Is someone there?
He looks around cautiously, wondering if he had just heard someone. There’s no one here, no signs of civilization, not even a footprint in the damp earth.
Who are you? A whisper reaches his ears.
He did hear a voice that time.
“I’m Drenar. You?” He doesn’t know why he says it aloud.
I don’t remember. It still sounds like it’s right next to him. Hang on. I’m standing. But I can’t move my body. It’s also…different than what I remember?
It finally clicks.
That voice is inside his head.
“Great. Voices in my head. I’m right around that age aren’t I? Schizophrenia kicks in around 21. Nah, I'm peacing out now, time to wake up. Wake up.” He pinches his arm as hard as he can.
The forest and the voice are still there. “Okay, let’s try that again?” He digs his nails into his arm hard enough to bite into flesh. The result is the same: Pain.
Hey, don’t do that, that hurts! The voice protests. Of all the reactions he’s expecting, that certainly isn’t one of them. Wait. Can you do me a favor? Where are my wings?
“Your what?”
My wings and tail. I don’t feel them.
“Because I haven’t gotten any!” He huffs indignantly. “And you’re absolutely sure you have no control over my body? Because it’s mine.”
I’m trying. Let me know if you have the urge to slap yourself.
“Great. A ghost with a dose of snark.” He almost lets a chuckle escape while taking a step around. Something feels weird with his leg, it feels…off. Like the stride is too long. “Man, is this a dead world or something? Where is anything?”
He feels something now that he didn't before by his spine, and he feels a motion of air on his back. He slowly swivels his gaze to the right, and his stare widens.
He’s looking at a wing. It’s large, easily two meters long, with bright silver and azure scales running along the length of the limb portion. There’s a knuckle with two semi-formed claws, and they wiggle slightly. The wing itself is composed of layered feathers of incredible size, with white, silver, seafoam, and azure color bands. He follows the wing, and then he realizes that it is attached to his back.
Hey, there’s my wings…wait, those aren’t mine! Wrong color! Mine were seafoam and silver, they didn’t have blue!
“There is a wing attached to me, and you’re complaining about the color?” he shrills in disbelief. He reaches out with his hand to touch it. He feels it.
It’s a part of him, not just glued on or some incredibly detailed costume piece. He turns his head and sees the other one. The foreign limbs connect to his back seamlessly. When he flexes his body, he feels something else. An extension of his lower spine.
“Oh. There’s also a tail.” He moves one wing out of the way to see the tail that’s extended past the lower portion of his spine, slowly twitching left and right. It’s long and slender and is about half his height, and covered in silver and azure colored scales that gleam brightly, even in the dim light. Patterned blue and silver feathers interrupt the scales occasionally. He doesn’t even have the faintest on how to react, except to ask questions.
“Uh, why do I have a tail and wings?”
Because I did? Do keep up. When he shrugs his shoulders, he also shrugs his wings–how did he even know how to use them? It feels like an extra pair of arms. Hmm. Are you also like me?
“Guy. I came here without them. I have no idea how to answer that.”
Oh. Then this might be your first transformation! But it’s strangely not playing out the same. He’s tapping his now-clawed leg on the ground impatiently–every time he takes his eyes off of himself, there’s another part of him that isn’t the same. He can see, and feel, his body slowly reorganizing and twisting and expanding into a new form.
“So you have no idea who you are, how you got inside my mind, or why I’m starting to look a little…feathery?” he responds irately.
Well, no.
“Fantastic,” he mutters after having finally decided to just roll with it. His jaw has now reworked into a snout, and he has to cross his eyes to see where his nostrils are, and he gingerly pats it with clawed hands. It’s real, as are the razor-sharp teeth he gently pokes at. It suddenly dawns on him just what he looks like.
“Ah okay, I’m a dragon. What a fitting spirit animal,” he says in slight awe–except his words are slurred and it doesn’t sound like that at all. “Wait. Were you a dragon?” he asks after finally snapping his claws. Of course, his words don't come out the right way again–his mouth shape and tongue don't seem to work the way they used to.
Of course, I was. What, you were expecting something less? That voice is coming in clearer now–something that hovers as a slight masculine voice.
