He didn’t know when he’d stopped falling. He hadn’t felt any kind of impact. One minute he was falling, and the next he wasn’t. What he did know was that he was cold, lying on his back, and still seemingly encased in darkness.
His first thought was that he was dead. But then he’d started to get bored, and his nose itched; two things that Donavan didn’t think would be of much concern to dead folks.
After a nervous venture of bringing his hand up to his face, he was relieved to find that he still had a nose to itch, and a hand that could do the job. Happy with that information, he stretched out his hands in front of him, seeing what else he could feel. He feared to find nothing, and that he was lost in some void, but about a foot away from his body his palms pressed against some cold smooth surface.
This was good, this meant he was just in a dark place as opposed to literal oblivion. Probing out behind and around him he encountered the same smooth surface as before.
That was not so good. He was in a box.
“Hello, anybody there?” he tried.
It was a stranger's voice that produced the words. The tone far to deep and resonant to be from his own throat. A sound that was more felt than heard, but even so it had a softness to it, like the tone one would use to comfort a child. He'd spoken the words, but it wasn't his voice that said them. That couldn't be right, that voice couldn't have come from him?.
A question for later, first he needed to deal with the box problem. He also needed to find out what the hell just happened, and how he'd gotten here. Where even was here? Only way to find out was to get out of the box.
Placing his palms against the surface in front of him, and bracing his back against the one behind him, he heaved.
Whatever it was- it was heavy, but fortunately not immovable. Slowly, he felt the surface shift with a massive grinding sensation. Dirt started to trickle in from the slight opening. Seems he had been buried. But if he’d been able to open the lid even slightly, he couldn’t be too far from the surface. Or at least he hoped.
He pushed again, straining against the enormous weight. He was struggling to make anymore progress when an enormous thundering crack rang out from all around him.
He stopped, alarmed by the sound. It went quiet. He froze for a few tense moments. Then the world began to lurch as the box and him in it started to tumble.
The next thing he knew he was being bounced around the inside of this box as if he was in the middle of a roll over car crash with no seatbelt on. He curled up in the hopes of sparing himself even a little bit from the blunt force of his body slamming into the walls. Surprisingly enough though, he didn't feel any pain, just disorientation.
This went on for what felt like forever. When he finally came to rest again, it took a few minutes to build up the courage to try anything else. He pushed again, this time, he found that not only did the box open, but the lid was blasted away from him like a cork popped off a newly opened champagne bottle. Its form retreating like a rocket upwards into an expanse of clear blue sky.
Donavan just laid there for a second, gawking upwards. The chirping of birds rang out somewhere in the distance as a gust swept through, filling the world with the sound of rustling grass and leaves, instead of what should've been sounds of traffic and pedestrians.
Now that he could see, he realized 'the box' he'd been in, was in fact, a coffin- a coffin made out of a strange substance so black it was identical the void he'd fallen through.
He took a deep breath in an attempt to calm himself. He knew he had to be outside by the fact he could see the sky, but the world around him was concealed by the abyss black walls of the coffin he was still laying in. He hesitated to sit up, unsure of what he would find. Taking a few more moments to calm himself, he slowly peeked over one side of the coffin.
Well, he definitely wasn’t at the bookshop anymore.
Instead, he found himself on the side of a mountain, in a clearing amidst a swath of newly swirled up dust, broken rocks, and bowled over trees. That tumbling sensation must've been him getting caught up in a landslide, but why had he been buried in the side of a mountain in the first place? Hade he lost time? The last thing he remembered was the secret room in the back of the Greymire's bookshop, how'd he end up here?
It didn’t make any sense, none of this made any sense. Who could've possibly buried him in a box in the side of a mountain? It couldn't have been Erwin, why would he?
His crisis was interrupted as a whistling rush came from above him, peering up, the lid that had blasted off the coffin was plummeting rapidly back to earth. How far up had it gone? No, he didn't have time to worry about that. With how fast it was coming it would shatter on impact, he needed to take cover.
Ducking back inside the coffin, he heard a loud thunk as it made an impact. Peaking over the lip, he was surprised to find it hadn't shattered, but instead gouged itself six feet into the earth, standing erect, and still intact.
