Osric.

Osric Thale is my name, or it was. At least that’s my last thought before dying. My name sounds like that of a protagonist, doesn’t it? Maybe, but I can say with certainty that I am not one. My life has been average. I was born in a small European country and moved to another, just to find myself unable to speak either of the two languages properly. I had only been ten when I left my home city. Thus my language skills of my stayed at that level when I moved to my new home. It was quite nice there, but I never learned German properly. I could speak fluently, even in front of an audience, that was not my problem. You see in German there are „der, die, das“ which equals the „the“ in the English language.

But enough of that I got carried away. I always thought my life to be boring, and I had no ambitions. My favourite hobbies were cooking, playing games and reading all kinds of stuff. Though T never thought that my life would end like this. Like what, you might ask? Well, no idea.

I was preparing some carbonara, then puff, here I am, thinking useless things.

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A heaven-defying, head-splitting headache. That’s what I get rewarded with for waking up. I hate headaches, in my opinion they are the worst.

I am okay with diarrhoea or coughing. Yes, it hurts, but that’s it. Only some pain, nothing major. Headaches in comparison are excruciating. You can’t sleep, can’t relax, can’t browse your phone or work on the computer. You can do nothing. Absolutely nothing without it fucking you up.

Alright whatever.  I made my point.

So, why exactly am I not dead? A question I would like to find an answer for, thus I open my eyes.

A bad idea, a very bad one. The headache, which got a bit better, makes itself known again in the worst possible way. I groan. Brightness, way too much brightness. Sometime later, my

eyes have adapted to the brightness.

Everything hurts, all my muscles from my head to my toes. I never knew that you could have muscle ache on your head. I feel like a fat guy after a five-hour workout, who started a bar fight right after. Just ten times worse. After three minutes of constant pain, I slowly regain some rudimentary control of my body.

Looking around, I find myself in a fairly empty attic, filled with a single bed and a big box, presumably for clothes, standing on a dark wooden floor. The same floor where my face planted itself.

Sitting up, observing more closely I find three additional things. An opened grey-goldish box, a strange book and a hole in the wooden parquet. It looks like the hole is usually covered with the wooden box by pushing it on top of it. The scratching marks on the floor suggest that.

Slowly my brain begins to wake up, with it my reasoning follows shortly.

My first action is panicking. After the panic subsidized a bit, I hastily put the book back into the small box. The moment I touch the book, I feel something in myself shudder. What is the reason for that? Is it possible that this book has something to do with my crossing over to this body? A bit later, I push away that thought and pick it up and put it into the hole in the parquet, which I decided to name secret stash, and finally moving the box above it.

Alright, now what? Window maybe? Meh, why not?

Everything is still aching, but it already got better, the same with the headache. Standing up slowly and limping to the window, I see a scene which shocks my mind. A rare occurrence I tell you.

The first three minutes I was in denial, caught in a strange trance. How did I get here? And why? I did occasionally feel a bit special, but not this much?

Hundreds of thoughts flash through my mind as I watch the city outside my window. In comparison to a big part of the city, the house is slightly elevated. High enough that I can see a lot of the city and the roofs of the houses, but not high enough to be able to make any speculations about the standing of the inhabitants of this house. Or my potential family.

It looks a bit like a middle-sized city in the 18th or 19th century. Mostly houses with two stories. Slightly to the right were some 3 and 4 story building.

There are three things which I find to be very strange. I can point out two of them. The easiest to notice is the huge tower to the right. It is black–goldish with something written or painted on it. It is too far away to make out anything specific. The second thing is the architecture. I lived in Austria, so I saw my fair share of three to four-hundred-year-old buildings. These buildings towards the centre remind me of them. They looked similar, but better build, straight walls, systematic city building, something very atypical for those times. Far to the left are buildings which look similar to stone houses, which I saw in the Normandy in France. There is something further, but I can’t really see that far. Finally, in the middle of the city is the oversized black-goldish tower. Standing majestically over the whole city. According to my speculations, it should be the centre of the city

Having accepted that I came to this strange land, which is most likely in a different universe then earth, a strange feeling begins to well up inside me. I don’t know where the feeling is coming from. It feels like it’s coming from an organ, like muscle ache, but this feeling feels so uniform and everywhere. I feel like I have an illusionary organ. It is everywhere at the same time. It feels like power. Personal one, not like in my own world. I feel like I can do everything. Freedom also overcomes me, after realising that I came somewhere which could not possibly be earth of the 25^th century.

Then I plant my face back into the floor.