My legs burned.

A groan slipped between my lips, instantly masked by the brisk wind. My once-tight grip loosened on the small and ineffective shortsword sheathed by my side. And the groan only rang louder as I felt the growing burn in my feet while I marched. Shaking my head uselessly to rid myself of fatigue, I was continuously met with a frustrating truth.

My body couldn’t keep up.

Even while walking the supposedly short distance to the nearest town, I was already slowing down. My muscles, once powerful and resilient, now got tired too easily and wound down with each passing second. There was nothing I could do. The experience didn’t make sense to me. My mind, conditioned to control and react to the body I’d once called my own, was stuck. Each time I tried to go faster—to break into a run or even a slightly faster jog, I was met with resistance. Either my breathing was too heavy, or my muscles began to ache, or my legs were too short—it was a different problem every time. But no matter what I tried, my mind just spun in confusion, failing to understand the feeble vessel it had been paired with.

After the first half-hour of walking, my muscles started to falter and my frustration became unbearable. It made sense to me that I should’ve been able to push on—that I should’ve been able to make the trip without stopping, but the curse of exhaustion begged to differ. I huffed, puffing my chest out for a moment to emulate my previously attainable stature, but it did no good. The air just burned at the inside of my lungs and my body once again screamed to stop. So, reluctantly accepting the truth that exhaustion was pounding into my brain, I set out to stop.

I slowed my walk to a crawl and pushed frustration away before sitting down on a small rock. My head pounded for a second, sending me yet another warning about just how tired I was. I nodded to no one, taking the hint and letting myself slump into rest.

Seconds bled on, one into the next as I sat on that rock. My heartbeat slowed and my breathing lightened up after a time. But my muscles still ached, and I had no intention of angering them again. The passion and resolve I’d built up back in the tavern was still there, but uselessly sitting around, I felt… bored.

As exhaustion gave way to lethargy, my gaze wandered from the ground. Before I knew it, I was scanning the world around me. And only shortly after that, my eyes widened in wonder. The world around me was… stunning. Maybe it was the euphoria of rest, or maybe it was just my fresh eyes, but the landscape I’d stopped before looked more beautiful than most of the things I’d seen in the entirety of my past life.

Right in front of me, only a few paces away, was the stone-lined dirt path that I’d been walking all morning. If I squinted my eyes, I could still see where the path met up with that tavern and the forest past it in the distance. Beyond the dirt path, though, was a wide and flat plain that seemed to extend for thousands of paces. It was filled with tall grasses, sparse trees, and crop fields from farms scattered around. Almost exactly like a sight I would’ve seen in the rural parts of my home kingdom.

But… no, it wasn’t. It almost looked like that, but it was clearly different as well. The plains were wider and less hilly than any of the ones I would’ve found in my old life, and the farmhouses were more scattered—less tied together by organization. The tall grasses of the fields were unkept and badly managed, as if they’d been able to just grow wild for eons. And there were large, sharp jutting rocks that stuck out of the ground at random, forming some incomprehensible pattern among the green.

It looked serene, like the scene of a painting my father would’ve bought, but something about it was wrong. The plains felt… chaotic. Tumultuous just past the point of untenability. There was no rhyme or reason to the growth or to the farms built on top of them. It was as if it had been designed just past the cusp of beauty, but just past the cusp of insanity as well.

As my gaze lifted higher, moving over the messy grass, I saw something new on the horizon. Just past where the last slivers of grass fled out into the distance, mountains grew right from the void. From where I sat on my rock, I could only see the top halves of the mountains, solid snow-tipped peaks extending high into the sky. And they… they looked beautiful as well, jutting through clouds like ancient guards keeping watch over the chaos below.

Wind ruffled my hair, sending strands of unfamiliar brown down into my eyes. I blinked away the scene, squinting at myself before I realized yet again. My hand was pushing the chestnut locks back up onto my head before the question could even slip out between my lips. I felt strain in my hand, the exhaustion in my bones having spread there, too. My eyes drooped as the tiredness crept right back up.

I was awake, and that was nothing if not a good thing, but one night’s rest didn’t cure months of mistreatment. My new body was still frail—despite its young appearance—and it still ached like I’d been lifting boulders for days. Feeling the heaviness in my eyes, I could’ve gone to sleep right there. I shook my head instead and snapped my eyes open, forcing myself to be alert.

I had to stay vigilant, I reminded myself. There was no time for me to sleep. The town—Sarin, the barkeep had called it—was waiting. I had to get there for answers. When I got there, I’d see the town’s local lord, and I’d be back on my way to Credon in no time at all.

I straightened my back, snapping my eyes to their full width as I tried to stay focused.

