Sleep was reluctant to let go, the feeling of complete exhaustion and sand under my eyelids was so strong, as if I had spent two days on my feet, and now as soon as I closed my eyes, someone had the urge to wake me up. I wanted to send the unclear source of noise somewhere far away and not too kindly, but for that I also had to wake up, then move and say something to someone... I terribly didn't want any of this, but the unclear noise didn't retreat, gradually taking shape of some kind of hum and... crows cawing?
The feathered ones clearly had some event going on, as they were screaming loudly, persistently, and selflessly, distinctly competing with each other on the topic of who would produce the most creaky and nasty note. It was annoying... I couldn't remember at all if I had opened the window for the night, but it was open, and while it remained so, I obviously couldn't count on normal sleep.
For three minutes I honestly tried to fight and ignore it, but the concert didn't quiet down at all, slowly pulling my consciousness out of Morpheus's realm, making me notice other sounds and smells too. The rustle of trees, some crackling, the smell of rotting grass...
Still thinking poorly, I still tried to get up to trudge to the window. However, the attempt to lower my feet from the edge of the bed met an unexpected obstacle — there was no edge. That is, moving my feet in the right direction, I didn't feel the boundary from which they could be lowered, but I felt some discomfort on my face, as if... as if I wasn't lying on a pillow or even on a bed, but on something dirty and... cold?
With the effort of will and rising bewilderment, I opened my eyes and stared dumbfounded at the ground beneath me. And beneath me indeed was the ground. Such a wild one at that — with grass, twigs, last year's leaves... some ants...
In the next few seconds, I stopped understanding anything at all. I found myself in some forest clearing. Day? Morning? Evening? No idea, but sunlight was making its way through the crowns. Not a soul around — no trace of tents, campfire, car... just trees, bushes, and grass, such lush, wild — not trampled down or pressed in any direction. Not a hint of a path, clearing, traces of any dragging. Just a wild forest, not even a clearing, but something... not too overgrown between the trees. Somewhere above, crows are arguing, and I'm on the ground... just lying around. And I'm wearing something very... metallic.
A frantic examination of arms and legs showed that indeed, I'm wearing armor. Real plate armor — blackened, with red either enamel or something else along the segment joints. On the chest was the same black surcoat with red trim and some winged symbol of blood-red shade in the center. They fit like a glove, don't restrict movement, even when you clench your fingers — there's less resistance than from a leather autumn glove.
And everything around is somehow... wrong. Too bright. Too colorful.
I don't know how long I sat there, staring dumbly at the surrounding world and trying to comprehend the very fact that I woke up somewhere in the forest instead of my bed, not to mention that I discovered some armor on me that I had never seen in my life and didn't even vaguely imagine where such could be obtained, but suddenly my head was squeezed by a dull pain, making me squint, and then... A second — and the pain completely passed, and with it disappeared both the feeling of sand under the eyelids, and drowsiness, and the tightness of thinking after sleep.
Only instead of them came something else.
[System Installation Complete.]
Declared the semi-transparent black and red panel with red letters that appeared before my face. A real computer-style notification panel, with red ornament along the contour and an x-mark with a dash [close-minimize] in the upper right corner. And it was hanging in the air. Right in front of my face. Like some futuristic hologram, as in Star Wars or something...
The first thought was that I was still sleeping. This was quite plausible, considering that, as I vaguely remembered, I had just been dreaming something about playing either "Dragon Age" or "Warcraft" or something else... This happens to me sometimes, nostalgia hits, so to speak. However... This was all too detailed. And too surprising. In a dream, you don't get surprised. Even if you understand that you're dreaming, you perceive it as something self-evident, but here... Here I really didn't perceive the situation as normal and natural. And the details... too many small details, they're too clear, static... no changes, but in a dream everything often flows...
"Okay, let's be sequential..." I voiced after taking a deep breath... and realized that I voiced it not in my voice. "Oka-a-ay..." I comment on the second discovery and start nervously getting to my feet.
Contrary to fears that it would be difficult to do in armor, no problems arose, and in a couple of moments I was already standing at full height. Standing firmly, not swaying. No coordination problems were felt either. Only the body was definitely not mine. First, though slightly, it was taller. I was already not a small person, but here I had grown about half a head above myself. Second, the waist. I won't say that I didn't have abs before, but on top of them was built some safety cushion, and under them lurked a bit of space for paying due to the sin of gluttony. Here the abs were clearly present too, and even more defined than my previous ones, only under them, it seems, the spine started immediately. In the sense that the general volumes of the belly, even taking into account the armor, were not very impressive.
