Chapter Text
Owen was sitting in an underground prison and waiting to die, and he was pretty sure he deserved it.
Magic had left a few minutes before, but his cell was sturdier than they must have anticipated, and the lava was taking a long time to seep into the cracks of the room and kill him. Maybe that was a bad thing, because he could only delay his death.
The prison was surrounded by lava on all sides, and the clearing was probably flooded by now, so Owen had nothing left to do but sit and think about what he could have done differently. There was a lot he would change if he could.
For one, he would stop himself from killing Apo. That was the death he truly regretted, but Magic hadn’t believed him about that. She hadn’t believed that he truly wanted to change his ways, and so she’d left him to die. He didn’t really blame her, Owen would probably have done the same thing.
He regretted Guts’ death too, but he was still stubbornly firm on Rasbi’s. She would have killed him had he not killed her first.
He sighed and leaned his head back against the wall, only to immediately flinch backwards at the heat. Gosh, what a horrible way to go out. The walls were scorching, the lava was closing in, all his former friends were either dead or wishing he was dead, and the stupid loudspeaker was ringing.
… Wait… the loudspeaker was ringing?
Hey Owen! We found this in the prison, Guts doesn’t remember putting it there. It looks pretty dead, so it probably came from whoever was here before us, but how do you think it got in the prison?
Owen shook the memory away. He missed Mohwee, but he knew that if the man had survived, he would hate him. Sure enough, the red light below it was blinking and crackling white noise bounced around the walls, all coming from a system everyone had assumed to be fried. Except it wasn’t fried, and the stupid Starr series executives were playing something. Music?
Owen listened for a moment longer, struggling to hear properly through the static noise, and his eyes widened in disbelief. Were they playing Britney Spears? Did the people in charge of this sick experiment or punishment or whatever it was seriously think it would be funny to have the last thing he heard be his own screams and Britney Spears?
Yes, his brain supplied immediately. He thought back to the annoying Scottish man who announced for the shows, the one with the cruel smile and the bright cyan hair and the silk suit and the bright golden jewellery. This was exactly the kind of thing that he would do. Especially since he hated Owen's guts. Owen sort of felt bad for the survivors who would be interviewed by him.
He curled closer to himself from where he sat on the bed, alone and much too warm. He was going to die here. He was going to die, and he was going to deserve it because he had taken his first chance and tossed it into a water duct along with his best friend and proceeded to do things so awful that not even Magic and Graeciee would him a second chance.
But really, why should they? He had betrayed everyone, destroyed every value he had taken to his name and crushed them in the palm of his fighting hand. He’d jammed his spear into the hearts of as many demons as he could, and permanently crippled the ones he couldn’t.
He was going to die, and it would be no one's fault but his own, because he just couldn’t let go of his stupid prejudice, even for his very best friend.
The loudspeaker crackled again as the lava closed in, and Owen flinched, clamping his hands over his ears and shutting his eyes. He didn’t want to die here, he realized. It was a bit of a shock, because dying actually sounded amazing right then, but dying while some pompous executives played Britney Spears over top of his screaming was strangely unappealing.
He kept his eyes closed as his breathing quickened, but he swore he could hear the lava creeping under the door and into the cell, cooking him alive.
He didn’t want to die here, he wanted to go see Apo. He wanted to go back to before all of this and wake up early and bake Apo pie and he didn’t want to die here he couldn’t die here he wouldn’t DIE HERE
-Owengejuicetv left the game
System error [rebooting…]
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System not found. [Closing server…]
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Complete. Locating nearest server
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ᒷᒲ!¡╎∷ᒷᓭ ᓭᒲ!¡ found. Checking whitelist.
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Invitation not f-
Invitation found. [Joining server]
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[Activating CHAT]
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CHAT settings are set to [livestream mode] is this okay?
{NO} selected
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Understood. Switching to [Character mode]
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Success. Now loading.
