“Unexpected” feels like a bit of an understatement. I am certainly surprised. More than a little disbelieving. Yet the proof is in the pudding, as they say, and I cannot deny the reality of this new body simply by deciding it is not so.

“Alright then,” I say, allowing myself to listen to my new, unfamiliar voice. I suppose I should try to get used to it. “What to do from here?”

As much as I desire answers about this body and how I got here, my immediate needs are clear: food, water, shelter.

I cup my flame between both hands, bringing it closer to my chest as I revel in its warmth and marvel at its existence. I suppose shelter is partially covered. At least I’m no longer at risk of freezing to death in this place. But what is this place?

Cautiously, I gather my taloned feet beneath me and stand. I immediately stumble backward and threaten to fall over, overbalancing from the unexpected weight of my wings. I flap them instinctively, like pinwheeling arms on a tightrope, the gusts of which threaten to snuff out my wildly flickering flame. Hunching forward, wings spread to either side, I recover.

“This will certainly be an experience,” I mutter.

Glancing to my left, I watch and feel my wing flex with no small amount of awe. The feathers are a fiery display of colors, starting with the deepest maroon at the base and brightening to an intense yellow at the tips. I splay the wings wide, arcing them up above me as high as I can reach. These things really are a part of me. I’m controlling them.

The feathers at my wingtips brush against something in the dark. I lift my fire above my head, but its small shell of illumination isn’t enough to light the roof overhead. I suppose I’ll need a bigger flame for that.

Hadn’t Echo mentioned something along those lines?

“Echo,” I say, folding my wings back in to tuck the long leading-edge feathers behind my back (and away from my flames). “I had another fire spell I could use, didn’t I?”

[Affirmative,] Echo says. [Blaze: Summon a flame of variable size and shape capable of moving with the caster’s intent. Mana cost: 10 per cubic yard per second.]

“And how much mana do I have to work with?”

[Check,] Echo says, my stats reappearing from where they’d slowly faded from my vision and mind. [Mana: 199/200]

That missing point must be from the Spark spell I currently have going.

Ten mana per second is a lot if I only have two-hundred altogether. A resource I’m hesitant to burn through if it’s the only thing keeping me from descending into hypothermia.

“Is there a way to recover mana?” I ask.

[Affirmative. Various spells and items may replenish a target’s mana pool. Additionally, this user passively recovers mana at a rate of 1 per minute.]

That’s convenient.

“If memory serves, doesn’t the Spark spell deplete mana at a rate of one per minute?”

[Affirmative.]

Then I can effectively keep it going forever. That’s one small comfort. In that case, one large burst of flame to get an idea of where I am won’t hurt anything.

“Let’s try one of those Blaze spells then,” I say, focusing on the fire in my hands. If this works how the previous one did, all I have to do is envision it, right? I mentally push on the fire, imagining it growing larger, brighter.

[Blaze spell activated,] Echo says.

The flame swells to the size of a watermelon. Alarmed, I hold my hands out at arm’s length, but the flame doesn’t engulf them as I’d feared. Instead it seems to be moving exactly as I intend it to, staying carefully away from my fingers.

In the corner of my vision, my mana starts to tick away.

Right. No time to marvel now.

I pull my hands back, and the fire continues to hover before me. I shape it larger, pushing it higher in the air as the heat begins to sting my face. Larger. Larger. In just a few seconds it’s the size of a kitchen table. My mana plummets, so I mentally throw the ball of fire as high into the air as I can manage, then disperse it in the shape of an expanding ring, the fire racing away from me like a pulse of radar. I quickly spin around, taking in my surroundings. The room momentarily bursts with color, as bright as sunlight. Then my fire collides with the far walls, extinguishing itself, and I’m wisped back into darkness.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

[Blaze spell ended.]

[Mana cost: 53]

For a brief moment, however, I caught a glimpse of my surroundings, and my heart squeezes in fear. I’m certainly in a cave, that much is clear. The cavern extends radially around me by about sixty feet, and is peppered with stalactites and stalagmites. More importantly, however, are the objects which litter the floor.

I breathe into the silence, ears ringing. The vision of the room lingers, burned into my retinas, like hundreds of grinning ghosts. Finally, I raise a hand.

“Spark.”

The small flame reappears above my fingers. I crouch down to the smooth stone, running my free hand over the surface. Perfectly smooth. Spotless, too, like I’m at the epicenter of… something which blew everything else away.

Balancing like this in a crouch, my wings naturally unfold to either side, countering the slight tilts and shifts of my body. One of my wingtips, extended into the dark, brushes against something on the ground there, and I hear the wooden tinkling of small objects falling over one another. Like a cascade of pebbles. Only, from the glimpse I caught earlier, I know they’re not pebbles.

