Zogrusz woke with his cheek pressed against something scratchy, drool dampening his chin. He blinked blearily, raising his head from what it rested upon and saw that it was a pile of rushes bound together by twine. He reached up, extricating his arm from under a blanket of soft wool, and brushed away the pieces of dried straw clinging to his soft fleshy face.

What was going on? Where was he?

Zogrusz sat up. He was in a wide bed, its frame intricately carved from dark wood, four posts wrapped by whittled vines supporting a canopy of gossamer cloth. Amber light was spilling from an open window, gilding the other furniture in the large room – chairs surrounding a low table, a closet, a chest. Tiny motes glittered like flurrying specks of golden snow, but not much dust had settled – this place looked well-lived in.

He drew back his blanket. Nut-brown legs greeted him, and in confused wonder he wiggled his toes. Why could he not remember taking a human form? And this body looked older than the one he usually assumed, which was odd. How had he gotten here, asleep in a strange house?

A wash of cold surprise sluiced through him. Wait. Something was very, very wrong.

Zogrusz turned within himself, reaching for the cold core of cosmic power at the center of his being.

It wasn’t there. In a panic, he tried to shrug out of his man-cloak.

Nothing happened.

“Am I dreaming?” he mumbled, pinching the skin of his forearm.

The pain was surprisingly sharp . . . and it did not wake him.

A numb sense of unreality was spreading through him, his breathing becoming shorter and faster. Was he panicking? Was this what humans felt when they were terrified and overwhelmed? The small part of him that was still detached to what was happening did find this sensation interesting . . . but the rest thought it was terrible. He ran his finger over his sweat-slicked skin, tracing raised bumps. Goosepimples. He had goosepimples.

Zogrusz slid from the bed, his feet settling on sun-warmed wood, and went over to the window. This room was on the ground floor of the house, and just outside was a copse of gnarled white-barked trees, their branches heavy with golden fruit. Birds flitted from perch to perch, calling to each other in trilling song. Through the gaps in the foliage, he could see a rolling meadow and in the very great distance a line of rugged mountains. His nose tingled, and he couldn’t hold back a sneeze.

The sound of a door opening made him turn. A plump, gray-haired woman stood framed in the entrance, staring at him with an open mouth and wide eyes.

“Oh, hello,” Zogrusz said, unsettled by his inability to see into her mind. He felt isolated, adrift, confined to this fragile shell.

He felt like a mortal.

“Master Ahuatz! You’re up and about this morning!”

Zogrusz swallowed, unsure how he should reply. “I suppose I am,” he finally said.

The woman entered the room, her hands fluttering like she didn’t know what to do with them. “You should be resting! Surely this is too much activity after so many days abed!”

He flinched back as she raised her arm at him, but it was only to gently place the back of her hand against his brow.

“Your fever has broken!” she exclaimed. “Still a bit of a chill, though. Back in bed with you, I must insist!”

Zogrusz slid away from her. “I’m quite well, I assure you. Never felt better.” He paused, clearing his throat. “Though there is one thing . . . it seems my memory is a bit hazy.”

The woman folded her arms under her ample bosom, studying him with pursed lips. “Doctor Tochtlea said you might be a bit confused when you woke up. The fire in your head would cook your thoughts like an egg in a pan.”

Zogrusz gestured at their surroundings. “How did I get here?”

Her face creased in confusion. “Here as in your room? We carried you in after the wainwright’s boys brought you home. They said you’d collapsed in the street – they first thought you must be drunk on pulque, but that would certainly be strange for the middle of the day, especially since everyone in town knows you never touch the stuff. They said you were mumbling all sorts of strange things and your skin was burning hot. You’ve been sleeping for three days.”

