I woke with a jolt, leg jerking forward. From the noise and the sharp pain in my toes, I hit something. I sat myself up and started massaging them as I gazed upon my victim. Now very much awake, I became aware of several distressing facts. First among them, I was outside, in a severe state of undress. A close second being that the piece of metal I struck belonged to a corpse. Far from the only one around.

The shock must have been playing tricks on me, because no matter how hard I tried, I could not recall how I came to be here. In fact, I also failed to remember what had happened and who these people were.

My eyes darted from one cadaver to the next, causing my heart to race and my breathing to become much more pronounced.

“What the fuck?” I asked aloud, voice trembling.

My distress made me repeated myself quite a few times in the following minutes, not always at the same volume, nor with the same words being stressed. I did not expect an answer, and received none. Once I stopped for long enough, I realized other, more discreet sounds abounded. These, at least, proved no source of concern. I listened to the birds singing for a few moments, waiting for my panic to pass.

After a while, only echoes of it remained. I experienced headaches, feeling like something applied a bit of pressure at every heartbeat.

My mind persisted in not focusing on the surrounding horror, choosing instead to point out my inability to recognize any of the avian calls. This struck me as wrong, even considering how unimportant such a detail may be to my current situation. Indeed, while I held no expectation of being able to identify which species of bird sang, a complete lack of familiarity with any of the melodies gave that fauna an eerie atmosphere.

“It doesn’t matter,” I said to myself, and forced my mind to acknowledge my immediate surroundings. The spectacle proved ghastly. Over thirty bodies lay in the dirt. It suggested the aftermath of a battle, though there did not appear to be any standard uniform on display. In fact, the only shared color came from a revolting amount of blood. I still judged some of them to be soldiers, however, as a handful wore unadorned breastplates. Yet, most had no metal to protect them at all. Not blind to the irony, it seemed to me like they were woefully under-equipped for people on a battlefield. The headache increased as I became frustrated with my inability to figure out anything else I should have expected them to be wearing.

I was just fixating on the armor so that I would not look at their faces. So far, I had managed to avoid seeing any gory part. The nauseous feeling I got from the few glimpses I already took proved enough to dissuade me.

Being defenseless in the midst of so many dead bodies filled me with dread, and I resolved to get myself a weapon, just in case. Not looking for them before, I had failed to notice their conspicuous absence. As I got up to search for one, I saw an unfortunate victim carrying a dagger sheathed on their belt. Crossing the distance by walking barefoot and feeling the wind reminded me of another pressing issue: clothes. And armor, too, if possible.

Now holding the dagger, I realized clothing would prove more of a challenge. Indeed, touching the corpses felt repulsing, and most of the attires themselves were soiled. Not always just by blood, either. My choices thus so severely limited, I resigned myself to dressing up with the cleanest pair of pants I could find. The leggings proved too short for me and still bore an uncomfortable amount of blood, though not enough to make me gag. Shoes turned out to be a much simpler affair, provided I accepted the need to forgo any socks. Despite spending far too long, I found nothing I could bear to wear on my chest. Giving up on my search, I counted on being a man to afford me some leeway in this matter, at least as long as the weather stayed this mild.

All hopes of recovering one of the armors died in their confrontation with my disgust at having to extensively manipulate dead bodies to undo the straps. An aborted attempt informed me that it could not have been too long since the battle took place, because blood had not been given sufficient time to dry.

Unable to bear the sight and smell of the bodies’ exposed gore any longer, I decided to head for the nearest town and seek help. I glanced up at the sky, but could not see either of the suns. I found no real hint of a direction in which they might be, only some uniform blue, with no clouds. To be fair, trees limited my view on all sides. I appeared to be in a broad, sinuous corridor cutting through a forest. It was maybe fifty meters (around 160 feet) wide, although I knew I was not good at estimating distances. Dirt formed a path trailing in the middle of it, but I saw no sign of where either end would lead.

Lacking anything to decide on which direction to follow, I just chose at random and started walking along the path. This proved a rather unpleasant experience as, while my shoes offered a notable improvement over going barefoot, they made it clear they would exact their price in blisters before long. It did not matter. I had plenty to distract my mind with. What had this battle been about? How did I end up there? Thinking about it, these were far from the only things I should know, yet did not.

