Where before, it had felt like a forest fire burning through my bones, sort of, this time it felt like Ice. Every breath was freezing agony that shattered my chest, every heartbeat a blast of pain ripping through my body like an erupting volcano. Every nerve screamed, beating me with hammers, and worst of all, it felt like someone was kicking me in the nuts, again and again, at a speed approaching that of cosmic radiation.

The worst part, though, was that it didn’t stop. It seemed to ease abruptly for a moment, and then started again, worse than before. It felt like it took about an eternity of being dipped in agony before, finally, it started to ease to the point where I could control and intellectualize it, and my first thought was that I had failed, I had overloaded my quintessence and it had torn me apart, and this was hell.

No devils or evil rock musicians, no weird torture or pineapples being stuffed into unpleasant places jagged-end first, just unending, unrelenting agony. No explanations, no excuses. I was simply drowning in pain, barely able to force myself to not die. I kept coming up for air for a few moments to a new round of unrelenting pain, both external and internal, and I was only barely able to force myself not to beg for the cool release of death.

After about a million years of unrelenting torture, my attempts to set aside the pain worked, and it became simple torture, one I could look at and feel without drowning in it. It took another eternity of waiting, and the sheer agony subsided into a dull ache. Every part of me hurt, from my brain to my feet, and I could tell that even my tail was aching like it had been slammed into a door about ten thousand times. Every sense was screaming at me, even my mouth tasted like pure horror and my nose was filled with a stench beyond my imagination, enough that I was expecting a fox terrier with an eyepatch to show up riding a saint bernard.

I felt something behind my head, making the pain intensify, but a moment later something was washing over my mouth, something that didn’t taste like I had drunk African lager and vomited out demon spawn. It tasted like water… I spat out some of the taste in my mouth, and then took an eager drink of the cool liquid.

Every part of me hurt, but the part that hurt the worst was in my torso, my stomach was crawling up my spine promising that, despite the sickening odors, if I didn’t pay attention it would beat my brain up with its bare fists. It was like blue balls meets diarrhea, mediated by starvation, and only the completely empty feelings in every part of me kept it from exploding.

I slowly cranked my eyelids open, to be met by painfully brilliant light before I felt the cool wash of Mnemosyne’s light filter crank it back to a manageable level. Above me, I saw Mae leaning over, and tried desperately to ignore the furry cleavage almost spilling from her top. She glanced down for a moment, and then realized what I was studiously trying to avoid looking at, and then I could feel my head lowered down onto a gooey mess. “He’ll live,” she stated quietly, “and from the smell of things, he gained at least one stage of maturity. Not quite a big boy yet, but he might be competition for you someday, Rik, at least among the sort that appreciates a set of scales.”

I couldn’t move yet, but the pain was slowly receding. “Food?” I asked, barely able to croak out the word before I had to close my eyes again.

I felt something cool, and wet, brushing my skin. Apparently, I wasn’t wearing my armor anymore, and I think it felt like some sort of fabric. Rik’s voice came, apparently grumbling a little, “Not if he’s going to do that again. This stuff stinks so bad, and it looks like it might have permanently stained my armor. What is this crap? It’s so disgusting.”

“He evolved. Almost instantly. What did you expect? A cocoon? I am just glad we were able to get him out of there. And all things considered, I think he might deserve a little gratitude after that mess with the Seeker. Shiana, is that rabbit ready yet?” Mae asked.

Cassie’s voice came, “I would have gotten him out, even if he got bigger. That’s three times he’s directly saved my life. I count the blackberries.”

Another voice started talking from directly over my head, and I felt a small piece of cooked meat enter my mouth. It wasn’t well-prepared, but it was fully cooked and oh so delicious. I carefully closed my mouth around the piece of meat and started chewing, and the taste of smokey rabbit with just a little salt filled both my mouth and nose. Bliss.

