I slowly opened my eyes only to be met with the eye-stinging sight of the white-blushed world around me. I blinked rapidly, adjusting to the brightness before fixing my gaze on what was seemingly right above me: A spectacular snow-covered mountain peak the likes of which I'd only seen before in magazines and nature channels.
As I fixated my eyes on the beautifully picturesque sight, the chilling sensation of fresh snow stung my exposed arms. I quickly pulled up my torso and sat upright, shaking and dusting off the snow that coated my arms. "What the hell." was the only thought I could muster up in the moment. But the voice that spoke it wasn't mine
"Huh?" I spoke out loud again in a voice that didn't match my own "Aaaah, a-a-a-aah" I continued to speak out in disbelief after a few coughs. "What the actual hell." My voice was much more feminine than I was used to. It also had a subtle rasp to it that induced a few more intentional coughs which didn't get rid of it.
"Ugh" I groaned in confusion and held my head with my hand which led to an even more unfamiliar sensation. I put out my arm in front of me and saw the pale, flawless skin that adorned it. Even the dainty fingers could only be described as perfect, everything just started making less and less sense. Looking more closely at the rest of my body, I found I was wearing very tight, black, leather pants that were laced up at the waist, and a sleeveless ice-blue shirt that looked to have come straight off of a monk.
"So, what, am I dreaming I'm a princess?" I joked aloud in the same feminine voice that refused to change no matter how deep I tried speaking. Something more pressing caught my attention, however, as I refocused my eyes to the bright purple cliff wall with pink flames within it that stood in front of my hand. "Well that definitely isn't any element that exists in the real world, so this is definitely a dream." I said aloud, again. My habit of talking to myself aloud seemed to have gone unchanged at least.
I fell back onto my back as I decided to take my time enjoying the dream before having to head back to work in the morning. 'Hold on, work?' I closed my eyes and tried to remember what happened before I went to sleep but the memory was fuzzy. As if I had it right in front of me, but I still couldn't see it clearly. My head fell back a bit farther than what should've been normal as I laid back, the sharp pain of edged stone stung my nape as I jolted up and turned my head back to see that I was seated right on the tip of a ledge.
The fresh sting on my nape and sinking feeling in my stomach was enough to accelerate my heartbeat twofold. I turned my head back up to the purple mountain wall, in preparation to move closer towards its safety before my ears were assaulted violently by an impossibly loud croak sounding from further up the mountain. It felt as if my entire being shook with the sound and I jumped back in agitation at the noise. 'Shit, wasn't there nothing behind me?'
The sound of cracking stone accompanied the heart dropping sensation of descension. As I plunged down backwards, the last thing I saw was a glimpse of a blue-skinned monstrosity that eyed me from further up the mountain.
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"Hey, get up. Hey... wake up!" A slim and long-haired boy commanded in an overly authoritative tone.
"Stop shaking her so roughly Arton! Are you trying to help her or make sure she's dead?" Another boy with spiked hair shouted at the first.
"Uhh, I-I think we should just wait for Tetsu to get back here with an elder, guys. S-she could be dangerous..." Spoke a third boy that cowered far behind where they both kneeled.
"Rafal... don't you ever get tired of being such a wuss?" The spikey haired boy turned to question him.
"S-shut up Relti. Elder Souan says that sometimes cowardice is just cleverness in disguise." Rafal said as his face contorted to one of displeasure.
"Well if the village elders were all as 'clever' as you Rafal, we'd all be living as slaves to the forest boars just so we don't incur their wrath." Relti joked.
"Ugh" The throbbing of my head slowly faded as I forced open my tired and heavy eyes. Finding myself once more in a pit of snow I laughed aloud at my expectation of waking up peacefully in my bedroom at home.
"L-Look guys, I-I told you she was dangerous. She's laughing like a d-demon would." Rafal said as he slowly retreated away from the other two, pointing indicatively towards the girl.
"Man, calm down. She probably was just laughing at my awesome joke." Relti said with a somewhat shaky voice as he looked suspiciously down at the laughing stranger.
