Reincarnation H&H
Dark, wet, drips of water impacting puddles and echoing out through a large cavern. Me and my comrades had made camp here after a long day's travel. Right now, I was leaning over a small pyramid of sticks trying to light a fire with Prestidigitation. Also known, as "Parlor Trick". A small, couple inch long fire from my thumb trying to get the damp wood alight.
Guess we should have brought torches instead of magical lighting huh?
"Take So long. Wizard bad at fire making." That's Grognak, a bit of a simple Human Barbarian, doesn't particularly have a large vocabulary. But he's far from a fool.
"Oh lay off, it's
hard lighting wet wood!" I answer in reply, growing rapidly frustrated at the old wood refusing to light.
"I knew we should have taken torches. Didn't I say we should have taken torches? Because we should have taken some torches but
oh no Mr Wizard over here says that his permanent glowing rocks should be good enough." Traban. Good old Trusty Traban. What can I say about him? If he didn't have sharp eyes and a skill with a lock pick I would refuse to work with the bastard. Steal
my food
again why don't you you damnable Half-Fiend. The druid huffs and pulls me away from the wood.
"Let
me handle natural affairs next time.
Calicia Flair!" She always liked to one up me. Relatively young Elf with a superiority complex casts her combat grade spell to light a campfire. Oh, that's
easy, she had a spell that's better than a
cantrip. Which she
could have used on an
Orc or something. Bloody bitch, she does this all the time. Keeps her spells in reserve even if they'd be very useful at the time.
I never did like miss "Flameoak Pretencia". Apparantly her last name meant Regality or Nobility or something. I personally find it hilarious that it's so similar to Pretentious, a term that fits her to a T.
I sigh at her action before sitting beside the now crackling fire.
"If her
highness is finished
blessing us with her presence perhaps she should return to her meditation?" I say, annoyance dripping in my tone. She
smiled, as if she thought I was totally
serious.
"It is right of you to remember your place Human." She says, stick up her ass as always before walking, no,
marching away to return to her privacy. I let out a sigh of frustration. Grognak slaps me on the shoulder, making me jerk a bit forward under his strength.
"Ignore her Mal. She's just jealous that we get to eat meat!" He says reassuring me as he gets to work on cooking meat we sliced off of a large, boar like lizard we encountered earlier. I don't get where he thought the druid was a vegetarian, I mean, sure all she eats are good berries because she doesn't trust us to cook "Proper Food" or eat "In the Proper Way". But I don't recall druids being banned from eating meat.
"You're right Grognak, let's eat. Traban, do you want dark meat or light meat?" I say as I help Grognak prepare dinner.
~~~
The end of the cavern held the lair we were searching for. A Lich had been experimenting on something that made
both Celestial
and Infernal beings worried. On the bright side, the Infernals agreed to forgive Traban's debt should we slay the Lich and halt his experiments. While the Celestial's agreed to look into finding a path to my home world. I doubt they'd find Earth, but there's hope.
"A flair for the dramatic doesn't he?" Traban commented, gesturing to the Gothic architecture.
"What that say Mal?" I heard Grognak ask as he gestures to something above the door. He couldn't read, so whenever he saw or was curious about what something said he asked for help from me. Since I was the only one patient enough to care.
I recognized it.
Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate
Impossible.
"There is no such language, it's obviously nonsense-" The Druid began before I interrupted her.
"Abandon all hope, all ye that enter here." I translate. "Impossible." I say, thoughts racing in my mind as I look confused at it. I didn't know Italian, but that phrase was recognizable enough.
The Elf scowled at me for interrupting her.
"I have bad feeling about this." Grognak says, worried.
"Me too buddy, me too." I reply. Traban watched for a moment.
"I was right, really has a flair for the dramatic." He comments before walking towards the large stone doors.
~~~
My head was filled with a strange, cloudy sensation. Barely able to think. The sun blared against my closed eyelids and face leading me to scrunch it up in annoyance.
"Mal, are you ok? Why did you become a cat?" Grognak's worried voice came to me.
Cat? What?
I open my eyes, and see Grognak's no far larger face hovering over me. Flameoak stood off the the side, an arrogant smile on her face.
"Flameoak." I say, anger barely kept from my tone. "
What did you do?" I failed to keep my anger hidden for long however.
"You died trying to talk to the Lich, said something about trying to trick him and that you were preventing him from making it home. Crazy bastard pretended to surrender and then stabbed you in the back." And there's Traban's commentary! Now I remember the primary reason we keep him around. He's comedy
gold on occasion.
"And I'm a cat, why exactly?" I say as I start to stand on my black, furry legs. Heh, a black cat. At least I'm something that's still capable of making the right movements for spell casting. Otherwise I'd be far more pissed.
"I called upon the divine power of nature to reincarnate you into a new form! You should be glad I chose to grant such a blessing on someone as impudent as you." The Druid says in the most arrogant way imaginable. Grognak glared at her, she flinched at his gaze. Ah, I get it, she had to admit to herself that she
needed me. That I was
better than her.
Either that or Grognak threatened to kill her if she didn't bring his best friend back.
"Well, I suppose I'll just have to
deal with this." I say, somewhat annoyed as I look around. We were in a relatively small clearing in a forest. Weren't we underground before?
"Where in the Hells are we anyways?" I finally ask, causing Traban to perk up.
"When we slew the Lich and broke his Soul Trap the experiments he had were all released, we were forced to travel through one of his portals with you out for the count and unable to get us out." He answers. I sigh, whiskers twitching in annoyance.
"Figures. At least we aren't in hell." I comment.
Could be worse I suppose, at least I still have my magic. Now, to get my equipment back on. How hard can it be to adjust some magic items to a new frame anyways? People did it all the time after all!
~~~
AN: Inspired by the idea that a Wizard Cat would be horribly overpowered due to being hard to hit. By the way, I'm willing to listen to suggestions for worlds to visit since this is a Multiverse story. H&H stands for "Horrible and Hilarious".
