It had barely been thirty minutes since the duke's men had arrived, when there was a large commotion coming from the direction of the river. From the light of the bonfires, I could see something moving. Out of the tree line stepped a massive man with bulging muscles, green skin, and he was almost as large as the emissary had been.

The orc looked around before raising a crude metal club and yelled at the duke’s men in challenge. The duke's men turned and seemed to come to the same decision as the all drew their weapons and didn't move.

Behind the orc the forest got brighter, like it was on fire. Then out of the forest more orcs came, carrying torches, they rushed past the first orc as they charged the waiting humans.

I ducked further into the confines of my hiding spot as the orcs ran past. The sounds of fighting could be heard echoing throughout the clearing. The screams of men died out and only the guttural language of the orcs remained.

I thought about taking a peek when shouting began, followed by the sounds of metal on flesh. The orcs began speaking quietly again and then I heard the tell-tail noises of them departing.

Carefully looking out from my hiding spot, I didn't see anyone around. Well anyone alive. The firelight revealed the corpses of the duke’s men that had chosen to stay and fight.

I climbed out and against my better judgement ran over to the bodies. The humans had been ripped to pieces and there was no signs of their weapons. Holding back the rising bile in my throat, I had to hope to find something better than my skinning knife to defend myself with.

I almost missed the body of an orc was laying there where it fell down between a number of fallen trees. It didn't take a physician to see its head had been caved in. Through the destruction to its face, I could only make out a single large tusk like tooth protruding from its lower jaw. Obviously one of the other orcs had killed it and not the humans.

I was about to turn and leave when I felt an uncontrollable urge to see if the orcs skin was as tough as the emissaries felt. The orcs had only been a head or two shorter than the emissary. Were they just as tough?

Crawling down into the crevice of trees the orc had fallen into, I reached over and pushed in on the skin of the orc's arm with one finger. Surprised, their skin wasn't that much different from a humans, maybe slightly tougher. Nowhere near as tough as the emissary's skin. Grabbing its arm I started to lift it when my hand seemed to sink into...

I came to floating in blackness, except for two bright orange lights that slowly made their way towards me. Once the two lights came to hover right in front of me they began to drop even smaller lights that floated down to slowly form into two completely naked individuals. One light formed an image of myself while the other formed into and image of an orc.

I couldn't help frowning over the difference between myself and the orc. I was pathetically small and weak looking. While I was well below two meters tall, the orc easily reached three meters.

Moving closer I was shocked to find I could look into and through their bodies. As I did this, different parts of their bodies lit up with different colors. While the image of my body always lit up in orange colors, I found the colors in the orc body varied between red, orange, and yellow.

I noticed that the brain of the orc was mostly different shades of red while its muscles and bones were all yellow. Like my image, it also had orange blood and a single portion of the brain that was orange. Lastly both our bodies were surrounded by an orange aura that held no meaning or significance to me.

I was very confused and since no one else was volunteering to assist me I decided to try something. Reaching out I touched the muscles of the orc and quickly moved away as they glowed and rushed over into the image of myself.

As this happened, the bright light above the image of myself split into two and now in the center stood another me but with increasing muscles.

I stood in awe as the new Larkin's muscles swelled to unbelievable proportions. It was almost comical how large they were. I looked up to see that the light above the new version of myself had turned a slightly lighter shade of orange. How I could tell this confused me, but it was easy for me to discern here.

Next I reached out and touched part of the orcs brain that was red and as it flowed and changed the new Larkin, I saw the light above him turn a darker shade of orange.

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I thought, "Is darker orange or lighter orange better, or did neither really have any purpose?"

Orcs were known to be very stupid and slow creatures, but that didn't stop them from being able to single handedly kill multiple humans on their own. If the duke's men had been able to take on a single orc they could have easily had a chance of surviving, unfortunately for them that hadn't been the case.

I decided that since orcs are dumber than humans the colors were a ranking red worse than orange. Since orcs were stronger than humans, then yellow must be better than orange.

Using that reasoning, I started selecting everything that was yellow on the orc. I also made sure to go back and change the red part of the brain back to orange, by selecting it from the original Larkin.

