Before reading this chapter, read the "Before You Read..." auxiliary chapter. It will provide some context on what this story is about. Thank you and enjoy!
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What does it mean to etching your name into history?
It is a question that boggled many minds on Earth for centuries, yet for the natives of Gielinor, this question was not too difficult to answer. There were many heroes stretching as far back as the First Age when the god Guthix walked among the men, dwarves, fairies, and many other species that called this world home. Some heroes, while unsung in the history books, were just as important.
What truly sets this fantastical world apart was that this world was, in some odd way, the center of a universe that held magic unparalleled in most other stories. As time passed on this world, the gods were left clawing at the edge of a world brimming with power.
The Third Age marked a turning point in Gielinor's history where mortals reigned supreme. After the threat of the God Wars were forcibly removed by Guthix's intervention, it started an Age of reconstruction. With the passing of the Fourth Age, what truly began another turning point was the year 169 of the Fifth Age where simple adventures set off a cascade of events that led to the death of Guthix and the beginning of the Sixth Age.
It also saw the rise of the last World Guardian personally blessed by Guthix himself. Gielinor was a world where gods walked and ages of heroes were forged from even the most humblest of beginnings.
Yet, on Earth, the Age of Heroes had long since past.
Since the late 1700's, tales of heroes going on epic quests to push humanity forward have become stories told to show the best of humanity. Most of the tales told in the present era feature beings that are no longer among us with scant few true heroes still living. The only time heroes were needed in recent centuries was during both World Wars and the way they were needed was to fight against oppression brought upon them by heavy taxation.
It is not to make light of those dark times that I speak of this, but to truly say that those who fought in these wars were fighting to correct a dire mistake before it consumed them all.
Now, in the 21st century, we face our own dark times. Even though the age of heroes had long since past, there are people who are slowly beginning their own tales of heroism.
This tale, however, is one not from our reality. It is from a version of Earth where things have changed drastically.
This is a tale where a humble man from a version of modern-day Earth is sent into a world from a video game to save it. A tale of a hero from humble origins rising to prominence.
=={RS:NS}==
In an American rural town lay a small unassuming home. This home once held happy memories of a family of three. This family was a typical heterogeneous family unit where there was a father, mother, and son. For the first eleven years, this family was peaceful.
Father and son played video games on their computers and consoles while the mother stood by with a happy smile on her lips. She loved her husband and son while often encouraging them to spend time together. These memories were very precious to the son and father duo, but despite the reminder of happier times, a dark storm was brewing. That storm finally struck this family on the boy's twelfth birthday.
A fatal car accident occurred that evening and turned a once-happy family into a broken shell of what it once was. The mother lost her life and the father lost his mind in grief. As for the boy, he was left with his right leg amputated and left permanently crippled. The father, in his grief, turned his already broken family into a living hell for the boy.
The extent of the father's madness grew like a slow and insidious poison in his mind over the course of thirteen years.
The boy, whose name is Cole Sol, quietly endured his father's madness since his mother's death. Even though he was now twenty-five, he still lived in the house he grew up in. His father, no longer as young as he was when he lost his love, still sulked in his madness. While Cole's father was unable to physically hurt his son, due to him being the last piece of his wife left, that did not mean he was unable to psychologically break him down.
Cole looked back on those first few years with a hollow ache in his chest. The loss of his mother broke them both and sent a child, barely a teenager, into a living hell he couldn't escape fully. This soon turned him back to a game that a cousin of his introduced him to the same day he lost his mother: RuneScape.
It was somewhat perfect for him. It was an online game that could be played with other people around the world and offered the player the opportunity to escape into great adventures that did not ever truly stop. He could fight against monsters and generals from ages past. He could explore a brand new world and grind skills to level 99 or beyond it.
For the past thirteen years, he played RuneScape when his father wasn't attempting to break him or spin wild tales with him at the center. Cole managed to get into a good clan that supported him through his troubling times and he even believed himself unable to form romantic attachments.
Whether it is due to the trauma of losing his mother or his father emotional torture, Cole didn't know.
What Cole did know was that, every year on his birthday, he would always wish for his father to come back to his senses. He always wanted to have his father heal from the loss and move on with him into a better future, but his hopes were always left wanting by his next birthday. Cole felt like things were not going to change that easily nor get better, so on his twenty-fifth birthday, he changed his wish.
In his little attic room, where his father decided to put him after he attempted to run away five times, Cole made a new wish that changed his life forever.
"I want to live free," he wished as he blew out a single green candle on a cupcake.
==[RS:NS]==
Continued in: Wish Granted.