Something happened. Something bad happened! Was it an accident? Or did they want to burn me alive? I was engulfed in flames. For a few moments, I admired their beauty. The flames are so beautiful when you look at them up close! It is such a fascinating thing!

Oh, that thing covering my eyes was gone. Or was it burning? Then I felt the pain. I screamed. Pain is not beautiful! She's ugly as hell!

I was healed, but the healing was bad: malformed and incomplete. It hurt again. I screamed again as I burned again. Tremors of pain shook my body as waves of healing and fire covered it repeatedly. But the healing was getting better.

Then a sudden explosion happened, and I was fully aware. Everything around me was dark. I was on a cold metal table, and some fat iron bands restrained my hands and legs.

Everything around was in shades of grey: mana sight.

A heavy metallic arm descended suddenly from the ceiling towards me, trying to inject something into my body.

A set of thunder strikes blew it away and destroyed my bindings. I stood up and sat on the table, looking with mana sight around. My wings helped me stand. I had wings and horns. Oh yes, full healing brings them back.

Small electrical discharges surrounded me, forming a halo around me and touching everything around me. She must have spelled a thunder halo.

Spelled a thunder halo? Or is this some technology?

A weak light illuminated the room. I saw a couple of burned heaps beside the table. I refused to think what those have been. A bit further away, a girl was pushing against a door. She was trying to enter a password that didn't seem to work.

I breathed deeply for the first time in a long time. Spells covered my body fast to grant me additional resistance, then Flo started the lightfire spell.

Vapors were filling the room. It was some kind of spray. Poison? In a second, I'll be far away!

Something interrupted my spell. It was like a kind of minor earthquake that hit me. I turned towards the glass wall, and my eyes adjusted. Now I could see through. There were some humans and … orcs there!? Orcs and one goblin?

Orcs?

Do alien people look like orcs? Like dreamland orcs? And a goblin? A goblin?

It was one of them who had cast the spell that had interrupted mine. If I were in the game, I'd think it was a shaman's earth-stroke.

I was feeling tired. With each passing second, I felt more tired, just as those kicks the girl was making against the door became slower and weaker, as if she was getting tired quickly. That picked my attention.

I looked at her and saw how her skin was getting wrinkled. She was not a young girl but was old, very old. Why did I think she was a young girl? Her hair was long and completely white. Was it visibly growing? Her hands had become thinner, and her legs looked like spindly legs. She was getting older! She crumbled, scratching the door with her grotesque fingernails, an already mummified heap of flesh.

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My vision became blurred. I turned and looked down at my hand, and I saw it becoming thinner, exactly as the girls' hand had changed, only slower. I looked back to see the girl, but I could no longer distinguish anything in the distance; five meters was now a distance.

Then my vision changed again back to the grey vision, vision through mana. My mana vision which I had already learned to love, was now much clearer than my eyes' vision. And in my mana vision, I could contemplate myself, and I realized that I was... old? I saw an old naked hag with horns and strange wings sitting on the metal table.

Another spell hit me, and I turned my attention to the orcs in the other room. I shot a formidable thunder in their direction. It didn't pass through the glass, the energy spreading back in a dangerous cascade into my room, nearly hitting me.

I sighed, looking closer. It was a one-way glass; however, the thunder was not entirely lost; the crystal glass was cracked. Small cracks were spreading across it, and suddenly everyone on the other side began to panic.

I grinned and shot another thunder enlarging the cracks.

They were running away. Another shot, and it will break.

I rejoiced at my small victory, but what could I do? They were already closing the door behind them, a couple of idiots being left in the room. I saw their imploring eyes as they turned to look at me. Sacrificial lambs. Some were screaming, and some fell on their knees.

I almost heard Flo's desperate thoughts: aging water, we need to get out of here at once!

The next spell exploded the glass, and I saw them crumbling... getting old very fast while Flo moved for the door.

Some heavy ventilators were started, and I felt the air moving around me. They were vacuuming the fog that had been here, and then finally, I understood what had been plaguing me, the same thing that had already killed those in the other room: aging water. Why did I not understand when Flo had already mentioned it? Because I could not believe it. It cannot be!

But I've seen this phenomenon already. I mean the effects of it with the amazons. It was aging water vapor that I was breathing in, and I was already damn old; I could already feel the pain in each movement. Interestingly, it did not affect me as badly as the others, but it still did.

That young girl there, that skeleton by the glass door, she had died of old age.

I almost could feel how Flo was thinking: the orcs had fled now, but as soon as the air was breathable again, they would return and have the support of the army. I will be outmatched and overwhelmed. Or they'll explode the bomb...

My lightfire-recall spell had been interrupted, and now it was on cooldown. This would keep the spell blocked for hours. I needed to run and hide, but where? I was too slow to run away. Even if I were to say my speed spell. I laughed, imagining an old naked hag running using the speed spell and a support table, followed by a bunch of orcs. I am in the same condition as those old amazons at their camp. But that was in the game; that was not real? Where did this aging water come from? Did the harpies come to this world? How?

My mind was confused, but I had no time to analyze this; things were happening so fast!

It was so strange to see all of this, to live through it, to feel the pain, to smell the burnt skin and hair, and yet to be only a spectator in my own body... well, in my body, not sure if it is still mine.

Was I dreaming all this?

My eyes fell on my arms where the amazon's rune lighted like a beacon in my mana sight. Not real? Or real?

I was still wondering, but Flo did not hesitate a second; she pressed her other hand against the rune infusing it with mana, and reality transcended around me.