Not even ten minutes ago, Tassia, ‘Dragonborn’ the Wizard, one of the legendary heroes of the forces of Order, was standing together with her closest compatriots, the Ranger-Smith Alvrik the Eagle-Eyed, the Saintess Mari Gold-Hart, and the Lion-Prince Issandar. Before the Demon Lord of Terrors castle, ready to finally end the catastrophe that had nearly brought an end to the known world.
Yet now…
Now she was lying naked tied to a stone table, in some kind of cellar, having no clue even where she was.
“What the fuck…” Was all her parched throat was able to sigh.
Tassia was only capable of frowning as she had spent the last ten minutes trying to organise her fractured mind. Or rather, minds. Tassia ‘Dragonborn’, and Anastasia de Voyant, following a dry chuckle she could only lament that both sets of her memories were incomplete. The honourable Anastasia was the heiress-apparent of a Baron in the middle of some kingdom that eluded her current memories, this was also the body that the dual minds of each Tassia was currently occupying, however Tassia Dragonborn was the dominant personality.
Not much of a surprise considering there was roughly two decades of an age gap between them, and that Tess was a Wizard who trained her mind to the extremes, whilst Anna was a mere Baron-heiress who had barely reached puberty.
Regardless that was all unimportant, instead what Tess needed to do was escape, and to do that, Tess needed to warm up her vocal cords.
“Hello, my name i-” Tess started to speak, trying out her brand-new vocal cords, before frowning at just how young she sounded, whilst she understood her current body was not the nearly Forty years of her past life, it was still produced cognitive-dissonance that was not easy to overcome.
“Hello… Hello?” She tried a few more times, “Hello, name… Hello, my?”
“Hello, my name is Tess!” she eventually managed to settle the words in her throat, it still felt unusual at how high-pitched it was, but that was just something she would have to bear with. All that mattered, was that she could still speak, and thereby was capable of weaving her ancient arts of Magic.
“Knock” As Tess spoke, a single ethereal wooden knock echoed out with Tess in the centre, suddenly all the shackles that were tying her down shattered in an instant.
Finally, she was no longer bound down at the mercy of her unseen partner, and although she didn’t mind doing some S+M play, it was very frustrating playing solo, and having been left out for… Twelve minutes now? It all still seemed too blurry for her.
Now sitting up, and no longer being quite literally – pulled apart, she could feel that what she was strapped to, was some sort of stone table, a bit bigger than her in length, though she was already able to pick that up, instead what she did learn is that she was almost certainly smaller in her current life as compared to the nearly 4 cubits of her past life, having stumbled down the table after having become too used to being larger than almost all furniture in her past.
The room around her was basically pitch black, and her former memories provided no explanation to how this room was situated, nor where it even was. Looking through her mental-spell-list she could only lament the fact that she didn’t have her trusty Book with her, which certainly hurt considering the only spell she could recall of the top of her head that wasn’t ‘teleport’, did in fact require a focus, unless there were ingredients nearby, which might actually be a possibility?
“Carrots huh?” Tess muttered to no one in particular, in all honesty it felt nice being young again.
Well, if we did consider this to be a cellar of sorts, it’s not preposterous to have carrots down here, right? But to find a carrot she would need to find a forked twig. Tess had completely forgotten just how painful it was to use components, not that a Spell Focus would completely negate the need for certain components, but it certainly helped with not having to carry around a million trinkets, some blades of grass and whatever else a spell had called for.
So that’s what she did, for the next few minutes, she spent crawling around, naked, in an ice-cold cellar looking for the hint of a twig or a carrot. Tess had never before suffered such humiliation, and she swore deep in her heart that she would make sure, whoever it was that locked her down here, would suffer a million times this indignancy…
Finally, after what felt like an eternity, she found a twig that had a distinct split in it!
“Locate, Carrot”
Then as the range spread itself out, she actually found some carrots down here.
Slowly, crawling her way towards the direction she sensed the carrots at, she came to a wall, slowly she stood up, careful not to hit her head on anything, she finally felt something that was sticking out from the stone wall. Pulling it open, and feeling inside she felt several semi-hardened objects, which gave of the feeling of old vegetables, instantly she retracted her hands and felt bile rushing to escape her mouth. But the carrots were there, closing her eyes, as though that would provide some solace, Tess reached into the draw of rotten vegetables, and rummaged around until she felt something that felt long and hard.
