The official unofficial SV female lead Isekai contest: Story Thread

[BiopunkOtrera]

[ ] Ushinawareta Shoujo Sophia

Spoiler: Ushinawareta Shoujo Sophia

Chapter 1

Late one Wednesday afternoon, the door to Flood of Wonder Books & Fantasy opened with a chime. Brett looked up from the sales counter, cluttered with everything from paperback books and dice to Excalibur letter-openers and cheap Steven Universe key chains, as his friend Sophia came into the shop. Her hair was tied up in a neat bun, and she was wearing a pants-suit with a blue tie.

"Hey, Brett. Any new books come in?"

"Just a couple light novels and a Hunger Games wannabe," Brett replied. Sophia had started moving towards what he called "the otaku corner" before he finished his sentence. "Oh, and someone sold their Sengoku Night Blood manga if you're interested."

"Isn't that another Sword Art knockoff?"

"Not really. I mean, it's isekai, but it's better than most."

"So was SAO," Sophia pointed out, flipping through one of the new novels. "But even if Night Blood's a good isekai, and I'm not saying it's not, I'm kinda tired of them."

"Fair." Brett leaned back, watching people pass by outside for a minute. "So. What's with the suit? Did you get another interview?"

"Yes, finally."

"How'd it go?"

"Pretty well, I think." Sophia sighed and put the book back, grabbing another. "Of course, so did the last few."

"Yeah...but you've still got that volunteer thing, right? Houses for Humanity or whatever?"

"I guess. It's better than nothing, but I wish I was doing something related to history. Or something useful, at least."

"Kinsey's still not trusting you with much of anything?"

"Yeah. I mean, I get why, but it's annoying to just fetch crap and run errands."

"The two-by-four incident was months ago. Is that not enough to earn a second chance?"

Sophia opened the book. "Guess not."

Another customer came in while Sophia was examining the second book, and she had moved onto a third before Brett finished helping him.

"It's kinda frustrating," Sophia grumbled.

"What is? Kinsey?"

"No, the job stuff. I keep trying and trying, and nothing keeps happening. I feel like I'm in the same place now that I was when I graduated. I want to be...somewhere else, you know?"

"Where?"

"I'm not sure. Somewhere closer to..." Sophia shrugged.

"You don't know where?"

"Out of my dad's basement and into my own apartment would be a good first step. But past that...I dunno."

"What's your next step?"

"Keep getting interviews, hope one of them sticks?" Sophia sighed. "If I just knew where to go next, what my next goal was, I feel like I'd have a better idea of what to do. I could figure out what I need to get there and how to get those bits, one by one. But I don't." She closed the book and put it back on the shelf.

"You need a destination before you can get directions?"

Sophia began taking books out and putting them elsewhere on the shelf. "Yeah, pretty much. I kinda know what I want, but it's all about the details, and I didn't realize I needed to figure those out until it was too late. I thought I could just get some crappy job or internship or something and work out what fit me and what didn't, but even the crappy jobs and internships have tons of competition from other people who are trying to do the same thing. And the people getting those jobs are the ones who already figured out the details, who have the passion and—"

"Sorry to interrupt, but what are you doing with those books?"

"Huh? Oh, it looked like other customers had put some of these books in the wrong places, so I'm trying to fix it. Why?"

"Um, how are you organizing them?"

"...Alphabetical by author, why? Is that—"

"Don't worry, I'll fix it later."

"Oh! Sorry, it's just that the shelves looked almost in alphabetical order, and—"

"It's no big deal. You and my manager are the only ones who care."

"How should I—"

"Don't worry. Seriously. Just...find something you're actually interested in, alright?"

"Um, okay." Sophia looked around.

"But I get what you're saying. About job stuff, I mean. You've got this script for how things are supposed to go. Graduate high school, get a degree, get a crappy job, eventually get the job you want if you work hard. Some people tell you to figure out where you want to go, and some people tell you don't worry, you'll end up somewhere you never expected. But here we are."

Sophia picked up a book. "They got one thing right. We definitely didn't expect to end up here."

"Yeah. But we were supposed to have some idea of what came next. You've finished college, time for your entry-level crap. But it's not like that. You get a minimum-wage job because you've got a family friend who needs a warm body, or..."

"Nothing."

More time passed as Sophia looked at a couple more books. After putting the last back on the shelf, she turned to Bret. "Are you doing anything on Saturday?"

"No, why?"

"There's an Amtgard newbie thing this weekend."

"That's the LARPing thing you do?"

"It's LARPing the same way World of Warcraft is a roleplaying game. You can get into character as a knight or wizard or whatever, but most people just hit each other with foam swords. Lots of fun."

"Yeah, I remember you telling me about it. I'm glad you're enjoying it, but I don't think I would."

"It's nerdy exercise," Sophia pointed out as she put the third book back. "What's not to enjoy?"

"Getting hit with swords?"

"Foam swords. It wouldn't be much fun if they were real."

Brett sighed. "I guess I'll think about it."

"Alright, I'll take that. Hope to see you there." She headed for the door.

"I'm obligated to ask if you're going to buy anything."

"Still unemployed, sadly. Besides, all the books here are either ones I already own or crap."

"I'm underemployed, and the store's not doing great financially. Besides, we sell more than books. We've got some miniatures and figurines over there, a couple board games by the D&D stuff, these nice letter openers...lots of stuff."

"Nice sales pitch."

"You're one to talk."

"Fair. Still, why should I buy any of this?"

"You've been reading our books for months."

"I buy some of them!"

"Some, yeah. But don't you want to support your local business so you can keep reading those books?"

Sophia shrugged. "I'll take a look, I guess." She glanced at some of the figurines before moving on to the various knickknacks on the counter. She picked up a fluid-filled stress ball made to look like an octopus and a belt buckle with two eyes and seven stars on it. "What are these?"

"I think this is just a cute stress toy thing. And this is the holy symbol of some D&D moon god, I think? Which someone made into a belt buckle? It's just stuff the manager had and wanted to sell, I guess."

"Because they're just kitsch."

"Yeah, but they're charming kitsch, aren't they?"

"I suppose. Not something I'd pay ten or fifteen bucks for."

"You're not the only person who said that. A couple of weeks ago, some kid was playing with the octopus while his dad browsed for some gift or something. The kid wanted to buy it, but he changed his mind once he heard it was ten bucks."

"How does your manager pick his prices?"

"Hell if I know...you know what, I'll make you a deal. Twenty bucks for both of those."

"Buying two kitschy things for the price of slightly less than two?"

"Hey, take it or leave it."

"...How about this. I'll give you your sale, and you come to Amtgard."

"Deal." They shook hands, and Sophia dug a twenty-dollar bill out of her wallet. Bret tossed the stress octopus and belt buckle into a plastic bag, before taking the money. "Have a nice day."

"You too. See you Saturday."

"I'll try to look forward to it."

"Don't worry. If you've got knee-pads or anything, you might want to bring them. Save us the trouble of fitting them to you."

"Sure."



Sophia left the store and glanced around. The street and sidewalk were not completely empty, but not many people were around. A few were window-shopping, and an occasional car drove through the area on some errand or another. Sophia had parked in a lot a couple of blocks down, and crossed the street after letting a car pass. She was still watching it when she heard a car horn blare.

Things seemed to slow down. A car, probably going close to twice the speed limit, had swerved around the corner and was coming straight for Sophia. She turned, throwing the arm she carried her purchases in towards the car, as if the plastic bag could shield her. But Sophia and the driver had noticed each other too late. Sophia felt the bumper hit her leg, throw her forward off her feet…

...and she hit a brick wall.



Sophia landed on the ground and just lay there for a moment, staring at the cobblestones beneath her. She had almost been hit by a car—she had been hit by a car—and needed to catch her breath. But after the moment passed, she realized a number of things were wrong.

Where had the wall come from? Where had the car gone? Why didn't she have any broken bones or anything, just a sore spot on her shoulder where she hit the wall? What were cobblestones doing? And why had it gotten sunnier all of a sudden?

Sophia stood, brushing herself off. She had been in a city made not of one- or two-story buildings with concrete sidewalks and asphalt roads separating them, in the middle of a street. Now she was in an alley, surrounded by three- or four-story buildings crammed together, separated by narrow cobblestone roads and alleys. No air conditioning units hummed and no automobiles growled; instead, hooves clattered noisily on rock, echoing down corridors of brick and plaster.

The sun was now high in the sky. It was like Sophia had gone back a few hours...and several centuries.

Okay. I'm stuck in a strange city, where I might or might not speak the language of anyone here and definitely don't know my way around. Even if they speak modern English somehow, I'm going to stand out like a sore thumb. At best, I'll be mistaken for some foreign aristocrat and targeted by every mugger within a mile. At worst, they'll think I'm a witch or a demon or something.

But on the bright side, I'm not roadkill. I might have come out of this ahead.

Sophia took off her suit jacket and tie, stuffing them in the plastic bag with her new belt buckle and weird octopus-thing. Now I should look slightly less posh...and it's pretty warm out, so that would probably be a problem eventually. Now what?

Priority one, figure out what kind of place this is. Priority two, figure out what the hell I can do here. Priority zero, don't be a sitting duck for muggers.

Sophia strode out into the street, trying to ignore the weird looks everyone gave her. Then she realized the looks were brief and only moderately interested. What, do 21st-century job-seekers pop in regularly? I would have thought something this weird would warrant more… Sophia's thoughts were interrupted by a carriage crossing a nearby intersection. Her first reaction was to step back, even though it was fifteen feet away. Her second was Hold on, does that carriage have a lit interior?

Following the sunniest, least empty streets, Sophia made her way to what seemed like a market. Along the way, she saw numerous odd sights. Many buildings, carriages, and so on had those weird artificial lights, almost like big LED's without the plastic shell. While most people looked more or less white, with hair various shades of brown or black, some had odd hair colors or caricatured features. And where some cities had stray cats, this city had weird lizard-rat things fighting over scraps. In case all of this wasn't enough, at one point Sophia saw someone magically pulling water out of a weird barrel on their back and using it to wash trash through a ditch.

I'm not in the past. I'm in another world. A fantasy world, to be specific.

Sophia looked around the marketplace, watching people buy and sell everything from fruit to bread to weird fantasy-looking plants while a street performer mixed magical and acrobatic ability. If I know my fantasy, and I'm pretty sure I do, there's probably some kind of evil overlord or demon king or something. Where there's a villain, there's a hero. If I'm not the hero, he'll probably be some distinctive-looking guy with a cool sword. If I am the hero, I'll probably have a supporting cast...at least someone to fill me in on why I'm the Chosen One or something. So I'm probably looking for a distinctive-looking young man with funny-colored hair and a sword, or an old guy that's been watching me ever since I showed up but hiding.

After fifteen minutes by Sophia's watch, spent trying to look interested in the merchants' wares and not at all suspicious, she saw what she was looking for. A boy with spiky red hair and a fancy-looking sword hilt sticking up over his shoulder, probably in his late teens. Sophia quietly kept her eye on him as he bought lunch and began to follow as he left the market. She kept far behind him, at least a block, and tried to focus on keeping the protagonist-looking boy in sight. This took her from the clean, crowded part of town into one with smaller, dingier buildings somehow pressed even closer together. Where is he going? Is he meeting a resistance movement, or going to meet a mentor, or...anything that makes me more comfortable being around here?



The protagonistey boy ducked down an alley. This is it, she thought as she hurried forward. This kind of alley is where I'd expect a hero to meet with some kind of shady contact, or a secret entrance to some secret base. She reached the alley and glanced down it. It looked empty, aside from the protagonistey boy and a lizard-rat. Or where the hero saves some girl from an implied rape, I guess. But there's no...shit.

"Why have you been following me?" the boy asked, his hand disconcertingly near his sword.

"Uh—huh?" Wow, great first words.

"You've been following me since we passed that blacksmith. Why?"

"Because you—" Because you look like a hero? Who says things like that? Because... Sophia stepped into the alley. "Because you're going to be attacked here." By some generic mooks who the hero can use to show off his heroic spirit and raw strength.

"What are you talking about?"

As the boy was talking, the wall behind him split open silently into a door, and two suspiciously generic-looking guys in generically suspicious-looking black cloaks stepped out. "And who told you that?" one of them asked.

The protagonistey boy spun around, drawing his sword. It was an oversized sword, almost like a Buster Lite. Sophia thought she saw something engraved on the blade, but it began glowing like the sun before she could make out any details. "And who are you people?"

