ROBIN SINCLAIR FELL into a void and forgot his name. All around him was an endless expanse of roiling nothingness, so vast and empty as to be nigh unfathomable. Yet for all the emptiness, he was not alone. A featherlight touch brushed his mind, prodding the edges and feeling for cracks in the surface. Eventually it found one such opening, slipping inside with deceptive gentleness, and more slithered from the yawning chasm, oily fingers prodding for openings, peeling his mind apart like the skin of a fruit.

He tried to scream, but there was no sound in this void, and with no voice, he was powerless to stop the intrusion upon his very being. Deeper the tendrils reached, farther and farther into the depths of what made him himself, pushing out what was there and replacing it entirely with something new and frenetic and dark, until there was as much of it as he. Yet even as they twisted and sought for more purchase on his soul, a brilliant light shone through the void, cutting a swathe through the darkness. It began to pull him away, and though the void held fast, its tendrils couldn’t bear the weight. They snapped, and he was thrust from the void into the light.

For a brief moment, he glimpsed the world. It was much like the globe he’d grown up seeing, big and blue and glorious, but also different—scarred. Great swathes of the planet had been carved out or burnt away, while some had grown sick with rot, land so dead it was little more than a withered husk exposing the bones of the world beneath.

Harsh emotion swirled in his chest as he gazed down, cycling through pride and rage and love and despair, each bringing with it a feeling of satisfaction he’d never known. This was what it meant to be human—to be alive.

How had he forgotten?

And then it was dark again, only different this time—there was more than the infinite nothingness to which he’d grown accustomed. A gentle pressure exerted itself on his body—his body!—pulling him ever downward and pinning him in place. More sensations began to make themselves known; the feeling of something soft and hard pressed to his back and beneath his fingers, the smell of dirt and leaves and nature.

The muscles in his face moved automatically, curving his lips into a smile. He opened his eyes to a twilit sky, dark but not truly dark—the difference was so obvious now—with more than enough light to see the canopy above wrought in so many shades of green. The leaves and branches swayed in a gentle breeze verging on chilly—enough to make his flesh stand on end.

He climbed to his feet, utilizing muscles in his body for the first and millionth time. His thoughts were alien even to him, formed of half truths and revelations that made little to no sense. Having a body was not something to be excited about, nor was waking up in the middle of a forest he didn’t recognize, and yet he couldn’t deny it—he was excited.

Why?

There’d be time to consider it later, perhaps. There were more pressing matters to attend to.

A quick glance down showed that wherever he’d ended up, it was without a single possession. He was naked from tip to toe, dirty blonde hair falling down around his face, brushing against pale shoulders. It was a familiar style; it’d always been long, hadn’t it? He sifted through memories of a younger self, intact but distant somehow, searching for one in particular.

There was a playground with several children standing around him, pointing and laughing for reasons he didn’t understand.

“Robin is a girl’s name, stupid,” one boy said, causing the others to laugh harder. “I guess that’s why your hair is so long—you want to be a girl. Well you can be one from now on. Robin the girl!”

The words weren’t true—just the misguided ramblings of a child. He knew that.

But a familiar ember of rage burned hot in his chest anyway.

He grit his teeth and clenched his fists, knuckles going white even as he saw red. Moments later the boy who’d jeered at him lay on the ground, rubbing the spot on his jaw where Robin’s small fist had struck.

The boy began to cry, and soon after the adults came rushing to fret over him as they were wont to do, demanding to know what’d happened. Meanwhile, the boy refused to meet Robin’s eyes, his fear evident in his own.

The rest was a blur, long forgotten to the passage of time—he couldn’t even remember the boy’s name. But Robin would never forget the moment he stood above his enemy, victorious. The moment he’d finally had enough. The moment he’d won.

That moment had changed his life. There’d been others, of course—the boy with the delicate features and feminine name was too tempting a target for many—but his answer was always the same. Violence became his tool, his first and last resort, while his feminine features became a point of pride; a challenge issued to those who believed themselves superior.

He ran a hand through his hair, feeling the silky locks lacing through calloused fingers as if for the first time. They were his hair and his hands, he knew. The memories to prove it were fresh in his mind, so close he could smell the blacktop at his old elementary school baking in the afternoon sun.