"Or maybe she just saw your face when she woke up. Actually no, if that was the case she'd be screaming now, not laughing." Arton said to Relti as he laughed at his own cruel joke.
"S-shut up." Relti said in a very similar manner to his cowardly brother as he began to run his fingers over his face. 'Am I really that ugly?'. His self-examination was interrupted, however, as the stranger lying down in the sharp and uneven snow next to him looked up at him, then spoke.
"Where am I, kid?" Her beautiful voice resounded harmoniously in the cold mountain air. Along with her flawless skin and perfectly proportioned face that he was just now noticing, Relti could do nothing but freeze up and gawk at her as she looked at him expectantly for an answer to her question. "Aw, .uh..." he struggled with his words for a few moments before turning away from her, his face flushing red.
'Huh?' I looked confoundedly at the strangely acting boy in front of me as he turned away his gaze. 'Is there something wrong with me?' I wondered before feeling around my face and looking my body up and down once again, finding nothing wrong. 'Maybe his people aren't allowed to talk to outsiders.' I mused as I once again examined the boy in front of me and his two 'associates'. By the short untrimmed hairs on their faces, they must've been around 16 years each, the kind of teenagers you'd see making a scene at the mall or playing around at a skate park. Except for the way that they were dressed of course. They each wore thick and bristly fur jackets which would be expected of anyone living in this arctic environment. Underneath their jackets were equally uneven leather tunics and leggings that seemed to have also been stuffed haphazardly with fur for the purpose of keeping warm. The boy seemed to have noticed my scrutinizing eyes as he stiffened up even more at my gaze.
"Rafal! What's going on here? Are you all alright?" A man wearing an intricately complicated warbonnet upon a regular fur-stuffed winter cap walked hurriedly towards the boy farthest from me along with a man nearly twice his size that met me with a piercing gaze from his dull grey eyes.
"V-Village Chief!" Rafal shouted in surprise as he hurried bowed his torso in what seemed like both respect and fear.
"Easy boy, there's no need for such things. I don't remember doing anything so great to garner such respect. Just tell me where Reltin and Arton are." The Village Chief spoke in a soft tone with a warm smile spread on his face. Such a quick and unnatural change from his earlier alarmed state was worthy of a politician that had lived his whole life through lies. But it didn't seem like the boy picked up on any such thing. As he looked up in respect and admiration to the Village Elder.
"Y-Yes sir! They're right over there." Rafal said as he pointed far behind him towards the two boys and a stranger that sat in the snow between them.
"Reltin! Arton!" The two boys quickly stood up and ran over towards the Village Chief as he called their names, lining up in front of him. The Village Chief sighed heavily in relief at the sight of them alive and healthy. "So what happened exactly?" The Village Chief asked again, now much calmer.
"T-There's a demon! It d-disguised itself as a girl though..." Rafal quickly spoke up and pointed towards the strange girl who was now dusting herself off of the snow that covered her tall and slender body.
"Stop spewing nonsense Rafel!" Reltin shouted again at his brother with thinly veiled anger in respect for the Village Chief in front of him. "We found her lying by Ice marrow's Drop Village Chief." Reltin spoke to the Chief with his hands twitching at his sides. "S-s-she's too pretty to be a demon." He spoke again but in a much more hushed voice.
"What was that?" The Village Chief asked Reltin, knitting his eyebrows in confusion and bringing his ear closer to him.
"A-Anyways! There's no way she's a demon. She just fell from up there so she probably hit her head or something!" Reltin said, pointing up at the cliff that stood nearly 200 feet above the ground they were standing on.
"From there?" For the first time the tall, grey-eyed man spoke, sporting an incredulous tone as he raised his eyebrows, pointing out the absurdity of Reltin's suggestion.
"Yes, from up there! Don't get all sarcastic just because you're tall Tetsu, I'm still older than you, where's your respect for your elders?!" Reltin shouted back at Tetsu's remark.
