“Nnngh…” I tried to open my eyes only to be blinded by the light around me. I squeezed them shut again and waited for my head to stop swimming. What… just happened?
I remembered being in that vast, dark space, then finding a table with the character sheet for Colranth on it. Then there had been that noise of rushing air, and the bright light, and the next thing I knew, I was here. But where was here?
I could feel a cool breeze and hear the chirping and tweeting of birds around me. The hand I placed on the ground was met with the cool, damp feeling of healthy dirt. Somehow, I had wound up outside, on the ground somewhere.
Maybe that was all a weird dream? The black space, and what had happened before—the storm of strange energy, seemingly summoned by Dave’s usage of an ancient-looking tome. Maybe… there was a gas leak in his house and I was hallucinating? Did someone drag us outside?
I pushed myself shakily to my feet, blearily forcing my eyes open. It was bright. Too bright. I could barely see, but vague, indistinct shapes loomed in front of me. Tall and wide, they almost looked like pillars, but the irregular shapes and angles meant that probably wasn’t it. The dirt, the birds… was I in a forest?
I stumbled over to the nearest shape and leaned against it, both to steady myself and to inspect it more closely. It looked like bark, and felt like it too… but Dave didn’t have any trees on his property. There were barely any trees on his whole block, so where had all of these come from? And whatever that was had happened in the evening, when we were getting together to play, but it was clearly daytime now.
My vision was slowly returning, and the trees—I was in a forest, I could now tell, though there weren’t actually any forests anywhere near where Dave lived—cast dappled shadows across the already dark earth underfoot. I was grateful for the shade. If this much light, scattered and diffused by the canopy overhead, had been blindingly bright, I could only imagine the migraine I’d be suffering if I had woken up with the unfiltered sun shining down on me.
“Hello? Is anyone there?” I winced, even as I shouted. My voice rang out too loudly and it made my head pound. I also thought my voice sounded strange. It was almost like hearing a recording of my voice—recognizable as mine, but wrong and unpleasant to hear. I must still be groggy. And maybe the gas leak made me hoarse.
There was no response except for the rapidly diminishing echo of my own voice and the symphony of birds in the trees above me. Though I recognized the danger in being lost in a forest, and was aware that I should be worried that there was no response, in the moment I was simply glad that I hadn’t been met with returned shouts that would have made my headache that much worse.
I placed my hand on the tree to steady myself, then did a double-take. My vision was still a bit blurry, but I could see that my whole hand was covered in something red. Blood?! I quickly wiped at it with my other hand, and saw that it too was similarly colored. Panic rose in my chest—I didn’t feel injured, so either I was in shock and couldn’t feel the pain or this was someone else’s.
As I tried wiping them on my clothes instead, a thought slipped its way through the haze of fear and settled into my mind. Wait… it’s not coming off. And it feels weird. Why is my hand so… bumpy? I blinked repeatedly, trying desperately to get my vision to return to normal.
I was wearing the same clothes I’d had on last night, and was even still wearing my backpack. I’d been so wrapped up in trying to help in the house that I hadn’t spared a thought toward taking it off. But my hands looked different: rough, bumpy, red, and… lustrous? And the sleeves on my jacket were too short, ending a few inches shy of my wrists. My pants were the same, leaving several inches of ankle and calves bare.
Finally able to see more clearly, I whirled around, ignoring the somersaults it felt like my stomach was doing at the sudden movement. I looked around to try and find anything reflective. A stream, or even a puddle would do. I stumbled around and explored as far as I could before needing to take a break, which wasn’t very far at all in my current condition, before my brain finally started to work rationally.
My phone! I fumbled for my pocket, hoping that it hadn’t been so long that it had died and also that my fingers could still work the touch screen. Thankfully, as I looked at the screen, it lit up and displayed a respectable eighty nine percent charge. Good. With shaking fingers—good lord, were those claws?—I unlocked my phone and turned on the camera, switching to the front-facing lens.
Staring back at me… was not my face. Gone was the nose that had gone slightly crooked from a few sparring matches that got a little out of hand. Gone were the brown eyes and hair, and the smooth, unblemished skin that I had worked so hard to maintain in spite of the acne I’d dealt with.
Bright green eyes, the irises flecked with red, stared back at me. The nose was straight and chiseled, and blonde hair framed a face that was mostly smooth-complexioned—as long as you ignored the scattered red scales around his eyes. The same red scales, in fact, that covered both of my hands, as well as the wickedly sharp claws at the ends of my fingers.
My heart was pounding in my chest. But… no, it wasn’t my heart in my chest, was it. It was… Colranth’s heart. The face that I saw in my phone’s camera was exactly how I had described my character, Colranth Firebreath.
I pressed the power button on my phone. Held it down. I needed to stop staring at my face, so I turned the phone off completely. With shaking hands I put my phone back in my pocket, then turned and slumped backwards against the tree, sliding down to a sitting position.
I don’t know how long I sat there, staring at my hands. I focused on my breathing, taking deep, steady breaths to try and calm myself. Eventually, it started to work, but as the panic left anxiety started to set in. I need to do something or I’m gonna lose it.
I set about busying my hands—no, Colranth’s hands—as I took off my backpack and carefully, so as to not rip the material with my claws, unzipped it to take an inventory of what I had.
It wasn’t much.
