I wheeled through the ash laden sky, my vast leathery wings beating a staccato in the air. I released the crushed remnant of a mighty jet fighter to fall. Beneath me mortals fled in fear and a once luxuriant governmental palace burned. It’s occupants, those corrupt criminals that had wronged so many with their lies and greed, burned with it. I alighted upon the spire of the famous clock tower, with it's far more famous bell, grasping the cast iron roof tiles with claws wreathed in green fire. Wrapping my tail thrice around the edifice. With wings wide in the furiously flaming updraft I raised my head atop my serpentine neck to roar my victory in gouts of fire.

“Sic semper tyrannis!”

Thus always to tyrants.

I looked around from my lofty perch and admired my handiwork. To my west other palaces burned. The figurehead monarchy that had held the kingdom in their thrall was rapidly turning to cinders within. Closer, to my north west, lay the ruins of the ministerial town house and associated offices. My wrath greater than any bombs that had threatened them in decades past.

Across the ebon dark river to the east, and slightly to the north, the vast mechanical panopticon stood deserted. I would pluck it from its base and dump it into the river, then head south to raze the offices of the kingdom’s security services who had singularly failed to secure themselves against the likes of me. For what could mere mortals do against the creatures out of myth and legend? But they still tried. Bless them.

Another trio of fighters blasted across the sky at me, missiles lancing towards me only for both weapons and aircraft to be tossed aside by a pure act of my will. Instead they fell to detonate at the base of the tower.

The tower top lurched beneath my weight. At the same time I felt a weird duality. Like I was in two places at once. Followed by a vast disconnect. Like I’d been stolen from myself or a plug had been pulled. I felt like I was simultaneously rising and falling. The tower bucked under me, like a ship upon the sea. This was unwanted. The symbolism of ship and sea always led to the sunken depths where my greatest fears lay drowned. Ready to drown me within them.

"Door!" I commanded, visualising a flaming green portal through which I could escape the rising tide of my approaching nightmares. But there was no tide. No portal. No green fire.

The roof continued to rise and fall beneath me. Not like a ship rocking upon the waves, but more like a horse at a gallop.

I opened my eyes as something whistled past my right ear, drawing a line of pain across it, and fell to the flagstones of the road far ahead. I was leaning forward in the saddle, reins clenched tightly in my hand, as the hooves of the horse I sat astride pounded upon those same stones. I raised a gloved hand to my ear, and found the injury further from my head than I’d expected it to be, before my gloved hand came back bloodied. Behind me there was a startled cry. Something metal fell, followed by something large and somewhat soft hitting the ground. Horses neighed in distress.

I hadn't ridden a horse in 40 years, and never at such speed. I wanted to slow and turn, but I didn't know how. Yet I didn't think. I just did. Like my body was responding with muscle memory. I made a sound that I hoped meant "Woah!" And pulled on my reins. The horse slowed and turned.

In the bottom left of my vision tiny words appeared. I didn't recognise the alphabet, if it was one, but I found that I could read them all the same.

{Mental Attributes revised; secondary attributes recalculated.}

{Non-fatal damage taken. 5% penalty due to pain; negated by [High Pain Threshold].}

{[Riding] check passed.}

Four men on horseback sat further along the road. Well three men. And I say ‘horses’, but these had forward curving goat-like horns. These three held long bows, two of which were half drawn as if the wielders were unsure what to do with them. I noticed that the tip of one arrow smoldered as if it had been burning until recently. The fourth man was no longer on horseback but instead lay unmoving on the road. Past him a sword glinted in the light of a pair of half moons. It looked like he'd dropped it before he fell. They all wore a uniform. Red tabards with a diagonal yellow pile, over chain mail hauberks, over signal green gambesons. On their heads they wore something between chain mail coifs and basinets; swept back pointed skull caps that stopped just above the ears, with chain down to the shoulders, leaving the face exposed.

Those faces were darker than the pasty-faced northern European that I’d expected; the Scottish so white it’s almost blue. I’d have almost called them a rich bronze. Their inhumanly large and angular eyes were brown while the tallest of them had eyes grey like an overcast sky. Their hair was white, again for the tallest, charcoal grey and black.

They also wore dark breeches and knee high riding boots.

At first I thought that their helmets had weird horns coming out the sides, but as I neared I realised that those were their ears. That would explain why my injury wasn’t where I’d expected it. We were elves.

I looked down at my hands and willed the green fire that was my subconscious tell that I was lucid dreaming to appear, but it did not. Instead I felt something I can only describe as Darkness surge within me. My vision seemed to dim, while not actually being reduced.

