says with genuine surprise. “I guess I’m stronger than you thought.”. “Well, it looks that way. Well, I don’t know how long you plan on staying with us so I’ll teach you a fighting style that is quick to learn but hard to master.” You shoot him an inquisitive look. “So right now you know the moves but don’t know when to use them right?” “Ya.” “So I'll teach you a way of using them that doesn’t require years of training. Although you will lose to someone who has those years of training, you'd put up a fight. And if you master it you might even win.” “So what is this fighting style?” you ask Odak. “It's called Battle Trance. It is essentially your body is reacting to stimuli with very little to no thought.” “So I’m just reacting?” “Yup! I’ll demonstrate, you and Karlanma both attack me. Just really give it your all.” Karlanma takes a fighting stance in front of Odak and you walk behind him and get into a stance. “Ahh not a bad thought, I can't see behind me after all.” You see Odak takes a deep breath in and then exhale and his body loosens up. He then rises off his heels and he is slightly swaying side to side. “And if you guys win I’ll give you a reward, alright.” You gaze past Odak and shoot Karlanma a look and nod your head she does the same back. You focus back on Odak waiting, the moments stretching on to what feels like minutes. Then suddenly Karlanma takes a step forward then jumps backward and you rush in behind Odak throwing a punch as you do. Odak steps forward and spins to the right dodging your punch and facing you in the process. “I knew it.” You feel a surge of strength and the sky changes to beautiful colors. You step with your left pushing your body with incredible force and speed. Your fist hurtles toward his stomach “I'm too close he’ll never be able to dodge in time.” You only notice it in your peripheral vision but Odak is staring at you and with incredible speed, he clasps his hands together and brings them down on your extended arm. The hit causes you to lose balance and fall, and as soon as he touches you the colors of the sky go back to normal. You say “It seems you have fallen for my trap.” Upon hearing those words he does a 180, you imagine Karlanma sweeping his legs and you see her drop low to do just that. But you also see her throw a punch at his chest. You are in complete disbelief as you see two Karlanma doing two separate things entirely. Odak jumps over the leg sweep and dodges the punch so while he is still in the air you throw a kick. Odak then twists his body in the air successfully dodging all three attacks and lands gracefully on the ground. Odak yells “Time out!” and he runs to you and lifts you off the ground giving you a hug. “You did it!” He says excitedly while spinning you around. You hang there motionless overtaken by emotions you’ve never felt before.