A chaotic awakening

Nothing, I felt nothing.

A sea of endless black ink clouded my consciousness.

There was no sense of time.

Above me, endlessly far away, there was a surface.

Sometimes my consciousness would drift closer to the surface of this sea, never quite reaching it. I was drifting along far below the surface, no sense of time or self, no thoughts.

Then, without a warning, everything changed, my consciousness drifting through the endless darkness suddenly jolted upwards and within seconds burst through the surface that seemed so far away. Just like that, the silence was replaced by an influx of senses, hitting me like a brick wall.

My consciousness was awake immediately, being flooded with an overwhelming amount of information, colors, lights, smells, and sounds, it all overwhelmed me at once. Among all this, I saw glimpses of a room. Before all of this accumulated into one single ringing throughout my being, that overtook everything else. It hurt, a lot, everywhere!

The barrage of information didn’t stop, my mind was being constantly assaulted. Amongst all of this, slowly, one single thought was able to form within my mind.

“I am alive?”

The thought resurfaced repeatedly, and at first, it was difficult to focus on it with all the noise in my head, it was deafening. But then, slowly, I managed to cling to the thought, realizing what it meant. I was awake, the endless darkness replaced with colors and sounds bombarding me. That can only mean one thing, right?

I am alive!

The very second I understood my first thought in who knows how long, it burned into my mind.

I focused on it, using it as a lifeline to keep me from being overwhelmed by everything again. Clinging to this realization, I started to attempt to rein in the senses around me.

Easier said than done.

I must have tried for what felt like hours to rein my senses in, to regain control. Every time I made some progress and gained a smidgen of control, it would just slip away again. And then the endless waves of information threatened to overwhelm me once more. Yet that single thought kept me from spiraling out of control.

This went on for I do not know how long, but at some point, I noticed that the way the senses would flood my mind resembled how water under pressure acted when met with only a small opening to flood through. I slowly gained a better understanding of my mind, giving me a 3-dimensional view of it that slowly let me locate the “leaks” I had to close.

Closing one of these leaks would stop one of the senses from bombarding my mind, but when I started closing another one, the one already closed would open up again.

It must have taken hours, but slowly, I was able to close more and more of these leaks simultaneously. My control grew steadily, and with time, I finally managed to regain a calm mind.

Everything was silent again, but unlike before, I was not within the endless sea of darkness. I could finally form actual thoughts.

The pain was still there, the entirety of my being felt raw. But that was fine with me, at least I could think again. That is when it hit me, the realization that I was just a mind, everything else was missing, there was no body! It stopped me dead in my tracks, and in that moment, my control over shutting away my senses slightly slipped. It took all I had to regain it.

I was tired. I needed to rest, to stop thinking for a while, and collect myself. I had to slowly breathe in and out, wait, I wasn’t able to do that, right? Just with that thought, my hold almost slipped again. That was when I remembered how my mother would always calm me down with one of her songs that she would sing to me until I calmed down. My favorite song was a tale about how our forefathers created a link between us and the mana of the worlds. It was the spark that originally led me to study the runes called rota, that are that very same connection.

Thinking about this slowly calmed me down as I hummed the melody of the song within my mind.

That is when my memories of the experiment caught up with me. The test should not have gone wrong. It couldn’t have, the setup was perfect. We triple checked everything!

And yet I remembered.

I remembered how the wave of mana came bursting towards me. I remembered the feeling of being ripped out of my body, my very core. Was I truly a soul without a core?

My control was slowly slipping again, but this time I reined it back in immediately. I had to think, I had to make sense of my situation!

It shouldn’t be possible for me to survive without a core to house my soul in. It would simply be pulled into a ley line and disappear, that much was common knowledge. Yet here I was, seemingly bodyless, coreless. Was I already pulled into a layline, and the bombardment of my senses was the result of that? No, that made no sense. After all, I remembered seeing parts of a room at some point, while the senses assaulted me. So that probably rules out that theory, but then how was I conscious, what was going on?

