章 2: The Beginning, Part 1

Friday, 6:00 AM

Beep, beep, beep

In a dark room somewhere in a big city, the alarm was beeping. It was an unusual clock. Every single of its numbers was a different size and color, its housing made of wood, plastic, and metal, two sides of each.

Beep, beep, beep-

"Alright, alright, I'm up. Shut up!"

After the shout, the alarm clock went silent. It seemed it was voice-controlled. The voice belonged to an eighteen-year-old high-school student, named Erik.

He was almost two meters tall, with an average body build. Not fat nor thin. His long brown hair had a nice contrast to his deep blue eyes and a carved jawline. His last girlfriend told him that If he put at least some effort into his appearance, he could be extremely popular just with his looks.

However, such things didn't interest him, or to be precise he couldn't be bothered with all the attention. It wasn't that he disliked it, but to be known for just his looks didn't appeal to him. Since he was very young people would often misunderstand him and he had difficulties forming connections with people, that's why he preferred to be alone most of the time.

"Light on!" he shouted.

Immediately, the lights illuminated the bedroom. It was quite spacious but looked nothing like a typical high schooler's room. It was full of weird things: On the wall, there were hanging all sorts of weapons like swords, knives, spears, rifles, handguns and even a crossbow.

On the opposite side, there were displayed different paintings, drawings, and wood carvings. Near, it resided even a half-finished statue made out of light blue stone. A desk, covered in many electrical components, motors, and pieces of what looks like weird robots, completed the picture.

The young man sat up and looked around the room. He was tired from the lack of sleep, as for the most of last night he stayed awake, studying lasers. His goal was to determine how to increase the distance at which the laser could cut while keeping the power consumption the same. It was not for a school project or anything like that. He was just doing it for the fun of it.

Also, he was quite sharp, with a nearly photographic memory. This could allow him to be highly successful in the future but he was extremely uninterested in wealth or fame. He actually despised the company of other people like that and preferred to keep to himself. That's why he tried to have many different hobbies in the past.

He tried archery, blacksmithing, drawing, painting, and sculpting. Even sword fighting and shooting sports, like hunting occupied his time for a while. But all of that didn't last long. Soon, he got bored of it and changed to something new.

Instead of giving up and letting the boredom consume him, he started studying all sorts of technologies. He learned how to program and build complex electronic machines, automating many aspects of his life, at least at home.

Although he could simply buy stuff like that, he preferred to do it by himself, at least that way he got some satisfaction out of it.

High school was a different story entirely. It was a nuisance he had to suffer through due to the stupid law which made it mandatory, and his parents who wouldn't let him drop out, insisting he needed a degree. Because he couldn't care less about it, he didn't rank high in his class. In fact, he was just about average.

The amazing memory couldn't compensate for slacking off by either skipping school, or daydreaming when he should be listening to professors talk. He rarely studied for more than a few minutes before tests, and he put the bare minimum effort in all of the assignments.

It simply wasn't worth his time.

Today was no different. After he woke up, he took a shower, brushed his teeth and dressed up in some casual clothes and went to school. He only took his laptop and phone with him. There were no strict requirements for books or notebooks and if he really needed to write something down, a smartphone was enough.

In class, he spent most of the time ignoring lectures and surfing the internet in hopes of finding something that could bring him away from this mundane life. Just as always, he was completely immersed in thought until a loud voice woke him up.

"... I will say it one last time, so you better listen up! The report must be finished in two weeks' time or you will fail this class. No exceptions!" The professor was merciless.

"Oh, man! I totally forgot about it. I was planning to go skiing with my girlfriend," someone complained.

"Yeah, tell me about it. There goes my free time. How am I gonna party and finish this paper?!"

There was a lot of commotion in the classroom. Evidently, people weren't happy that they will have to do school work during the winter holidays. Erik was no different. Even though he didn't have any plans for the holidays, he still disliked the task given by the professor.

They were forced to write a report on an old book form the 16th century and there was absolutely nothing on the internet about it, other than its title and the name of the author who wrote it.

"I don't wanna hear any complaints! You all knew this a month in advance. It's completely your fault if you left it for the holidays" the teacher berated them.

Riiiiiiing!

The school bell interrupted him, saving the students from a lecture on responsibility and taking control of their own lives.

"Well, it seems like we are out of time. Class dismissed!"

Immediately, everyone got up and started talking to each other while leaving the classroom. It was the last day of school before the winter break.

Erik's family was quite well off and so he could afford to have his own apartment in the school's vicinity. It saved him quite a bit of time and effort that way.

The sky was light gray color and it looked like it was soon going to snow. Erik resented the thought of staying outside in the cold any longer than necessary, but since he didn't have any plans for the holidays and the city library was close, he decided to find that stupid book and bring it home. At least that way, he could do the assignment.