'That little chibi is older than that giant?' I thought in disbelief at the prospect as I stared blankly at the arguing tribesmen in front of me. I had many questions on my mind at the moment: 'Where the hell am I? What happened to my body? Who the hell are these people in front of me?' Only the last of which could be answered right now. There was no reason to lose myself in what I couldn't answer so I decided to just focus on what was in front of me.
"Um... hello?" I spoke in a small and broken voice as I questioned myself as to whether they'd understand what I was saying or not. That spiked hair boy earlier also didn't respond to my question, so maybe I could only understand but couldn't speak it? I had no idea what kind of situation I was in. As I walked forward with my question, the body I was still unaccustomed to walked jaggedly and imbalanced. It wasn't long before I ended up falling ungracefully onto my face in the snow, tripping on my own feet. The feeling of being buried in it was shamefully familiar to me after the past however many hours I was stuck in the same situation.
"You fools! can't you see how much she's struggling? go help the poor woman!" Seeing the pitiable sight of that young woman speaking in such a frail voice before falling over struck a heavy sense of guilt into the hearts of the young men and Village Chief that spoke leisurely by her for so long.
His commanding statement immediately sent the four boys running over to her side, however the extra three were unneeded it seemed, as Tetsu lifted her simply with one arm before whipping her over his shoulder like a meat sack before running back towards the Village Chief.
"N-no.. you don't have to..." Was all that came out of the young woman's mouth as she hung over Tetsu's shoulder like a bag of potatoes.
"Easy child, there's no need for such modesty! Let me and these young n's here take you back to our village, out of harm's way, for now." The Village Chief spoke to her in another warm voice. but this time with much more sincerity. He waved towards the other 3 boys to follow him who stood with mouth's agape at Tetsu's coarse handling of the girl.
It was just moments ago that I was violently pulled off my limbs and swung around like a rope before landing chest first on a steeled shoulder, knocking all the wind out of me. As I lay there, nearly unconscious, I begged the feather-hatted man in front of me to let me go but I was met with a beaming smile and generous response as if he was doing me a favor. 'You're the ones harming me right now dumbass!' I shouted in my mind, struggling to get loose from the boy named Tetsu's arms. But his grip only tightened on my back at my resistance, causing me even more pain.
"oogh" I groaned out in pain as I relented to the tribesman's determination to take me away. "Poor child, you must have been left out here for quite a while.. Hurry up boys! We have to get her back to the village quickly!" The Village Chief's words were like a Judge's sentence to me as the pace of the group quickened and my face contorted in pain at the increased repetition of shoulder strikes to my stomach...
'God, please let their village be close..' I thought, kneeling to the sky in my mind. My prayers, however, were not answered as the journey lasted another hour.
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A dingy waypost stood short and fragile at the foot of a beaten path that started and split in three ways just in front of it. The sign was crudely stained in a red dye that came off at the corners. Clearly inscribed in it were beautifully calligraphed characters that seem wasted on such an unkempt canvas.
The characters glowed with a yellow hue that stood out starkly from the red dye surrounding it. In front of such a place the Village Chief whipped backwards towards the 4 boys that followed behind him.
"Tetsu... huu, you take her over to Llana. I have to return to my meeting with the delegate." The Village Chief commanded through strained breaths before turning to the other three boys. He clearly wasn't used to such physical exertion, having just jogged for nearly an hour.
"As for you three, you might as well go with him there. Do whatever you want, but just remember what I told you." He said cryptically, making sure to emphasize his words.
"Yes, Village Chief" Reltin answered for the group and the Village Chief nodded before walking off. Tetsu was already well on his way down the rightmost path that led into an opening in the nearby woods.
"What was it again that that old man told us to do?" Arton questioned Reltin leisurely as his eyes trailed the girl that bobbed up and down on Tetsu's fleeting shoulder.
" 'That man'? That's the village chief Arton! Show him some respect." Reltin snapped back and yelled at him but was only met with Arton's cold eyes that moved once again to meet his.