So I was stripped down to the very core of my being. If this weren’t such a dire situation, I would find this whole thing quite interesting. This was giving me a whole new perspective on the inner workings of the soul. Anyways, concentrate Tepin! If I am somehow still alive, how the hell is that possible?

Maybe my surroundings could help me shed light on that question?

Well, easier said than done. Just the thought of unleashing my senses again made me shiver. Wait, how can I feel the sensation when I don’t have a body? Is this a phantom sensation?

Damnit, I am getting off track again!

I decided to slowly loosen the hold I had on the part of my senses, which I think allows me to see. The first try was, well, I loosened the hold of the wrong senses, and the sensation of many different smells hit me. I immediately clamped down on those senses and tried again. This time I overdid it, but I chose the right senses. I saw too much at once, immediately. I calmed myself again by humming the song from my childhood, and this time around, decided to slowly try and strengthen the hold on the senses.

It was like trying to create a jet of water by holding an open pipe shut and only leaving a small space open.

So I tried my best to keep the flood of visual information steady and find the perfect hold on the sense so that it wasn’t overwhelming to me.

It took a while, I could only see patches of what was around me, which was quite disorientating but workable. I wasn’t able to just look where I wanted anymore, what I saw was what I saw. If I loosened the sense even more, at some point, I was able to see everything around me, seemingly in a 360-degree radius, but that was simply too much for me to process right now.

Either way, I could see, somewhat, but what I saw was confusing? There was glass surrounding me.

Am I in a bottle?

How did I end up in a bottle, of all places?

I was also able to see beyond it. The bottle was attached to the belt of somebody. He was a Draigkin, I think. I have only ever seen them in pictures, never met one in person.

He was quite tall, some of their skin was exposed to the sun, and I could see turquoise colored scales as they were glistening in the light. So it was true that they resembled Dragons much. I, on the other hand, am what is called a Kirin, while we also had scales, we only have them in patches. We also have a much more slender build and two tails, unlike the Draigkin here. Our horns seemingly differed too, while they only had a singular one, I had two.

His clothing seemed unique. I have never seen anything like it, the Draigkin was wearing large plates, probably made of steel. I couldn’t say for sure.

Then my sight fell on the person walking beside the Draigkin. I have never seen someone like them, he had pale porcelain colored skin without any scales. Long, pointy ears pierced through light brown hair. The clothing, however, was more familiar to me, though it looked a bit dated though. He wore green colored clothing with some padding made out of leather.

We were currently crossing a large green field, but I wasn’t able to recognize the location.

Where was the lab, and why am I stuck in a bottle carried by a Draigkin? So many questions, yet no answers!

I needed answers. I needed to hear those two, their mouths were moving after all!

So I readied myself for the onslaught of sound I would surely experience and slowly loosened the grip I had on my presumably auditory senses. As before, it was difficult to do this in a controlled way, but I managed, and this time I chose the right senses. Yay me! It started with white noise, becoming louder by the second. Then the noise merged into something more whole as it balanced out, and I started hearing voices first muffled, then they became clearer to the point that I could hear them perfectly. This is where I stopped to not overwhelm myself again.

Now, time to figure out what is going on. I just hoped they were talking about something relevant to my situation.

So I listened. And listened.

And my face fell. If I currently had one, that is…

I did not understand a single word they spoke, in fact, I am quite sure I had never heard this language ever before in my life.

What was going on?

None of this made sense!

I have no body!

I am stuck in some sort of glass bottle hanging from some random Draigkin’s belt!

I don’t know what exactly got me into this situation!

And I barely have control over my senses!

My spiraling mental breakdown was interrupted when I noticed, through the little vision I allowed myself, that the Draigkin had pulled the glass bottle I was in from his belt. He was holding me in front of his face while talking to their companion. Of course, I did not understand a thing, but the taller of the other two answered in a curious tone? I think, I wasn’t really sure.

One thing was clear, I was completely in over my head. How do I get out of this situation? What do I do?