Corbin woke up slowly, groggily. The ritual–basically all the shapeshifting–had taken it out of him. Last time, he’d been under attack from Stevie, wonder bard and member of The Five. This time he was safe.

The temple, now devoid of its holy energy and the flare of oily light from the rituals, now seemed oppressive, small, and dim.

A voice hissed out of that darkness. “Corbin.”

So he wasn’t safe after all.

He peered around for allies, but found a pile of bodies and loot everywhere: these army Rangers were all gone, except for a single golem guy and a tiny gnomish, and loot lay on their bodies. Prissy, Hale, Drell and Rinna were among those bodies as well.

“Hey!” he called, and winced at the sound his new body made.

Oh… wow. Okay. He was… a dog. His card sat in front of his face, now gleaming silvery in the non-light of this place. Oh, it wasn’t silvery light, he just couldn’t see colors. Great.

Disappointing, really. He’d gone through so much to get here, sacrificed his friendship with Prissy, sacrificed his friendship with Kyesiara, set some pretty nasty people free, and then helped them realize their insidious plan. This wasn’t hero shit he was involved in, and it made him feel even

“Corbin!”

“Findell.”

The magistrate stepped out of the gloom and laughed. His voice hadn’t changed, and was still the slightly deeper tone of a half-fae half-nellwynian. He didn’t appear too different; he wasn’t hovering, didn’t sport malevolent glowing eyes or anything. If anything, he smelled diminished, like he’d just popped a sickly fever sweat all over his body and could use a serious bath.

“Still can’t understand you, wouldn’t you know it?” he chuckled.

Corbin went to Inspect the former magistrate and failed. The game informed him that his form had been reset, and while he was still level 10, none of his Attribute points, Skill points or ability upgrades had been spent. On the other hand, he had twenty attribute points to use if he survived this fight.

However, he did have Worry, a bite-based attack that bound a limb or immobilized a leg, had a good chance of provoking panic in the target. That sounded pretty dope.

“Well I can bite you now.”

Findell was leaking smoke. Dark smoke was pouring off him as if he were made of cigarettes just smoldering away. That put a damper on Corbin just rushing and biting on one of his legs.

“Hey asshole!” the little gnomish shouted.

They both turned, and beheld the gnomish standing over Serrell’s body. Corbin could actually smell Serrell’s soul hanging around the place, watching what was about to happen like she was in an MMORPG. Dane stood over him, with a brass eagle perched on his shoulder, defiant, with a black silk drawstring bag held in one hand. It was the type of bag Corbin had once held dice in, once upon a time, but backpack sized.

“Why don’t you pick on someone bipedal?”

Findell, hunched and having that mostly-eyebrows villain look, shot a hand forwards at the little gnomish. Sure, it was difficult for him to pull off with his hair that color of pink, but the smoke drifting off his hair helped a bit. Dane, for his part, seemed to anticipate the attack and dive aside. The eagle flapped up and came towards Dane, only to be grabbed up in a mass of smoke.

The thing exploded, revealing Findell’s HP bar at last, and the blast must’ve been something, because it took his health down by half. The next second though a cold breath of smoke billowed out toward the stunned gnomish and killed him.

“You and your… what were you, a fellowship? Well you and your fellowship very nearly cocked everything up for us. You failed though. Serrell is respawning this very moment, and Grotok has already respawned. The assassin… honestly I don’t know. Grotok hired him, I’d never met him before. But you… oh you.”

He laughed.

“I thought you’d be just another addition to the Shardmage’s collection for this ritual. And later, I thought that ranger might actually be a threat. But whatever you two went through out in the swamps really broke that connection, didn’t it?”

Findell stepped toward him, and his card. Corbin snapped up the card in his jaws (he had jaws now, cool beans), and smelled the rancid smoke coming off the former magistrate.

“Now, before you die–”

He nearly finished, before the big golemite barrelled into him.

“Come on!” Findell shouted in his little voice. His HP bar had fallen just into the red, with about 10 or 15% left. “You think you can best an avatar of Vethros?”

A cocoon of smoke wrapped up around the golemite, lifted him high into the air, and dropped him. The entire temple shook, and great cracks radiated out from the impact zone, between Corbin’s feet, and back to where the temple walls stood. Those cracks raced up into the walls as well, while dust rained down from above.

The smoke slammed into the golemite again, and Corbin watched in horror as the big guy’s HP bar dropped from near a hundred percent down to a third.

“The avatar of Vethros remakes civilizations!” he shouted in his most intimidating shout. To be fair, the smoke gave the tinny little shout a lot of weight.

The smoke slammed into the golemite again, and his HP fell down to Findell’s level.

“The avatar of Vethros defines the epoch in which they came into being!”

This time the golemite flew high into the air, bashed into the temple’s ceiling something like fifty or sixty feet up, and when the dust cleared, Corbin could smell his soul departing.

“The avatar of Vethros has more pressing concerns than a single pathetic adventurer. It would take an army to stop the avatar of Vethros.”

Corbin almost wished this guy would kill him so he would stop repeating ‘the avatar of Vethros.’

“And now, Corbin, you will die. You enabled my ascension. You made Denspire a safe haven for my kind. You and your friend– hey, don’t run away!”

Corbin wasn’t listening to none of that bullshit. He’d already failed Grit check after Grit check and been forced to hear ‘the avatar of Vethros’ a good forty-six times, give or take. He hoofed it instead, enjoying the speed of four paws on the ground, but hating his inability to fly.

