Wet gurgling sounds accompanied by wheezing came out of a dying teen. The right side of his torso and arm were completely torn off.
"I hate them." The thought repeated bitterly in Hadrian's skull.
His watery eyes opened to a slit as he gazed forward, though his eyes seemed to see past the debris and dirt into a far off place.
He had just turned fifteen, the past six years spent as a street urchin.
A painful gurgle escaped him once more with a heave, blood flowing down his mouth.
He'd been lucky to find work today, the inn needed extra workers to clean their latrines. A conflict had ensued between two Mages as Hadrian waited to be paid after doing his work.
Their fight had moved elsewhere by now but not before passing through Hadrian and leaving him in this state.
"I hate them."
His vision darkened and the pain he'd been feeling ebbed away, his bloody mouth left hanging open.
In a sewer in the same city, a dead rat's whiskers twitched and its muscles moved.
The first thing he sensed was the smell of rot and iron, the air damp on his snout. He heard squeaking and the skittering sounds of small feet tapping against wet stone. His whiskers and muscles twitched.
Whiskers? Fur?
His heart raced. Opening his eyes, he saw small shapes moving past him, scurrying; red beams glowing in their eyes every once in a while. Rats. And he was one of them.
Frozen in place, his tiny heart drummed. A small rat came up to him, smelt his snout and moved in another direction. Hadrian's rat body wriggled in reaction and a gag reflex kicked in.
He bolted in one direction like a released spring, his tiny legs tapping the wet ground. He found a small hole with an opening the size of a coin and squeezed himself in.
His entire rat body shook as he curled in on himself in the hole.
I died.
Water dripped from somewhere and echoed throughout the space.
Reincarnation? So it's real?
His ears and whiskers twitched, picking up frequencies he'd never heard before.
Despite the state of his life, he'd never become a spiritual person like those other heretics.
A rat? Of all things. A vermin? Is this what I'm worth?
He looked down at his small body, grey fur and long tail.
I was too weak back then, and now you turn me into a rat?
Emotions flared up, a rat's cry came out of him. He tried cursing but a squeak came out of him.
As his emotions rose, Hadrian felt something vast at an indescribable centre within him open up as well. With his sight fixed on the opening, he calmed himself and focused inward.
He tugged at the sensation, he did not know with what or where, but it felt as natural as flexing a muscle.
It pulled back at him. He got scared. Retreat! He told himself, but the more he resisted the stronger the pull became until he eventually sunk into its embrace.
In the next moment, Hadrian found himself looking down a vast, dull white space. Dense fog spun in a chaotic vortex beneath him.
Looking down at himself, expecting to see fur and paws, he was met with nothing. Not even his human body, he seemed to exist only as his sight. Like a god looking down an ocean of fog.
Hadrian panicked and wanted to crawl away. The vortex got more chaotic the more restless he felt. Seeing this, Hadrian calmed himself and so did the vortex.
Is this what the Mages speak of?
He'd heard mages could enter their souls, see their soul cores and manipulate their essence to use abilities.
Hadrian got excited.
Am I about to awaken to a Mage?
His excitement died as he thought.
But I died and now I am a rat. Even if I could awaken as a rat, where then is my first rank core?
The fog beneath him now moved gently; you could even miss it was moving at all.
Ghost-like tendrils rose from the fog and formed into textual information.
Hadrian observed this sight, not surprised.
The world had a language, and the soul as a part of the world, could speak the world's language. This is something he had learned about Mages, they could see information about their souls in their own languages.
The misty texts finally formed and danced in the air. Hadrian did not know if there was air here since he was not breathing, but he liked to imagine there was. The text read;
[ Name : Hadrian. ]
[ Authority : Unity. ]
[ Authority attributes: ]
[ 1. I: take over, Mind. Soul. Body. Of another existence.]
