I’d like to consider myself a fairly grounded man.
While I have a few moments where I let myself daydream, I mostly always know that I’m in the ‘real world’. I don’t do drugs and I don’t drink, some people call that boring, but I’m a doctor, I’ve seen what that stuff does to people.
I didn’t realise just how delusional I could be till reality hit me like a bucket of cold water.
It wasn’t till I was fully submerged in frigid water, pulling me down like I was being flushed down a drain, that I finally understood that all of this was ‘absolute reality’.
My body moved while my brain was uselessly spinning. I couldn’t see anything, and only god knew if that was because the flashlight was too close to me, or if it had been washed away in the current. I fought against the current that seemed to push me down, using every ounce of training I had, I felt like I was nothing more than a stone in water, like I could only fall deeper.
I was a good swimmer, and I had my own share of risky adventures when I was younger, but I swear I could feel every muscle of my body strain to make even the slightest bit of progress towards ‘safety’ as I swam like hell itself was on my heels.
From everything I could put together in the brief seconds after I fell, I had fallen into a large room, it was probably a trap with spikes or something else at the bottom, and the only exit I knew of was the hole I fell through.
I couldn’t see, so I wouldn’t even be able to look for another opening. I didn’t have too much breath to spare either, so I put all of my effort into swimming upwards! There was no telling if the room would fill up or the water would just flow and flow, so everything hinged on my body holding out.
Everything felt so alien in those few moments of sheer panic.
It wasn’t till I exerted myself to the fullest that I realised how wrong everything felt. My muscles, the pain from my scars, just how well I could move… everything was different.
I was going to die, I could feel it creeping in as surely as the cold seeping into my bones, and the only thing I could think of as I desperately tried to escape it was that these bones didn’t feel like mine.
And then a miracle happened, I hit something solid! I managed to reach the hole in the floor and grab onto the edge of it as I tried to pull myself up through the current.
I swear I felt my muscles rip as I struggled for dear life, surfacing just long enough to take a breath before being pulled under again, my hands shooting out to try and grab something before I was pulled back by the current.
I was so close! But as the cold water kept hitting me in the face, I held on tight to whatever I could. I was lucky enough to have grabbed a sturdy chunk of wood that was too long to get pulled through the hole!
With something firm I could actually hold onto, I pulled and pulled, eventually managing to wrench my body out from the flooded hole and collapse onto the slightly less flooded floor as I gasped for breath.
The water was maybe a finger deep at this point, and it was still flowing into the hole in the floor. I could only thank god there wasn’t enough water to pull me back in… I didn’t have the strength in me to fight that uphill battle a third time.
As I lay there gasping for breath, feeling my freezing body scream in pain, I could only stare at the ceiling as I slowly got my strength back, now completely in the dark.
Patting down my body, I had lost my flashlight, which made sense since I was only holding onto it with a belt… I still had my sword, though, which was decent news… probably.
And as I lay there staring up at the murky and cracked black, I finally noticed something about the ceiling that I didn’t see before. The stars in the ‘painted sky’ glowed in the dark, ever so slightly.
And it seemed to glow a bit brighter and in a different colour in certain spots.
Rubbing my eyes to make sure I wasn’t seeing things, the stars stopped glowing.
I started to wonder if I was just seeing things, but as I kept staring at the ceiling I could see the glow again. It was still quite faint, but I was certain that it was glowing, and there seemed to be special ‘stars’ painted onto that cracked black sky that were a bit of a brighter blue than the rest… and one of those just so happened to be over the spot in the ground that I fell through.
Did they have hints all along? If this was a temple, that would make sense because not everyone can be expected to remember where every single trap was, and they couldn’t just mark them out too obviously… Jesus Christ.
Other than the regret of not paying enough attention to my surroundings, my mind was filled with unease. A lot of it.
Questions that I should’ve been asking myself if I was thinking rationally and accepted all of this as reality:
Why don’t I have the same scars? Why does my body feel so different? Who did this body belong to before I woke up in it? Am I dead?