"We'll be asking the questions here," a voice behind Sophia said. She spun around, fumbling out her pocket knife as she saw two more generic cloaked guys who had stepped out of the wall behind her. "Questions like how much you value your lives...and what you have to pay for them."

"Lady!" the boy shouted. "Duck down, now!"

Sophia did as she was told, throwing her bag and knife in opposite directions as she did so. A moment later, a blast of wind hit the alley at about chest height, throwing the goons Sophia saw into the street and presumably doing much the same to the ones by the boy. Sophia quickly grabbed the knife, almost cutting herself on the blade in her panicked haste.

The street gaped open, and a single stone pillar emerged. On top of it was a less-generic guy with long white hair and an eye-patch, holding a cane-sized staff against the pillar. "Interesting...very interesting. That sword you have there must be worth a small fortune. And if the girl's outfit is anything to go by, she's quite wealthy as well. I think we'll be taking both off of you...along with anything else of value you have, of course."

"Never!" shouted the protagonistey boy. He swung his sword again, hurling a burst of wind.

Weird how he's using air, Sophia thought. His character design practically screams "fire magic". I'd expect green hair for a wind-mage-knight...person.

The obvious bad guy twisted his staff, causing a wall of earth to raise itself out of the ground, blocking the burst. "Your sword may give you great control over the wind, but between my humble staff and my years of experience, I can counter anything you can do." He then raised a hand, causing the sword to rise up into the air. "Particularly if I rob you of the source of your power."

He then turned to Sophia. "And you? What are you going to do?"

If I try to do anything, Sophia thought, he'll probably hit me with a rock or drop me into the sewers. And if he didn't, that gash around him is too long. I can't reach him with my pocket knife, and if I tried to throw it at him it would just fall into the sewer. I have a wallet, a cell phone, a battery pack, and the crap I just bought. I have nothing useful outside an adventure game. Sophia glanced around the area for anything she could use her random possessions on as the terrakinetic watched. He smiled. "Good girl. I'll have my men be gentle with you."

And there it is. I hope that kid's actually the hero.

On the other side of the wall, a thump indicated that the protagonistey boy finally dropped his sword and landed on the ground. "You're right," he said. "Without that sword, I'm not much good at wind magic. But I was never that good with the wind."

Fire?

The obvious bad guy turned around and gaped as he saw...judging by the bright orange glow, something fiery.

"Dragon's Rush!" he shouted, shooting at the bad guy. The bad guy cried out in fear before being whalloped by a burst of fire which contained the protagonistey boy, being knocked over the nearby rooftops and presumably into a sky-twinkle. As Sophia got up, her focus was on the generic bad guys who were still in her zip code. Not that this world probably has zip codes… But the mooks were gaping in awe at their leader flying off into the distance. As the alley and nearby buildings returned to their initial state, they ran off.

Sophia dusted herself off before collecting her possessions and looking around for the staff. Unfortunately, the semi-generic bad guy seemed to have pretty good grip strength. Meanwhile, the protagonistey boy grabbed his sword and turned to Sophia. "Thanks for the warning."

"Um...oh, you're welcome."

"Are you okay?"

"Um, I think so." Sophia walked over to the boy and held out her hand. "Sophia. My name it Sophia. It's nice to meet you."

The boy stared at Sophia for a moment, before shaking her hand. "My name is Shou." He let go. "But I'm guessing you already know who I am."

"More or less. Though I'm a bit short on the details."

"...I—"

"I mean, I don't know many of the details. I'm guessing you're planning to..." Sophia glanced around as if to check for listeners, giving herself an excuse for talking in vague terms, before lowering her voice. "...the overlord?"

"You mean Emperor Ketesu?"

"Yeah, him."

Shou glanced around as well. "Since you seem to be on my side...it's probably safe to tell you that he's my half-uncle—"

"And you're the prince who should rightfully hold the throne," Sophia continued, "so you plan to put an end to Kotatsu's evil and bring peace to the land and stuff."

Shou stared at Sophia for a moment, glancing at her hair-bun, blouse, and shoes before back at her face. "You're strange, lady. But you seem to know some useful stuff, so..."

"We have a lot to talk about."

-----

Chapter 2

"This Imperial Library place...you're sure it's safe?"

Shou smiled. "Of course it is! My grandma set up a bunch of these and gave them to a bunch of wizard guilds and stuff. They're not actually run by the Empire."

"Maybe don't talk about being related to royalty in public places?"

Shou looked up and down the line of stone shelves, covered with books. "...There's hardly anyone here."

"And that means that sound is going to travel pretty far. Besides, it's best not to let yourself develop sloppy habits."

"I guess. But, um...what are we here to talk about, anyways?"

"Our plans for the future, of course. I know that you're a prince, planning to take your place on the throne. How? Are you going to claim some MacGuffin, discover the secret of Kotetsu's power, unite the Empire's enemies?"

"...What's a muguffen?"

"A magic item or something that gives you a bunch of power."

"Um, something like that." Shou drew his sword and leaned it on a bookshelf. She could make out the carvings on the white-and-gray blade, which looked like outlines from a stained glass window. "This is the Sword of the Sun, forged from the Sunrise Sword and—"

"—and let me guess, there are a bunch of other powerful magic weapons you need to unite?"

Shou stared at her. "Um, kinda?" He pointed to the image nearest the hilt. "When the King of the East and the Queen of the West—my grandparents—married, they united their kingdoms and their royal regalia."

"The Sunrise and, I'm guessing, Sunset Swords were part of them? And I'm guessing we need to get a jewel and a mirror, too?"

"Um, the Jade Teardrop and the Mirror of Eight Faces? Yeah, those were part of the Eastern Regalia, and the Golden Lance and Crown of Foresight were part of the Western Regalia. That's five powerful magical artifacts. Emperor Ketesu grabbed the Crown when he usurped the throne, but the rest of the Regalia were hidden by my surviving family members and their friends."

"And this is the kind of 'hidden' where even the people trying to protect the kingdoms don't know where they're hidden, because that would be too convenient?"

"Um...I guess?"

"More importantly, do you know where any of these Regalia are?"

Shou put his hand on his sword.

"Alright. So we need to figure out where each of these Regalia are, track each down, claim it for the glory of the True King, then have a big final showdown with the Emperor."

Shou glanced at the bookshelf behind him in concern. "...How do you intend to figure out where they are?"

"I'm not sure yet. Probably not by reading these books, though."

"Oh, thank the gods. What are we doing, then?"

Sophia paced down the hall. Shou quickly sheathed his sword and followed. We probably aren't going to be able to get much down without being introduced to the other main characters. The rest of the five-man band, or at least the power trio, would be a good place to start. "I don't suppose you know where any of your family or other allies would be? Ideally ones about your age and willing to go on quests with you?"

"What? Um, no."

"Right. If you knew that and hadn't already joined up with them, you wouldn't be adventuring alone." And then you couldn't be a badass hero instead of a pawn in someone's scheme.

"Um...right..."

"Are there any smaller-scale problems?"

"What?"

A side quest to get the main characters together, and establish the world. Maybe the Shou's-royal-heritage thing was supposed to be a secret for the first few episodes, though given how quickly he told me, that's not likely. Either way… "Something heroic to do. A sort of...entry-level hero stuff, killing monsters or fighting bandits or something. Something to help you find other altruistic questing sorts and, um...establish you as a heroic person. You know, so the common people will support you."

"Oh, that makes sense. Um, there've been some monster attacks lately. Which is weird, because the King of Monsters was—"

"Right, kill some monsters, figure out what's going wrong, and see how much of a party we've got assembled by then."

Shou sighed. "I mean, I don't have any better ideas, but...I kinda wish you'd let me finish more of my sentences."

"I can only abide so much backstory at once. You need to focus on the relevant stuff and keep things moving."

 

[BiopunkOtrera]

Some late entries are coming in.

[ ] Love and Cats

Spoiler: Love and Cats

"You know what Frank? I'm sick of this shit, and I'm sick of this goddamned world." A red-headed lance corporal said, as she pointed an unsteadily bobbing finger at the sergeant next to her. "I wanna go back home, and try and patch things up with Kristen. We've been on this side of the portal four months, and I swear everyone's gotten hitched but me." Hiccuping, she continued "Don't get me wrong, I love you guys, but when I see the girls Lieutenant Bear and that fucking retard ended up with, I just get so jealous."

"Jessica, why the fuck would you want to patch up your relationship with her?" the sergeant said in between sips of his own beer. "She's a fucking harpy, and she cheated on you how many times?"

"Three times... that I know of…" Jessica muttered.

"Then why not forget about her and try to play the field here?" the Sergeant said. "It's worked out for literally everyone else. Besides, it's a different world, and we're not even sure it's in our universe. What happens here stays here."

"I'm not going to waste my time chasing bartenders or fucking whores who aren't actually into me, Frank." Jessica shot back. "It's like every hot local chick is straight as an arrow and thirstier than Private Bevan."

"How is she doing anyway?" Frank replied, morbidly curious.

"She's bringing home enough dudes that when there's finally a herpes outbreak she'll probably be patient zero." Jessica continued as Frank's beer shot out his nose. "And she's loud enough I usually just give up and sleep in my office. Especially when I see that fucking cat dude loitering around."

"I don't know what to say then." Frank said. "You're pretty damn hot, there's got to be someone in town who might bite. Like one of the PHS nurses or something. Hell, you can probably hitch a ride with Vegas' lunatics or Lieutenant Bear when they go to the capital again."

"Fuck. Thanks for trying, but that's not exactly giving me hope." Jessica said as she downed her beer in a few gulps before motioning for another.

"Do you want me to like magic some girl out of thin air?" Frank said. "I'm in intel, not miracles."

"You say that like there's a difference."

"Don't you mean staffing? I mean, we somehow ended up with only one lieutenant that can't tie his shoelaces, and he's Civil Affairs for fuck's sake. When are we gonna need him here, ever?" Frank laughed weakly, pulling on his own drink.

"You'd rather have Captain Lee wouldn't you?" Jessica said as her drink arrived with the cute bartender who had somehow managed to get herself a crop top and booty shorts (probably from some american admirer,) instead of the wrap dress every other local woman wore.

"Fuck yes I would." Frank replied. "At least Captain Lee only crawls out of the bottle for meetings and wouldn't try to get involved in my job. The goddamned lieutenant just keeps fucking shit up, and I can't wait until we have a civilian city government so it isn't my goddamned problem anymore."

Jessica's phone went off. "Fuck, the game's about to start. I'm going to head down to the Mess and actually eat something." She said before downing her beer in one go. "Tell Miguel I said 'hi' when he gets here."

"I will." Frank said.

~

It was about midnight that same night when Sergeant Frank Valois and his husband Lance Corporal Miguel Villalobos heard a familiar jingling over the sound of the space heater in their tent. They'd only had the tent for a couple of weeks since they had gotten married, but it had become homelike, even if interruptions like this had become depressingly common. The newlyweds waited a few minutes before Frank popped his head out of the tent to take a look around.

"What is it this time honey?" Miguel said as he looked over at the tent flap from his perch on a crate they had pilfered to be a couch.

"A pheasant." His husband, Frank, replied as he stared at the dead and unplucked bird hanging down from a convenient tent-pole.

"Is she ever going to get the message?" Miguel said as he ran his fingers through his black hair. "We've told her you're off the market twice. I'm about ready to call the MPs."

"I don't really think that's necessary." Frank said, before taking the pheasant in. "Sheti is a nice girl with a cute kid, and I don't want her getting in trouble over this."

"Because you want to tap that." Miguel said as he sighed. "I didn't know you were a breast man though. I might not have said yes if I'd known. That lip rug is bad enough."

"I like all kinds. Besides, you're just mad that she can pull off that dress better than you can." Frank shot back, stroking his mustache.

"I could pull that off." Miguel replied, "I'd just need some new heels is all. Maybe a nice set of pumps. Oh, and a new wig."

"Sure…" Frank muttered dutifully, trying to find his boots. His bald head reflecting the lamplight.

"You're going to give it back to her aren't you?" Miguel said as he sat up. "I'm coming with."

Sheti lived in a farming hamlet about a mile out of Metella proper, and only a few hundred yards from the fence line of the main base. It was on a small rise that was just above the high-water mark for the spring flood. The hamlet itself wasn't much more than a couple of barns and corn cribs, with maybe a half dozen pithouses and a low wall working their way around the rim of the rise. Sheti's late husband had been one of the farmers there after they'd had their first child, and his family hadn't yet thrown them out of the house on the edge of the hamlet yet, even if they were loathe to tolerate, never mind support a Yrcen full-blood and her half-breed toddler.