But something was… off. Sitting on the rock and trying to keep myself alert, I felt something strange inside my mind. Deep inside my mind. No matter how awake I felt or how much rest I’d gotten, it still slept. Some part of me, deep in the back of my consciousness, stayed dormant, refusing to come see the light like a well-fed creature walled in for the winter.

My eyes narrowed, trying to stare at the inside of my brain. I’d noticed it before, I realized as sleep-hazed memories rose up. After I’d woken up in the tavern. Only a few long hours ago. I’d felt that part of me still sleeping. Back then, I’d chalked it up to nothing more than residual fatigue or the unfamiliarity of my own body. But now, forcing myself to be awake, I couldn’t feel that same way. I couldn’t—

A bird screeched behind me, tearing the quiet air into pieces and my mind back to the present. I whipped my head around, clutching the hilt of my sword. The world spun in a blur around me as I twisted, but once I got there, what I saw was quite marvelous.

A hitch caught in my throat as my sharp new eyes were met with another sight too foreign to really understand. A ways away from me, a large bird sat on the top of a jutting rock. Its feathers were a bright, dazzling green that sparkled in the sunlight and radiated an almost regal kind of power. The feathers played down its body, mixing and mingling into an impressive pattern of different shades that mesmerized my eyes.

Its claws were sharp and golden. Its head was held high in a sweeping, defined shape. And its eyes were the same color of pure gold, staring right at me.

I jerked my head back for a second, surprised by the glare of the bird. Its golden eyes looked intimidating, stirring something within me that I couldn’t quite define. My hand twitched over the shortsword sheathed by my side. But for some reason, I didn’t take it out.

The bird tilted its head at me, causing my hands to relax even more. Its royal feathers ruffled in the wind. I stared and… got lost in its eyes, the air freezing around my enchanted soul. My lips parted slowly to—

A loud screech split the air, sending time back to its normal speed. I blinked again, finding the bird nowhere and feeling dizzied by what had just happened. My head whirled around, searching the empty sky above for any sign of the creature. But my keen eyes searched uselessly, catching only sights of blue.

It was gone.

Eyelids flitted at the sky, my breath quickening by the second. It was gone. My head tilted to the side, the series of events that had just taken place spinning through my mind. One second it was there, but the next second it was just… gone.

A younger me might’ve sat there in confusion, pondering the bird’s disappearance for hours to no avail. But now, with energy as still a sparse resource in my body, I didn’t. It wasn’t worth the work. It wasn’t worth the time. So I didn’t. I just tore my gaze away, forced what determination I could back on my face, and looked back at the plains.

Eventually, with my normally disciplined resolve still poking at my skull, I turned my attention to the path. Looking down the dirt road, I saw only sparse wooden buildings scattered far on either side. But the barkeep had said Sarin was close, I reminded myself. And he’d seemed trustworthy, hadn’t he?

I wasn’t all that sure with everything that had happened in the past day, but he’d given me a place to stay and some food to eat without so much as a peep about compensation. So I gave the man the benefit of the doubt. Sitting around thinking about a bird was not going to get me anywhere, I recognized quickly with a shake of my head. I had to push on. I had to get to town.

So, stretching my youthfully frail legs, I pushed the barkeep’s sword fully back into its scabbard and walked on.

My legs had felt much better when I’d set back out. But another half-hour and a few hundred paces later, I was in the exact same spot. My muscles burned. My body wasn’t able to take the paltry exertion. And on top of that, I was hungry again. I gritted my teeth, feeling the increasingly sharp pain in my left foot as I walked on. I didn’t want to rest. I wanted to keep walking all the way to town like I should’ve been able to do. But the exhaustion was back, and the pain was only getting worse. So, biting back a sigh, I did what I had to do and sat down in the grass.

A few hundred paces back, with the sun a little lower in the sky, there’d been a convenient rock on the side of the road. But now, that rock was much too far away, and I didn’t have any better option. So I sat right there in the dirt. A sigh fell from my lips as my muscles cheered in relief and I nodded to myself lazily, letting my still-active eyes once again wander the scene.

Laid out in front of me was the same sparse plain, the same random farmhouses, the same jutting rocks, and the same mountain range. But, as I realized with a breath of cool air into my lungs, I hadn’t yet looked behind. Blinking, I twisted my body and looked around while my scabbard dragged through the dirt.

Behind me, after only a few hundred paces of plain, was a forest. The forest was made up of low, winding trees formed into an intricate pattern of leaves that reminded me a little too clearly of the bird I’d seen a while back. The gentle, organic pattern was sparse and chaotic, yet more controlled than the plains. It was covered in dozens of slightly different shades of green, all making up a sweeping canopy that both beckoned explorers and intimately hid what stayed inside.

