The "Best" RPG Ever-31

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---

Ian Kellen found himself...as himself, once again. It felt almost alien for a second, and his surroundings were blurry, indistinct somehow...but things slowly came into focus. He was...sitting down in...his office. His office back on Earth. Was what had transpired before some kind of dream? He wasn't exactly the kind of person who would sleep on the job.
"Yeah, you're not..." The doctor was startled by a woman's voice, which felt deeply familiar but difficult to place somehow. As soon as it had spoken, its owner appeared sitting in the chair on the other end of his desk: A woman with long dark hair, bright red eyes, and big pearly white wings from her back, but other than this difference in coloration, nearly identical to what he'd seen in a mirror the previous day. Of course...the voice was the one he'd spent all day getting used to having.

This didn't really fit the description of an ordinary dream. He asked the first question that came to mind. "..Who are you?"

"Er..." she scratched the side of her head briefly, uncertain how to proceed. "Well, my name is Clera. We've...sort of...met before? Well, more than that. You saw me in the uh..white place."

"You were the apparition I encountered there, before being transformed," he concluded.

"Right," she nodded. "I was called to an Empath ritual to be a Soul of Empathy, and you were the one who called me there. Ex...cept that it wasn't a normal ritual at all."

"I would be hard pressed to describe anything that's happened today as 'normal'," said Ian, leaning forward onto his elbows on the desk. "What happened?"

"Well, I did what a Soul of Empathy normally does. I sort of...looked into your soul to see if you were worthy of being an Empath, and then when I had decided you were, I joined with you. It had...a different effect from usual, though. But because that happened, when you're awake we're both the same person. I thought it would be...a good idea to try and sort out what happened here."

"Hm." He decided to take this at face value for now. "Did the look at my soul tell you anything about how I got there?"

"Yes. I didn't get a very good look because it wasn't directly relevant to what I was supposed to be checking for, but it looked like you were in the middle of a very complicated, powerful summoning spell. I would guess that's how you got to our world from..." She hesitated, for the first time looking around the office instead of directly at him. "...here."

"So, how does one become a 'Soul of Empathy'?"

"Well, I—"

"Wait." Dr. Kellen remembered some unusual behavior on his part throughout the preceding day. "How much influence do you have over my mind?"

"Er, not really much. The only thing I can do is give you ideas. Or at least, that's how it's supposed to work...you're right though, there were some times we did things you wouldn't have...Um, to answer your first question, a Soul of Empathy is supposed to be someone who died heroically. You know, a sacrifice that saves lives, that kind of thing..."

"Why can you read my mind and I can't read yours?" he asked next.

"I'm not really reading your mind," she said, tilting her head slightly. "You're directing thoughts at me. I can do the same thing, and...I probably should, I guess, for your obvious next question."

Clera was born with an unusual talent for fire magic, a talent which seemed more like a curse than a blessing. Even after years of study as a mage, she had never been fully in control of her power. After a while she gave up being a mage at all and took up a job as a shopkeep in a certain town, keeping her powers a secret. One day a near army of bandits had descended on the town. She evacuated or hid as many people as she could, and then carefully lead the majority of the raiders into a trap. A large storehouse for grain which she claimed was full of treasure. It was winter, so there was no grain, but the place was made of wood. Not using her magic in so long had caused it to build up rather than die down, and since she was surrounded anyway she had just decided let all of it loose. Something after she had died had informed her that her actions saved the lives of everyone in the town, but in the moment there had only been a great deal of heat and pain.

All of that was communicated in an instant, and Dr. Kellen felt as if he remembered the series of events himself, rather than someone else's having related them to him. He jolted back slightly in surprise at the sudden appearance of the information in his mind, and then straightened in his chair, composing himself again. "...I see," he said.

"...What kind of person would be capable of the spell you saw?"

"Someone really powerful with a lot of time on their hands," she said. "I don't even know how they targeted your world for it, since it seems like it operates on completely different laws."
"There isn't magic here," he said, nodding in agreement.

"But uh, back to...I'll try not to take over anymore. It's...got to be uncomfortable."

"Don't promise what you can't keep," said Dr. Kellen. When she gave a confused look he said, "You said we were one person while awake, correct?"