What kind of material was that dense, and why had he been in a coffin made of it? More importantly, it had to be incredibly heavy to sink so far down into the ground like that, yet it had blasted into the stratosphere after he'd barely pushed it.
He had to be losing his mind. After forming a theory in his head he decided to test it.
cautiously, he climbed out of the coffin, slowly inspecting his immediate surroundings. Good, he was alone. Walking over to a nearby sizable boulder he ran his hand across it, noting how very solid and hard it was. Then he balled his hand into a fist and raised it above his head.
If he was wrong about this, then this was really gonna hurt.
The boulder exploded outwards into hundreds of small rocky chunks as he brought his fist down, he hadn't just broken the thing, he'd utterly demolished it with a single blow. Staring down in awe at where the boulder had been, and his fist now was, he inspected the hand.
It wasn't his... or atleast It didn’t look anything like the one he was used to. Sure, the normal amount fingers and everything was there, but it was the wrong color. It had a bronzy, brown complexion, and the nails atop each finger were long, sharp, and black- definitely not his normal style.
Taking inventory of the rest of his body he found there to be several more issues. The first being he was completely naked, the second was that he looked entirely too good naked.
He still seemed to be male, and a spectacular one at that. This body would easily serve as a model reference for statues of greek gods. It even seemed to come with a few other… sizable enhancements. But it was all wrong, like wearing clothes that were just not quite the right size. His legs were too long. His chest too broad. He was much taller than before, inhumanly tall. He had to be over eight and a half feet. The long hair hanging in his face and cascading down his back and shoulders was raven black, and out of the corner of his eye he thought he saw it glimmer in strange ways when it caught the light.
“Well it took you long enough!” A voice called out from nearby, interrupting his thoughts. Donavan flinched, turning on the speaker.
A tall and ridiculously handsome man dressed in a white toga adorned with excessive gold and jeweled accessories was waving at him. He looked completely out of place in this pile of debris in the middle of nowhere. The man seemed like he’d be much more at home sitting on a throne in some roman palace instead of out here in the wilderness. Though something about the man seemed oddly familiar, like maybe he was related to someone Donavan knew.
The figure started to jaunt casually over to him, picking his way through the rocks and eventually arrived, standing only a few feet away.
“Do I know you?” Donavan asked warily.
“Oh c’mon dude.” The man said In a tone contrary to his stately appearance. “I know I made some changes but I don't look that different do I?”
Looking at him critically, he now saw who it was that the man seemed to resemble.
“Erwin?” Donavan said incredulously.
“Bingo!”
Donavan gawked. He didn’t look like Erwin at all. Maybe a comic book superhero, heavily modified version of Erwin in an alternate reality, but if you put the two side by side you'd never confuse them for the same person in a thousand years. This man far more resembled Donovan's current body than he did Erwins original body.
“Erwin…” Donavan said shakily. “What the hell is going on.”
“Don’t worry I'll explain, but first.” He said gazing down at Donovan's completely exposed crotch “Put this on, I’m not gonna talk to you with that thing flopping around.”
Erwin closed his eyes for a few seconds and a moment later a long brown cloth came fluttering down from the sky and right into Donavans arms.
“Much better!” Erwin said. “Now that I’m seeing it in person, I may have gone a little bit overboard with that body of yours, but oh well can’t do anything about it now.”
“Explain.” Donavan demanded, finishing up tying the cloth around his waist.
“Ok, ok.” he said putting his hands up in appeasement. “To put it simply, I’ve transported you into my world."
"Your World?"
"Yeah, don't have an official name for it yet, but the one where my book takes place."
Donavan starred at Erwin in bewilderment.
“But that's not…” he started to say.
“How about you do us both a favor, and we skip the whole ‘but that's not possible’ section of this discussion. I’m sure we've all seen plenty of stories where the characters are first introduced to magic or whatever, and don’t want to believe it. That's nobody’s favorite part, so how about we just skip to the good stuff.”
“Ok, fine.” Donavan said with a scowl. “How then?”
“The typewriter.” Erwin said as if it was obvious. “It creates an alternate world where whatever you write with it becomes real,” He said gesturing to the mountains and trees around them. “Don’t ask me how that works because I don’t know. I figure it's some kind of pocket dimension type deal or some shit like that, and no, I don't know where it came from, as I said before, its a family heirloom.”
