《Force of Will》Chapter 2: Panic is as Panic does
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I cut about half of this chapter while I'm reworking it. I've received a lot of feedback about this chapter and so clearly it needed to be reworked. The first half was a lot of re-telling that I threw a bit of lore into, but nothing that is going to affect your understanding of the story.
Thanks for bearing with me!
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“Page William, are you okay? Is there anything still hurting? Can you understand me?” the priest man said something to me. I opened my mouth just about to say that I didn’t speak whatever language they were speaking when, suddenly I did. It was as if it translated in my head, though it was no language I had ever heard before. Although it was nothing like how I handled Spanish back in high school. I was just staring at them and then suddenly I knew what he said. That was weird. What’s going on?
“Yes? You know me?” I said while nodding my head. They glanced at each other and then back to me again. Kind of becoming a routine at this point I guess.
“William, I’m glad you’re understanding me… but can you help us out? We don’t recognize your dialect and cannot honestly tell what you’re saying.” the clergyman said something else. I waited a bit, not comprehending nor thinking about anything, and then suddenly I understood. It took a good 10 seconds but there it was. It's like I was Google translating in my head or something and having to wait on the result. I thought this was the strangest sensation I was feeling, but I decided to see if I could reverse it. I thought about what I wanted to say and waited for a bit and then it hit me. “I’m sorry, can you understand me now?” I asked, very slowly, I was definitely not used to speaking this language.
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“Wonderful! Is everything okay though? You are taking quite some time to answer. Does something still hurt? I can try casting some more healing your way if there is still something wrong.” the priest asked. However, even after the translation kicked in I still had no reply. I just kind of stared at him, dumb founded. Casting some more healing? What was this guy going on about? Did my drunk ass find my way into some weirdos LARPing or something? I hadn’t thought about those since leaving high school behind and discovering just how social I could be in college. Best to just move on, I wanted no part of whatever roleplay these two were going on about.
I began changing the topic, and realized I had to translate again so I paused and thought it through, until finally it clicked.
“Well, actually could you just tell me where I’m at? I don’t actually recognize this uhhh… church?”
“William… this is not a church. This is the training grounds for ‘The Order of the Exalted Sun’. While neither of us is quite sure how long you’ve been here, that surely should give you a bit of context, yes?”
“Uhm, sorry, but no….. Uhh could you at least tell me how you know my name is Will? I still feel kind of out of it I guess.”
“Truthfully young William, you introduced yourself but shortly before your spar with young Samuel here. Neither of us knew you beforehand.”
Well, that was a dead-end. The college kid and the old guy both did not know me. Sounds like I drunkenly stumbled in here and thought I would LARP with the kid though. He couldn’t tell I was drunk? No way I was speaking correctly when I showed up. Reckon I should be on my way then if they weren’t able to help. I pushed myself up to a sitting position. The roleplayers smiled a bit and backed up, so I guess I didn’t ruin their session or anything.
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“Oh well, while I don’t quite understand that either, I guess… I… should….” I trailed off. I just began acknowledging the scale difference of everything here. Now that I was standing I realized that everything and everyone was huge here. The smaller guy, Samuel apparently already had what appeared to be a foot on me, so that put him around seven feet. And then the priest was over a foot on him. That means the priest had to be approaching or at eight foot right? That seemed… odd.
Now that I realized the numbers were bothering me, I started trying to analyze everything a bit further. If I didn’t take my own height into account …. I would only put ….Samuel at just over five feet. Which means that the other guy was around six feet. But that couldn’t be right….. I’m six foot myself and they were taller than me…. Something wasn’t right….. I started checking myself out. Now that I was paying attention and trying to be objective, these weird shoes were obviously small….. Everything about me seems… small….I scrambled to take off my shoes and I began hyperventilating. These were not my feet. I stood and began spinning and taking everything in, and suddenly a rush of green greeted me and then sweet oblivion took me.
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