He rode on a black stallion, jumping over the fallen bodies as he launched arrows into the horizon, though he didn't see it, he knew they struck down their targets. His army behind him, advanced forward, charging and shouting their war cries with all of their might. Before them lay their enemy, and one by one, they fell. Soon the battlefield was covered in the blood and the bodies of their enemy and comrades alike. He shouted for victory, and his men matched their voices with his own. They had been victorious, but this was just one battle, and as the men buried both the enemy and their own fallen comrades, he prepared for their next.

His head shot up at an unfamiliar sound. A loud buzzing akin to summer beetles, but more sporadic and obnoxious sounding.

~What in the hell was that!?~ his thoughts screamed. He didn't recognize it as any war call, or a weapon.

"Kenneth!!!! Kenneth Jeremiah Ryans, you get your ass out of bed this instant!! This your last day of finals, and of school! And God damn it! You are not going to be late!"

Kenneth groaned as he rolled over, he quickly slammed his hand down on the alarm clock, realizing the sound had been coming from it. He sat up in bed and attempted to rub the sleep from his eyes. That had been a weird dream, at least in the sense he’d never had one so vivid before. He'd had similar dreams all the time, because of all the video games he'd played. Probably because he wanted adventures to go on, or at least be able to run. Hell, even a brisk walk.

"Kenneth!!"

"Yeah, yeah yeah I'm up! I'm Up!" He called down to his mother, muttering under his breath as he crawled out of bed. "Damn harpy, don't you have better things to do than pick on me."

He dressed in record time, was munching on a granola bar as he grabbed his school bag, and headed to the door to wait for the school bus.

"Don't forget to remind the coach to give you a special final," His mother irradiated for the thousandth time. "Oh, and here's your inhaler."

"I've already got two in my bag, and one in my pocket mom." He said annoyed. "And it doesn't matter what I remind the coach, he'll make me do whatever he wants."

"But your condition!" His mother protested. "It's clearly stated in your charts and the file at school! I've reminded them several times! If they try to make you do more than you're capable of, walk away! Do you hear me, Kenneth!? Walk Away!"

He rolled his eyes and didn't answer her. Instead, he walked out to the bus which had conveniently arrived. He sat in the back, the assigned seats for his fellow Seniors, but where they were all doubled or tripled in their seats, he sat alone. No one sat with him. Despite the drivers insisting no more than two people in a seat, unless they were small children, no one sat with him. They avoided him as if he had the plague or something. Which was fine. He could live with that.

School, was dull. It was the final day of school for the Seniors. The day they took the last of the finals before they were graded and they graduated. Kenneth had studied hard, and he felt he would at least pass them. Barely, but he would.

At the end of the day came his mother's dreaded fitness final. He'd heard that some schools only had physical education for a year, or for their first two years of high school. His had theirs at the tail end. In their Senior year. Because that was New Eastern High for you. Doing things backward since it was established in 1943. Joining the rest of the rest of his class outside, Kenneth sighed as the coach paced in front of them, arms behind his back like a drill instructor. The coach barked orders for them to do twenty push-ups, thirty sit-ups, fifteen jumping jacks, then they had to run a mile. When they were done, they could go shower off and sit around waiting for the day to be over.

As he had expected, the coach did not give him another way to pass his fitness exam. The big man, who looked like he ate at McDonald's every day, simply glared at him. Kenneth found it funny that a man who was middle-aged, overweight, and among the cruelest men he'd ever met was their coach. Acting as if he were some superior being, and Lorded that fact over them all.

He heard somewhere that the man was once a promising athlete, they thought of him as a local legend. But then he went to the big leagues, and things changed. Kenneth didn't know if the man was injured, or if the coach just walked away, but he came back a broken man. Started coaching at the high school to see that others go where he couldn't. Only those chosen few, were deemed worthy of his affection.

