T'balt held his head as his eyes readjusted to the light of the living room. Then the moments of readjustment turned to a pounding headache. It was like a nail was freshly hammered into his head. But the pain only lasted for a second. Like it was just a phantom.
"That was a weird dream."
T'Balt arched his neck in confusion. He was sitting upright, staring at an RPG death screen. It wasn't like him to fall asleep in the middle of a game. He didn't even feel tired. According to his phone, it was only midnight, well before his usual bedtime.
These days, he could stay up playing video games until nearly five in the morning. He did it most nights, the definition of a night owl.
25 years old, no real job, and a house completely paid off by his grandparents. What else was he supposed to do?
Still, that dream was so vivid that he had to splash water in his face to bring him back to reality. Because nothing else in his body reassured him that he was indeed sleeping. In the end, he decided to brush off the aching foreboding feeling in his gut.
He checked the bedroom. Chosa still wasn't home. "Likely at some other school thing." He smacked himself on the cheeks. "Come on. T'balt. You got a boss battle to settle."
Settling back in his gaming chair, he entered a hard grinding session that took hours before he was even close to gathering enough experience to beat the final boss. He'd been working on it for what felt like days, and tonight was finally the night that he would destroy that boss so bad that they'd be practically offering up their lunch money. But at some point, the clock hit 5am, and tonight turned into tomorrow night.
T'balt woke up close to the afternoon, groggy as hell and needing a drink of something not named water. He stumbled to the kitchen, mumbling to himself until he smacked his head against the fridge.
"Late night again, Tibby?"
He closed the fridge, eyeing the young, black-haired woman sitting in the kitchen and typing on a laptop that wasn't hers.
He groaned like a hog that was too fat to stand. "Do you really have to ask?"
She shrugged, seemingly too busy to even look at him. Or maybe she didn't want to. He was a mess at the moment. Going for the homeless look. Unshaved, messy black hair, bags under his puffy mud brown eyes.
She was the exact opposite, managing to keep herself stylish, casual, and comfortable. A sweater and a short skirt. A lot of black and deep violet. A perfect blend of goth enough to be seductive but not enough to be dangerous. The balls on her smooth ivory cheeks carefully shaped a face that was too cute for its own good. And somehow this was T'balt's girlfriend, Chosa Sonomiya.
She had a dark expression on her face, darker than usual. But like always, T'balt didn't pay attention to her long enough to notice. He lay half dead on his living room couch with a half-empty gallon of orange juice. "I didn't hear you come in last night," T'balt wheezed.
"I doubt you'd notice anything as intensely as you stare into those games all night."
"Don't act like they're all bad. They teach me to be perceptive. Think on my toes," he said, doing his best to hold in a lazy burp.
"School project."
"Again? You're not done with that thing yet?"
"You don't get a degree in three days, T'balt. It takes a lot of time, hard work, and perseverance."
"Eh. Life's too short. Time is too precious to let go… Damn. If only I had farmed those griffins instead of the mimics, I would've beaten that damn boss by now."
Chosa rolled her eyes, clearly dismissing that as nerd speech. As silent as a deer in the road, Chosa packed up her backpack, ready to head back out somewhere else. She teasingly patted him on the head with a suspiciously mocking smile. "You'll get 'em this time. I believe in you."
"Shut up." T'balt playfully threw a pillow at her head. She dodged it with comical ease.
"By the way, don't forget the electric is due this week. I don't want to come back to a cold, dark house again."
"Why not? That we have to cuddle for warmth."
"Uh huh. What use are you if you can't even keep the lights on?"
"I knew you only liked me for my grandparents' house," he half-joked.
"Well, it's a nice house. Your grandparents were nice enough to leave it to you in their will. It would be stupid to let it go to waste."
"Hmm." T'balt hated it when she brought up his grandparents' will. They were long dead, and this house contained everything that they were. And it went to him. Not his mom, not his aunts and uncles, but to him. That's why everyone stopped talking to him.
It was a sore spot, as Chosa could tell from the sudden sadness on his face, but he would let it go. He supposed he should pay the electric bill. Despite having no mortgage or rent to pay, he still had to cover monthly utilities, so he wasn't completely responsibility-free.
"Oh…" He checked the bill on his phone. "I'm a little low this month, huh?"
