Nope.

Down below, in the middle of the bridge rapidly hurtling toward me, I saw a small, winged figure struggling to his feet.

Kreston.

He still had his wings.

With the ground rushing toward me, I tried deleting his wings.

Nothing happened.

I splayed out my limbs as I fell belly-first.

Oh fudge.

I think Lantor had just become real.

I had maybe three seconds until I crashed.

But then the feeling of the wind through my pangol scales gave me an idea. It was a crazy idea, but when then the alternative was becoming a blot of flesh-putty splattered on the Precursor bridge, what other choice did I have.

What’s the one thing any cool beastfolk hero character has been able to do since basically the dawn of time?

.

And had I given my half-pangol Cleric-class hero character access to ?

You bet I had.

I could use the ability three times per day.

So, yeah, it was giant pangolin or bust.

I shouted in my mind: !

And then, I felt myself grow. Pressure crushed my head long and slender as my body beefed up and bulged, exploding in a mass of thick scales and myrmecophagous attitude.

There was a twitch at the base of my chest where my tongue anchored itself and grew impossibly dextrous and long. It was an incredibly strange sensation, but there wasn’t time for that!

Bending forward, I tucked my head down and curled into an armored ball. The next thing I knew, a massive pressure dug into my back, only for me to bounce up off the ground like a schoolyard ball, spinning mid-air.

I tumbled and rolled.

Against the backdrop of my frantic heartbeats, I heard crystals shatter and metal groan.

I screamed.

I unrolled right as the ground underneath me began to give way.

Once more, I tumbled down, belly up. Above, I saw the hole in the side of the Precursor Bridge where my giant pangolin body had crashed through.

“Kres-Kres?!” Andalon screamed.

The boy was diving toward the river, riding the air with his wings. Chunks of broken bridge fell like boulders around him, and though one smacked him on the side, he managed to swerve away from them by gliding side to side.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

Then I hit the water, back first. I bobbed in the rapid current like a bottle on the sea. Flailing my limbs, I managed to flip myself over, sinking my furry underbelly into the current. Fortunately, I had tail power on my side.

While arboreal pangolins had slender, prehensile tails, the ground pangolin species I’d used as the model for the pangol had thick tails. This made them excellent swimmers—especially if the pangolin was car-sized, as I currently was.

Lifting my snout above the water, I flicked my powerful tail for a burst of thrust, scrabbling with my feet and my front claws in a giant dog-paddle stroke.

I aimed for the shore.

Flick tail. Stroke, stroke, stroke!

Finally, I caught the shore’s rocky edge. My claws scraped the stone as I pulled myself onto dry land, huffing and grunting.

“Mr. Genneth!” Andalon yelled. “Behind you!”

Craning back with my pangolin neck, I saw Kreston caught in the current, flailing his arms, legs, and wings.

Straightening out my back, I stiffened my tail and stuck it over the water, as far back as it could go.

“Kreston!” I yelled. “Grab on!”

And he did, though only after smacking into the big scales on the fringe of my tail.

“Go!” he yelled.

Digging my claws into the dirt, I pulled myself forward and then turned around, bringing my tail out of the water. I rolled onto my back as soon as I heard the scamper of Kreston’s feet across the ground.

Then, with a groan, I sprawled out on the ground, a big, wet mass of stressed-out pangolin, my underbelly facing the sky.

I shook my head.

“Mr. Genneth!” Andalon cried, floating above my chest. She was darting around like a frightened bumblebee.

As for me, I felt like I was about to throw up.

“,” I muttered.

The effect was immediate. I shrunk, and a wink later, I was my half-pangol self again—fully clothed, thank the Angel—left staring up at the sky.

“A little help here?” I said.

Kreston skittered over to help, grabbing my arm and pulling me up while I pushed off the canyon floor with my other arm. My tail scales scraped against the ground as I righted myself.

“Dr. Howle,” Kreston said, “what’s going on?”

Panting for breath, I knelt down and looked up.

“I… I…”

I gasped. My mouth felt thick and dry, and I swear, my pangol scales were standing on end.

The canyon had been violently transformed—and whatever process at work was still having its way. An alien landscape had been superimposed onto the Lantorian terrain. Landmasses cut through our surroundings, overwriting whatever had been there before. Some hung mid-air, untethered from the ground. A few even floated upside down.

And they were at war.

Overhead, two skies struggled for supremacy. One was Lantor’s familiar blue. The other was hazy orange, like chicken soup, only putrid and impossibly cold. They alternated in patches, blue here, orange there.

Clouds of dark, ruddy soot trailed through the swaths of orange sky. I smelled almonds and ammonia. The chunks of ground beneath those skies were nearly as dark as the clouds, and seemed to have a five o’clock shadow: minuscule, black stubble stuck up in patches here and there. Vines like barbed wire wove thick nets on the ground, covered in flexible, flimsy disk-like “leaves”. Tall, seemingly metallic structures grew in the distance, standing on ropey struts; I couldn’t tell if they were living or dead. Some of them had their struts grip the sides of cliffs as if they were roots.

Impossibly blue rivers and seas spilled off the edges where the floating land masses dead-ended into Lantor’s sky. They looked more like paint than water, and they smelled like burning urine. Pale, colorless smoke streamed off the falling liquid, beneath the fiery explosions that rocked the boundaries where the two skies met.

My eyes watered as waves of heat and cold buffeted the river’s shore. Geysers blasted out from the canyon’s river where the paint-water poured into it.

I brought my hand to my mouth.

It was getting hard to breathe.

Andalon huddled on the ground, on her knees, her hands on her head, shivering in terror.

I felt dizzy and lightheaded.

Kreston yelled something, only to bend over and puke up what looked and smelled like chicken katsu.

The smell of ammonia in the air was beyond nauseating.