Apparently, weaklings like Kenneth were the bane of his existence, and he was especially cruel to people who were far better off than him. So whenever Kenneth said he hated gym, and he hated the coach, it was putting the situation mildly. Still, he never complained to the coach, never complained in general. Just did what he could, and if the coach got chewed out by his mother, and the principle, because he mother chewed out the principle first, then that was his problem. Not Kenneth's. So however much his mother wanted him to correct the coach and get a different test, Kenneth merely put an inhaler in his pocket and joined the rest of his class in the lineup.

Interesting.

Kenneth stopped and looked around. He was sure he heard someone speaking, but there was no one there with him. He was all alone. His classmates and the coach were in front of him, and it sounded as if the voice came from behind.

Shrugging it off, he took his place in line and began to do the required warm-ups. He managed to get through the jumping jacks fine, the sit-ups gave him some grief, but he managed without the use of the inhaler. He wasn't so lucky during the push-ups, he got through three, then had to take a hit. He managed to do five more, then another hit.

By the time it was done, he needed four hits off the inhaler. He looked at the track, a one-mile run, they had to loop around it four times to get the full mile. He got to his feet, his legs already shaking. He managed to run half of the track, slowed to a jog, but when he went for his second lap, the inhaler was in his mouth, and he was forced to walk. It was grueling, his chest burned, sweat poured from his brow, and walking made his legs ache. When he reached the coach after his fourth lap, he was the last one on the track, and he was shaking from head to toe.

"You failed boy." The coach said glaring at him.

"I don't think I did," Kenneth said softly. "I at least earned a C."

"You didn't run a mile, you pussyfooted it!" The coach yelled at him. "You fail boy! You fail! And there ain't nothing you can do about it!

Kenneth looked up at him, narrowing his gaze. That was it. He'd had it. "Yeah, you could fail me, but when my mother asks the school to see what kind of program you made me do instead of this, and she requests to see the video footage as proof, because everyone knows the school has camera's everywhere since they've been robbed too many times, you'll be out of a job."

He didn’t like using his mother like that, but it was the only way. He wasn't beneath using what he had to get what he wanted. Especially if it spared him a lot of grief later down the line. The coach merely glared and grumbled under his breath. Everyone and that was no exaggeration, everyone on the school staff knew of his mother's wrath, and no one wanted to be on the receiving end of it. Every time she showed up at the school, people hid, and by the time she left, at least three people were left in tears. Kenneth knew, for all the man's bravado, even the coach was terrified of his mother.

Kenneth shook his head. "I'll be in the showers, I'm sure you'll do the right thing."

He walked away, straight to the showers without looking back. He turned on the water cold as he sat naked on the shower floor. Man, it felt good. His chest felt heavy, but it was better than it had been when he came inside. Once his body had cooled off, and his head was no longer spinning, he turned the hot water on full blast. Breathing in the steam really helped his chest. Soon, his chest didn’t burn, and he could breathe normally.

The other guys were by the lockers, already having showered, and they were goofing off. They had two hours left of school, and they knew once they left this room, some teacher would grab them and have them do some kind of work. They were even on their best behavior, normally, they would be heckling him, today, they left him alone.

Very. Interesting.

Kenneth froze, his eyes opened and he looked around. There was that voice again, he was preparing to yell, but there was no one. He stood and glanced outside of the showers, but all of the guys were still by the lockers half naked. No one was even remotely near him. He shook his head as he went back into the shower to actually wash off.

Maybe he was losing his mind. Even if a pervy old man was to peek in on him, there was nothing about him that would be sexually appealing. He was a very sickly boy, not even the girls with mental handicaps found him attractive. He was far too skinny for his height, and there was the fact that he couldn't even walk for five minutes without needing a shot of his inhaler.

He headed home, putting all of that out of his mind. Romantic love had been as foreign to him as France his whole life, and that wasn't about to change now. Besides, he didn't need it. He had what was important; his parents, a roof over his head, the fact that high school was soon to be over, and his video games. That was all he needed in life.

Love wasn't important. At least that’s what he told himself. Being young, he could believe it for now. Though he had a feeling, as he got older, his views on the matter might change.