"Uh-huh.."

"Then that person can't tell the difference between your desires and mine. Whatever one of us wants to do, the body will carry out, unless the other one stridently doesn't want it."

"Oh. I guess you're right. But.."

"We are in this situation whether we like it or not," he said. "We may as well attempt to cooperate." He leaned over the desk and offered her a hand.

"Yeah..." She took the hand and shook. "It's nice to meet you, such as it is, anyway..."

---

Aria sat down, perfectly still. As before, the sound of blood pumped through her ears, and even with the benefit of Tsaron's lesson it was very difficult to remain calm and avoid being distracted. Before the attempt at meditation had lasted long enough to yield results, it was interrupted by a feeling like something poking her.

She opened her eyes and looked around, eventually locating a black cat floating in midair a couple of feet off. "Oh, hi...Katherine?"
"Yeah. I can't really—"

"You're adorable like that!" The shifter hopped up onto her feet and moved closer. "Can I squeeze you? Just a little bit?"
"Um, yeah, no.." The cat floated backwards and up a bit, trying to get out of reach. "It's weird enough being this tiny without everyone trying to grab you, sheesh."
"I bet you'd enjoy it, though. A little scratching of the ears, maybe?" Aria had always been quite a cat person, and having one that could actually talk in front of her made it hard to focus on other priorities. She reached up one hand toward Katherine, who sighed and floated down a bit to allow it.

"Anyway, uh, so this is what your dream space looks like..?" she said, turning her head left and right to see the wall of static and giant pit with a demon behind it.

"Yeah, it's not much and I don't like it. You see anything with psycho-vision or whatever?" She ran a hand down the cat's back while she talked.

"Well, uh..the pit over there has some kind of...fear attached to it. I don't know exactly how to describe it, but it's like more of a mental wall than something physically dangerous. The other way...it looks, I dunno, damaged? Kinda like it's trying to repair itself somehow."

"So you're saying it won't do anything bad if I just jump into the pit?"

"No..I mean, since when can dreams hurt you anyway? Especially since this is your dream. Anyway, can't you just grow wings and fly?"

Aria finally withdrew her hand to cross her arms for a second. "I can grow wings, I think, but I'm too heavy to actually...oh wait. That's physics. Dreams don't care about physics, right?"

"I don't think I need to tell you that."

"Well, let's try it then!" Aria willed it, and grew a pair of massive wings from her back, spreading them out experimentally for a second or two while the cat quickly floated out of the way. She looked to the pit again, and felt the same kind of fear from it as before. But she took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and remembered who she was—who she had always been. That person had set countless new score and time records on game after game, found all sorts of new bugs and shortcuts with ease, took all the riskiest strats to show off and to get ahead. If it was in a game, nothing was truly impossible...and this was some kind of game after all, right?

Keeping her eyes closed, the shifter ran at the pit, felt its end, and leapt forward and up, spreading her wings out. She flew a short distance before opening them and seeing clearly that the flight was going just fine. After a few experimental flips and turns, she went into a full-on dive toward the abyss below, and went as far down as she dared before turning around and flapping her way back up toward the cliffside. The sense of fear from this place had vanished, replaced by a heart-pounding exhilaration, a knowledge of freedom. This was just her mind, and she was the one in control here after all.

Katherine watched her land and fold the wings back out of existence. "Well, that was easy," she said. "Something's occurred to me, though."
"Yeah?"
"Well," Aria summoned a dream-likeness of her sword into her hand, looking at it, "since this sword is bound to me, or me to it..it's a part of me. We're the same being, more or less. And I—" she paused, and the sword appeared to melt into a kind of liquid metal, followed by reforming into a pair of smaller blades joined by a chain, "—am a shapeshifter." It changed again, into the shape of a massive warhammer, and then a scythe, before going back to its original appearance. "There's no reason this thing has to be stuck as just one big sword if it's as powerful as it's supposed to be, right? And sometimes it's better if I can use it as some other kind of weapon, so it should just be whatever I need it to be."

"So, that means you've figured out how to make it do that in the real world?" said the cat curiously.
"Pretty sure I did, yeah," she grinned. "Um..thank you. Even though I really should've figured it out on my own, having someone tell me that pit isn't really dangerous sort of made some things click in my head."