I’ve been rationalising it by using the stupid name ‘backstory me’. When I thought this was a dream, that might have been okay, but I accepted that this was reality… about an hour ago now? And I never thought about the issue since.
My muscles were better defined and there wasn't as much hair on my chest. When it came to scars, I was missing the one from when I was shot and instead had some scars on other areas.… I didn’t look at a reflection yet, so I don’t know what I look like, but I had to accept that I was probably in a stranger’s body.
This didn’t feel like one of those stories where I suddenly remember a past life, because the original guy didn’t have my ability to negate magic. He wouldn’t be stuck in that room otherwise, or even be able to use the flashlight with it strapped to his belt.
And that begs the other big question… Did I die?
When I close my eyes to think about it, my head hurts. It hurts so bad that I can’t concentrate. I only remember tiny pieces of the last thing before I died. There was an earthquake, I volunteered as a field doctor, and the next thing I remember is being rushed to the ER, then everything went white. I probably died on the table, if I made it that far.
And yet, I’m filled with so much guilt about failing… there must be more, but I didn’t have the luxury of thinking about it too much longer.
I was cold, wet and tired. Hypothermia would quickly set in if I just lay there in the dirty water and did nothing.
So I focused whatever energy I could gather again and pushed myself to sit up.
At first, I thought that there was no light at all, but there was a small amount of ethereal light spilling into the hallway from the ground. It was coming from the hole I fell through, and it was a lot larger than I thought now that I could actually see it.
At first I thought it was from my flashlight, but that was a mostly colourless light, not this strange blue. I didn’t know what this light was coming from, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to know.
Gulping, I shakily crawled towards the hole, making sure I wasn’t getting too close to the edge, and peeked in.
What I saw was a large floaty glowing blue mass. I wasn’t sure how to describe its shape, it seemed oddly formless, and I couldn’t see most of it, but it made me think of a large jellyfish… I could only gape as I wondered what kind of creature or thing that was and where it must have come from. As I looked closer through the murky water, I could see a large crack in the wall of this surprisingly small pit for what it felt like I was falling through.
The water must have broken through a crumbling wall when it all spilt in, which connected to another flooded area or an underwater cavern, where that creature must have slipped in from. Gulping, I realised I could have been swept away down a cavern god knows how far if I didn’t fight against the current with every fibre of my being.
The flashlight was nowhere to be seen, so it was likely swept away god knows where.
Shaking my head, I decided to ignore… whatever that was. There was some light, and I needed to make the most of that as long as it lasted!
Getting to my feet I immediately turned to look around at the various shelves, keeping in mind what I remember seeing earlier and being mindful of checking the ceiling for hints.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
I quickly gathered a kettle and a few candles, they would be invaluable. Dried wood was an impossibility, but there was cloth upstairs that wasn’t completely waterlogged and I could use a candle at least for some reliable light.
Over the course of the next few minutes, as the light became brighter and brighter, before starting to fade away as the glowing thing passed by underneath, I managed to find the following things after searching high and low:
A tinderbox (VERY IMPORTANT), 5 candles, a waterskin (need better light to check), 3 glass bottles (contents don’t matter), 4 daggers (3 are horribly rusted), 3 empty sacks, and a lantern!
There were other things, but they were broken, useless (like rotten brooms and buckets), and there was a chest I couldn’t get into yet.
To note, all of this was in one half of the hallway, because the other half had no light.
But with a lantern, candles and if god was on my side, a working tinderbox, I’d no longer have that problem!
With the last traces of the ethereal blue light from the hole, I fumbled with the tinderbox, very carefully… If I dropped it in the water, it’d become useless junk.
If this was a normal tinderbox, then there’d be no hope of it staying dry and useful after all these years in a flooded room, but I was banking on the hope that whatever magical bastards made this place also treated this with magic so it’d be preserved.
It was a very simple kit, just a few pieces of metal you could strike against each other (simple and reliable), and some cloth (the tinder) and wooden sticks to act like matches, AND IT WAS DRY, THANK GOD!!!
