PROLOGUE

"My parents named me Zed because they

said I was the last kid they'd ever have.

I'm an only child."

-Zed Thorn

Zed Thorn was in stasis. Not lost, but having no direction. Motion without motivation. It had been six years now since Zed pulled out of university. Undeclared major, undeclared goals, undeclared life.

"Between all the loans you've taken out and the stipend we send you every month, the entire household has been drained. Don't you have any goals or aspirations?," his mother lamented, wringing her hands. A typical nervous gesture of hers, and an annoying one at that. "I'm sorry, Zed. We're going to have to cut you off."

His father was more detached, leaving a short voicemail on his last business trip to Prague:

"Get your shit together, boy. I don't know what your problem is, but you're going to fix this. Now."

And so, drowning in debt from student loans and out of options, Zed tucked tail and slunk back to his parents' home in the suburbs of Harpfield. Literally bum-fuck-Egypt, in his not-so-humble opinion. Big enough for an outdoor mall, small enough for every nosy housewife to have a finger in every pie, and so insular as to shun any member of the community not conforming to the tacit standards of Midwest Hell. In a choice between minimum wage and manual labor, WholeCart, a cookie-cutter low-budget whole food grocery store, was the lesser of the two evils. Barely. At least it didn't look like a blight on a fledgling resume.

The uniform, however, was a serious drawback when Zed was assigned to cart duty. His tall and lanky build, combined with the ridiculous dwarf-sized green vest, caused him to stick out like a sore thumb. An easy target for his former bullies and deranged soccer moms to victimize. Today, an oversized white SUV with tinted windows blared its horn and swerved left, right, and back again trying to overtake Zed and his unwieldy shopping cart train. Zed gritted his teeth and clenched his knuckles. The screaming would start any moment now.

There was an unholy squealing of tires and a shuddering crash that sent Zed sprawling on the asphalt. The short-fused suburban bitch actually had the audacity to attempt to force him out of the lane with her vehicle! The cart train was in shambles, the SUV riddled with dings and scratches all down the passenger's side. A shrill shriek came from the driver side, followed by a bodily SLAM. The impatient bitch, an early-forties yuppie-wannabe in a sleek black and white pantsuit and pumps stomped toward Zed's prone body, shrieking and spitting inarticulately. She gesticulated wildly at her scarred vehicle.

Still in shock, Zed felt a tingle at the back of his neck as several pairs of eyes zeroed in on the spectacle. Some footsteps could be heard approaching from multiple directions. His right hand was smarting; he looked down at his palm to see a criss-cross pattern of scrapes, blood oozing from a few deeper cuts at the side of his wrist and forearm. That bitch. His pulse started pounding a deafening shoomp-shoomp in his ears, drowning out most of the commotion around him. His upper lip twitched involuntarily and his muscles began to tense up.

He looked up again. The manager, Jared, a tall and muscular adonis-type with a blonde man bun, was attempting to pacify the yuppie bitch, who now had her cell phone plastered to the side of her face, presumably contacting her attorney. As his pulse steadied, he caught a few snippets of conversation:

"... inattentive swine... hundreds in body work... want him fired..." Bitch.

What?

Something black and unnameable started fizzling in the back of Zed's skull.

"... can only apologize... will make this right... to be reprimanded..." Jared.

No.

Something sinister. Scrabbling. Sizzling. Seething. Spreading across his scalp, seeping in the edges of his vision.

"...saw the whole thing... his fault... slimy little bastard..." Male. Unseen.

Excuse me?!

Suddenly Zed shot to his feet. Now he was the one screaming.

"YOU LIAR! WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU? YOU'RE IN SUCH A DAMN HURRY THAT YOU HAVE NO REGARD FOR ANYONE ELSE?"

The woman's eyes were wide as dinner plates, her face was pallid, completely drained of blood. "Y-you little...," she stammered.

"You HIT me! With a moving freaking vehicle!" He shoved his bleeding hand in her face. "I'm bleeding, for Chrissakes!"

She wrinkled her nose and recoiled in disgust. A large, meaty fist seized Zed by the upper arm, wrenching his arm back.

"That's enough," Jared roared in his ear. "This is entirely your fault. If you hadn't--"

Zed twisted painfully out of Jared's grip, wincing slightly, and turned on the man. His ears were burning, his entire body now shaking with rage. The blackness was threatening to swallow him whole. His lip curled.

"And YOU! I was doing my fucking JOB! I didn't--"

"ZED!"