"Yeah, no problem," said Katherine, nodding. She looked around again. "So...your dreams just last as long as the entire night?"
"I think so. The last one did." Aria looked at the indistinct, staticy area opposite the pit, and briefly considered asking whether Katherine could get cable before remembering what world they were supposed to be from, and making an effort to re-word the request. "Do you know of any way to make that...like, not fixed but less boring?"

"Actually, there's something I've been meaning to try. This dream-walking thing is really just my power to connect my mind to those of others...but I can also bridge people's minds so they can think-talk to each other, so...maybe I can bridge dreams, too?"

"Well, go for it."

"Hmnn..." The cat closed her eyes, concentrating, and gained a slight purplish glow to her outline for a few seconds. The static before them flickered a few times in a way that did indeed remind Aria of a TV changing channels before settling itself to the scene of a dense forest at night, and in front of the two of them in particular was a small girl in very 'witch'-looking clothes, looking up at a boy who had been pinned to a tree trunk well above her reach by about ten knives stuck through his clothes and buried into the trunk.

After a couple of seconds the girl, who Aria now realized looked like a younger version of the 'witch' she'd seen speaking with Rose before, turned to see them, and yelled in surprise. "Aah! Uhmm, this isn't what it looks like," she said.

---

Zack was dreaming again, and back to the same physically-male but still wolf-person form he'd encountered before. This felt a little more...vivid somehow, more real. He was fighting alongside a group of other knights...their faces were indistinct, and the group's opponent even more so. He only knew that their enemy was a woman, and a group of demons she had summoned. They were at the top of some kind of tower...but it was hard to remember exactly how coming up here had gone.

The fight seemed to last an eternity, small blades flying from their opponent as the demons and his allies fell one by one. Eventually there were only two left standing: Zack, and the woman...their target. Having just finished taking out the last of the demons under her command, he raised his sword and said something. It must have been some kind of challenge or declaration of intent to bring justice...something like that. She laughed and said something mocking, driving him to attack.

This last part of the fight was frenetic and rapid, like some kind of frantic dance. Both sides fought desperately against one another, and he took occasional hits to his armor or superficial scratches. But after a little while, she started chanting something, a spell of some kind. It was a long, complicated spell by the sound of it, and it seemed impossible that she should be able to keep it up while still holding up the fight. In fact, it did appear to distract her somewhat to cast it, as he caught a few real mistakes in her movements and got in a hit each time—never a firm enough hit to finish her off, but clearly leaving meaningful wounds behind. There was a sense of urgency—a spell this costly on concentration, this long to cast, had to be dangerous; for her to finish it would surely mean death.

But when she did finish it, death didn't follow. His opponent jumped away from one of his attacks and turned her hands forward, sending the spell at him. There was a brilliant flash, too quickly to respond, and then..seemingly nothing. After a brief pause of confusion on Zack's part, his opponent panting too heavily from the effort to take advantage, he moved to strike her again and the fight seemed to proceed as before. But...something did start to happen, after a moment.

The knight's hair grew longer, flowing its way across the sides of his face. He started to shrink slowly, the tower growing taller around him, and his armor began to subtly shift. In another brief pause of the combat, noticing the changes, he made some demand to know what was happening, which the opponent responded to with deranged laughter. His voice sounded..off, higher than before. The changes progressed, bringing his height down below hers and trailing his hair out down his back as far as his hips. His sense of balance changed subtly as his hips widened, and his stomach pressed inward. His greaves split at the thighs, tightening below and spreading out above, while his breastplate lost much of its visible metal, pulling itself down off of his neck.

Sounds from his throat rose higher and higher, soon drifting entirely out of masculine range. He said something else, an accusation of what he suspected was happening. She replied in a coy way that clearly indicated he was right. Just then, he began to feel an unusual tugging between his legs, a heat in his cheeks. The full realization of the spell's effects, along with her mocking response, finally drove him over the edge into a full rage.