I fell to my knees, short of breath.

I looked up. Explosions continued overhead unabated. Rain spilled down from the fire, turning to steam as it passed through the paint-water.

“The… air…” I muttered.

I closed my eyes and focused.

“,” I said.

As soon as the words left my mouth, the three of us were enveloped by a faint yellow glow. Immediately, my breathing relaxed and the dizziness faded. My eyes stopped watering. Yes, the air still smelled like ammonia, urine, almonds, and Angel-knows what else, but I could breathe.

I laughed—giddy, elated, and terrified in equal measure.

Kreston groaned and coughed.

“What…” he wretched, “what the hell is going on here?”

“A level two Cleric spell just saved our lives, that’s what.”

— — —

Human senses are very lazy, and, for once in my life, I couldn’t have been happier about that.

Because human physiology had evolved to detect things that might kill us and to make us take action to avoid them, once it became clear to your eyes, ears, tongue, and nose that something wasn’t going to kill you, your body would put the sensory input on the back burner and forget about it.

Right now, the air was thick with ammonia, and with what I was pretty sure was cyanide. The reason we hadn’t suffocated was because there was still air in the air, and because Lantor and the intrusion-world didn’t bleed into one another everywhere, but just at isolated points where they overlapped. Granted, the amount of poison in the air was more than enough to have killed us many times over, but, thanks to my spell, it would have to settle for just being really, really unpleasant-smelling.

“I still can’t believe that worked,” I said, under my breath.

“I’d like an explanation, Dr. Howle,” Kreston said, his arms crossed in frustration.

“You and I both,” I said.

I took in more of our surroundings. Steam and smoke hissed off the chunks of dark land and orange sky that floated over the canyon.

“Angel,” I muttered, “what I wouldn’t give for Brand’s thoughts on all this.” I said.

There was just so much to it. I made sure to commit it to memory, so that I could share it with Greg and the other SHG transformees, to get their input.

“I don’t understand,” Kreston said.

“Neither do I,” I replied, “but… for whatever reason, I’m pretty sure the orange parts of the sky you see have ammonia and cyanide in them.”

“C-cyanide?” Kreston stuttered. “Isn’t that a—”

“—Yes,” I nodded, “and that’s why I cast .”

He breathed in nervously. “It feels weird when I breathe,” he said.

That it did.

I turned to Andalon. She was still on the ground—on her knees—but she wasn’t cowering as much. Instead of screaming when another explosion burst in the warring skies overhead, she just flinched. Her face was pale and her eyes wide.

“Andalon, is this… it?”

She nodded shakily, her lips tightly pursed.

I shook my head. “I don’t get it.”

“What do you mean?” Kreston asked.

“Do those look like violent attackers to you?” I said, pointing to one of the otherworldly barbed-wire things. It grew on a landmass that jutted out of a nearby fairy chimney.

“Those explosions seem pretty violent,” the boy said. His wings shivered.

Andalon shook her head. “No, Kres-Kres, the bad thing is worse. Much, much worse.”

I turned back to Kreston. “What happened after you passed through the invisible curtain?” I asked.

“I found myself… here,” he said. “My wings weren’t keeping me airborne, so I fell, though I lucked out and managed to glide to safety—well, mostly.” He rubbed the bruise forming on his upper right arm.

“What about… all this?” I pointed to the craziness overhead.

“Did you try to go back the way you came?”

“Yeah, though it’s not like it mattered,” he answered. “I could barely control my fall.”

We kept staring for a while.

“It’s like we’re looking at another world,” I said. “Or, maybe it’s a world reaching out to us.” I blinked. “Wait. This is just like what happens with the wyrm link.”

“The what?” Kreston asked.

“When I connect to another transformee’s mind by making physical contact with them.”

Coughing, Kreston rubbed his head, closing his eyes to focus. “That’s… Greg, right?”

“Yes,” I said. “When he first let me into his mind-world, and I didn’t have any control over it until he gave it to me.”

“Do you think that’s what’s happened here?” Kreston asked.

I shrugged. “I mean, what else could it be? If we assume the ripple-curtain-wall thing was the point where the two worlds met, if we can get back there, we should be able to return to my mind-world by going back through it.”

Flexing his arms and shoulders, Kreston flapped his wings. He stirred up a small breeze with his wingbeats, scattering the snow on the wet, gravelly riverbed.

It was quite impressive, but it didn’t get him off the ground in the least.

“Why can’t I fly?”

“Well, I… uh…” I stammered, “when I gave you wings, it was purely aesthetic. I didn’t give you the ability to fly. I just made two floppy attachments grow out of your body.”

“Why?” he asked.

“Well… you didn’t ask for that. It would have probably involved making more substantial changes to your body, or maybe giving you a special ability, and… well, if we’re really in someone else’s mind-world—or something like that—there’s no guarantee that it will acknowledge the abilities I gave you.”

“Then, how’d you turn into that big critter?”

“It’s called a pangolin,” I said.

Kreston glowered at me. “You know what I mean.”

Looking off to the side, I quietly mumbled, “,” under my breath. I didn’t know if it was going to work, and, honestly, part of me didn’t want it to work, but—

—Boop.

Kreston flinched as a bright blue, text-filled rectangle appeared a couple feet in front of me.

I quickly glanced over it, checking what needed to be checked.

“,” I said.

Mercifully, the window vanished.

Kreston stared at me, his eyebrows narrowing. “Was that a stat window? Wha—”

“—C’mon,” I said, waving my arm as I started to walk off. “It’s gonna be a long hike back up to the bridge. only lasts for an hour, and I’d rather save my other spell slots for later.”

Andalon and Kreston followed behind me. Gravel and snowy slurry crunched beneath Kreston’s shoes.

“Why do you have game stats?” he asked. “Can I have game stats?”