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Now changing [Skin]
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Now loading [EMPIRES S2]
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-Owengejuicetv has joined the game
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Owen didn’t fully wake up at first.
His head hurt and he couldn’t see, and he felt like he was floating, but eventually he heard something.
“H- ?” Owen squinted blearily, but all he could see was black, as if he was covered in squid ink.
“Wh- f-“ There it was again. Something was speaking, but he couldn’t tell where they were. He couldn’t tell where they were, he realized with a start, because they were echoing in his mind.
Suddenly, a bit too suddenly, the voices broke through like a blast of cold air, shattering the quiet of his near comatose state.
-Huh??????
-WHAT
-HES AWAKE YALL
-OMG OWEEEENNNN
Owen winced at the sudden burst of input, his voices had followed him to wherever he was now. “Chat? Where are we?” He wheezed.
-no clue
-mind space again??
-SERVER CHANGE?????
-WAIT YOU’RE RIGHT ITS A SERVER CHANGE
-:0
Owen sighed and focused on trying to see out of the void he was in, but he couldn’t move. Despite the addition of his voices, it was still too quiet. It took him a moment to figure out why.
“Chat, didn’t there used to be… more of you?” He questioned softly. A lot of chat had left after he’d killed Apo, but now he could only hear about ten or fifteen of them. It was blessedly calm, but unnerving.
(When did he start calling them chat and not voices? Well, it probably wasn’t important)
-Character mode was activated
-We’re in character mode
-we have PERSONALITY now
-we get names!
-there’s less of us now tho
-I can live with that
-what server are we going to
Owens head swam. Character mode? Server? Chat was making less sense than usual, and that was saying something. He was so confused, he didn’t notice immediately his vision started coming back. Well, not exactly coming back. The colours were changing from black to a strange mix of green and orange, with twists of what looked to be text swirling around occasionally.
He looked around in confusion and mild discomfort at the sickening choice of colour, (literally and figuratively. It was ugly, but also almost dizzying to look at, and his chat didn’t seem to like it either.) as the swirling got more intense.
His chat voiced their confusion as the movement and colour got worse and suddenly everything was too bright and too loud and where was that sound coming and why did his head hurt -
The colour mixed into white and he almost started tearing up as the colour assaulted his eyes. For a fleeting second everything was clear and he saw with perfect clarity the walls of text surrounding him and a hazy purple nether portal below him, then he felt himself being pulled closer to it. As the cold unnatural feeling of the nether portal began to wash over him, like submerging only the back of his head in cold water, he looked up and saw a vaguely human shape looking down at him.
The portal was fizzing in his ears now as he fell further into it, and his voices were uncharacteristically silent, but behind the hazy purple of the portal he saw the figure make a dismissive gesture. Barely audible behind the static noise and so quiet it might have been his imagination, he faintly heard a young sounding voice.
‘Use this wisely’ it seemed to whisper. ‘ You weren’t supposed to last this long. Consider this a gift’
The static got louder, clouding his vision, and then he was blinking at dappled sunlight.
Owen blinked a few more times and rubbed at his eyes, finally able to move again, but sure enough he was laying down on moss in a forest clearing, and his face no longer hurt as it had ever since Krow attacked him.
He sat up and surveyed his surroundings, but found nothing truly strange in of itself. It was just a quiet clearing in an even quieter forest, but that still didn’t change the fact that he had no idea where he actually was.
- ummmm
-HUH
-SEVER CHANGE????
-what server are we on tho
-isekaii protag owen?
Finding his voices completely unhelpful, Owen instead focused on standing up, and found it surprisingly easy. It was as if his injuries had disappeared, or he had become a few years younger. Following the sound of trickling water, Owen soon found himself at the edge of a small pond. Turned out, it was both.
Owen stared at himself in shock, or, what appeared to be him. Vaguely looked like him, more like. The face staring back at him was still horribly scarred, but the angry jagged red claw mark had faded to the same colour as his other marks. He hadn’t noticed before, but the faint haze of imperfect vision covering his right eye was gone, the only evidence of its existence being the slightly lighter shade of the formerly affected eye.