His mother was thankfully out as he walked through the front door. The note on the fridge said something about a doctors appointment, then grocery shopping. Then the six messages on the answering machine said something about the delays at the office, then a flat tire, then the crowded grocery store and having to wait forever for the items she wanted.

Free of the Harpy he called mother for a little longer, he headed up to his room, put on his headphones, turned on his computer, and lost himself in a world of dragons, magic, the undead, and lots of difficult dungeons. He would have played one of his online games, fighting with other players against others playing the same game, but that always got him so worked up, and he'd overworked himself enough that day. So when his eyes got heavy from exhaustion, he shut it all down and laid his head back for a few minutes of rest.

"Quite the warrior you are."

Kenneth jumped, opening his eyes to face the owner of the voice that had haunted him all afternoon, and gawked.

Instead of sitting in his recliner in his room, he was now in a vast room with a white floor and a white ceiling high above his head. There were no walls, just the endless sea of white. There was a red plush chair in front of the white one he sat in. Sitting in it, was the most massive man he'd ever seen. Not fat massive, but muscle massive. He was resting his elbow on the arm of the chair, his face resting in his palm, grinning at Kenneth.

"I don't know what you mean, I've never fought any battles." Kenneth protested weakly.

The man grinned. "Not all battles are on the battlefield my boy. You fight battles every day."

"Those are just video games!" Kenneth protested again. “Put me in that situation in real life and I’ll fail before I even begin.”

The man's grin didn't budge. "I wasn't referring to the simulators."

Kenneth sat back confused now. "What did you mean then?"

The man chuckled. "I was referring to the way you battled your ailment. The way you battled against what was expected of you. The way you battled every single day for the whole of your life. A life, while pitiful and not really worth living in my opinion, you still fought every day to live it. Now that, is a warrior."

Kenneth said nothing merely looked around the sea of white, wondering if this was actually happening. Was this real? Or just another vivid dream? Had he taken too many hits of the inhaler after all? He had been warned about that.

"What would you say if I said I could cure your ailment?"

Kenneth's eyes returned to the man immediately. Those were words he'd heard many times, and each time, proved a disappointment. He knew better than to trust those words without question.

"I’d ask what’s in it for you?"

The man threw his head back, barking with laughter. "Oh yes! I knew it! I knew you were the right choice. You are right to question me, for I will ask much of you."

Kenneth merely heaved a sigh, waiting for an explanation.

"You see," The man said manifesting an arrow out of the nothing and twirling it amicably as he talked. "I'm a God, the God of war to be exact. My fellow Gods and I created a world so that people like yourself and others could gain power and live easier lives. Relatively speaking anyway. Sad thing is, some have taken advantage of it, and are now ruining this paradise we've created. We need champions to go there, and bring balance to it."

“Didn’t you just say you’re a God? Why can't you just wipe them out if they’re becoming such a problem?"

The man, or God, was once again barking with laughter. "Oh yes," He said as he finally recovered. "Oh yes, you are truly my champion. I had the exact same feelings on the matter, but we Gods are incapable of acting ourselves. We can influence, we can make suggestions, Hell, we can bluntly say, “DO THIS!”, but free will and all, you don’t have to do what we say. If we were to physically descend and get involved with the dealings of mortals, then how would the people react?

“In our previous experience, they would stop respecting us, and they wouldn't follow us willingly anymore. They would start looking at us as the cause for all of their problems. Just look at your own history. At how religion was used by those in power to control the masses or wage war in their god's name. Look how that ended up.”

"So, why choose me? Surely there are others better suited to this role." Kenneth found himself saying. "Certainly ones in better health."

The God nodded. "True, but you are the best. You, I can trust, will not betray me. You have a good heart, unburdened by so many plights, despite the fact that you have suffered. You do not hate the healthy and powerful, despite the fact that they have things you don't. Nor do you neglect the weak because they remind you of what you are. One of my last champions, I realized too late, was burdened by such things, and turned his back on everything I asked of him. You, I can trust, once you're cured, will perform my tasks in your own time, but they will be done."

