Ethan Morris woke up to the sensation of silk sheets against his skin, which was the first sign something was terribly wrong. The threadbare cotton sheets in his room had never felt like this, and no hospital in his town was going to give people nice sheets.
The second sign was the ceiling—dark wooden beams crossed above him instead of the familiar water stains he'd reported to housing maintenance time and time again to no avail. He sat up, heart pounding, and that's when he noticed his hands. They weren't his hands. These were longer, more elegant, with a silver ring on the right index finger that seemed to pulse with a faint blue light.
"What the—" He stopped mid-sentence, startled by the rich baritone that emerged instead of his usual voice.
A heavy pounding at the door made him jump. "Gilbert! I know you're in there!" The voice was female, authoritative, and distinctly annoyed.
Ethan scrambled out of bed, tangling himself in the silk sheets and nearly falling. He caught his reflection in a full-length mirror and froze. The face staring back at him belonged to a man perhaps several years older than him—sharp cheekbones, piercing green eyes, dark hair that did not have a single strand out of place, and slightly pointed ears. He was taller, fitter, and dressed in black silk pajamas that probably cost more than Ethan's entire wardrobe.
The pounding continued. "Gilbert Shadowveil, if you don't open this door in the next ten seconds, I'm coming in magically, and you know how much paperwork that creates!"
Panic seized him. This had to be a dream. A very vivid, very detailed dream where he somehow ended up in the body of someone named Gilbert Shadowveil. He pinched himself. It hurt. He slapped his face. It hurt even more.
"Five seconds!"
"I'm—I'm coming!" he called out, still startling at the unfamiliar voice. He looked wildly around the room. It was spacious, with walls lined with books and strange artifacts. Crystal spheres glowed softly on floating shelves. A thin, elegant wand was placed reverently on a special cushion on the side table, emanating a subtle purple light. Everything here was elegant and carefully made, and not a speck of dust was in sight.
"Three... two..."
Ethan yanked the door. It was locked.
Where the hell were the keys?!
He looked around in rising panic, as the woman on the other side threatened all kinds of physical harm to both him and the door in between them. He always just kept his keys in the lock anyway, why would they be hidden away somewhere?
He found a set of elegant, golden keys placed neatly in a tiny, shimmering box. He tried one, and it didn’t fit. The second key yowled like an angry cat when he brought it close to the lock. The third key…
Click.
On the other side of the door stood a striking elven woman; her silver hair was tied up in a severe looking bun, her purple eyes shooting daggers at Ethan. She wore a perfectly tailored, charcoal pantsuit, and sparks of arcane energy crackled at her fingertips.
"Finally," she said, striding past him into the apartment. "Care to explain why you're not answering your work calls? We have three missed calls and a dead curator at the Museum of Magical Artifacts. We’ve been called in to help investigate."
"I was... sleeping?" Ethan offered weakly.
The woman - a faint little voice in his head offered the name Lysandra - turned to face him with an expression of disbelief. “Sleeping? You? At nine in the morning?” She moved closer, studying his face. “And what’s with that face, Gilbert?”
Ethan backed away, bumping into a table. A crystal paperweight wobbled, and without thinking, he reached to steady it. The moment his fingers touched it, it lit up with swirling colors of yellow and magenta. He did not miss the eyebrow raise Lysandra (?) gave at that display of colors.
“Extreme anxiety and confusion,” she said. “What the fuck did you do, Gilbert?”
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
"I'm fine!" he said quickly, snatching his hand away from the crystal. "Just... had a late night. Studying. Cases! Studying cases."
Lysandra's eyes narrowed further. "Right. Well, whatever's going on with you, it'll have to wait. Get dressed. The curator's body is still warm, and the Head Curator of the Arcalis Museum is breathing down the Captain of the Guard’s neck, and you owe him roughly a dozen favors too many and now he’s breathing down our necks to get that case solved. We need to move, and roughly an hour ago at that."
"Yes! Yes, of course. Just let me..." Ethan looked around frantically. Where would a magical detective keep his clothes? "...get dressed."
