There was a low rumble of thunder. A single chime of colossal bell.

Then the crystal light ball rocketed forward out of His Majesty’s palm faster than I could blink, striking me dead in the chest. I reflexively flinched back with a gasp of pain, but it didn’t hurt. The tiny marble of solid light simply passed right through my leather jacket, then my flesh, like a phantom.

Even though it had disappeared into my body, I still saw what was happening, a crystal clear image of the process forcing itself into my mind’s eye. The crystal sunk into me, burying itself directly into the middle of my heart. Again, I felt no pain, the tiny orb ghosting right through the beating muscle.

Once it reached the exact middle, it became solid, corporeal. That did hurt, my heart seizing up like someone was trying to wring juice out of it.

“Nnnnnngh!” A deep groan was all I could get out as I clutched at my heart, the pain bringing me to my knees. Holy fuck! The light crystal blinked. Once. Twice. Then it started to spin, ever so slowly. That felt like someone’d gotten to the precious, meaty organ with a melon baller. Just a sloooow twist and scrape.

The crystal began to flash repeatedly, strobing a dark yellow light as it started to spin faster. The faster it spun, the faster the strobing light pulsed. It quickly reached top speed, constantly glowing with angry yellow light.

I fell forward, my forehead hitting the floor with a hard *thud*. I barely noticed, as the crystal began to heat. And then heat some more. I wasn’t sure how it wasn’t just melting everything around it and killing me (God magic), but it gave a whole new meaning to heartburn.

For what is was worth, I managed to get out a lot more than just a groan of pain that time.

“Ahhggggh!” It was scream city.

The crystal heated until it resembled white hot, molten metal. Two thin bands of blood began spiraling into it, merging together with the molten crystal. The orb started to squash and squish together, folding in over itself like a ball of clay being worked by a master artisan.

This went on for several seconds, the lump slowly darkening from burning white to a cold, rough grey the color of wrought iron. It molded itself into an oval, a wide hole opening up in the center. Then the burning stopped, the no-longer-orb cooled down completely, and it stopped spinning.

What? So thats it? All of that for some little metal circle?

No, that wasn’t quite right. I dunno how I knew, but something told me it wasn’t just a circle. It was a chain. Or at least, a link. It’d become a chain eventually though.

Okay, that was cool, I guess, but I’m still not sure what-

*CRASH*

A giant peal of thunder echoed throughout the Tower.

The chain link reacted instantly, buzzing like a wasp. It began to tingle. Nothing major, just the sort you get when a limb just starts to fall asleep. Then it started to crackle with power, literally. Tiny arcs of electricity—little bolts of lightning(Cool!)—began conducting through the link, zapping back and forth across the open middle.

Once the lightning began flowing through the link, things got crazy. Threads of lightning, thinner than the finest hair, began leeching out of the link and into the blood surrounding it. This blood flowed right on through my heart, and soon, the power of lightning was coursing through every vein in my body. It seeped into my muscles, down to my bones. It eked out of my skin, minuscule currents of electricity dancing over me.

The lingering pain from earlier vanished without a trace as the potent energy healed my wounds. I pushed off the ground and directly back into a standing position.

Holy shit, I’d never felt this good in my entire life! It was like everything in my body had suddenly gone turbo. My muscles literally ached with potential, and my brain—though I didn’t feel any smarter—was running at least twice as fast, thoughts coming to me at a speed I’d never even dreamed of before. Even time seemed to slow down a bit, my reaction time suddenly shooting through the roof.

I watched the lightning play across my skin. God, I must look like a total badass.

I spun around to face King Sam, a huge grin splitting my face. “Holy hell Your Majesty, thank you so——Your Majesty? Is something wrong?”

That was kind of a rhetorical question. King Sam’s face was a mixture of disgust, horror, and sadness. That was not a face you made during a big celebration. No no, that was the face you made when you had to put your dog down.

And in this situation, I did not want to be the fucking dog.

The King’s infinitely green eyes were somber, confirming my suspicion that I was definitely the dog here. My heart sank. “The process is far from over. For the Chosen, the Blessing is the total reforging of soul and body. What you experienced is just the tip of the iceberg. I am sorry.”

Oh.

Oh.

Well goddamn it—

Before I could even finish that curse, I found out exactly what His Majesty meant. Like His words flipped a switch, the chain link embedded in my heart kicked into high gear. It began generating a ton more energy all at once, from conducting a few bolts here and there, to being coated in a thick layer of lightning.