Donavan took another look around at his surroundings. They seemed every bit as real as any other place he’d ever been. It seemed unlikely that it was fabricated by a single person. It had too much detail too much variation. Then a thought occurred to Donavan.
This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.
“Wait, didn’t you say your grandfather wrote the star crown series on that typewriter?”
“Yep.” Erwin said with a grin. “Well, he didn’t actually 'write' the starblade series persay. Sure, he came up with the world, characters, and lore and everything, but the story? The actual events that took place? Well he just sat back and watched it happen and wrote down the coolest parts. It’s kinda like one of those wind up toys. We use the typewriter to wind the world up, but after that we just watch it go.”
“And this is the world of... your story?”
“Yeah.” Erwin confirmed. “Well sorta, this is an alternate draft to the one you’ve read. This has a few changes in it and chronologically it's still at the beginning of the story.”
“Ok.” Donavan nodded barely believing what he was hearing “So why am I here, and why am I not in my own body.”
“Well I can’t transport physical matter in between the worlds. So in order to take someone from our world and put in this one I have to transport the mind or soul or whatever you wanna call it, and put it in a pre-existing body in this world. Your original body is still lying on the floor in the bookstore. And you already know why your here.”
“Obviously I don’t or I wouldn't ask.” Donavan growled, glaring at Erwin.
“You said you’d help me with the story.” Erwin said confused.
“No” Donavan said through clenched teeth. “I said I'd give you a few notes on things you can go back and improve on. Not that you could kidnap me into your goddamn fantasy world.”
“But that’s the problem.” Erwin whined. “I can’t go back and change things once I've hit play. It's a typewriter, there isn’t a backspace button. I can make new additions to the world, but I can’t change things that have been pre-established. The only way to influence the story from here on out is from the inside.”
Donavan closed his eyes, trying to quell the irritation growing in the back of his head. This asshole had a typewriter that allowed him to create literal worlds but it didn’t have a damn backspace button.
“Ok, but how does having me here help you fix your problems, and why can’t you just do it yourself?”
“If I leave things as they are, events will continue based on the autonomy of the characters.” He paused looking a little disappointed in himself. “But its like you said... The characters themselves are flawed. The hero went and easily defeated every enemy, and all the other characters just cheered on, never growing themselves.” Erwin sighed to himself. “Turned out my power fantasy was a lot more boring than I expected. I just don’t know what to do to spice things up. But you…” He said glancing up hopefully at Donavan. “You do.”
“That doesn’t explain why I have to actually be on the inside to do it.” Donavan said angrily.
“This way you can actually get close to all the characters, interact with them, study them. Find out how they tick and then do what you need to do to push them in the right direction. Actually I think I did something quite clever in how I set this up.”
“And what's that?”
“The body that your in.” He said with a sly grin. “Thats the body of the character I was gonna have as the big bad for the entire series. I only foreshadowed him a bit in the first draft, so he wasn’t set in stone as apart of the story yet. So as per your suggestion, I beefed him up a bit, and with your mind driving him as the villain he’ll be a lot more narratively impactful then I could make him on my own.”
“That only solves one of the problems I told you, and you seem to be forgetting that I didn’t agree to any of this.”
“No it solves all of them.” He said giddily. “As the villain, it will be up to you to challenge the main character, and I've made sure you and few others have more than enough power to do that. Which means he won’t be steamrolling over the bad guys anymore. Plus, I’m gonna give you an item that will allow you to disguise yourself so you can also go and interact with the main characters without them knowing who you are yet!” He said getting more and more excited with each word. “You’ll be able to play both sides! Infiltrate the main cast of characters, learn who they are as one of their friends, then go and use that information against them to force them to develop as the villain. It's brilliant!”
“Once again.” Donavan said flatly. “I never agreed to any of this.”
“Huh?” Erwin said as if he didn’t understand. “Why wouldn’t you? I mean, look at you. You get to run away to a real fantasy world where you can have awesome magical powers and badass fantasy babes.This is like every nerd's dream. Do you want a harem? cuz I could write you up a harem. Anything you want, just say the word."