"I don't like that guy." He stared coldly into Reltin's eyes while speaking out in a monotone voice. "He's no good, my intuition says so." Arton tapped his head with his finger a few times as he said so.
"Eh.." Reltin stared back him not knowing quite what to say. Arton's rarely ever brought up his intuition but whenever he did, it was usually right. Reltin turned back to look at the fleeting back of the Village Chief with a troubled expression.
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I continued enduring the drilling at my stomach that evolved into now what felt like a javelin jabbing in and out of it. 'Were this boy's shoulders made of steel!?' I continued to cry inwardly but soon found my salvation in the form of a building that the giant had stopped on the porch of. Evident by the wooden flooring that now met my vertical eyeline as I hung over his shoulder. The flooring however was quite crude, and I could spot multiple tiny cracks and gaps between each plank.
"Llana." The giant spoke gently before knocking repeatedly and violently on the wooden door in front of him. His soft voice sounded in stark contrast to the thunderous banging that came after it, as if the calm before a storm.
I could feel a shaking from his extraneous gesture but soon realized that it was not just his arm that shook but the entire hut that was trembling under his hand as he continued to pound on the wooden door that I looked up to find was quite shabby as well. It was a wonder to me that the thing had held under such violence.
"What, what, WHAT!?" An impatient voice squeaked from the other side of the door before opening it from the other side and squealing even louder. The figure on the other side stood short as a gnome in comparison to the giant that I could only assume was staring down at her from next to me. She had to be no more than five foot tall as she looked up with exceedingly squinted eyes and a dangerous look that I assumed were aimed at the giant next to me. She wore a dirtied, blue apron atop a simple white shirt and black leggings which were also quite bruised as well as a pair of thick, brown gloves that gave her the impression of a gardener that had just come out of an intense wrestle with a bush.
"This, take her." The giant spoke in the same manner of a five-year-old child before I felt the shoulder that supported me disappear and the world spin as I was flipped forward and presented to the lady in the hut as if I was a gift basket. The sudden propulsion left me too dizzy to protest at the continuous inhumane treatment.
"Huh?" The girl's face contorted into a frown as she looked down at me and seemed to study my body. Her squinted eyes trailed over me stopping only to stare briefly at my stomach before she looked back up at the man behind me.
"What, is she supposed to be injured or something?" She snarled at him, clearly not taking me as a serious case. Well, it only made sense. I was, after all, completely fine.
"She fell. From Ice marrow. " The giant replied in more short sentences.
"From the top of Ice marrow?" The woman asked incredulously, answered only by the nod of the boy. She looked down at me again but this time with much more peculiar gaze. Her face held the same expression for a couple more moments as she looked back between me and the boy's serious face before clicking her tongue, seemingly haven relented. She opened her eyes from its previously squinted state, revealing green pupils that glowed with a similarly bright green light, taking me aback and causing me to unconsciously recoil at her gaze.
Her eyes trailed me once again but this time feeling much more piercing, giving me the feeling of being completely exposed. Her eyes stopped on my stomach but only for a second before they darted up to my head and her face contorted drastically. She quickly grabbed my shoulders, propping me up on my feet before grabbing my hand and pulling me into the hut behind her, closing the door behind us. Tetsu stood outside puzzled at their sudden disappearance.
My still untrained steps almost caused me to trip over myself multiple times but with extreme focus I somehow managed to keep myself upright until the woman pushed me down onto a bed that was nearly double my size. I sat down at the bedside and my eyes drifted around the room surrounding me. The interior was about what you'd expect from a typical cabin in the woods. A few buckets sat on the ground around what seemed to be seeds that littered the floor, above them was a tool rack on which hung a pan, tweezers, and a variety of other tools that didn't quite fit in a gardener's kit. Although I called it a bed, the cloth I sat on was nothing much more than that: a thick fur blanket that covered a wooden frame which not even a soldier would be able to sleep on comfortably.