Pulling it out, she fell to the floor, and let her stomach contents loose. Instantly cancelling the Location spell.
It was not a pretty sight.
Blood and guts were something that was easy to deal with. Rotting food and maggots, were just in many ways far, far worse.
As a minute passed, and Tess feeling far worse than ever before, she once more grabbed the half rotten carrot.
It was dried enough to count, and even if it wasn’t Tess would make it count. Breaking off the front of the carrot, just enough to be a pinch, she lifted it up to her right temple, and moved her empty hand up to her other temple.
“D-dar-huh… Dark… Darkvision” She managed to spit out, after much trouble.
The carrot that was held up to her temple disappeared in an instant, and the darkness that was once surrounding her retreated in an instant, and she finally felt the slightest bit better about her situation.
Then of course she realised that she had already used up all her second-tier spells. Whilst lesser Wizards will tell you “You can cast 15 more spells just like that, and they are stronger!” All that Tess felt was that it was a waste she had to use all 3 second-tier spells! Tess was naturally born in an era of Demon-kind invading the world, and they didn’t care about Humans only being capable of casting 22 spells total, no they were like Dragons who were made of magic and could always cast spells as they chose.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
Those 3 spells she had used, could have been used to reduce several lesser Demons to nothingness, and thus removing at least 3 magic casters who could endlessly use magics!
Regardless of Magical efficiency, it wasn’t like Tess could just not use magic to help her escape this… Kitchen? Is honestly what it looked like to Tess, a large table in the middle, cabinets to side, which probably used to be filled with fresh ingredients ready to be prepared, there however didn’t seem to be any tools or pots around, but she didn’t doubt that if she actually looked closer, she could find them.
“Wait… Shit.” Tess cursed suddenly as she realised that the former owner was probably prepared by some cannibalistic cult who wanted to feast on virgin girls! How horrible… And strangely erotic. This all became to much for Tess, as the feeling of being dirty was taking a toll on her mental state.
“Prestidigitation” Tess rubbed her hands together, and cast a Cantrip, which removed any of the grubs and rotten vegetable flesh which had found themselves stuck on her hands.
“Prestidigitation” She once again cast, and exaggeratedly moved her hands towards her head, and the lingering taste of Bile was washed away, and finally she felt about as clean as she could be, having been locked in a dusty cellar, that has long since been forgotten about, writhing away with god knows what kinds of horrid maggots and rats.
Looking at the height of the cabinets, and using the table as a reference, Tess figured she was probably below average height, which felt unusual, as in her past life she was known as a Titanic Woman who towered over all her compatriots, even above Issandar, only losing to that Barbarian Orc-kin.
Honestly it was a strange feeling not being able to even reach a counter-top, but that all went to show at how incompetent that Baron was, having his own eldest daughter be malnourished… Though now that she was looking through Anna’s memories, weren’t all her siblings much more filled out than her?
Wait, was that Baron actually incompetent, or did he just not like Anna?
It gave her a headache, thinking about things like this was to much for poor old Tess, she was never interested in politicking with people she didn’t like, Issandar was much better when it came to showing false pleasantries, Tess had most of the time just cast ‘Charm Person’ on people she needed to do certain things, and she went on her merry way, not caring particularly about the feelings of the pigs who could only stuff themselves full of the peasantries money.
In the midst of her thoughts, she made her way to the entrance of her little resurrection room. Reaching for the door, she gave it a slight yank, noticing that it was never locked to begin with.
“Fuck” If she had just looked around the room to begin with and found the door, she wouldn’t have had to use two extra Spells… She also wouldn’t have disgraced herself with the rotting vegetables either… “Fuck”
Without much ceremony she yanked the door open, unlike the glorious sunlight she was expecting, instead she was greeted by a long stairway up.
Dragging her way up through the stairs she could only mutter curses that she didn’t have any spells like Good Berry or literally any Clerical spell. Although Wizards are often considered the most powerful and versatile of all magic casters, even the Core hero party required a Cleric to help keep everyone in tip-top shape. Though Tess could use a Wish to restore her energy, that was the equivalent of trading a solid-gold palace for a bit of kindling, because you were hungry. It was a waste of the highest degree, and something Tess would never endorse, no matter how desperate her situation would become. Never!
