The red and blue swirled around each other, making the odd room that Kain woke up in look like the center of a hurricane or a tornado. The two colors swirled and swirled until they reached an equilibrium. In the chaos, the derelict car and all of its contents were melted and were subsumed into either the blue or the red. In the end, the room color looked like tiger stripes made of blue and red where red was the primary color and blue was the accent color. After the stripes were solidified, the room became silent and still.

*=====*

Kain gazed upon the river that exuded the strange scent. It felt like he was being pulled in by some bewitching power that would not let him go. The animals all looked at his weird behavior and ignored him for now, as he was not dangerous to them. Kain inched closer and closer to the river and looked at his reflection in the water when he reached its bank. He saw his pale face with a small amount of barely noticeable fat. His face was becoming fuzzy as he had not shaved for a while, and his hair was a mess from his days of driving with few showers. His whole face was seen through the mirror-like water with a bluish tint to it. Now that he was closer, Kain felt his headache, which he had ignored for a while now, flare up again. It felt like he had been hit in the head with a rock because he could feel his mind pulse in pain. Despite that, he was still inching ever closer to the water until his face was almost touching it. He reached out his hand and dipped it into the water which, while it felt cool to the touch, felt electrifying as well. Reaching his hand into the water made him feel alive in a sense that Kain had never felt before. He withdrew his hand from the water and brought a handful of the bluish water to his mouth. He parted his lips and sipped the water in his hand.

Instantly, he felt pain ripple throughout his entire body. He fell backward and pushed himself away from the water as soon as he felt pain. The creatures that had been ignoring him immediately shot their gazes to his direction and ran in any direction away from him. The rabbit hid in its burrow, the turtle dived into the river, and the deer herd bolted. As Kain backed away from the river, the pain shot through him again, sending him tumbling to the ground. He tried to scream, to alleviate the pain in some way, but his vocal cords wouldn’t move. In fact, he couldn’t move anything now. His arms, his legs, his fingers, his toes, even his facial muscles or chest muscles wouldn’t move. The pain came again, but it felt different. It no longer felt like general pain, but it now felt like his muscles were torn and his bones were shattered. Despite his feeling this way, he saw no blood. In the next ripple of pain it felt like his shattered body reforged itself and in the one after it shattered itself anew. After a time of this process repeating itself again and again, a new pain came. It felt like his blood began to boil and his nerves began to burn. Kain began to only see in red, as blood flooded from his eyes. After enduring the pain for a while longer, he finally could not hold on anymore and passed out.

*=====*

Kain slowly opened his eyes after who knows how long. He tried to move his limbs but they felt stiff and sore, like he had been doing exercise that he had never done before to a degree that was unsuited to beginners. His eyes felt sore as well, but what was more important was that his eyes were covered in blood. Kain wiped away his eyes and tried to sit up, and found it to be an extremely challenging task. Failing at that, he decided to look around, an undertaking that took him minutes to complete. He was lying there in a puddle of blood, though calling it a puddle would be like calling a mansion a house: technically correct but fails to describe the size. The puddle of blood was many feet long and wide and extended in all directions, almost reaching the river despite Kain’s movement away from it.

Kain looked at his skin as he moved his head and saw that it had acquired a tint of blue. Though his skin was blue, it did not look like the skin of a dead man. Instead the blue made his skin seem to glow, which ended up making his skin look healthy by some metric Kain was not privy to. As well as that, his muscles were toned and strong, looking more sturdy than most trees he had seen. His clothes were also soaked in blood to the point that his jeans seemed to be able to stand on their own by virtue of the amount of dried blood on it and his originally grey t-shirt was red with blood as well.

He eventually managed to pick himself up off of the ground and limp his way to the river to see his reflection. He stumbled and fell to the ground on his way, but crawled his way to the river eventually. When he looked at his reflection in the water, he was bewildered. His face was no longer one of mediocre shape and slight fat. He now had a shaped face that, while not muscular, was almost exotic in shape. His eyes were no longer brown, like he expected, but were now red. His hair and beard were still as they were before his ordeal, but their color became a slight shade more red from its original brown as well. Overall, while his face did not become too much different, some underlying factor changed that made Kain look like a different person.

‘Red…? My skin is blue, so why are my eyes and hair red? Wait, that’s not the problem here! My skin is blue and my face has changed its shape! What the hell kind of water is this!?’

The initial shock of the changes to his body were delayed, but he was still surprised nonetheless. Kain, through his shock, noticed something else as well. The water that seemed enthralling earlier was now not as appealing. While it was not anything close to bad or disgusting, it was still not enthralling anymore. It was like comparing a siren’s song, which could attract sailors in droves to their deaths, to the singing of a man or woman of great singing talent; while they both were things that few would mind listening to, one would be incomparable to the other.

Kain gazed into his red eyes once more and calmed himself down. While changing his eyes and hair color were indeed strange, as well as the fact that some facial changes occurred, it was not like he was not human anymore, right? He could imagine weirder fates like becoming an insect or spider or even a goblin like all of those fantasy novels are doing these days. He took a deep breath and calmed himself down before taking stock of his surroundings. During his moments of panic, Kain realized that he was able to perform some basic movements like moving his arms and head while sitting straight up. He could not stand up for now though, but that could come later. He looked for his three weapons: Grand, Mouse, and Dea, as well as his helmet. By some twist of fate, Grand was somehow flung into a tree nearby and was hanging on one of its branches by its sling, Mouse was flung to the riverside somehow still in its holster, and Dea was still attached to his waist. His phone had also mysteriously disappeared with his helmet. Kain gawked at the end-points of the other two weapons for a while before trying to pick himself up to go get them.

He pushed himself up and immediately fell backwards onto the tree root he was using for support. He tried again, but failed again. He tried for a third time and failed for the third time as well. He sighed and decided to sit and wait it out. So he sat under the tree and waited to regain decent movement in his legs. While he was resting, his mind was going into overdrive. He had to sort out what had just happened.

‘So let’s see… I was driving along and found myself in a rainstorm, got struck by lightning, came to some crazy floating world next to a red pillar, stumbled to a stream, drank from it and immediately collapsed, only to wake up with blue skin, red eyes and hair, and a body that could go on the front cover of a fashion magazine. But ignoring everything else like where I am, how I got here, or why everything is blue, why is my hair and why are my eyes red? I had thought that there was a consistent color scheme here, but I guess it doesn't apply to humans? But I have blue skin now! So obviously the blue or whatever it is has affected me in some way, but it didn’t reach my eyes or hair? Well, either way, I won’t be in for work after my vacation ends, huh?’