Startled

"Wh-what!"

Sic was reasonably startled and quickly stood up to look around. He had heard that voice before, it was the one in the darkness. But where has it come from?

The voice laughed

"Calm down, I won't hurt you. Well to be more specific, I can't hurt you"

'What was it talking about?'

The voice was full of distain

"I have a name you know, you can stop calling me 'it'"

Sic felt the blood leave his face

"You can... read my thoughts?"

The voice laughed again

"Of course I can! I'm in your head, after all."

Sic was even more confused now, however, his answer were right there talking to him.

"How are you inside my head?"

The voice talked in a much more grim tone

"You remember those chains right? They were the chains of well... The goddess of chains. I don't know who you are or how you got your hands on them, but they effectively trapped me inside your head."

'goddess of chains?'

Sic felt like he had heard that name somewhere before.

"Who is the goddess of chains?"

The voice sighed

"That's a big question to ask, you know"

Sic raised an eyebrow

"Why?"

The voice was silent for a moment, then said:

"Because the goddess of chains isn't a single person. How much do you know about the gods?"

Sic took awhile to answer that question. His mother has told him stories about the gods before she passed away. They're were more like fairy tales than anything else, so he didn't remember much.

"Nothing really"

The voice made a sound of distain, then told Sic:

"Alright well, if you want my information, I'm going to need something from you."

"What?"

"You see, I'm something of a.... criminal in the eyes of the gods. I need you to hide me from them."

Sic shook his head.

"How am I supposed to hide something from the gods?"

The voice snickered

"It's a lot easier than you think, trust me"

It waited a second then said:

"Also... call me Chaos"

Sic thought for a moment.

'Chaos?'

Who names their kid Chaos? Well, Sic shouldn't be judging. His full name was probably worse than Chaos. At least Chaos is kinda cool?

Sic had one more question for Chaos

"So that crystal.. was that you?"

Chaos didn't respond for a moment

"... crystal?... No, that 'crystal' as you call it was a Boon of Ichor"

That was something Sic had never heard of before

"Boon of Ichor?"

Chaos sighed. He didn't seem like the type of person who liked answering questions

"Yes, although it seems the people now call it by a different name"

Sic took a deep breath and waited for what Chaos was about to say.

"What you touched was a 'Runic Blessing' as you call it nowadays"

For the first time in awhile, Sic smiled.

'A Runic Blessing? Really? His boss loved to talk about them, and he has heard stories a about people obtaining superhuman abilities and escaping the poverty in the dumps.

Chaos scoffed

"It's really not that big of a deal, it was corrupted by me anyway"

"Corrupted?" Sic asked

"Yeah, corrupted. Normally it would be impossible for you to use any of the abilities of the Boon, however, because you have me it should be simple."

Sic's head was on the verge of exploding. He was learning so much in such a little time! He also has so many questions for Chaos. How are Runic Blessings made? How did he corrupt one? What does a corrupted Blessing even do?

But one he wanted the answer to the most was: How did the goddess of chains seal Chaos? He talked as if Sic should know how they got there, but Sic had no idea where the chains had come from.

It was with that thought that the exhaustion hit Sic. He fell to the floor and laid down

'Im too tired for all the information'

Chaos chuckled

"Get some sleep, we have some work to do tomorrow"

'Work?'

Sic definitely didn't want to do work, but it didn't seem like he would have a choice anytime soon. He nodded his head and slowly drifted to sleep.

That night, he had the same dream again. Except, everything was a lot clearer. He knew he was in a dream and could see much more clearly. He was surrounded by trees, with red wood and black leaves. In front of him, was a lake of blood. However, when he looked closer he realized that it wasn't actually blood, but the coral underneath that made it look like that. He could also make out a new figure beside him.

Sic waited a second and I then asked:

"Chaos?"

The figure was hard to explain. His body seemed to flow like a river, even though it wasn't moving. He was primarily red with black cracks scattered over his body. Speaking of body... what the hell!?

What was Sic looking at?

He wasn't human. He had 2 legs and 2 arms, yet instead of hands, they seemed to be mutated to be sharper and look like claws. He also wasn't made out of flesh, but that slimy stuff that wasn't actually slimy? His entire body was made of the material. He had two pure black eyes with a small dot of red in each and a wide grin on his face. His teeth were sharp and menacing.

Chaos turned to look at him.

"What an interesting dream you have here. My old domain? Who really are you?"

Sic didn't understand what Chaos was asking

"Domain?"

He looked at Sic for awhile. It was to the point where Sic was becoming uncomfortable under his gaze. He couldn't tell what emotion he was feeling, if he felt them at all.

Finally, Chaos stopped staring and made a comment:

"Bad. This is real bad."

"Why?"

Sic wasn't entirely stupid. When Chaos mentioned his domain, Sic guessed it was somewhere Chaos had a personal connection to. Sic didn't know how it was in his dreams, or why Chaos said it was bad, but he was staring to worry.

"Many reasons. First off, there seem to still be wild monsters around here."

'Wild monsters, huh.'

Wild monsters have been around for as long as humanity has. Although most people never even see them due to the work of the people of the past. The dumps are bad, but at least they keep the monsters away from people. Hearing that there were wild monsters nearby, Sic started to worry. He had fought before, and he's not completely useless in a fight, but against wild monsters? He stands no chance.

That was before the Runic Blessing, of course. He stood a good chance against any wild beast as long as he knew what his powers did.

So right now, Sic's biggest problem was finding out how to use his abilities.

"Chaos, you said you could help me use my abilities, right?"

Chaos looked at him and smiled

"Of course, of course.. however, it isn't that simple, you see I need to be able to fuse with your-"

Suddenly, a loud roar came from the trees behind them. For the first time ever, Sic noticed that Chaos looked panicked.

He shook his head.

"Nevermind, just give me your hand. Either we make it out of this together, or both our consciouses get destroyed"