Lucid stood outside the mansion beneath a lavender sky where the sun had just begun to rise. Gerald had led him out and given him the basic details about the mission. Strangely, Gerald had only mentioned that one individual would accompany him. Lucid had thought Karmen would be waiting outside to see them off, but as things were, no. He was way off in what he thought.
"Hey there. I'm Jake Rosenberg. I recognize you from last evening. We had so much fun, didn't we?"
Lucid and the young man named Jake were outside the mansion just after Lucid had finished a tense, quiet breakfast. Jake wore his wide-brimmed hat and a travel cloak that concealed his upper body, with simple blue trousers and a matching tunic. He extended a hand toward Lucid as if nothing strange had happened at all. He was the same person who had carried Lucid to safety from the gawking nobles in the middle of the estate's party.
'It's him. That stupid musician who threw me from the air and made me break my leg,' Lucid thought bitterly, his anger simmering just below the surface.
"I too do not appreciate this individual's presence," Alice's voice chimed in, a note of cool caution in her tone. "Be wary of him, Lucid."
"N-nice to meet you," Lucid said, managing to keep his voice steady despite the internal conflict. He continued, "Yeah, though I don't know where you disappeared to afterwards."
Jake put a hand up to his lower face, seeming deep in thought. "I was practicing a new ability of mine and it didn't seem to work right. I sort of fell outside Tyriana. Looks like my instrument carried on without me and landed me right outside Tyriana. Ahahaha..." He laughed a light, pathetic laugh, as if to brush off his own clumsiness and the major accident it had caused.
Lucid shook his head slowly, managing only a faint sigh at the explanation that had resulted in his shattered bone. It wasn't like he could get back at the boy now. In a twisted way, they were even. Jake had saved him from the crowd, and Jake had also broken his leg. A fair trade, perhaps.
"Well, nice to meet you. I'm Lucid," he managed, the words coming out in a faint, dismissive breath. He sounded like he really did not want to be doing this. Yet a feeling nagged at him. Last night, he could swear Jake had called his name without any introduction. But he let that thought die down for now.
"Where is Young Master Karmen?" Lucid asked, looking around the empty courtyard. "Shouldn't he be here by now to give us the details and instructions?"
"Well, you woke up a bit late," Jake said with a shrug, his smile never fading. "He's already off to some tavern meeting. Don't know the details, but he'll be gone for a while."
'Rebecca,' a faint thought lingered in Lucid's mind. He couldn't help but worry for her. Had she made it back safely? Or was she being held against her will? He couldn't tell. But the sooner he got this ordeal over with for the governor, the sooner he could ask about the man in black and seek her out. Right now, he had no leads on that man, and nothing solid to back him up. The man in black was also really strong. He had managed to nearly kill Lucid. So Lucid doubted he stood much of a chance alone. Whether he liked Karmen or not, the noble could be a powerful ally. Though the fact that the hooded figures accompanying the man in black had led all the way to the estate still put him deeply on edge.
"So what's your affiliation with the young master?" Lucid asked, trying to sound casually curious.
"Oh, me? I'm just his personal errand boy. He pays me really well," Jake said brightly. He had a really lively personality, that of a performer or a musician. Although his cap obscured the upper half of his face, normally his eyes and eyebrows, he had a really bright, intoxicating smile. One that looked completely different from Karmen's tired, calculating expressions. He also carried something on his back, the case for his instrument.
'A guitar? A violin?' Lucid tried to imagine what it was.
"So, let's get going, shall we!" Jake beamed confidently, putting his hands on his hips.
He motioned toward his back, holding the large black case. He opened it and withdrew a small, elegant violin. He tucked it under his chin and positioned the bow, ready to play.
Lucid, upon seeing that, immediately revolted. He took several quick steps back, his hands coming up in a warding gesture. "No, no, no, no, no! I'm fine! I will walk!"
"Hm?" Jake sounded genuinely confused, the violin still poised.
"I would much rather walk," Lucid said, his words coming out worried and hasty. "Thank you!" He immediately turned around and started to walk briskly in the opposite direction, away from Jake and the mansion.
"Are you sure, Lucid? You don't even have a map?" Jake called after him.
Lucid didn't respond. He just wanted to put distance between himself and that instrument.
But before he could manage more than a dozen steps, a blue circle of light enveloped the ground around him. It formed a small, glowing perimeter that consumed everything within it. In the distance, the faint, haunting hums of a violin sounded. A chuckle, a laugh of pure delight, could be heard riding on the morning air.
"This is bad! Run, Lucid!" Alice's voice sounded in his head, sharp and struck with fear on his behalf.
'Crap!'
As he desperately tried to run, the world dissolved into a bright, bluish light, just like the night before. Running was a useless attempt. His brief, startled scream was carried away by a rushing wind as the terrain beneath his feet, the mansion, the sky, all of it melted into streaks of impossible color and sound. He was trapped in the musician's magic once again, a passenger on a journey he did not want to take.