“Guy…we don’t have dragons where I come from.” The words still don’t come out right. He opens and closes his jaw, and is mildly impressed by how much further it hinges open than a human ever could. His tongue feels longer and more flexible, and he ponders a few things internally. Alright, I need to work on speech. This is going to be a major holdup at some point.
Yes, your speech is absolutely terrible, when’s the last time you took this form? This immediately set off Drenar’s curiosity. He taps a claw on what would be his hip.
Hang on. You can hear me thinking? Drenar gets a soft grunt as a response. There’s an audible grunt. This is getting weird here.
Your change of form didn’t already qualify this as weird?
“Point taken.” Those are the first few words he’s able to get out coherently, once he tries speaking from the throat. He tries to balance on his new digitigrade legs and take a step forward, and stumbles and goes chin-first into the wet earth, with a squishy splat sound.
Ow. That was not graceful, Drenar thinks unhappily. I’m not used to the way this body moves. How can I process what a ‘new’ body would feel like, if I’ve never been in one?
We’re still here, tasting mud. Can we fix that? the voice groans.
“Blech.” He spat out a trickle of mud. It tastes far too real for his liking. He turns around and taps a claw impatiently on a rain-slicked rock, trying to experiment for a moment. He wiggles each talon a few times. He flexes the elongated ankle, and then his knee joint. His range of motion is different, as is the overall length of the limb. He can't stand straight up, but perhaps with a slightly coiled, relaxed stance, he could?
He hauls himself up after a moment of contemplation, and spreads his talons widely and flexes his elongated ankle. It feels stable this time. He shifts his increased body weight, then the other leg is up and he slowly rises. Finally, some progress, though the stance leads him to wobble, like balancing on his tiptoes.
Okay great, we’re standing. That’s a start. We’ve got mysteries to unravel. Like why you’re here. And why do you look like me? Sort of. Drenar takes a relaxed stance and leaves his forelegs in a slightly coiled state, his clawed toes spread over the rock and grass. He breathes a sigh of relief. His body structure allows for him to stand on two legs–and his hands are still human-like in arrangement, with an opposable thumb and fingers. The claws and scales, not so much.
“Okay, this is cool. I should…examine myself?” He scratches the back of his head–and promptly bumps into one of two short horns, and a plumage of feathers, when he pulls one forward and sees it just out of the corner of his eye. “Why is this dragon form so birdlike?” he questions with enthusiasm.
Or, maybe you *are* a dragon and don't remember? I mean, I am one too, but I look a little different than this.
“Nah, I've been human my whole life,” Drenar replies casually while shrugging his new wings. He glances at each one, and focuses on flexing them–it is very much like another arm, and he wriggles the two semi-claws. Guess I won't be hanging five with the wings. Maybe hanging two. They do feel pretty strong.
We still have no idea what is going on! Focus on our surroundings. We need to figure out where here is, or ‘what’ here is.
A toothy smile comes to Drenar's face. “You know, that's a pretty good idea. Hey, spirit dragon, let’s fly on this one. I just need to run full tilt and launch off and flap my wings, while not crashing headfirst into a tree. Easy.”
Um, there’s a bit more to it than that, give me a moment?!
Drenar huffs impatiently, but sees the wisdom to wait. He’s never flown with wings before. “Before I risk breaking my neck, I have one question! In what world do humans turn into dragons, anyway?”
That’s a fundamental ability of all dragons. It also made interactions with humans while we tried to guide their civilization to greatness a little less…intense.
“No need to boast,” he mutters before hoisting himself to his feet. “Seriously, can you go back and forth between the two forms? Like a shapeshifter?”
Well, yes. So can a few other species. Your education is lacking, and we must fix that! Well, uh, once I can remember.
“I guess I don’t mind a plus one for a bit,” Drenar huffs. He tenses and flexes his wings, trying to find some kind of analog for motion. He might have an idea as he slowly tests the limbs–it’s like his brain is rewiring for the additional appendages, slowly.
That’s a good point–how did I get in your head? Where exactly we are–uh, why did I feel a shudder through the fabric of reality just now? Drenar feels it too, a vibration of existence that seems to shake him down to his soul.
There’s a burst of light above him, and he glances skywards. A primal trickle of fear creeps down his spine and tail, because he can’t understand what he’s witnessing.