Luckily, the library was not far away, so he had to endure the freezing temperatures for only a few torturous minutes. As expected from the last day of school for this year, the place was mostly empty, absent from people.

Those few individuals that were there paid no attention to Erik and neither did he pay any attention to them. He was planning to quickly find and rent the book and leave as soon as possible. However, today of all days, mischievous faith decided to toy with him, as even after twenty minutes, he was still unable to find it. Thus, he had no choice to ask for help from a librarian. But sure enough, he didn't have much luck there either.

"Sorry, but I have never heard of this title before. Let me check in the computer database... Nope. There is nothing on the computer either. Although, we did recently get new editions of many novels. Maybe it's just not in the database yet. Also, try checking in the back. There is a big cardboard box with some old books that are about to be thrown away, if it's not there then we probably don't have it."

"Well okay. I'll check it out, thanks," Erik replied with a somewhat forced smile.

He turned around and went towards the last rows of books in the library and sure enough, there was a large cardboard box on top of a wood palette. There were at least a few hundred books in it and Erik had to check them one by one. Almost half an hour went by before he finally found what he was looking for.

"Cursed book, I finally found you!" His eyes were glowing from anger and frustration. So much trouble for something so stupid. Exhausted, he couldn't wait to go home and catch some sleep for a few hours.

Just as he started to throw the other novels back in the box, something caught his attention. It was a book, lying at the very bottom of the box. It was extremely old and very different from others. On closer inspection, Erik noticed that the covers were bound in leather and its pages were made from a really thick paper. Moreover, the writing was completely foreign to him.

The book was full of symbols and pictures he has never laid eyes upon before. To make everything even more mysterious, it had no library stamp. Someone must've put it there by mistake.

Since that was so and the books were going to be thrown away, Erik decided to take it and stored it into an inside pocket of his jacket.

After returning the rest of the books into the box, he went back to the librarian to rent the other one for school.

When he finally got home, it was already late evening and like that wasn't enough, it also started snowing. Erik hated the cold. To him, whoever invented it was a sadistic maniac, laughing at the suffering of others. Or at least at him, since everyone else he knew seemed to enjoy the freezing weather.

He intended to drift into peaceful slumber the moment he got the chance, but although he was tired, he just couldn't resist examining the contents of the weird book he found. The cover was dark red and on it, there were scattered many weird symbols of golden color. The pages inside were covered with those symbols as well, mixed with something that looked like pictures of different soil and stone structures, fires of all shapes and sizes as well as rivers and lakes, geysers, and icicles.

Confused, he started wracking his brain on what this could be. He had to find an answer and the internet seemed like a perfect place to find help. He scanned most pages and uploaded them to his computer so he could utilize the newest technology in the hope that he could find a match with a known language. Even after comparing it with over five thousand known languages, new and old, he was unable to find a match.

It was already over midnight and his head felt like it was going to explode from all the intense research. For the last try, he uploaded the scanned book into a program he downloaded from the web, for deciphering encrypted messages, hoping it could crack the meaning of the book and its contents.

The program consisted of a self-learning algorithm that was capable of learning the meaning in every unknown language. It was invented and perfected a decade ago and with its help people finally got a universal translator in the middle of the 21st century.

Erik was now barely keeping his eyes open. All those nights with barely any sleep finally came with a full force to bite him. Only moments after starting the translation algorithm he fell asleep behind the screen.

Saturday, 9:00 AM

Beep, beep, beep

Beep, bee-

"Shut the fuck up!" he yelled at the top of his lungs. "Why did I even make this annoying thing?"

Erik woke up after the long night. Due to drifting asleep on the keyboard, his face was now covered in funny lines and squares. He completely forgot what he was doing last night. In near darkness, he stood up and went to the toilet, took a shower and then went to the kitchen to get a cup of coffee to wake himself up.

After the caffeine filled his body, he mustered enough strength to prepare and eat some eggs and a ham sandwich. After going back to his room and jumping on the bed to go back to sleep, he finally remembered last night's struggles.

"Light on!" he yelled. The lights slowly brightened, one by one until they illuminated the whole room.

Instantly, he jumped up and excitedly went to check his computer. And sure enough, he was pleasantly surprised. In only a bit over five hours, he got the results that he wanted. A complete translation of that mysterious book.

"Elemental Codex?" Erik muttered to himself. That was the title of the book. Finally, he was able to figure out what it actually was.

After a closer examination, he found out that it was some sort of an old spellbook, and based on its state, it should be at least a few hundred years old, maybe even a thousand.

'How on earth did something like that end up in a city library? But more importantly, a spellbook? This had to be a joke. Magic and spells only exist in fiction. The reality is much more boring' was what he thought.