Chapter 1: Arcana’s Whim

  A fog of shadows lurked just beyond where Theo was standing, one of deep, abyssal black yet still bright to his eyes. Squinting made the bright darkness brighter, though as Theo’s face went from one grimace to the next, opening them wider didn’t help either.

  Where was he? What was he just doing?

  This place wasn’t where he was just moments before. He’d been…he was…Theo drew a blank. This place, with the odd, blinding fog, was new to him.

  Theo’s brow furrowed as he considered to himself: what was he supposed to focus on? His memory of where he had been, or how this place seemed…off? What kind of dark fog could blind a person, anyway? He guessed that answered his musings, so he focused on the here and now.

  He took a step ahead, but whether his feet recognised the order thoroughly confused him. While he was certain that he had moved, nothing seemed to happen. He didn’t even feel the change of pressure from under his feet as it should have lifted and fallen again. His gaze lowered to wonder about the floor, though the same bright haze was there, confounding him even more. He turned and found more of the same all around him, surrounding him, trapping him within it.

  “What is this?” he gasped, circling around himself. At least he thought he was. He had difficulty telling.

  “I was wondering the same thing,” said an echoing voice.

  As it rang hollow through the surrounding haze, the fog rumbled and shook in response, almost like shaking jelly. It grew firm, then not, then firm again, all in the blink of an eye. Theo’s skin trembled in the same way, his bones quaking, and his joints clacking.

  Then, the whole place shifted.

  The fog drew back, letting his body breathe as familiar sensations like his own weight resting on his legs returned. He felt hot, reminding him he hadn’t so much as felt his own body heat. His mouth felt dry like a desert and his eyes even more so, though he found the latter a note better than the blinding fog irritating him.

  The misty air no longer wrapped around him formed a noble hall with intricate pillars surrounding him, statuesque arches looming above him and a wide staircase laying itself out in front of him. Small busts of some kind of creature littered the railing of the stairs; the powerful, chiselled jaw of the beast was not at all as frightening and awe-striking as the three horns on its head.

  Theo gulped at the majestic sight and stepped onto the first step, even as a bead of sweat ran down his cheek. The first pair of threatening busts’ eyes glowed a deep, hazy pink in response to his presence, and he froze.

  “Hello?” he tried, his voice hoarse from dryness and nerves.

  “You’d think, as an invader of my space, you’d be a bit bolder. How are you here, anyway?” asked the same hollow, feminine voice from earlier. Now that he’d heard it again, Theo could add that last little detail, though for what good it did, he didn’t know. “Come now. She doesn’t bite.”

  Did the busts just shift in response to that voice? Theo could swear they had a thousand-yard stare straight ahead earlier, though now…had they shuffled just a fraction towards him? No, of course not. Of course not. Of course not.

  Theo took a second step, his left foot making landfall as heavy as could be, making no noise even as he felt the very stairs shake. He struggled to lift his knees. More eyes glowed in response to his unenthusiastic advance. A third step was all he could muster as more sweat framed his face, forming a glistening film.

  “Hi there,” said the voice, now pointed, warm—welcoming even. No more did it ring through the foggy halls in an eerie, body-shaking echo.

  Looking ahead, Theo found himself at the top of the stairs, his right foot having landed all the way past the last step somehow. He released a heaving breath, refilling his lungs after releasing all the stale air he’d been grasping onto for his life.

  “H…—” he tried, forgetting how to breathe, and talk, and breathe.

  “Oops! Sorry. It’s been a while since I last socialised. You’re so pathetically weak I’ll have to bring my aura back down to…how’s that?”

  A pressure like that of a ten-metre-deep swimming pool resting atop his shoulders lifted; his mind cleared and his throat wasn’t as dry anymore. He gasped for air once more, thinking he’d finally remember to keep breathing this time. Even with the weight lifted—whatever it had been—more poundage than normal was pressing on what that thing inside his skull was. He tasted the word ‘mind’ and was only half-certain the word was appropriate for his situation.

  “Wow, even more? All the way, then. How’s that? I suddenly feel a bit naked now.”

  Another gasp for breath and Theo’s mind cleared again, the cobwebs dulling his brain disappearing. While confusion was the first thing that he glimpsed from it, it struck him as the right kind of confusion, the kind where he struggled to understand the events transpiring in front of him and what the odd woman was talking about. Gone was the confusion that grogged up his mind, that made glowing busts scary and made him forget how to walk and breathe.

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  “Thank you,” Theo said as he collected himself again. He took in the figure before him, finding a normal woman in her thirties with long, hazel hair. Clad in a fitting, airy dress of varying colours, its chest open enough to reveal a crisp, black tattoo of two separate avian wings, the woman’s figure was striking despite her age.

  “Excuse me, the fuck?”

  Again, the pressure from earlier drowned him, an ocean of roiling pressure threatening to snuff the life out of him in an instant.

  “I don’t look to be in my fucking thirties, you demented child of a—”

  With all the pressure turning his mind to gooey sludge, Theo couldn’t quite hear or focus enough on the dangerous woman’s words. An unknown amount of time later, the pressure subsided as quick as it had squeezed him, leaving his mind clear again, but the woman in front of him still fuming. What was she upset about? He was the one suffering from her stray thoughts wringing him like a wet rag.

  “Where am I?” Theo asked, then felt the urge to correct himself. “Where are we?”

  Taking a few deep breaths of her own this time, the woman calmed herself before answering, though when she finally did, she did so with a wide smile. “We’re in my domain. Why you’re here, I’m still trying to figure out. What’s your name?”

  Theo gave her his name hoping to get the conversation along so he could get some actual answers out of her.

  “Theo, huh? I knew someone with a similar name once. A long, long time ago. Hmm…” she answered, devolving into her own thoughts or memories.