He attacked faster and harder than ever before, and even her more desperate maneuvers didn't save her from losing ground and taking hits over and over again. In the full heat of rage he didn't even consciously register the shift of his body from male to female, the slow growth of a pair of bumps on his chest into a waiting bra which had formed beneath the altered armor. Only after one final, decisive set of swipes gave him an opening to plunge his sword straight through her chest and into the wall behind it, and that opening was taken, did he really begin to notice the full effects of the spell. She laughed, and said something about it being a curse, and mocked him with her final breath. He drew back, letting go of the sword's hilt, panting heavily from the effort.

Time seemed to stand still as he remained there, alone, in the top of the tower, slowly coming to grips with what had happened.. There were no witnesses to the change; nobody would recognize him like this. He couldn't imagine trying to explain to anyone he knew what had happened, even if he wanted to convince them.

So many people had died to do this...a part of him questioned whether it had been worth it. But something...some indistinct memory convinced him that it had been. He couldn't stay here, couldn't stand to be a stranger to people he knew. Instead...instead he needed to go somewhere else, and try to make a new start.

Zack felt at the same time deeply immersed and yet somehow detached from the events of this dream. He had no control over the actions and decision of the knight, so it felt less like something he was experiencing now, and more like some kind of...memory being relived. He couldn't remember all the details...so much of it was missing...but somehow, the events felt real. It felt like something that...maybe didn't happen, but certainly could have happened.

---

"Well, what's it supposed to look like?" said Aria.

"Um, sorry if I'm interrupting something. I wanted to try out the dream bridging thing," said the cat, floating over to Mika.

"Oh. Uh, no, you're not really interrupting something. I'm not really even sure what's going on," said the witch, her body slowly starting to grow and mature. "I was going through the forest to get...something, I think, and then I found this guy pinned to a tree. I...feel like someone was going to see me here and accuse me of doing it when you two showed up."

Aria came a little closer, noting that the lighting on her own body and clothes changed from the reddish glow of her own 'dreamscape' to the dark, bluish night look of the witch's as she went from one to the other. "Well, I don't see how anyone could blame you for that. You're nowhere near tall enough to get up there, and there's no ladder or anything around..."

Mika turned toward Aria to respond with something, and then paused, headtilting. "Who're you?"

"Mika, this is Aria. Aria, Mika."
"Yeah, nice to meetcha," said the taller one, offering a hand. By now Mika was rapidly progressing through the teenage years and starting to (re?)gain her breasts. Not seeming to notice this, she took the hand and shook.

"Did Kath tell you anything mean about me?"
"Not particularly. Just that you were a witch?"
"Oh, yeah—whoa!" Mika's eyes widened as she finally noticed the gigantic demon across the pit. "Wow, that demon's so big and powerful.." she visibly salivated.

"Mika...that's Aria's demon," said Katherine, moving into a spot to obstruct the witch's vision of said demon. "You can't eat it. I don't even know how you'd go about trying to kill it, honestly."

"Eat? Kill?" said Aria, "Can people eat demons for power?"

"Well, just witches. And warlocks, I guess," said Mika, looking completely like her usual self by now. "Uhh, a witch actually kills demons and eats their souls for power. But if that's yours I won't bother it."
"That is so.." Aria restrained herself from using the word 'metal', "..cool. I wish someone had told me how to become a witch before I tried pulling the dumb cursed sword out of a rock."

"You pulled a sword from a stone?" said the witch. "You're probably better off than I am, then. 'Cause that's like, classic hero stuff."
"I can think of a few villains who start that way, too, though...especially with a cursed sword?" said Aria.

The shifter turned to Katherine. "Hey, how long can you keep this up, anyway?"

She shrugged. "Until someone wakes up. This is basically zero-effort."

"Great! I'd love to just hang out with you two instead of being stuck on the cliff by myself the whole night. For that matter, can you pull other people in? We could have a dream party!"

"I mean, I can but I don't really want to do it without their permission," said Katherine, remembering the incident with Zack. "Sometimes people are dreaming about...y'know...private stuff."

"Oh, yeah, that's fair. Well, this is still a huge improvement over last night, anyway."

"Soo," said the witch, "Did you get Kath to let you pet her?"
"I tried, but she's awfully stiff about it."
"I'm right here, you know!"