My heartbeat surged again as I realized I could not summon any specific memory from before waking up. Anticipating the upcoming panic attack, I stop for a few minutes. Something was deeply wrong with me. This amnesia seemed much too precise to result from a physical injury. Besides, as far as I could tell, I was completely uninjured. I concluded it had to have been some kind of mind magic, then.

However, mind magic did not explain how I ended up naked. Well, not in this situation, anyway. And none of the other people I had seen were missing their garbs. How could my state result from a battle? I found two plausible reasons for the lack of both clothes and physical injuries. Both involved magical abilities: an invulnerability not extending to whatever I was wearing, or some kind of transformation power.

To my knowledge, I possessed no such magic. However, this would only be one more missing information on an already long list of them. It made sense, though. If they had failed managed to inflict any physical damage to me, going for a mental assault was the next logical step.

Another rush of dread, another pause in my walk. I just thought of myself as their enemy, did I not? That meant I somehow believed I murdered all these people. Why would I ever do this? I had no answer: the amnesia made it impossible for me to figure that out by myself.

My feet forged on, and so did my mind. If they had succeeded in using mental attacks to stop me, then how did I survive? Could they not have finished me off once my protection fell? Maybe I had not become vulnerable fast enough, and they had to flee. But then, why did they take the time to retrieve almost all of their weapons? Had I perhaps still been invincible, yet immobilized? That was a possibility. As far as I knew, which kept proving to be frustratingly little, there was no reason mind manipulation could not make it happen.

I walked for what felt like hours, though the landscape did not appear to change in any significant way. I still knew a considerable amount of time had passed, because one of the suns became visible through the trees.

In fact, I could now hear chaotic sounds filling the pauses in the wildlife’s songs. I was about to reach civilization, though I found myself unsure how to feel about it. When I left the bodies behind, my aim had been to find people that would help, but now that I had taken the time to think about my situation, I felt far from convinced help was what I would receive.

Indeed, if my assumption that I was the remnants of a rampaging monster proved correct, I might very well meet my end upon encountering whatever peace keeping force guarded these lands. On the other hand, if I was truly so dangerous, then maybe surrendering myself would be the better option. Of course, this would be an irrevocable decision, so I needed to make sure my actions had not been justified. The idea of murdering anyone filled me with disgust, but I presented obvious symptoms of having been subjected to some form of mind magic. As a result, whatever values I held now might not be the ones I had before. I shivered at the thought. Was whoever I used to be now gone, dead in all senses but the physical? Did I still bear the guilt of that person? It seemed my own phrasing told enough of my opinion on the matter: I was now someone else, someone new. Provided I could make sure I posed no danger anymore, there was no real reason for me to suffer from this body’s previous occupant.

I was, of course, not the most partial of judges.

Lost in my thoughts, I almost failed to notice the change of landscape. The forest ended abruptly, giving place to fields. Lacking trees to hide behind, both suns revealed themselves, crowning a vast city little more than an hour away. A few sporadic buildings stood in the way, but these would be of little interest. No doubt dwellings and storage for whoever worked the agriculture. There did not seem to be anyone out on the fields right now, though. No matter. I could see the far silhouettes of people moving about in the city, so I was not too worried.

I soon arrived at my destination. By that point, the city’s background noise, which I had heard all the way from the forest, grew too loud for comfort. Given time, I might get used to it, but this did not make for the best of first impressions. As expected of a city’s outskirts, the architecture here was rather sparse, but its density and height surged as I got deeper in. I noted that gray and brown stone bricks seemed to be the primary construction materials used around here, despite the forest's proximity.

Not even a minute after entering the town, I met my first living local: an old man sitting on a wooden chair, smoking from a pipe in front of what was likely to be his home. It would not surprise me to learn that this was how he spent most of his days. Indeed, he looked disheveled, wore patched clothes, and held a posture that spoke of back pains.

Perhaps whatever he was smoking had put him in a daze, for he did not seem to notice me approach at all, keeping his pensive as he stared at the pavement. Only when I reached the spot he was pondering on did he react. His eyes widened in surprise, and he jumped out of his seat, staring at me like I was some sort of ghost.

“W-What?!” he cried out, the fear in his voice obvious. “Stop! What the hell are you doing?!”

I flinched at the unexpected outburst. The man’s expression now displayed deep anger. Before I had time to speak, he let his pipe drop to the floor and reached for something at his belt.

A sword. Shit.

I ran.