My stomach rumbled, a dull pain stabbing me from the bottom of my gut. I clenched my jaw, just sitting there and feeling the breeze until the horrible quivering of my insides had stopped. Feeling the pain start to lighten up, I parted my lips and whispered a soft curse into the wind, memories rising up in my mind.

A dark forest flashed in my mind, one with gnarled, impossibly taunting trees. A phantom sensation brushed up against my skin, one that stung me to the core with such a frigid lack of grace that I shivered right there in the grass. I felt my eyes widen, my heart thundering as I relived the moments I’d only just gotten past. But no, I told myself. I shook my head and let the warmth of the sunlight pull me back to the world.

Staring at the forest, I couldn’t help wonder if it was the same one I’d emerged less than a day before. I couldn’t be sure, and no matter how much I wanted to look back the way I’d come, I was interrupted each time. When I looked in that direction, a film of unease built up in my gut. It made me snarl, and was the kind of feeling that was foreign enough that I would’ve suspected tampering if not for the fact that nobody else was around.

I shook my head again, letting the ragged dread settle below as I turned away from the forest. The twisted brown trunks and patterned green canopy fell away in a blur as I whipped my head back around. Sitting there in silence, I noted something. The thing inside me had stirred. As if being startled from its slumber, the dormant layer somewhere deep in the back of my mind shook. I tilted my head, feeling the movement as intimately as I could. But the change was so minor that I couldn’t tell if I was imagining it or not.

I was probably just imagining things because of exhaustion, I told myself. I still seriously had to get used to my new body, and without all of the luxuries I was normally—

Movement. In the corner of my eye. My thoughts ground to a halt. I noticed them instantly. Two forms, probably male, walking down the path from ahead. One of them was wearing light armor with metal reinforcements on the shoulders and wrists. The other was also wearing light armor, but his wasn’t meant to protect. The dark, fitting half-robe was tinged with purple and had winding symbols inscribed on it. I recognized his kind of wear in an instant.

He was a mage.

My eyes narrowed as I kept track of the pair walking towards me. My grip tightened on my blade slowly, acclimating still-unknown fingers to the style of my hold. My body slumped further down in the grass, going just far enough that I would’ve been hidden from view, but not far enough to keep the two men out of my vision. I had to stop a grin from overtaking my face. I’d just been thinking about the limitations of my new body, and it was nice to see that with the same mind, my instincts were still very much intact.

I glared daggers at the men, studying their every move. They seemed dangerous. Maybe I was being overly cautious, or maybe it was a side effect of the fire seeping into my blood, but I just couldn’t trust the way they walked. The way they moved in sharp jolts and reacted to each other a little too suddenly and carefully to just be friends. It looked like they were… hunting.

And I did not want to be their prey.

They continued to approach me, meandering down the path in fake nonchalance. Their grips were still tight, and their eyes were still sharp. But they hadn’t noticed me yet, which only really felt like half reassurance. They didn’t stop. They just kept wandering along with equal parts confidence and cautiousness, getting closer every second. I trickle of sweat rolled down my back; I stayed motionless.

Then they stopped. One of them, the one in the mage robes, halted his movements while standing only a few paces away from me. The man held his arm out, making his more heavily armored companion stop as well, and looked at him curiously. The robed man didn’t pay him any mind, squinting hard and drawing his gaze in my direction.

From his angle, he still shouldn’t have been able to see me through the grass. But he had, somehow, and I could feel the battle ready to start. I tightened my grip further, twisting pale fingers around the leather hilt of the blade. I wanted to curse into the air—to berate myself for being too obvious, but I didn’t move. I couldn’t move.

“What are you looking at?” the armored man asked, pushing the arm in front of him out of the way.

His friend glared a long, pointed glare that looked like it could’ve broken steel. “There’s something here,” he said, his voice more like a hiss than anything else.

The one in armor straightened at the mage’s warning. His hands gripped what looked to be a longsword on his waist.

“How do you know?” the readying warrior asked.

“I can feel the energy of… something.” The mage didn’t seem too sure. “It’s a mage, I think.”

The sword-user rolled his eyes, but he kept his stance. “You think there’s something hiding in the grass over there?” His hand gestured to me through the grass, seeming to cut through air and right into my soul. My breath hitched for a moment, but I didn’t move.

The mage nodded, his eyes slits at this point. His friend unsheathed his blade. “Okay, so if they’re there, then they’re listening to us.”

The mage nodded again, which was seemingly all his eager friend needed.The warrior readied his sword and took a couple steps forward, coming directly into my view.

I unsheathed my blade silently, nearly scoffing at the low-quality shortsword that the damned barkeep had given me. I flicked my gaze back, clenching my jaw and forcing power into my legs. I readied myself, waiting by the wind before I dashed out and took a swipe at the man’s calf.