"No! No! No!!" Lucid yelled, flailing his arms as if he were doomed to be swallowed by a monster. But when he looked around, he was simply on the soft ground of a purple meadow. He had tumbled onto the grass, messing up his clothes. After taking a minute to realize what had happened, he stopped yelling. He looked around, registering Jake's wide grin from a few feet away.
"You are so silly at times, my Lucid," Alice said in his mind. She was trying to comfort him, but he could hear the slight, gentle laugh in her melodic voice.
After a moment, Lucid got up. He straightened his clothes and started walking in a direction he guessed was right.
"Uh, Lucid," Jake called out, his voice light. "The North Cave is this way. Not that way."
Lucid turned around and walked right past Jake as if he wasn't there. He totally ignored him, heading off in the direction Jake had just pointed.
"Wait, hold up!" Jake laughed, partly jogging to catch up to Lucid.
They walked, soon entering a thick forest. The trees had strange, purple leaves, and the grass underfoot was a deep violet. The air felt cold, colder than the area around the town. But then again, Lucid had not woken up in this part of the woods. He had first appeared in a southern forest with similar purple grass, where a giant spider, an Unfaithful, had resided. This place was devoid of such immediate danger, but the chill was deeper. He could spot the occasional deer, but their coats were in totally off colors, shades of blue and silver that would never be seen on Earth.
Walking through the forest in silence, Jake finally broke it.
"Aren't you curious?" he asked.
"No," Lucid said flatly.
"Already? I didn't even get to say what it was about. Ahaha," Jake laughed, unbothered.
"What is that violin of yours?" Lucid asked hesitantly. He had to admit, something about Jake piqued his interest. This world seemed to run on swords and magic, but from what he understood, they were both the same. They derived from a form of Fate Essence. Jake wasn't an Enlightened, so how could he manage to use that ability, that power to teleport, with just a violin?
Lucid thought back to what Karmen had said. The governor claimed he did not have enough resources to hire an Enlightened mercenary. But he was a governor, a noble. If anything, shouldn't he be able to hire an army with his funds? Something did not add up. He asked a question, reluctantly, but he needed to know.
"Are you an Enlightened?" Lucid asked.
A moment of silence followed. It was a quiet moment that dragged on for a bit, but it was not without an answer.
"Well, no," Jake said, his smile still in place. "I am an Awakened."
"An Awakened?" Lucid repeated. He had never heard that term. He had never seen one, either. Strangely, it was as if he had never even considered that name.
'Could it be another way of saying an Enlightened?' he wondered.
"I am not strong," Jake continued, as if reading his confusion. "An Enlightened is an individual that have reached the pinnacle of strength, who has fully merged with their awakened trait. There are only a handful in all the scattered realms. So yeah," he said with a shrug, "it is life. We cannot always be what we aspire to be. That is why I am a musician!"
"That does not answer my question," Lucid pressed. "What is an Awakened?"
"Do you not know anything about this world?" Jake asked, his head tilting.
Lucid flinched slightly, trying to hide that he had been caught off guard.
"Ahaha, just kidding," Jake said, waving a hand. "An Awakened is an individual who is receptive to Fate Essence. They can use it, shape it into abilities, but they do not have a Specter. A soul-scape, you could call it."
"I also heard there are ranks between the Enlightened," Jake mused, more to himself. "I am not quite sure about that. It is not like anything an Awakened has. But some Awakened can rival a low-ranked Enlightened, they say."
"A Specter?" Lucid asked, latching onto the new term.
"Are you deaf?" Jake shot back with a good-hearted laugh, a joke. "It is that white smoke, that white shadow they claim to see that displays their information. An Awakened does not have that. We just... feel the power. We shape it with will, or with tools." He patted the case on his back. "Like my violin."
'Interesting,' Lucid thought. It made a strange kind of sense. Alice had said the Chain of Heart gave weak Fate Essence regeneration. Perhaps that trickle was what made him an Awakened, not an Enlightened. He had a Specter, the status screen and potentially multiple traits seeing he had just unlocked one but that was because of his bond with Alice, a Primordial. It was not truly his own.
Just as he was thinking about that, they arrived.
In front of them was the mouth of a cave. It was not a natural, rocky opening. It was a tear of deep black shadow that seemed to extend into the mountain side. The edges of the entrance wavered like heat haze, but cold instead of hot. Looking into it, Lucid could not see any depth, only an endless, consuming darkness. From within, he could feel something. It was not a natural feeling. It was the same goosebump-raising wrongness he had felt back at the town's fountain, just before the Rift had opened. But this was stronger. Heavier. It sat in the air like a bad smell, a pressure against his skin.
A Rift was here.