Muttering my prayers that this would work, I set the tinderbox down on one of the standing shelves and hit the strikers together, looking to get a spark, so thankful that I learnt all this when I went camping with my dad instead of using matches or a lighter.
And giving me another minor miracle, the cloth readily lit, and it was just a matter of a few seconds to use one of the sticks to transfer the flame like a match and light a candle, giving me wonderful wonderful light, bathing the environment around me in orange.
Smothering the cloth in the tinderbox. I took my precious source of light and a bit of heat, holding it close, happy that it didn’t turn off just from getting too close.
The lantern, now that I could see it better, was an oil lantern, which meant that there might be kerosene nearby, and that stuff never expires as long as it’s stored well… maybe in that chest?
Now that I had breathing space, I remembered the sounds I heard before I fell through the floor. I still didn’t know if it was a person or not, but I could hear some odd scratching sounds coming from the far end of the hallway… I desperately wanted to rush over, in case it was someone in trouble, but I couldn’t afford to be careless anymore. My life was on the line too, and if I died then there’d be zero chance of being able to help unless necromancy was real and a friendly necromancer happened to pop by.
Taking a deep breath to calm myself, I carefully searched the hallway first. I needed to find anything useful that I could.
Over the course of the next twenty minutes:
I inspected the chest and found out that it had multiple latches to open but no other security. It was dry inside and I found a few tins of ‘lantern oil’, aka kerosene, as well as dry clothes, long expired rations, some kind of repair kit (not a mechanic or tinkerer, just a doctor), children’s dolls (a bit spooky), and A MEDICAL KIT! It even had a potion inside (that looked like the potions I might have had when I woke up). There was even a (very thin) book about the basics of potions inside!
A little fiddling later, and I had a lit lantern, giving me a lot more light with a lot less chance of it suddenly going out. The windows of the lantern were filthy and dimmed the light a bit and cast weird shadows, but it was still an upgrade.
There was more ‘junk’ or vaguely religious items scattered about, and there… was a corpse.
Long decayed and forgotten, what was unique here was that the skeleton didn’t look like a normal human skeleton, but I wasn’t sure if that was because it wasn’t human, or if it was mixed with other bones by someone. They also had more than just rags, a weapon and a light source, they actually had a bag, some rope, and a tag on them!
The bag… was pretty small and empty. There was some strange cloth blocking the opening so I couldn’t look deeper.. It seemed useless, but it might have had sentimental value, so I took it to check later. Then I looked at the weapon… It was a metal staff, with a bit of ornate designing. I took that too to help identify the body and hopefully return to their family.
And finally, the tag… It looked like an American soldier’s dog tag, made of what looked like iron with a ruby border, yet not rusted in the least despite being half submerged in dirty water for years.
It had the name “Oromar Witechere” etched onto it, as well as “of Dolomer’s Wand Guild” on a separate line.
Looking over at the other side, it simply said “Attacker” and “Support”.
Seeing this, I had too many questions. Like what country was this person from and why would he have such a strange dog tag? Were the magical bastards who ran this place so into the fantasy setting that they actually made guild tags for whatever stupid lore they had going on?
Bottling yet more questions aside for now, I decided I had spent long enough looking around and approached the end of the hallway, which was a door sitting on a ledge four steps above the ground, well above the water level.
I wanted to change out of my wet clothes before I suffered from any hypothermia, but making sure that there wasn’t someone here who I could help was a more immediate concern.
And so I climbed the handful of steps and reached out with a trembling hand and placed it on the door. It was a very firm wooden door in surprisingly decent condition. It had a simple handle, but no lock, so it simply opened as I pushed it, revealing a dark room that lit up as I pushed my lantern inside.
The first thing I could see as I stepped in were bars, like a prison cell that-
And an ethereal purple dagger suddenly flew out at me with a screech, almost faster than I could react!
I quickly ducked into the room, the dagger barely whizzing past me as I drew my sword, making sure that I didn’t let the lantern fall.
Another dagger flew out as if it were tracking me, and I couldn’t dodge this one. The purple blade shot straight at me with this horrid screech, and I was sure I was going to die, before it dissipated inches away from hitting me. So it was a purely magical attack! I was completely safe!