[ 2. Chain :All vessels are one being. ]
[ 3. Substitution : Essence. Flesh. ]
[ Vessel categories: ]
Basic lifeform
Sentient lifeform
Mutated lifeform
Ascended lifeform
[ ]
[ Current vessels : 1 basic lifeform. ]
Hadrian scanned the information three times over, confused on what to make of it.
Admittedly, he knew little about mages, and the little he did was mostly from word of mouth. Still he had never heard about any type of magic like this.
Take over the mind, soul and body of another being…. Hadrian repeated in his mind. Is that how I ended up in a rat?
And that second attribute "chain" is a strange one too.
What's the difference between the first and third attribute?
And what about rank? How will I know my rank ?
Questions flooded his mind.
Mages used their soul cores to determine rank, and Hadrian saw no soul cores in the space. A rank one mage had one soul core, a rank two had two and so on.
The "basic lifeform vessel" must be the rat I currently am.
Immediately he thought this, the fog cleared up at a specific spot and there, he saw a small rat standing still on its four paws like a realistic statue.
He approached it and it was indeed the regular rat. Observing it, mist flowed above it and formed into the text "basic lifeform."
He looked back to the misty text.
"Sentient lifeform" could be Humans and the other races like Elves and Dragons.
Hadrian thought.
"Mutated lifeform" then, would be the beasts and horrors.
While "Ascended lifeform" must be Mages. I've heard them referred to as "Ascended" before. So, this is where it comes from?
A dark excitement built up within him.
If this is true, then I can have my revenge on those bloody mages that killed me.
Ahahahaha!
Hadrian's laugh reverberated from all directions in the space.
For so long, my life has been determined by my environment and others. Now?
"Not even fate will decide my life."
His bitter voice declared above the space.
He looked back up at the information where the fifth vessel category was empty. Not knowing what to make of it, he sank into the fog.
The rat in the small hole had stopped shaking now, its heart no longer beating frantically.
Hadrian squeezed himself out the hole and stretched his rat limbs, he looked down one end of the sewer where squeaks echoed and moved in that direction.
The rats scurried, squeaking. Some fought; scratching with their claws or biting at each other while others gnawed and sniffed around the place. It was a whole colony down here.
Perfect.
Hadrian thought as he got deeper into the colony, controlling the disgust he felt.
He needed to understand how his power worked.
A light flickered in his rat eyes and his sight changed. He saw past the rats' fur and flesh and into a space where a mass of black fog flowed.
Hadrian approached one rat that was gnawing at something and raised his tiny paws above it.
The black fog in the rat's soul body got chaotic. The rat stopped gnawing and raised its head, its whiskers twitching.
Does it sense something is wrong?
Hadrian cursed.
Thin phantom tendrils rose from the rat's foggy soul sea and wrapped themselves around Hadrian's rat paws.
The rat darted its head, squeaked and ran from the spot.
Hadrian was left there, his paws in the air. But in his sight, the fog tendrils still wrapped around him. However, they were thinning and getting translucent the further the rat ran away from him and looked like they would break and disperse.
Hadrian bolted in chase. He'd lost sight of the rat but he followed the fog, slamming into other rats.
The fog tendrils regained their dark hue as Hadrian caught up to the rat. The rat swayed and fell, its heart beating slower. Its eyelids narrowed to a slit.
Hadrian stood above it.
Three seconds later, its whiskers twitched and limbs moved as it brought itself to stand. It turned and faced rat Hadrian and the two rats were motionless staring at each other.
Hadrian's perceptions doubled and he was disoriented. He could see the world from one rat and at the same time the other rat as well.
It was not just his sight, he could feel the heartbeat of both rats and all their other senses. They were both him.
After taking this all in for a moment, he simulated the sinking feeling again to his centre and found himself in that vast dull white space, the fog calm beneath him.
It dispersed at one spot, and there, two rats stood still.
Hadrian summoned the misty information once more, and as he expected looking at his "current vessels" it now showed
[ Basic lifeform vessels : 2 ]