I moaned and thought that I was rolling over. Perhaps even like I was going to get up. Yet, nothing happened other than a reminder of how sore I was.

I felt like I had been thrown into a clothes dryer and forgotten about. It was kind of the story of my life, or at least as far back as I could remember. I got picked up by a cop when I was about 10, and my parents never came for me. Then I got forgotten about again. I was in the station for a week before they sent me to a home. After that, I bounced around in and out of homes and trouble for my whole life. Finally, I got out of school with a GED and then went off to college. I made friends, but none of them stayed true when we graduated.

Yet, none of that was why I felt this way. I was working to get my brain to jump start; I hadn’t felt this bad in years. I wasn’t entirely sure where I was.

I tried to say, “I must have one hell of a weekend,” but my voice didn’t work.

No I remembered some of it; I somehow got snagged out of the stupid call center I was working in and dropped in the middle of a messed up magical world. I was given a heads-up display like a video game, yet I was also given a broken class. The jerk (Sam), who claimed to be a greeter and acted as if he knew me when I first met him, also claimed that he didn’t do this to me.

My brain still wasn’t fully up to why I was in the pain I was in. I remembered a bit about getting hit, cut and magical lightning. Something was going on. I kept trying to move but I was stuck between being awake and asleep. I needed to remember.

Whatever happened to me, I couldn’t level, so I was given a necklace that could make cores that I could put into items. The cores could get more powerful, but I had to use them and feed them. I also got to ask questions from Sam.

So to ask Sam a question, I had to use a spell that put me into mana depletion and dropped me face-first onto the ground. As I was falling, I would get to yell out my question. That night he would answer the question in the pettiest way that he could. Oh, and the whole time I was in his office, it was a nightmare. I wouldn’t be able to move or be hurt, but he could cause pain with where I would show up.

I ended up getting a pet (though calling her that might get me eaten alive) named Blink. Her species was Ropola which was some giant chameleon with a bad attitude. Now, I am from the south and call little anoles chameleons because they can change from brown to green.

I tried to move again. I wanted to laugh about Blink being like the little South Carilona Chameleons. I remembered her. She was a killer, sassy and fun like the best pets are.

Blink’s body shape was that of a real chameleon if you added long spikes that came out of her back. She tended to be black when I saw her, but if you thought an anole was a chameleon, then you would think a chameleon was the predator. This lizard would seriously vanish in front of me and get mad if I tripped on her.

My brain felt like it was getting a full reboot. Somewhere in there I was sure there was a screen that said starting windows 95. It was taking so long and I still couldn’t get my eyes to work.

At any rate, the reason that I felt so bad. I had been seeing gremlins and goblins for a while and ended up tracking them back to one of their camps. While I was there, I saw they had some prisoners. Since I knew they like to eat everything, I knew the prisoners were food. Dumb me. I rescued one and fled back to my camp next to a waterfall.

That led to some crazy things. I told the woman, Lannah Dreamweaver, I had rescued everything. Then we got into a siege situation with the goblins and thought that making more cores would fix the problem. So we entered into a Familial contract which lets me use her mana to refill mine. That caused some unforeseen, at least by me, moments. When I drew the mana from her, it caused her to get lightheaded and swoony if I pulled too fast. I might have skipped the whole contract and tried to figure out my way out of everything without it had I known.

So with that, I was able to make my weapon, but it wasn’t enough. So then, I came up with a crazy idea of climbing out from where we were and looping around to burn the monsters with a fire rain. However, before I could kick that off, we found out that repeatedly draining my mana gave me stacking debuffs. So I wasn’t going to be able to go as all out as I had hoped.

Then the orcs show up, and I kicked the whole thing off before we were truly ready because I felt forced. Well, everything went sideways. I could kill gremlins and goblins by myself and hope to live. Orcs were on a different level. I almost died with the first one. Lannah saved me.

My memories were coming back faster now and some of the feeling in my body was waking up. I felt like every limb had fallen asleep and I was trying to move them.

I remembered, that I tucked her away in a stone room and went to fight the other one. I was hoping that I could kite it and, with enough area effect spells take it out. Well, I almost died with the second one, but Blink saved me. Ate some of that guy too.

When we got close to home after the second orc, I kind of snapped. I had been dealing with how evil the goblins were and still trying to give mercy to them. Yet, when Blink and I started to fight our way across the riverbank towards my home, I gave in to something.

When I got up on my ledge, there was another shift, and my fighting was like nothing I had ever done before. I knew how to use a katana, not a short sword. Yet, I was fighting with a sword in one hand and my staff in the other. I was doing flips and using the staff to stand on like some sort of crazy monk.

We won that fight, and right when I thought it was over, and everything was good, the rest of the orcs showed up. There were ranks of them. It wasn’t some little gang; it was over 50, and they marched at my ledge.

My brain was now firing on all cylinders. Most of the pins and needles feeling had left and I was just left with a low ache.

What happened next was; I threw all my chips in, asked for new cards from the dealer, and dropped a bet on 00 spun the roulette wheel while I threw my dice down the craps table for boxcars. Well, I used all my rune stones and all my mana and every bit I could get right after I prayed to Chaos. I ended up with a royal flush, my spin landed, and somehow my bet road on boxcars.

The world turned crazy, and things that shouldn’t happen, like a tree throwing orcs and the river throwing boulders at orcs, all seemed to happen at once. While that was going on, my vision blanked out because of all the lightning, and my ears got messed up because of the thunder. Then the earthquake started up. It was all crazy.

I tossed out a prayer, still don’t know why to Order for safety, and boom, the crazy stopped at my camp. But, it kept going all around me, and I ended up passing out, I think. Blink pulled me someplace, but I wasn’t sure where. I just got a peaceful feeling across my bond with her.

Then the most unbelievable part started. Order and Chaos started talking to each other about me. They weren’t sure who I was or how I called on them. Something about not being here anymore. They wanted me to be theirs but said someone else already had a claim and so there were rules that had to be followed.

It was kind of on the scary creepy part. They said they would teach me, which I think is the genuinely unnerving part of the whole interaction. That, and they seemed so confused about me, which I thought wasn’t something gods would be. Or I guess goddess on their part judging by their voices.

That kind of summed up what got me to where I was now. I couldn’t feel anything. (well now I could) I had a line of debuff stacked two thick in my vision, and the hud was the only thing I was seeing. I only heard a hum from a speaker turned up too loud.

Time was mostly meaningless for me for a while. I would choke from time to time and swallow something. I didn’t have a clue what was going on or how long it was going on. Then, slowly ever so slowly, the debuffs came off. Finally, my senses returned to me to some extent. At least feeling did.

It wasn’t a surface feeling but the deep pressure feeling. I could feel that I would go from laying down to sitting up propped against the wall, I guessed. Then I would feel my jaw being worked openly and then closed. Then a hand would rub my throat, and I would swallow.

I felt like someone must have been feeding me something, but I had no idea what was truly happening. The only reason I thought that was because I remember watching a video about how to give a pet a pill, and that is what you would do. Force it in and then rub the neck until they swallowed.