"Ugh," Reidnott awoke, his face pressed against a cold stone floor. It was moist and peppered with splotches of moss. His palm pressed firmly against the floor, and his arms rattled as they tried to push his body up.
"GRRRRGH!"
Each and every rope of muscle beneath his skin cursed his name as they rolled, wailing in agonizing strikes of pain.
He raised his head and widened his eyes, trying desperately not to let himself give in to his body's cries.
'Where am I?'
Reidnott's voice was raspy and uneven, his eyes focused in and out of his surroundings. His pupils shrank and grew, filling their containers and enthralling their beholder.
Uneven breaths drew in and out, each one tried to get caught in Reidnott's throat, like tumors trying to grow into coughs and retches that would throw him back to the ground.
Finally, he raised one knee and balanced himself in a prostrated position, his foot planting was like a key in a lock, clicking everything into normality as it turned.
"Ho- shit!"
His eyes settled on the torturous image of Thyra and the statue, who was unmistakably Mitchel. And Agnes, who was still collapsed on the floor, her eyes lined with dried blood like they had shed tears of crimson red, and her chest showed signs of life through breathing.
"Agnes!" He pushed himself crouching toward her and sucked in his breath, holding it in case something had happened to her.
His hands glided over her body in patting motions, performing a blood sweep carefully. He reeled in one of her outstretched arms, its hand was dipped in a well of clear and fresh water.
Agnes' body was clear from any wounds, the only blood he could find was the dried blood around her eyes that wore like eye shadow and trailed like rivers.
"Huf-she's okay." He released his held breath and sighed in relief, letting his body lean back and sit down.
His eyes drifted to the well. It sat at the feet of the statue, and joined with it as one formation. The wells rim was clean, decorated only with life that should have been impossible to grow out of stone. It was shaped like a snake eating its own tail, and had engravings of crows along its scales.
Reidnott let his focus wander through his surroundings.
They were all beneath the edge of a cave's lid, stone and rubble surrounded them, peppered with moss, dried wood and dead leaves. By the statue, there were flowers growing out of stone and vines creeping around with no roots to ground them, yet they were a deep green with buds ready to flower, even on the brink of winter.
And the well that Agnes' hand had dipped into. Its water was clear and pure, almost glowing to inviting him.
His body was accepting the invitation, his dry mouth ached and his throat itched at him, as if to say: "We're thirsty! Feed us!"
He blinked for a moment in hesitation, then reasoned with himself. "Not like I can go find the wagon right now."
With that, he leaned forward and cupped his hands together, drawing some of the water from the well and bringing it to his mouth without a second thought.
Streams of water fell out from the edges and cracks between his fingers as he poured it into his mouth.
'Delicious.'
A tear escaped his right eye and ran down his face.
He leaned forward again, this time cupping with only one hand and using the other to hold himself over the well, he brought more water to his mouth. He even splashed some over his face and washed away some of the dirt.
Again and again, he drank the wells water and leaned closer.
Eventually he dumped his face into the water and gripped the edges of the well with both hands, gulping down mouthful after mouthful.
Reidnott ripped his drenched face out of the water and gasped, dragging in a large breath.
His eyes widened and sparkled with something golden swirling deep beneath their surface. Then the whites turned red, and blood ran from under his eyelids down his cheeks.
Black lines flew under his skin, fading in and out and moving toward his eyes as they bled more.
"AGHH!"
He screamed and clawed at his cheeks and his pupils shrunk into themselves like a collapsing star.
And then. It all stopped. And his pupils grew large, filling with something cosmic and unknown. Reidnott's eyes focused on the secrets of the life around him and sounds became louder, more clear.
A mechanical voice, familiar, yet strange, echoed behind his eyes and in his head.
[ 'Obtained Skill: Odin's Eye (High Saturation)' ]
[ 'Would you like to activate the skill?' ]
"Huh-wha? Odin's eye? Who are you?!"
[ 'Activating Odin's Eye active trait: Great Sage' ]
"What?!"
Reidnott questioned the voice, but it did not answer. Instead, light filled his vision and ethereal symbols formed in front of him.
They were writing in runes that struggled to keep their shape, each made of red and black ink that rippled and waved.
Letters and words of a forgotten language flooded in and made his head ache.
"Urg—what does any of this even mean?"
[ 'Activating Odin's Eye active trait: Runesight' ]
"Huh?! Wait what do you—"
His vision pulsed and each word broke into his mind trying to assault him, but right before it could, they stopped fighting and settled, becoming easier to read.
And the information presented itself:
Skill: Odin's Eye
Rarity: Relic / Divine
'Divine... relic? Does this mean I've technically received a gods gift?'