Nearing the top of the two dozen or so large steps she was crawling up, Tess came across another door, this time it looked very much more like a cellar door, so her expectations instantly shot up.
Quickly moving her hands up she grabbed the trapdoor handles and tried pushing up.
“Oh, for fucks sakes” It honestly started feeling like these curses were the only thing Tass could say ever since she was reborn.
The trapdoor was locked, and she didn’t want to waste high level spells, but she couldn’t do the thing that sorcerers could and combine some lower-level spells into higher level spells, so she was forced to do one of her personal cardinal sins.
“Knock”, She cast a Second-Tier spell, as a Third-Tier Spell, despite it not providing any additional effects.
Once again, an ethereal knocking sound echoed outwards, and the Trapdoor which led outwards had whatever was blocking it – shatter.
She only had 18 Spells left for today, and considering her unclothed state, unless the current world was more liberal than the past, she would have to use another spell to use an illusion on herself.
5 Spells, and it had barely been an hour? Maybe barely two. It didn’t matter, at this rate she would have used up all her magic before dinner time. Speaking of dinner…
Looking up into the sky above her, Tess saw the glittering stars, like thousands of tiny particulates of sand spread across the heavens. Tess reminisced to when she was far, far younger, Mother had always been talking about how each of them was like a Sun which had planets – just like this world – surrounding them.
When she was younger, she was always filled with dread, at the infiniteness of the sky, and a sense of hopelessness at how small the world was, that if there were endless amounts of worlds that were just like the world they currently lived on, wouldn’t it all just be truly meaningless?
Yet Mother always spoke about how despite everything being endless, even the tiniest butterfly mattered, that with the mere flap of their wings, a butterfly on the other side of the world would cause hurricanes, and if you took it onto the cosmic scale, then it would cause untold effects upon the rest of the universe.
It was always a funny thought seeing a butterfly twirling a stringy moustache and talking about how with the flap of it’s wings it would erase all the stars in the skies!
Even now, however, the stars were the same as those from 700 years ago. Mari always talked about how the endless and infinite god held dominion over the stars, and how it was by his grace that life on the world would exist at all, although none of the three of them were particularly religious, Mari was just so charismatic with her words, and that even though the world felt so endless and uncaring, she made it seem just a little less empty.
Issandar would only ever talk about the future, and how someday he wished to be immortalised as someone who was above average, and that he would know that his life, and all his achievements would matter more than just satisfaction for his family to add onto their achievements. He wanted to become one of the constellations which helped light up the night sky, and in a way his wish was fulfilled, for the brightest star in the night was named after him. Issandar’s Blade, a constellation in which the tip of this supposed blade, is the brightest star in all the heavens.
Whilst the Half-Elf, Half-Dwarf Alvrik would only ever talk about how she… He? Tess was never really sure, Alvrik would only ever talk about how they wanted to forge a bow which would be used to bring down a star, so that they could then forge that star into an even more legendary bow. Issandar would always ask what they would do with the bow after making it from a star, to which Alvrik would simply reply with a sly smile, as though it was a joke only, they understood…
It wasn’t long before Tess felt a tear crawling down her cheek.
To her, it wasn’t even a day ago when she and her closest friends had sat under the night sky, surrounding a fire, and talked about their future, if they would even have a future, after facing the Demon Lord.
Before facing the Demon Lord, Tess had never taken him seriously, after all her Mother was essentially like a god in comparison.
But…
Had she died?
Did Tess actually make it to the end?
Did Tess and someone else fall, and force Mari chose to ‘True Revive’ the other person over her? Were all her other resurrection spells used up?
Or?...
Did Tess refuse to be revived?
She didn’t know… No, she would probably never know, all she knew is that her last moments were filled with fear and… so completely lonely.
All her friends have passed away.
And she crumbled to her knees.
All her friends had passed away, and she was living a half-life.
The past decade of her life was constant war, she never knew anything beyond that, over a third of her life was dedicated to warfare against an unbeatable horde, and many of her friends had died. But not them…
They were together from the start to end.
Everyone could die, but not them.
Tess curled into a ball; she could not prevent the flood of tears that left her eyes.
Everyone could die, but not them.
After closing her eyes, Tess’s world fell black.