“YOU FILTHY FUCKING TRAITOR, FINALLY SHOW YOURSELF!?” There was that screech again, but I could actually make our words this time, and “What are you-” I replied, turning to look at the source of the screeches, “I’LL EAT YOUR INNARDS RAW LIKE A FISH, YOU WALKING MONKEY!” It sounded somewhat feminine, but it was hard to tell.
More shocking than the magical daggers that attacked me, or the screeching, was the person… or the ‘creature’ screeching at me. How could something like this actually exist on earth?
When I was younger and visited the zoo with my family, my favourite animals were these spiky lizards who look like they’re staring at the sun when they sunbathe. “Sungazers”, they were called, or “giant girdled lizards”.
That was what was staring at me.
A short humanoid body, maybe 80cm tall (2’6”), wearing leather armour on a dirty grey tracksuit, and with the head of a girdled lizard.
Bathed in the light and dancing shadows of my lantern, I saw the cracked greenish brown scales on its face shift as it snared at me, its various spine scales flaring and large black eyes mired in cracking red energy narrowing in rage.
This wasn’t a mask, it was a living breathing lizard person… a small one too. God, were those conspiracy nutjobs right?
With an incomprehensible screech, purple energy gathered and twisted around their hand, turning into a strange bent shape, something between a dagger and a boomerang. “YOU WON’T TAKE ME!!” it screamed as the dagger flew out.
I was prepared for it to come flying at me and disappear like last time, but instead it whizzed past me to the side, and before I could regard it, it suddenly turned around and shot back at me, dissolving away just before hitting my back.
So they were smart enough to immediately try to hit my back, thinking that I could only disable the daggers if I was facing them… that was dangerous, and if I gave them any more time they might come up with some way to attack me without just using magic.
“Wait! I’m not your enemy!” I called out to this… lizard person, as I slowly stepped forward, shifting towards a pillar in the room that might be able to act as cover if she did something non-magic.
As I approached, I eyed the room we were in. The half I was in looked fairly mundane, like a common area, while the side she was in was completely bare. There was nothing but bare stone and metal bars. It was a cage, and it looked like it was some kind of trap that sprung on her, because the bars just came out of the ground or the walls.… and I noticed several levers in a corner of the room on my side, possible mechanisms to open the cage?
“LIES! MILVARR SEES, MILVARR HEARS, MILVARR KNOWS OF YOUR DECEIT!” She yelled (I was confident it was a woman now), and at least I knew her name was Milvarr now. I had to calm her down somehow, and fast. “Now, now, Milvarr, we can put the weapons down and talk for a bit first, okay?”
“HOW YOU KNOW MILVARR’S NAME!?” she screeched, snarling as she conjured up another blade as she started desperately digging through her bag. “You just said it…” I retorted, before shaking my head, still trying to approach slowly, now reaching the pillar and ready to take cover.
“I can help you out of that cage, but I need you to not attack me first.” I say, taking a moment to calm myself and try to reason with this lizard person, hoping that they’d have the same basic thoughts as a person and that I wasn’t talking to a brick wall.
“I’ve not even met you before, I only recently found myself here. I haven’t yet and I have no intention to hurt anyone.”
“MORE LIES! DO YOU THINK MILVARR HAS NO EYES! YOU KILLED THAT MONKEY AND TOOK HIS BODY!” She screeched, stunning me. “AND NOW YOU SPEAK LIKE NOTHING HAPPENED!? USING HIS LIPS AS CASUALLY AS YOUR OWN TO POUR POISON!”
Three times.
Once when I realised this wasn’t a dream.
Again when I remembered how I woke up in this place.
And then when I was an inch from dying.
Three times I had run away from that question.
Three times I gave myself the excuse that I couldn’t afford to think about it…
But those words hit me like a bucket of cold water. They made me feel like I was drowning again, like I was nothing more than a stone in water, like I could only fall deeper.
Those words made me have to answer that question: Why am I in a dead man’s body?