Frank knocked on the door, and after a minute Sheti opened the door and popped her head out. The smile on her face quickly faded when she saw Miguel and her blue-grey ears drooped, almost hiding in her hair. The maltese cat-woman then came out to talk. In the light of the moon (and a flashlight) her eyes glowed even as they narrowed.

"I guess this is actually a no then." She said in pidgin as Frank and Miguel nodded.

Frank handed the pheasant over. "Yeah. I'm married. I love my husband, and I can't just leave him for someone else."

"Could I do your laundry or something? Could you set me up with someone?" Sheti replied nervously, with her ears back, eyes wide and voice low. "I need to go somewhere else, they won't let me plant, and I can't leave my daughter with anyone here to really hunt. She's too young to travel into the mountains, and they might try something if I'm gone…"

"We'll ask around, but there's not really much work at the base if you can't speak English, and you can't stay in our quarters." Miguel said.

"Maybe try with someone else?" Frank said.

"Some of the boots in my section or the sergeant could probably go for the whole single mom catgirl thing." Miguel continued. "Alternatively there's Captain Lee. Only problem is he's Captain Lee."

"I don't think that would work out." Sheti replied. "I'm about ready to give up on men anyway. You let two women marry, right?"

"Johnson's a dyke, so maybe her?" Frank said switching to English.

"You just described half the women in the brigade." Miguel replied.

"The redhead. Weather forecaster, sings Duran Duran songs on karaoke night." Frank said. "I know she's on the rebound."

"Right, her." Miguel said. "She might be worth a shot."

"So," Frank said, switching back to Meledli, "We might have a plan."

"What kind of plan?" Sheti said nervously.

~

"Sergeant, what are you planning?" Jessica Johnson said when she got the look on Frank's face, trying to decide if she'd had enough coffee to handle this bullshit on top of her hangover.

"I just want you to go out on a date with someone." Frank said, pulling something up on his phone "Just as a favor."

"Who is it this time?" Johnson said, "It better not be one of your husband's boots. I've been pretty clear I'm not interested in men, and I don't need a merkin. Why you think I'm one of those boatfuckers down trying to build a dock is a mystery to me."

"That's funny. I remember that you were practically begging me to set you up last night." Frank continued as he handed his phone over to Jessica. "She's a nice full-blooded yrcen girl. Looks kinda like a Maltese cat, and she's cute I guess. It doesn't even need to be much more than the two of you and her kid having a picnic or something."

"Cute or not, she has a kid." Johnson said, her green eyes narrowing even as she looked at the screen, before handing the phone back. "You probably should've led off with that Frank. Even if she is cute enough that I won't report you over this."

Frank waved his hand, pulling out a cigarette. "It's not like that. Her daughter is adorable, and is why I'm trying to find her someone. Her late husband's family hate her, and she can't really hunt or travel with a toddler." he said, lighting up and offering the pack to Johnson "and I said I'd help her find someone if she'd stop bothering us."

"Why is she a widow, anyway?"

"He was one of the guys who died in that first skirmish, along with the nomarch and a few others." Frank said. "She doesn't hold it against us, and she's been essential for the Clinic's research since her daughter is the only eared yrcen child in town, but his family are pretty anti-everything as a result. Most of that hamlet, really."

"Christ, what is it with you and charity cases? This is like that damn dog."

"I'm a bleeding heart. Sue me." Frank replied with a shrug. "Anyway she's hot, and she has a pretty good sense of humor, so do you want to go out with her or not? If you don't want to, I could try and set her up with Captain Lee."

"Fuck, if that's the alternative, I'll go out with her." Johnson said. "Christ, talk about going for the throat. I mean, you might as well let them kill her or something, put her out of her misery.

"Well, that's option three," Frank muttered, puffing away. "Except the minute she's dead, the kid's getting thrown in a sack and stoned to death or something. Probably just as much to spite us as to just kill the kid since the locals know we're doing very important research on her, which makes it my problem and you're the only decent asset we have for this, outside putting them in protective custody or playing favorites with a particularly hated widow. Plus you were the one complaining about not getting any."

Jessica gulped, and swiped the proffered cigarette from earlier. "That would probably have gotten me to agree sooner, you know. 'Oh hey, this kid's on the line and the circumstances involve a threat to our control of the town, do us a favor and show up a few times, maybe get her to scrawl on some paperwork.'" Jessica said as she lit up. "But no, you have to mention Captain Lee, didn't you?"

"There is no fate worse than Captain Lee, except maybe a posting in the sandbox, and even then the second one has danger pay." Frank said. "So I used what worked."

"You still could just take this up with the MPs or something, instead of trying to be sneaky." Johnson continued. "God knows this would be the perfect dry run to get a women's shelter or something going."

Frank scoffed, and waved his cigarette dramatically out towards the base wall. "You tell me, with a straight face, that you think we can get the people and the money to work out a woman's shelter when we can't even get a goddamn seven-day forecast that isn't 'mid sixties with a chance of rain, bring a poncho you fucking boot'? When my entire job is hunting down dumbfuck boots who might have run into spoopy shit and making sure we don't get smited for fucking up another holy site? When the USDA people are trying to figure out the best way to drag these people out of sustenance farming without causing a famine along the way, and I'm the go between for all of it?"

"Fuck you, you'll get a good seven day forecast when we get a radar worth a damn." Jessica growled, puffing angrily for a moment as Frank's cold summation of the facts warred with her rosy recollections of the past few weeks. "but you have a point. It's still not right."

"Never said it was." Frank replied, as he tossed a butt into the sand bucket. "And this case can't wait, so we'll do what we can. I'll go with you to bring it up to the brass if you want, see if something isn't done, like what happened to that son of a bitch Schmuckatelli bought his wife from."

"Where is your husband, anyway?"

Frank sighed, looking up at the stars. "We flipped a coin. I won."

"Christ on a cracker." Jessica muttered, the remains of her cigarette falling from her lips. "You sent him to Captain Lee."

"Ayep."

~

The area at the edge of the old town where Jessica met Sheti for their date was actually pretty nice. Being floodprone and too close to the walls to be cultivated, the current plan was to turn it into a park once some benches and playground equipment came in. In the meantime, it was a good place for a picnic, as long as you didn't sit in the swampy bits. With that in mind, Jessica had brought a tarp, and a tote full of food and drinks. In this case a couple cheesesteaks, a thermos of coffee, fruit cups, and a parfait.

Sheti had brought her daughter Nauta, a sack and a hunting bow and arrows. The toddler looked a lot like her mother, except she didn't have fur and her milk teeth were unsettlingly prominent.

The two sat on the tarp and conversed as well as they could in pidgin, even as Nauta ran around, tugged on her mother's hair and tail, and gorged herself on the parfait.

"I've needed this." Sheti said as she flicked her tail around, "Since my husband died, I haven't had a moment to relax. They've killed my dogs, threatened my daughter, and left me with no other way to feed us outside of picking off deer or pheasants stupid enough to go into the orchard."

"You live a hard life."

"If I could get away with it, I'd probably kill them all." Sheti said wistfully as she looked at her daughter playing with a doll. "It wouldn't be hard if I could get some poison, but shooting them or hacking them all to death would be too slow for it to be safe for her."

"Are you really capable of that?" Jessica asked as she looked at the grey woman who was pensively flicking her ears around, "I killed a man last week, and I don't think I could do it again unless it was him or me."

Sheti laughed. "I did it to put food on the table when it was just me, and those people didn't even deserve it." She continued confidently. "Not like they wouldn't do the same to me, if they ever left their huts for anything except the corn and their sheep."

Jessica laughed nervously even as she unwrapped a philly and handed it to Sheti. "I can understand that."

"Are you all that squeamish about violence?" Sheti said as she looked at the philly, covered in cheese and peppers and mushrooms, even as her ears tracked her now sleeping daughter's movements. "Is your land really so peaceful even your soldiers can be like that?"

"I'm supposed to be a fobbit, and I didn't join the Marines to go out and kill people." Jessica said as she unwrapped her own sandwich. "I joined up because if I didn't I'd have been stuck in Logan County waiting tables for the rest of my life. Nothing to see, nowhere to go, nothing to do… the boredom and drugs would've gotten me faster there than my odds of getting an arrow here, or getting blown up in Afghanistan."

"I left home for much the same reasons." Sheti said. "I had good timing too, since plague carried off my parents a year later."

"I couldn't handle being alone like that." Jessica said. "I know my family would hate me if I came out to them, but I still send money home because I know they couldn't get out, and I do at least want to give my sister's kids the chance I got even if there mother is a good for nothing."

"How do you even eat this thing?" Sheti asked, her ears folded back in confusion as she looked at the sandwich

"You eat it like this," Jessica said, before holding her philly up in Sheti's line of sight and taking a bite out of it.

Sheti followed suit. "What is this?" She asked in between bites, with her ears perked up, "I've never had anything like it."

"Bread, beef, provolone, green peppers, onions and mushrooms." Jessica replied. "There's no tomatoes or egg whites in it."

"What are those?"

Jessica rolled her eyes. "We kinda found out the hard way there's a lot of food the locals like you can't eat. Tomatoes, egg whites, certain sugars: they all make you sick."

"Glad I'm not the one who found that out the hard way." Sheti joked, taking another bite. "Did Skior find out about it?"

"Skior?"

"Old… comrade? I think that word is right? Comrade of mine. He did sales down here. Actually met my husband through him after a business dispute."

Thinking for a minute, Jessica tried to decide how to broach this topic gently. "Was he about yea tall, bushy unbraided beard, spat a lot, kinda greasy looking?"

Sheti shrugged. "Yeah, sounds about right."

"Well, since he was pimping some girls he'd brought in on our base and that's not allowed for a number of reasons, some of the guys tried to run him off, and followed him back to his camp. Except then they found a kid and… well…"

"He's dead, isn't he?"

"Yeah, he's pretty dead." Jessica shrugged. "Just got shot 'resisting arrest' instead of having his heart torn out like that pimp did."

"Eh, he was horrible in the sack anyway, and tried hoarding our share of the loot." Sheti groused, finishing her cheesesteak, and going for the other half. "These are pretty good!"

"Thank the commissary." Jessica grinned. "After Awri puked up all over their floor from sweet tea and some kid's mother freaked out over bloody stools they made a local-safe menu, aside from the omelettes, which are whites only now."

"You know, if it means food like this on a regular basis, I'd be more than happy to come to the base with you." Sheti said, batting her eyelashes and smiling. "This is delicious!"

"It's on a rotation, but everything is pretty meat heavy." Jessica replied as she poured herself a cup of coffee and Sheti's expression shifted to something that reminded Jessica of a housecat that just heard a can opener even as she scooted closer to Jessica. "I've been in for three years, and I'm still not used to how good and how much food there is."

"Is it unusual?" Sheti asked, looking concerned as she leaned over. "I thought you all came from paradise."

"No," Jessica said, in between sips of coffee. "I just grew up really poor in the country."

"What about the medicine?" Sheti asked, as she moved to brace herself with an arm. "I've been taking Nauta to the doctors so she'll be safe from plague and worms, and because we need the food."

"I think that's cheap enough you don't have to worry about it." Jessica said in between sips as she tried to calm the older woman. "The doctors here are working very hard to make sure we don't accidentally make everyone sick, and that's why they're not charging for anything or outright paying people with peanut butter and spam to come in. Of course wives and children get priority over other civilians, but everyone does that."

"But isn't that why you give offerings to the gods and pray and keep food safe? Do your gods not protect you-" Sheti said, before being interrupted with a kiss.

"You're cute when you worry that much." Jessica said after pulling away. "We've got good doctors here and none of you are stupid enough to avoid vaccination."

"It's just, she's all I have left." Sheti said. "After my husband died, I don't have any family left, my former partners are all dead or gone, and Skior is dead. So it is the two of us, and I don't want to lose anyone else."

It was at this point that Jessica pulled a confused Sheti into a hug. "You're not doing this alone. I'm here, as are Frank and Miguel, and from what I've seen the enlisted wives here are pretty tight as well."

"Where are you going with this?" Sheti asked, unsure of how to respond to the gesture.

"I mean you were looking to get married right?" Jessica replied.

"Yes, I was." Sheti said.

"Then let's keep doing this." Jessica said before pulling back. "Grab your shit, I'll grab the kid, and we'll go to my quarters before we talk to Sergeant Valois."

