"AAAAH!"
Morgan shot up with a scream, his hands grasping desperately at his chest, his mind reeling. The last thing he remembered was dying, a giant piece of metal ripping through his heart and his blood leaking through his fingers while darkness clouded his vision.
Confusion flooded his mind, his breathing fast and laboured as he hyperventilated. He should have been dead, he was dead. Even now the feeling of the debris digging through his flesh lingered, the sensation too real to imagine.
'What?!? Why am I alive?! Where am I?? What happened!?'
Slowly, his breathing calmed as reality took hold once more of his mind. He had a million questions running through his head with no answers in sight, all he could do was assess his surroundings.
The first thing he noticed, was that wherever he was, it was dark. The only source of light came through the gaps of what looked to be a wooden door on the far side of the three meter wide chamber.
The next thing he noticed was the walls, floor, and ceiling were all made of large stone bricks that had a thin layer of moss growing over them, moisture condensed in the cracks. In the corner he saw a bucket tipped to its side and a wooden table that was rotted through.
It was strange, he had never seen a room like this before in his life, much less been in one. Tugging the coarse, paper thin blanket off, he attempted to swing his leg to the floor, but was caught mid motion by a cold iron shackle locked around his ankle.
'What is this? Am I a prisoner? But to who, which country abducted me?'
More questions joined the growing collection in his mind as he followed the length of the chain to its base, where he found it was bolted to the floor with thick, rusty screws.
'I won't be able to do anything about that, what about the lock.'
Turning his gaze to the shackle around his ankle, he began to assess it. The band was roughly three centimetres thick and made of a polished metal he couldn't immediately identify. It hung loose on his ankle, but not loose enough to slip out of without breaking his foot.
The lock was another story, it was large enough for him to peer into, and seemed simple enough from what little he could make out in the darkness
Morgan decided his best way out – if it came to it – would be to try and pick this lock, though he needed some sort of tool-
*URGH!*
A sudden spike of pain sent him keeling over as he finally realised, he forgot to check his own body. Gritting his teeth, he endured the bone deep pain while it washed over him in agonising waves. By the time the pain finally ended, he was covered in a thin layer of sweat and deathly pale.
He toppled backwards onto the rough straw mattress, his entire body relaxing at once. Minutes drifted by meaninglessly as he fought to steady his breath, his entire body trembling slightly all the while.
When he eventually recovered, he sat up on the rough prison bed, digging at the edges of his coarse linen shirt – a shirt he didn't remember putting on – he pulled it over his head.
Morgan's breath stilled, his eyes locked on the hideous scar situated directly over his heart. It glimmered with a faint metallic sheen, the centre buckled inwards while the edges rose slightly above the surrounding flesh like the rim of a crater. From it, small vein like protrusions spread across a quarter of his torso, touching one he felt something solid hidden beneath his skin.
But there was no blood. Of all the things he expected to see: a gaping wound, a sheared off piece of metal, maybe bandages. All of them had blood.
Yet none of the life sustaining liquid left his body. His heart beat steadily, a gentle, impossible thrum within his chest.
It was baffling, it contradicted everything he knew about medical science, and it was happening to him.
'How is this even possible? How long have I been here?'
Morgan scratched his chin as he fell into thought, as far as he was aware no medicine on earth could have revived him, and assuming the technology existed, he was stumped trying to figure out why someone would use it on him.
Another wave of pain, this time more muted than before, spread across his chest. Through the pain he noticed that something felt off, it felt like something was shifting ever so slightly beneath the surface. Yet before he could focus more on the feeling it vanished, leaving him to believe it was simply his imagination.
What wasn't his imagination, however, was the sound of talking growing closer, accompanied by the heavy fall of multiple feet. He strained his ears, focusing on trying to make out any of the foreign words.
Whilst he had a bit of practice in linguistics, he was in no ways a master. But, as the head of a vast international research team he'd picked up a few skills and could confidently identify most languages. Even then, he failed to recognise the language spoken by the two men.
'Strange… I thought I would at least be able to recognise the language of whoever has me captive. Are they simply speaking in code? Or are they part of some smaller nation… but why would they have the technology to revive me?'
Question after question piled up in his mind without answer.
Morgan shut his eyes, focusing intently on each word the men spoke, trying his best to discern their meaning based simply on the structure, tone, and pacing of their speech.
'…o..c..n…'
'Huh? Did someone say something?'
Opening his eyes, Morgan looked around intently. He heard a woman's voice, so faint it could have simply been his imagination, or it could have been his mind unravelling – he'd been through a lot recently.
'Co…t…ng'
'There it is again.' "Who said that?"