“We are a team, Cassie. He saves your life, you save his life, we save each other’s lives all the time. It’s not something you keep track of like favors, or I am going to have to owe all of you just for doing your jobs. I already owe you for hauling my body out and putting up with me while I was an idiot.” Holy shit, was that Shiana’s voice? I wasn’t sure, she wasn’t speaking her script, and wasn’t she supposed to be dead? I cranked my eyes open again slowly and there she was, alive as ever, although when she glanced down at me her eyes were crinkling… humor, I think? Rather than that blank expression I was more familiar with.

“Shiana?” I croaked, “Aren’t you...dead? And stupid?” I would apologize later.

She shook her head, and cut another small piece off a rabbit she had spitted on a wooden stick. “No. Killing that Boss cranked the whole team to level 6. I have been waiting in the Summerlands for a long time, and Aen was happy to let me be reborn like this. I don’t remember my history, no one who enters the Summerlands ever does, but I got to keep my knowledge and skills. I am not sure how it works, but I think she is happy to release souls to Librus for any immortal that gains enough power, and I volunteered rather than having to go through the whole baby and childhood thing.”

“The whole team got to level 6, and I was supposed to be released at level 5, so I think she let me keep a bit more than usual.” She shrugged a little, “I know I didn’t look exactly like this before, and I don’t think I was an elf, but it’s nice to be back in the real world. When I respawned.”

Respawned. Oh right, that’s why players from Earth were called ‘immortals’. Mae Bae Ling, the kitsune using illusion to pretend to be a fox changechild, whatever that was, had a different definition for immortal.

Before I crashed so hard, my sprite, Mnemosyne, the inhabitant of my soulspace, had managed to let me know that the bands which provided the ‘system’ that adventurers and players from Earth used were not actually created by Librus, the god of lost knowledge. It was created by someone or something else. Players from Earth were convinced that this world was a “Game”, but I knew that it was real. As real as me, Brantley Gallagher Winterborne, a human soul trapped inside the body of a kobold.

Yes, a kobold. Those things you used to slaughter in the tutorial with ease before you ever even got to level 1 in your favorite MMOs. Somehow, I got tossed through a portal from the ship where I was serving in the US Navy right around the time the world trade center was bombed, and my soul was deposited into newbie trash. Not only that but from what I was able to determine, over seventy years had passed while I traveled. According to Rik, the Earth that existed today was a not-nice place where the aged, infirm, handicapped, or some kind of criminals called ‘social terrorists’ were diced for their brains to help run this game and overall society.

It struck me that perhaps these bracers that all adventurers wore were… powered, or controlled, by those brains that were stripped of memories back on Earth? At any rate, it had given me several resolutions.

1. I wanted to become human again. I used to be a fairly decent-looking guy, and I liked girls, sex, and the idea of having a real human family again someday. Kobolds apparently had to go through quite a bit of extra evolution to reproduce, and the idea of a girl that looked like… me, without a real mind, and a nest of eggs in a cave someplace didn’t exactly scream happy family to my human sensibilities.

2. Despite my pathetic body, I’d much rather be human here than back in whatever crippled world Earth had become. Apparently, the United States was no more and at least Rik had come from some kind of California-run nation. I had no idea what had become of the rest, but if it had broken up, I was not sure that my duty to the constitution even existed anymore.

3. I had woken up in a pile of similar kobold bodies in a dumpsite under Sindaenaway. If someone in Sindaenaway, the Capital city of Rhydia, the country we were in was kidnapping humans from earth and sticking their souls into the bodies of kobolds, I needed to put a stop to it, somehow.

4. The bands were creepy. Again, I didn’t know if they were created on earth to send ‘immortals’ to this world for adventure, or if they were created here for some unknown, possibly unethical reasons.

Okay, enough about that. I started trying to wiggle to my feet, mostly to get off of the squelching, stinky nastiness I was lying on and realized that I was covered with filth. I wasn’t sure what it was, but it covered the blanket in gooey nastiness I had been laying on. I waved aside Shiana, I was hungry, but the two chunks she had already fed me had staved off my crawling stomach, and getting clean was more important.

“What the hell is this crap?” I asked, getting to my feet and suddenly realizing… I was almost as tall as Cassie! Holy crap, I had grown most of a foot, no wonder I hurt so much! I staggered a little as I tried to take a step, and my tail slapped the ground and blankets loudly, sending little goobers of the black foulness spattering a little.