Nauta didn't even stir once on the walk back, and Jessica laid her down on the small bed in her quarters to continue sleeping. Sheti watched over her and silently judged the shoddy construction of the B-Hut, and the moaning from next door. Jessica, having decided against hauling the two of them all the way across camp for what amounted to a socal call, called Sergeant Valois. By the time the Sergeant came around, it was late enough that the pair of locals were asleep, although Jessica was still up.

"So, how'd it go?" The Sergeant said as he sat down on the bench outside the B-hut.

"They're both out like a light." Jessica replied. "Hopefully her neighbors don't do anything to her house while she's gone."

"I don't think they're stupid enough to give us an excuse to come down on them. If they think she's fucking an American, that's protection enough for now." Frank said as he lit up. "You think you might end up marrying her?"

"She's certainly cute enough." Jessica chirped.

"You better start doing the paperwork then." Frank said. "I'll have the numbers for the people you're supposed to talk to on your desk tomorrow morning."

"Fuck." Jessica said. "Is that new?"

"No." Frank said. "You're just not enough of a fuckup to get special treatment."

 

[BiopunkOtrera]

[ ] Dreams of a New Age

Spoiler: Dreams of a New Age

~!@#$%^&*()_+

Your adventure begins, as movies tell you these thing sometimes do, at an estate sale. You've visited these regularly since you was a kid because your parents had the bizarre idea it made for better birthday and Christmas presents when you could pick through some old ladies stuff. It used to be boring, even annoying... then you started selling the stuff you got on Ebay... the bidding war one of your sales set off made things much more interesting. With pocket money to spare and the advent of smartphones with touchscreen internet they became positively exciting.

This particular estate sale is in memory of Madam Vivienne Varma. Recently deceased at the age of 93, black, short haired, rather pretty despite her advanced age, and possessing an astounding collection of pseudo-Victorian-era finery. The old house is filled with ball gowns, gilded masks, leather bound books and jewelry. You carefully peruse the dead ladies belongings as they're laid out on the auction table, googling everything and occasionally calling friendly professionals with picture IM's to gauge the value of one thing or another.

Then you see it. A necklace. A large Aquamarine stone on a long silver chain that seems to glint at you invitingly. Against reason, you're captivated and add it to your purchases.

You leave the sale several hours later, car loaded down mostly with old books. Jewelry is nice and can fetch a good price, as can dresses, but the really good stuff is rare and snatched up quickly. More often you've found that with an old book and the right highbrow auction house you can make enough money to take vacations and not need a real job. It's almost better than finding vintage 'one of a kind' collectables people on Ebay go nuts over.

At home, you catalogue each of the books, even read bits of them, set up pictures of everything and send emails to your friendly experts. They'll send emails to their buyers and by the end of the month you'll be in another auction. For reasons beyond you, you forego cataloging the aquamarine necklace and instead, fall asleep in your Lazy-boy, the gem in your pocket. As you sleep the gem begins to glow.

You awaken in a landscape full of green mist. The stone is uneven forming a cobweb of rough hewn archways. In the distance you can see... people you think... walking along the stones like ants. Or those people from M. C. Escher's painting "Stairs". On one horizon there appears to be a city out of Lord of the Rings, on the other, you see a brightly glowing disk with more people going in and out of it. Walking around a little you take note of things closer to home. You seem to be in a clearing of sorts with a gigantic blue stone wart smoking at its center.

The stone pathways out of your clearing are steep up or down and idly you wish you had climbing gear. As you imagine the equipment you're startled out of the surreal bliss of your imagination by a tightening across your hips and chest. You are now equipped with a rock climbing harness, a coil of rope wound around your shoulder and a fanny pack full of carabiners and climbing hooks.

You decide to amuse yourself before figuring out who the people are. As long as you're in control of the dream you might as well. Focusing on a memory from your childhood where Scrooge McDuck dives into a pile of gold coins and dollar bills. Before your eyes a giant blob of money begins to form in the void off to the right. Laughing like a loon you dive into it. It's not quite swimming around as you had imagined. You're weightless, and the notes and coins spread and flow easily, but it's a lot like crawling through a tunnel. You shrug and kick yourself to the top, the money disappearing and reforming itself into the strange green stone of the nearby ground now that you no longer want it.

The next thing you'd like to try is flying! Not falling either, flying like a bird! Isn't that usually what people talk about having dreams of? As idea swirl around in your head, you feel the wings growing out of your back and reforming themselves. It's odd and surreal, just like the whole rest of this experience and you really wish you could see yourself. A short bit of focus and a large standing mirror you resold once appears in front of you.

The current set of wings you're wearing are those of a peregrine falcon; long thin and angular. Good for acrobatics and controlling a dive, but not for flying, requiring large amounts of flapping or very strong thermal updrafts. Musing on the issue you go through several other types; fantasy succubus, full dragon wings, bat, sugar glider, angel wings.

Ooh, angel wings, keeping that one.

Stretching your wings, together, one at a time and moving them around like fingers, spreading out and curling. It's amazing how real it feels. Their weight on your back, the muscles stretching in the new limbs, the soft prickling as the feathers move over each other. You remember a could of really vivid wet dreams, but this is more. Or perhaps it's not? Maybe this is what it's like in every dream, you just don't remember 60-95% of the details afterwards. With that thought in mind you take off, legs crouch, wings spread and you jump, pulling down with your wings with all of your might. You rocket up into the pea soup clouds.

You've gone far higher than you expected, but the rush as your stomach sinks into your shoes and air rushes past your face. You crest above the clouds and see the city in the distance as you roll over in the air. You shrug, it's floating on the horizon, a multitude of tiny lights offering a sense of scale and incredible distance. It's much further than the people at the light and you're not sure you want to visit any of the cities in your memory. The people at the light are closer and if this is a dream, because of course it is, it's fewer people for you to invent fantasy conversations for.

Turning down into a dive you fall again, grinning as the wind tries to pull back your cheeks. You can still breathe easily somehow, but you attribute that to inconsistencies in dreaming. It would be inconvenient and probably mean that you'd rolled face down into your pillow...

Except that you were in your armchair last you remembered. ...And now an armchair is falling beside you through the emerald mists.

You dismiss it and spread your wings. You have more important things to do, like seeing which old relationships your dreaming mind has dredged up for you to revisit today. As your wings catch the imagined air, your flight levels off and you begin gliding at speed. An arm of stone loom out of the gloom and you pump your wings some to skim over the top of it, the rough stone just skimming your shoes as you pass.

You dive and weave around a few more before approaching the arcing precipice of rock where you saw the light.

Now that you're closer you can see broken half finished structures of what looks like a medieval castle. The light is coming from a room on one of the upper floors where the walls have been blown out. It appears to be a full length mirror and... holy shit those are not people down there.

Or, well, two of them are.

Both of the humans look like fantasy characters from a role playing game with one foot in the grave... or a couple years in it. The rest of the... figures... are humanoid in the same way a clay statue that's been left to sit too long is. Some of them look like a craze sculptor thought it might be cool to craft a person out of magma before the stone had cooled below a cherry red, others looked like the same artist had given up halfway through and left the thing to cool, soot and all. There were a few succubus looking things as well which seemed to be either the center of attention or directing the flow of traffic, you couldn't decide, but the armored girl who looked like a fresh casting from The Walking Dead seemed to be keeping everyone else away from the glowing mirror with her glowering presence.

The wrinkled old man on the other hand... seemed to be holding a soap bubble? If that bubble were 300 feet in diameter and covered most of the broken castle.

As you approach the knight the world seems to change, growing harder. Your wings itch and the feathers start to fade, forcing you to focus to keep them on your back. As you get within a dozen feet of the room your quarry sets herself within gravity has fully reasserted itself and the walls have become solid. They write with black mist and the worn stones are covered by a bright, transparent wall of plaster. The door to the study also has a strange duality to it, strong solid and polished on the outside, a large section broken out of it and significant damage from water and time on the inside.

What could that mean, you wonder? It's not as if you're old.., only 42. You certainly don't look or feel old or worn out.

You open the door to confront your gremlin.

"Fledgling, step no further. This one has no need of your presence."

You clear your throat and chuckle, remembering hecklers at the Renaissance Faire. "Forsooth, M'lady, but perhaps this one is in need of you. What say you then?"

The zombie turns to you fully, expression turning slowly from its sour mask to considering. "The dreamer has this one's interest. Speak, before it loses more."

Aaannnddd... the creepy double voice zombie talks about the dream you're both in. Fourth wall break? At least it's not speaking to an audience you can't see, making rude comments about your wings or confusion.

"The things one sees in dreams are issues unresolved in the waking world; so we were curious, what pray-tell are you?"

The monster looks at you incredulously and then laughs at some private joke. "This one is The Dryden, Sophia. This one is trapped. This one would see new places, seek new sensations, but The Avernus holds us tight. Keeps us prisoner. And now you walk into our midst, a meal to the brethren."

This... is definitely not a common dream. Well, unless you're schizophrenic and this is the first sign of your second personality. "The man holding the bubble keeps you here, does he? If he troubles the, why doth ye not strike him down?"

"This one cannot." Sophia replied simply. "This one has bound itself to The Dryden, seeking hope, craving change tasting delicious sensation and hidden places. But these things come with a price. The waking world is solid and does not yield easily to this one's commands. The Avernus has barred the door with his stones and his magics alike. This one cannot move beyond these three rooms. But this one is patient. The veil continues to weaken and the Avernus to tire. A century more and this one will be free. To roam, to see, to feed..."

"And if I were to speed things along?" You ask, edgily. You've really no intention of helping this thing, but the comment about being a meal for her and the... other things... has left you nervous. You're really rather not fall to some psychosis and if any burgeoning personality disorders could be turned on one another while you get treatment? Well...

Deciding it's best to leave the creepy lady alone for the moment you head for the old bugger holding the soap bubble. As you get further away from the ghoulish knight a weight lifts off your metaphysical shoulders. Walls become old and pocked with large chunks missing, gravity ceases to be so cumbersome and your wings stop trying to burn away. Not that you particularly care about them, but it's the principal of the thing. You're not the one trying to dismiss them, so them trying to crumble away sucks. It's your dream isn't it?

Though you're rather starting to doubt that last bit.

Flying loops around the causeway between the broken castle floating on it's chunk of rock in nowhere and the half tower supported by a few floating bricks, you approach the transparent rooms. As you approach the walls of the tower itself the air changes. It doesn't weigh you down or become thick like it did around Sophia, but the walls of the tower are no longer transparent. Flaring your wings you drop most of your speed and land against the walls.

Ooouch, that could have been nasty. Like falling in a dream. You wonder briefly if you'd have woken before the impact or with it.

You stand up, reorienting yourself. Gravity at least is still under your control, but now you have to deal with the surreality of a castle being above you, a tower below and a thin string of incomplete rock suspending it over your head. As you walk over to the causeway and the door you fold your wings and let them sink into your back. You're about to reach the door when the stones under your feet begin to shift and reform themselves. jumping out of the way you look down at the wall you're standing on and see that it has become a stone face.

"Yes? Oh, hello, who are you? What do you want?"

"I'm here to see the wizard?" you ask with a grin.

"Cheeky. So, you're a dreamer are you? Yes, I can sense you're not one of those uncouth demons. Come in, if it suits you; it's not often an old man gets to speak his mind."

With that, the face flattened out into a plain stone wall and the door a few feet behind you drops open.

You, perhaps against better judgement, walk in. "Enter my web, said the spider to the fly," you mutter. Then again, this was looking to be less dangerous than what you'd done last time. Assume this is still a dream, Avernus looks to be your rational mind holding your issues in check, while Sophia is one of the more cohesive representations of those issues. Given Avernus spoke of demons and she speaks in the third person, she's probably the usual fantasy about how much you would have liked to strangle your boss back when you still did 9 to 5 or what fun it would be to bash in that jerks skull at the bar.

If this isn't a dream... somehow... then meeting this entity seems safer than what you did flying up to Sophia Dryden earlier. At the very least Avernus hides the evil creepy shit better. Such as not being a zombie, no leering and not having a threatening multilayered voice.

You step onto the causeway, reorienting where down is again, and walk through the door. You have a better feel this time as the restrictions of the area close in around you. There aren't as many of them as there were in Sophia's space and you feel as if you could ignore them without a whole lot of effort... but then this guy is also holding what looks to be a bubble that's interfering with other people's spaces too, so who knows how strong this personality really is. Assuming he's not part of you.

You walk through and outer chamber and something catches the side of your eye. There are... pages... and writing hanging in the air. You can only see it from certain angles and the words are all in Norse runes, something you're only passingly familiar with. As in you know what they are, but reading them would be beyond you.

Weird.

