As he closed his eyes, Lev felt nothing—no pain, no fear, no anger, no happiness, and no grief. He felt neither his body nor his mind. He was fading, becoming one with the void. All his hardships were fading, but so were all his dreams. He was to forget his enemies, but was he… to forget his friends?

No! He would not allow it. He would not allow the apathetic emptiness to engulf his mind and steal everything he cared about, everything he had hoped to accomplish, everything he had wished to achieve. He would not let it devour his memories, he would not let it erase his friends and their smiles, and he would not let it destroy what made him Leonard Erand Vandersteen!

Lev fought and fought against the ageless, greedy despot who sought to strip him of everything. He fought for what felt like millennia, and finally, the overlord of nothingness conceded. As he felt it release its grip on his awareness, the void around him began to flow, and he lost his bearings.

What’s going on? Lev thought as he was swept away at an incredible speed with nothing in his sight but giant orbs of light.

Light? He could see again! But he was more shocked at the wondrous view before him. Orbs of light in myriad colours and patterns darted about. Some swirled to the left, some to the right, upwards, downwards, and some diagonally. There were even orbs dyed in multiple colours that moved in parallel. It was marvellous.

He abruptly felt the current sweep him downwards, and Lev found himself hurtling towards one of the orbs, a green one whose vortex pattern converged in the centre. Panicking, he closed his eyes before briefly losing consciousness.

Upon reawakening, Lev felt a sharp pain on his forehead. Head? He could feel his head! Suddenly the pain increased and a loud buzzing sound flooded his ears. He instinctively pressed his hands to his head, touching a soaked rag and detecting a wet sensation on his fingertips.

He opened his eyes to two filthy, grey, spindly arms with five clawed, blood-covered fingers on each hand.

Lev screamed as an onslaught of questions assaulted his already-heavy head. What’s happening? What’s going on here! These aren’t my hands!

He looked around and found himself sitting on a filthy hide, in a small filthy room caked in dried blood. A giant brown rag hung over what he assumed was the exit.

As he tried to make sense of his surroundings, a gnarled green hand with yellowish claws pushed the rag to the side, revealing a repulsive bald creature with long ears, a massive, pus-filled, crooked nose, and glowing yellow eyes.

“Maghag ma gherm!" croaked a guttural voice in a language alien to his ears. 

Lev’s headache intensified; it felt like a sledgehammer bludgeoning his brain.

He screamed again. He tried, hand pressed to his forehead, to put distance between himself and the bizarre creature, yet it advanced, screeching in its crude native tongue. When the creature was finally within arm’s reach, Lev lost consciousness a second time.

“Wa… Ghe…”

A voice?

“Wak… u… Gher…”

The feminine voice became clearer and clearer.

“Gherm! Wake up, Gherm.”

Lev jerked awake to another grey, inhuman figure clad in rags staring down at him. He unwillingly drew air into his chest and prepared to scream once more, only to have a grunt forced from him as he was kicked in the stomach.

“Scream again and I’ll kick you harder, got it?” said the squinty-eyed creature snarled. Lev nodded breathlessly.

“Good." She sat down on the cot next to him. “So how’s your head?”

Gherm? Breath quickening, Lev dropped his face into his hands as waves of new memories deluged his brain, crashing against his old ones. At last the memories settled, leaving Lev out of breath.

“Are you alright?!”

That’s right. She’s called Ghorza, and she’s Gherm’s older sister. But I’m not this creature called Gherm! What are these things even supposed to be, and where did these memories come from?! 

Lev looked at his hands. These aren’t my hands! 

He peeked at his reflection in a bowl of water. This isn’t my face! 

He gazed down at his torso. This isn’t my body!

“Gherm! Calm down! You’re freaking me out!” Ghorza quickly weighed her options. “Should I ask the overseers to get the healer?” she muttered to herself—or so she had hoped, but Lev, or Gherm, had managed to hear it.

Overseers? He winced at the thought of being “healed” by the mad witch doctors of the tribe.

The more time passed, the more he realized how bad his current situation was as his brain accessed more of his newly gained memories. For now, his brain had managed to assimilate about half of them.

From what he understood, these memories belonged to a male specimen of a race called “bogeys” named “Gherm.” Bogeys were a goblinoid race whose defining characteristics included physical weakness compared to other races, intelligence superior to that of goblins, natural lifespans averaging sixty years, and the production of fewer offspring than other goblinoids. 

Within the bogey race, Gherm and his sister Ghorza had been born into a grey-skinned tribal line known simply as greyborns. As greyborns possessed the greatest magical affinity amongst all bogeykind, they were once a privileged, honoured class. Alas, because of a failed coup by greyborn elitists centuries ago, the entire greyborn tribe had been forbidden from practicing the magical arts, and subsequently their techniques had been lost to time. With every bogey indoctrinated to hate the greyborns for “their” past mistakes, and no magical skills in which the tribe could collectively take pride, it was no wonder that “greyborn” was now synonymous with “worthless trash.”

To make matters worse, the bogeys of Lev’s tribe were casualties of a war between the Jiira and the Kur. The Jiira, a tribe of goblins, had conquered the greyborns to use their territory as a buffer zone against the Kur, a tribe of kobolds. Now the tribe, especially the greyborns, lived in squalor, mining for a pittance in one of the mysterious magical caverns known to house monsters, magical ores, and treasures created during the age of the gods.

This can’t be real… This has to be a nightmare, thought Lev. It shouldn’t be possible for this scenario to happen. It shouldn’t be possible for a world like this to exist! His breath quickened again.

“Gherm! Looks like I really need to ask the overseers.”

