NOVEL WEB Ch. 2: Insanity Either Way
Something snapped as her body slipped beneath the inky darkness. One moment she had been on her back, terror and pain racing through every fiber of her being, the next she was standing in an empty nothingness, feeling just as empty.
It felt less like her body had moved and more like gravity had reoriented itself around her.
The pain was gone.
She squatted down and clenched her head in her hands, trying to catch her breath. That was harder than it should have been. Not because she was having a hard time breathing, but because there was no breath to catch.
She should be gasping for air, her throat on fire from what must have been minutes of screaming without stop.
But she breathed at a steady pace. Her heart beat steady and regular.
What had happened to her? What was still happening? Where was she?
Her heart beat loud in her ears. It was the only sound. Its beat increased in frequency. Panic leaked back into her body.
Ghosts of tentacles grasped at her skin. Not there but like ice all the same. Pulling and pulling. Down and backward.
Cass curled up tighter, her fingers weaving into the hair along her scalp.
They were gone. Nothing was touching her. The space she found herself in was dead empty.
But she could feel them.
What did they want from her?
She forced herself to take a deep breath. Her lungs struggled with the task. Almost like they weren’t sure how breathing was supposed to work.
She forced another anyway. In. Then out.
Then another.
The tentacles weren’t real. Not now, at least.
She was alone.
Cass stood up, her hands clenched in terrified fists at her sides. She needed to know what was going on, and panicking in a ball on the floor wasn’t going to make that happen.
She was alone in an empty, black space. There was no floor, though she was definitely standing on something. There was nothing but her in sight.
Nothing but her and a strange panel floating in front of her face.
It followed her gaze, remaining in the center of her vision no matter where she looked. She didn’t know what it was or what any of the text meant for her, but it looked uncomfortably like a menu in a VR game.
Had she passed out? Was she unconscious? Did people dream when they were unconscious?
That would make this some sort of fever dream. Eventually, she’d wake up in the hospital. Her family would be waiting around her, tears in their eyes, relief in their hearts. A nice doctor would tell her what had happened.
Everything would probably change. A seizure like that—and that had to be what the pain and the thrashing was—couldn’t possibly be a minor thing. But it would be okay. She would get through it.
Or, she wouldn’t.
Maybe she wouldn’t wake up and this dream would just end.
But at least, she wouldn’t be worrying about anything anymore.
She shoved aside any and all thoughts about what would happen to her family if she didn’t wake up and suppressed the growing terror at the thought of dying.
There was nothing she could do about any of that.
Better to focus on the other option: What if she hadn’t passed out?
What if all this wasn’t some strange hallucination or dream state?
What was it then? Was she trying to tell herself she’d been pulled into an empty void with nothing but a VR game notification for company?
Said notification chose that moment to disappear.
It was replaced a moment later with a glaring red panel.
Error: Initiate Incompatible with selected Role.
Continuing search for Compatible Initiate…
Redirecting…
Cass had barely enough time to read it before it too was replaced. The next one was the same soft blue as the first.
Searching for Entry Zone…
Beginning final Initialization
Confirm Avatar Settings:
[Name: Cassandra Yuan
Race: Human
Lvl: 1
Str - 4 Dex - 3 End - 4
Wll - 16 Ala - 9 Res - 12
Frt - 3 Per - 5Vit - 7
Free Points: 3
Concepts:
- None]
Cass stared at the window before her. There was a lot of text here and most of it she could only guess at. But that last section looked uncomfortably like a video game character creation screen.
She took another measured breath.
This was all completely impossible.
Her heart pounded in her chest.
Just take it one line at a time. That was all she could do.
Searching for Entry Zone…
The ellipsis at the end was animated like a loading message, one of the three periods disappearing and reappearing in series, before starting again at the beginning, implying the search was ongoing. There was no indication of how long it would take or what the progress was.
As for what “Entry Zone” meant? She could only guess it was where she’d be spat out when she eventually left this void. If nothing else, it implied she wouldn’t end up back at the campsite with her siblings. It seemed unlikely much searching would be needed if whatever had brought her here was going to put her right back.