Moving into the next room... is about as disturbing as Sophia was up close. The walls are lined with ghosts of people in a variety of conditions, most of them laid out over tables or in cages. They appear and disappear. Play out little scenes that at a glance look to be... medical experiments? Human trials, nasty business.

"Hrm... interesting." Avernus drones, his accent posh and tired sounding. "Let me have a look at you..." The old man walks around you, looking you up and down like a specimen on his lab table, or a car he's planning to buy. "You're a dreamer, that much is obvious... and you're not a mage... but you could be! How curious indeed. I has been quite some time since I met one such as yourself. Are you perhaps a late bloomer? Or... well, no, that's quite impossible."

You tilt your head. "What are you talking about, old man? As cool is that'd be, magic isn't real."

The man stared at you for a few seconds before bursting out in a great belly laugh. This continued on for nearly a minute and a half before Avernus calmed down enough to meet your glower. "Oh, oh dear maker, thank-you son. I needed that. Perhaps more than I knew..." He straightened himself up and brushed down his robe. "Magic is in fact quite real, and You, my friend, have the talent for it. Where precisely do you live that you think the arcane to be a myth?"

"America." You reply flatly. Then you brighten, assuming once more that you're not dreaming or going nuts... magic! Bullshit of course, but it's been a personal fantasy pretty much since you first saw Lord Of The Rings, say nothing of reading Harry Potter or playing Video Games.

Avernus looks pensive. "Hmm... America. I have never heard of such a place myself. Is it perhaps across the Amaranthine Ocean? Or north of Par Vollen and the Anderfels? It must be a nice place to never have heard of demons." His frown deepened. "Unless the humans there are like the dwarves... blind to the fade and it's mysteries." He peers at you closely. "You do not seem unfamiliar to dreaming, have any of your dreams been vivid before this night?"

You shake you head. "Not really, though I think I might be from somewhere a bit further away than you imagine." You reply. For one thing you've never heard of Amaranthine, let alone an ocean named such. And you're pretty sure there aren't any countries still in the feudal or medieval ages. Hell, even in the dark pits of Africa there's still signs everywhere of modern times.

"How far?" he asks sharply.

"Cosmic." You state dryly. "I'm still not convinced this whole thing isn't a fantasy of mine, I quite like fantasy stories and the dreaming mind can do funny things. But assume you're real and not some manifestation of buried psychosis. You say you can teach me magic?" You utter that last part with an eager grin.

The old man looks thunderstruck, but quickly lowers his head in contemplation. "I could teach you. Much of my research is done here in the fade before I conduct my experiments. So much easier to hold information in a place it never, heh, fades and cannot be set aflame. But I'm afraid I'm not entirely qualified and who knows if what you can offer an old man would be worth his time?"

"What do you need? Or perhaps, what could I do for you?"

The corners of the man's mouth twitched. "There is the matter of the demons haunting this castle... And of course knowledge from another world would be quite valuable on its own. How able are you to access the lore of your peoples masters, for instance? Or I could direct you to the dreamers of the local Mage tower, Kinloch. Your choice..."

"Sure," You say, "knowledge is easy enough. I used to tutor people for pocket change in college. Mind you though, I'm not a proper scientist or even a doctoral student, so a lot of the specifics of stuff like advanced chemistry, engineering, non-basic medical sciences and other advanced shit is quite beyond me."

Avernus raised a wrinkled brow. "For all that you cannot do, you seem quite confident you'll have something valuable to offer me."

You grin broadly. "Do you have guns? Horseless carriages? Industrial metallurgy? Civilian electricity? I know a lot of basic sciences that to a medieval fantasy would seem a lot like magic. And I've gone through enough entertainment media with magic to spend an inordinate amount of time imagining what I could do to make science better. Call it... a hobby."

"Hrm..." The old mage grumbled to himself. "Be that as it may. Show me the first of these lessons and I shall help you achieve your first arcane blast. After that exchange I should know enough to determine a system of value we could work by."

"Alright," you say and close your eyes, dredging up more amusing memories of highschool Chemistry. "Have you ever heard of guns? Or perhaps cannon?"

Avernus thought for a moment, then nodded sharply. "350 years ago, give or take a decade a group called the Qunari came through and did a good job of conquering the known world. They were driven back however by their poor treatment of mages and brutal attempts to convert civilians from the church of the maker to their philosophy of the Qun. Their primary weapon was the cannon. A mechanical beast powered by the mysterious substance Gathlok. The Qunari have guarded the secret of the Gathlock well and when last I left my tower 180 years ago none had yet uncovered its secrets except that with a small spark it can explode with the force of a strong fireball spell." He chuckled darkly and his grin became positively bloodthirsty. "That was actually how the men of the free marches turned them back. The qunari mages were worthless and their greatest weapon easy to turn against them with the simplest of spells. When the mage circles were set to destroying a Qunari forces Gathlock stores their cannons exploded in the center of their armies and fleets, killing many and allowing our armies to face them on even footing."

"Huh," you reply "go figure. Think the knowledge of how to do it better would be of interest?" The look of greed in his expression was answer enough. "Find yellow curing salts, potash if you can, the crystal saltpeter that forms in sewage if you're desperate and grind it to powder. Then take charcoal..."

Avernus held up his hand in a stopping gesture. "What is charcoal?" he asked, wanting clarification. "Is it different than regular coal?"

"Ah, yeah" you reply scratching your head. "Charcoal is carbon ash obtained by baking things in sealed furnaces where extra air can't get to it. It becomes black and breaks down without burning. That ash is what you want. You can use Coal dust, but you need to bake the coal first to remove any liquids or gasses before it starts to burn. The last ingredient is sulfur. You want to grind them into a fine powder and mix them together. 2 parts sulfur, 3 parts ash or coal dust, 15 parts yellow curing salts."

Avernus shook his head. "Maker preserve us. So simple. Indeed, if my sins are atoned and the demons of this castle exorcised, that information alone could be sold to kings for enough gold to fund my research for decades at least." He looked at you, "I will have to test this of course, I think I might have the needed materials, though if not, creation magic should be enough to give me what I need. Have you more such world shaking revelations?"

Your grin was answer enough.

After that, Avernus walked you through the steps for creating both an arcane bolt and shield with the instructions to return to him once you'd gotten the hang of it. And further orders to practice it while awake. "In the fade all is possible and merely requires imagination and force of will. It is in the limitations of the waking world where skill is developed." The lecture and instructions for the spells were long, detailed and boring, but... essentially, they boiled down to four simple steps. First, draw on your awareness of the fade, doing so will build your mana pool. You'll understand what I mean next time you wake up. Step two, focus on the new feeling of vitality the mana will give you and draw it forth. It should be a simple act of will now that you have awakened and will manifest as a blue light with sufficient concentration. Finally, concentrate on precisely what you want to do and push the mana away from you. In the case of a shield, you want it to form a wall between you and the rest of the world, cutting you off from that which inspires fear. For a mana bolt you will need to feel some form of anger or repulsion that can focus your mind onto a point; that will allow you to fire it and hurt things with it.

Simple, right? Well, it certainly was in the fade. You figured it out within minutes and spent several more amusing yourself with blasting rocks from the underside of Avernus fortress.

Now that you have the basics of Avernus two lessons down, you need a place to practice the hard way. Since you're having too much fun to force yourself awake you decide to take what's actually Sophia Dryden's advice. The Mirror and entering the physical world of Thedas come with the consequences of reality and it's confining rules. Since that's what you need to practice properly according to Professor Avernus and you're actually used to doing things the normal way... you head for the mirror.

The Mirror has the same problem it did last time, that specifically being the swarm of things you now know to call demons on either side of of the barrier. Since you don't particularly want to deal with them, but want to get through, your plan is to swoop in like a bird and punch through the loose flock of monsters and get to the other side before they know what's going on.

Pumping your recently recalled wings you rise well above the castle before pausing to take in the panorama. You can see the emerald city in the distance, almost on your level, and at this height you can even see a glimpse of other structures here and there. One of them looks like a fingerprint far to the west, to the north east there's a sort of singing mountain and to the south, a giant crystal glacier looking thing. Turning your mind away from all of that, you stoop into a dive. Under the direction of your will as much as they height itself you steadily gain speed with each meter. As you approach the castle once more you're easily going 60, 70 miles an hour. Your wings flare slightly and the angle if your descent changes parabolically and you swoop, maintaining most of your earlier momentum in a lateral motion now. The conversion is much better and less straining in the fade where perception governs reality rather than the other way around, but you aren't thinking about that... you've just glided past the demons hovering around the entrance and there are a lot more of them than you thought at first.

There are the dark sooty ones and the magma spirits of course, but there's also a lot of ghosts, ghostly skulls and this wickedly dangerous looking succubus creature who manages to make pink look absolutely sexy. As you punch through the cloud of monsters at 50 miles an hour you feel all of them pulling at your mind, shredding your wings and greying out your vision. You only catch the briefest flashes, but the black ones want you to drown in despair or sleep forever; the red ones are trying to show you worlds where you're playing Red Hulk on everything and the purple one... You're sitting behind the desk of a highrise in a business suit below you is a panorama of a city you somehow know instinctively has been shaped by your orders...

And then it's gone. Rules of physics and magic wrap around you like steely bands even as you catapult through several walls, your vision going dark briefly as you pass through solid stone walls one to two meters thick. The air parts thickly for you, providing drag that devours your speed in a way the walls simply do not and flailing your arms around feels much like you remember from swimming in pools.

You finally come to rest half buried in a snowbank on the far side of the castle. Standing up, you brush yourself off, only to notice you're not covered with snow. Hell, you haven't even made an impression in the snow. Examining your body you find yourself to be vaguely transparent... like a super-concentrated ghost. Your pants feel like denim when you touch them, your shirt cotton, pliable and solid... but you're still just see-through enough to be noticeable. You cast around for a comparison if what you're dealing with now and come up with Astral Projection, but more Prue from Charmed than Charles Xavier or Dungeons & Dragons.

You take in a deep breath and let it out, but produce no breath mist in the frigid snowy landscape. Odd. Though, being a ghost, perhaps not?

You shake your head, you're drifting off topic. You came here to practice, so, you should practice, right? You get as far as step two before something odd starts to happen. One of the floating skulls you saw earlier has started poking around. It sees the mana in your hands and howls. With a flash it disappears and the snow begins to shift. With the distinct cracking of ice a shape begins to rise from the snowbank.

It's a zombie...

A fucking zombie. Complete with desiccated skin clinging in wrinkled chunks to white bone and adorned in armor with weapons sticking out of it's body at random points. It's movements are clumsy, but you still down get quite out of the way, and the swords edge carves a nice gash down the side of your leg. You look at the wound for half a second before the pain hits you like a wall and you stumble out of the way of the undead warriors second attack. You stare up at the thing in horror and as it raises the sword up to chop you in half where you sit, you raise your arms, still alight with mana in a warding gesture.

CLANG!

The sword rebounds off a distinct wall of mana, the shield spell you practiced earlier responding to your fear of being harmed and the presence of mana, manifested in your hands.

Clang!

The sword strikes your shield again and you feel a slight fatigue rush through your body. You mind runs through several game models where you've played magical characters and swear. You're using a mana shield like in World Of Warcraft where damage blocked takes 15% of the damage as mana, shielding you from the rest. You probably can't keep this shield up for as long as the ghost skull can animate that body and empower its weapon to touch you in your ghostly state.

You need to do something.

Scrambling, you float backwards, away from the zombie and dismiss the shield. You focus on flight, which is much harder and slower in Thedas than it was in the fade and when you're sufficiently above the monster you begin to gather your mana again. As you point your hands at the monster and gather focus the magic into a bolt you look back down at it and feel like crying. The creature has found a bow somewhere and is working on removing an arrow from it's body to fire at you. Pouring your rage, fear and frustration into the magic you're about to unleash on it, you fire the arcane bolt. It shines like a star as it speeds forward with the speed of a cannonball. You feel another greater wave of fatigue as the bolt of magic leaves your hands, but it's satisfying as hell to see the zombie collapse like a puppet when your spell blasts the ghost skull out of it's body and explodes with a small muted flash.

Floating back down, the strain of flight taking too much out of you to keep it up, you make your way over to where the monster fell and glare at it. There was a sort of ball lying there where your enemy fell and in a fit of pique you kick the remains of the spirit that just tried to kill you.

The reaction was not what you expected. Instead of flying off into the distance, the ghostly residue flows into your ghostly foot and up your leg, wiping away the exhaustion you feel from recent spell-casting. Your eyes go wide as the implications of this hit you.