"Maybe if you spent a little more time outside of the house, the bills wouldn't get so high," Chosa yelled from the front door.
"Yeah, yeah. I'll go make a few deliveries. It's fine."
"Good luck." The front door closed behind her. A friend was out front to pick her up for one of her college classes, and T'balt was alone again.
He groaned one last time before throwing on some semi-decent clothes and jumping into his car. He didn't have a real job, no, but in the modern age, one of the few decent ways to make money without selling one's soul was as a rideshare—Using his car for other people's needs. A long time ago, T'Balt figured out that he didn't even need to have another person in his car. He just had to pick up some food, smell it on the way to the delivery address, narrowly avoiding the urge to steal a French fry. Then money would enter his wallet like magic. He could do it for a few hours, pay his utilities, and get back to the gaming grind.
He turned on the radio just to get the occasionally needed update of worldly news. He heavily relied on Chosa to inform him of the world's doings, as he could hardly be bothered to pick up his phone for anything other than a walkthrough. But that was some of her use being a journalism major. She kept him worldly enough not to be out of the loop, but she never kept him up to date on the smaller things, like how the baseball teams were doing in the playoffs this year.
"If you missed today's game, it was a complete blowout and a top scorer. As the NightHawks cleaned up the HammerHeads in a whopping four to zip," the radio said. "Nothing like a good game of baseball, especially when the home team represents with complete domination. Yes, it was a game to make you proud to be a Nighthawks fan."
T'balt smirked inwardly, remembering a time when he played baseball in high school. He lamented on the what-if future if he continued to play. He could've been out there blowing other teams out of the water, on the way to a national title. Then he remembered not to fool himself into thinking he was that good. He quit after the first year.
He picked up his first meal from a burger spot in town called All One Burger. "Burgers so big you'd be surprised it's all in one package." Stupid slogan. Good burgers.
He picked up the bag for his allotted customer, not sparing the drive-through worker so much as a nod. He drove it across town and set the burger on the customer's doorstep. A job well done. But he got back in his car to check the app, no tip.
"Asshole."
Then moments later, as he was driving away, T'balt's phone rang. He nearly crashed like the ringtone jumped out of a horror film. "Hello," he answered.
"Are you serious!? You can't even get this little thing right! I waited almost an hour for this burger, and you forgot the fries! If you can't even be a good delivery driver, then what good are you!"
T'balt patiently listened to the man's screeching, apologized, and spent another half hour getting him some fresh fries that he would now get for free. Still no tip. Let's just say, T'balt wasn't in the mood to deliver order number two. He would worry about the electric bill later. Maybe when the customers were on their medication. Whichever one makes them less rude to strangers.
He tried to get back into the game, but his heart wasn't in it. The nerves in him were jittering like he was getting ready to be punched in the stomach. So he sat out on his balcony. It was a spot he could always go to relax. It was where his grandfather went to relax before he passed away. He'd light an incense to protect the house from spirits because that's what old people did. Then he would sit and watch the city move by as the clouds stayed still above them.
That was the way he thought. "Remember, T'balt. The Earth is always spinning. Even when you're sitting still, you're moving. The sun doesn't set or rise, but it's us who turn in and out of its view."
T'balt kept looking out at the horizon like he was hoping that something would change. "It looks pretty still to me," he said aloud.
Chosa's friend, some guy, dropped her off in front of the house. T'Balt stared from his second-floor balcony, concerned but not bothering to question it. It wasn't abnormal for a girl like her. She had a lot of friends. She was pursuing a college degree. It was a life that was going somewhere.
He couldn't deny that he was somewhat jealous of her. He often spent time wondering why she even cared to spend time with someone like him. Now the thought was gut-wrenching. Maybe she'd leave him for that guy in the car. Then what would he have? Just a video game and a big ass empty house.
"Why do I come up here?" he mumbled. "It doesn't do anything but make me sad." He watched the incense slowly burn away, smelling like his grandparents.
"I see your car! You can't hide from me!" he heard Chosa yelling inside the house. He almost didn't want to say anything. He wasn't in the mood to talk or to banter, even with her. But lingering on the balcony wasn't helping either.
But just before he turned, he heard a massive rupture scream through the air.
Then came the earthquake.
