Strange Tales of the Deadslayer Ch. 01

"Allan? Honey you remembered to take your medication right?"

"Just a second I gotta finish this dungeon!" I call back as I hear my mom's voice ring up from the floor below my room. Asthma can wait -- mythic keystone Black Rook Hold comes first, and my group's almost to the final boss.

"Allan? The doctor said 8pm every night, you need to take them."

"I'm... um, I'm taking them right now!" I call back, not taking them, and instead deftly blinking my night elf mage out of the way of Dark Obliteration; I'm too good to stand in the fire. I'll grab the meds as soon as I finish this boss.

A few heated minutes of arcane barrages and evading sleep-inducing mists pass and we finish the final boss, and I immediately start teleporting back for Dalaran, leaving the random group not a second too soon -- I can hear footsteps coming up the stairs now, towards my room. Crap!

Darkening the screen of my computer as quickly as I can, I make a mad dash for the cupboard by the side of my bed, my fingers struggling to turn the child-proofed lid, slipping at the last second. The little orange prescription bottle falls at the carpet beneath my feet just as the door opens, flooding the corners of my small, darkened room with the harsh yellow light of the hallway outside, my mom silhouetted in that incandescent glow.

"Allan?"

I pause, not looking at the bottle but simply standing dumbly in the center of my own room. "...Yeah?"

She arches one brow, then smirks very slightly, dipping to one knee to pick up the bottle off of the floor in front of me. "You drop something?"

"I was just about to take them," I confess sheepishly, sitting down on the edge of my bed. "Do you really think they're gonna help?" I say, a little worry swelling in me.

"Doctor Corben said they were something new, so they should work better than the others," she sighs gently, sitting beside me and wrapping one arm around my shoulders and pulling me in. I look at my feet awkwardly, wiggling a little under her tight hug. "Maybe this will help you with... you know."

"Getting a job and getting out of the house someday?" I say, looking up to her and offering a weak smile. She frowns, and I immediately feel kinda bad. I guess that did sound a little mean.

"You know you can stay here as long as you want. But you're gonna wanna leave some day. You're nineteen now, you'll want a life of your own. A career, maybe a girlfriend. Unless you're gay. You're not gay are you?"

"I'm not gay, mom," I chuckle. "But you know I'm working on Springlock Eternity."

"The video game?"

"Yeah! I'm gonna get it finished and one day it's gonna be great!"

"Well... I hope that goes well. We can talk about it more in the morning if you want, I set up an appointment for you to talk to a friend of mine who says he might be able to get you a low-stress job." She pats my shoulder and gets up, heading back for the door. "Have you considered turning the lights on in your little man-cave? I realize you're not much for the sun but some kind of light has to be good for you."

"I'll think about it!" I call back as she leaves. "Goodnight mom!"

The door clicks back shut behind her and I let out a breath. Yikes, an interview? I have plenty of work to do getting my game on its feet without worrying about a dayjob. Maybe there's some way I can wiggle out of it. Just until I can get Springlock Eternity done and show it to the world.

So this is me. Allan Douglas, nineteen years old, living at home, unemployed, severely asthmatic and suffering from just about every allergy in existence! It's not so bad honestly -- it gives me a lot of free time, and all the socializing I don't do gives me way more time to teach myself game design. And who knows, maybe the new meds actually will help-- holy crap I still haven't taken those!

I grab the bottle and head back to my computer, logging out of my game fully before grabbing my water bottle. The back of the bottle says two pills at 8pm, but something tells me 8:17 won't be any kind of dealbreaker.

The pills themselves look a little weird, nothing like my old asthma meds; these are strangely big, perfectly round and bright green, with no markings on them anywhere. I shrug and toss them down the hatch along with some water -- they're tough to swallow but they go down after a moment of chest pain. Boomjams. Goodbye chronic affliction. Hopefully.

I go back to my computer and spend the rest of my night studying. With high school over and college still a faraway dream, I nonetheless have a great deal of research and self-training to do if I ever wanna get an indie game off its feet. All the coding, all the design, not to mention the actual writing of the script itself! It takes time but I can't help but stay optimistic -- all this work, one day, is gonna count for something, and then I won't just be Allan, the kid that can't breathe and has to stay at home all the time. I'll be Allan D. Douglas, teen prodigy, creator of a bestselling new game.