"So you're going to cure me of my asthma, then drop me in some other world and expect me to fend for myself?" Kenneth asked skeptically. “Without any specifics as to what purpose I’m serving? Nothing and no one to help me at all?”

The God looked at him shocked. Then his face slapped into his palm. "I forgot to tell you, didn't I?"

"Apparently, if there is more to tell."

"Yes, there is more. You won’t be the only one, there will be others. Each of the Gods is picking a champion. There will be seven at least. If the Goddess of Elements finally decides to pick a champion, then there will be eight. But do not hope for the eighth." The God said looking up at him. "Elements has never chosen a champion before, and I see no reason for her to change her mind on that now."

“The Goddess of Elements name is Elements? Following that logic, is it safe to assume that you are War?”

“We’re not a very imaginative lot.”

“Clearly”

“Are you going to keep quibbling about random things, or may I continue?”

Kenneth merely sat back and waited, he knew now the God was far from done.

"As is it, every one of the champions will be offered three things. One ability, one item, and one personal favor." The God said holding up his fingers. "Obviously, your favor will be the cure so you can perform your tasks." The God said lowering a finger. "That leaves you with an ability and an item. You can choose for yourself what that will be.”

With a wave of the God's hand, a blue screen appeared in front of Kenneth and he was looking at two columns on the screen.

abilities items

"You simply touch the screen to pick ability or item, when you've chosen one, you can move onto the other. You can change your mind however many times you want, but I implore you to just think carefully so that you may save time. I'm not a very patient God off the battlefield."

Kenneth stared at the two columns. He sighed and figured he might as well see what would happen. He touched the abilities and looked at his options.

Stealth: The path of the Hidden Champion

This champion of War wages battles from the shadow.

Preferring instead, to operate in secret, and quietly take out problems before they become a threat.

Will not be a leader of armies on a grand scale, but a masterful tactician.

Spells will include:

Cloak - allowing the user to hide in plain sight. Duration will increase the more power the caster has.

Eventually will be able to cast this over party members.

Eavesdropping - allowing the user to hear from great distances at choice volume.

Detection - allowing the user to find anything out of the ordinary.

i/e traps, spies, poison in food or drink, etc

Sharp Eye - allows the user to see up to great distances to hit the target dead on.

Weapons:

Will be able to wield and carry lightweight weapons and armor as combat will be within close quarters

natural with any long-range weapons Angelic: The path of the Peaceful Champion

This champion prefers diplomacy over a battle.

Choosing instead to play the part of the politician and talk things over rather than raise weapons.

Spells will include:

Detection

Profiling - allowing the user to read their opponent as if they were an open book.

So they may know what the opponent is thinking and planning.

Eavesdropping

Diplomacy - allowing the user to charm their voice so their opponents will agree with what the user says.

Weapons:

The Champion will have three weapons.

The Sword, the Shield, and the Pen.

The Sword, so the Champion may fight in duels and preserver.

The Shield, so the Champion may defend against unjust attacks.

The Pen, for it, is mightier than the sword, and any treaty, deal, peace broker signed with it is final.

Completely unbreakable. Except by the Champion or the God.

Only the Champion may wield the pen, and should the Champion break the pen, all of the deals will be undone. Berserk: The path of the Battle-Born Champion

This Champion prefers a combination of Battle and Diplomacy

This Champion knows that not all conflicts can be solved with words and pieces of paper.

Some battles must be fought.

Stealth, while handy for this Champion, is among its weaker spells. For an army is not subject to stealth.

Spells include:

Detection

Profiling

Diplomacy - this spell is half of its normal power with this ability

Battle Cry - the counter part to Diplomacy. Any who hear this call take up arms and fight for the cause the Champion has dictated.

Sharp Eye

Weapons:

Due to the situations of the battlefield, any weapon that fits the battle and/or situation, the Champion can and will master.

