The first thing that happened to Thomas was feeling immense pain. It came from the hand holding the ball of glass, feeling it hurt like hell, as if a needle had just pierced through his palm.
"Pain… I feel… Pain!!!"
The first thing that happened to Thomas was heaven-defying. He lived his life without feeling anything, and now he just felt pain.
And that wasn't all… A storm of emotions started to assault his soul the next instant. Doubt, confusion, happiness, and hesitation wrestled in his mind and soul, making him stagger a step backwards without even feeling it.
"Watch out!" Just as he took one step back, he felt like he had hit someone or something, while an angry shout came from behind.
"Don't stop the line! Just finish with your test and get going!"
Thomas heard the same voice again while getting a little push from behind. He took a step forward, stabilised his body, and finally had a look around.
His hand, his left hand wasn't holding the glass ball. Instead, it was situated over some sort of weird statue. He couldn't see clearly what this statue looked like, but he could easily tell it was old.
It had rust, protruding pieces that got flattened by the passage of time, and even a moth invaded its base.
The statue looked as the head of a person or an animal, but that wasn't important now. Thomas' left hand was lying on top of a holder, one that was made out of the same blue material as the statue.
For a reason, Thomas couldn't help but recall the deep blue eyes of the old lady when he saw this statue. Yet the pain he felt jolted him awake from his disturbed thoughts. When he looked closer, he found a long needle coming out from the centre of his palm, with his red blood oozing from it.
"What are you waiting for? Just take your hand back!" As he stood stupefied in front of this weird scene, the owner of the same voice who spoke and pushed him before shouted, "We don't have the entire day! Just do it!"
"Do what? Ouch! It hurts!"
Just before Thomas would turn to face the one who kept yelling at him, he felt another excruciating pain as that needle freed itself from his palm, got itself back inside the holder and vanished.
He reflexively retracted his palm, moving it away from the statue.
"I was trying to warn you," the one who yelled at him before sighed, "you had it the worst… Just wrap the wound for now and wait for the results."
Thomas didn't get what was going on. But when he turned to see the one who kept speaking to him, he was surprised to see not only a youth standing behind him, but many others as well.
It was a line, a very long line, one that moved at the side of this hill, going down to the bottom. The line even extended to the far forest and vanished inside.
Thomas didn't know why, but he felt like this line would keep going till the end of the horizon. And yet he didn't get any time to think about any of that.
"What the hell is going on here?" And before he'd think rationally about any of this, he heard a series of old rattling noises coming from the statue. He turned sharply towards it, missing the shocked expressions on the faces of those standing behind.
"He made the statue react!"
"This… Is he going to be one of the blessed?"
"Don't tell me we are going to have the first superhero ever in our history!"
Thomas heard many whispers coming from many. But he didn't have any mind to care about any of this. Just as the rattling noises appeared, something seemed to open from the top of this statue.
"It's… A scroll?!" Thomas felt a bit weird. In front of his eyes, part of the statue rose slightly up, then its lid slipped and showed a space with a small scroll inside.
It was just the size of his finger, not exceeding ten centimetres in length.
"It's true!"
Before he'd extend his hand to grab it, the one behind him shouted, shouted in a very loud and excited tone that startled Thomas.
"We got our first superhero!"
"Yes!"
Just like a festival, many people standing in the line cheered, shouting loudly, forming a chorus.
Thomas looked at all of them with a puzzled expression on his face. He didn't get any of what was going on. Just minutes ago, he was sitting on a pavement in New York, speaking with an old lady who looked like a real beggar.
And now? He couldn't even tell where he was on Earth, or how he managed to get here.
"Come on, bro, make us happy, make our Dante settlement proud and claim that certificate," the one who kept shouting nudged him with an elbow, laughing in pure excitement and happiness.
"This is a certificate?" Thomas held the scroll, which was sealed by thin red thread, "for what?"
"It's the certificate that you got the thing in you," the youth laughed, "you got a superpower! Damn! I can't even imagine how exciting this is for you, for all of us! Congratulations, bro, you made our settlement known in the entire region."
"Ok," Thomas was confused, didn't know what was going on here. But he had the scroll and a long line of crazy people looking at him like they were looking at a champ or a hero.
"Let me try, come on, let me get tested!" The youth seemed to return to his old habit and shouted again at Thomas. The latter didn't even stand in his place again. Just before he'd take a single step away, he hit something on the ground.
"The tree pot?!" Thomas froze the moment he saw his old friend here. It looked a bit different, as if it had grown in size three times at least.
The small pot he could hold effortlessly with one hand was now at a size that he couldn't carry without exerting a little force.
It was at least half a metre in height and thickness.
"Good luck," Thomas left this complimentary word behind, "if any of that is real anyway."
He found a path leading down the hill. As he held the tree by surrounding the pot with one arm, holding the small scroll with the other, he walked down the path to the ground.
The place was filled with many people, who had already taken the same weird test as him. Thomas walked a few steps before he noticed something.
"This… Where is my suit? Where are my shoes?"
Unlike what he used to wear, there were a pair of old-looking shoes on his feet. And from there, he spotted a weird-looking, leather-made, black trousers.
Then, when he moved his eyes around to inspect himself, he found that he was wearing a totally different set of clothes than what he used to wear.
That wasn't all, these clothes looked… A bit old!