Glancing at the clock shows that more time has passed than I thought, and I'd better get to sleep. Taking a quick puff from my inhaler, I throw my shirt off and hop into bed. My stomach hurts a little bit; probably the new meds. I've had the weird experimental ones make me a little uncomfortable before and these ones are about as weird and experimental as it gets, from the look of them. I roll onto my side and just try to sleep. I'll feel better in the morning.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o

I dream, I think. I draw breath and I feel my fingers reach out as I am swallowed by blackness. That pain is gone but replaced with something else, a feeling of churning and swelling that overcomes me and blinds me, sending me stumbling, though my feet find no floor beneath them. I scream, and no sound comes out, but I feel my hands touch something. Water? Thicker, though. Like milk, or... syrup. My eyes open for the first time, and I look into the starry mirror before me, see the pale, skinny boy that I know. I see that form start to shift, shimmering and distorting, but don't see how it changes before I slip forward, into the mirror. It gives way in that thick, shimmering liquid, almost like mercury, and then there's darkness once again, a vast, starlit infinity.

I see fire ahead but not its source. It seems to come from all around, before and behind me, like I'm being thrust through a canal of the void while light struggles to reach me, or perhaps funnels me onwards. I scream and feel bubbles come out of my mouth. Bubbles, no sound. I can't breathe. Oh no, oh no no no I can't breathe, I need my--

Desperately reaching for my inhaler reveals that my pajamas are gone, and all that remains is pale skin, my pockets gone with them. I gasp for breath and I feel my lungs burn and shrink, feel my body collapse even as it swells. The cosmic highway of darkness before me serves as my womb as my body shifts and cracks, twisting, each of my limbs cavorting to a different dance as I'm reshaped and taken somewhere else. Wide, sprawling spiderwebs of lightning blast past my vision, filling the tube of darkness in which I descend, shooting towards me like a hungry maw of crackling light.

I don't realize that I've landed until I hear the sound of screaming. Not my voice, but so close. Coming from me, it has to be. I struggle up onto my hands and knees, gasping for breath, my skin stinging, bones aching from the ordeal I just went through. My fingers sink into a flat, dusty crust of earth beneath me and my breathing starts to slow, regulating itself without the inhaler for the first time since I can remember. As I did not recognize the scream, don't recognize the sound of panting coming from my own mouth, the two hands beneath me are foreign.

"Yikes," I whisper. I shift one foot beneath me and use it to slowly stand, though the action is easier for me than it's ever been. I close my eyes for a long moment, then open them, and take in the bleak, alien vision of a world that is not my own. Dusty shades of orange and violet envelop me as I take my first steps, stretching out and feeling... strange, different. I can hear voices though; those draw my attention and keep me trying to move forward, step after bare-footed step across the cracked earth below. Strange, dark plants block my vision of what's ahead. Perhaps vines or perhaps flowers; these long, crawling things. Where in the world am I?!

"Rise... rise before me, those who once fought against me," I hear a man's voice, low and dark. Almost... metallic. "Rise again and serve me as your cowardly hearts would not allow in life." Holy smokes, that doesn't sound good. That doesn't sound good at all.

I blink and start to move quicker, plumes of dust bursting up beneath my footfalls as I push my way past the vines and the strange structures they cling to. Monuments maybe, or very strange, inscribed trees. The vines grow more and more dense, small thorns raking along my skin but not piercing it, though I suspect they should have if I weren't in crazy-land. My body's on autopilot and I don't stop to think that I should be careful, that I shouldn't exert myself too much. I'm focused now, focused on finding the source of that voice, and I push past the last barrier of thick, thorny green flowers and out into a wide, flat area. The same dusty, gray-purple earth as before, though not as dry. This has seen caretaking at some point, and is dotted with gravestones like a honeycomb. Of most concern is the fact that the ground beneath those graves is beginning to churn and swell, pulsating as something rises beneath it, directed my an enormous man in a suit of deep black armor.

"What's--" I pause and almost choke, too jarred by the strange voice coming out of my mouth. It's a little huskier than my old one, but... "What's going on here?" I look up to the gigantic armored man, up on a great raised platform before the graveyard itself, possibly a place to read burial rites or something like that. A large cage is behind him, and I can see what looks like movement inside, but not through the thick metal bars.

