Ajax awakens. His eyes slowly open.

He stares at the ceiling. He is lying on his back on a soft surface; a bed it seems. He stares at the grey, concrete ceiling in a slight daze at the dream he just had.

The dream was... complex, for lack of a better description. A dream... a dream... was it a dream?

Ajax recalls the events of the dream. He can remember them perfectly.

Normally when he has a dream, he can barely remember its details and it becomes more difficult to remember the dream after some time passes.

But not with this dream. He remembers everything. Everything about it. None of it becomes less clear to him as the seconds pass.

Was... was it... a dream... but no... I... I can remember it clearly. The frozen trees, the lake of fire, Shaula’s dress... Shaula crying blood... we were... naked?

Ajax is confused. He continues to look at the ceiling while blinking his eyes a few times. He’s trying to get rid of the blurry vision associated with waking up from a deep sleep.

He seems to be under a blanket up to his neck. He can feel a soft pillow supporting his head. It’s not... uncomfortable but... it doesn’t feel like his own bed.

Ajax darts his eyes around without moving his head. There aren’t any ceiling lights or any artificial light sources on the ceiling or in the room around him.

Only natural light illuminates his surroundings.

He can see light streaming into the room from perhaps a window to his right. He turns his head to the direction of the window. He flinches as the sudden, intense brightness of a cloudless sky hitting his eyes.

There is a window there. As he gets used to the light, he sees someone sitting in a wooden chair looking through the window.

It is a woman, a beautiful woman in a long blue dress. It is a dress that covers her arms and her torso with a long skirt down to just below her knees.

She is sitting cross legged, right leg over left, with her blonde hair styled into a twisted bun, the bun covered by a white cloth wrapping. Her face is turned away from Ajax.

Through the window--

Wait. Wait, where... where am I?

Ajax has woken up in a strange room. A stranger is sitting next to him. He doesn’t recognize the ceiling. The blanket. The feel of the bed.

Tension fills Ajax’s heart. He slowly rises from the bed to sit up. He calls out to the person next to him who may be able to fill in the gaps.

“E-excuse me...”

Ajax speaks and surprises the woman. She turns towards him from the window. Hers is a brown skinned face with freckles. A quite beautiful face indeed, matching her beautiful body.

“Um--”

The woman rises and runs towards the door without saying a word. There is a wooden door a few feet behind Ajax’s headrest.

Right outside the door, she speaks to someone. Ajax can still see her through the slightly open door.

Ajax, still in confusion, doesn’t say a word and listens closely to what the woman is saying to the person outside their door. She isn’t speaking quietly.

However... he can’t... understand a word.

Huh? What language is that?

Ajax speaks English fluently and can recognize when someone is speaking French, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Mandarin, Arabic and German.

But, this language didn’t sound like any of those. It didn’t share any roots either with any of the languages he’s ever heard before.

Who is that woman? Where the hell am I?

The woman finishes speaking and Ajax sees a man run off. He didn’t get a good look at what this man was wearing but apparently he had to leave in a hurry to get someone? To tell someone something?

The woman returns, closes the door and sits in her chair to the right of Ajax’s bed.

“Um, who... who are you?”

“□□□□□□□□□□□□”

Ajax cannot understand her words. She speaks clearly and slowly in acknowledgement of that fact. Her expression is... bright? She looks at Ajax with a dazzling smile.

Huh? Why does it look like she likes me? Am I reading this wrong?

The woman is looking at Ajax with a look of adoration.

“□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□□”

She clasps her hands together and says a prayer, at least what appears to be a prayer. Tears fall from her closed eyes.

What is going on?

The door opens once again.

A man walks into the room. He is a man in a red robe, wearing a hood.

It appears like a religious habit. Ajax has seen this kind of outfit before (at least something similar to it) in teachings about devout, medieval Christian priests.

However, unlike a religious habit, the man’s clothing is decorated somewhat extravagantly. Religious habits are known to be worn by particularly monastic sects. Strange.

The man walks up to Ajax and says something.

“□□□□□□□□□□□□?”

From the man’s tone, Ajax assumes a question is being asked.

“I-I don’t understand you. Do you speak any english?”

The man seems to understand something. He shouts outside the door towards someone Ajax cannot see.

Another man soon arrives into the room, holding a case. This man is wearing a similar, less lavish, brown, religious habit.

The less lavish man hands a well-decorated, white case to the red-garbed man. The case looks to Ajax like a small treasure chest, the kind that pirates would hide their loot in and bury on an uncharted island.

The less lavish man walks out of the room carefully, showing deference to the authority of the red-garbed man.

The red-garbed man opens the case with a key that he takes from his sleeve.

Inside the case (which also opens like a treasure chest) is a golden cube. A cube that looks like it were plated in gold, perhaps even made of solid gold; it has an extremely complex pattern on its surface.

The red-garbed man asks Ajax to do something but Ajax cannot understand. He points to the golden orb. He gestures his hand towards it.

It appears he wants Ajax to interact with it.

He wants me to do something with this thing? Can I really touch something that looks so expensive?

The man continues to gesture Ajax with a solemn smile on his face.

Ajax looks over at the beautiful woman again. She smiles wonderfully. Ajax feels comforted by her smile.

Ajax reaches out his hand towards the cube slowly and the man nods his head up and down in affirmation that Ajax is making the right course of action.

Ajax touches the cube.

The moment he does, he feels a sensation on his mind. Something is happening to him. He doesn’t let go of the cube because of... curiosity.

The sensation isn’t unpleasant. It feels like his perception is somehow... increasing.

As he continues holding onto the cube, it shines brighter and brighter.

Ajax feels like his consciousness is being stretched. Like he’s about to fall unconscious but not unpleasantly.

Suddenly, the light coming from the cube stops.

The priest pulls the cube away from Ajax and shouts.

“Boy, take this back with you.”

...huh?

Ajax hears the red garbed man speak foreign words.

But they aren’t foreign words anymore.

They’re not English, the only language that Ajax is fluent in. Yet... Ajax just understood the words the man spoke without any issue.

The blue garbed man returns, takes the white box and rushes out of the room once again, closing the door behind him.

“Blessed hero, did the language crystal work?”

The red-garbed man says another thing that Ajax understands.

“W-what do you mean? Wait, how can I communicate with you? What just happened?”

Ajax speaks in the new language with perfect fluency, almost unconscious of that fact, as if this language is the one he was born speaking.

“Divine hero, that artifact you placed your hands on is a tool that imparts the language of Sapiora. You can now read, write and speak in our language now.”

This... this is unbelievable. How... how can that...

“Oh, yes, I have been told that such tools don’t exist on your world. But, you can see the results, yes? You can understand my words, right?”

“Y-yes, I-I can...”

Ajax didn’t understand this language at all before he had touched the crystal. But now... everything was clear. Every word in the man’s language had a meaning in Ajax’s mind now. Out of nowhere. Even idioms and region-specific phrases that the man was using.

The fact that this man is calling him a hero.

“Why... why are you calling me a hero?”

Ajax replies to the man in the language of Sapiora, whatever Sapiora is. He can speak it so fluently, it is as if he were born in this land.

“You may be a little confused about the situation from your travel here. My name is Archbishop Andal Frasia. Welcome to Omicron.”