Everything felt as if it was compressing in around Chance, shrinking, tightening. The world around him, his body, all of it. Skin pulled tight across his frame and his breathing came in short gasps as his body squeezed around his lungs. It was not painful, more of a discomfort, the constriction that gripped him, reducing him. All of this while around him the office and all in it, bar the desk, faded away. Vision blurred, his brain feeling as if it was being gripped by a vice that was squeezing slowly shut tighter and tighter.

He fell forward from his seat, calloused hands coming to rest on grass, his beard hanging down to brush the ground. Amongst the confusion, it took a few moments for those facts to register. Grass, hands, beard. No, that wasn’t right. They weren’t his. They couldn’t be his.

He staggered back up, looking at the hands before him, turning them over. They were too small, far too stocky compared to his hands, being dirt stained and calloused from much wear as well. And the beard; it was long enough that he could see it, thick and dull brown in colour, not to mention unkept, like that worn by some wild man or outlaw. He had no beard, had never had a beard, and his hair should have been a sun bleached blond, not this mundane colouring.

“No, no, no ,no no!” he heard himself say, and even the voice was wrong. It was too deep and too gruff.

The office was no longer around him, the shelves of books that had lined it, the certificates hanging on the walls, all of it gone, replaced by a forest glade. Long green grass spread underfoot and all around the small clearing were tall trees, rising high, branches spreading above in a woven lattice work that allowed beams of golden sunlight to shine down through them. Butterflies danced between the trees and sunlight, while birds flittered about above, singing as they went. There was a gentle breeze, and a soft warmth and all of it was wrong.

Despite his reputation as a bad boy, he had never touched drugs. The odd drink, sure, and even that in moderation, but nothing that would ever lead to a loss of self-control, of awareness. He’d had an operation once, as a kid, one that had required anaesthetic to put him under. The recovery had been brutal, one of the worst experiences of his life, a slow wakefulness during which he could not control himself properly, couldn’t even think properly, flopping about, his limbs not doing as directed, unable to speak. Dimly aware of what was taking place but completely unable to do anything that he wanted, to make himself known. He’d hated it and never wanted an experience like that again. He had been around some who had done drugs, and some of the trips that they had described were, well, trippy. Kind of like what he was experiencing. It couldn’t have been drugs though, so what on earth was going on?

Oddly, the desk remained behind, as solid as ever, and the comfortable chairs, all unchanged from what they had looked like when in the office. The counsellor still remained seated behind the desk; in some manner he was the same as ever except now he looked older, with a long grey beard of his own and rather than a suit he wore a grey robe.

Chance’s clothes had changed too, he realised. Gone was his poor attempt at a school uniform, replaced now by heavy boots, dun coloured woollen trousers and a dark green woollen tunic, belted around the waist with a thick leather belt.

He started to walk towards the desk, finding that his balance was thrown out as he did. His body felt too small, his legs too short compared to what he was used to, not to mention all the extra weight that it felt like he was carrying. It threw him off, being reminiscent of the feeling when missing a step when walking down them.

“What have you done to me?” he demanded, his deep sounding voice coming out with a louder roar than he was expecting. Oddly, it was a voice that he could admire. It had a rich timbre to it, one that would make a fine baritone singing voice. It was a strange fact to focus on, but he clung to it given the shock he was going through, the jumble that his thoughts were in.

Stolen story; please report.

The Counsellor looked up from where he was studying a bundle of parchments in his hand. “Ah, Chance Craghand.”

“What? No, that is not my name!” Chance snapped. He somehow made it over to the chair without falling over, a miracle in itself, and slumped into it. He needed to sit down, to think, to recover, to make some sense of the confusion.

“Hrm, it says otherwise here,” The Counsellor said, indicating the parchments. “Chance Craghand, aged forty seven, dwarf and an initiate of the Druidic Conclave.”

“No, no, no! Whatever game it is you are playing, that isn’t me. I’m Chance Cranlin. Seventeen. Lead singer of Esquire Forte, and sometimes a student as well. What is this place and what have you done to me?”

If The Counsellor still had glasses, he would have been looking over the top of them given the manner in which he gazed at Chance. “I am helping you here, Master Craghand.”

“Send me back. Now!” Chance demanded. “When my parents find out about this, they will sue you so hard that you’ll wish you had never been born. I never agreed to this, never gave my permission. I know my rights.”

“You wish to get out?”

“Of course,” Chance snapped. “Didn’t you hear me?” He was angry, he felt uncomfortable in the wrongly shaped body that he had been stuffed into, not to mention that he had never consented to whatever this thing was that was going on. Anger, pure and raw, rolled though him, all of it directed at the one in front of him.

“I sense…hostility.” The Counsellor said it placidly, as if he was unconcerned by it.

“Too right you do. Now, d’ya ken what I’m saying, laddie, or am I gonna have to give ya a right hard kicking?” The words that came out of his mouth startled Chance; they might have reflected the message that he wanted to convey, but not the manner in which it was done. No to mentioned that he had never said anything sounding like that before in his life. “What in Crathag’s Oily Beard is happening?”

“You are assuming the role, Chance. Don’t fight it.”

Chance took a deep breath to try and calm his frayed nerves down; it worked only partially. He leant forward, sturdy hands gripping tight to the edge of he desk in front of him. “Look,” he said, forcing himself to say the words properly, “I just want to know what is going on, where I am and how I get out of here.”

The Counsellor leant back in his chair, steepling his fingers together in front of his face. “Where you are is Arhad Zhur, in the realm of Varhaq Qasdar.”

For some reason he knew what the names meant, though he had never heard them spoken before, or anything like them. Arhad Zhur; Land of the People of Iron. Varhaq Qasdar; The Watchful Dream. Except it was more than that, a bit more nuanced if you knew the word aright; The Watchful Dream was the literal translation but it went beyond that. It implied a dream of rest and recovery after long and arduous labours, all the while being watched over and guarded by a trusted companion to ensure that no harm came upon you whilst sleeping.

Knowledge unlocked: Zhurazhi

Language; Dwarven

Affinity; Lore

A voice spoke, sounding exactly like The Counsellor, seemingly directly into his mind with words of flame, words that seared into his consciousness. It couldn’t have been the other man though, for his lips had not moved as the voice spoke to him.

“What did you say?”

“I said that where you are is the land of Arhad Zhur…”

“No, after that,” Chance cut in. “About knowledge unlocked.”

“I never said anything of the kind.”

Chance frowned, overwhelmed. “It sure sounded like you.” His brain had not been functioning right, what with all the shocks he had been receiving, and so it took a while for his thoughts to tick over, for a startling conclusion to come to him. “Wait, I’m in a game?”