"Death. Rebirth." The man says, turning his great helmeted head to face me, and I don't realize until now that I'm still naked. Beneath that spiked black helm I can see no face -- only one large, central eye hidden within, one eye that burns a deep, furious golden color. "The rebirth of these cowards, killed in their struggle against Thodax. The rebirth of a world under my rule. And the death... of you, stranger." The ground beneath him throbs once more and those graves begin to burst, the dead crawling free, clothes tattered and armor tarnished, necrotic flesh still clinging to dry, splintering bones. Their eyes -- or eye sockets -- glow that same mad yellow, and now their eyes are turning... focusing on me.

"Risen traitors," the armored figure continues. "...Destroy her."

I blink. Her? Wait, I... erm. Too much at once. Too much to deal with. I backpedal as the groaning, rotting bodies of armored warriors begin to find their feet and make their way towards me, and I look down. For the first time I take a moment to acquaint myself with the changes I underwent during my "trip" here, and let me tell you they are way, way more extensive than I thought!

My gaze is first greeted by the sight of breasts, and not small ones either, though not, like, too big, ignoring the idea that any breasts on me should be too big because I'm... not a girl. My skin is smooth, almost as pale as it was but not quite as thin and sickly, more like a rich cream than a sheet of vellum. Strange markings crawl up the skin of my lean, muscled stomach, deep black in color and and sweeping up across my body, along the underside of one of my breasts (that feels so weird to say!) and going who knows how much farther. My legs are long, smooth and strong, bearing the same unusual tattoos, and if I didn't know any better I'd say I was taller than I was back in Detroit. What in the world is happening? What the heck were those pills? Is this all a dream? Am I tripping or whatever? Did mom give me LSD?

As usual so far, I don't have time to continue my line of thought or investigation any further, as the dead begin to grow closer and closer, some extending bony claws or others wielding the weapons they were buried with, swords and axes and knives. I back up a few more steps and glance behind me -- that wall of thorns and vines again, there's no way I'll be able to wiggle through it before they get to me. Eesh, I always thought if I ever had to fight zombies I'd have a shotgun or something, maybe a tough Scarlett Johansson helping me. I didn't think I'd be the Scarlett Johansson in this scenario.

Okay Allan, take a deep breath. This is what those two weeks of karate classes were training you for. You earned that yellow belt and now you've gotta use it. I barely manage to hold off a moment of panic as the lead zombie in the group lunges towards me, attacking with a balled, rotting fist. Twisting my weight to the side I move to block, throwing up my hand in a desperate move -- and blasting my forearm all the way through the thing's elbow, its skeletal arm falling away and collapsing to the ground. I... didn't think skeletons were that brittle. Are skeletons that brittle?

I let out a frantic yelp as another one comes for me, swinging a long-hafted axe downwards in my direction. I bat it out of the way with one open palm, sending the axe flying out of the zombie's grip and spiraling into -- or rather through -- the chest of a nearby risen soldier. It dawns on me all at once; this is a dream, it has to be, and the dream is becoming lucid. They aren't brittle, I'm strong! Hah! Time to smash some zombies!

It all feels so real, so visceral, as I stampede forward, now taking no prisoners, my heart that of a lion now that I know I'm so much faster and stronger than my imaginary undead assailants. I smash my tattooed fist through the skull of one zombie, splattering it, and move onto the next, a barrage of brutal punches sending them flying or splitting them in half, depending on the angle of the hit. I can see a mane of blood-red hair whip and move when I attack, my hair. New hair for my new body.

Moments pass, fast and wild, as I march across this dusty purple graveyard, launching out cannon-like kicks from my long, amazing legs that punch bowling-ball sized holes in these zombies, shearing through their rusted chainmail and breastplates like wet cardboard, bringing these risen enemy soldiers back to the rest they'd died to have. I look up, scowling and extending one finger at the armored figure, at Thodax. "You want some of this, big guy? Huh?!" I call out.

"What... are you?" the hulking man growls, that fearsome central eye narrowing to a slit. "Who are you to interrupt the arising of my new army?"