Zogrusz dredged up the last thing he remembered. He had been in his cavern, trying his best to resist the rising tide of exhaustion that was threatening to carry him off . . . his fear had been that Ycthitlig might arrive when he was asleep. He would not be there to oppose the Eldritch Horror, his allies forced to face it alone. Zogrusz raised his hand, examining the lines deeply scored into his palm. He used to be able to feel his blood flowing through his veins and make his heart stop beating with a flicker of will. Now . . . he felt as insubstantial as a spiderweb. This must be what it was like to be human.

Something occurred to him, and though he immediately tried to dismiss the thought it lodged in him like a thorn under the skin. What if . . . what if his existence as an Eldritch Horror had been nothing but a dream? Already the memories were fading, growing blurred around the edges. Was his new human brain incapable of comprehending his previous life . . . or had Zogrusz simply been a creation of his fevered imaginings? Surely that was impossible.

“I want some fresh air,” he said, and the old woman’s expression turned contemplative, as if she were weighing the benefits of him going outside against more rest in bed.

“I suppose that’s all right,” she said, then nodded briskly before turning on her heel. “I’ll go prepare some breakfast – Delia is still abed, and I’ve a mind to let her stay asleep a while yet. Poor thing has exhausted herself worrying about you.”

“Delia?” Zogrusz asked, but the woman had already vanished. He stayed staring where she had gone for a few long moments, then slapped at his arm where some biting thing had alighted. If this was indeed a dream, it was far more intricate than any he had experienced before.

Zogrusz shrugged on a shirt he found draped over the back of a chair and traded the light linen pants he’d awoken in for a sturdier pair he dug from a basket in the closet. After getting dressed, he glanced at the window, the soft morning light beckoning him outside. He remembered the feeling of the sun on his skin when he had worn his man-cloak . . . would it be the same in this new body? Or had that memory only been conjured by his recent sickness? Zogrusz shook his head in frustration, then sneezed again – he had to hold tight to who he knew he was, no matter what happened. He was a cosmic being, not a scrawny man in his middle years with allergies.

Zogrusz left the bedroom and entered a low-ceilinged corridor. Narrow tables lined its length, their surfaces covered with small statues of exquisite design. No two were alike, and Zogrusz only recognized some of the stone used – there was a stolid granite elephant, trunk waving; beside it ambled a white tiger carved of alabaster; and squatting next to that cat was a green soapstone frog. He hefted the tiger and turned it over in his hands, marveling at how well the sculptor had captured the flowing beauty of the beast. The sudden clatter of crockery made him look to his right, and at the end of the long corridor, he glimpsed the old woman bustling back and forth in a large kitchen as she worked to prepare something. He turned the other way and saw that the corridor emptied into an outdoor space in that direction, though he suspected it was some sort of enclosed area in the center of this complex.

Zogrusz left the sounds of cooking behind him and walked towards where the day was spilling into the house. He paused at the threshold, his hand on the door frame, and gazed out onto a scene of such tranquility he immediately felt the tumult in his mind subside. It was indeed a courtyard, bounded by walls and filled with an artfully arranged garden drenched by warm sunlight. A path of red bricks wended towards a few small, gnarled banyan trees surrounded by profusions of flowers. Crimson songbirds hopped between the branches as they called to each other, and from somewhere he heard the gentle trickle of running water.

Zogrusz followed the path, dazed by the strangeness of this place. It was too idyllic, too bright, as if someone had tried their best to fashion a place that was the absolute opposite of his mountain home. He passed between the banyans and saw was these trees had hidden in the center of the garden. A great block of white stone had been placed within this grove, and partly emerging from its depths was the statue of a nymph, one arm upraised like she was pulling aside a branch while she slipped through an imaginary forest. Tools and shards of rock were scattered about the clearing, as if the sculptor had stepped away only moments ago. Zogrusz craned his head to peer through the foliage, hoping to catch a glimpse of this master stone carver, but it seemed that the squirrels clinging to the trunks were his only companions in the garden.

His hands were aching. Zogrusz glanced down in surprise, flexing his fingers. It wasn’t a painful ache – no, his hands yearned to pick up the hammer lying in the grass by his feet. Swallowing back the dryness in his throat he did just that, his fingers closing around the handle . . . and finding familiar grooves in the well-worn wood.