I had my phone, though the battery wouldn’t last forever. I also had a battery pack and charger at least, so I’d be able to prolong its life if I needed to, but… would I even be able to call anyone here, wherever I was? I got the feeling the answer was a resounding ‘no.’
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
I had several books: a math and geography textbook, a pretentious novel I was supposed to be reading for my English class, a notebook… nothing immediately useful, but with the pens and pencils I had in the next pocket I’d be able to write or draw, at least.
Thankfully I had a full bottle of water, which I frantically retrieved and began drinking greedily from. Whatever had happened to me, this body was thirsty. I was, however, kicking myself for not keeping hold on the pizzas Dave had sent me to fetch.
That’s right… Dave had tried to keep me away from the house. First the text that he had tried to pretend Chelsea sent, then picking up the pizzas. I wished he were here, so that I could ask him what the hell was going on and why he’d done it. I sighed, then stopped as I saw something I didn’t recognize in my backpack. Sandwiched between two of the books was an old, tattered sheet of parchment. I carefully extricated it and examined it.
It looked like a character sheet—like the one I had looked at just before arriving here, except it looked as if it had been crafted by hand. All of the blanks were empty, but as I stared at it, it suddenly began to fill in. Within seconds, it was fully completed:
COLRANTH FIREBREATH
Species:
Human
Class:
Dragon-Blooded Mage
Level:
1
Stats
Combat
Skills
Rank
Powers/Spells
MP Cost
Duration
Strength
15
Leadership
1
Dragon Claws
(Ignite)
N/A
(1)
Permanent
(1 minute)
Agility
12
Evasion:
13
Bluff
1
Dragon Scales
(Spread)
N/A
(2)
Permanent
(Instant)
Resilience
15
HP: 14/14
Sneaking
1
Mote of Flame
1
Instant
Presence
19
Fire Breath
3
Instant
Wit
12
Arcane Shield
3
Instant
Willpower
14
MP: 12/12
“What the hell is happening?!”
I shoved the parchment back into my backpack, then slumped over. My voice once again echoed through the trees before rapidly dissipating, but this time I heard something other than the whimsical songs of birds.
I heard a low, terrifying growl.
Scrambling to my feet, I whirled around only to see a wolf, gangly and thin. It was clearly starved, and it had found its ideal prey. Hungry as it was, it still paced patiently, circling around me.
I considered running, but there was no way that would. I couldn’t even outrun my uncle’s tired old mutt, on the occasion that it felt energetic enough to go outside and play. This was a beast accustomed to chasing down prey, built for it.
I eyed the claws on the ends of my newly inhabited body’s hands. Sure enough, they looked plenty sharp enough, and the arms strong enough, to do some damage if I went in swinging, but even if I won that fight, I’d probably get hurt pretty badly in the process. I knew how to fistfight, with strict rules and regulations in place, not brawl with a wild animal.
The wolf lowered itself, slinking ever closer. Each time it disappeared behind a tree my mind was overtaken with fear that, the next time I saw it, it would be launching itself at me too quickly to react. I needed a way out of this, and fast.
Can wolves climb trees? I think I remember reading that they could, but I don’t remember. Should I play dead? Or try to make myself look big and scare it? At that last thought, something clicked in my mind. Wait a second. Scare it… most wild animals should be afraid of fire, right?
It was crazy. There was no way it was possible, and even if it was, I didn’t really know how to do it. But my mind flashed back to the character sheet I had just put away; to one of the spells Colranth had used all throughout his adventuring career, and was included on the sheet even now at level one.
I had no other choice. My heart was pounding so hard my body swayed with each heartbeat, and my breathing was ragged, but I tried to clear my mind. I took a boxing stance. I didn’t intend to throw a punch, but just taking the familiar stance—both fists raised to protect my face, leading with my left foot, my right foot behind and at a slight angle as I bounced on the balls of my feet—almost seemed to trick my body into thinking this was a normal situation.
My movement seemed to put the wolf on guard for a moment. It stopped in the middle of one low, slinking step, watching to see what I would do. I didn’t make the first move. I couldn’t. It was all I could do to keep myself on track, attempting this crazy plan. I didn’t have the nerve to take a step toward this starving predator. So instead, it made the first move. With one swift motion, it loped at me, covering the distance between us more quickly than I imagined it would.
I was ready, though. As ready as I could be, at least. I skipped a couple of steps backwards, muscle memory alone keeping me light on my feet and causing the wolf to come up just short. I had a second—if even that—to enact my plan. I took a deep breath, and…
“Burn!”
The same exhalation that fueled that word first shimmered like a mirage before suddenly, inexplicably, magically igniting. A rolling, expanding flame burst forth, buffeting the wolf with both intense heat and a concussive wave of air. It yelped, caught in the middle of a second attempted leap, and was sent tumbling end over end before landing on its side, smoke rising from its now-smoldering coat.
It scrambled to its feet and I froze. I had only planned as far ahead as trying to make one move. If it came at me, I had nothing. No further plan, no muscle memory to guide me. One counterattack from this wolf would end with me on the ground and its jaws around my throat.
Then it turned and ran away. I stood completely still save for my trembling, waiting to see if it was just retreating momentarily before coming back for more, but…
I did it! I had driven off a dangerous, deadly wolf.
And I had done so by using magic.