There was a buzzing noise.

This would, in and of itself, not be that strange, of course. The world is full of buzzing things, so hearing a buzzing noise in any fashion should not be a reason to believe that something was strange.

However, in Mervin’s particular case, he should be dead. There should be no noise whatsoever, buzzing or otherwise. In fact, now that he thought about it, it should be equally impossible for him to be thinking about anything at all. Being dead should mean that he would not be able to think anything. Therefore, thinking about it a little, Mervin came to the conclusion that he was not dead.

But if he was not dead… why was he not feeling anything? Or seeing? It seemed that, aside from hearing, none of his senses was working. There were no smells in the air, nothing of the sweat that should be present on a hot day like this – was it even still a hot day? He did not feel the clammy heat on his skin, or his clothes, or anything at all for that matter. Like he did not have a skin at all.

Maybe he was a ghost? Maybe that was why he could not feel anything? But then, why was he able to hear, but not see? None of it seemed to make sense at all. There was no logic. The fact that there was no logic irked Mervin a little. His life so far had been about logical things, science and facts, and he was usually able to understand what was going on in most situations. However, as much as he was trying to make sense of things now, he had of course never died before, so it stood to reason that he could not make out what was going on completely, since he had no frame of reference. If he was even dead. Which, given the fact that he was still thinking, he was still uncertain of.

As he lay there pondering (was he even laying? How could you tell if you cannot feel your body?) he was surprised by a bright white light that was suddenly his whole vision. One moment there was the purest black he had ever experienced, and the next there was only white in his entire vision. He tried to make a noise in surprise, but there was no change in the buzzing that he kept hearing.

Or was there? It seemed like the buzzing was starting to have some variation, if he focused enough. Similarly, the white that was filling his vision started to get some colour to it. The buzzing started diminishing, and other sounds started filtering through the noise. Coloured blotches started filling his vision instead of the monochrome white as well. As the process continued, after a few minutes, his vision was starting to turn into something comprehensible though blurry, and the buzzing noise started fading away almost completely, leaving him to hear many sounds.

There was a soft whisper of wind rustling through leaves. Birds singing in some faraway place. Still several soft humming and buzzing noises, but no longer all-encompassing and monotone, but with a lot of variation in their pitches and volumes. Most importantly however, was the fact that, as he was listening to the symphony the world created around him purely by existing, a voice suddenly spoke out through the sounds.

“He should be able to understand us now.”

It was a deep voice, with little emotional inflection. A hard voice, ever so slightly raspy. It was speaking words that were not at all any language that Mervin had ever heard before, yet he was able to understand the words perfectly.

“How can ye tell?” A second voice answered the statement. This one sounded like it belonged to a slightly aged person, with a slight but noticeable accent in the words. “I’ve detected no change in the rune readings fer at least five minutes now.”

“I’m feeling for his soul.” Replied the first voice again. “I’m not certain, but there is a certain alertness to his being now that was missing a few minutes ago. It feels like someone waking up, except waking up usually goes faster.”

Soul? Rune readings? What on earth were they on about? Mervin had no idea what was going on, and a slight panic started to grab hold of him, not in the least because he was apparently in a room with two people talking about some deep fantasy stuff as if it was the most normal thing in the world, but also in part because he was still unable to see straight or move anything. Not to mention that despite his hearing and sight coming back, he was still unable to feel or smell anything.

“He is panicking.” A third voice cut into the conversation. This one was female, warm and smooth, and somehow conjured up a feeling like golden flowing silk, if that makes any sense. Even if it does not, that is the feeling Mervin associated with it.

“I’ll say.” Voice two responded. “His functionality fer moving has not engaged at all yet. I think if I woke up in a strange place, unable to move and surrounded by unknown people, I’d be in quite tha panic me’self.”

“Please try to calm him, Ilna.” The voice of a young girl interrupted. “We’re not in a hurry yet, and Neera needs more time to recover anyways.”

A bigger blotch of colour moved over Mervin’s vision and blotted out most of the ambient light.

“Hey there, young one.” The warm female voice from earlier, apparently belonging to this ‘Ilna’, came from the blotch, which was probably a blurry face hovering over him. “Please, don’t be scared. I know this must be scary and weird, but we mean you no harm, and we will do what we can to help you. You…” some movement in the blotch. “Lor, he should be able to move soon, right?” She addressed someone to the side.