Again he heard the woman's voice whispering in his ear, this time slightly louder than before. Glancing at the door, he estimated he had a few minutes till the men arrived – they were walking quite slowly.
He called silently into the darkness, seeing if he could elicit a response from the strange voice. Silence was his reply, after a few seconds passed by, he was increasingly certain the voice was just a by product of his mind unravelling and, went back to studying the men's speech.
'CONNECTING…'
"ARGH!!"
The voice returned suddenly, far louder than all the other times as it yelled directly into his skull.
Morgan, didn't even get a second to understand the word before a headache, more painful than any he'd ever experienced tore away his ability to think. Pain coursed through his body as he curled into a ball, blood dripping down his lip, and body trembling like a leaf.
Flashes of blue swum in his vision as garbled, broken words wrote themselves into the air before shattering. Somewhere deep inside himself, he felt something reaching out to him, its aura gentle and kind, but also… hurt?
It was a contradictory feeling, like the love of a mother mixed with a desperate plea for help, or the bond of a lifeline friend strained by time.
It made him want to embrace the aura, welcome it in and care for it, but it also made him wary. Subconsciously his wariness pushed the strange aura away, letting it only get a loose hold on him. He felt bad about pushing whatever it was, away in its time of need, and justified himself by stating all the unknowns it represented.
None of which he did with any conscious thought, as it all unfolded in the few seconds his headache lasted.
When it cleared, his vision warped, the air in front of him took on a blue tone and a strange rectangular panel appeared.
[AQ#*&RED #^$^## O$%ILINGU*##L
ER$$R ERR*R
CORRECTING…
TEMPORARY SOLUTION FOUND
Congratulations! Skill Acquired: Omnilingual]
[Omnilingual L MAX (Passive): Allows the user to understand all spoken language. Bonus to language comprehension when learning written languages.]
'…'
'…what?'
Morgan stared uncomprehendingly at the screen, his face blank as his brain went through a forced reboot. He had truly lost it, it seemed the stress of his near death had driven him to madness and now he was seeing things.
'I suppose my best bet would be to ignore the hallucinations? I don't know if that'll make them better or worse, it's not my field of expertise. I suppose it can't hurt, as long as I don't feed the delusion, it should eventually go away… hopefully.'
Set on ignoring the panel, he turned away expecting the panel to stay, instead it remained dead in the centre of his vision and spun with him.
Not one to let a little insanity ruin his day, Morgan pivoted back to the two men's conversation, if his vision was block, he'd focus elsewhere.
"I… metal box… five hundred gold…"
"No… marriage… your loyalty…"
Oddly, he noticed that he could suddenly make out parts of the two men's conversation, the words seemed so obvious now, and the longer he listened the clearer they got. From what he could hear it seemed like the two men were bartering over something the first found.
Man 1 seemed pretty adamant on getting some resource from Man 2, while he seemed willing to offer someone up for marriage. It was a strange conversation, and Morgan couldn't help but thinking of the blue panel, maybe it was real. Afterall, he could suddenly understand this new language and it mentioned acquiring a skill of some kind.
Still, he wasn't willing to feed his delusion without solid evidence, for now he would continue to ignore it, he apparently had guests.
The two men stopped outside the door and leered in, their faces clouded in shadow didn't tell much about them, but the greed in their cold, evil eyes was clear. Turning to someone standing outside Morgan's view, Man 1 spoke, voice dripping with disdain.
"You. Open the cell immediately. The Marquess wants to see the product."
Product. That word alone told Morgan all he needed to know about these men, they were the bottom of the barrel, utter scum. It was clear they saw him as nothing more than an object to be sold.
With a click the door swung open, the hinges surprisingly silent despite the rust. Light flooded his cell as a third, previously silent man, stepped inside.
'How peculiar, what's with their medieval garb?'
The first man to enter the cell carried with him a single lamp that burned without any smoke or odour, a thick set of keys hung from an open hook on his waist, and from his back hung a decorative cape embroidered with a picture of a snake curling around a crown of thorns.
But the most peculiar part of the man's ensemble was the striking suit of silvery blue plate armour he wore.
The next man to enter was the one Morgan had taken to calling 'Man 1' in his head. He was a fat man with a permanent snarl carved into his face, he wore gaudy robes adorned in excess with intricate pieces of jewellery that pulsed faintly with energy.
A few of them, like the brooch pinned low on his collar had intricate runic symbols carved into them. On his back the Fat man had a equally opulent cape that stopped just before the floor, adorned with a crest identical to the knights.
The final man to enter sent a shiver down Morgan's spine. He was tall, abnormally so, having to duck to fit through the two-metre-tall doorway, and even then he barely fit, his head almost scraped the frame and when he stood, his shadow cast the room into darkness.