“That's not the point, Erwin.” Donavan said rubbing his temples. “Not everyone has this escapist, wish-fulfilment fantasy. I have my own life, one that I worked hard to create for myself, and though you may not be able to understand it, I'm not willing to abandon it for something as shallow as a harem of fantasy women.”
Erwin just stared at him as if he'd started speaking an alien language.
"But-but you said you loved fantasy stories."
"Yes, I love to read them, I love the momentary escape they offer, but you can't live your entire life lost in them." Donavan said, he was unsure how to put it in a way he thought Erwin could understand. "Besides... Doesn't the bad guy have to die in the end? What happens to me if I get killed here?"
“Don’t sweat the dying thing.” Erwin waved dismissively “You die here, your mind just returns to your body in the other world.” He spoke absentmindedly, as if he was considering what Donavan had said.
“Well good, then all I have to do is go kill myself.” Donavan said folding his arms.
“Good luck.” Erwin snorted. “If killing you were easy, you wouldn’t be the big bad now would you.”
Donavan clenched his jaw. "Just let me out then, I'll find you an editor or something, I'll help you, just not like this."
"No." Erwin said, a surprising amount of confidence in his voice,
"Excuse me?"
"You think you're better than me, don't you?"
"What? No, I-"
"I could tell when you first saw me. The way you looked at me, the way everyone looks at me- the pity. Just because I'm not the most attractive, or successful, because I live alone in the back of an old bookshop. You assume I spend my life sad and alone."
"No Erwin, I didn't mean-"
"Well guess what, you're right. These stories, the fantasies of being powerful, of being desired. That's all I have, and all I want to do is share my creation with others who might feel the same. But I need help to make it better, and you're going to help me if you ever want to get out."
"Erwin, please, let's talk about this."
“Look.” Erwin said frankly “There’s two ways out of here. I let you out- which isn’t gonna happen. Or you play your role in the story well, and at the end the hero strikes you down in a big climactic battle. No one else but him is gonna be able to take you out, and that's including yourself. So just do this for me alright? Besides, I think once you get a feel for the place you might find it pretty cool.”
Donavan had enough of this. He was not going to put himself at the mercy of this man-child. If this body was as powerful as Erwin said, then he was about to regret putting him in it. Donavan lunged at Erwin, hand outstretched to grab him by the neck. He moved so fast the ground he’d pushed off of shattered.
Nothing... His fingers went to clench around the man's throat and found nothing. Erwin hadn’t moved. Donavans fingers had simply passed through him.
“Yeah, that's not gonna work.” He said. “I’m not really here. This is just a projection. Someone has to be on the outside to use the typewriter or else we’d both be stuck in here.”
Donavan glared daggers at Erwin.
“When I get out, you’ll pay for this.”
“What are you gonna do?” Erwin laughed. “Tell the police I kidnapped you into my fantasy world?”
“People will notice I’m missing eventually, and they know the last place I went to was your bookstore.”
“Yeah, no.” Erwin said shaking his head. “Time moves differently here. You could spend centuries in here, and outside in the other world it’ll have been a few minutes. As far as the rest of the world will be concerned. You went into my shop for an hour or two, then walked out. So there’s no need to worry about missing out on your precious little life or whatever.” Erwin rubbed his temples as if he was developing a headache. “Honestly, I don’t know why your so against this. There is literally no downside.”
Donavan stepped back and clenched his fist. He was against it because he hadn’t had a choice in the matter. If he knew Erwin was gonna do this, he would have left after telling him they weren’t gonna publish his book and left it at that. Now it seemed he was completely at the mans mercy, which meant that there was really no way out of this other than death by protagonist.
“Fine.” Donavan said biting down on the word. “At least brief me on what I need to know. Where should I start, what’s the situation at this point in the story, and who exactly is this big bad villain you want me to play as.”
“See that river.” Erwin said pointing out towards the bottom slope of one of the nearby mountains. “Follow it west until you reach a settlement. That is where all the major good guy characters are currently. They haven’t met each other yet but they will soon. I suggest you focus on them for the time being and leave building up your own forces for later. Right now the heroes are far too weak to handle even low tier monsters, so you’ve got plenty of time to plan and build up any dark forces you want to throw at them later. As for who you are? Well that'll be my secret for now.”
