When Nathan opened his eyes into a new world, the first thing he saw was a very impractically dressed girl.
In quick succession, he saw a few other things: two skeletons and a zombie, a blue bubble holding them off, and the woman’s more practically dressed companion.
“—no more than ten seconds,” the woman in chainmail was in the middle of saying. “Hon, we’re—”
“Ritual’s done,” the girl said, interrupting the other person. “Language spell, now!”
“Water,” interjected Nathan in a croak. “Please.”
That gave both women a moment of pause. They had been expecting the spirit summoned by the ritual into the young man’s pristine body to be confused and unmoored—Nathan’s instantaneous awareness and his keen thirst was less strange than his immediate capacity for their language, but only by a small margin.
The woman in the dress, if one could even call the garment a dress, waggled her fingers at him; or, more accurately, she very precisely and quite rapidly worked her fingers through a structured set of gestures. The tattoos on her fingertips glowed briefly, carving a rune ephemerally into the air, and in her high ringing soprano voice she spoke a word in a language that had not been understood in the winds of the world for a hundred generations.
“Revitalize,” she uttered, and Nathan was revitalized.
“Whoo!” he whooped, shooting to his feet. “That was like a cold shower, a hot shower, a cup of tea, and a Monster energy drink all at the same time, plus a massage and a warmup run. Do those things—”
“My lord, we need your—”
“—have any weak points?”
“Riseworm for the skeleton, spinal column,” snapped the armored woman absently in a commanding tenor. From out of nowhere she’d pulled out a two-handed sword and was adopting a stance that Nathan suspected was meaningful and awesome but which he did not recognize. “Hon and I have the groaners.”
In the next moment, four things happened.
First: the bubble around them disappeared, and all three apparent undead rushed the small group.
Second: Nathan flipped his mace around in his hand, wondering absently to himself when he’d acquired that and then realizing that it had to be Saucer, and swung.
Third: the woman with the two-handed sword struck like a freight train, which is to say she moved at speeds which utterly belied her size and with titanic force, but in a way which seemed precarious and left absolutely no room for error.
Fourth: the woman in the impractical dress rose into the air, hands lifted and hair flying out in a near-horizontal halo of glowing power. Glowing traceries of runes lit up on her bared inner thighs as her already cursory dress rose up in a similarly horizontal fashion, and a stylized glyph of lightning erupted into actinic light on her spine.
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It was a moment frozen in time, and then it resolved.
Nathan’s swing brought Saucer on a trajectory smoothly through the skeleton’s spinal column, obliterating the slender blue glimmer of something he’d barely noticed wrapped around the bone in an explosion of bone shards and a tiny bit of worm-gore. The warrior’s sword bisected one of the zombies and sent both halves of it flying across the room they were in, and the sorceress’s spell seemed to do nothing other than send her zombie staggering back one step and then another.
Then the second zombie collapsed onto the floor and began to sublimate into a glimmer of light, twinkling as it faded.
“Fuck,” the sword-wielder swore. “I forget how hard this piece of shit is to use. Gods-damned stupid fucking Artefacts, rather have good-quality steel than this thing.”
“Yes, if only you hadn’t broken your sword, Tanya dear. And reminder me, was that after your spear melted? And I seem to remember that your dagger got afflicted by a bonerot curse, but no doubt—”
“Oh fuck off, I know, I know.”
“I would simply prefer a mote of gratitude that my luck was enough to find something, you know.”
Nathan carefully waggled Saucer from side to side, feeling its balance before hanging it once again from the belt at his waist. He started to inspect himself as the two women bantered, taking note of heavy canvas pants and a jacket of similar make, with layers of cotton underneath. His hair was of medium length and drawn back in a ponytail, and he had a helmet that felt firm enough to be protective while still being light enough to not be burdensome.
“Well shit. I’ve really been that ungrateful? Rain of my every morning, forgive me. I’m just… tired,” the swordwoman whom Nathan was assuming was named Tanya admitted. “I wasn’t kidding when I described this thing as riding the razor’s edge between usable and a catastrophe with every swing.”
“I know, love,” the sorceress said with a sigh, smoothing the skirt of her dress down against her upper thighs and adjusting a flyaway bit of hair. “It’s hard on us both. These close confines are… not my preferred combat environment, as you know. But we’re neglecting our guest.”
The attentions of both women snapped over to Nathan, and he smiled cheerfully at them. “Good morning, or afternoon or evening, whichever it is,” he offered. “It’s nice to meet you, probably! You can call me Nathan.”
“Already fluent in our language without magical intervention. Careful enough to speak a name that is true and his, but not his True Name.” Tanya’s words were a murmur, one which Nathan was fairly confident he wasn’t supposed to overhear. “Wields a Relic beyond my capacity to evaluate, fast on the uptake, some combat training.”
“May this meeting be a source of joy and a locus of change towards the best of all futures. I am Honeydew Dream Brilliant-Flower-Opening-Softly,” the sorceress declared, speaking over her companion. “Heiress of House Brilliant Flower, Twice-Blessed, and Priestess of the Dreaming Fulmination Who Is God And Primordial Wrath.”
“Also a sanctified prostitute,” added Honeydew’s armored companion.
“And also a sacred whore,” the noblewoman agreed without missing a beat. “And a few other things besides, I suppose. And this is my companion upon my quest for apotheosis, my lover and best friend: Tanya of neither name nor house, who holds neither title nor honors.”
“Nice to meet you, Nathan,” Tanya said genially. “I hope you’re ready for an adventure, because you just landed in the middle of one, and it’s more or less ‘bend over and grab your ankles’ o’clock.”
“Ah,” the Millionborn said in satisfaction. “You have clocks.”
And then, for a moment, there was silence.