The threads of lightning that ran through my veins swelled proportionally, suddenly becoming a thick torrent of electricity.

I screamed bloody murder as veins all over my body started bulging out underneath my skin. My vision turned an angry yellow as the lightning blood river reached my eyes, the swelling forcing them shut.

My muscles didn’t do any better. The flood of extra power was too much. Every little twitch I made let out such an explosive burst of force that whatever muscle moved practically tore itself apart. I crumpled back to the ground in a heap.

The arcs of electricity that had made me look so cool became a cloak of living hell. Instead of gently weaving their way out of my skin, the electricity pushed their way out like a wall of burning needles. That tore flesh open all over my body, the blood vaporizing away from the heat.

I should have passed out. By God, I wanted to pass out. But I couldn’t. Some sick, malevolent force kept me awake, conscious. In pain. For the next thirty seconds, I stayed like that. Seizing on the floor like a fish out of water. Veins damn near the point of bursting. Muscles tearing themselves apart, cloaked in cruel, clawing lightning.

Then it stopped. Mercifully, it just stopped. The chain link stopped making lightning, all the electricity in my body dispersing right after. A wave of golden healing poured over me, whisking away the pain and closing my injuries. That was His Majesty’s work.

Okay, so it was done now, right? “Uh, King Sam? Is that all?”

He didn’t answer me.

“Oh, fuck y-”

My chest exploded open, an inch thick chain coated in a sheathe of lightning smashing its way out of my chest in a spray of bone shards and body juice. That’s blood, by the way.

The two previous waves had easily been the worst pain in my life.

This was still worse by far.

Something between a sob, wail, and a screech tore out of my throat and into the open as the chain just kept pouring out. Link after link after link. About thirty foot of chain (Some-fucking-how) spooled out of the cavity in my chest, then stopped.

The thirty some odd feet of electrified chain reared up into the air, weaving back and forth like some kind of overgrown snake. It ‘examined’ me for a few seconds, silently judging what to do.

There was a loud *CLINK* as a link in the middle of the chain fell apart, the top half slamming into the ground. The bottom half slunk down quickly after. The chains made a horrible clanging noise as they slowly drug themselves over the black stone floor and over to me. Each of the chains picked a side, starting at the foot, and began to coil.

I’m not a super smart guy, I know that. But in my free time when I’m not training, I like to read the accounts of famous adventurers, heroes, and the sort. Some of those guys use real fancy language, so I’ve had to really broaden my vocabulary over the years. I don’t have a single combination of words that can do justice to what I felt over the next few minutes as the chain coiled around my body.

Terrible. I wasn’t electrocuted, but the heat contained in the metallic chain was immense. As soon as it touched my boot, the leather began to burn, and any cloth parts caught fire. My boots instantly turned into ovens, roasting my feet whole.

Horrible. When the chain got to the bare skin between my pants and boots (They’d gotten untucked sometime during the Tobis fight I guess) the white hot temperature seared my skin on contact. In fact, it didn’t just sear my skin, it cooked it. My skin sizzled and burned, sticking to the chain. It smelled like bacon. I wanted to throw up.

Traumatic. Of course, just because my skin stuck to the chain didn’t mean the chain stopped moving. Oh no, it kept right on going, ripping and tearing the skin that had fused to it right off. Then the next link would move into place, re-cauterizing the wound, then tearing it again as the coil moved up.

Nightmarish. Blood was pouring out of the open flesh, bubbling and boiling away as it came into contact with the chain. Black smoke drifted up from my legs, from anywhere the lightning chains touched me. It was thick, with a sickly sweet, bitter smell. I threw up.

Hell. Together, the two chains coiled their way over my whole body, wrapping me in some sort of fucking psychotic cocoon. By the time they had gotten to my upper thighs, I’d already screamed my throat hoarse. As they coiled around my groin, I screamed it raw and bloody. For my own sake, I’m just going to skip the description for what it did to my junk. You can probably figure it out.

Chest. Upper arms. Shoulders. Face. Everything wrapped in chains. Everything burned, bled, boiled. Magic was the only thing keeping me alive right now, but I would gladly welcome death right now.

Once the chains wrapped around my face, my eyes boiled away, and the world went completely black. I laid there, in total darkness, while my electrical prison writhed around me, the pain agonizing and unrelenting.

How long was it? Five minutes? Five hours? I couldn’t tell, didn’t have anyway to tell. My sight was gone, everything was just darkness and pain. But even the pain had a limit. And when my body was as pain-filled as it possibly could be, even that all consuming void faded.