The sky has ceased to exist. Where there had been a sky, there is nothing but a kaleidoscope of light and darkness. He sees shades of light that simply can’t exist. There is nothing but the whirl of energy arcing above, and all the lights are circling a…void of some kind. “Uh, this feels like a bad thing,” he utters nervously.
Ah, bleeding Odin, that thing's back. Not sure what it is, but those little bits of light orbit around it. And I was, too, up until just a few minutes ago. I’ve got no idea how long I’ve been looking at it, or what it is, and I've been staring at it for a long time.
"You neglected to mention the hole in the sky till just now?!"
Well, it was there, and then it wasn't when you showed up!
“Way to understate the disintegrating world around us!” Drenar shouts out. The ground beneath him is breaking into clumps of dirt, rocks, roots, and trees are being pulled upwards. Small limbs break off, then branches, until entire trees uproot and are pulled toward the orbiting lights. He desperately claws deep into the earth to try to hold on with every limb, but he finds himself being lifted, flapping his nascent wings in a futile attempt to get away. “This is just a dream, right?!” He exclaims worriedly.
Do we really want to bank on that idea?! The entire world is disintegrating into blobs of earth, stone, and bits of trees, and he flails around in the void, watching light streak past and he tries to fly in the opposite direction. He thrashes his tail wildly, but it's a rudder, not an extra bit of lift. Drenar, I don’t know how you got here, but this is new!
“Then we need a plan, right now!” Instinct kicks in, and he extends his wings to their full length and veers down under a tree, twisting in a nonexistent wind. He picks a direction and pumps his wings with all his might in rapid motion.
Thrust. Draw. Thrust. Draw! Muscles burn from untrained use, but adrenaline covers the gap.
He knows how to do this as if it's all muscle memory, and uses slight deflections in his wing wrist to adjust his heading. It’s as exhilarating as it is terrifying, because there’s debris the size of boulders and chunks of mountains now serving as a deadly debris field. He dodges gracefully above and below it on feathered wings. A single miscalculation could be deadly. “Okay, nameless dragon dude, we need a plan, right now!”
I have a name, it’s Alexander! The light orbiting the void is picking up speed, growing brighter, and the void in reality is now brimming with crackling energy. Huh, I guess primal fear does have a way of knocking loose a memory. Drenar angles around, toward the void in reality, with a new plan in mind after he makes a theory from his observations. Uh, what are you doing?
“Something a little crazy. That thing up in the sky might ironically be our ticket out of here. Otherwise, reality might keep crumbling to include us!” he bellows out before taking in a panting breath and arching his wings. He feels a lurch in his stomach, and not from the notion of being instantly disintegrated like the rest of the world around him.
Gravity is no longer working, and he doesn't feel the pull of the earth. There’s still air, but there’s no force pulling him ‘down’ anymore. He angles his wings and uses his leg feather flaps and tail as rudders. He flexes a muscle in his arm, and a small flap of feathers arches off his forearm, forming a shorter airfoil that gives him even more maneuverability.
“Damn, dragons are biological fighter planes!”
He skids by a floating tree and digs his hind claws into it, before redirecting and springing off it, and changing his heading. Flying is now just like swimming in the absence of gravity. With careful maneuvering through the debris, he can start to see the lights surrounding the void are streaking away as if trying to flee. They’re not lights–
–They’re dragons! Thousands and thousands of them, all shapes and sizes and colors beyond his imagination. “Hey, uh, Alex? Friends of yours?!”
Are you serious? I haven't been stewing in this place alone?! Well, that would have been nice to know one eternity ago! Alex seems just a little bit furious at the impromptu discovery. They’re all trying to fly away from the void; we’re the only ones flying towards it! This is a bad idea!
“Bad ideas with flawless execution can still work!” he responds with a toothy grin. Alex groans in disgust.
You’re either a genius, or insane. Possibly both, and I’ve known you for five minutes!
“Put it up to a vote if we survive this!” he shoots back and course-corrects under a pile of tumbling boulders. A few dragons crane their necks to look at him and let out roars of surprise. If they are trying to warn him, it’s lost in translation. His focus and thoughts are on this giant void thingy. Theory and observation become his sole focus.
