“Gontran!” someone whispered. “Wake up!”
Lee stirred. A large hand with long slender fingers was shaking her shoulder. She opened her eyes to darkness. It sounded like someone was pounding on a door nearby.
“Where’s the money, Koraki?” a muffled voice yelled from the other side of the door. “Demetrios has waited long enough!”
“It is time to leave!” the whispering voice said in Lee’s ear. “We must make haste!”
In her sleep she had tumbled through one nightmare after another—calculus equations, bad students playing a board game in detention, and then a tavern filled with shadowy people who dressed like they were in a medieval-themed restaurant.
“That’s it!” shouted a different man on the other side of the door. “We’re coming in!”
Metal rang and then hacked against wood.
“What is it?” Lee groaned—again with her strangely deep masculine voice. “What’s going on?”
“If you want to live, you must wake up,” the whisperer said.
So groggy she was unsure if she was still dreaming, Lee climbed out of bed. Her entire body ached, and her forehead pounded. Had she been poisoned?
I must be hungover, she thought. This is what it feels like.
Lee hadn’t touched any wine in that tavern, but maybe somehow the person she was now—before she became that person?—had been drinking a lot beforehand. She was so confused. And then she remembered—she was a man!
She groaned and clutched her forehead. All she wanted was to be safe in her own bed back in her beautiful clean house in Maine, with its white walls, its white blankets, its white bed sheets and couches and pillows and curtains. Her parents were both scientists at the lab. They had high expectations for their children—Lee and her sister Esther. Lee was planning to become a prosecutor; her sister wanted to be a doctor. All they ever did was study and work to improve themselves, mindful of how their parents spoke of the poverty they had escaped decades ago in South Korea.
“Doctors, lawyers, scientists—they never need to go looking for work!” her grandparents said during one of many trips to their homeland. “You’ve come so far in America, but you must study hard! Don’t let us down!”
But now that was gone. All the afternoons she had given to homework and cramming for tests and quizzes—all the times she had raised her hand in class to help her teachers when no one else knew the answer—all the times she had written those long papers with their endless perfectly sourced bibliographies and their plagiarism-free prose—all the times she had memorized impossibly abstruse scientific and mathematical formulas which were beyond the comprehension of almost everyone who had ever lived—all the parties she had skipped—all the times she had been too tired to even look at herself in the mirror before going to school.
It was all gone.
“What am I going to do?” she said.
“You must get up and depart this accursed place,” the whisperer said.
Lee looked at this person. It was that guy from the tavern—Diaresso. He was dressed in a white tunic and pants and even a white turban. Now a scimitar was sheathed at his side, and a crossbow was slung over his back.
Diaresso got Lee to stand and helped her into her tunic and tights. Then he belted some kind of weapon to her side.
Equipped Seran Fire Lance, the voice said. This weapon does 100 damage, but can only fire once every five turns. Thanks to your Professional Dexterity (Level 7/10), every attack roll has a +7 bonus. After firing, the Fire Lance—also known as a pistol-sword—can be converted into a mêlée weapon on the next roll, although your Apprentice Strength (Level 3/10) means that it does limited damage.
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Whatever, Lee thought.
Memories which belonged to someone else entered Lee’s mind: this weapon seemed like a short sword, but it was spring-loaded. If you pressed a button, the blade would separate, and inside you’d find a gun barrel. The whole thing was covered with Chinese writing and dragons. Guns or swords had never interested Lee, but she thought this gun-sword—for lack of a better term—was cool. The question was: did it work?
While the debt collectors chopped down the door, Diaresso laced up her sandals—since they were too complicated for Lee—and guided her toward an open window. They were inside a room walled with stone and roofed and floored with wood. It was in a caravanserai—a tavern with rooms for sleeping and a courtyard and stables for horses. Through the window was a dim early morning. Their room was on the second floor. The quiet courtyard lay below.
“We must jump,” Diaresso said.
Lee shook her head. “No way.”
“What’s come over you?” Diaresso said. “Since last night you have acted so strangely—as though you have been possessed by a djinni.”
“Listen,” Lee said. “I’m not who you think—”
“They’re trying to jump out through the window!” shouted one of the voices from the other side of the door.
Lee and Diaresso turned. Their pursuers had carved a hole through the door and were peering inside. Boots thumped in the hallway as several men ran away, though at least one stayed behind the door and kept hacking at it.
“Take my hand,” Diaresso said. “We have done far more dangerous things.”
“You don’t understand,” Lee said. “I’m not supposed to be—”
“When I count to three,” Diaresso said. “That is the unholy number you polytheists prefer, is it not?”
Lee shook her head, but Diaresso had already grabbed her hand. She tried to shake free.
“One,” Diaresso said.
The man smashed the door and reached through the splintered gap for the handle.
“Two!”
The man turned the handle, threw the door open, and rushed toward them with his sword drawn.
“Three!”
Diaresso leaped through the window and pulled Lee after. For a moment they hurtled through the air. In the darkness he hit the dirt and rolled, but she was so clumsy that she fell flat on her chest—hard—and worried she’d broken a bone.
5 damage from fall, the voice said. 95 health remains.
Diaresso helped her up and guided her toward the stables. Men with torches were chasing them and shouting.
Thanks to abilities that were beyond Lee’s comprehension, Diaresso found their horses in the darkness and even saddled them. He leaped onto his horse and was about to gallop away, but Lee was just staring at her own horse—too afraid to mount it. Swearing in a language she didn’t understand, Diaresso jumped back down and helped her onto her horse.
“Tell me you remember how to ride,” he said.
“I’ve never ridden a horse,” she said.
“You must have been cursed. But we cannot deal with this now. You need to listen. Guide the horse with your legs and the reins. Say ‘yah!’ to make him move forward quickly. Say ‘whoa!’ to make him stop. It is not difficult. Keep your feet in the stirrups.”
Lee was so terrified she could only respond by shaking her head. It was hard enough to believe that she had even gotten on top of this massive powerful animal.
You are an Intermediate Rider (Level 5/10), the voice said.
Oh, great, good to know.
Just then, their pursuers arrived. They were two men, but one had a sword drawn, and the other was already nocking an arrow on a bow and taking aim.
Instinctively—how else could she explain it?—Lee drew her pistol, separated its blades, cocked it, took aim, and squeezed the trigger. Sparks and smoke burst from the barrel—which scalded her fingers—propelling an iron ball straight through the air and into the forehead of the man with the bow and arrow. His skull exploded into blood, bone, and brains, and he stumbled backward, waving his arms as he fell, dropping his weapons, then quivering on the ground.
Critical hit, the voice said.
Yeah, looks like it, Lee thought.
The other pursuer gaped at the dead man and then ran off.
Diaresso turned to her. “Mashallah, it seems you have not forgotten everything.”
“I guess.” She blew the acrid smoke from the pistol, folded the barrel inside the blades, and then tucked the weapon into its sheathe. All of this felt natural. She was surprised, too, by how little she cared that she had killed this man. He had been trying to hurt her, after all.
Together, she and Diaresso rode into the darkness.