BRYZ - Chapter First: It’d Take a Hell of a Setting

The sky was overcast, with murky, ashen clouds blotting the sun out above the lone hero as he plodded onward through the downpour. Each step resounded beneath him with a crunch, as the rain drizzled down in pizzicato notes on the glassy puddles below. Reaching out his hand, the hero caught some of the falling drops, each one tinkling against his metal gauntlet.

There, like little unmelting snowflakes, were countless shards of glass. The hero sighed, crushing the fragments into powder beneath his armoured fingers. He couldn’t wait for his quest to end, so he could finally leave this accursed land behind, and its glass rain with it.

On, on, he walked, the glass now having formed into crystalline snow-like dunes, refracting the light into illusions of colour. The drifts sapped his strength, as he struggled to put one foot in front of the other. Little shards, barely the size of the head of a needle, had already found their ways into his boots, imbedding themselves in his feet and digging a little deeper with every step.

And then…a noise.

He barely heard it at first, the constant static of falling glass deafening him over time, but this one sound cut through all that. Drawing his half of the ancient sword, a hilt with little more than a shattered remnant of a blade still remaining, he turned and saw…

Isaac paused, wiping the sweat from his brow. Reaching into his right pocket, he pulled a hand-laminated card out from its deck, turning it to the 90° position and reading the text printed there.

“With a fearsome roar, Aqnyzus, archdemon of melancholy rises from the earth, lesser demons crawling from the great maw in his chest. “Շђєгє ץ๏ย คгє, ђєг๏!” it rasps, in a voice like falling sand.”

“Well finally!” Isaac muttered to himself, pulling his necklace out from under his shirt, revealing a small plastic container attached to the end filled with seven polyhedral dice. Giving it a firm shake, he regarded the largest of them intently. “17 for initiative, that means I attack first!” he declared, stepping into the shadow of a dollar-store overhang, ignoring the curious glances of passers-by. Flipping out a trifold plastic card-holder, he made a quick scan of his available skills.

“Well, I don’t know what form Aqnyzus has taken yet,” he muttered to himself. “There’s a 25% chance he’s resistant to magic, and a 25% chance he’s resistant to physical attacks, but for weaknesses, it’s a 75% chance of taking extra damage from radiant attacks, and a 25% chance he’s fully immune to them. I could try a fire attack as that’s a 50/50 chance of weakness or resistance but…” He traced circles with his index finger as he often did when thinking. “Eh, I’ll take my chances with radiant. Luminous Blade!”

With a flick of his hand he set the dice tumbling again, holding the container up so he could see the result.

“13, just barely a success!” He grinned, reaching into his left pocket to pull out his miniature almanac. Opening it to Aqnyzus’ page, he peeled away at the little pieces of sticky paper covering the entries for radiant and for physical damage.

“No resistance to physical attacks, and +25% damage from radiant, hell yeah!” He pumped his fist, returning the book to his pocket. “Now to roll for damage. That’s 3d6 + my Charisma modifier of 3…”

He stopped, his voice caught in his parched throat. Even in the relative shade of the store’s awning, sweat dripped down from under his hat, running in droplet trains down his face.

“It’s too damn hot for this,” Isaac muttered to himself, returning his necklace to beneath his shirt as he turned to head home.

*******

“I’m back!” Isaac called out to nobody in particular, throwing open the door to his family’s house and kicking off his shoes before collapsing into the living room sofa.

By all accounts, Isaac was the definition of an average 17-year old. With average height and an average build, even his unstyled russet hair was an average colour, the kind so boringly normal you knew it was natural, not dyed. His clothes were equally nondescript, just blue jeans and a sarcastically decaled tee.

Of course, that only applied to the physical elements of him.

If you were to ask anybody that knew Isaac what he was like, they would like as not answer in the same way; “weird”.

Everything he did, from the way he tied his shoes to the way he ate pizza was contrary to the norm. This wasn’t even for the average reason a teenager would act in this manner, out of a vain attempt at uniqueness. Isaac was simply the sort of 17-year old that thought far too much about things of far too little consequence, turning his life into a string of convoluted rituals and processes, all in the subconscious aim of categorically doing everything the “right” way.

Or, to sum it up, he was weird.

This is why not three weeks into summer, he was outside alone and playing a real-world RPG of his own creation. This isn’t to say he didn’t have friends, just the few he had made since his family's move last year were as weird as he was, and usually had their own things to do. After all, Isaac believed that the “right” way to spend free time was to do exactly what you felt like doing, even if that meant doing it alone.

The sound of a door opening upstairs followed by descending footsteps heralded the arrival of another notable member of the Burke household. Stepping onto the main floor and heading to check the grocery bags without a glance at her brother was Celica Burke, his 14-year old sister. With redder auburn hair and diminutive proportions, her face still carried the same lines of sarcasm and cynicism that labeled her as Isaac’s sister, despite any of her wishes to the contrary.

“Hey,” Isaac half-muttered.

“Hey,” she replied, rummaging through the bags. “You gonna put these away or what?”

“Frankly, I’m a bit busy leaving a sweat-stain on this couch at the moment,” he replied languidly.

“Perfect, we won’t even need the chalk outline after I murder you,” she replied with deadpan humour.

Grunting, Isaac regrettingly rose from his seat, taking one of the bags from his sister and carrying it to the kitchen.

“Did you get the nori?” Celica asked, unloading the bags and sorting the groceries based on their destination to either fridge or cupboard.

“Was it on the list?” Isaac pulled the slip of paper from his pocket, making a pretext of checking it over.

“No, but I reminded you last night, and twice this morning.”