Smoke crept into his field of vision, on either side. Whatever Findell had, it was faster than whatever dog breed Corbin had been left as.

The smoke snatched him up, too, and turned him around to face the self-proclaimed and oft-repeated avatar of Vethros. Panic gripped him; he hadn’t yet died as a familiar and didn’t know what that meant exactly. Would we wake up at a spawn point like all the PCs around here, or would that be the end? He didn’t know and didn’t like it. After all, as far as he could recollect, he wasn’t yet forty, he didn’t have any kids, and he’d spent his entire time as a raven yearning after a girl whose freckles and hair he knew, but whose name he did not.

He didn’t want to die.

“Okay okay, let me start over.”

“Dude shut up,” Corbin growled around his card.

“Now, Corbin, you will die. That’s how it went, right? Now, this avatar of Vethros–”

“Just stop, please.”

“–will unmake the person responsible for making him. It is the destiny of–”

“The avatar of Vethros. Jeez, dude, we know!”

“Would you cease with that infernal barking and let me finish?”

“Let you finish the worst monologue ever? Absolutely not.”

“As I was saying, in unmaking you, I will begin my reign over this age as the new emperor of all that is. Everywhere I walk will fall under my sway. The mountains and the forests will bow before me–”

“I can do that in CivCity, asshole. Let me go.”

Findell ignored him. “All the peoples my shadow falls upon will bend the knee or fall on their backs, dead.”

“You’re the worst.”

“Dead, you hear me!” Findell shrieked.

“Dude you’re literally two inches from my face. I can hear literally nothing else.”

“This is the future,” Findell went on. “A future you will never see, for the avatar of V–”

And then his chest erupted with a bright silver fire. For a moment Corbin could see all the bones in his ribcage and spine, and the shape of an arrowhead thrust in there, before it all went very white. And before it did, the point of the arrow burst forth, dragging some of Findell’s awful, awful smoke along with it. That smoky shit came with the arrow that drove through Findell’s entire body, and then into Corbin.

As mentioned before, though, Corbin couldn’t see any of this, because all went very white. Then, immediately afterwards, all went very black.

***

Corbin opened his eyes to find the two people he most and least wanted to see having a fight.

“You wouldn’t know your ass from your elbow if you came over ta my neck a the woods. You high n mighty other worlders are always so sure a yerselves, aincha?”

“What are you even saying?”

“Piece a piss, innit? Jes get off yer high horse n you’ll get it right off.”

“I know what is needed, that is all.”

“Lil miss know-it-all, knows everythin’.”

“Nerf it. If I hadn’t shown up, Corbin would have died. You had your chance to make things right, you had your chance to save him, and you failed.”

He could just about hear Prissy roll her eyes. “Oh riiiiight, leave it to us ta do all the work, then you come in, shoot a single bleedin’ arrow, and call yerself a savior. Pfffft.”

Kyessy threw her arms in the air. “You’re as bad as he is. You know what? Have him. My end of the bargain was upheld. The fool failed to use the relk’s tails to poison his captors. He could have saved you half the work… and he didn’t. I don’t care what happens any longer. Denspire is dead to me, and I’ll never show my face in Densmeer either. And for what? To be cursed with the gods damned knowledge of He Who Slumbers. I’m done with it. Really done this time.” She turned to Corbin. “We’re even now, understand? I saved your life.”

He opened up his mouth and croaked, “You still didn’t uphold your end of the bargain.”

She’d been in the middle of going, and froze. He could almost feel Kyessy’s face twitching with rage.

“What?”

“Your vow was to help me get changed back into a human.”

She turned back. “And I’d say saving your life counts just as much.”

“I’m headed to the Parley then,” he said.

“You wouldn’t.”

“Not rightly sure what’s happenin’ right now, if I’m bein’ honest.”

Kyessy handed her the card. “He’s your problem now.”

“You could come with us. We could work against Veth–” Kyessy hissed. “–okay okay, He Who Slumbers. We could lay low the temples or whatever.”

Kyessy bared her teeth at him. “You don’t understand what you’re asking, canidian.”

“Dog is easier. Just call me a dog.”

“It’s an ugly word.”

“But a simple one. A simple word for a simple creature.”

She groaned.

“You said we could find someone to change me back at the Parley.”

She groaned even louder. Prissy, meanwhile, was snickering.

“What about you… Cilla? What brought you back?”

She shrugged, and began picking her claws with a dagger. “I know ya need me. Yer also the first one in this whole bloody business that din’t try ta cheat me or kill me. Ya done right by me and that’s not nothin’. I’m taggin’ along.”

“My my, Priscilla, was that… sincerity?”

“Bugger off!”

“I didn’t know you were capable.”

“See if I don’t sell off yer card ta pay me debts.”

He laughed, then jumped up when she wasn’t expecting it, and she went down on her butt, surprised and stunned. Before he knew what he was doing, he’d darted forward and licked her face. All three of them froze, and stared at one another: he stared into Prissy’s face, she stared back down at him, and Kyessy didn’t move a muscle.

“Ugh! Never again!” Prissy cried.

At the same time, Corbin spluttered, “Not my fault! These animal instincts are, they’re… sometimes I can’t help it… I don’t, that wasn’t a kiss or anything.”

Then suddenly the tiefling ranger was laughing, loud braying that sounded just the worst. She nearly fell forward, then crumpled to her knees, laughing until tears streamed down her cheeks.

“Made… for… each… other…” she managed at last.

As for Corbin, he just stared at the ranger.

End of Un-Familiar Book 1: Raven and Ranger