TranspoReincarnated

Splinters of crystal shot through the air, crashing into the plaster walls. The window got shattered in the process. Elana, caught flat footed, swinged her grey pelt cloak upward. She crouched to take cover, as the shards hailed onto it, causing a pattern of dents with occasional tears, where the sharper and heavier ones hit.

The guard rushed to open the door, face cramped in fear of having failed at his task. His metal boots creaked on the floor as their steps inside crushed pieces of ice. It was already over. Elana risked to peak. She wasn’t injured besides some minor cuts on the arm that held the cloak. Luckily, the debris didn’t carry dirt but were immaculatly clean.

My lights went back on. I heard a loud noise and something shattering. After fully coming back to my senses, the first thing I saw was Lia. I tilted my head to the side. I felt like some time had passed. Did I pass out?  My body felt light but weak, as if it was missing almost a live time of exercise.

There was relief in Lia’s eyes, although her mouth formed a slim grin. “Unbelievable.”

“What?”

She ignored my question just as I payed no heed to her comment. She took a blanket from a chair that stood in a corner of the room and shook off blue splinters.

“Why is the ground covered in ice?” My eyes wandered to the door where someone clad in metal turned around and left. “Who was that?”

“Cover yourself, then I’ll explain.” Lia handed me the blanket, careful to avoid eye contact by starring at the roof.

My gaze followed, but I couldn’t find something remarkable up there. Then I looked down. “Oh, sure.” I swung the blanket around my shoulders. It was made of white wool and slightly scratchy.

Lia was already doing some analysis: “Your clothes must have been destroyed by your ability.”

“What ability? Could you please explain what’s going on?”

She closed her eyes to refocus and nodded. “When we played the game – you remember, right – we got transported to this place. Literally as in ‘teleported to another word’.”

“Wait, wait… who is ‘we’?”

Somewhere in the periphery of my awareness, I could discern a feint iron smell.

“You, I and Sarran. He is here too. So, we don’t know the details, but we know that your character’s ability caused it. We woke up right her.” She let her mask slip and for a moment, a pale shade and tired eyes could be seen. “Mind you, that was seven days ago! All the while you were nothing but an oversized egg.” Her pupils darted from my head to toe and back.

My head spun. My mind faded in and out of a state of refusal and undeniable realization. Things felt surreal in one moment and sober in the next. “You’re sure this isn’t a dream?”

“I am pretty sure there are no shared dreams at least.”

“Right.” I locked eyes, stupidly trying to discern whether an actual person stood in front of me or a particularly convincing illusion.

“Okay, stop that. You’re having the face of an idiot right now. And you don’t want to look like that when lord Avenar comes to greet you.” She stepped closer to whisper in my ear. “Don’t trust him. And more importantly: do not disrespect him. It might seem that only his lackeys have no tolerance, but in fact…”, she paused as her breath stuttered and a hand with scratched fingernails grabbed my wrist, “...we are all his hostages.”

Two minutes later, the guard came back and told us something I couldn’t understand. Lia dragged me behind her as we followed. I didn’t like having to go outside wearing a blanket instead of clothes, but obviously, this was nothing that required concern.

She showed me the way to some rooms that had been prepared for us.

There it was again, this feint smell of… “Lia, you’re bleeding!” Sliding a hand out of the comfy blanket, I pointed at her arm.

She raised it to get a better look. “You’re right. Now that you say it, my forearm hurts a little.”

“Only a little?”

“It’s fine, I am taking care of that while you change. Got some bandages in my room.”

As she shoved me into one of the doors, she said: “You don’t know what they say, right? Sarran and I got lucky with our characters, so tell us if you need help.”

The room was neither small nor very big and measured around twenty square meters, if I wasn’t mistaken. The floor was dark parquet. The white wallpapered wall opposite to the door had three large windows. I tried to open them, but they didn’t move further than a hand-width. If we were to attempt to escape through them, we had to destroy them. Then, the sound would alarm the guards.

Lia didn’t tell me what they wanted from us. We had our character’s powers, so this had to be it. They couldn’t handle us as common prisoners, or we wouldn’t be willing to cooperate, but they couldn’t risk giving us so much freedom that we could slip through their fingers either.

Wait, powers… Lia had told me about. Blood drained from my face and my arms slumped downwards so that the blanket slipped from my shoulders. A sentence came to my mind: “anyway he or she pleases.”

I whispered, realizing: “I can do anything, change reality as I see fit…”

I wanted to go home.

Without a clue on how to do so without a console, I tried speaking the command: “activate [reality adjustment]  to change the plane of existence of [Tharamir], [Elana] and [Sarran] to earth.” Not going to forget you, Sarran.

The world went eerily silent. Goosebumps formed on my arms.

Nothing happened.

“How is that?” Can I somehow see the console? No, there is no console. What about:  “[reality adjustment], info tag?”

Just as before, nothing responded.

Nothing except for Lia, who still waited for me behind the door, having expertly bandaged her arm already. “This doesn’t work? Damn it!” Angry, she hit the door. “Ah, sorry… Okay, whatever. You don’t need to spell your abilities out loud for them to work. You just need to do it. Do you get it?” Lowering her voice, she added: “Oh, and do not tell the lord about this ability. I had to tell him about your other two, pretending that there was no third.”

This made sense. According to the explanations she gave me on the way here from the hut, he had seen the intermediate state of my resurrection. Also, chances were near one hundred percent that I had to use the golden fire of [inner light] sooner or later. Hiding it wouldn’t work anyway, which in turn would raise the question if I was hiding more abilities.

A maid arrived in the hallway. “Is he ready? Minister Lared wants to open the brunch.”

Judging from her high pitched and soft voice, she could be about twenty years old.

“Not yet, Seja.” Lia nocked on the door. “Hurry up!”

“Okay, okay, I do. Ready in a minute.”

I hastily put on the clothes that lay on the canopy bed. When I pulled a red tunic over my head, I could hear the maid loudly say something.

“Elana, you’re hurt! What happened?”

“It’s nothing. The egg exploded, that’s it.”

The maid’s expression was clear regardless of language barriers: “What?”