“How do you expect me to play this villain if you won’t even tell me who he is?”
“Because finding out who he is, is essential to finding out how to kill him. I need insurance that you won’t duck out early. So you’ll find out when I feel you’re a hundred percent on board for helping me. Beyond that I haven’t developed a personality for him or anything. So consider yourself as having full artistic license.”
“Wonderful.” Donavan said voice dripping with sarcasm. “You mentioned me building up forces, what kind of forces are you expecting.”
“Well the main villain has gotta have minions. Whether you wanna build up some kind of empire or cult or whatever is up to you. But your gonna need some allies to delegate tasks too. You’re powerful sure, but you’re still only one man. You’ll need resources and people to act as your hands when you are indisposed.”
“I don’t suppose you’re just gonna give those to me are you?”
“Don’t worry, I think you’ll find that you'll have no problems with recruiting when the time comes.”
“Care to elaborate?”
“Nope.”
Donavan rolled his eyes.
“One thing to be aware of though.” Erwin said raising his index finger. “The typewriter has a way of filling in the blanks about the world and its inhabitants. So there will be things you encounter that I didn’t create, and therefore have no knowledge of. So keep on your toes. You should be able to handle most anything, but it’s not a hundred percent guarantee. Other then that, this world is an alternate draft to the one you read, so while some things are similar, don’t count on knowing what’s gonna happen because you read the first draft.”
“Alright fine, I think I’ve got what I need for now then. You mentioned an item I could use to disguise myself.”
“Yep.” Erwin said. “Just gimme a sec.”
He closed his eyes again. Now that Donavan knew that he was only speaking to a projection. The real Erwin was probably typing out whatever this item was so it would be added to the world. And closing his eyes was him going ‘away from keyboard’.
“And done.” He said a moment later. “Catch.”
From the sky above Donavan, a small glistening object fell, reaching out and snatching it from it’s fall, he found he had caught a simple golden ring.
“Put it on.”
Donavan did, and his skin started to tingle. He could feel his body starting to rearrange itself. It should of been a quite painful experience, but instead it was just odd. After a few moments the tingling stopped.
“Check it out.” Erwin said producing a mirror from seemingly nowhere.
Looking at his reflection. Donavan saw himself. Not the towering, muscular, and god-like man he’d been, but the body he’d lived his whole life in. Well it was almost his body. A few features seemed a bit over pronounced and his dark hair was quite a bit longer and much more wild and shaggy then it had been, and he apparently now had the beginnings of a beard on his face giving him a scruffy appearance as opposed to the clean shaven and professional look he’d been careful to cultivate. But his storm grey eyes, thick brows, sleek jawline, and normal human height of just above six feet were all seemingly restored. Well that and a bit of extra muscle definition along with a new sunbaked complexion he'd never been outside enough to actually earn.
“I had to make a few changes so you’ll fit in a little better. But I thought you’d at least appreciate the familiarity.”
“Yeah.” Donavan said softly touching his own face.
“While you're wearing that ring, the grand majority of your powers will be sealed away.” Erwin said. “Think of it as training wheels. I’ve still left you with a small percentage of your superhuman strength, speed, and durability. But it’s best you get a feel for that before you start throwing your full weight around.”
That was probably a good idea. Judging by how easy it had been to smash that boulder, he might kill someone just by bumping into them if left unchecked. Plus he didn’t think he’d be able to keep a low profile walking around in that other body.
“There’s a lot of other stuff you can do as well, but that’s all sealed away in the ring too. So we’ll leave it for another time. I’m sure you’ll figure it out as you go.”
“Will you at least give me a hint?”
Erwin pursed his lips in contemplation.
“very well, If this were a role playing game, then your characters class would be wizard.”
Donavan blinked. Weren’t wizards usually supposed to be frail and weak? If he was able to casually smash boulders and send things flying into the stratosphere by sheer strength alone. He could only imagine what kind of magical ability he possessed.
“Now that’s taken care of. You best be heading off or you’ll miss it.”
“Miss what?”
“Go find out.” Erwin said with a wink, and disappeared as if he’d never been there at all.
Donavan turned his gaze to the river he’d been directed to, and with a sigh, started walking.