I awaken to the stink of incense and... Is that blood? I blink my eyes open and am sure that I still sleep.

A short man wearing magnificent robes in black and gold stands before me, dark hair turning grey, hard featured and perhaps looking a well preserved fifty. He is brandishing an elaborately curved and bloodied dagger in his right hand whilst bleeding from the left. He also seems exultantly happy about something.

Behind him and around me... A temple? Marble, statues and elaborate carvings. My bare feet are surrounded by an intricate array of precious metals set into stone and channels filled with blood. Bronze braziers burn with something cloyingly sickly sweet and there are a number of men and women wearing less elaborate version of the costume sported by the knife wielding man in front of me. The only sources of illumination are the fires and glowing crystals upon pillars, is it night time? Underground? I have only a few seconds to take in the outlandish scene.

“By your seven names I bind you into servitude!” The dark haired men announces with a flourish of his bloodied knife, then I feel something tugging weirdly at me before dismissing it. I step forward, his face pales, everyone seems shocked. Several of the individuals I mentally dub as minions lower steel tipped spears whilst all of them back away. “The wards! She ignored the wards!” Somebody screams this to my side then a rather tiny woman lunges at me with a spear.

I slam my left hand out and into the haft just below the point, deflecting the sharp steel a fraction of an inch past my ear then pivoting on the impact to twist forwards and within her overextended reach. Abruptly something changes, it is as if a spotlight of impossible power is illuminating the scene and everything is cast into either searing brightness or knife edged shadows. People scream and flinch whilst the woman who just tried to impale me collapses bonelessly to the floor with a crushed windpipe. She barely had time to blink before my hand impacted her with an utterly precise application of force.

I feel... Powerful. I am moving so easily as I settle the spear into my hands as if it was an extension of my body. Another of the goons, cultists? Tries with his spear but he is fighting as if blind and I dodge to the side almost weightlessly, a flick of my wings imparting impossible momentum to my movements as I neatly stab him through the face, in and out, a piston motion that sends the spearpoint entirely through his skull. The weapon is flicked to the side and, barely looking, I half bisect the throat of a stumbling victim.

The wooden haft of the spear is smouldering and charring in my hands now, also I realize I am naked, also I have wings? This is not something I have time to consider, instead? Agony. I spasm and stumble, almost losing my footing, the haft of the spear snapping in my hands as I arrest my near fall. The man with the dagger is holding it toward me as lightning sparks from the outstretched weapon. Every muscle in my body attempts to seize up at once whilst I feel my skin burn. I scream and hold out a hand.

A bar of white flame solid enough to seem like a liquid connects my hand and the man, for a fraction of a second it splashes against something intangible and then most of his torso is gone whilst his head, arms and hips are turned to ash that near instantly explodes outward. Cooked legs collapse whilst marble burns around a divot seared into the wall behind him. The others are running now, stumbling and still half blind, though the searingly bright light seems to not affect me. I throw the half of the spear I still hold, it pierces through a man's back and he collapses to the polished floor.

I still hurt, I fall to one knee, I pull in my wings against my sides as I draw deep and ragged breaths. I try to take stock of this situation because it is feeling increasingly less like some manor of insane dream and searingly bright light begins to fade.

The last thing that I remember is crawling into bed exhausted after a long day of work, curling onto my side under the duvet and buzzed with a little too much alcohol after downing half a bottle of wine. The soft pressure behind as one of my cats curled up atop the duvet in the hollow of my knees then drifting into unconsciousness to the faint blaring of a car alarm several streets distant.

Now I am naked in some kind of opulent temple and have just killed five people in robes, people using medieval weaponry and magic? Also the wings. I open my eyes again as I hug my arms to myself and inspect them. Rooted at the base of my shoulderblades, the first word I would use to describe them would be anglic and I appear to be pressing  expanses of bright feathers to myself. They are huge and feel very much part of me not to mention horrendously strong despite the impossibility of any resulting shoulder joints, also rather than white they are shaded in autumn hues. A deep burgundy along the leading edges that shades through oranges and yellows to cream at the tip of each flight feather.

Apparently I am also now a red head? Coppery curls that reach down past my waist, along with my being built like some manner of idealistic image of an amazonian goddess. This is not my body but the change does perhaps explain why I was able to stab through a man's skull as if it was made out of paper. I start to utter a curse, flounder, I close my eyes and as I wince.

Then, fighting against the throbbing pain in the wake of that electrocution, I force myself to my feet and hobble across to one of the people I just murdered. I poke the man with a finger, this time what I touch fails to begin to smoulder and burn and so I scoop up his spear, I can still hear retreating foot steps from the four or so oddly dressed people who escaped. Additionally everyone seems pretty short? Even the men are probably only five foot tall or so. Or am I just now freakishly tall myself?