You hover over your recent kill for several minutes, thinking to yourself. You just defeated a spirit and consumed it boosting your power back to what it was before it attacked you. More interestingly it felt the need to take a physical form before launching its attack. The chance it left more essence on the body and a curiosity over what it thought it needed with the body drives you to examine the corpse more thoroughly. squatting down, you focus on picking up the withered frame and suit action to thoughts. Your hands slip through it a few times, with an odd resistance like moving through cobwebs before you finally manage to move it.

There doesn't seem to be any more essence as you continue your examination, so you lay down in the body, looking for any change. As you finish settling into position the world ripples and distorts until you are seeing double.

You stand alone in the fade, a rocky grotto around you devoid of other figures, demonic or human.
You lay in the snow, your limbs heavy, lungs cracking as you try to breath.

Your strength has returned, but you feel restricted, unable to move as easily as you had before.
Your strength is reduced, significant amounts of your mana being needed to perpetuate your movements.

"Well this was... brilliant." You groan. Ooh, your voice is doubling like Sophia's.

The double vision thing is going to be quite distracting for a while, you decide, as you look around both your stony fade clearing and the snowy crag to one side of the castle. Because you're not quite used to multitasking yet, you focus on the part of you now possessing the soldiers corpse. Raising a brittle, frozen hand you gather mana and cast the mana bolt spell again. It's a lot easier than when you fought the ghost skull a minute ago, but still much harder than when you were in the fade and firing them off like party favors. You're not sure however whether this is because you're possessing a body, or because of the spirit you just ate.

Regardless of which it is, you're feeling vindictive and need to return to Avernus in order to figure out just what you did. You focus briefly and try to shed the body you've picked up.

...It doesn't work.

You focus on the matter harder. Then add in the concept of trying to push the body away from you. Your magic reacts, and you find yourself, corpse, spirit and all, thrown 50 feet backwards where you land in another snow bank.

Well... Fuck.

It's then that you remember the words of Sophia Dryden. The Dryden was useful, but taking her flesh came with a price. Fuck.

You draw in a large breath of air and wheeze as you feel it whistle out through cracks in your ribs. Ok, you can work with this, it's not like you've done anything to your real body, you'll be whole once you wake up and if you can get back to Avernus he can likely show you how to fix your current predicament.

You grab the sword and bow and begin removing the arrows from your torso. You have a feeling you're going to need them before you get back to the one friendly in who knows how many miles.

Searching your armor, you find that your vessel does in fact have a quiver, but there's a hole in the bottom, so it won't hold the arrows you've just recovered. Second, the sword and bow are both cracked; you'll destroy them after a couple of uses. Best to make them count. The bonus at least is you still have most of your armor. Iron Pauldrons, chain and splint main shirt over a padded doublet, Iron Greaves and gauntlets. It's all low quality and full of battle scars, but aside from missing the helmet you sort of expect something of the like from a battle casualty. More curious are why his armor and body were not recovered and how the bleeding hell his sword had hurt you when you couldn't even touch his armor without conscious effort.

Examining the sword closer you find it shines in with flickers of fade green along the blade. Running your hands along the metal offers you more of the same energy you consumed when you kicked the slain ghost.

Comprehension dawns. The ghost put magic into the sword-blade. If a host could enchant a sword, you, a much stronger spirit, can do better. Gathering your mana again, you focus on it flowing into the blade. It lights up emerald white for the briefest of moments and becomes weightless in your hand.

Excellent.

Allowing your focus to split itself again, you walk the body around the outside of the castle while in the fade you explore the grotto. After a short inspection you find that there are things cemented into the walls. Spines of books, laminated swords, eating knives, skinning knives and daggers. Mostly buried sets of armor, many of the shattered. Even some faces. Each of them holds a memory, shattered and faded as they are. None of them are distinct enough for you to draw anything from them, which is perhaps a good thing as it you've read alot of literature about how psychics loose themselves to the memories of those whose minds they invade.

You try shape-shifting within the fade as the corpse stumbles around under your direction but manifesting wings as you had several times recently is... difficult. Your vehicle stumbles, and you shift your attention to Thedas. Twin lengths of meat and bone stretch out from your mid-back, just below and between your shoulder-blades. It's barely a shadow of what you've manifested in the fade and malformed beside, but it gives you a few ideas. First, you're worried about getting back into the tower. You don't know the layout of the towers base in the real world, and there's likely to be more zombies you'll have to fight if you go up the steps inside.

Focusing on your boots you gather your mana around your feet and push. It takes enough power to make you stagger, but the metal of the boots flow out to form Ice Climbing teeth. Doing the same to the gauntlets sends your avatar to it's knees as you try to build the mana to continue locomotion. You wonder for a moment if expending all of your mana could potentially separate you from the body and add a mana shield over yourself. The lack of mana causes the body to collapse, but because of your dual presence there's an instant trickle of refilling power.

Hmm... An experiment for later. see if you can pull out by draining your mana and trying to cut yourself off then. Right now you can't manage to build the focus, this duality thing is just distracting you too much. On the upside this will help you with multitasking later, something you've never had the best success with before now. Necessity is the mother of growth after all.

When you've gathered sufficient mana in your alternate form you try to change things again. This time, you focus not on your armor, but on your zombie, trying to make it more like your body. The wings disappear and flesh begins mending. The holes are quickly closed and missing chunks of muscle stretch to knit together before you're face-down in the snow once more. Deciding that, as magical locomotion is apparently your prerogative as a ghost, repairing your lively physique is a secondary concern. Your next manapool is devoted to manifesting proper eyes, rebuilding the corpse's nose and reviving the throat and tongue. As much as you can see and speak despite logic or reality without them, the chances are, Avernus will smite you before you get a chance to explain if you don't look somewhat alive.

It's as you're finishing off your fifth recharge to build a proper face that the next spirit finds you. This time it looks like a proper ghost of sorts. It howls and disappears too, but instead of raising a zombie nearby to attack you you hear the faint thumping and howls of something on the other side of the wall you're resting by. You laugh, an odd sound as one is lively and echoing while it's mirror sounds like someone trying to cough up a hairball. They're in perfect sync too, so you can't pretend it's two different laughs either.

You can work on building a proper face later, you decide, if spirits are finding you now, it's time to get to the tower.

Your body at mana saturation it's easy to move the body and you start to run. Avernus tower is easy to recognize by the bridge connecting it to, or perhaps separating it from, the rest of the castle. More spirits show themselves as you move and piles of bones and desiccated bodies begin appearing throughout the courtyard as you move. They're drawn to you, some of them confused, some of them enraged, others hostile to the spirits raising themselves. It creates a necessary bit of chaos for you to get past the lot of them and reach the base of Avernus Tower.

Contrary to expectations, there is in fact a door at the base of Avernus tower. As expected however, it's blocked by something on the other side. Judging by the number of risen corpses in the courtyard, probably something pretty substantial. Cutting back to your original plan you jump for the wall outside and latch onto the roughly shaped stones. Whether by shoddy construction or the decay of elements and ages the towers blocks are rough and bowed outward like stacked bags of flour or sandbags. It would be possible, though difficult to climb with living hands, with regular metal gauntlets it would have been quite impossible. The modified claws however, you began climbing it with the same effort as crawling on your belly across the ground.

Less really, because you don't really feel the strain of physical muscles as you move, just the constant trickling loss of mana providing you with motion.

You nearly fall several times, holding on by only one hand and your feet, one hand and one foot, or your hands without either foot. You recover however and reach the tower causeway after an hour and a half of effort.

The downside of your climb, and what actually caused you to nearly fall several times are the new arrows sticking out of your back and the backs of your legs. At the top of the causeway you look at the walkway itself and groan in frustration. Though currently inanimate, there are six bodies in much better cared for armor laying there, with arrows sticking out of their skulls. You move over to the quickly, divesting them of weapons, trading up twice, and throwing the others over the side.

Just in time too, it seems as the corpses now each have spirits settling into them. You catch a glimpse of two floating skulls, three ghosts and... fuck, one of those glowing red magma demons before they finish melting into the bodies and raising them. Two newly looted swords in hand, you roar and charge your weaponless opponents. They're stumbling around reaching for swords and bows that aren't there and you quickly cut them down, except for the one animated by the demon. It's not hard, unarmed opponents allowing your form, which boils down to pointy end goes into the other guy, to dispatch them without challenge.

The last body however, bursts into flame and posing, roars at you Hulk style.

You drop to the floor as it charges you, flames pushing it forward into a body slam. The fire hurts, but thankfully it's too stupid to tackle you. You raise a shield and pat out the flames, taking a fireball full on and draining a significant chunk of your mana. You need to end this new opponent quickly, but you don't know if you have the power to deal with this different more powerful type of spirit. This demon.

But... but..! You gained mana from looting the corpse of that last ghost! Perhaps you can do it again? You're only at half mana, not nearly drained like last time... It may make divesting yourself of this body harder, but hell, it's better than the pain of these magical attacks you've been taking the last few hours.

You charge the demon, catching it on your shield and forcing it aside with your rush, heading for the fallen spirits. Ducking and weaving, you crouch by each body and on quick inspection find each fallen spirit and consume them. High on your newfound power and bursting with energy you turn back to the demon, ready to fight...

Wait, where is it? You look around and don't see either a body or the demon you were fighting. You think back to when you fought it and it hits you... You hit it with a bull rush and knocked it back. Right over the edge perhaps?

A fireball flies over the top of your walkway and explodes, answering your question. A quick look over the edge reveals the burning corpse, now a burning skeleton, forming a puddle in the middle of the courtyard sixty feet below you.

You burst out laughing.

You're brimming with energy, your goal is in sight, and you're out of enemies to fight. You head for the door of the tower. Focusing in your glut of power, you try once more to transform, healthy, if somewhat pasty white flesh spreads across your vessels skull, replacing the skin charred from your first contact with the demon. Muscles develop under the flesh, giving it's face articulation, and a proper throat forms. The effect continues to spread, slowing as it gets away from your face, forcing you to shift your focus and think about your memories of anatomy and various body systems. Soon enough you're looking freshly dead... and bald.

It's odd. And uncomfortable, but unimportant at the moment.

You knock on the door, and it opens for you. You enter and close the door. Moving through the outer rooms of the tower you find Avernus once more and Avernus sits up from his bed, looking baffled. "What in the makers name are you doing possessing one of Arland's footmen, outlander?"

"A bit of foolishness," you reply, shaking your head and explaining the situation. Avernus comes over to you and examines the body.

"Fascinating..." he murmurs. "Fascinating..." He looks up at you. "I've seen transformation magic like this before. Once with a Chasind woman, and many more times with abominations. I had not expected it to be so easy to do. Can you feel anything? How far have you taken this spell?"

"I don't feel cold, heat or pressure," you reply, "but spells from the spirits outside hurt like a bitch."

Avernus nodds slowly. "Indeed, indeed. It's oft been theorized that as to why enchanted weapons could allow a normal soldier to fight demons, but significant dismemberment was required to banish a demon otherwise." He looked us up and down, a speculative look on his face. "I did some work, early in my tenure under Commander Dryden, binding spirits to bodies of the fallen but none of it bore any useful fruit. You wouldn't perhaps be interested in testing a fe..."

"No." You reply, a flat finality in your voice. Avernus seems to pout for half a second, but the expression is gone before you can be sure you even saw it. "I don't suppose you knew any means of separating a spirit from it's body? I'll admit that I like the significantly increased mana regeneration this body grants me over being an astral projection in Thedas, but not being able to leave on my own is... unfortunate. God, I never thought I'd say something like that. I'm rather attached to my real body back in the waking world."

Avernus nodded absently. "Indeed, I'm sure you are." He hummed, and went over to his bookshelf and pulled down a thick tome. The pages seemed to be made of a thin creamy leather... and were inked in blood. Fuck, is this guy about to use his worlds version of the necronomicon on you? This may not be the most... sane of choices.

"I have something I'm pretty sure will help you." Avernus replied eventually "but such assistance does not come cheap."

"Spinning lodestones around a piece of metal will produce lightning." You reply, impatiently. "Set it up on a wheel with a crank and any nonmagical civilian can have lightning at their fingertips. In my world we have a million uses for lightning, i'll be happy to tell you about. Now show me what to do."

Avernus blinks at you. Then he smiles, not quite a leer. "That wasn't what I was meaning in terms of price, but I think we're going to have a wonderful friendship."