Speaking of his eyes, they were a bit more vibrant than before, a change in shade so subtle that only he could have seen it. His hair was tied back into its low puffy ponytail, a style he had lost during his time in the prison, and secured with a soft orange fabric scrap. The scrap that used to be on his arm, specifically.
His outfit was the same, but significantly less burned. A small satchel was connected to his waist, looking similar to a money pouch. The only thing that stood out to him was the lack of a daisy in his hair, although he had gotten rid of it ages ago.
He looked younger, maybe he actually was, and all he could do was stare at his reflection and wonder what in the gods had happened.
His trance was broken by the tolling of a bell, loud and reverberating from somewhere outside the forest. He winced at the loud sound, but moved away from the pond and towards the edge of the trees. Pushing past the foliage, he almost fell down the slope ahead of him before steadying himself on a birch.
(He hadn’t seen a birch in all his time in the maze, but chances were he wasn’t there anymore, which he would have to address once he figured out where he was, because he had seen weird stuff, but not even Starr series could teleport people.)
Owen gasped in awe as he overlooked the cityscape below. It was a sprawling mass of buildings with beautiful architecture, separated by… colour? The houses and shops were all divided into colourful themed sections, and the villagers all appeared to be hybrid creatures. Most of them were rushing around, clearly because of something related to the bell.
Judging by the sun’s placement, and unless the bell was for something completely different or culturally diverse, it was about midday. He wasn’t sure what time it had been when the clearing flooded with lava and he was left to die, but he had the strangest feeling that a bit of time had passed.
Okay, so chances were he was a little far from the mainland, seeing as hybrids mostly kept to their own continents and he had been required to learn all nearby settlements as a general. As he wondered about the strange city, his voices caught his attention.
- woooaaaaahhhh
-pretty :D
-ok but where are we
-omg is that ANIMALIA???
-NAWW YOURE RIGHT ITS ANIMALIA CITY
-WERE ON EMPIRES YALL
“You guys know this place?” He murmured questioningly. Owen started a bit as one of the voices stepped up to answer, something they had never done before. Well, they did say they had changed.
- Animalia City is one of the 13 empires. It’s run by Mayor Lizzie and a council of advisors. It works as a hybrid safe zone, specifically people who are more anthropomorphic, and is mainly inhabited by them. -Blue Voice
(So they did have names now, as a result of whatever had happened. Owen thought he could live with that, less noise and more distinct personalities. It would make him feel less crazy.)
Animalia City? He didn’t recognize the name, so either the city had sprung up during his time in the maze, or he was very far from his home. Then again, did he even have a home when everyone he had ever known either wanted him dead or was dead? Certainly not a home he was desperate to go back to.
He thought about that for a moment. Nobody he had met would be upset if he died, in fact quite a few of them would rejoice. It wasn’t as he was undeserving of such hatred, not after what he did, but it still hurt a bit. But… if he was so far away from the mainland, these people wouldn’t know him, would they? He could start over here, and everyone else could rest believing he was dead.
(Because after whatever strange magic had just happened, anyone who hadn’t seen it would have no reason or proof to believe he was still breathing.
He was choosing not to think about that magic, by the way. Maybe pushing it to the side wasn’t the best, but he had more important things to do currently, and he was great at pushing things away!
That… sounds really bad, now that he’s thinking about it.)
No, Owen supposed, he didn’t have a home. But maybe he could make one. Looking down to the city of hybrids and colour, Owen turned back to the forest in order to find a safer way down, and maybe to look for something to cover his face. He was technically still a criminal, after all, and his scars were pretty distinct.
His goals were simple: Find some supplies, learn about where he was ,find a home, maybe try and figure out how he got here, and possibly start a farm.
Oh, and the most important part. Never, under any circumstances, see any of the Outsiders ever again. Especially Magic and Krow.