Okay, think! Black holes pull things in, but also give off radiation. Pretty sure I’m not feeling nauseous from a lethal dose of radiation. I can’t feel a gravitational pull, what’s another word for this? It’s a wormhole! He can see something or somewhere on the other side. Energy arcs out, and he can feel a charge that permeates his scales. Something exists on the other side!
It's almost like a teleportal, but not–duck! Alex’s warning almost comes too late, and Drenar clips his shoulder and wing tip on a rocky outcropping, barely avoiding a lethal collision. That void, the way it distorts reality, looks like the signature of a teleportal. It’s a gateway to somewhere!
“Then strap in!” he barks out, dipping and weaving not only the nebulous debris, but darts of light that zip by with force. One cracks apart a boulder just to his right in a cloud of debris. He thrusts forward with his wings, even with the burn of fatigue starting to trickle in. His breath is coming in ragged gasps–there seems to be a headwind almost pushing back out of the void.
This place…is it the aether? The stranded lands? It can’t be! It's a theory! Why do I remember that and nothing else?! Damn wasted lessons, Hanna!
“Alex, you need to recall faster, or we might not live long enough for you to go down memory lane!” Drenar shouts back. The only sound is a gale of unimaginable volume building as he closes on the void, and more energy arcs outwards–each near-miss too close for comfort from the beams of destruction.
The void is breaking apart with more streaming light, and he beats his wings, his eyes watering from the impossibly bright light. The energy burns on his scales, and he bursts forward with the last of his stamina, and hopes for the best when he closes his eyes. He feels the world burning bright, from the tips of his wings to the core of his being. And a feeling of unimaginable energy flowing across him.
He feels himself falling through space…
And then there’s a throbbing pain in his side and his eyes shoot wide open. He’s covered in sweat, his heart is racing and he gasps for breath, crumpled next to his bed, the sheets in disarray. His movements feel twitchy, and he takes a moment to control his breathing. He rubs his side where he had just fallen out of bed, and winces when he tries to move. He looks upwards, and the ceiling still exists, as does the sky outside the window. There's the hint of dawn approaching in glowing purple and red notes on the horizon, and atrickle of clouds. He breathes a sigh of relief.
There’s no disintegrating world. Just the mountains in the distance, the dawn sky, and a sprawling forest adorned with colorful autumn colors, and a hint of a pond hidden behind the leaves. The world continues to exist for him. Along with him, sprawled on the floor of his less-than-tidy room, and the uncaring music posters.
He hears a tap at the door. “Drenar, are you alive in there? We need to leave in like ten minutes!” Evan announces.
"Well aware of it!” He grabs the first pair of jeans and long-sleeved shirt he can find in his drawers, nearly trips getting his pants on, then dashes to the bathroom to tidy up. A quick glance at the mirror gives a less-than-glowing impression. His hair is a right mess like usual, and he looks sleep deprived with baggy eyes. He spends about twenty seconds getting his hair into a slightly less tousled appearance before dashing down the stairs. Evan stares at him from the kitchen counter, a mug of coffee in hand.
“Oh, hello. I guess you can be motivated to go fast,” Evan poses after a few seconds before taking a sip. “What was that huge thud, earlier?"
"I uh, just fell out of bed," Drenar answers. Evan raises an eyebrow.
“You fell out of bed. You know I heard you shout before I heard that giant thud.”
“Just a dream. It startled me.” Startled is a criminal understatement.
What Drenar doesn't tell him is the fact that he swears he can still hear the crackle of energy, and the thrush of wind of that ominous void in the sky. He rubs at his wrist anxiously.
Human skin. Okay. Everything is perfectly normal. Just a normal dream.
"Hey, uh, did you get in a fight with a blue jay or something in that mess of tangles you call your hair?" Evan asks.
"...Why?" Evan reaches to the side of his head, and plucks something out, and shows him a small, azure feather. Even he's puzzled. "Ah, that. Knocked over that stuffed bird I did when I was in scouts," Drenar says quickly. Evan gives him a sidelong glance before handing him the feather.
"Uh, okay." Drenar examines the feather. It's not the same color as that silly stuffed bird he’d made years ago. How did that get there? He stuffs the feather in his bag before he opens the beat-up car and hits the garage door opener.
Hang on...why does that feather look like the ones that were on my arm and wings? He glances anxiously at his bag on his shoulder, and dares not to reopen it.
It’s not going to be a normal day.