“Aye, at some point.” The somewhat aged, accented voice acknowledged.

“…right.” Came the resigned reply. The blotch moved a bit again. “You should be able to move soon, so please just wait a moment longer and we will be able to speak to each other, okay? Then you can tell us what is frightening you so much, and we will be able to help you.”

As she finished speaking, Mervin’s vision finally got as clear as his hearing – and what a vision it was.

In front of him was the most perfect face he had ever seen. The skin looked softer than any person’s he had ever seen, the face was somehow perfectly symmetrical, with not a feature out of place and not a single spot or blemish. Dark brown hair was hanging, almost flowing away from her face, towards his own as she was apparently hanging right above him. But the most captivating were her eyes. They were slightly narrower than he was used to in people, yet somehow their curve was so smooth as to feel like it was purposely carved in a way so as to flow, without a single straight line in them. And her irises were green, but they did not look like any kind of eye colour Mervin had seen before. The colour in her eyes seemed to almost flow around, as if it was a liquid flowing in her eyes, the colour seeming to speak of fields of grass and young trees. It was enough to take Mervin’s breath away.

And that, of course, made him realise that he was not breathing to begin with and he immediately panicked again.

As if the beautiful face in front of him could sense his panic despite his unmoving state, her face looked pained at his feelings. “Please, whatever is scaring you, try to realise that nothing is wrong, and as soon as you are able to move, we will be able to help you with it.” She implored him.

Thanks to her words, Mervin started to calm down again. Indeed, now that he took two seconds to analyse his own situation, he managed to realise that, despite not breathing, he was not experiencing any choking feeling at all. Like the weird beautiful woman said, while everything was undoubtably weird, there was nothing immediately wrong. In response to his calming down, the face above him started smiling slightly, and now he was suddenly very glad that he calmed down. If her face was beautiful, her smile was absolutely breath-taking.

After only a few short moments of this, Ilna pulled her face away from over him, and he was able to get the first good look at the place he was in. It was unlike any room he had ever seen.

There were holes in the ceiling as if the place was somehow massively old, yet the parts of the wall and ceiling he could see where there were no holes looked completely smooth. Various lights were visible from the corners of his vision, but without being able to turn his head, he would be unable to see what they were. Along the walls and across the ceiling, in the undamaged places, there were patterns drawn on the surfaces, intricate and complex, written in symbols and characters he had no way of deciphering. Since he had nothing else to do, however, he spent the next few minutes looking at the ceiling, trying to find any pattern whatsoever in the weird markings.

“Something’s changing.” Came probably-Lor’s voice.

And indeed; Mervin felt it. It was not so much a physical feeling like he was used to, but there was some change in how he felt all the same. It was like he became aware of his body for the first time. Taking this as his que, he tried to move his head – and failed to do anything.

“munfh” A sounds came from his mouth.

It did not sound at all like his old voice. It was almost synthesised, the way a robotic computer voice would sound. Mervin froze. He tried to move his head again, and slowly, very slowly, his vision started tilting forward… to gaze upon something that was not supposed to be there.

Where his body should be, there was something like a skeleton, made of an unknown material, absolutely littered with the same type of symbols that were also on the ceiling and the walls, except these symbols were glowing slightly, some of them blue, and most of them red. Everything started to come together as his mind exploded with realisation. No wonder he did not feel like a human anymore.

He wasn’t a human anymore.

Mervin had turned into a sort of robot.

Mervin responded to this new information in the same calm, rational way he usually approached new information.

“AAAAAAAAAH!”

His synthesised voice filled the room with a robotic scream, and he scrambled away from himself.

“Wait! Stop! Don’t be scared, we can help you!” Ilna’s voice reached him. He looked at her, and saw two pointy ears that had been hidden behind the curtain of her hair the first time he saw her.

“AAAAAAH!!”

His voice processor somehow went even louder at this unexpected revelation. He turned around – and came face to face with a nightmare.

The thing in front of him looked mostly human, except that from its nails to its lips to its long hair, it was pitch black. He looked up into its eyes, which were also pitch black, and then it opened its mouth, which somehow and completely conversely had incredibly white teeth, but then those teeth were also sharp and pointy as if from a demon and combined with the otherwise pitch black appearance of the human-shaped thing it was somehow way more unsettling to see those white, sharp predator’s teeth shine out of the darkness.