“That,” Mae answered simply, “is taint. It’s what happens when your body sheds impurities after a full enhancement. This is the worst it will be, since you apparently decided to handle all of your enhancement at the SAME TIME, and somehow lived through it. In the future, you will just be increasing your level of enhancement, instead of each system, and it should be a lot less of a mess, especially once you start cycling your mana.”

“On the other hand, this is a lot less than what most people have to deal with when they finish enhancing. Your body is only a couple of years old, with little time to build up taint and impurities, and most people have a nice long time to build up tons more of this 'crap' in their bodies. Adult elves, for example, can lose half their body mass from taint when they start enhancing, even if they have lived lives of healthy austerity. Mostly they come out of the first foundation step looking like walking skeletons and have to be nursed back to health. You are just a little hungry, and because of your unique body type, you grew a step. That probably hurt like hell.”

I nodded to Mae, “Hurt like hell is an understatement, I am surprised I survived.”

Mae shot a glare at our dwarven paladin, Cassie. “It lasted longer than it had to because Our lovely Paladin decided to lay on hands with her new healing and restoring ability. It immediately fixed up all the changes you were halfway through, restoring them to exactly the place you started at and made the whole thing last over twice as long and probably hurt a LOT more.”

Cassie looked down, her cheeks ruddy as she twisted her hands together. “I’m sorry, I thought you were dying, and I was desperate.”

I pointed a finger at Cassie, “You are forgiven. If I evolve again, don’t do it again. You were trying to help.” I pointed it at Mae, “Thank you for helping. Cool off a little on tearing up Cassie.” I tucked my hands back down and looked around, trying to stretch and get a feel for my new size.

We were outside the cave where the dead goblins had been holed up, and I guess that Rik had lugged my gooey, stinky form from the dungeon deep inside the cliff. “Shiana, it’s wonderful to know you have a soul now, even if it creeps me out a little. And thank you for cooking, I know it was you because Cassie doesn’t cook, I have never seen Mae near a fire if she can help it, and Rik couldn’t boil water without burning it. And Rik, I apologize for the inconvenience of you having to carry me out of the cave. I only have three more things. Where are my clothes, how long was I out, and can someone walk me down to the stream so I can wash off? The stink is...painful.”

It did stand to reason. Shiana had some survival skills as a skirmisher, and campfire cooking was a survival skill. I was pretty certain that she was also the likeliest one to have found a rabbit in the middle of a recent goblin hunting ground.

Cassie said, “I will take you to the stream, the blanket is ruined, you were out for three days, and believe me, after what that stuff did to your armor, and the fact that there’s no way to make it fit anymore, you don’t want it back. We had to cut it off because it was too small and was killing you.”

“That was the first and only thing I had to wear. I don’t have any more leather and I don’t want to run around naked anymore. I spent most of a day putting it together, but I guess I shouldn’t get too attached, nothing you wear or carry into battle can be truly permanent.” I said as we took the short trek down to the river bank.

I slid into a very shallow spot, the exact same spot I had set my fish trap before the goblins discovered and wrecked it. Some time before the skeletons that the dungeon we had just vanquished sort of accidentally spawned when it was formed and took the goblins out.

The caked-on grime didn’t want to come off easily, and I examined myself as I washed the nasty stuff off. I was now a little over three feet tall, with a thick, balancing tail coming out of the back. My skin was still a brilliant blue, and although I didn’t have much in the way of scales except around my eyes and in a few other places. I had a thick white crest of feathers as well as feathered patches behind my elbows, at my knees, and on the backs of my digitigrade calves. My hands had three fingers and a thumb, and my feet had 3 thick, forward-facing toes with the fourth, almost birdlike, facing slightly backward. I was able to climb trees and rocks exceptionally well with the birdlike feet, and could probably make a fist with the toes or pick up something with my foot if I needed to.