{Utilise [Born of Darkness] abilities? Y/N}

No; The darkness retreated.

With it gone my night vision seemed unnaturally clear. Thin clouds slipped across the sky. Beyond them were the moons. One was wrong. It was too big and... Wrong. In my youth I'd seen a child's moon and realised that the surface of the moon looked like the Ying-yang symbol. Two curving teardrops, one dark and the other light. Chasing each other counter clockwise. Being in the northern hemisphere the dark teardrop had been on top. But this moon was different. Not only in its size but in the pattern upon its surface. The second moon was yellow-green, like an olive, and had a weird haze around it. I had an unearthly sense of its surface being covered in vegetation.

"D'yer ken wits goan oan?" One of the elves asked me as I neared. Or at least that's what I heard. His lips made other shapes. "Yin moment we're drivn' doon Calder Wynd, whin sudden lik’ wur oan horses!"

"I don't know." I said truthfully, pointing to the moons in the sky. "But I don't think we're in Forfar any more."

"Och! I've fallen asleep in the car and this is all a weird dream," one of them said.

I raised my hand back to my ear. I'd always experienced pain in my lucid dreams as something distant, like it was happening to someone else. But this. This felt real.

I dismounted and went to their fallen friend. I lived on Calder Wynd. They must have been passing my home when... When... When what? I was lucid, but not able to use any of my lucid dreaming tricks. Which had to mean that this was not a dream? My non-lucid dreams were never this clear. They got fuzzy outside the bits I was focused on. This wasn’t like that.

I examined the fallen man almost robotically, distracted by my thoughts.

Were we dead? I lived on Calder Wynd and these four men, elves I corrected myself, had been driving past. Had they lost control of their car and what, leapt up a story to smash into my bedroom? In which case where was my wife, Amanda? A night owl she might have still been awake. But I doubt she’d have survived anything that had killed me and four bystanders at once.

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

This didn’t fell like an afterlife. Not that I knew what one of those felt like. More like some sort of anime style reincarnated-in-a-fantasy-world isekai thing.

{[First Aid] check passed. [First Aid] skill defaulted from [Anatomy] skill. [First Aid] learnt at rank 0.}

{Target is uninjured but unconscious. They will recover consciousness in 5 minutes. They may experience a concussion; keep them under observation.}

{[Instant Kill] strike points located. Please select an appropriate strike point for a stealthy kill.}

I'd just put the fallen rider in the recovery position when the final message appeared. I recoiled from him as I became aware of places on his body where a quick thrust of the narrow blade concealed in a hidden wrist sheath could end his life. Not instantly, but in an unrecoverable, irreversible, and not immediately noticeable way. If I acted on the impulse he'd never wake up.

I kept my hand away from that weapon and left his sword where it lay.

"He'll be awake in a few minutes," I said, “We’ll have to keep an eye on him just in case he’s concussed but he should be fine.” I looked at the riders. They looked uncomfortable atop their steeds. I had a responsibility to their fallen friend. And by extension, to them. "If you want to dismount," I said, "Don't think about it too hard; trust your body's instincts. You might not remember getting up there, but you must have done, so getting down safely should be possible."

“What about this?” The man waved his bow and now unnotched arrow around. I noticed it was the smoking one.

"For a start don't point it at anything you don't want to hurt.” I half joked, “Put the arrow in its quiver and then unstring the bow." He looked puzzled and offered the items towards me so, ignoring the murder prompt, I took the arrow and made sure it wasn’t hot. I slipped it into the quiver at his hip. I then held the bow while he gingerly dismounted. I wasn’t strong enough to unhook the string.

"I'm..." I started to introduce myself but three names popped into my head at once. One looked, in my head, like a really unfortunate selection of letters for Scrabble; too many consonants, and not enough vowels. It had the sobriquet The Sagacious Shadow. The next was Merle Sagado, which was both unfamiliar and sounded vaguely Asian. The title, Earl of Manchwark, looked ominous. The last was a name I recognised. It was classified as “Player”.

"I'm Drake Dunn," I said.

“Mah name is…” The man whose bow I still held paused before going on, “…George Lithgow. Who the hell is Delmuth Caidove?” He looked at me as if for the first time. “And why do you have pointy ears?”

“Have you looked around?” I said, “It’s contagious.” He did so and stepped back.

“Who are you guys?”.

“It’s me, you weapon,” said the largest of the group, “Greg Magee. This is a weird dream”.

“I’m Lauchlan MacLean,” said the third. He pointed to the person on the ground, “Making him Murdo Ness, by a process of elimination.” He looked at me. “Sorry you're hurt," he said to me. Blood had run down my neck to my collar. But the flow had already stopped.