“Not on the list,” he tapped the paper.

“Bruh, you had one job,” she sighed. “And you were gone for five hours.”

“I was fighting Aqnyzus, the archdemon of melancholy,” he explained.

“Hmmm, that’s odd, I can’t find it.” Celica looked around, lifting up a nearby stack of papers and checking under it.

“Whatcha looking for, sis?” Isaac queried.

“I can’t find who the heck asked,” she replied acidly.

“I hate you.”

“The feeling is mutual.”

“We have a list for a reason, you know,” he defended.

“I’d say you have a brain for a reason too, but I’m starting to doubt that,” she replied, heading for the door and putting on her shoes.

“Oh, heading out?” Isaac asked. “Where to?”

“To get the nori,” she replied, slamming the door behind her.

“Well, can’t please everyone.” Isaac shrugged, putting away the rest of the groceries and returning to the couch.

*******

Half an hour later, Isaac looked up from his notebook to catch a glimpse of his returning sister in the living room TV’s reflection. Rather than having to further suffer her acid-reflux wit, he promptly decided to vacate his seating and make a tactical withdraw. Heading upstairs to the half-sized second floor, he immediately threw open the door to his room, entering his sanctuary.

Isaac’s room was more or less set up like the contents of his head; absolutely jam-packed with anything and everything in unsorted piles, wherever there was space for them. Duotangs, notebooks, and binders vied for space in the great land-war of Isaac’s room, with every surface drafted into service. And yet, there was an incomprehensible method to the madness, and Isaac could locate anything he needed whenever he needed it…most of the time.

Tiptoeing between stacks of notes and designs, Isaac slumped into his chair, wheeling it over to his desk. Despite this being the age of the virtual reality headset the N-LiFe, or Neuro-LiveFeed, and BRYZ, the virtual landscape that had usurped the internet’s place, Isaac still used a personal computer where possible. But then, he was also the sort of person to keep Internet Adventurer as his default browser.

Unlocking his computer, he picked up where he had left off last night, designing a new story arc for his portable RPG. It was always a challenge, trying to write adventurers for himself, because he knew all the plot twists in advance. His solution to this was to write multiple similar plot lines with very different twists, and randomize which path he would take. His next quest would see him travel to the great mountains of Yter with a valiant knight in search of the flower needed to heal her lord.

But would the lady knight be a staunch ally, or a greedy knave, only aiming to advance her career? Would the flower be guarded by the King of Fairykind, or would it be growing from the tail of the Great Hillwyrm? Would the flower really heal the lord, or was it all an elaborate plot to keep the hero away while a usurper made his moves?

Isaac couldn’t wait to find out.

But then again…

Isaac paused, rising from his desk and wandering over to his window to gaze out at the summer day. No matter how he sliced it, playing alone just wasn’t the same. No amount of self-written scenarios and random events could make up for the joy of dungeon-crawling with a party of equally-deranged murderhobos causing chaos and destruction while the game world tried frantically to keep up.

But how to set it up? Of his three friends, Jace could barely sit still long enough to watch a movie, let alone play a tabletop game, Linus was strictly a video gamer, with tabletop games being far from his interests, and Art was anything but a gamer in general, spending his time on more “intellectual pursuits”, as he would say. How to meet in the middle?

Isaac sighed, surveying his room. In stories, it would be someone like him who would be whisked off to another world as a legendary hero, or recruited to defend earth from some supernatural or extraterrestrial force. He was by all accounts an ordinary high schooler with very abnormal talents; the stuff of bland MCs the reader could associate with.

“I don’t get it!” he complained out loud, slamming a hand bitterly against his dresser. “If I’m such perfect protagonist material, why has literally nothing happened in my life?”

“Well, my BS reader is going biiiiiiiiiiing!” Celica announced from the stairway. As misfortune would have it for the both of them, their rooms were opposite each other in the hall.

“You get back and that’s the first thing you say to me?” Isaac complained. “Anyway, I don’t recall asking for your opinion.

“Just saying, it’d take a hell of a setting to make you a main character,” she pointed out, entering her room. “Besides, everyone knows that by movie rules, crazy events only ever occur in the US or Japan. Sucks to be Canadian, I guess. Go write some self-insert fanfic or something, get it out of your system.”

“Damnit, I’ll write something alright, and it’ll be a sight better than fanfiction,” Isaac muttered to himself, kicking at a pile of folders, then immediately regretting the decision as loose papers and notebooks scattered his cramped floor. Resigning himself to having to tidy things up for once, he began to assemble the loose notes, placing the books back into a stack of documents titled “Alveus”.

“Hey, I remember this! This was the first campaign I ever created!” he reminisced, laying it to the side and reaching for another. “Here’s where I kept those video game concept designs I made last year…and there’s the reference book I wrote for my own mythological creatures! I thought I lost it.”

Sifting through his old notes and unused creations, Isaac’s wistful smile slowly faded. Sighing again, he returned the various volumes to their former heap. “For all the time I put into these, they sure never saw much use, did they?” Isaac chuckled dryly, dusting off his knees as he rose to his feet again. “I’ve got so much worldbuilding here, you could practically make a TV show out of it.

And then, his sister’s words invaded his thoughts. “It’d take a hell of a setting to make you a main character" she says? Isaac began to smile, one quarter-smirk at a time, turning to regard his powered-off N-LiFe. Heh, I’ve got a hell of a setting right here! he thought to himself, grabbing the topmost folder off the stack and returning to his computer. Now, where to start…

Hitting ctrl-S-W to save and exit his page, Isaac pulled up a brand-new document and began typing.

ns3.139.237.218da2