Pulling out a dagger, he cuts his finger and begins drawing on a piece of velum. "This," he explains, "is a basic summoning contract." You watch him as he draws it. "It creates a hole in the veil between the Fade and Thedas. Such things are generally self repairing and open but for the briefest instants. As such, the spirits you get are generally quite random. More advanced contracts can be made to search for increasingly specific types of demons, those ones of course require progressively larger offerings of blood and spells calling out through the fade. However, If a demon divests the barest portion of their essence into the vellum, they can be summoned anywhere in Thedas, and from anywhere be it in Thedas or in the Fade. This includes pulling them out of bodies. It is a blood mages secret as such research and learning is of course banned by the church. Demons themselves have their own means of vacating possessed forms, though they don't like too, and don't like to share. In most cases, they simply transform possessed bodies to perfectly reflect their chosen forms, rather than vacate, or get forced out when the body is destroyed by an enterprising hero."

Grinning, you take the Vellum and tuck it into your armor. "Thanks professor. I feel alot calmer knowing I've got a way out. Was stupid becoming a zombie in the first place, but it's been informative."

Avernus smiled blandly. "I'd be quite interested to hear everything you observed during the experience." He doesn't seem concerned that you aren't using his necronomicon page, but he's already given you a surefire way out (destroy the body) and a possible way out (interrogate a demon) and of course, the question of what may or may not happen when you wake up at home.

"Sure," you reply shrugging. "I'd be happy to regail you... as soon as we finish our next magic lesson. That shit saved my life I think" you finish with a laugh.

Avernus looked at you reprovingly. "Yes... Dangerous enough to wander the fade as mages are required to do nightly, you had to do something unprecedented on top of that. If you were in danger, it was your own fault." Then he chuckled. "On to your lesson however. You believe yourself to have mastered basic evocation, arcane blast and shield. Show me!" You do so, going through the paces slowly at first while Avernus takes notes, and then faster. He insists on judging your stamina as well, which is currently at 21 arcane bolts before you're near collapse. This also in a short timespan, so your absolute moment to moment Avernus calculate to be 18 shots or two per minute recharge speed.

You'll have to work on that.

It's also alot better than you thought it'd be given not a few hours ago you were dying after three shots, granted you were a spirit in the material world and not because of an anchor. After allowing you some time to recover Avenus continued, taking a sip of conjured wine. "Alright. You've show yourself to be quite talented with the creation tree, so we'll start our next lesson there." With that, Avernus goes into a complicated lecture on manifestation and conjuration, the difference between the two and how both can be applied to heal or bolster the body and provide a variety of support options. For all that the man goes into a deep and detailed lecture on the subject, waxing into one tangent after another and happily and clearly answering your questions, Avernus makes the oddest claim of not being particularly well versed in the subject.

If a litany of over 100 different spells covering four conceptual uses of magic is poorly versed, you shudder to think what a proper education in the subject is.

In the end, Avernus walks you through four spells. The first is healing. His reason being that after being able to recreate most of your current body from a desiccated corpse, being able to close minor wounds should be quite straight forward. As is his teaching method. As the two of you have determined that physical wounds don't actually harm you he hands you a knife and directs you to carve 'your' arm open and seal the wound repeatedly while he observes your progress and makes comments. After an hour of this comes the next spell, Heroic Offense. Heroic offense, like most of the spells in the enhancement spell line of the creation tree relies on using magic to support your own movement. In this case, allowing you to hit things harder. This spell you get down in five minutes, mostly owing to the fact of how you're practicing this already to animate the corpse you're riding in. The final spell is conjuration. Making things out of the fade. In this case, grease. A circle apostates favorite spell he says, because if you're being chased it cannot be countered and can easily be set on fire.

You're rather befuddled as to why your teacher starts you on something as complex as animal fat rather than carbon cubes, but the lesson doesn't take more than an hour before you've created enough grease to have the whole tower smelling like bacon and old lamps burning on every surface.

You didn't summon the lamps, just the oil. That's in a few weeks of lessons away apparently.

Your lessons concluded, the old mage insists you recount your experiences and findings since becoming a spirit. All of them. In detail. Pages and pages of notes are written, much of it you believe to be supposition on the part of Avernus because you're certainly not saying as many words as you've seen him write.

He also seems to have guessed that you're not all that interested in using his means of De-possession and asks you to tell him how it goes when you finally figure it out. Because he wants to publish a paper on the subject. Apparently the churches means of exorcising a ghost is to cut off the victims head. And what kind of church calls themselves a chantry anyways? This is when you realize your thoughts are going in circles and you're feeling rather light-headed.

 

[BiopunkOtrera]

[ ] Almost a Nightmare

Spoiler: Almost a Nightmare

Into Another World Through Social Necromancy
Ch1: Almost a Nightmare

"So you're hiring me?"

"No," Mary said. "I'm asking if you would like to stay on as is. To get more working experience."

Experience stocking shelves? I kept an eye on the monitor to make sure the eponymous boss of the Caul of Armide was going down as planned while I'm afk. Tinny sounds of spells and chain attacks waft from my headset.

"Experience in a work environment," she droned on. "And career development."

"So you're... not hiring me?"

"You would have to show to me why I should hire you even though I could pick up the phone and bring on any number of people wanting to work for their benefits."

Wow!

My breath left me audibly at that moment so I appended a tactful cough to cover it up. I knew she was an ass but still. Fuck you.

"Sure," I said after a pause.

"Can you come in right now? We're short someone right away, just now."

"Tonight? Well actually I'm-"

"We need doers here," she said. "Are you a doer?"

Another pause. "Yeah. Sure," I said, intending to agree because I had to. Why not? Fuck you. Fuck life. Fuck everything.

I knuck punched the End Call button.

Oops.

I leaned back, rolling my eyes, calculating how much that offense would cost but quickly decided it wouldn't amount to more than a self-satisfied, passive aggressive remark on Mary's part. It'd waste a few seconds off the clock anyway. The boss – the one in the game – was done about ten seconds ago (about when that other boss was asking for doers) and the other members of my party were now busy running around or dancing like crazy people.

<rhx for the heals as always>

<You're very welcome.> I typed. <And I'm sorry you didn't get your drop today, Clem.>

<Yeah! Nothing new!>

<rng hates>

<Thanks for the heals. You gonna be running again tonight after reset?>

I apparently have to work so probably not, the sensible part of me thinks. I wonder how many are stuck on this boat of mine. You can tell from appearances they don't put much if any cosmetics money into the game. Does this guy actually need to work but is asking about the reset anyway? Who knew?

<Maybe. Just see if I'm on.>

I play Overtale a lot and when I'm online, I am almost always at 'the Caul'. Now and again, I'll still do events, or expansions when they come out, or even raid; I still sometimes get requests for Basilica, by groups wanting to tank the last leg the dangerous way. Besides that though, I'm usually running the Caul. Like most dungeons, the Caul is designed for a party of five and has rewards that diminish if you run it too often – a daily 'little' reset and a weekly 'big' reset on Tuesdays. Since the main rewards are once a week, most players only run it that often. Me? I'm a fixture. I run so often that a writer for a community site once clumsily interviewed me about it. 'Why do you keep doing it? Is Caul that fun?' Really, it's just a routine. It's a thing I do.

Hira, the 'main' I play almost exclusively in Overtale, started off as a Dancer. The game launched when I was in secondary and I asked a friend to suggest something easy to play. The Dancer has mobility, dodges, and a bit of single target damage to give it some depth, but its main role is passive area-of-effect support, meaning it's almost impossible to be bad with one; stand near your friends and don't die and you're already being reasonably helpful. When class combinations became a thing, I picked up the edgy-as-heck Necromancer and became a Dead Hierophant, which basically everyone except the devs instantly dubbed the 'Necrodancer'. Outside the memes, it's not actually that popular; other combinations just have better numbers or utility in most situations and it introduces some new, potentially contradictory elements into play – now you have to stand near your enemies too and also stand near dead people. However, the Necrodancer's specific mechanics make it infamously overpowered in a very narrow niche – mostly Basilica and Caul. With patience and practice, you can solo the latter, so the run literally cannot fail no matter how bad the rest of the group is; I can occupy myself with reading or arguing with people on the internet, which is what I am actually doing when I appear to be running Caul.

When this latest pickup group broke up, I was, as usual, teleported out of the dungeon into the castle basement of Miroria, the fantasy kingdom sat on top of the Caul. Among the usual list of quests and notifications on the right side of the screen was a new entry.

Title Unlocked: Social Necromancer
(Raise 1,000,000 dead.)
Switch now?

Sure! Why not?

There was one time a while back when I'd counted up the resurrection opportunities inside the Caul. With efficient movement, you can get well over a hundred over the course of the dungeon, which is how Necrodancer can solo heal with passives alone and trivialize the entire thing. Still. One fucking million. I leaned back and closed my eyes. In the past eight years, had I really run Caul nearly nine thousand times?

<><><>

Something's weird.

The first thing I notice is the murmur of a small crowd of people, which is not what I should be waking up to. Had my shitty headset managed to not fall off? When I open my eyes I don't have my PC in front of me either. Instead, there's people. People in the throne room of the Caul of Armide. It's not a dawning realization; I recognize it. I mean, I apparently have been in here almost nine thousand times, so it's as familiar to me as my own room. Mind you it's a bit bigger than that.

My vision starts wild and erratic, darting around as it did into the shadowy recesses of the throne room, gradually revealing a gathering of unfamiliar people as it focused. Bright uniforms. Brass. Floofy sleeves. Men and women with swords and muskets. People and things. There's quite a few people and quite a few things, but their collective mass is still dwarfed by the vastness of the boss room. Right. Obviously, I am dreaming and this is all a little much to take in.

The murmuring dies down as a young woman strides forward confidently, heels clacking against the cracked flagstone floor, to the obvious chagrin of her bodyguards who quickly follow behind. She wears a bright red uniform that is clearly a uniform without actually being uniform with any of the other women's, save they all seem determined to show a hot bit of thigh.

Is that Mary? Is Mary the fucking princess?

"Greetings, Quester! My name-"

"Mary?"

"Ah- Er- I'm sorry?" she stammered.

"Rude!" one of the knights pronounced, before the other gave her a sidelong frown. Medium height with short red hair. Definitely the type of overzealous royal guard who causes diplomatic incidents.

"Sorry," I said, not bothering to suppress my smile. "I don't actually know who you are. I'm somewhat disoriented and you do have a passing resemblence to someone I know. Please continue."

"O- Of course..."

The second royal guard – he's taller with long blue hair, which is obviously indication he's the cooler, more collected, clearer thinking of the two – steps up to clear his throat and salvage the conversation.

"You are in the presence of her royal highness, Mary, second princess of the Kingdom of Miroria..."

Really! So it is actually Mary. A Mary. I lean back, smile some more and nod as he carries on.

"...her highness has performed the Ritual of the Questing Champion, by the ancient methods, and summoned you into this world."

He pauses, frowning until I space back in. It's not truly silent with a small crowd of NPCs fidgeting and staring from the background but it quickly gets a bit awkward, especially with the stupid grin that's crept onto my face. Maybe because it's been a good year and a half since I've run into any new voiced lines, it was hard to pay attention. I glance around at the fading but still pulsing blue magic circle etched on the stone floor around the throne, then take a deep breath as I look back. No response comes to mind. I try to imagine what the dialogue choices might be. 'Air Miles today?' 'Cool. What's the quest?' Suddenly, I also realize I'm still seated while everyone else, including at least one princess, are stood up.

There's another thing too.

See, if you're a Dead Hierophant and your character is male, you are basically Skeletor, or else outright a skeleton with glowing eyes and Lovecraftian tendrils holding you together. Well formed tendrils in the shape of chiseled, finely built muscles, but you know, tendrils. If you're female, well you're obviously going to be a pale vampire woman with only edgy colours available for customization. And the better your gear gets, the less of it there usually is. I look down at myself and confirm I am wearing my usual sustain gear – fantastic stats, commeasurately short on area covered. Then again, this is my dream isn't it? My dream. Well then fuck it. Nobody is here to judge me, or my opinions, my cosplaying, my body, anything. Plus I appear to be in Hira's body anyway and that is as positive a thing as I've been able to make it with Overtale's quite thorough customization sliders over the years.

I stand up, momentarily putting a bit of weight on my staff as I adjust to the longer legs and quite high heels – of being quite high up in general. The NPCs are all still staring at me, but half of them take a step back as well.

"I am Hira, Dead Hierophant... You have summoned me."

I delved back in time through my various drama classes and quickly consider my next line. Damn, your brain never turns quickly enough when you're in the perfect dream. Hopefully we'll get going before it ends as usual.

