This floor now also has a bathroom with a mirror. My face is still my face, in the sense of my facial features still being present. Even most of my hair is still present. My eyes are, though, outright disturbing. Right after the fact that I now have five eyes. Two black orbs where human beings have eyes. One on my forehead.
I am resisting an unhealthy urge to recite mantras while blinking with my third eye. That is if I can decide which way to blink. In addition to eye lids I am now sporting a nicticating membrane like a lizard.
And where my ears were, I now have two more eyes. I do not quite have full all round vision, but it comes close. That raises the question how I am hearing without ears. With the two sets of antennas sprouting from my head? One of them is quite long. It goes down to below my shoulder blades. The other is like an ants. One long segment facing backwards and then a kink and a number of segments facing forward again. For both I have grooves to shelter them in.
I turn around. Winged fighter seems accurate. My back is covered in elytrae, below which a scorpion tail emerges. That, apparently, is what a scavalander is.
That is the moment that phone rings.
Under these circumstances I might just as well read the message. After all, it may be a warning.
Change in racial abilities detected. Execution of contingency option #8. Releasing replacements.
In a corner of the room the gadget is dropping two awakening stones. I pick them up, grab my backpack, put the gadget, my tricorder, my wand, my bag of monster cores, the two essences I carry and my coins into a backpack. The backpack is substantial, but that is quite a load. I would like to take the guns, too, but they won’t fit. How have I come to carry a small household’s worth of stuff around with me.
I have some kind of tracer on my body. How else would they know my racial abilities have changed? I don’t care. I care about very few things anymore. This has broken the camel’s back. I belong nowhere, not even in the human race.
By the way, where is my car? It was in my inventory, too. I do learn. There is a small orb where you’d expect a light switch. Yes, I can set the window to transparent from the inside. I have also stopped caring about violations of the laws of optics.
That tells me that my car is parked right in front of the house. That is, if I recall correctly, prohibited. I don’t care, either. This is dangerous. People who do not care make mistakes.
And we are in a truly alien environment. What used to be a street of low houses in white bauhaus architecture is now a street of metal sci-fi houses almost twenty meters high.
And there is a complication. The few cars parked further along the street where parking is legal are no cars from this world. They look like crystal bubbles, some opaque, some transparent. They have no wheels. I don’t think Zora or Maria are prepared to drive one of them.
And yes, a sphinx is walking down the street. It has happened to other cats, too.
Which car to use? I don’t know. I am just tired. I do not want to make decisions.
Hence I decide to check on the upper floors this house should have picked up.
Nice, very nice. A lounge with a bar and other big TV screen. I suppose those strange pyramid shaped devices are alien equibalents of DVD players.
A floor of extra bedrooms. And one floor further up, exactly what I need and what I planned to use on Zora, a room for rituals. Stone floor in one unbroken piece, with grates for water to flow through around it. There is even a kind of bucket with an added sprout already filled with salt. Why not? Does it matter?
Gun: [Tools of the Magister] Special Ability Iron 1 (34%) [Joy of Sustained Fire] Blood Special Attack Iron 1 (27%) [This is my Gun] Myriad Special Attack/Conjuration
Iron 1 (84%)
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[Chemical Warfare] Defiance Special Attack/Conjuration
Iron 0 (54%)
[Hyperkinetic Cannon] Gun Special Attack/Conjuration Iron 0 (11%) Vast: [Giant Form of the Ancestors] Special Ability Iron 1 (21%) [Immortality] Tree Special Ability Iron 1 (4%) [Nebelwerfer 42] Focus Special Attack/Conjuration Iron 0 (30%) [Arsenal of the Mad Scientist] Magotech Special Ability Iron 0 (0%) (unused) 0% Dimension: [Teleport] Special Ability Iron 1 (25%) [Dance by my Will] Dance Aura Ability Iron 2 (23%) [Eternal Moment] Reach Special Ability Iron 0 (72%) [Path in Time] Hunt Perception Ability Iron 1 (85%) [Wrath of the Magister] Corruption Special Attack/Spell Iron 1 (29%) Battlefield: [Equip the Army] Special Ability Iron 2 (14%) [Robotic Servant of War] Magotech Special Attack/Conjuration Iron 1 (3%) [Pipes of War] Unity Special Ability Iron 0 (15%) [Cornucopia] Feast Special Ability Iron 0 (22%) [Feast of Decontamination] Light Special Ability Iron 0 (0%)
That changes things. I head back down and repack my stuff. I think my soul has wanted to replace what it lost. That changes the situation from the end of the world to me to a horrible disaster.
I still have heard nothing from Zora or Maria. I do not care. If they want something from me, let them call me.
But just in case I should check the uppermost floor, too.
Damn. A roof terrace with a whirlpool. Has the transformation process operated on our wishes, after all? Does wishing for power turn you into a dragon? And what does this say about me?
I think I get it. Can I lock the door from the outside? Yes.
I lift my elytra and unfold four dragonfly wings from below them. Origami wings.
Only one way to find out. I lift off.
--
Zora is cooking noodles. The oven at least has manual controls.
M: The children are enjoying cartoon TV. Did you …
Z: Yes.
M: What changed?
Z: You do know that I am a divorced single mother over fourty?
M: OK, but you never looked at him sideways.
Z: Did you get a good look at him before he turned into a spider?
Maria is looking at her hands.
Z: I am sorry, but being sorry about ourselves does not help. If it is a consolation, you still sound the same. No change at all.
M: OK, but what do we do now?
Z: I checked the phone. It still works.
M: Whom do you want to call?
Z: My father and my uncle. There is no point in keeping this … event a secret. They may come here anyway.
M: And then? Do we stay here?
Z: I have a job and they expect me back next week.
M: Do you want to live among peope to whom we will be monsters?
Z: Do I have a choice?
M: I don’t know. Do you?
Z: No, I am not going to call a man for protection.