Anon_Y_Mousse

6/19/22 Edit: Changed starting lines to be more appropriate to the new prologue. Changed August's lines about the blue light and deep sea dragonfish, since in the first iteration he looked like he plucked those facts from thin air. Fixed some grammar stuff.

I was embraced in darkness; a strange warmth wrapped around me. A rending light occupied the entirety of my vision, yet it did not hurt. Why this happened, or what was the source, I did not know.

My thoughts were muddled, only able to ponder about the present.

I felt like I was falling, not through the air, but through something… purer? Feels like I was high, very high. In more ways than one.

It was hard to breathe. But even that felt like an illusion, a pleasant illusion. It was a beautiful illusion. I was falling, floating yet I was soaring.

Ah, someone was with me.

“What’s your name?”

“Kyle.” He said, his voice resounding in my head.

“Thank you, Mr. August. I noticed you a lot in my class. You study a lot, and always ask me questions. You are a good student, I like that.” Wait, wasn’t Kyle the first name of my science teacher? Science… teacher?

The feeling surrounding me got colder, the light that encapsulated my vision dimmer. The embrace got tighter, as if it was trying to give me warmth. However, it did nothing against the growing coldness.

“Thank you, sir, but why am I here?” I asked, him being my only conversation partner in this odd place.

“I’m here because I’m just like you, August. I’m here because I’m lonely.” The feeling of soaring was gone. I fell slower, and slower. Until each moment of falling felt like a fleeting forever.

I was no longer floating to something purer than air; this substance was denser and more alienating.

“I’m… lonely? You’re lonely? “

“I’m never going to succeed. I’m never going to achieve my dreams. I set my goals too far out of my reach, in the end… I’ll achieve nothing. I’m never going to find my one true love. Isn’t that lame? I’m pathetic.” Kyle’s self-deprecating voice informed me.

The warm embrace turned cold and crushing. It did no longer feel comforting. It no longer felt good. Yet it got worse, I wanted to scream, but I had no mouth.

“You are not, you never were pathetic. Tell those thoughts to fuck off!”  However, I had another outlet.

“How do you know that is not my destiny?” August asked.

“Because you are the son of a famous astronaut! You have wealth, intelligence, beauty… You don’t need to be lonely.” I advised him.

The crushing pressure of the embrace took a turn for the worse. The faint glow of the distant light had all but completely faded from my view. My body felt cold, and lifeless.

“I guess you are right.” The voice felt different now.

“I am always right. I am God.” An older man spoke.

“God is a figment of your imagination.” The girl responded.

“Shut the fuck up, you little cockroach.” A young lad cheerfully replied.

The voices melded into one, I could not tell the difference anymore. I changed, because I felt like I needed to change.

I left the voices, for I had to climb up the side of a mountain. It was a long and difficult climb, but I would reach the top.

The light completely disappeared, but I cared no longer. My very being changed, so that the coldness around me felt soothing. So that I could feel warmth from this crushing embrace. And so that even with the muddled state of my mind. I felt clarity.

“TRIUMPH!” I yelled.

“Hey!” A voice called out to me, it was Kyle.

“Do humans remember their dreams?” He asked.

“No, not always.” I curtly responded, focusing on the mountain top I was falling into.

“What a shame.” August mused as he waved me goodbye.

I woke up.

--

Oh fork. Hehe, fork pun.

It was a little hard to breathe, and there was a strange lack of light. Certainly, not the normal outcome of dropping a fork. I'm glad that clutz didn't drop the fork the first time; i'd hate to see such good tomato sauce wasted.

Ah well, no use crying over spilled spaghetti. I had more pressing issues right now. Namely a lot of things to question. First, the fact that i could question so much in the first place.

Yeah, I’m not dreaming, huh.

I was strangely calm about this; I should be panicking or thinking irrationally with such a bizarre change of environment.

I was moving forwards, being pushed by the flow of something. This familiar feeling is water? Still felt different though.

If it was water, I would be drowning, clearly I was not. Breathing was only uncomfortable, not downright painful.

Ah, never mind that, there it was. I was really pissed off now, like really fucking angry. I was having a nice chatwith some good friends, and someone had the audacity to do whatever tomfoolery is happening right now.

I couldn’t even ask myself any questions, because I didn’t even know where to start!

Ok, think logically, you dimwit.

Logically, logic has unfortunately taken the initiative to throw itself out of the window right now. Because unless I invoke the power of bullshit quantum mechanics shifting me into an alternate dimension, there was not a single thing I could do to explain this.

Granted I don’t know what I’m talking about when bringing up quantum mechanics, but I doubt anyone else does either.

I chuckled inwardly at my poor joke to preserve my sanity. Laughing is always a good countermeasure to insanity, I think.

Right, so what am I trying to come to terms with again? Right, pretty simple.

THE FACT THAT MY BRAIN/SOUL/SPIRIT OR WHATEVER CONSCIOUSNESS WAS WAS STUFFED INTO ANOTHER BODY.

Yeah, I mean, either I’m high as fuck right now or I was certainly not human anymore. The former I think can’t be true since I don’t do drugs, but such an explanation was far more reasonable anyways. It didn’t matter though, because if I was having an acid trip I might as well use my brain to maximize my enjoyment out of it. Heck, I could write a book about the experience.

It’s easy to figure out the shape of your own body without a mirror, provided you had the sensory organs and intellect for it. Any creature with a human-like brain should likely have both, but it was still hard to figure out the specifics.