All that was left was darkness. And it was there, in that never-ending abyss, that I felt it. When every distraction had been removed from the picture, I felt what the Blessing was doing to me. The lightning imbued in the chains was leeching into me, my body absorbing it like a dry sponge.

It permeated throughout me, deep down to the most basic level. Down past skin. Past bone. Deeper than the cells, diving all the way into my very DNA. The lighting dissolved into motes of pure magic, floated towards the building blocks of what made me me, and fused together with them.

I felt strength well in my body. My poor, battered heart began to repair itself, along with the area around it, which had been ruined when the chain exploded out of my chest earlier. Once all the veins and valves were repaired, blood and lighting began to flow again. The chains no longer burned at all, and my body’s injuries began to heal at warp-speed. But it was different now. As layers of flesh, muscle, and all that other good stuff put themselves back together, everything felt stronger. My muscles denser, my bones thicker.

Oh, and my eyes healed, so I wasn’t blind anymore. Which was nice.

It became clear what His Majesty had meant when He’d said it was a ‘total reforging.’ This chain cocoon was exactly that, and just like a caterpillar, I’d been broken down in order to be rebuilt better than ever before. I was a brand new man. A brand new Emmanuel.

Before I could really register what was happening, I was swooped off the ground, my face shoved in something golden, and soft. Really soft. Like, ‘holy-shit-this-might-be-the-softest-thing-I-ever-felt’ soft. And-

I took a big whiff. It smelled like an entire bakery’s worth of freshly baked bread. Amazing.

“You know, its usually considered rude to so obviously smell someone’s hair like that. Just a little fyi.”

With a start, I pushed back and looked up, straight into the grinning face of King Sam. “Y-Your Majesty!”

He laughed and dropped me. “Congratulations kid!” Reaching one of His giant gauntleted hand/paws up (What the hell do you call those? Are both right?) He gave me a hearty slap on the left shoulder.

Which immediately broke said shoulder. And sent me tumbling to the ground in a heap.

His Majesty cursed. “Oh, shit! My bad.”

Good ol’ divine healing magic cleared that up almost before I even felt it.

“Sorry about that. It’s been a long time since I’ve physically interacted with someone lower than Tier 4. I forgot you newbies are very, very squishy.”

I chuckled nervously. "Haha, yeah, its no problem at all! I mean, compared to what just happened, a broken shoulder isn't that bad."

King Sam crossed His arms and nodded seriously. “Indeed. I wasn’t going to say it during the process because I didn’t want to psyche you out, but I think that might have been one of the most over the top Blessing transformations I’ve seen. I was seriously concerned you weren’t going to pull through for a second.”

“Wait, what? That wasn’t a ‘guaranteed to live through’ kind of thing?”

“Nope. You just obviously never hear about the Chosen that didn’t live through it. If you don’t live, you ain’t the right stuff.” He shrugged it off like it was no big deal. “Anyway, I am sure you have a lot of questions, but those can wait. Right now, you need to sleep more than anything.”

I stared blankly at Him. Memories of the pain, of having my everything ripped apart like that, lurked in the back of my mind. “Uh, no, I'm sorry. Can we go back one second? I wasn't guaranteed to live through that? Your Majesty, what the heck? That would have been nice to know! And, it would have been nice to know how badly it was going to hurt too. That was........I literally don't think I could feel more pain than that. I think I'm gonna have nightmares about that! For real."

King Sam sighed and crossed His arms. "Well, Emmanuel, look at it this way. Even if I had said something about it. What would that have changed? Are you telling me you wouldn't have gone through with it?" He raised His eyebrows at me.

"Well, I-uh, no. Probably not?"

He snapped His fingers and pointed at me. "Aha, see? You'd still have done it anyway. And there is, even for me, no way to possibly convey what the Blessing process is like through words alone. You wouldn't have been prepared even if we sat here discussing the finer points for an hour beforehand."

Thaaaat was a good point. "I-yeah, okay. Fair enough, Your Majesty. I'll uh...just deal with that if it comes up then."

He nodded. "I really don't think it will. If it does, I have some things I can do about that. Anyway, I'm gonna send you home now to get some rest. You may be feeling good at the moment, but as soon as the adrenaline wears off, you'll be worth less than a log cabin in the Glass Desert. Unfortunately, you may be asleep awhile."

Huh. That seemed oddly specific. Wait. "Hold on, what-"

The King waved His left hand, and I passed straight the hell out.