I opened my eyes on the beach of black sand by the shores of a mercury lake. Just for a moment, before I had felt the coarse grains on my cheek, I had hoped that the previous frantic minutes had been just a nightmare. That I hadn’t been flung by a Gate to God-knows-where.

Unfortunately, here I was, next to a lake that was probably leaking poisonous gasses into the air. It was with a groan that I managed to heave myself into an upright position, and with bleary eyes that I looked about. The darkness further up the beach seemed more solid than anything else, so I staggered over that way.

The world did not decide to immediately hurt me again - the darkness resolved itself into a cliff of smooth black stone that was blessedly cool and that I could lean against.

It was a slow walk along the beach, until it petered out into the lake. I huffed as I turned around, and began walking along the beach in the other direction.

This time, there were stairs, just about wide enough for my feet if I put them down sideways. They were better to sit on than the ground, and I sank to my knees.

It’s not exactly that I was tired - physically, that is.

My brain still felt like it was overfull - like after a long days work, or an all-night study or gaming session. To be fair, it was not dissimilar to what had apparently happened. By my count, I had gone from having no Skills or Powers to having… more than 10.

I didn’t know if every one of the… What did they call themselves? Awakened Seekers? Something pretentious like that… My thoughts drifted through nothing again, as my brain worked its way through foreign and strange memories.

Like drawing a flower on a piece of wood that would, in conjunction with throwing it up and a song about sunlight, burn a fist sized hole through a man.

…

…

…

I could do magic. Honest-to… God?

That phrase elicited some very complicated memories, that I immediately pushed down as much as I could.

To distract myself I pushed myself up and cautiously approached the dwarf’s corpse. I hadn’t been able to get a good look at him earlier. His clothes were even edgier up close, skull motifs picked out in silver thread on his black robes. The scalpel was still clutched in his hand. He had a satchel, and one of those weird military shoulder badge things in royal blue with a triad of stars and yet another skull.

I tried not get any blood on the satchel, awkwardly pushing the loop down over his arm and pulling the whole thing under his legs. Then, on an impulse, I grabbed the badge from his shoulder. Then I carefully grabbed the scalpel from his hand.

Now, I was armed, at least. A quick look into the satchel revealed several thin sheet of metal, a vial containing a dark liquid, and two spare scalpels.

I went back to the stairs, and sat down. I bounced my leg as I thought, longingly, of the sun.

Then I had an idea. One of my new powers was called… [Synthesise Spell]. Now, did I have any idea how that worked? Could I make light?

Synthesise Spell Activated

The world, or rather, my perspective of the world, changed. The dwarf’s corpse was overlaid with a bunch of existing symbols. Everything else was mostly the same, except for a sense of latent power that emanated out of it.

Synthesise Spell Failed - No Emanation

Well. That sucked.