The empty glass bottle span through the air, flung out of the speeding convertible, to hit square centre in the middle of a large green road sign. It shattered, spraying shards of broken glass about.

In the back of his brother’s convertible, the wind whistling though his sun-bleached hair, Chance Cranlin pumped his fists in triumph. “He shoots, he scores!” he bellowed.

From the front passenger seat, Amber, his brother’s girlfriend turned towards him, a glare on her face; not just a glare, but anger directed at him, her eyes blazing with it. “What are you doing?” she snapped. “That could have been recycled.”

Chance flashed her a mischievous grin; annoying her was one of the joys of his life, and it was all so easy. “It’s not as if I need the few cents you get for turning it in,” he told her.

“It is not the money,” she replied, lips a thin, disapproving line. “It is the principle of the matter. We all need to be doing our part.”

And there it was, the phrase that he had come to detest, the phrase she was always sprouting. Doing our part. He did what he wanted, not what others tried to pressure him in to doing.

The worst part was that she lured his older, once sensible, brother into her lifestyle. They had met at first year of university, where she was studying some mix of law and environmental studies, and he had soon given up on life. He had given up on meat, except the odd piece of bacon when the cravings got too hard, on the luxury holidays they had taken with one parent or the other. He had even sold his beloved V8 and bought an EV. The new car they were riding in barely made a sound. A car was meant to purr when it wasn’t roaring. This one was all wrong.

“Others can do their part,” he retorted. “I enjoy my life. I ain’t going to give up what I’ve got. If others want to sacrifice, then that is their choice, not mine.”

The glare intensified; he could see the blood rising in her face, a sure sign that she was about to go off on one of her lectures. It was an old path the two trod, one that she could not win but didn't stop trying to.

“If you two have quite finished,” Chance’s brother, Declan, interrupted, “I was up studying late last night and could do without the distractions.”

“Talk to your girlfriend, bro. I’m just trying to enjoy my life here and she wants to lecture me.”

“That’s enough,” Declan snapped, the car beginning to drift as he turned towards Chance. “Oh bisc…” he started to say.

Blackness….

The shriek of tearing metal….

The song of shattering glass…

The sensation of drifting…

Bright light fading to red.

Screams, screams everywhere. Who did they come from? Where did they come from?

A voice, indistinct, distant, spoke. “Can you hear me?”

Sirens, flashing lights, the dull thump of rotor blades.

“...multiple injuries….”

Blackness.

A low, repetitive beep, beep, beep of some machine near at hand.

“How is he?” His mother’s voice. “What is going on?” His father. Strange, his parents hadn’t been in the same room, let alone spoke together for years.

Thoughts slipping away, remaining unformed, ungrasped. He couldn’t concentrate; he had to concentrate. Nothing responded when he tried to move, tried to talk.

Another voice, unknown. “...very serious…” “Few options.”

“...do anything..” His father again.

“...experiment…” Again the unknown voice.

“Please.” His mother.

This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.

Blackness again.

“Chance? Chance Cranlin?”

Chance blinked, confused. He was seated in a room, in front of a large desk, and across from him, behind it, sat a man with a pair of glasses on, with thinning greying hair. The man looked familiar and yet Chance couldn’t place him. Had they met before?

The room itself was of the type that he had been in many times before, a well appointed school office. He had practically lived in them over the years; some days it felt like he had been in them more than in classrooms.

“I was asking how you were doing,” the man asked, speaking patiently. “You blanked out on me for a moment there.”

“I…I…, yeah, I was elsewhere.” The headaches, the loss of time and awareness, they had become all too common an experience since the incident. He couldn’t recall entering the office, and yet he must have done.

“That I can see,” the man responded. “So, how are you going?”

Chance stared at the man - couldn’t even remember his name. For just a moment, there had been the impression that they had been sitting somewhere else, that there had been sunlight streaming own upon them and the man had been…different. Just for a second, and not even that, so quick that he was not sure that he had seen it at all. That was new, different from his usual issues.