He wore a brown vest, one made out of leather, looking like it was handmade. He could even see the thick threads the maker used to sew the leather pieces together.
It had many different-sized pockets and was unbuttoned, showing an old-looking shirt. It was made of thick and rough fabric, one that Thomas couldn't recognise at all.
"Sh*t! I failed!"
Just as he stopped in his place for a few seconds, he heard the loud shout of the same youth who kept bothering him before.
"As if any of this is real," Thomas knew all the facts pointed towards one thing: he had been hypnotised, and all of this was a dream.
He could feel pain, emotions, and things he had never felt before. He was in a place that he had never visited or even heard about. Not to mention the weird things happening here, this test thing, the superhero and superpower stuff, plus the way people acted here.
And the pain and emotions he felt; it was simply something he would never take for real!
Everything told him he was indeed inside a dream, one that the old lady had gotten him into by using some mystic methods. He kept trying to recall the different hypnotic methods he had read about before while walking down the path.
Without knowing it, he reached the bottom of the hill.
"Wow! It's true then!"
"You… What kind of superpower do you have?"
"Yes, show us! Show us now!"
Just as he reached the bottom, he got instantly surrounded by many faces he had never seen before.
They were all young, not exceeding seventeen or eighteen years at most. And they looked at him like they were looking at their idol.
They kept asking him questions like the ones mentioned above, and he condused and felt weird about this.
"It looks so damn real!" he never expected hypnosis would reach such a stage, or even become this real.
"Easy there," and just as he got surrounded and asked many questions without saying anything, one big dude approached and spoke in a deep tone, "you all know superpowers can't manifest by this test. Let our boy catch his breath, let him enjoy his moment."
It was a middle-aged man; the only old face Thomas saw since coming into this dream world. All the youths around got themselves away from him at last, while that man stopped and looked at Thomas' eyes.
"I'm Oliver, the leader of Dante settlement," he extended his hand, said in greeting. Thomas looked at both of his hands, as one held the tree and the other had the scroll.
"Sorry, but I'm too excited about having a superhero discovered in our settlement at last, hahahaha," Oliver laughed, retracting his hand as he added, "don't worry, everything that you are feeling is normal. Just go there, take a little rest, absorb everything, and prepare yourself for the glory awaiting you in the future."
"Ok…" Thomas was still taking all this as a dream. And so, he simply nodded to Oliver before taking his leave towards a place that wasn't filled with many.
Yet he could feel tons of eyes attracted over him, following every single move he made.
"Don't forget, you have to go to a town with that scroll. Open it and see where that place is, and I'll take you personally to the train station."
"Thanks," Thomas shouted in response, "at least there are trains here."
Thomas went to one side, sat on a bare rock, and thinking about what he got himself into.
"It's hypnosis, I bet it is," Thomas sat on the rock, placed the tree next to him, and examined the wound he got from the statue.
He didn't wrap it as that youth told him, and that let his hand be painted with his blood. The blood had already clotted and formed a crust over the wound.
It wasn't the first time for him to get wounded like that, but it was the first time he had felt such a pain ever in his life.
There wasn't only pain, but a myriad of emotions he had never felt before. "So… This is how real people felt all the time?" After going through everything and analysing his feelings and disturbed thoughts, he couldn't help but deeply sigh, "It's a hellish nightmare! How come normal people live with all these… Distractions and noises?"
His mind before all this was like a clean sheet of paper. And now it was like a child had grabbed a pen and kept scribbling lines without any order or logic.
The worst was that he had zero experience at dealing with all this, ending up suffering a headache like never before.
"I got it! I knew that what I had was a gift, a blessing from God or whoever! Let me return, I learnt my lesson," he raised his head and shouted, as if he was trying to communicate with the old lady.
But nothing happened. He waited, and after a few long minutes, he couldn't help but start feeling something felt amiss.
"I'll play with you a little longer then," he fiddled with the small scroll in his hands, before opening it.
The moment he did so, he saw a small handwriting, written in a language that he had never seen before.
"This…" he touched the paper with his bloodied left hand. As he did, a throbbing pain appeared in his temples, forcing his body to tremble and his hand to rise and squeeze his head.
"I… I can read it!!" The pain appeared and vanished fast. Yet as he held his head with both hands, his eyes could see the weird symbols through the gaps in his fingers. Like magic, these symbols changed from being something alien to being something familiar, something he could read.
"Retto Town, in one day, meet Mr Mark, he is your mentor. Please go there and take further instructions from him."
The scroll only got these little words and nothing else. Thomas held it and flipped it around, trying to see the alien symbols again, but failed.
"Interesting," he tried to understand what just happened, but couldn't get a clue. Everything happened in front of his eyes, and the only possible explanation was that he was confused and couldn't read these words before, thanks to the storm of emotions and thoughts in his mind.
Or perhaps it was magic, and all this wasn't a dream but reality.
"That's funny, there's no way any of this is real," he took a long glance around, moving his eyes among the eyes of others looking at him. He was like a superstar, standing in the middle of all his fans.
Just by looking at them, looking at the world, looking at the bright, big orange star that was much bigger than the sun, he felt something was defintely amiss.
"Everything… Everyone… They all look real… They all look alien..."
As he got more thoughts like this, he had tons of conflicting emotions inside, making him place both hands over his head, squeezing his temples again.
"What the hell did you do to me?" he muttered, before raising his head and shouting at the clear sky, "What did you do to me?"