"I'm Alla--" I pause, gritting my teeth, stepping up onto the mountain of skeletal bodies before me, my fists at my sides, dripping with black blood and gore. I'm not Allan anymore, am I? I can do things he never could. I'm better. "I'm Allara."

"Allara," he spits the name in response, his massive figure taking a few steps backwards that shake the earth. My heart's racing in my chest, I have no clue whether or not I could beat him in a fight or not, but I have no choice but to pretend. Wait, who am I kidding? This is my dream. Of course I ca-- "I shall remember your name, Deadslayer. When the Tora'sai is once again in my possession, we will meet once again. And on that day I shall not suffer you to live a second longer." As the last word leaves his lips (helmet? not actually 100% sure this guy has lips) he begins to glow with an outline of golden light, that sickly yellow seeming to seep from the joints in his armor until it envelops him. Then the light fades... and him within it, gone.

So I stand victorious, in a strange world, standing triumphant atop a heap of the undead. Shouldn't I be waking up now? Wouldn't this be where the dream would usually end?

"Stranger! You've... have you banished him? Is Thodax gone?" Yikes! The box! I'd almost forgotten about it! A voice is coming from inside, a girl's voice. Maybe I have to free the damsel to complete the quest? Then I wake up?

I rush up over to the cage that Thodax left behind him, fiddling with the lock briefly before simply smashing one bare fist against it, causing the weak metal to shatter like a glass bottle against a concrete curb. Swinging the door open, I gasp, taking a little step back when I see what's inside... or, um, who's inside!

I'd thought it'd be a girl, from the voice, but I had no idea it'd be... she'd be... like this! As she pulls herself out of the cramped cage and climbs forward on all fours, I can't help but stare -- waves of beautiful blonde hair spill down her bare back, flaring out to the most amazing hips I've ever seen. She's naked, as naked as I am, which reminds me once again of exactly how naked I am. If only I could find some kind of torn cloth to at least cover up the important stuff!

"Warrior, you've saved me?" she whispers dreamily, looking up at me with huge green eyes and sitting up on her knees. Straightening her posture brings her amazing chest into view, her skin smooth and milky and her breasts around the size of my new ones, voluptuous and sporting just the right amount of natural hang. I blink, then blink again, strangled for words as I stare at her beauty, her smooth stomach and soft thighs beneath it.

"I... um... y-yeah! I mean, that guy just turned tail after I took care of his army!" I stammer. To be fair, twenty or so zombies doesn't count as an "army" but hey, his words, not mine. "A-a-are you okay? Ma'am? I mean miss?"

"Truly you are as courageous, then, as you are beautiful," she purrs. She doesn't quite have an accent that I can place -- just a way of saying things that feels strange, older, like she's from a faraway time or a faraway world, or both. From the state of things around here, both seems likely. Or just a really extreme case of one or the other. I stagger back one step as she leans in, wrapping her arms around my thighs and pulling close, a smile widening on her cherubic face as she looks up at me... then down between my legs. "Do I please you, warrior? You seem barely able to contain your desire."

My... my what...? I--

Ooooh. Oooohhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

When I woke up in this body I just kind of... y'know, assumed that everything was supposed to be where it went! But either a certain something came with me, or I'm a different kind of girl than the ones I'm used to. I hadn't even noticed the slow swelling and rising of it, but as I'd gawked at the caged girl it had been picking up steam all along -- a big, cream-pale ding-dong between these tattooed thighs I have now! Now that I have a second to notice it, it's definitely bigger than my old one, too, so maybe it didn't transfer from my old body after all. Just another thing this body gets right that my last one didn't.

"My... desire, um..." I inhale deeply through my nose, trying to slow the pounding of my heart. This is way scarier than the zombies were! The girl's face is only a few inches from it, kneeling in front of me, her soft hands sliding up the sensitive backs of my thighs. "I mean-- yes! The Deadslayer finds you most... appealing." I try to lower my voice a little, embracing the rippling, husky timbre of my new body.

"I could not be more pleased, warrior," the girl says, smiling up at me again. One hand drifts up from my thigh to gently wind her fingers around the base of my shaft, squeezing softly and bringing the tip to her lips, giving it a tender kiss that shoots a current of numbing ecstasy through my entire body. Before this I'd never even kissed a girl, but now... "Otherwise I may not be able to properly repay you for my rescue from that dreaded tyrant."