Description: Your right eye becomes "Odin's Eye," a conduit of divine perception. This is not a gift—it's a sacrifice.
Reidnott bit his lips as he carefully read each word. His focus jumped from letter to word, sentence to paragraph.
Origin: The Allfather of a broken realm sacrificed an eye at a great sage's well for true sight—not just of the world, but of fate, fear and falsehood.
He shivered as he realized what he had just drank. A well saturated in the eye of a god who sought wisdom. He drank a gods sacrifice. And thus inherited it.
Passive Trait (Beyond the Veil): You see through illusions, disguises, deceptions and lies.
Passive Trait (Echoes of the Dead): Impressions of strong emotion and death linger in spectral form. Your eye can perceive these memories breifly.
'These... aren't these a little strong?'
He had gained the ability to see things no one else could. Now, even the god who hid among the fog would be exposed for him to see.
Or at least he imagined so.
'And this one...'
Passive Trait (Threads of Fate): On the edge of your peripheral, you can see faint lines trailing from all things living and non-living.
Threads of Fate... to perceive fate itself meant being able to challenge it in some way.
But the consequences of challenging fate...
He continued to read, shaking off any ideas he couldn't—or rather shouldn't try out.
Active Trait (Runesight): You can read, write and speak languages with a single glance. Even the words of the gods are legible.
Nott almost grinned as he read those words. They were what saved him from almost experiencing more pain. But he quickly wiped it away.
'What is wrong with me..'
The god who caused this chaos could still be around. And smiling next to the dead would be disrespecting them.
Active Trait (Great Sage): The spirit of the well owner shares his wisdom with you. The world will become clearer and your mind will become sharper.
This trait held true to its name.
It was like he had lived in this world for several lifetimes, as if every life and their experiences that Odin's Eye had witnessed was compiled and pressed into Reidnott's skull.
Divine Restrictions: You will inflict divine madness onto yourself over time, and your eyes will weep blood in sacrifice.
'Well that answers my previous question.'
The only thing he couldn't comprehend was the voice, it had no fixed gender, sounding like it was switching between male and female intermittently.
"Hey, who exactly are you?" He asked, "The one that was speaking to me... who are you?"
...
"Nott?"
Agnes' voice rose up from below him, and he looked down to catch a glimpse of a droplet of his blood falling onto the dirtied alabaster skin of the girl.
The blood landed on her forehead and ran backward onto the white half of her hair.
"Agnes! You're awake, thank the gods." Nott sighed and relaxed his shoulders. The world around him seemed to brighten up as he smiled in relief.
She looked at him blankly, then averted her eyes and parted her lips.
"Yeah.."
"What happened to you all? What happened to.. them?" Nott's head tilted toward the two companions that were stuck in place without life beneath their skin.
Agnes's eyes avoided the boy, like guilt kept her from speaking, "I don't actually know... I found them like this."
Nott wanted to ask if she drank the water. But he didn't need to, as the blood around her eyes said everything, matching his own as if it were a uniform.
"Hey..." She continued, turning to face Nott.
"Hm? Yes?" He flinched and looked her in the eyes.
Agnes raised an arm weakly, "Help me up?"
"O-oh, yeah, sorry." Nott jumped up and helped her to her feet. She almost collapsed again under buckling knees, but caught herself with Notts support.
The two patted dust off of themselves and stretched, then turned to face their peers.
"So what do we do?" Agnes asked. She was avoiding looking directly at the morbid image.
Nott gave her a sorrowful look and looked back at them, "We have to give them a proper burial. Or Thyra at least..." His eyes bounced between the two, then continued, "I wouldn't want to insult Mitchel's culture."
And so, Agnes left the cave and started digging a hole in the dirt outside, whilst Nott untied the lofty lady and let her down, making sure not to bring harm to her, even though she was already gone.
As he did, a weight seemed to hold him down. Something internal, and emotional. He hadn't known who she was to a great extent, only what she had said in the short time he had known her.
But that emotional weight was heavy, as if he had known her for years. As if the previous owner of this body was crawling out to show their grief.
"I'm sorry." He whispered to himself.
"I don't know what I could have done."
His words reminded him of his dream. The dream he had of Myrkvi. Only fragments of it remained after he had awoken, like it was slipping away from him.
His eyes were empty and distant, looking off into the memories of his dream, when a faint whispering caught in his ears.
Below him was two swirling flames. One a soft blue and another was a forest green. They looked wrong. Almost cosmic in a way, like what he had seen when he drank the water.
He rested Thyra's body gently upon the ground and reached out for the fires, as he did, voices began singing in his ears, and time seemed to rewind.
And a systematic voice rang in his head once more:
[ 'Activating Odin's Eye passive trait: Echoes of the Dead' ]