“Would you stop SCREAMING!” The thing hollered at him.

“AAAAH!!!”

He turned around again, only to be caught by Ilna, who was surprisingly strong enough to not only catch him, but completely prevent him from moving any further at all.

“Hey!” She yelled at him, and somehow, her shout, compared with her angry and upset face, got through to him, and in an instant, his panic was gone, replaced by a feeling of calmness that was pleasant, yet on a deeper level also sort of wrong. It was more pleasant than wrong, however, so for the moment he just accepted this next weird twist of circumstances, and as his body somehow started going limp, he let himself relax. When Ilna released him, he sank down on the floor into a sort of sitting position, his head and eyes swivelling between the beautiful face in front of him and the monster behind him.

“I’m so sorry.” Ilna mumbled, causin Mervin to now focus his attention solely on her. “I hate using magic to calm someone’s emotions, but we’re honestly in enough trouble as it is without you going into a rampage on top of it all.”

In his state of forced calmness, Mervin started thinking. He could look at his body and see that it was robotic now, so either he was hardcore hallucinating, or he was somehow placed into a machine. If it weren’t for his calmness, he would have believed the former more likely, but even while hallucinating, or perhaps especially while hallucinating, it seemed weird that he would be this calm. He had never studied the science behind hallucinations in particular, but somehow he would expect that, if he were losing control of his mind, he would not be this much in control of himself. He looked at his hand, and moved it. It was, at this point, responding almost exactly like he wanted it to move, except that he still did not feel anything. Out of curiosity, he looked to his left, while drawing his finger in a wavy line over the ground, forcefully, making a grinding noise as he did so.

“Um… what are you doing?” Ilna asked him.

Instead of responding, he lifted his hand away, and looked to his right. There, on the ground, was a faint pattern of scratches that he would expect to be there after his movement. He bent closer to the ground to study the pattern, and found the details in the scratches to be within his expectations. Then, he looked at his finger tip, where some tiny scratches were also visible. If this was a hallucination, it was a very detailed one, one that completely matches his expectations of what would happen if this were reality. Combined with his earlier logic, however far-fetched it might seem, he was starting to arrive at the most likely conclusion, that…

“… this is not a hallucination, is it.” He said blankly.

“I’m afraid not.” Came Ilna’s gentle voice.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“And it’s not a dream either.” He looked up at her. “It’s all real.” It was as much a statement as it was a question.

“I’m afraid so.”

Her face mirrored his sadness when he started to understand the implications of that. Everything he had known was gone. Well, technically, from their perspective, he would be gone, but the details of the situation did not change the practicality of it: he had died, he had woken up in a new world, and from the way Ilna was looking at him he was guessing that it was if not for good, then at least for a very long time.

“Can you… stop… whatever it is you’re doing to control my emotions?” He asked her. “I think I need to feel sad for a while.” The longer his calm state was going on, the more wrong it was starting to feel.

“I wish I could do that, but the kind of change you will be experiencing will need time, which we don’t have right now.” Ilna sat down in front of him, and rested her hand on his cheek. “In fact, we don’t have very much time at all. I wish I could explain more right now, but the most important thing you need to know right now is that we mean you no harm, but there are others who will.” When Mervin looked at her in confusion, she sighed. “Look, you don’t know anything about this world, and explaining would take too long. Some very dangerous people will arrive here soon, and they’ll be looking for us. If they fid you here instead then…”

“Then what? Mervin pushed, when she stopped talking.

“They’ll have questions, and not the fun kind.” The black thing behind him butted in. “Look, kid, I know I look terrifying, but I’m a doozie compared to some of the things that could be showing up here, and as much as I don’t like you, you’d be better off with us.

Mervin, still somewhat scared by him, but feeling bold enough in his calm state to at least respond to him when he was directly spoken to, frowned at him. “Why don’t you like me?”