He was multiple heads taller than even the knight – the previous tallest person in the room – and used that to his advantage as he leered down at Morgan. He wasn't skinny either, thick muscles rippled with each step he made.
Man 2 – who he assumed to be the Marquis - stepped closer, the lamplight glimmering off his chest plate and gauntlets. He too wore a decorative cape, his crest however was different. It featured a fox and a wolf, both with their jaws open and locked in combat atop a mound of broken spears.
His eyes were a dark brown with traces of black, and they held more malice in them than Morgan had ever seen, for a brief moment he even considered giving up on his hastily made plan.
'Um… what the FUCK! If looks could kill, I would be dead already. Hopefully he doesn't interfere with my plan, I might have to accept some pain.'
"So… this is it? I expected more."
The Marquis spoke, his voice deep and loaded with unspoken authority as he looked Morgan over. He felt bare before the man's gaze, as though he could see right through him. Trembling slightly, Morgan diverted his eyes to Man 1 who quickly stepped forward – his plan was still on.
"Yes! Yes! This is it. It may not look like much now, but I assure you this is the one the blessing announced. We found it a few days ago at the epicentre of the Onyx forest blaze, in a strange metal box that a local assured us, fell from the stars."
The way the men talked about him sent shivers down his spine, it was if they didn't even see him, he was merely a object to be traded.
Rage bubbled in Morgan's gut as Man 1 strode closer to him, keen on showing off his 'wares'. Channelling his rage, he used it as a tool to overcome his nerves, and started his plan.
'Hopefully I read the situation correctly, here goes…'
"Who are you calling it you fat bastard. I'm not a object, I have a name."
"Wha… you… FITLHY WRETCH!! HOW DARE YOU SPEAK TO ME!!! I AM NO BASTARD YOU MISERABLE RAT!!!"
Man 1 spluttered, his words caught in his throat as his face was dyed in shades of red. Like a piece of dry spaghetti, his temper snapped and he lunged forward. His hand flew out faster than should have been possible, palm striking Morgan's face with a sharp crack of displaced air.
The sharp taste of blood assaulted his senses, a tooth tumbled from his mouth while he tried to regain his wits. He'd wanted the man to lash out, to strike him, but he hadn't expected the power behind the blow.
Grinning through the pain and dizziness, Morgan lashed out, his fist smashing into Man 1's nose with the full force of his body behind it.
A satisfying crack sang out, but not from the man's nose. Looking down Morgan realised with dread that something was off, instead of the man's nose, his fist had struck an invisible barrier. His wrist bent in an odd direction. Pain spiked up his arm, the force jarring his entire body.
Committed, Morgan couldn't afford to back out now. Sucking up all the liquid in his mouth, he reared back and spat, blood flew like a shotgun blast as it painted Man 1's already crimson face darker.
While his target was disorientated, Morgan struck again, his fist aimed at the right of the man's collar. At the last possible moment he pulled back, his fist grazing the man's gaudy coat without force, as his fingers unfurled.
He didn't get another shot. The Knight leapt in from the side, grabbed his extended hand and drove him into his armoured fist. Morgan's vision swam as he stumbled back, only to be held in place as the knight swung again.
Blood poured from his nose as he vision darkened, he was running out of time. Pulling back on his captured arm, Morgan raised his knee and kicked at the knight's waist to little effect. Landing off balance, Morgan slid on a blood spill and tumbled face first into his armoured chest.
His vision went black for a few seconds, and when he came to, Morgan found himself trapped, legs splayed out behind him and wrist locked in the Knight's immovable grip.
"Enough! Don't damage my goods any further, I'll be taking the healer's fees out of our agreed price."
"But he disrespected-"
"Enough. You're a measly Baron, know your place."
The fight ended anticlimactically as the Marquis spoke up. The Knight – unmoved by Morgan's escape attempts – nodded respectfully to the larger man before hefting the barely conscious Morgan onto the straw bed with a single arm.
Man 1 – the Baron – despite his protest was unable to sway the giant of a man, and reluctantly his anger simmered out.
"So we have a deal? I'll have it sent over to your estate after the slave mage returns and brands it with the seal."
"Seal of servitude or Slave crest? I won't pay extra for inferior goods."
"Yes your honour, I can assure you it'll get the most powerful seal my mage can conjure."
"Good. Then we're done here."
Business concluded, the Marquis spun on his heel and strode out of the room, followed shortly by the Baron and the Knight. Who, without glancing back slammed the heavy wooden door shut, locking Morgan away once more.
However, that's what he wanted.
A smile split his face as he opened his clenched fist, his plan had worked.