I looked at him, at the bow he carried, and then back at him. He’d been the one without a nocked arrow. I gave him a tight lipped smile, which felt weird. Like my face didn't know how to smile.

"Accidents happen," I said.

“In my defence it was already in the air when I got here. Wherever here is.”

“Any thoughts on that regard?’

“It’s one of those whatsits, Isekai jobbies, like mah boy loves oan the crunchy roll,” said George. “Oh god! Mah boy!”

“Dinnae worry min, it’s just a dream.” Greg said in an attempt to be reassuring.

“There’s going to be skeleton wizards who can kill armies with one spell! We’re all going to die! Again! My boy’s lost his da!”

“Do you remember dying?” I asked him.

“No?”

“Then why do you think you’re dead?”

“Because I’ve been reincarnated as a bloody elf!”

“It’s just a dream,’ Greg repeated.

“Dream this!” George threw a punch. And it was a good punch. Although Greg was taller than him, he managed to strike him right in the t-zone; the area of the face formed by most of the face’s features and somewhere a solid punch will put the recipient down.

Greg fell back on his arse and sat there for something like ten seconds, back of his hand to a probably bloody nose. Lauchlan and I moved to separate them but George only had the one punch in him.

“Does that feel like a fucking dream to you?” he all but yelled. Greg looked wounded, eyes sad.

“This has to be a dream,” Greg said, “Otherwise it makes no sense.”

"Oh shit!" There was a cursing from the ground as Murdo regained consciousness, finding himself prone on flagstones. He sat up too quickly and wobbled, looking around. "Did we crash? Where's my car? Why are there horses? Who are you guys? Who is Alluin Balvalur?"

"You had a fall," I said.

“Murdo, it’s us,” Lauchlan reintroduced everyone.

“Why does everyone look weird?’ Murdo asked.

“We’ve been reincarnated as elves,” Lauchlan explained.

“That would explain the weird name, but not the weird letters in the corner of my vision. It’s like we’re in some sort of MMO.”

“I’d noticed,” I said. “But I didn’t want to draw attention to it.” The others nodded. They’d noticed too.

“What’s everyone’s weird elf names then?” Murdo asked. “I seem to be Alluin Balvalur.”

“Tannyll Quiphine,” said Lauchlan.

“Naesala Eilsandoral” replied Greg, standing now that he was sure his nose wasn’t gushing.

“Delmuth Caidove,” George said with great reluctance.

“Merle Sagado,” I said.

Murdo turned to me.

“Okay so why are you the only one of us who is still ghostly white?” he asked.

“Murdo you can’t just ask people why they’re still white!” objected Lauchlan.

“Sure he can,” I said. “I blame the concussion.” I looked at him. “Am I? I haven’t had a chance to look at my complexion.” I looked down at myself.

I wore a very dark blue gambeson under a woollen cloak and hood of a similar hue. Although the latter wasn't up. My hands were covered with dark gloves, made of moleskin by the feel of them. My breeches or hose, I was unsure as to which, were similarly dark and I wore thigh high riding boots of the sort that could be pulled down into bucket tops. I also carried a sword, although shorter and narrower than theirs. This was supplemented with half a dozen knives secreted about my person.

Finally I wore rings on the ring finger of each hand, and one more on my right middle finger. The ones on my right hand I wore over my glove. The one on my ring finger was a signet ring made of gold and with the same heraldic device as their tabards. Which raised some questions. The one next to it was silver, and carried the device of a pair of white cattle horns on a red background.

The last, on my left hand, was concealed beneath the glove and would have to remain a mystery for now.

“Och! Maybe you’re some sort of realistic Drow or summat. Pale from living in darkness, rather than dark grey for some weird reason, Gary!”

“Gamer.” I looked him dead in the eye.”Roleplayer.” He nodded.

“Aye, guilty as charged. Lauchlan and I still play D&D. George will return in a few years when his lad’s old enough to join in and Greg. Well Greg is a friend from work.”

“Yeah well I don’t have time for silly fantasy games. I’m an adult.” Greg said.

“Well you better find time for fantasy games, pal,” Murdo replied, his accent growing thick with ire, “You’re in one.”

While Murdo was talking to his friend I took the chance to look around more. The road we were on reminded me of Roman roads that I’d seen when I’d studied archaeology in my youth. Being paved with small flagstones, metalled with cement, and cambered for drainage off the sides. Off to the north, presuming the moons were in the east, I spotted a flicker of fire among the trees. A campfire? There was only one way to be sure.