“No!” Lev blurted out, causing his so-called sister to flinch.

A moment passed in silence. He was thinking about what he should do to prevent this lucid dream from getting worse; she was worried about his repeated outbursts.

Lev took pains to steady his breathing long enough to speak. “I’m okay. It would be disrespectful of us to bother them with such a trivial matter." He feigned a smile.

“But—”

“Just trust me,” Lev said a little more forcefully than he had planned. “It’s all okay.”

“Okay… But please don’t scream like that ever again. You’ll give me a panic attack! Now get up.” Ghorza slung one of his arms over her shoulders. “You’ve been here long enough, and we’re painfully low on merits now.”

“Low?”

Slap!

“Ouch!” Lev winced at the stinging pain in his back. “Why’d you slap me now?”

“Because you’re an idiot!” she cried. “In case you haven’t guessed, you were as good as dead when that tunnel collapsed! Thank Vee we had enough merits to save you in the first place!”

Lev sighed. Merits were the closest thing to money that greyborns could readily obtain, and the merits-for-labour system had been spearheaded by the upper class and implemented by the ruling powers to restrict greyborns’ access to goods and equipment. With merits, greyborns could buy essentials such as food, water, and clothing, but only of the lowest quality: foodstuffs on the brink of spoilage, water with notes of soap, and tunics sewn out of whatever remnants could be scrounged. Even so, bankruptcy would certainly spell his demise.

That is, if any of this were real.

What a weird dream… I should wake up, or at least turn this one lucid. I’ll do a reality check—look at my palm, close my eyes, and then look again. My palm should be different. 

Lev closed his eyes. Now on 1… 2… 3. Lev reopened his eyes. His palm was the same.

“No… This can’t… be,” he mumbled to himself. “Wake up!” he hollered—nothing happened. Lev violently shook his head hoping to shake himself awake—nothing happened. He cracked his knuckles, an old habit, and even pinched himself—nothing happened.

Ghorza felt as if she were in the presence of a madman. “G-Gherm?”

“It’s real… This is all real.” Tears streamed down his cheeks.

Ghorza slowly approached and gently extended her arm to wrap around him. “Why are you crying? What’s wrong? Did something happen—”

“Don’t touch me!” Lev snapped, slapping Ghorza’s arm away. Lev saw the shock and sorrow in Ghorza’s eyes; her younger brother must never have treated her like this before. He suddenly felt his chest tighten, and for once it was not from panic. 

“I’m sorry,” he began, “I’m really tired right now, and my head is killing me.”

“It’s alright…”

As Lev stepped out of the room, he immediately found the yellowish-green face from before glaring at him. He scanned Gherm’s memories: it was old Rogg, an herbalist who, due to his meagre set of abilities and insolence towards the wrong people, had ended up working here, between the slaves and the poor.

“Have you finally calmed down, you grey wretch?” Rogg hissed. “You just had to keep screaming! Do you know hard it is to put a gravely injured hunter to sleep using dalk roots without killing him?”

Lev shuddered. The roots of the dalka, a common cave plant, contained a neurotoxin that could easily sedate a goblinoid, but carried a one-in-four chance of putting them to sleep forever. Only a master healer should ever have given Lev dalk roots, and by no measure was Rogg qualified.

Rogg read Lev’s face. “Oh, so now even a slave thinks he’s better than me. If I’d known you were such an ungrateful wretch, I wouldn’t have healed you!”

Please. It’s not like you did it for free, Lev seethed in his mind. We all know you checked with the local overseer to see if we had enough merits before Ghorza could get a word in! Still, as much as he disliked Rogg, Rogg was the only healer in the area who would treat greyborns. 

“My apologies, I had never meant to offend such an esteemed practitioner of the medical arts.” Lev inhaled deeply before delivering his lengthy next line. “Surely you can understand that a mere greyborn such as myself never intended to doubt the greatness of your skills, let alone insult a master healer, such as yourself, who would so much as deign to apply his years of scholarship to heal lowly slaves like us.”

From the wide grin on the old man’s face, Lev concluded that he had flattered the old coot a little too well. It had obviously been a long time since anyone had treated him with respect.

“‘Master healer’… Alright, You’re forgiven this time,” he boasted, “but if you look at me like that again, death will be the least of your problems!”

“Yes, of course. Thank you for your care, great healer.”

“As long as you have the merits, you can come anytime—otherwise, don’t waste my time! Now get out. I have other matters to attend to.”

Lev and Ghorza obliged with copious thank-yous without protest. Lev was careful not to drop his act until they closed the door behind them.

“What was that?” asked Ghorza.

“What was what?”

“That whole act of gratitude and… submissiveness. You were kissing his wrinkly old ass more than a priestess of Maga. What happened to you? You’ve always been a coward, but you’ve never lowered yourself like that.”

“Ouch. You don’t pull punches, do you?”

“Nope. Never. But you…” Ghorza hesitated. “You know that, right?” Something about her brother had changed after waking up, and she did not just mean his “episodes.” This Gherm now spoke differently, walked differently, and acted differently. This Gherm was assertive and cunning, completely unlike his old self. It was as if he were no longer her brother. 

Was he possessed, or had he lost his memories? Freak accidents like those were rare enough to be legendary, but had certainly happened before. Since Gherm’s behavior could also be attributed to aftereffects of the damage or side effects of Rogg’s treatment, though, Ghorza decided to give him some time before drawing any conclusions. 

They trudged back to their home in the slave quarters near the border of the cavern, far from any clean water source and with only a single-layer wall between them and the monsters of the cavern. Still, it was one of the better parts of the slave quarters.

They had returned home. Now it was time to rest.