My head was triangular, with two small horns at the top corners and almost invisible ears buried in my crest, and a little hint of a muzzle at the bottom corner. My head was large in comparison to the rest of my body, although it looked like my body had caught up a little, and my eyes, well, they were huge ovals on either side of my head, with an enormous amount of peripheral vision and slightly reduced binocular vision. My eyes were, apparently, my most attractive feature, taking up a good third of my head, and I would have to get a replacement helmet if I didn’t want them to be an obvious weak spot.

Cassie was watching, not-watching at the same time, with a weird kind of flush on her face. I had always had trouble reading normal human expressions and figured it was embarrassment on my behalf. I was much more muscular looking than I had been, with a clearly visible musculature under the blue skin with slight rainbow highlights from very subtle scales where most humans would have bodily hair, but both Rik and Cassie herself had musculature that made me look like little more than a child playing at flexing at daddy’s mirror.

I was being careful to NOT get kobold bloodline evolutions, which would make me look and act more monstrous at the cost of humanity, and thus was looking considerably more humanoid than like a giant wolf lizard. Not attractive in any traditional sense, but far more civilized. Cassie didn’t have to feel shame on my behalf, looking like this, I was far less likely to get stabbed out of hand, and kobold bodies had ways of keeping their more delicate bits protected.

As I finished rinsing off, I took a look at my new and updated, character sheet. It was suspended in my soul space, but I had spent a lot of energy to make sure that it, the 3 bottles measuring my health, mana, and fatigue, and any messages that Mnemosyne sent would appear in my mind’s eye.

Mnemosyne had made a few small changes, but I had said ‘yes’ when she asked if I would give her permission to upgrade if I was overloaded in quintessence, and I didn’t begrudge her the changes she made. I would have done the same thing. That made sense because, from what I understood, she was technically my familiar or guide or something like that, a gift from the goddess Flame when I had asked for help understanding the Draconic, or magical, language.

Bran’s Character Sheet

Brantley Gallagher Winterborne

Ice Kobold

Body size: Small

Evolution: 83%

Health: 100%

Body: Fair

Mana: 100%

Mind: Good

Fatigue: 100%

Reflexes: Extreme

Unenhanced Skill Groups

Logic: apprentice superb

Mathematics: apprentice good

Acrobatics: novice good

Physical Fitness: novice good

Spellcrafting: novice mediocre

Piloting: apprentice fair

Socializing: apprentice mediocre

Security: apprentice mediocre

Metalworking: novice good

Magical Lore: novice mediocre

Enhanced Skill Groups

Survival: expert fair

Martial arts: journeyman fair

Ranged combat: adept superb

Improvised Fabrication: journeyman poor

Essence Manipulation: journeyman good

Stealth: journeyman poor

Foundation: journeyman poor

Willpower: journeyman fair

Innate

Ice Kobold

Unique soul

Kobolds innately gain trapmaking and scrounging at apprentice level, minor natural weapons, can swim at a trotting speed, darkvision, and minor regeneration.

Ice Kobolds in particular gain 75% cold resistance and 150% cold affinity.

All Kobolds are considered tiny creatures, difficult to target for larger creatures, but are much weaker and less resistant to damage.

Your unusual origins give you a unique soul for your species.

You gain combat meditation which includes mental time dilation, fear resistance, pain resistance, and the ability to access your soul space for mana manipulation and improvised spell creation.

Unfortunately, your special soul also gives you a minor penalty to social skills.

Evolutions

Silver Cord

Sprite Information Link

Sprite Materialization

Gifts and Traits

Draconic Language

Rhydian Language

Enhanced Quintessence Body

Aura Domain

Beginning Foundation

Enhanced Verbs

[Observe] great

[Push] mediocre

[Alter] poor

Aspects

Quintessence

Temporal

Frost

Animation

Illusion

Sonic

Meridians and Systems

Skin poor

Heart poor

Vigor poor

Muscles poor

Head poor

Bone poor

Nerve poor

Tail (none)

Left Arm (none)

Right Arm (none)

Left Leg (none)

Right Leg (none)

Yup, buck naked. Fortunately, I looked down and noticed that whatever kept me from showing off was still working. I guess this body still wasn’t mature, but frankly, until I regained my human form and could wear clothes again regularly, it didn’t matter much. I went barefoot anyway and was extremely resistant to cold temperatures, so the most important reason for clothes became simple protection from damage and modesty, of which I needed very little. Well, that and not getting shot on sight by town guardsmen as a monster.