Her eyes dropped to the next line.
Beginning final Initialization
No ellipses here. No sign something was happening behind the scenes. Was this in front of her the final initialization?
Or had it completed instantaneously? But in that case, why say “beginning”? Why not report it was complete?
And initialization of what exactly?
Confirm Avatar Settings:
She frowned at the next line. Did that imply she could deny the current screen? What did that mean? Did she dare experiment?
Would refusing to confirm whatever this was signify she did not consent to this kidnapping and she’d be dropped back where she’d come from? Would it mean that she was denying her existence and she’d blink into nothing? Would it mean she’d be stuck here forever?
For that matter, what would confirming it mean?
She pushed the worries aside and read the next line.
Name: Cassandra Yuan
That was her name. Interestingly, neither her full legal name (it was missing her middle name) nor the name she was called from day to day (everyone called her Cass, never Cassandra).
Nothing to object to here.
The next line as well was unobjectionable.
Race: Human
“What other races are there?” she muttered to herself. She would have understood the line’s purpose if it had said “European” or “Chinese” or “Mixed-Race” or “American”. It would have made her uncomfortable if it had, but she would have understood what kind of information it was trying to convey.
To just say “Human” implied the race signified here was different than the geographic or ethnic races of Earth.
Before she could speculate further, another window popped up adjacent to the first.
Available Races:
Human
Elf
Dwarf
…
The list continued, however, the window was only big enough to display 3 entries at a time. Based on the scroll bar beside the visible options, the list was quite extensive. She lifted her hand, intending to attempt to drag the scroll bar with a finger, but at the thought, the list scrolled up revealing the next three options.
Slyphid
Corvin
Lycan
The heading said “available”. Did that mean she could change her listed race at will? Did she dare experiment?
She looked away from that section. There was too much she didn’t know.
Next line.
Lvl: 1
Simple enough, but man did that have implications. As if the rest of what was happening wasn’t clue enough already. She set that aside for the moment too, in favor of the block of what she could only assume were stats.
Str - 4 Dex - 3 End - 4
Wll - 16 Ala - 9 Res - 12
Frt - 3 Per - 5Vit - 7
She recognized some of the abbreviations from video games she’d played in the past. “Str” was short for strength. “Dex” for dexterity. “End” was probably endurance. “Wll” she was willing to bet was Will. “Res”, resistance? “Per”, perception? “Vit”, vitality.
For “Ala” she could think of only one word that started with those three letters: alarm. And for “Frt”, she could only think of two, neither of which seemed likely: “Fort” or “Fart”.
They weren’t exactly possible video game stat like the others though. She supposed it was possible none of them were video game stats and they all made sense together in some other way, but she had even fewer theories in that case.
Regardless, even if she wasn’t sure what each specific stat was or what it governed, it was pretty clear that this was meant to represent her current abilities. The sharp divide between what she assumed was Will and Strength made that pretty clear.
Cass was not an “active” person. The yearly camping trip with her siblings was the most strenuous physical activity she did, and that amounted to little more than light hiking. Add a day job at a desk and overwhelmingly stationary hobbies, the only way she could be any frailer was if she had some debilitating disease.
On the other hand, she was confident in her willpower, if nothing else. It had carried her through her higher education and then again through that job she’d hated. Too stubborn for her own good was how Robin described her.
All this to say, a strength of 4 and a will of 16 made sense to her. How that compared to other people, she hadn’t a clue. 16 was likely high, but was 4 low? Very low?
Without anyone else to compare to it was impossible to say for sure. And maybe she was entirely wrong. Maybe none of these represented her right now and were completely random.
Either way, that brought her to
Free Points: 3
Which, if this was a video game, would mean she could distribute those to any of her stats as she pleased. Which, if her previous guesses were correct and these stats represented her very real capabilities, meant altering those capabilities.
Would putting a point in strength really increase her strength? What about increasing her will? Would that make her more stubborn?
And would that change who she was? If she was defined by her actions, and her actions were chosen by her choices, and her choices predicated by her decision-making abilities, did artificially increasing her willfulness change who she was at a fundamental level?
