image [https://i.imgur.com/wpzULlN.png]
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âWhere gods gamble,
Mortals writhe in endless sport.
Truth, a shifting sand,
Life a forgotten whisper.
The game plays on, unseen, unknown.â
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The scent of ozone, a whisper of burnt sugar, and the faint, metallic tang of fearâthese are the perfumes of the Proving Grounds. You think you know such places, don't you? Hallowed arenas where heroes clash for glory, where justice reigns supreme and valor is its own reward. How quaint. How utterly, charmingly naive.
For once, though the when hardly matters anymoreâa blink in the eye of eternity, or perhaps a moment ago, I truly cannot recallâthere bloomed a realm not unlike the frayed edges of a forgotten tapestry. The Proving Grounds: a place where gods, those insufferable, bickering children of the cosmos, held wagers. And what did they wager with, you ask? Mere mortals, of course. Not that you would understand. No, this isn't a place of fairness, nor of simple contests. It's not that sort of story.
The Proving Grounds⦠they shimmer. Or perhaps they writhe. Itâs hard to tell from this vantage point. They exist beneath a sky too wide for mortal eyes, a canvas of bruised purples and electric blues, too sharp for sane minds. An endless battleground, they say. Carved from the petrified bones of dead titans, stitched together with spell-threads older than time itself. Or was it built last week, by a trickster god drunk on moonwine and a whim? My memory, as I may have mentioned, is a rather slippery thing in this placeâlike trying to cup water in your hands.
Champions. They drop like falling stars, don't they? Or perhaps they just⦠appear. Summoned from scattered realms, ripped from their lives as a child tears a page from a book. Some call it destiny, a grand design. Others whisper of a glitch in the very fabric of creation, a cosmic hiccup. All I know is this: they arrive screaming. Always screaming.
They land in sacred zones. Or what passes for sacred here. Each one more cursed than the last, if such a thing is possible. Jade gardens that bleed a sickly green underfoot when you tread upon the impossibly vibrant foliage. Stone temples that blink when youâre not looking, their ancient carvings shifting, rearranging themselves with a silent, grinding sound that only the truly mad can hear. Forests grown not from trees, but from the rusted, gleaming shafts of ancient spears, their branches bristling with a deadly intent. And all of them, every twisted inch, pulsing with mana, drenched in divine spite. Oh, and power-ups. Canât forget those. Little baubles of concentrated magic, just waiting to be claimed. Or to explode in your face. It's all part of the game, you see.
You must understand, this world plays by rules. Oh, yes. But never the same ones twice. The gods, in their infinite wisdom and bottomless boredom, rewrite the code as they see fit. A champion might sprout wings today, iridescent and glorious, only to have them crumble like burnt paper tomorrow, leaving them to plummet into a bottomless chasm. Stats fluctuate wildly. Alliances, those fragile things, fray and snap like dry twine. And resurrection? A coin flipped by forgotten deities in a dark corner of the cosmos. Or, perhaps, by bored players in some higher realm, their fingers dancing over a celestial keyboard. That's a theory I heard once. A foolish one, perhaps. But then again, what isnât, in this place?
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
Now, they say the Grounds were made to test champions. To find the one worthy of divine favor, the paragon who will bring about⦠something or other. A new age, perhaps? A clean slate? Another round of bickering amongst the gods? But let me ask you, truly: who defines âworthyâ here? The gods? They quarrel over petty legends, their voices echoing like thunder, and offer blessings like poisoned sweets, sweet to the tongue but bitter in the belly. The champions themselves? Their memories are often missing, fragments of lives they once led, their very names stolen by the realm itself. They fight because they must, because the Grounds compel them, not because they understand why. Such a tragic comedy, isn't it?
Ah, but every tale needs a beginning, doesnât it? A point of origin, however murky. And ours begins not with a hero, not with a grand champion chosen by fate, but with a mistake. A glorious, incandescent mistake.
She falls from the sky, not unlike the others, but somehow⦠different. Wrapped in blue fire, a celestial ember descending to a cruel earth. Not the chosen. Not the foretold. But certainly someone. Her name⦠Jane Doe, perhaps. Or maybe thatâs just the name the Grounds, in their infinite whimsy, let her keep. She lands in a field where the wind whispers in a hundred different languages, a cacophony of forgotten tongues, and the grass, a strangely vibrant crimson, tries to taste her blood, its roots writhing like hungry tendrils. She stands slowly, disoriented, a puppet with severed strings. Blindfolded. Scarred. Oh yes, how utterly poetic. She fits the part far too well, wouldnât you agree? The perfect, tragic heroine.
I shouldnât speak of her yet. Not directly. It spoils the fun. But stories have a way of leaking into themselves, donât they? Like ink dropped into water, spreading, staining everything it touches. So letâs pretend I didnât mention her. Not yet. Her time will come. All things, even mistakes, have their moment in the sun. Or under this bruised sky.
Instead, letâs speak of the champions, those poor, deluded souls. They come armed with weapons, with desperate dreams clinging to them like shrouds, with broken quests that haunt their every step, and with glowing sigils burned into their flesh. Each one crafted by lore too grand to summarize, too convoluted to untangle. Youâd like them, I thinkâsome noble beyond measure, some monstrous in their very souls; all of them, every last one, tragic beyond belief. They battle in trios, in quartets, sometimes alone, their desperate cries echoing across the shifting landscapes. Sometimes together, for a fleeting moment, before the Groundâs insidious influence turns them against one another. The arena shifts underfoot, a malicious entity in its own right. Entire biomes vanish between blinks, replaced by something entirely different, something more dangerous. Death means nothing here. A temporary setback, a brief respite. Victory, if it can even be called that, means even less. A hollow triumph, quickly forgotten.
And always, in the sky above, the gods watch. Or pretend to. Or perhaps, and this is a thought that truly amuses me, perhaps they simply forgot the Proving Grounds still exist. Wouldnât that be a twist? To have all this carnage, all this suffering, all this story, unfolding for an empty audience?
You want rules? There are none. You want truth? Youâre already too deep in the labyrinth, friend. What you need is a tether. A reason. A name to hold onto when the Grounds begin to shift beneath your feet, when the very ground you stand on threatens to swallow you whole.
But donât look to me for it. Iâm only the storyteller, you see. The one who pulls the strings, or perhaps merely observes them as they dance.
And havenât I warned you?
I wouldn't lie. Not to you. Not about this.