I ended up selecting the orc's muscles, bones, skin, lungs, heart, stomach, intestines... testicles? I really didn't understand the last choice I made, but I figured yellow was yellow. There wasn't anything different looking about them, as they were proportionally similarly sized. Also, nothing else down there was yellow, so I figured it must be something internal.

Now before me stood a green skinned, heavily muscled version of myself, with tusk like teeth sticking out of my mouth. Frowning, I wondered if it was possible to change the skin color and tusks. Also, this new me was also still my original height. I didn't see anything on the orc to suggest an option to change height.

That was when the new Larkin started growing taller and the rest of my body grew to match this new size. The image reached the height of the orc next to it, but I didn't like that either. I didn't want to be potentially confused with an orc. The new Larkin shrunk down to a height somewhere in between the orc and the original. I could only guess it must be a little over two meters tall. Changing my height did seem to affect the color of the light above my new form, but not by much.

Against my better judgement, I reduced the amount of muscle slightly, as it looked absurd on my shorter frame. If I wanted to be mistaken for a monster, leaving all this unnatural amount of muscle would be the best way. The color of the light above the new Larkin seemed to change back to the same hue it was before I increased the height.

Then continuing to focus, I removed the strange teeth and returned the skin color to my original color. I was grateful when this had not resulted in any color changes to the orange light.

There before me stood a version of myself that was larger and more heavily muscled. That was when I noticed the slave marks were missing and the crooked nose was fixed. Smiling, I couldn't help but think this version of myself handsome.

That seemed to be the trigger for me to leave.

Opening my eyes, everything was tinted in a red light. Moving was difficult and I felt constrained by something clinging all over my body. As I opened my mouth liquid rushed in and I began to choke and gag. I immediately began to panic and thrash around.

Getting my feet below me, I stood up stretching my arms as high as they would go. My hands broke free as I frantically tore at the substance that seemed to be loosely attached to the skin on my face.

The red tinted light broke and I was greeted with the sun. My body was covered in this fleshy substance that had to be torn off. Rubbing my naked body, I had no clue where my clothes had gone. Despite my efforts, pieces of skin and viscera still clung to me in places.

Looking down I shifted to see what it was that I just emerged from, only to see the remnants of the dead orcs face stretched out along one large strip of flesh I had just removed. Gagging I threw up whatever remained in my stomach until I began to dry heave.

I scrambled for answers and began mumbling to myself, “How in Jivana's arms did I get into that... thing? Did it try and eat me? Did it have something to do with that dream?”

Looking around, I realized it was noon. It had been the middle of the night when the emissary had first fallen. How long had I been in there?

Easily pulling myself out of the cluster of fallen trees, I paused to look down at the remains of the duke's men. Something had come by and had taken bits of flesh from some of them. I found it odd that these men looked smaller for some reason. More the size of teenage boys than grown men.

Looking down at myself I discovered why. I was huge. Muscles bulged all over my body and my hands were massive. It was bizarre, like waking up in someone else's body. Realizing something else from my dream, I reached up to touch my nose and cheeks. Gone was my crooked nose and slave brands. The dream hadn't been a dream.

I sat down on the earth next to the remains of the men, to stunned to move away.

Would I be able to go back into town? Surely someone would recognize me… Wait, how would they? Yes, my face was the same, but I was almost a meter taller and grown my previous weight in muscle. Getting up I decided to head back to town.

Stopping myself again, I realized that was the directions the orcs went. Looking down I also remembered that I wasn't wearing anything. The air was still freezing, I just didn't feel it as I used to.

Unfortunately, that wouldn't stop the town guards for arresting me for walking around without a stitch on. That would be exactly what I needed. Escaping slavery only to be arrested and branded again.

Running back to where my camp used to be, I hunted around and was able to find a few of my furs and my fur cloak. It hung on my like a short cape. My most important bits still hung freely in the wind. I also found my backpack and bow. Unfortunately the bow was broken.

Using my knife and rope, meant for stringing up the deer, I fashioned a fur skirt out of the scraps. The skirt wouldn't be showing up in any of the local stores, but it should get him back into the town till he could find something more presentable.

Tossing his bow into the brush he pulled on his pack and headed back towards town.