“He doesn’t like anyone.” Came a new voice. To his left, a young girl was sitting on a rock, overlooking the situation. She looked way too young to be in such a serious situation. If Mervin had to guess, he would put her at about 7 or maybe 8 years old. She had very long hair that fell loosely from her head all the way down to just above her legs, starting at a normal blonde colour near her scalp, then fading into lighter and lighter shades further away from her skin. Her face was cute in the normal way that children can be, but her eyes were somehow different. Not different like Ilna’s eyes, which looked literally magical, or the eyes of the thing behind him which were alien and creepy. No, her eyes looked like a normal person’s, but the wisdom and age they spoke of completely belied her otherwise childish appearance. They seemed to be studying him just as much as Mervin was studying her, which was another first for him; never before had someone showed such open and honest interest in him.

After they studied each other in silence for what seemed like a lot longer than it probably was, she was the first to speak.

“Look here chap, we can talk long or short about this, but take a look around you. Look at us. All of us. And when you’re done, don’t tell me what you think. Just tell me if you would rather stay with us, or try your chance at some unknown factor you have no information on.”

While it was not unheard of for Mervin to be speechless, it certainly did not happen often. Yet as he looked into her eyes, he found that there was nothing to say to that, really. The girl was simply right. He made his decisions by analysing things and drawing conclusions from his observations, which she apparently understood about him. And while it looked like Ilna would be more than happy to give him more information about this ‘unknown factor’ as the girl had put it, the fact of the matter was that everything they told him would only be hearsay, and since this group and the unknown people were apparently enemies of sorts, that meant just about nothing to him. He wondered if the girl had somehow realised how he thought, or if she had just gotten a lucky guess there by phrasing her words like that, but her face was absolutely unreadable, so he was left guessing for now.

Not getting any further with her, just like she said, the next logical step for Mervin would be to look at everyone in the room. For starters, somewhat more to his left and slightly behind him, there was a rather large man standing just in front of and to the side of a hole in the building that looked like it had once fitted a door. Where he stood, he had a perfect view of the room including the entrance, while not being immediately visible from the outside. He stood perfectly still in a stance that reminded him of a soldier at rest, or perhaps even a martial artist. Calm and sure, he gave off the feeling that he was in control. The only part of his body that made any significant movements were his brown eyes, which were constantly flitting around the room. Studying his eye movements, it soon became clear to Mervin that the man was scanning all openings in the ceiling and walls, not nervously, but in a set pattern, lingering on every opening just long enough to confirm that nothing was coming in there, before looking at the next. Another thing he noticed was that the man never stopped to look at any of the people in the room. Filing that information away for later, Mervin looked to see what he could learn of the man’s body, which looked naturally tan, and had muscles that were slightly bigger than you saw on soldiers on tv, but not as ridiculous as on body builders. He had black hair that was cut fairly short, ending above his eyes and ears. His clothes were a dark blue, with thin golden lines forming intricate patterns, though nowhere near as complex as the patterns on the ceiling and walls of the room.

All in all, Mervin could tell that he was strong, probably some kind of martial artist, and from the way he behaved, it was obvious that he was feeling responsible for protecting the group, and him never looking at the other people was an indicator for Mervin that he trusted the people here enough to not even bother checking on them.

Next in line was the young girl. She was sitting on the rock, wearing a light-yellow dress that came to slightly below her knees. It had no pockets or anything defining, and the simplicity only helped sell the image of the innocent young child she looked like, with, just like before, only her eyes revealing the fact that there was something more to it than that. Not finding much new information after so little time, he kept his head moving slowly towards the right, his gaze landing on Ilna next. Her expression still held a bit of the sadness from before, but now there was also a bit of anxiety, probably in trepidation over his decision. Since before he had been very focused on her face, he now took the opportunity to look at her clothes a little closer. She was wearing a brown dress with a pattern like green vines decorating them.

No, wait… looking closer, Mervin realised to his surprise that those were actual, living vines decorating her dress. He assumed that would have something to do with her magic, but since he did not know anything about magic yet, he could not really draw any conclusions from that.

Since other than this, there was not really much news he could learn from looking at her, he looked over at the next two people, who were somewhat to his right and in front of him. Both of them were very small, about half the size a regular person would be, but aside from that, they looked very different from each other.

One of them looked, quite simply, like a small human, only his head and face were somewhat rounder, and he had pointy ears, although not as long as Ilna’s, and slightly wider. He was lost in concentration, looking at a projection of an area (probably this area, Mervin thought), with several lines of the symbols that seemed to be everywhere floating around the map. He was wearing something that looked like pants and a shirt, with an overcoat that came all the way to his feet. It was absolutely littered with pockets that all looked about the same size and shape, rectangular and about 5 by 10 centimetres. Whenever something in the symbols changed, he would move his hands around, and mostly, after several gestures, the symbols changed back to what they were.