Anyways, I think I was a fish. No this isn’t a gender identity thing, I was legit a fish, I have fins to prove the fact. Certainly not a conventional fish, though.

I was one long boy, but considering the anatomy of fish, that doesn’t narrow it down one bit. Should I even use my meager knowledge of biology for this? For all I know I can be made up of wizard jizz.

Eh, wizard jizz probably has some properties you can examine anyways.

My head is pretty big, I had eyes, teeth, no nose though. I have some extra organs I knew were there but didn’t know how to classify.

Since it was dark, I can only assume I was in the midnight zone of the ocean. That, or in an aquarium where light was covered, but I’ve been swimming up right now and not bumping into anything. So yeah, open waters it is.

Since I was a fish and not something with a shell; rhat probably meant I couldn’t go to the surface without my innards spilling out, great. Thank you for the blessings, whoever sent me here.

Am I doomed to live as a fish right now? Even if I somehow have my original brain; how the fuck is my brain receiving enough oxygen anyways? Gills are not be able to provide me with enough to sustain a human brain, especially at this depth. So either my brain was ridiculously efficient or there’s some miraculous chemical process that was somehow able to fuel it with that much energy down here. Like, I don’t know – snorting wizard weed?

All this thinking is making me hungry. Which is bad, because I can not think properly if I am hungry, because that’s how reality works.

Oh wait, sorry, reality.exe isn’t working properly anymore, but I am still hungry. Need to eat.

Ah, eating huh, not looking forward to that.

Anyways, I did notice something pretty cool about myself, no it’s not my charisma or handsome fish face, I had a shiny new tool.

Well, this body always had it I hoped, I really don’t wanna go in the direction my thoughts are going right now.

 My enhanced senses detected a disturbance in the water in that direction, so I should go check it out.

It took a while; swimming in the water was pretty slow. As I was approaching, I activate my ‘light organ’¹A photophore, see wikipedia or whatever. Wasn’t too interested in deep sea biology, but bio-luminescence is cool.

Holy smokes I’m seeing red! Literally,  there is a lot of red light in my sights. Those things falling around me were probably marine snow, detritus from above. I am not a decomposer, so I’m looking for some fine dining here.

Which, if the ocean still worked the way I know it, pretty rare. Lots of empty stuff.

And… there it is, the disturbance in the water I was talking about. Squid-like things were swimming around²I saw a random image, looked like a squid. Apparently its some zooplankton that's a sea cucumber of sorts. But I kept them as squids, because I it was cool.. They were slightly transparent with a red tinge that I could clearly see thanks to my unique vision. I was slightly unnerved about those exposed organs, but at least I knew they had some substance.

Hey, I have a light, you guys have eyes, why don’t y’all come at me? Wait, never mind, my light was red, they probably evolved to see blue... since blue light from the sun would travel the furthest. Makes sense that they couldn’t see me.

Hold on, did that mean I was undetectable?

HUHUHUHU

I menacingly approach the prey as fast as I could go. Look at them, floating around so carefree, eating whale shit, such poor innocent souls that’ll be gobbled up by a merciless and unseen foe.

What? If I was going to be a predator fish, I may as well get into character here a bit.

I sloweddown, because for all I know they might start launching magic missiles at me as a defense mechanism. Thankfully, they didn’t have any mystical properties, just regular critters.

As I got closer, I noticed a small problem. Namely, they were bigger than me. Now, while my thoughts are coming up with some eldritch horror squid swallowing a man whole, the only size that matters is relative size.

Relatively, they were bigger, and thus I cannot eat them. However, something told me that wasn’t a problem.

I crept up on one, moving right next to it. I found my jaws straight up unhinging themselves so I could tear apart the squid thing with my teeth.

I do not know if I should be relieved or absolutely terrified of what I did.

Obviously, since I chomped down on their friend, the other squids ran away. They wouldn't exactly fight to the death.

It was fine though, deep sea critters had slow metabolism, this guy would last me a while. Good, because it will take a while to find my next meal since the ocean was so large.

That was unless my powerful brain demanded more sustenance, in which case I would say I was royally fucked.

Oh, and I have a good idea of what I was now. There was a very specific type of deep sea creature that could produce and detect red light, unhinge its jaws and provided people with thalassophobia nightmare fuel. It was a neat coincidence too, since I only found out about these creatures because I wanted to draw a draconic fish hybrid.

If there are any disembodied people in my head, can you guess what I am?

That’s right I was a deep sea dragonfish³Not really a dragon, but I will make it so.! Or at least related to them. It was really "dope"; I wouldn’t have to worry much about anything eating me down here.

There was a very low chance I would encounter any predators while moving around these depths. I could be at the apex for all I know

I notice my light organ was still on, so I decided to turn it off to save energy, not before scanning my surroundings one more time.

Illuminated by a red glow, I find numerous thin tentacles dangling overhead. They were so long that I could not find the main body. It seems that whoever this guy is looking for prey too. Sorry buddy, got here first.

Uhh, buddy?

The tentacles seem to be quite angry, they're flailing around at me even!

Oh you have got to be kidding me.

Anon_Y_Mousse

Not sure if a deep sea litRPG has been done before, but I find it quite interesting to play around with the concept. With that, no hummies or humanoids for a while, but lots of tentacles to come!

As for my release schedule, I'll try to release a chapter every day for the first week. After that I'll slow it down depending on how I feel.