Apparently, most kobolds around here were green or brown-skinned, but the type that I was, an ice kobold from some mountains someplace, was rare. Between that, knowledge of the local language, and decent facility with making clothes, I figured I would be safe in most towns with a certain level of adventurer variety. Dwarves, also, sometimes traded or warred with kobolds, so it might be safe to make contact with them under a flag of peace. Simply knowing what a flag of peace was was enough for many dwarves to assume that you might not be a monster.

Yep, quite a few changes. The essence gift was changed to an enhanced quintessence body, and I guessed where she had put most of my evolution points. She knew full well that some of the kobold bloodline paths could harm me or my future, so had dumped everything into what I was already working on, namely building my essence body for my foundation.

Except for sprite materialization. That was new. I was planning on using some points to buy her a habitat, but quintessence costs always grew higher based on how powerful you were.

Other people could level using their bands, but I had to absorb quintessence from the atmosphere or my kills, although Mnemosyne had mentioned that eating the meat of high essence beasts could also boost it. Like people that used bands, it required more and more quintessence, the energy of life, according to Mnemosyne… or chi, for me to evolve and increase my power.

Unlike people that use bands, however, I didn’t gain levels. I didn’t get freebie skills or spells just from leveling up, or attributes. I could increase my body from exercise and my skills by using them and learning better ways, but it wasn’t the same thing. As people with bands leveled up, they could get truly superhuman levels of strength, speed, and special abilities. I could too, but I did it by investing essence of various ‘flavors’ into my body, or by using ‘verbs’ in draconic to create various effects with that chi.

Between Mnemosyne and the [observe] special ability, I could gain a rough idea of how powerful people were compared to me, but right now, pretty much everything, even level 1 players, could probably kick my ass in a straight-up fight.

I did have a few advantages, though. Certain skills, the ones that were in the ‘enhanced skill groups’ and were above journeyman level, could have Quintessence permanently invested in them. For instance, my enhanced survival skills could potentially allow me to mess around with traps that would normally require magic skills to handle, or cook a meal that gave magical bonuses, and my stealth skill allowed me to camouflage myself like a chameleon so my pure blue skin wouldn’t give me away, although I was still learning what magical bonuses could do for the rest of my skills.

That and I could go into 'the zone', an ability that I had even had on Earth, which allowed me to temporarily subjectively slow down my sense of time so I could react to things with forethought and planning. I could not effectively move while in my ‘zone’, not without hurting myself, but when you can see a punch coming in slow motion, it becomes vastly easier to dodge even if your real-life motions aren’t any faster. Here, the zone was far more effective than it had been on Earth, but it was something I could do all my life, and apparently it was not uncommon among people with my particular handicap.

And my real-life motions were very, very fast. Think house cat or squirrel getting chased that doesn’t want to get caught. Because of their size and the way their legs and nerves are wired, kobolds can really move when they want to.

“Rik looted some stuff from the Seeker that Shiana thought you could use. I know that it shattered from all those noises, but as a boss, I guess your survival bonuses played into his looting skill. We also got the stuff you were wearing, like your pouches and pack. And umm…. We met your friend, the fairy, although Mae called her a spirit guide.

“My friend?” I looked confused.

“Yes, the little fairy that called herself Mnemosyne? Rik was going to take the dungeon’s core, they are worth enormous amounts of gold if you can get one intact, but she showed up and begged him to leave it alone. Something about it being a beta test thing that the deaths wanted to experiment with? I didn’t really understand when they talk immortal-speak like that. She was cute but got mad when Rik tried to bond her as a pet and said that she would band him. Which is weird, he’s an adventurer and already banded, but he got all pale.”