“How I am going?”

“Yes,” the man replied with near inexhaustible calm. “You have not been yourself ever since the tragic incident.” Tragic incident; it was funny how people sidestepped saying what had actually happened.

“I am sorry, I’m a little confused here. Who are you again?”

“I am your counsellor, Chance,” the man told him. “I am here to help you.”

“I don’t need help,” Chance snapped reflexively, bristling at the suggestion.

The counsellor quirked a brow in Chance’s direction as he picked up a thick file of papers. “This begs otherwise,” he told Chance. He opened the file and started leafing through the pages. “Chance Cranlin. Age seventeen. Kicked out of four schools over the years. One of them twice.”

Chance grinned. “Good times.”

The counsellor peered over the top of his glasses at Chance before continuing on. “As I was saying, kicked out of four schools, but with your parents money there was always a new place willing to take the risk with you. Mixed academic results. If you don’t care for a subject, you don’t put in any effort, but if you do apply yourself you do well enough. Except your focus is usually elsewhere, like girls, or your band. Esquire Fore, I believe you call it.”

“We are starting to get noticed,” Chance replied, a surge of pride rising through him. “We are getting listened to, talked about.”

The counsellor read from one of the pages in the file. “I am not sure how with some of these lyrics. I’ve got what is mine, ain’t none of you taking it from me, and, I’m not sticking around, don’t even want to know your name.”

“The chicks dig it,” Chance replied smugly.

“Yes, that is another matter isn’t it. You have a bit of a reputation in that regards.”

“I’ve never done anything wrong,” Chance was swift to interrupt. He’d always had the reputation of being a bad boy, with the looks and money to back it up, and adding lead singer of a rock band to that just made the temptation all that much more stronger. The chicks were drawn to him and he enjoyed it, even if he didn’t take any of them too seriously; they knew what they were getting in to at the start.

“Well, that is a matter of semantics. There have been complaints, from parents mostly. Not of a criminal nature, but still, you have at times not behaved exactly well.”

“Look, what is the meaning of all this?” Chance interrupted, a touch of anger in his voice. “Why are you doing this?”

“I was assigned to you, Master Cranlin. I am doing my job, which is to help you.”

“I don’t need any help,” Chance said again, this time even more firmly.

A slight shake of the head came from the counsellor. “You are not making my task any easier, Chance. I need to find out about you if I am to help you live a full and rewarding life.”

“What if I don’t want that?”

“What you want is not always relevant.”

Chance folded his arms across his chest, slouching back in his chair. “What I want is not relevant?” he asked. “Hello, I’m Chance Cranlin. You are supposed to be helping me, not denying me.”

An eyebrow arched from the counsellor. “If you don’t know what it is you want, how am I meant to be helping you? The rest of your life depends on that fact.”

“Fine, do you want to know what I really want?” Chance asked, a touch sullen.

“Please.”

“I want to be left alone, to not have people endlessly lecture me, to badger me to do things I don’t want to do. I want to do things my way, do you understand? Esquire Fore is my way of living my life.” There was a fire in his words, an anger that came from deep-seated issues that he hadn’t really put into words before. Everyone always felt that they knew what was best for him, the way he should live his life, what he should do for the future. Well, they were wrong. He knew what was best for himself. And if he made a few mistakes along the way, so what? Everyone else did to.

The counsellor smiled at that. “Ah, there it is.” He folded up the file, tapping it against the desk to get all the sheets back in order. “Rather than listen to sound advice or guidance, you are willing to sabotage your own life in order to spite others, just to prove you are in charge.”

“I wouldn’t put it like that exactly.”

“You wouldn’t? No, I guess you wouldn’t. I think that we have enough to go on with for now. Yes, more than enough. It is time to put those convictions of yours to good use. We are going to engage in a little roleplay, Chance, one that I think will be good for you. How do you feel about being a dwarven druid?”

Chance blinked in surprise, and in that blink the world and everything in it changed.