Was this shocking enough for the gut, so to speak, to perceive the news? Oh ye-e-es, very much so! Did it explain anything? We-e-ell... that depends on how you look at it. "Where am I?", "What's wrong with me?", "What the hell?", "Who's to blame?" and "What to do?", not counting a whole wagon of similar questions, remained unanswered, but I wasn't so wild that the message window in front of my face didn't hint at anything. I'll say more — I was deep enough into anime to have fallen to reading Korean and Chinese comics, so... yes! I... I could say, slightly suspected into what depths of, um... "rear" I might have been carried.
Still afraid to touch the message that statically followed my head, remaining in one position to the face, I carefully walked around the clearing, peering at plants and around. The distant fir trees looked familiar to me, I also recognized raspberry leaves, moss looked familiar, the rest... well, I'm not a botanist, not a botanist!
A careful examination of myself revealed several facts. First of all, four leather pouches with buttons hung on my belt. In one was found a water flask, and such a colorful one at that. Made of green glass, with an antique form and beautifully braided with leather cord. In the second were some brown plates wrapped in cloth, apparently some dried or jerked meat, totaling about half a loaf of black bread in volume. In the other two were found flint, tinder, an antique metal spoon, and a handful of coins, apparently copper, with a bird-shaped coat of arms, only not quite like the one on my chest, but as if inside a shield, such a teardrop-shaped one and seemingly consisting of tongues of flame. Also on the same belt, on the back, there was a sheath with a dagger. From the back itself descended a long, though not reaching the heels, black cloak with red trim. And over it somehow hung a sword. Two-handed. A claymore of sorts, as far as I understand swords, and also with a bird on the guard.
Trying to remove it, I easily "unstuck" it and could just as easily "stick" it back, feeling something like... I don't know. It wasn't like a magnet, but I seemed to... take it with my back? A very strange sensation, as if I have some invisible hand there that can clench into a fist or can unclench. Or rather not even a hand, but some kind of cloud that at my will, completely reflexively becomes either viscous and rigidly fixing the blade's canvas, or weightless and imperceptible, as soon as I grab the handle with the unambiguous intention to remove the sword. In the first moments it wasn't even felt, but the longer I listened to myself, the more clearly I felt it. And it, this cloud, was present not only on the back — it streamed and swirled around the whole body, flowing through muscles, skin and armor and quite responding to my attempts to feel myself and somehow move myself. Sluggishly, jerkily, not always understanding what it was doing, but responding. The clearest expression of this was in the sword sticking to the back, but in other places... However, in other places I didn't really try to move it, because something told me that it's better not to immediately stick my crooked hands into an unclear substance.
As for the sword, it had no scabbard. The blade was perfectly sharpened and polished, along the "strong part" of the blade were some unclear but beautiful patterns made with some other red-golden metal, while the guard was decorated with a bird with spread wings, but not an eagle, rather... a phoenix? Yes, it was definitely a phoenix, like the one on my chest. A very familiar phoenix to me, almost perfectly repeating the outlines of one coat of arms that very often decorated my characters in a certain online game...
"The longer I stay here, the less I like what's happening," oh, forgot about the new voice again. Sonorous, well-trained, suitable either for serenading a beautiful lady under a balcony window or shouting commands to your dozen of cutthroats. And yes, exactly a dozen, because in the noise of battle, commands to larger units should be given through a signal horn or magic — otherwise they simply won't hear.
Wait a second... And how do I know this? In the sense that I just thought this completely seriously, as an immutable truth, not as something that I heard somewhere sometime...
From examining my equipment and unwinding the last thought in my head, I was distracted by the appearance of a new information window with text in front of my eyes and another flash of pain in my head, making me wince and apply "Healing Touch," putting my hand to the aching temple.
Wait a minute... what did I just do?!
To say that my state was "fell into a stupor" — this greatly understates the said state. There were no thoughts in my head at all. Only a puzzled "Wha-a-a-a-at?!" echoed between the skull bones. But... I really did cast a full-fledged spell from the Light school and directed it to my healing, as if I had done so hundreds and hundreds of times before. And I understood how to feel the Light inside me and direct it for healing... or to infuse my weapon with blessed power or strengthen defense. I didn't know how I knew this, but I knew! Like the fact that at the moment all my abilities are not even the tip of the iceberg, but just a light frost on its surface. But how, why? No idea. It just suddenly "remembered." And was applied at my will.