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I am trying not to focus on the big picture because this makes no sense at all, I am screaming in the back of my head as I feel myself tightly furling those wings in against each side of my back. First priorities. I need clothes and the woman who has just choked to death with a crushed throat seems the only place to obtain those which are not covered in blood. Also I take in more of the surroundings to find more corpses, ones pre-dating my arrival, a half dozen men and women in coarse woollen garments who seem to be piled to the side, the sweet stink of the braziers being the only thing mostly masking the foulness of voided bowels from the accumulated corpses.

So it is not the worst smell I have ever experienced.

As I inhale I do wince at least the people I slew were murderers? Also nobody has been dead long enough to start rotting. As I strip the woman of her outer robes I try to consider more minor details in order to not consider why I am in another body and being attacked by maniacs with spears. How did I kill them so easily? What was that light? Also how am I going to wear these robes whilst I have wings?

Fortunately she has a nicely decorated leather belt with a very sharp seeming steel dagger sheathed upon it, I am able to awkwardly cut a scooped back into the thing before struggling into the too small robes, allowing egress for the feathered limbs. Everyone seems to be wearing soft leather shoes, none of which fit me because everyone is tiny, but I retain sufficient presence of mind to start stripping the corpses of their expensive seeming jewellery and improvise a sack from an unfouled portion of one of the men's robes. One of them was also apparently wearing an arming sword, I take his belt and spend a moment hefting the unfamiliar weapon in my hand only to find that it is like an extension of my own body.

This is not the first time I have held a sword but I have never more than dabbled and I know I do not have this kind of muscle memory, a few testing slashes are made as I hold the spear in my left hand then I stop as I hear the clash of metal, I look to the doorway.

A half dozen men and women wearing partial plate armour and holding halberds rush in and I can see something glowing around them and their gear. I can feel a presence and sense that there is something altogether dangerous about their weapons, hurriedly I slam the sword back into its scabbard as I bring the spear back into a two handed grip and read it, weight rolling forward onto the balls of my feet, wings flaring outward and poising in the air. I have a sense of absolute balance and coiled energy, I commit to fight.

And the light returns, the soldiers stumble and scream, I lunge forward and thrust into the air with the spear before a lance of flame bright enough that it seems it should sear and after image into the retina connects the tip of the weapon and the new arrivals. What happens to them is impossible to describe and once again I get the impression of some manner of intangible barrier seeking to protect against the attack but it gives way within a few seconds before all that is left is ash and twisted half molten metal. The doors are shattered, portions of the far wall are turned to glass, I feel drained and stumbling whilst the spear in my hands is simply gone.

So now I run.

Past the burnt corpses and twisted armour, my bare feet apparently unharmed by the glowing flagstones, through ornate corridors, out into manicured gardens which I crash through as I hear further shouts of alarm in the distance. Some manner of castle or perhaps fortified manner is illuminated in the near distance and very much visible but whatever I just did to that squad of soldiers is not something I can feel I can replicate, I still ache and hurt from the lightning and I have no idea what is happening.

I flee into the woods with just my too small and hastily modified robes, a sword, a knife and a bag of jewellery. No food, no water, no idea where I am going or what has happened to me. Also no shoes!

*****

I run at the start with but then drop to a jog, alternating that with speed walking as I flee through the night and fighting off the chill through activity. By the time dawn begins several hours have passed, but I honestly have no idea how much time, also I am feeling mostly recovered and barely exhausted despite a pace that would have been punishing in my prime. How long has passed? I really do not know, but I feel I have properly covered at least fifteen miles and it has all been through either forest or scrub land. My bare feet ache, but through some miracle are not reduced to bleeding ruin.

At this point I can only hope that I am far beyond any pursuit from whatever kind of medieval insanity is happening. I collapse down against a tree only to yelp as that catches my wings, flaring them out and jerking forward, then draping the huge things to each side. Deep breaths, time to take stock.

I am not in my own body. I am not in my own world. My family, my job, my pets? Right now I have literally no idea how to get back to that and instead I am a refugee in ill fitting clothes in a forest in some kind of what I can only presume is a fantasy world. The kind of fantasy world where I am... What, an angel who burns people? This seems distinctly other than angelic, but then I was also apparently summoned by the kind of people who sacrifice what I can only assume were villagers.

I feel my head for horns and fail to find any.

Okay. I am probably not a demon. Why I would be a demon, or an angel, I have no frame of reference for. Also I just killed a dozen or so people. How do I feel about that?

It was easy. Am I even me mentally at this point? It is almost a decade since I stopped Muay Thai andfencing. The army certainly never trained me to crush the throats of people holding spears. Mostly it taught me that killing people is fucking awful and that I much prefer being a project manager for twice the pay and a third of the work. But I feel somehow detached from the violence and the moment that spear came for me I just moved without thought, hesitation or flaw.

I am also ravenously hungry, thirsty and probably in the middle of a forest.