And yet… there was something different. Some part of himself he hadn’t known existed was missing, only discernible in its absence. The truly strange thing was the space it’d occupied wasn’t as empty as it perhaps should’ve been. Had the rest of him stretched to fill the gap…? That didn’t feel quite right, but if not… what had filled it? What was it that’d needed filling in the first place? The feelings were too abstract to grasp, but he was nonetheless certain they were correct. Something was missing… and something had taken its place.

Robin shivered, as much from the chill wind as the apparent changes in his body. It would be dark soon, and he was naked and alone. There would be time to worry about these things later—for now, he needed to focus on survival.

The trees around rose menacingly toward the heavens, eerily silent in their observation of the intruder in their midst. He imagined them with eyes that roved his skin, penetrating flesh with the intensity of their gaze.

“What, never seen a naked guy before?” Robin quipped, finding some of the humor he’d almost forgotten was his own.

Of course, the trees didn’t respond. They were trees.

He put his head down and began walking, carefully navigating the natural debris littering the forest floor. It was impossible to avoid outright. Each movement brought varying levels of pain as he carefully stepped between hazards only to hear the crack of a branch hidden underneath the fallen leaves, or worse, feel the sting of a sharp rock as it jabbed his sole.

Though he moved with purpose, Robin had no destination in mind other than out. The canopy above was too thick to navigate using the stars, so he was stuck walking in a random direction, hoping it wouldn’t lead even deeper into the forest.

It wasn’t long before he emerged into a clearing, forming what seemed to be a perfect circle around a large stone altar at the center. Robin froze, his lungs paralyzed to match the stillness in the air. A girl laid on the altar, pale and unmoving. Her hands rested on her sternum atop silken robes of a deep violet matching the hair splayed out beneath her. It was hard to tell at a distance, but she didn’t appear to be breathing. The entire scene may well have been a singular moment plucked from the passage of time.

Robin moved to the altar, possessed by a fierce curiosity, staring down at the girl’s face. Her features were delicate, almost elven—though she lacked the pointed ears of an elf (and also existed)—and while her skin was perhaps too milky white, her lips were rosy and full, not at all what one would expect of a corpse.

“Hello?” Robin’s voice was a clap of thunder, shattering the silence in the clearing, and yet the girl didn’t stir. “You, uh… alright there?”

She made no indication she could hear his words, so he reached out, intending to give her a gentle shake. The moment his hand touched her shoulder, something snapped. It was intangible, little more than a gut feeling… but he felt the moment it broke as clearly as the silken cloth beneath his fingers, like a bungee cord snapping at the apex of its descent.

The girl’s eyes flung open. She gasped for breath with lungs that seemed to have forgotten how, her eyes darting frantically around, not truly seeing in her panic. It gave Robin time to notice the strange, pink symbols visible beneath her irises.

They look like… runes? Glyphs…? Magical Sanskrit…? Hell if I know. Weird, though.

Those strange eyes locked onto his a moment later, growing wider by the second. The girl opened her mouth, but no sound emerged, leaving her gaping like a fish.

And then a deafening roar thundered through the forest, vibrating his bones and the earth beneath his feet, threatening to shatter not only his eardrums but the land itself.

Robin winced as his hands flew up to cover his ears, though it did little to stop the sonorous onslaught. The girl huddled in on herself, shrinking down as much as possible. A sudden, powerful gust blew through the trees, knocking Robin into the stone altar. He placed his hands to either side of the girl to prevent colliding with her, all the while a hurricane wind raged around them. She peaked out through the space between her arms to meet his eyes, and the terror he saw there sent a shiver down his spine.

Something caught his eye, movement above the canopy—though his brain was having trouble registering what it was seeing. It took him some time to realize why—it wasn’t possible. What little he could see of the thing moving through the air spoke of its absolutely gargantuan mass; he could only barely discern what appeared to be scales along a serpentine body, each the size of a small house.

Robin wasn’t the smartest guy, but even he learned enough in school to know there was a limit to just how damned big something could grow. This was just absurd. Nothing so large could exist in nature, let alone fly—it would be crushed under its own weight. Not to mention the amount of energy it would need to move, or the fact that no heart made of flesh and muscle could pump enough blood to sustain it.

It passed overhead for what seemed like hours, thankfully far enough above them it didn’t uproot the entire forest. When it was over, Robin looked to the girl. Her shoulders quivered as she buried her face into her knees.

“Hey… you alright?” He tentatively reached out for her shoulder again, but thought better of it this time.

The girl raised her head, giving it a tentative shake. “I’ve failed... He is free. I’ve failed...”