She slammed the breaks on that line of thinking. It was far too soon to start careening down that line of thought. She hadn’t done it yet. There was no evidence these numbers floating in front of her face meant anything, much less were inherently tied to her state of being.
Sure, her gut was certain they were, but gut instincts were just that, instinct. It was the same voice that whispered something was lurking in the dark down the hall. The same voice that promised the next roll of the dice would be a win. It didn’t know anything and it wasn’t nearly as good at pattern recognition as it thought.
She’d circle back to the “free points” and the nature of self later and read the next couple of lines again.
Concepts:
- None
She pursed her lips. She had no clue what that was supposed to mean but found herself a touch insulted. It was like the screen was saying she had no concept of what was happening.
It was right, of course. But still!
She liked knowing things. She liked having a handle on the situation. There was a comfort in building an ever-deepening mental model of her surroundings. And right now that model was being built on old RPGs and too much sword and sorcery fiction of questionable quality.
It wasn’t necessarily wrong, but until it was proven, it was shaky foundation to be standing on.
And that was it. That was all she had to work with to figure out what the hell was happening.
She still didn’t want to start touching any of this. But the bit about searching for an entry was still animated like a loading screen and there was nothing else in this weird void space besides herself and the system windows floating in front of her. Though…
She poked the screen. Or tried to. Her hand went right through it, not affecting it in the slightest. So maybe it wasn’t really here either and was being projected onto her vision through magic or nonsense.
Which would make her entirely alone. Standing in an endless emptiness. Waiting for something to decide where to put her.
She was suddenly cold again. She hugged her shoulders, glancing around.
She didn’t know the void stretched in every direction. She didn’t know she was truly alone.
It looked like it did. It felt like it did. Her gut certainly was convinced that it did.
She dropped down, lying down in the nothing, her hands on her face.
It was too soon to just give up, wasn’t it? Too soon to curl up in a terrified ball and cry into her arms.
But she was terrified. And crying sure felt like it might be a useful outlet for the rising terror.
The memory of her siblings' terrified faces as they’d run toward her bubbled over her vision. They were scared of what had happened to her. At the very least, scared she’d been screaming like a banshee.
What did they see now? Was she passed out on the ground in the middle of the campgrounds? Were they anxiously waiting for emergency services to arrive and do something? Was Robin cradling her head in his lap, while Kaye was pacing with a slowly rising, fear-driven rage?
Or had something really and physically pull her through the world? Had she been abducted by forces outside human comprehension? Had they been forced to watch as dark tentacles grabbed her and pulled her out of existence as they knew it? Were they standing in the campground in muted shock?
What did they do if she had been kidnapped? There was nothing human authorities could do about inter-dimensional kidnappings. No authority would believe their story.
Oh, god, that was so much worse. She had never in her life imagined she could wish brain damage on herself so badly.
At least, if it was just a brain thing, there would be something they could understand. Something someone else knew more about. Experts to address the problem and explain next steps. An end to the tunnel, maybe long and twisting, but at least mapped.
If she really was in this void… If they’d watched her get yanked from their world… There was only insanity.
What options these were. She grit her teeth and rubbed the tears from her face.
In the end, there were only two options: she was insane or her kidnapping would leave her siblings crazy.
If she was insane—if all this was just the hallucinations of a damaged mind—she just had to trust Robin and Kaye were going to do their best to make sure she got the help she needed as quickly as possible.
But if she had been kidnapped—if her siblings had been left dumbstruck behind—it was up to her to survive whatever this was and get back to them, as quickly as possible.
And crying in the void could only do so much toward that goal.
Slowly, she pushed herself back up to a sitting position. She needed to get back, and the first step had to be to get out of this void.
She looked over the window in front of her. No way to know when an Entry Zone was found. No way to know if that was the only requirement to get out. Confirming her Avatar was likely also a requirement. Did that mean applying her free points? Maybe. Did she have the confidence to spend them well? No, not even a little.
She took a deep breath. Time to try something.