He’d used this hammer before, he was sure of it.

Zogrusz stepped closer to the statue. A chisel had been set where the nymph’s torso vanished into still-uncarved stone and he took that up as well. Feeling like he was wading through a dream, Zogrusz set the point of the chisel where he thought the sculptor had left off in his labors and tapped the back of it lightly with the hammer.

A chip of stone sloughed away, revealing a little more of the nymph’s shapely hips.

Zogrusz’s heart was beating fast now. He could finish this statue, he was sure of it. All the years he had spent carving his mountain had well-prepared him for this moment. Taking a deep breath, he pressed the chisel once more to the stone and drew back the hammer.

“Papa!”

Startled, Zogrusz just managed to stop himself mid-swing – if he hadn’t, he certainly would have miss-struck the stone and perhaps ruined the statue.

He turned, tingling with relief that he had not committed such an atrocity, and then was nearly knocked over as a small girl crashed into him. Her arms wrapped around his waist, and he had to grab hold of the nymph’s raised elbow to keep them both from toppling over.

Dark eyes dancing with happiness stared up at him. The girl’s hair was a mess of black curls, her cinnamon skin glowing in the morning light. Zogrusz wasn’t all that familiar with human ages, but he didn’t think she could have seen more than five summers.

“Papa, you’re awake!”

Zogrusz stared down at her in astonishment. “I . . .” He began, but then was interrupted by an almost ludicrously fat little dog bounding into the grove.

"Look, Waddles!” the girl cried, her breathless attention also drawn to this new intruder. “Papa is back! And he’s sculpting again!”

She buried her head in his midsection, and, unsure what else to do, Zogrusz began patting her head while looking about in alarm. His gaze settled on the dog, which had plopped down on its pudgy haunches and was staring back at him with idiotic enthusiasm.

“It’s good to see you, too . . . Delia,” he ventured, finally pulling forth the name the old woman had said earlier.

The girl jerked her head back, her face collapsing into either annoyance or a very mild anger. “Papa,” she said sternly. “Are you really feeling better? You haven’t called me that in a long time. I’m your little duckling, remember?”

“Yes . . . yes, of course,” Zogrusz said, his thoughts whirling. What was going on?

“You know, Papa,” Delia said, pulling away from him. “I stayed by your bed while you were sick. You said the strangest things!” Her brow drew down, like she was concentrating hard to remember something. “You talked about a fish in the sky and a giant bird and something called a leaper.”

Zogrusz blinked. “Are you sure I didn’t say ‘reaper’?”

Delia hopped up and down in excitement. “You do remember! You do! Oh, I want to know everything you dreamed about, Papa! It sounded so interesting.” She rushed at him again, and this time he welcomed the embrace. He might be an imposter, but he had to admit it just felt good when she clutched at him like this.

What an absolutely perfect life this man had. A sculptor with rare skill, the master of this house with its beautiful garden, father to a little girl who clearly adored him . . . something twisted inside Zogrusz, and it took him a moment to realize what this was.

Jealousy.

But why should he feel jealous? Perhaps this truly was his life, and what had come before nothing but an intricate fever dream . . .

“Meow,” said the dog.

“Ori!” Delia snapped crossly, whirling to face the dog with her fists on her hips. “Dogs say ‘bark’!”

The dog tilted its head to one side, staring at her in confusion.

“You had one thing to remember!” the girl cried, stamping her feet.

The dog glanced down, inspecting its body like it was seeing itself for the first time. “Apologies, little princess,” the dog rumbled in a voice Zogrusz knew, its head hanging in shame.

“Origenius?” Zogrusz said in shock, squinting at the dog.