Jared took a long step forward, closing the distance between them. He loomed over Zed, inches from his face. Seconds ticked by as Zed glared into the man's soul. His brain felt full of static, his ears buzzed. It was over, and Zed knew it. Maintaining eye contact with Jared, Zed ripped off his vest with his bloodied hand and balled it up tightly in his fist.

"Fuck you," Zed hissed. "Fuck you, you spineless sack of shit. Fuck you, and FUCK THIS JOB!"

He threw the soiled vest bodily at Jared. Jared instinctively caught the vest, looked down at the crumpled ball, saw the bloody handprint, and dropped the vest in disgust and horror. The Karen was still standing there dumbstruck, her cell phone dangling precariously in her now limp hand. Zed dismissed her with a death glare and silent double middle finger salute, and walked off down the street.

---

Back at home, Zed shouldered his bedroom door closed and turned the key in the lock. His head was pounding and his leg muscles felt as if they were being eaten away by battery acid. Adrenaline dumps, Zed noted, were hell. He fumbled for the light switch, flipped it on, and trudged over to the full body mirror hung over the sliding closet door.

Time to take inventory.

Zed stripped off his now filthy white button up uniform shirt with some care; the bleeding had stopped, but the soreness was starting to set in. He tossed the shirt aside and turned to face the mirror. His normally piercing green eyes were darkened with the stress of the day and his black hair hung in his eyes. Too long, he thought to himself. Definitely in need of a trim. He raised his right arm to his chest and surveyed the damage. Sore, yes, and probably worse in the morning, but nothing meriting a trip in an ambulance. There were some bruises surfacing on his lower right side, and a truly ugly blackish blotch on the sharp angle of his hip bone. Strangely, that didn't hurt, not that he was complaining. Give it a day or two, probably, and it would.

In the stark artificial basement light, he could see the small indentations between his ribs, shadows in his sallow flesh. Over the last few years he was starting to look practically malnourished. Living at home with his parents yielded the perk of a shared food pantry, however, he typically couldn't be bothered to scrape together a proper meal. Call it apathy, or something like it.

Low-grade depression, his inner voice commented. He shook his head vehemently.

"Fuck off," he told his reflection, turning away.

What he needed right now more than anything was some stress relief, a la video gaming. He stripped to his boxers and scrounged around in his dresser drawers for some PJs. Something comfortable. This was going to be a marathon session. More scrounging. Empty? Next drawer, then.

Aha, success, he thought triumphantly. Drawstring sweats.

Zed slipped into his pajama bottoms with some difficulty, almost falling over with one leg in and one leg out, and flailed comically to regain his balance. Shirt? Sure. It felt a little chilly in the room anyway, and he didn't want to have to look down and keep seeing the reminder of earlier that afternoon. He plunked down on his mattress and sat cross-legged with his lower legs and feet on the floor. No box springs or bed frame. He never really bothered to refurnish the room much after moving back in. The less to move out when he had his shit sorted, the better. Only...

He sifted through the game cases on the floor next to the bed and quickly found what he was looking for: an old JRPG with a tactical twist, his favorite. He slotted the disc into the drive of the outdated gaming console and the fan started whirring loudly. He slapped the top of the console a few times, and the whirring stopped. Better, but still not great. Last gen on its last legs, and now he definitely wouldn't be able to afford better for a long while. How the hell was he going to find another job in this shithole town? It didn't matter now, he decided. Another problem for another day. The intro screen flashed on the big screen display and Zed shifted on the mattress, ready to get sucked in.

Zed had dumped hundreds of hours into the game, completing it several times. Every playthrough was a new and unique experience due to the complex class system. The player only started out with three of the most basic classes: Ranged, Melee, and Ranged Caster. As the player advanced through the game and met certain prerequisites, new classes were unlocked. Pre-existing classes could also be transformed into an upgraded form of that class with enhanced specializations. The mage class, for instance, had access to every type of elemental attack, but they did pretty low damage. The mage could be upgraded to the archmage class fairly early on in the campaign, but would have to sacrifice half of their elemental attacks in exchange for much stronger versions of the remaining elemental attacks.

Zed set the stage to start one of his favorite builds: the Necromancer. He worked well with an arsenal of mindless minions at his disposal. It was a lengthy process, but he was able to establish most of the fundamentals and unlocks before the controller slipped from his fingers and he fell into a fitful slumber, TV screen still flashing.