I cautiously step toward the edge of the clearing I now know surrounds me. Beyond this flat bed of rock is rough slate, stalagmites, and…

I hold my light over the ground, the spots of white almost seeming to glow against the contrast of their dark surroundings.

…Bones.

Hundreds of bones. Maybe thousands. The skulls are easiest to pick out, round like stones. But they don’t all appear human. Some have horns, while others are much too large or small, and squashed or stretched. I pick my way carefully around my small death-free island. Now that I’m really looking at the skeletons, only some of them seem to be human. A few have wing structures—possibly harpies, like me. Others seem to be made of some material that’s not quite bone and have… far, far too many legs. I suppress a shudder at these remains.

After making it all the way around the circle, it’s clear I’ll have to pick my way out. There’s no clear path through the chilling graveyard I find myself in, and even if there was, I need to explore this cavern. Without water, I’ll only be able to survive here a few days at most. Another bright light would help me explore the area, but—I Check my mana, and find the Blaze spell reduced it to 146. Best be cautious about burning through it too quick. I can afford to use just this little Spark for now.

“Sorry, friend,” I murmur as I step carefully around the remains of the nearest skeleton. My talons slide and clatter noisily over the loose rock. My wings open once more to help balance me, and I try not to marvel at them, how instinctive they’re becoming, as I focus on where to place my steps next.

Glints of metal shine occasionally among the stones and bones. Perhaps this was a battlefield from long, long before. The cave smells of must and earth rather than decay. That gives me hope that there must be some open-air passage out of here—and also fills me with concern that these remains have been left to be lost to time. Whomever fought here—would their people not have tried to reclaim their remains? If they made no attempt to lay them to rest, then why? Was this location too remote or inhospitable? If so, that doesn’t bode well for me.

I make it to a wall without stepping on too many bones, cringing each time I feel them break beneath my talons, and then begin to trace it around the room. The quiet has become eerie, or perhaps that’s just my imagination now that I know what surrounds me. I’m quite certain I’m alone, but even so it’s hard to shake the unsettling feeling of being watched while lost in some ancient necropolis.

I trace the wall for what I estimate to be two-thirds of the way around the room before coming upon something unusual. The wall here is crumbly and loose instead of the smooth limestone I’d become accustomed to, and as I move my light over its surface, it’s clear this space has been filled in, naturally or otherwise. Giant rocks and slabs of stone block what might have been a tunnel out of the cavern. Perhaps there’s still a way around this rockslide. Searching the sealed exit, I’m not paying near enough attention to my feet, and trip over something on the floor. Alarm flashes through my mind. My wings shoot out to catch me. One of them immediately strikes the wall, which only serves to leverage me over and expedite the fall.

I collapse to the ground in an unruly heap, wincing as I check to make sure nothing’s broken. The bones in my wings seem hardier than those of a bird, however, and in the end the only thing injured is my pride. I move my Spark over the ground, searching for what I’d tripped over.

Another skeleton is buried in the rubble. The lower half of their torso has been swallowed by the boulders, but their upper half is uncovered and largely preserved. Something glints in their hand.

A large blood-red gem rests atop the bones. Perhaps a garnet. But rests isn’t entirely accurate. The jewel seems to have… seeped around the bones. Melted somewhat back into the rocks. Dozens of veins zigzag away from the gem, embedding themselves in the limestone floor like lines on a circuit board. How strange.

My fire flickers on the surface of the precious jewel as if a second fire burns within its depths. Staring into that light, I’m overcome with a strong sense of familiarity. Like I’ve seen this exact stone somewhere before. Like I know it.

The feeling is troubling. “What are you?” I ask the ruby. What made it so special that this person died clutching it?

[Check,] Echo says, as if I’d been asking her. [Dormant Dungeon Core. Psionic Touch available.]

“What?” I say.

[Dormant Dungeon Core,] Echo repeats. Apparently she isn’t well versed in rhetorical questions. [Psionic Touch available.]

“That means it can think?” I ask. “You said Psionic Touch only worked with creatures that could think.”

[Affirmative.]

A thinking rock. Of course. Why not?

What could a rock have to think about? And I suppose more to the point, would it know anything that could help me get out of here?

It’s the first interesting thing I’ve come across so far. I suppose it can’t hurt to try to speak with it. Perhaps it will know something about my circumstances. Still holding the fire in my right hand, I reach out my left to touch the stone. The surface is cold and hard, just like any other rock.

Psionic Touch, I think, willing myself to cast that spell. Triggering this one doesn’t seem as intuitive as wishing a fire into existence, but mentally saying the name seems to do the trick.

[Psionic Touch activated.]