"Your closet is still in the same place it's been for the past five years, Gilbert." Lysandra's tone was dripping with suspicion now. She crossed her arms, waiting.
Ethan’s mind was racing, afraid the elven woman might fireball him if he acted too suspiciously. “Yes, uh- can I get some privacy, please?”
Lysandra looked at him. Ethan got a feeling she’s the kind of person who treats eye contact like a competitive sport - and were it a competitive sport, she’d deserve an Olympic gold.
She placed a small, empty hourglass on the table.
“Downstairs. Five minutes. If you’re not there in time, I’ll teleport you to the scene as-is, so make sure you’re decent.”
Black sand filled the hourglass and began to drip down. Ethan did not have the time to say anything before she walked out the door, as abruptly as she came in.
He began to frantically search through every dresser, shelf, and any kind of furniture that looked like it could hold clothes. He finally opened a door next to the bedroom he awoke in to find a walk-in closet.
I’ve lived in apartments smaller than this, he thought grimly as he searched for whatever might be appropriate attire to wear to a crime scene. Everything in this closet was soft, well-made, and felt expensive. He frantically grabbed whatever simple, no-nonsense clothes he could find and ran for the bathroom, wondering if toothpaste exists in whatever strange world he found himself in.
It did exist indeed, and it tasted strangely bitter. He barely had the time to brush his - Gilbert’s - teeth before the little hourglass started to emit a high pitched, warning sound, and the sand turned bright red - what little remained of the sand, anyway.
Ethan swallowed hard and ran down the stairs, leaving the cursed hourglass behind.
He noted that Gilbert must have lived in a luxury apartment of sorts in a very tall tower. He was relieved to find an elevator, operated by a chipper little goblin woman dressed in impeccable uniform. Her name tag said Xâē, and no helpful voice in his head suggested how that might be pronounced.
“Good morning, Mr. Shadowveil!” she said, in an impossibly high-pitched voice. “Always great to see you! Bottom floor, I assume? Your partner just went down, and boy oh boy did she seem to be in a foul mood.”
Ethan chuckled awkwardly. “Bottom floor, yes. And her, haha… oh, you know how it is with her.”
Xâē laughed. “Miss Lysandra is always so serious! Though it sure makes sense, with all that nasty work you two do. My late husband, may he rest among the stars, was a guardsman, you see- oh, the stories he’d tell me about some of the cases he’s seen. Granted, he was an accountant for the Guard, that is, and I know the guard and a private eye like yourself are two very different- oh my, here’s the bottom floor already! Take care, Mr. Shadowveil!”
Ethan said goodbye to the goblin and walked briskly out the elevator, feverishly looking for his - Gilbert’s - partner. The bottom floor of the tower was just as elegant as the apartment he woke up in, but a lot brighter - large windows were open wide, letting in fresh, warm air. Outside, he saw trees in full bloom, swaying gently in the lazy, summer breeze.
“Hope you took your allergy potion last night,” Lysandra’s voice caught him off-guard, as she silently appeared right behind him. “The augurblossoms are in full bloom.”
“Hm? Oh, yeah,” he muttered.
Lysandra looked him up and down. “Experimenting with your style at a time like this, hm?” she shook her head. “Let’s go. I have a coach waiting outside.”
Ethan nodded perhaps a bit too enthusiastically and hurried toward the exit.
It took all his self control to not audibly gasp when he stepped outside.
The city was beautiful - tall towers and spires reached up towards the sky, with the central spire - one made of marble so white it was blinding - reaching far up above the clouds. The streets were clean and full of vibrant greenery and plants he’s never seen before; flowers so big you could wear them as a hat and bushes with blue leaves. The fashion was different from what he was used to, and while he knew nothing about fashion, magical or otherwise, it seemed to him like some mixture between Victorian and steampunk outfits, but with a lot less browns and a lot more colors. He noticed a young, perhaps 15-year-old girl wearing a school uniform, a large witch’s hat, and walking a large dog covered in flames and sporting large horns.
Lysandra motioned for him to step inside a coach, which was pulled by two pitch-black horses who did not give off shadows.
“Let’s go, Shadowveil. We’ve got cases to solve.”