T'balt latched himself onto the balcony railing, hearing Chosa's screams from inside as everything shook violently.
"Chosa! I'm upstairs!" he yelled.
"Is this a damn earthquake!?" Chosa called.
"I think so!"
Then, from the city, like a distant sun, came the explosion. The start of what would later be called Zero Day. The flash blinded him for a moment, and he shoved his face into the floor.
After a few moments, the shaking stopped. When he looked up, it was as if the Earth was split by the heavens themselves. His eyes were burning, reflecting a sea of violent flames.
"T'balt, what's happening?" Chosa ran upstairs to him. Frightened, she clung to his arm, but then she was taken by the sight as well. Buildings were burning, and the air had become hard to breathe.
Feeling her touch, T'balt reacted. "Chosa. We need to go to the basement." His first thought was to get them to safety. But Chosa wouldn't move. He tried to shake her out of her stun lock, but all she could do was point.
"What the hell is that?" she whimpered.
When T'balt looked, it was something that could only be described as a demon. It was half the size of the house, with the body of a man and the skin of a deer. Its eyes screamed with malice.
There was a man running away from it. More like crawling. T'balt then saw the long blade in the beast's humanoid hands—A sword doused in inferno with a melting blood sweat. The beast screeched. As did the man, but for completely opposite reasons. The man's body was cut in two, with both halves being taken by flame.
T'balt could only watch breathlessly, eyes widened. He didn't hear Chosa's scream next to him. Not until the beast noticed it. Then T'ballt immediately clasped a hand over her mouth. He ran her back inside. A million thoughts sprinted through him as his body moved on its own.
The basement. He needed to make it to the basement.
He wouldn't stand a chance if that thing found them. Even if he had a tank, he didn't know if that could stop it. They had to hide and hope that it didn't care enough to come for them. But hope was an unfounded thing on this day.
The walls of the house imploded as the deer creatures chopped it down with the ease of a machete through weeds. The impact sent both T'balt and Chosa to the floor. Suddenly toppled by debris, T'balt struggled to move. As Chosa lay near lifeless on the floor.
But he was able to get a good look at the beast. And it was clear that it was not from this world. It gnarled its dagger-like teeth, and the antlers were morphed by fire. The brute dragged its sword like a massive club.
"This isn't real. Another dream. This isn't real." It was all he could think. It was his only safe haven if such a thing existed. If this wasn't a dream, then he was dead. But that terrible, sinking feeling in his gut was pounding through his entire soul.
"Just close your eyes. And wake up again. That's it. And this will all be over." But when he closed them, he could still hear the metal skidding across his kitchen floor. "No. No. No."
The sound wasn't heading towards him. But for Chosa. She was slowly coming to, but not fast enough to avoid the thing.
"Chosa!" he yelled. "Please no!"
She opened her eyes, unable to believe the monster standing in front of her. With no other option, she froze in place, fear, shock, and pain overtaking her.
"What do I do? What do I do?" He was thinking, but his body was already moving, shoving the debris from his legs. Just enough to move, despite the pain and blood seeping down his pants.
The monster reared its sword, and T'balt screamed. All he could do was throw his full weight against the thing's leg, hoping to stop it for only a moment. The deer beast struggled to shake him off, as T'balt suddenly developed the grip of a great titan. "CHOSA RUN!"
She was snapped out of her shock and did exactly as he said. This was right when the beast drove T'balt back-first into a wall, driving the breath from him and breaking a few of his ribs. The impact forced blood through his throat. This time, he really couldn't move. Even trying put his entire boy in agony. But the thing was aiming its sights right at him.
"I don't want to die," he said, forcing his way to his knees in some semblance of defiance. "I don't want to die… Fu.."
And then for a moment, but only a moment, he felt a stinging in his neck. The world was spinning. And for an agonizing instant, he could see his body, without a head on it.
T'balt Ferrier woke up in the living room of his grandparents' house, sitting upright in his chair. He was alone with a controller in his hand. Dripping red letters flashed on the screen in front of him. They read, "You died."
He was holding his neck as his eyes readjusted to the light of his living room. Then the moments of readjustment turned to a pounding headache. It was like a nail was freshly hammered into his head. But the pain only lasted for a second. Like it was just a phantom.
"That was a weird… dream?"