"Sorry, that bed was made to fit even that blockhead outside, so you'll just have to deal with it." She said, rummaging through a variety of flasks and trays on a table that covered the length of an entire wall. She seemingly found what she needed as she turned around with two flasks of a strange yellow liquid in one hand, and a tray of red herbs in the other that looked similar to chili peppers.
"y-yeah no, it's ok." I spoke in a soft tone, still uncomfortable with the alien voice that came from my mouth. The woman put the unusual vessels on a cart that was just by the bedside before putting her hand over my head and asking me to lay down. I was still very much confused by the entire situation but feeling her gentle touch and seeing the concern in her eyes, I complied.
"How do you feel?" The woman asked as she grabbed some tools from the rack nearby and began to do something with the ingredients on the cart I couldn't quite see from my prone position on the bed.
"I'm fine, a bit of a headache if anything." I replied feeling guilty that she was still under the impression I was gravely injured. The woman approached and sat by me on the bed. Her left hand was cupped, as if she was holding something in it. She put her right hand on my head once again and opened her squinted eyes to reveal her green eyes once more.
"What is that?" I asked, inwardly cringing at how the soft voice that came out of me sounded like the tone of a five-year-old asking why the sky is blue.
"What? these?" She asked, pointing at her eyes with the hand that left my forehead, winking them at the same time as a bad joke. I nodded at her question, and she smiled in a motherly way that reminded me of my long-passed memory. "Have you never met a healer before?" She asked as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.
"A healer?" I asked incredulously, thinking she was pulling a prank on me, but her expression didn't change.
"Did you not even have a healer in the tribe you came from?" The woman asked me, curiosity but more prominently concern visible on her face.
"Tribe? what tribe?" I asked, my mind now running in circles trying to figure out what the hell was going on. new body, new voice, new place, glowing eyes. What the hell was happening to me.
"I think you might have a brain hemorrhage." The woman explained. "I can try to heal you but it's going to hurt. A lot." She said with a serious tone.
'A brain hemorrhage?' The idea was ludicrous at first and honestly too scary to consider, but after some consideration it didn't seem so unbelievable. Trouble walking, a headache, coupled with the fact that I heard my voice differently and that I was seeing things it wasn't so crazy. The idea of being operated on by a tribesman out in the middle of nowhere, however, was honestly terrifying and I was reluctant to agree to go through with it. Maybe it was because she could see the fear in my eyes, but the woman brought her hand down to mine and held it gently before speaking.
"I know it's scary but if I don't do anything, you won't survive. You have to be brave." Her words broke me out of the spell of fear I was under, and I inwardly slapped myself for behaving like such a child. I took a few deep breaths before looking at her and nodding with determination. The woman brought her cupped hand up to my mouth before dropping unfamiliar herbs with the texture of dry leaves in my mouth. She brought a flask of water with another swift movement, and I slurped it down quickly, swallowing the strange substance and sending it flushing down my throat. I expected her to bring out a scalpel or some other sharp tool, but she moved her hands over me instead,
The woman brought her right hand once up to my forehead, while her left one sat idle on my chest. Suddenly both hands began to emit the same dull green hue that shone from her eyes, and I began to feel an intense burning in my chest. The burning quickly progressed into strangely familiar searing pain, and I convulsed in agony. My head began to rush back with memories locked away in the deepest vault of my mind. That day's events flooded my mind. A cold brew coffee to start my morning, driving to work, teaching my classes for the day, helping the students write their final exam papers, the long drive home, sitting in my chair alone watching as the continuous pitter patter of the rain struck my windows, the same sudden searing pain in my chest, my final breath as the crickets continued to chirp and the sky continued to rain down its indifference.
I opened my eyes abruptly and howled out in pain as the memory struck me along with the already intense searing on my chest from the woman's hands. I nearly lost my consciousness before the pain slowly faded away and I was left panting in relief, sweat trickling down my forehead. I felt as though I had just run a marathon. As I lay down exhausted, my empty head was occupied only by the memory of the cold and unforgiving grasp of death.
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