  Theo looked around some more at the scenery atop the stairs, finding a hazy throne beneath where the woman was sitting. It, as well as the walls behind it, had similar foggy shapes as that creature on the railing, and then there was the full-size statue of the giant thing next to the throne, standing proud like a beast guarding its master.

  It doubled the woman’s height, but what was more impressive was its bulk; bursting with lean, perfect muscle beneath its thick, hazy hide. Its tail was the size of a massive log hanging limp from its hind, big enough to crush cars by its weight alone.

  “She’s away playing at the moment,” said the woman, earning back Theo’s attention while her own wandered to the giant statue.

  “That thing is…a she?”

  “Very much so. She’s a darling, don’t worry. She never aged out of that playful side, though—always a child at heart no matter how she grew. Well, I guess I never did either, not truly. You should’ve seen me with—”

  While Theo had to admit he was interested in this mysterious person’s story, she stopped herself from speaking more with a clearing of her throat, looking disgruntled as she did.

  “He sent you here. Of course he did. All this time and he’s still teasing me.” She smiled wide again. “Is the name important? No, that’s going a bit too far. He was always a bit emotional underneath everything. But why then?”

  “Excuse me? Is there a way for me to not be here?”

  The woman stopped rambling to herself, though her echoing words had been far from private. She rose, growing a different size as she now loomed far above Theo. His breath caught at the suddenness of it all.

  “Cheeky, aren’t you? I don’t know what you’re doing here, nor why you’re here. How did you die, if I may ask?”

  Theo froze…and then he remembered. The hazy pressure of earlier must’ve been why he didn’t do so before.

  The disease had taken him. He’d otherwise never forget the beautiful, touching moment of his family and lifelong friends being there with him, offering their goodbyes to him in a tearful adieu. They all knew it would take him sooner rather than later, but getting to that sorrowful evening before his life returned to rest was something he’d always cherish with his entire being.

  As if responding to the very memory of it, the woman spoke. “That was beautiful. I’m sorry.”

  Theo roused from the memory, looking at the woman with suspicious interest.

  “You remind me of him. Maybe…maybe he didn’t mean to send you here. Maybe he just recognised himself in you and longed to see me. Let’s just go with that, shall we?”

  “Who’s he? Who are you?” Theo asked, almost sure he had asked the latter sometime earlier.

  “I’m…let’s just call me a god for now, alright? This is my domain, and it reaches across multiple worlds, much like your own, I’m guessing. As for him…he’s the one in charge. Kind of. He’s not my boss or anything! He’s just…the one who made it all happen.”

  Theo didn’t feel like any of that was much of an answer, but this woman was claiming to be a veritable god. Though, with her presence alone crushing his very being moments earlier, maybe he had to admit the possibility was there.

  “Call me J—…Arcana. Geez, I suck at this. Seeing as you can’t stay around here all day, every day, like a puppy without its parents, I’m sending you away.”

  “C-can I go home, Arcana?” Theo asked, surprised.

  “Sorry. You’re not from my domain. I can’t reach that far. I know just the place to send you, though,” she said with a devious grin plastered on her otherwise unblemished face. “It’s been a bit boring over the last few decades, so maybe you can spruce it up a bit. I’ll even prepare something special for you. Will you agree?”

  Theo considered this. He’d be alive again, though in another world than the one he knew. A world he had no sense of belonging in, no knowledge of—but it was better than nothing, right? If the alternative was death, then…he’d accept. Why wouldn’t he? If nothing else, the final years of his life were aching for a bit of adventure. He hadn’t even been able to leave the city for so long.

  “Something special?” he asked, nodding his acceptance as he did.

  “Your world seems very different from where I’m sending you. You and I come from rather similar worlds, but that’s not important. You’ll need some guidance, some assistance and some…Hell, it’s my domain, right? You’ll need to cheat to get ahead.”

  “Cheat?”

  “Listen, cheating’s great! You don’t have to be a dick about it, though. Cheating and being a jerk are far different things. Cheating is about knowing the rules and circumventing them, not breaking them for your own gain or other’s loss. Be a part of the rules and see that they are rarely bulletproof. Here,” she said, letting a tiny book fall from her giant hands and onto the floor in front of Theo.

  Theo stooped to pick it up, finding Arcana once more in a human-sized body, though her face pressed up into his. He had to admit; she was rather pretty, even considering her age. She was a bit of a—

  “Don’t you dare finish that thought! Get lost, punk!”

  Arcana waved her hand, flexing her aura and sent a surge of her magic through to the brat. He vanished from her sight in an instant, and she looked down at herself. She then turned her misty throne into a flashy mirror, eyeing her own reflection. How long had it been since she had even looked at herself? When had she last needed to look good for someone?

  She brushed her fingers through her hair once, and her stray hairs fell in line where she wanted them, the colour of her hair reclaiming some long-lost lustre. Her face, though, which the kid had used as a reference for her age, looked pristine. He must’ve just had no sense of age or beauty. She still looked to be in her prime. That would never change.

  Arcana scribbled a quick message as her sudden self-reflection reminded her of how things used to be. She poofed it away, sending it right to where she’d sent the brat.

  Now…what fun would he stir down there?

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  Remnant Ascension is another of my fictions! I've been writing it for a long time and it has finally launched on Royal Road. There are new chapters dropping three days/week.

  Sigilist: A Sigil-Weaving LitRPG is not; it's a darker and grittier progression fantasy (not LitRPG or System) which shows a resurrected man's struggle against a magical monster incursion that humanity can't defeat. Where Remnant Ascension is all about magical trials and survival of the strongest, Sigilist: A Sigil-Weaving LitRPG is all about goodfeels and wholesome, slice-of-life, casual adventuring in a brand new magical world.