What I had meant to be an elegant slash and retreat, a maneuver that was taught in elementary practice, ended up being nothing more than a clumsy blunt strike that forced my unkind body to scramble away. My blade slashed through the man’s light armor, piercing his skin only a sliver. I dashed off, feeling the air flush in around me as I pulled my blade with unceremonious grace.

I was clumsy. My body was different. I didn’t have the strength I used to have. I didn’t have the training I used to have. None of the pointed reflexes or refined muscle memory I’d built up over years. I was weak, uncoordinated, and exhausted on top of all my other shortcomings. Staring back at the swordsman with anger flaring up in his eyes, I forced an all too dry swallow. This did not bode well for me.

The now-bleeding man shot his eyes toward me, seething with rage. By the time I’d adjusted my grip, he was already on me, swinging his two-handed blade down with all the force he could muster. My eyes widened in a second, the command to dodge echoing out in my mind seconds before I moved.

I barely got away. My awkward hand lazily brought up the old shortsword to deflect his blade, causing him only to cut my left shoulder as I twisted away. I winced at the pain that my body wasn’t acclimated to and backpedaled with all the strength I had as I stared at the still-raging man.

He turned to me, holding his longsword with one hand now, and grinned. “Now we’re even.”

His lips tweaked upward, twitching in a confident rage. But I didn’t wait for him to finish fueling his arrogance. I rushed to interrupt him, my instincts screaming this stance or that at my blundering body. I tried to focus, to pull the movements of the attacks out of my mind while he had his guard down.

However, by the time I neared him, my feet were still beating on the dirt ground with a hurried lack of elegance that stung my own pride. I was the one to get interrupted.

Something hot tickled my legs and I reflexively jumped back. Pain radiated onto my skin, flicking off and on with my newly singed pants. My eyes scanned the ground for the source of the heat, and when I found it, my jaw nearly dropped.

Sitting there in the dirt, burning all on its own was a flaring, menacing purple flame. It was fueled by nothing and seemed to burn off only what it could find in the air.

I heard a chuckle from my side, and I knew in an instant. The mage. He was able to conjure such fire with nothing but his own will. My heart started racing and my I stepped back, feeling the increased weight on my feet. I blinked rapidly, trying to get my thoughts to calm. But only one question stuck out with any kind of certainty.

Why was such a powerful mage walking down such a desolate path?

I stood there agape, pondering the question in the ice-cold haze around me before I was rudely ripped from my thoughts by a screaming man. I twisted on my heel, bringing my sword up as quickly as I could. My eyes flitted intensely. I tried to block the strike already coming down on my form and dodged to the side.

The sword-bearer’s blade split the air, missing its target with impressive precision. But my eyes narrowed as I realized something. Only an inexperienced fighter would announce his attack with sound.

I scanned the area around, noting the position of everything I could as more maneuvers flitting through my head. But when I went to move, I stumbled awkwardly and evenly, my legs almost laughing at their own incompetence. My mouth hung open as I staggered, my heart wrenching for the fall.

After a moment of instinct-driven thought and painfully strict movements, I found my balance. For a second, I smiled, relishing in the fact that I hadn’t buried my nose in the dirt. But, unlike I very much wanted to think, my opponent wasn’t dumb; he took the opportunity to rush at me again. I turned on my heel, feeling the incredible strain in my ankles as the larger man rammed right into me. His shoulder collided with mine, sending my feet off the ground and my body through the air before I could even get out a wince of pain. I fell hard, my borrowed blade clattering uselessly into the grass beside me.

As quickly as I could, I tried to grab for my weapon, but I didn’t move very far. Before even got a chance of saving myself, I was stopped. The horribly sweet sound of a sword whipping through the air, getting progressively closer to my ears kept me in place. The arrogant swordsman had his sword raised above me. I could feel it in the air. I knew the position all too well; I’d put enough people in it myself. If I moved, I died.

“What a pathetic excuse for a fighter,” he muttered above me. The comment hurt far more than the bleeding gash in my shoulder. “Can I kill him?”

“No,” the mage said, his serious tone coming right back. “He’s useful… I think.” And yet, his uncertainty returned with the same kind of speed.

The swordsman growled, keeping the sword steady above me. “Whatever, but you’re helping me carry him back.” I heard the soft mumbling of complaint as the mage took steps toward my prone form.

I let out a soft breath right into the dirt as relief washed off my shoulders. I might not have been in the best situation, but my rematch with the beast was still yet to come. Behind me, I felt the air shift and the soft metallic sound of a sword raising again. I tensed up, my hands already starting to push against the ground.

He raised his arm high then brought it down, striking the handle of his blade on the back of my head. My insides tumbled terribly, whirling in a dizzying way that I knew wasn’t right. But my concern didn’t last long as all the resistance drained away.

Before another thought could cross my mind, everything had already faded to black.