The Pen still holds its power but is not used as often. Frenzy: The path of the Chaotic Champion

This Champion prefers to solve any and all conflict with a battle. To the death

This Champion is not satisfied until blood has been shed. Doesn't matter what for, the situation isn't over till there's blood.

Note, Diplomacy is nonexistent. All problems are solved with a battle.

Warning: this choice will affect the Champions personality to a severe degree if Champion does not already think this way.

Spells will include:

Detection

Eavesdropping

Battle Cry

Frenzied Attack - allows the user for a brief time increase their strength to unnatural heights to slay their enemy.

Weapons:

Any and all weapons the Champion wishes to master they can.

He saw no leveling system, and he suspected that War would get to that in due time. So he swallowed his questions and scanned over the abilities. They seemed more like classes than abilities, but whatever. It was the gods who made this system.

Right off the bat, Chaotic Champion was off the table. He did NOT want something to fuck with his personality. Diplomacy wasn't really his thing, people didn't really listen to him when he talked. Why would that change if he went to a new world? The people there didn't know him, and they weren't going to listen to him right off the bat, and he didn't exactly have the patience to try it.

So that left the Stealth Champion and Battle-Born Champion.

Battle-Born seemed to be the better of the two options, it offered more, and there were endless possibilities. A combination of the first two with more added in. Still, Stealth Champion couldn’t be completely discredited, that seemed more like the route of the ninja. He chuckled for a moment at his childhood dream of being a Ninja, which seriously had him considering that option for a moment. In the end, he clicked, and the screen changed.

Ability Chosen: Battle-Born Champion

"Alright, now that's done." He muttered. The screen went back to Abilities or Items, this time he clicked the Items and a new window opened.

Items Given the Champion has chosen the Battle-Born ability, items will reflect this ability

As all three items are needed, the request MULTICHOICE has been activated

Starting out item will dictate the path the Champion will favor more.

Others will follow as Champion gains power Starting out Item

Sword

Shield

Pen

"What the heck!?" Kenneth asked looking around the screen at War.

"Something wrong?" War asked sounding rather proud of himself. "Can’t decide which one to start out with? I assure you I mean what I say, the others will follow in time."

"Is this even fair!?" Kenneth balked. "Will the other Gods be doing this?"

War shrugged. "I don’t know."

Kenneth shook his head. "Alright, I guess I’ll go with the sword first." He clicked the option for the sword and sat back with a sigh. “Makes more sense to start with a weapon in a new place where we don’t know what’s going on, where we’ll be, or who we’ll encounter. A pen or a shield would help given what they can do, but a sword is more practical.”

War grinned and clapped his hands, as he did, Kenneth's world went black once more. Instead of waking up in his room, as he fully expected, it was just another really vivid dream, he could hear birds, and felt his back up against something, a tree maybe?

He opened his eyes and saw that he was in a center of a circle of trees.

"I'll be damned." He whispered amazed. "If this is a dream, it's the best damn dream I've ever had."

Through the trees to his right, he saw a road. Through the tree's to his left, he saw a vast field with cattle like creatures grazing there. In the clearing with him, were seven other people.

"Wait, wha-?"

He recounted, including himself, there were eight.

"Not a dream." He whispered, laughing slightly in shock. Then his smile fell, and his stomach plummeted down to his toes. "Not a dream."

That meant this was real. This was very real. He was sitting, in some strange world, put there by some god. What about his mother!? He didn't get the chance to say good bye! The last things he said to her were in annoyance and his thoughts about her since reflected that same annoyance. She constantly worried about him, ever since he was born, she was obsessed with keeping him alive. Now he was gone. Disappeared. Without a word, without a trace. This could kill her, and he didn't even care to ask War to make sure his mother was going to be alright and move on from this.

He was in a whole other world, with complete strangers.

And it dawned on him as the others began to wake up, he had no idea how he was supposed to level up, or if he even could. He didn't know the mechanics of this world, War never bothered to explain!