Murmurs touched off again in the back lines. Scientist and scholar looking types push back glasses, scribbling down notes, or otherwise being in character. I guess this was something they did without being entirely certain it would work, sort of like the Manhattan Project I guess, though obviously it would have been par for the course in the game's setting. This premise of Overtale's did put player characters firmly outside of the game world and its countries' social systems but it did let them make a fun theme park type game without reservations. You play magical heroic space aliens, essentially.

"D-Dead Hierophant?" The princess said.

"Mmhmm."

I nodded, looking down at the princess. On the other hand, muskets, brass and clock or steampunk aesthetics definitely never were a thing. There was a place from the second-to-last expansion featuring magical clockwork stuff but overall, the setting was quite firmly in the fantasy milieu. 'By the ancient methods', Blue Hair had said. Maybe a long time had passed? Was this future Miroria? Possibly!

"I've never heard of that before," the princess said. "Or, well, read of it. I was expecting- I suppose I was expecting a-"

"A man perhaps?" I said, tilting my head. "Someone with a sweeping black coat swinging a sword, or a gentleman in white robes with a staff? Sorry if we seem to have subverted all that."

"I'm sorry! I didn't mean to-"

"It's fine," I said, glancing at my staff given I seem to be in familiar gear. Sure enough, it's the one I usually carry by default, the Basilica raid drop, Aylesbury Unwaker, a construct of pure, twisted darkness topped by an ever-shifting monstrance and shrouded by a forbidding black mist. Not the sort of subdued equipment expected of gentleman in white robes. Actually, it's about as sinister as you can get without actually mounting a skull on it. All around me, the princess and the throne, scholars and soldiers alike are keeping their distance. Even the royal bodyguards were eyeing it with apprehension. I sweep my gaze over them and try to be imperious. "Still, Miroria must be in dire straits to have summoned one such as me. Are you boys at war or something, I wonder?"

"Ah! We can discuss this somewhere more comfortable! " the princess declared cheerily, raising a finger. Getting comfortable clearly was her forté. "Come! Would you like tea?"

I don't think Necrodancers eat. They are technically undead.

"Okay." I shrug. Not the most imperious of responses. Evidently, even the escorting troops and the two royal guards, glancing at one another, agreed. Again, your brain never turns quickly enough when you're in the perfect dream.

<><><>

The princess ordered a runner to go ahead and get the staff to prepare the 'City Room'. After that, the rest of us followed her at a more sedate pace. Initially, the scholar types had wanted to get involved as well but the princess made it clear that she would be meeting with me first. Alone. Quick scheduling. None of the 'please retire to one of our rooms and rest and we'll chat in the morning after you meet some other important characters over breakfast' – I suppose in that case I'd just wake up and that'd be no fun.

First, it became obvious that the Caul had been sealed away long ago and only very recently reopened. Actually, in the aftermath of the Caul of Armide main story, the surviving princess from that incident had promised to do precisely this. The place held untold power but was also a Lovecraftian nest of undeath – exactly what you'd expect to find under a kingdom running a priests-and-paladins theme. Besides, what else would you do with a jar of dark powers? Break it out and use it?

After passing through a section of catacombs, rubble floors and freshly dug walls, we entered the castle as it was now, a mixture of palatial corridors and low and narrow passageways. Add hundreds of years from the game and the place now looked as I'd have expected it to look. There were a fair number of soldiers around, some in armour but most not. A double row blocked off where I remember the main section of the castle to be. Others had cordoned off the path we were taking but I still got glimpses of gossiping servants, apprehensive faces and in one case, as we ascended a grand staircase, a woman being tackled to the ground behind us, trying to break through the lines. She yelled 'Highness! Highness!' a few times before her face was pressed to the floor and the words were no longer audible. When I looked at the princess's face, she was wincing. I smiled, not entirely certain how things would play out.

The 'City Room', sure enough, overlooked the city around the castle. I'd guessed from the change in milieu that the city too would have changed. Rather than a small yet loosely spaced fantasy city, it was a compact mess of torchlit brick and rooftops almost touching. The old city walls were barely recognizeable silhouettes in the fading light, having had new gates torn into it and much of its remaining length incorporated into newer buildings. Entire new districts had been added beyond the reach of the few familiar avenues. A narrow row of buildings had even sprouted along the length of one of them, dividing the highway into two narrow lanes. A haze hung in the air and I'm pretty sure some of the fires were not burning where they were supposed to. The compacted streets made it hard to see what was going on even from above but the noise and bobbing torchlights made it obvious.

"Nice," I said, looking out over the smoggy mess.

"R-Really? I mean-"

"No, I don't actually mean it."

"I see..."

I could see in the window reflection that she was fidgeting in her seat behind me, waiting for me to come back and have a seat. I remembered to be imperious this time though, so I stayed standing by the window.

"So?"

"Let me start," she said, instantly putting herself at ease. I could hear the clink of her teacup. "Actually I'm not entirely sure where to start. It's a very complicated issue-"

"Well you are having riots," I observed. "Maybe start there?"

"Miroria is currently amidst a financial crisis. Multiple chancellors – that is, officials who manage our finances – have found that there is no way to collect any more taxes than are being collected now. So- Am I being overly-"

"No. Go on."

"Right. Proposals were made to remove ancient exceptions to taxation given to the temples and the nobility of the land. For obvious reasons, this has not been a popular proposal at court. This is why we've had a number of chancellors recently as his majesty has had no choice but to dismiss them for further opinions."

"I think your father should probably just listen to the unpopular opinion."

"It's not that simple."

Of course not. Nothing about economics ever is, is it?

"In any event. As a result, my father, the King, summoned the Parliaments of the kingdom. Do you know what a Parliament-?"

"No," I lied.

In the window reflection, I saw her blink at my abrupt reply.

"Uh... To put it simply, it's a gathering of representatives chosen by people from all walks of life in Miroria. They don't come together often but having the backing of the Parliaments would have given my father the backing needed to convince the court to reform."

'Would have.' I could see where this was going.

"Unfortunately, once the Parliaments had gathered they didn't see eye to eye with my father or each other. In fact, it's turned unexpectedly into a standoff. If nothing's done my father intends to order the royal guard to the hall where they're gathered and make them agree."

"O...kay? Sounds solid," I blurted. Oops.

"No! That's what I'm trying to prevent!"

I turned and raised my brow at the princess's indignation, then smiled.

"Oh. I see. So you're trying to be a benevolent princess, is what you're saying."

"Of course!"

"So this is how you went about it, huh? This isn't a bad dream."

"Thank you. I read a lot of old texts, not just sorcery but history as well. Did Questers not resolve issues like this in ancient times as well? Will you help?"

'We' of course did. Things like this were usually fairly boring. Talk to the right people in the right order or have the right item in your inventory and then miraculously, the antagonist NPC sees things your way. In the worst case, it was just a matter of going somewhere, talking to them, and skipping through the dialogue.

"Just to make sure we're clear. You want me to resolve the crisis somehow so your father the king won't send in troops to do it."

"Yes, exactly so!"

"Okay."

"Eh?"

She had a precious look on her face. Maybe the word 'okay' still threw her off, but she must have finally realized for a moment that she might have gotten in over her head. That's sort of the classic downfall of summoners isn't it? You mistake your desires for problems so you summon a thing only to realize it's the wrong thing.

And then she was dying. She fell forward, heaving as she tried to prop herself upright over the table, throwing up first blood and then black ichor, eyes wide and shivering in disbelief. Death from her own mouth tainting her tea. Being promoted from Dancer, the Dead Hierophant has a lot of passive area-of-effect abilities; Dead Aura drains the life of all mobs within a certain distance of line of sight and regenerates your own. It doesn't tick for very much on the whole but against something much lower level, it'll obviously kill within seconds.

"I will take on your 'quest', princess. I don't usually like problems that aren't 'that simple' but I have a solution that is. I will wash Miroria castle in blood and massacre everyone in here to the last child. That will make finances much simpler I'm sure."

Actually, the best way would have been to kill the king and then she'd be Queen. Whoops. Too late. Inconsistencies. What number along the line of succession was she anyway? Besides, this is much more satisfying. I'm supposed to be at work. Work at night. Work I don't get paid for. Work that will never end as long as I live. Work to make other people rich. I hate life. So right now, I just want to murder lots of people until I wake up.

The princess falls out of her chair, twitching. I head for the great double doors and reach for the handls when one of them is suddenly yanked open from the other side. Awkward no matter the circumstances.

"Awkard," I snerk as the royal knights on the other side stare down at the princess

"!"

I swing my staff in a hurry. It's much too quick for him to react to, almost too quick for me to realize myself. Red hair starts a syllable and then it turns into a crunch as I pound his skull in. Not very cool or imperious, but highly effective. He topples, face a red mash, eyeballs hanging out of their sockets. Almost nightmarishly gruesome except I'm not having a nightmare. I stride through the doors, black smoke and intense shadows radiating out. The knights following Red Hair double over, throwing up blood and ichor. Blue hair vomits blood too but manages to turn and run, even shout. He's almost incoherent, but coherence is a luxury here as I my heels sink into blood-soaked carpets in the bright, gaslit halls of the castle. The maids down the way don't need to be coherent, they just need to scream and run. The servant down the other direction does the same as the knights who fell to the ground around me moaned and shambled back to their feet, eyes glowing with black power.

I raise a bridal gauntleted arm and wave – imperiously.

"Kill everyone who stands before you. Leave none alive!"

I turn and walk down the hall as my minions scatter, in the direction where the double row of soldiers had blocked off the main great hall. I assumed the king would be there. That was also the direction where Blue Hair had gone. It would be disappointing to wake up now. At one room, a rotund man burst out the door trying to ambush me with a sword. Good on him. He dropped to the ground, dead before a single swing. In another room, my zombies had gone ahead and cornered a terrified girl. As I passed the doorway, her screams turned from ones of panic to ear-splitting ones of unspeakable agony.

"Okay. Fuck. Jesus. Stop!"

The zombies shambled back, distended jaws bloody. The woman, elaborate dress and all, fell like a rag doll in the corner, bleeding, dying, looking up at me and the undead in disbelief until I raised my hand and hurriedly healed her into a gentle unconsciousness.

"Okay. Like. Not while I'm in earshot that makes them scream like that? That is too much," I declared, unsure how complex an instruction zombies could manage. This was almost a nightmare.

<><><>

When I arrived at the doors to the main area of the castle, to their credit the royal guards hadn't abandoned the post. As I strode around the corner black magical power bleeding out in an aura of shadow and smoke, the front row immediately knelt down and both rows levelled their muskets. Blood still trickling down his face, Blue Hair was there, arm raised, then arm down.

Deafening explosions thundered down the corridor, making me wince. Fuck these fucking muskets are loud. The air instantly fills with soot and sulfurous smoke. Black powder. One bullet hits me in the navel but doesn't seem to do much damage. I surged forwards with Shadow Dance. Lights dim and the bangs from the second row go muted. Bullets are now flitting harmlessly through me as I've briefly turned into a glob of black smoke, darting towards their formation. A second later, I'm in amongst them and they're all falling to the ground, grasping at themselves. Vomiting blood, dying with contorted faces. I look down at Blue Hair's heart in my hand as the rest of him topples over. Definitely a rated eighteen level of ultraviolence. Almost a nightmare, this, except I'm the one causing it. Held lanterns fall and overturn. Fires spread. Screaming and yelling. Everyone left alive is running away. Somewhere, a bell is ringing wildly. Whether it means 'Intruder!' or 'Fire!' I'm not entirely sure.

Almost a nightmare.

Alone with a pile of corpses in front of the grand hall doors, I crouch down and give Blue Hair's face a ginger poke. My finger indents the still elastic skin. The head wobbles limply before settling back the way it was. Forget Overtale but a game made this year wishes it were this vivid.

Almost a nightmare.

My smile is a nervous one. I think my heart would be thumping about now. Should be, but I don't have one. Hira doesn't have one. I stand up, looking around at the low, medieval ceilings of the passages connected to the high, palatial ones in the corridors. The clicks of my heels echo over the crackle of scattered flames. I approach one of the wall mounted gas lamps, hearing the hiss and sputter. Feeling the heat against my face and then my hand as I give it a touch. The glass is hot. The brass is hot. The vividness of the blinding bright, dancing flame entrances me.

Strangely real.

I glance around, looking around for anyone. Of course, nobody is in sight of me. I'm not sure why I'm even looking. But suppose it were possible that this was real and I have just done all this to real, living people. It's not like I'd be asking for directions.