“Gah, and this took me so long to prepare!” the girl said, reaching up to wrap her tiny hand around Zogrusz’s finger. Still not understanding what was going on, he let himself be pulled stumbling over to where the dog was cowering. It raised its head, and he was struck by the contrition in its squashed little face. “Oh, don’t look at me like that,” the girl said crossly, then she placed her other hand on the nape of its neck, grabbing hold of its fur.

“What’s going on?” he asked as the girl and the dog both turned to look at him expectantly.

“It’s time to go back, Zog,” the girl informed him, and her words sent him tumbling into darkness.

***

Zogrusz came awake gasping.

He lay on stone and stared up at the mosaic arching across the ceiling, a storm raging inside his head. Pain pulsed in lightning-bright flashes, making him feel nauseous.

What a bizarre dream. Everything about it had been so real, the details etched as finely as a stone carved by a master craftsman . . .

“Wow.”

The voice was faint, barely more than a whisper.

Zogrusz sat up abruptly, glancing about in surprise. A small cloaked figure was slumped on the lowest tier of his ziggurat, scraggly strands of blonde hair escaping from within her cowl.

“Qala?” he slurred thickly.

The girl slowly pulled back her hood. Her complexion was even paler than usual, but still she managed a shaky grin. “That was exciting, wasn’t it?”

“What was?” Zogrusz asked, with some effort rising to his feet. The cavern briefly spun, then settled itself.

“Living another life!” she answered, sliding from the step. She also seemed unsteadied, but did manage to keep from toppling over until she found her balance.

Zogrusz dragged himself across the cavern and collapsed where she had been a moment ago, placing his pounding head between his scaled hands. “You . . . you were in my dream?”

“That wasn’t a dream, silly!” Qala cried. “I put our minds into other bodies and it worked!”

Zogrusz kneaded his scalp with his claws. “You mean that ‘great project’ you told me about? How . . . how did you do it?”

Qala pulled the chunk of black crystal she’d found in the city of the snake-men from within the folds of her robes and held it up triumphantly. “The Heart is the key!” she said gleefully. “I suspected it might be able to help, but it worked better than I even thought possible!”

The implications of what Qala was telling him slowly filtered through the haze in Zogrusz’s head. “That man . . . who was he?”

Qala ignored his question, still staring into the depths of the dark rock. “The problem was never the transfer . . . it was what happened to the mind that was being pushed out. I was always afraid to try this because I knew it would dissipate like smoke in the wind . . . Ixia certainly wouldn’t have cared, but I do! I don’t want to kill anyone! But the Heart is the answer.” Her fingers stroked the gleaming facets. “It’s capable of holding the memories of an entire race; there’s a lattice inside of incredible density, which is also what makes it so incredibly hard. What is one more mind? I put the consciousnesses of the sculptor and his daughter and their dog within while we were borrowing their bodies.”

“But . . . they’ll be all right?”

“Should be!” Qala said. “I suppose I’ll have to go check up on them to make sure. But I can sense their minds are gone from the Heart, at least, so I believe I was successful in putting them back.” She giggled. “Imagine their confusion when they returned to themselves in the garden standing around staring at the dog!”

The elephants stampeding through his skull had finally faded into the distance, and Zogrusz lifted his head from his hands. “You should be careful. Those were . . . good people.” He could still remember the feel of the girl clinging to his waist . . . the memory was in truth a little bittersweet.

“I know,” Qala agreed. “I spent a long time looking for someone whose life I thought you would appreciate. And I did a good job, didn’t I? If Ori hadn’t messed up, I think I might have been able to convince you that that was your real life!” She laughed, as if the very idea was ridiculous.

Zogrusz shook his head. “That man . . . his life seemed good.”

“Thought you’d appreciate it,” she said, sounding very satisfied with herself. “Rhas is always going on about how much you like the humans . . . now you know what it’s like to truly be one.”

The full understanding of what Qala had managed to do was slowly coming clear to him. Her powers were staggering, far beyond anything he had imagined . . . and perhaps, just perhaps, they might be their salvation.

“Qala, so you can alter minds . . . but can you protect a mind from being altered?”