The other one was… well, if Ilna was probably an elf, with her beautiful features and long, pointy ears, then this guy was absolutely a dwarf. His long greying hair and long grey beard fell around his head in such a way that it was impossible to tell where the one ended and the other began, and together with his moustache, most of his face was hidden. He had a very sturdy physique, and while his clothes were nothing more special than something that resembled an old style of shirt and pants, he was carrying a wooden crate with him that looked comically large on him, which he hung from his shoulder by a rope used as a shoulder strap. He was looking intently at the projection just like the other small guy, but was not interacting with it. All in all, it looked like the two of them were on area surveillance, although what those pockets and that crate were about, it was too early to tell.

Moving his gaze over to the last two people in the room, to his right, there was a teenage girl taking care of a young woman. Both of them were quite unique, though for different reasons.

The girl had quite a normal human appearance, with no special eyes like some of the people here, and a normal light blonde hair colour. What made her stand out however, was the fact that her hair was in several different lengths that were seemingly randomly determined, sometimes disappearing as if cut or even ripped off, and it was messy, pointing this way and that, before the longer strands fell down in a sort of curly pattern. Her clothes, made of a sturdy brown leather with pockets in all shapes and sizes that seemed to be sewn on willy-nilly, had stains in all imaginable colours and then some. To complete the picture, she was wearing a set of way too big safety goggles, thick classes encased in hard leather, which were currently strapped on top of her head as she was holding the other woman’s hand in mild concern and resignation. Mervin got the impression of a mad scientist in training from her.

The final person in the room was the woman she was taking care of. Her appearance was led first and foremost by the fact that both her hair and eyebrows were the whitest he had ever seen, the colour of snow during a bright winter day. It was about shoulder length, and the tip of every hair was black, making it feel like it faded from white to grey to black if looked at from a distance. Her face looked young and round and she was unmoving with her eyes closed, yet instead of the natural relaxation of a sleeping face, she was wearing a strained expression, and had dark circles around her eyes that looked like she had not slept in 4 days. Her clothes looked to be the same as those of the soldier/fighter guarding the entrance, a dark blue with thin golden threads forming symbols.

“What’s wrong with her?” He asked.

“She’s magically exhausted.” The girl to his left replied.

“Yeah, that and a hefty case of potion sickness.” The teen taking care of the woman butted in. “I told her this wasn’t a good idea, that even she has limits, but nooo, there was no other choice, right? And now look at you, damn it.” She finished by directly addressing the seemingly unconscious woman.

“What did she do to be so exhausted?”

His question was met by silence, and when he looked back around, Ilna was looking distinctly uncomfortable, and the girl to his left was looking slightly annoyed. When he opened his mouth to probe further, she answered him.

“Look, you have to know that we had nothing to do with your death, okay?” She said. When he simply kept looking at her, inviting her to continue, she sighed. “But, we did have something to do with your soul appearing here, and in this thing you are inhabiting now. It would take-

“Don’t tell me it would take too long to explain, please.” Mervin interrupted. “I feel like this is kind of important.”

“Fine. We used a spell to summon your soul here after you died. That’s the short of it.”

“Why?”

“See, that really would take too long to explain. I don’t know how to convince you right now that I’m not lying, but-“

“Simple. You tell him more.” The black thing butted in.

“Mulran…” the girl looked over at him.

“No, look. I still think there’s better ways to do this, but if y’all are committed to this, better to tell him if you’re gonna wanna get his trust. You,” he said, apparently addressing Mervin, “look at me.”

Using the artificial calm he was still feeling, Mervin took a moment to collect himself, then turned around and looked at Mulran. He could fight the same feeling of fear he felt earlier push against his calmness, but for now, the calmness was winning.

“Good. I’ll be short about this. When someone dies after living their life, usually, their soul moves on somewhere, but sometimes, it lingers. What we did here was, we called out to a lingering soul to put into this thing here, and ended up with you. Do you get what I’m saying? We simply couldn’t have used this spell to get your soul here if you wouldn’t already have died, so no harm done there.” He crossed his arms. “Frankly, I’m thinking we did you a favour.”