Ugh. Sex-crazed, teenaged, ill-bred, narcissistic… Yeah, if Mnemosyne showed up, I could see him trying to bond with her since his class let him collect a monster girl harem. She should be protected because she already had a soul bond with me, but technically his class pet ability was what allowed me to work with the team even though I didn’t have a band. I was considered a sort of ‘monster pet’, like an animal, and animals didn’t need bands to join beastmasters and other pet classes, like Rik’s, called a ‘Warmaster’.

Mnemosyne was, to put it bluntly, perfect. At least perfect in my mind. Obviously, she was a spirit, I was a kobold, but when she soul bonded to me as a companion and guide, my human imagination had created her like something out of my most fevered teenaged dreams. Look but no touch, obviously, but to Rik, especially if she used her minor illusion ability to look like a fairy, it would be like leaving a raw steak on a table and expecting your ill-trained dog to ignore it.

The idea that she was threatening to ban Rik was, to be fair, kinda hilarious. Unlike most of this world's people, she was up close and personal with my mind, and well aware of what went on with the 'immortal players' that were here, virtually, from Earth. They were plugged in with some kind of VR gear called a 'coolset' and breathing almost pure oxygen, and Rik had implied that they could spend a lot of time here with 'compression' and very little time passed on earth.

I finally got out of the water. Fortunately, my skin seemed to shed most dirt, but I still preferred to bathe regularly when I can, and that ichor was… sticky. I stepped onto the shore and shook rapidly, the same way a dog would, drying almost instantly. Kobolds were very at home both underground and in the water, but due to their size, they were also prey to many waterborne beasts. I could swim far more quickly and hold my breath for a lot longer than I ever could as a human, but it was not enough to save me from the gators or other monsters that lurked in these waters.

“You said Rik looted some stuff, what do you mean?”

“He got a bunch of hides, and something called ‘seeker fronds’, and ‘seeker armored plates’ as well. He is keeping them in his inventory but thinks you might be able to make armor or something out of them. I could use the hides myself, but I am a metalworker, the chitin or bone or whatever the plates are made out of aren’t really in my wheelhouse, and my skills take a real anvil and forge, I cannot do it over a fire in the woods like you can. I also am not sure you’d want to run around in metal armor.” Cassie said, holding out a piece of burgundy fabric of some sort to me.

“What is this?” I asked her curiously, unfolding it. It looked like a shirt, but longer, with slightly baggy long sleeves. The stitches were almost totally torn out on one side, and it looked like it might have been made for a child that ruined it quickly, but the fabric itself was a good color and very solid, like heavy cotton.

“We found that in some of the goblin loot. Mae fished it out because it wasn’t wrecked like most of the goblin clothes, and thought it might fit me, but I am much… bigger than that, but I realized that you might be able to fix it and use it until you can get some armor.” She explained.

She was not kidding. I might be almost her height, but she was a dwarf. Dwarves were not fat, but they were very...wide, and female dwarves were very generously endowed. This shirt might be the right length but would fit like trying to stuff a sausage. On the other hand, I had plenty of experience with a needle and thread from my navy days and trying to deal with uniforms and coveralls on a ship far away from any port, and my sewing skill, like many other simple craft skills I had picked up as a kid spending his summers learning mountain man crafts from relatives in the Appalachians, was bound up into my enhanced survival skill.

“Thank you very much. I will be glad to have at least some clothing, and I can probably fix this right up.” I peered up at the sun which was slightly lower than before, “Are we planning on spending the night here and then heading back to the outpost in the morning?”

Cassie nodded, “Honestly no one wanted to move you. This is a decent camping spot, and we haven’t had much downtime yet, and Rik was tickled pink to make level six from the Seeker. He says that puts him ahead of the curve, so we have spent our time training up our skills to the max for our level. Shiana’s a decent enough cook, although she isn’t nearly as good as you are. I know Rik wants to get back to a merchant and sell some stuff he has collected and turn in a bunch of goblin ears for the bounty and reputation.”

We headed back to the nearby camp. Someone had set up my little canvas lean-to, and had already removed the foul blanket I had been laying on, spreading some fresh pine needles under the canvas. Cassie's tent and the magical pavilion Rik, Shiana, and Mae slept in together were set up, and the fire was burning merrily, with Shiana cooking what looked like some kind of a bird over it.