Mervin had no time to respond to that because the woman on the ground suddenly moved, drawing everyone’s attention. Her whole body spasmed once, then started to make tiny, jerky movements as some heavy coughs racked through her. Then she suddenly turned her head to the side, and vomited a thick, grey sludge out over the floor.

“Neera!” shouted the teenage girl. “Oh thank the gods, if you’re spewing now it means at least you’re purging and then you should be all right soon. Gods, do you have any idea how-”

“Lethi, the residue!” Mulran snapped at her.

Her eyes widening, she immediately took a pouch from one of her many pockets, and started sprinkling a sort of thin, white powder in the air. Mervin looked on in fascination as the powder stayed in the air instead of falling to the ground, and she began pushing it around to form a sort of bubble around the grey sludge. When Neera managed to hoist herself up into a position where she was leaning on her hands an knees, and vomited an even greater amount of sludge onto the floor, Lethi immediately started working to make the bubble encompass that part too.

“What is going on?” Mervin asked in fascination.

“She’s-” Ilna started, but got interrupted by Mulran immediately.

“Details. Look, now that Neera’s awake, we’re leaving soon. Now are you coming?”

Mervin looked at the young girl on the rock, who shrugged and said “Honestly, she’s suffering from a medical condition called potion sickness. We could tell you the ins and outs, but as Mulran said, there’s no time for details. You have until we finish packing to make your decision to come or not. Lor!” she yelled over at the two small people. “We’re leaving, start preparing. Everyone else, start packing.”

At her words Lor started walking around, deactivating some glowing stones with symbols on them. Every time the glow faded, the symbols crumbled to ash, leaving no sign of them on the stones, which he simply left there. Ilna and Mulran started walking around and throwing bags and supplies that were scattered around the room onto a heap in the middle of the room. As they were working, Mervin started thinking on what he had seen so far.

It struck him just how different these people were from the people he had known before. And not just in the obvious way of magic and weird appearances, but in their characters. People he knew were boring and unfocused. All throughout his life, Mervin had never really felt interested in people – his interest had been in designing and building new stuff. Yet now, standing here, he was, maybe for the first time, interested in not one, but several people here. What made Mulran so scary? What made the young girl such an enigma? And to a lesser degree, what made the others tick? It would probably not be easy going with them, but they seemed an interesting bunch.

At that thought, Mervin suddenly realised something, as his memories took him back to his childhood years.

At school Mervin had always been a smart kid. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that he was the smart kid. He was the smart kid other smart kids went to when they didn’t know something. In fact, he was so smart, that even most bullies left him alone, since even they needed his help sometimes. And whole most people would probably think that attaining such a position in school would be a good thing, to Mervin, it was the exact opposite.

It was utterly boring.

See, the problem with being the smartest person in the room, is that it feels like you’re never learning something. So while Mervin loved to learn, he hated going to school. He was never challenged by his teachers, so in his boredom, he started playing practical jokes on his school that got him a reputation of trouble maker. And then of course, when he got old enough to start taking the advanced classes, his reputation prevented him from joining those, leaving him to sit, bored out of his mind, among the normal kids.

And of course, when he tried to explain to his parents how he felt, they had not understood him. “Why would you want more difficult work?” his mother had questioned him. “Isn’t it nice to have an easy time?” And when he had explained how bored he was, his father had scoffed in annoyance. “You should be glad that you even have time to be bored. Kids have it so easy. Just you wait, when you grow up, you’ll be longing back to the time that you even could be bored.”

Needless to say, his father had been wrong. And after that conversation, Mervin had made a decision. He had decided that, if ever in his life, he would face a real challenge, any kind of real difficulty, he would see it as a challenge, and throw himself at it.

And this moment might be exactly that. Being thrown into a new world? Finding out magic exists? Finding these people who were obviously having a very hard time with something? He felt like, whatever happened from here, if he went with them, he might actually get a real challenge for once. And with that thought in his mind, he walked over to the young girl. He was slightly aware of the fact that several people in the room had started looking at him, including the large man near the entrance for once, but he ignored them, his focus being on her.

“What’s your name?” He asked, standing in front of her.

“Sana.” She replied.

“Sana.” Mervin responded. “My name is Mervin, and I would like to join your group.”