The "Best" RPG Ever-98

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Ezra knew that he was dying, and was more or less at peace with it—at least as much so as any man could be. There had been a time in his life when he feared death, hated it, railed against it...but in his present condition he couldn't help but see it as something of a relief. Spending another year in a hospital bed wasn't his idea of living anyway, and he was weary of worrying and taxing his family at this point. He had lived a long, full life, watched the world go through one upheaval after another, and his children were so old now that they were beginning to have grandkids of their own. Not many of his peers, he understood, retained their minds as long or as well as he had, so he could only feel fortunate and grateful when his eldest daughter held his hand, telling him about the boy her son had had recently, and drifted off into a sleep he would likely not awake from.

Yet that wasn't exactly the way of things, it seemed. He did awake, just not where or how he might have expected. He was lying on his back, the surface beneath him hard, and cool, but not freezing. Opening his eyes slowly, there was a glaring light from above whose source seemed impossible to correctly place. More importantly, however—it didn't seem that he was in any pain. He didn't feel weak, or tired, just...normal. Healthy? At the very least, he had no trouble sitting up and looking around; he was still in his hospital gown, and the only other object of interest in the strange, white room he found himself in was a pedestal cast in the same color with a thick, hardcover tome laying closed on the right half of its top. Shrugging to himself, Ezra slowly pushed himself up off of the floor—which was far easier than he thought it should have been—and walked over to the pedestal.

"Read this," he read aloud from the cover. Unusual though it was, his throat and voice working properly was hardly a surprise against everything else at this point. "A'right..." Turning the cover open, he found a message seemingly handwritten in careful, rigid letters across the book's first two pages:

Welcome!

We regret to inform you that you have died. However, this is no afterlife. Our world has need of people from yours, and you are among those we have selected to ask for help as a result of your existing skills and experience. We are willing to grant you a new life and a limitless potential to supplement these.

If you prefer to remain deceased in your own world, you may take the doors behind you.

Ezra paused reading a second, turning to look behind him. There were indeed a pair of doors faintly visible on the wall back there, although he was fairly sure they hadn't been there a moment ago. He resumed reading:

Otherwise, the remaining pages of this tome contain descriptions of the varieties of potential we can provide you with, in order from what we believe to be the most compatible with you to the least. If you wish to help, and have found the potential which you feel suits you best, please place your hands palms-down onto the pages describing that potential in order to receive it and move forward.

"'Potential', eh?" The idea of other worlds had occurred to him before, but being contacted—much less somehow posthumously "borrowed" by one—was far from his range of possibilities. However, if he doubted that whoever wrote the message had the power to do what it was they were suggesting, he needed only look to the current health of his body compared to how it had been before. It was hard not to believe, with that, that they would be capable of more—whoever 'they' were.

Did he want to go back, and stay dead? It wasn't a choice he'd been offered before, so it was one he was thoroughly unprepared for. He had already made his peace with his death back on Earth, so receiving a new life on this new world was only a gain for him—the rest of what he might hope for in a new life lost already. More importantly...they needed his help.

It was difficult to place, but reading the carefully written, dryly worded text gave Ezra a distinct sense of desperation—of dread from the writer. If whoever it was had the power to bring people back to life and from another world, no less, and yet were unable to handle whatever it was they needed him for themselves...it had to be important. It might be something that impacted a lot of people of this other world—and, no matter the world, people were people. If there was one ethic or code that Ezra had always lived his life by, and tried his best to teach in his children or any other young person he encountered, it was that when you see someone in need, you try your best to help them. If this really was an entire world of people who needed his help...then, reward of a new life or not, he needed to help them.

Turning to the next pair of pages, he found the left page to say “War” in large letters, with depictions of all manner of medieval weaponry adorning it besides. The opposite page appeared to have a more detailed description, but Ezra slowly shook his head and moved on to the next two pages rather than reading it through. “I've had enough of war in one life,” he said quietly to himself. The next pair of pages depicted the potential of “Speech”—the imagery on the left including a silhouetted noble and jester, someone whispering in an ear, and a few musical instruments besides. This one's description Ezra elected to read:

The power over expression and communication of all forms. The ability to inspire, demoralize, or deceive. The capacity to understand the hearts and minds of others, and to bend them to one's own ends.

Ezra considered this a long moment, but turned the page to see the next few options before making his mind up. These were “Light”, then “Mind”, “Sight”...none of their descriptions seemed as good to him as “Speech” had been. Finally he returned to those pages, staring at them a moment longer. “Solomon chose wisdom,” he said to himself, and then carefully pressed his hands onto the pages. He thought perhaps this would cause some observer watching through a one-way window or camera of some sort to take note and reveal or open a new door in a different direction; what he didn't expect was for the book to glow bright blue and send spirals of that same light snaking upward along his arms, up his neck and down his body.

"Whoa, there!" Ezra stumbled back in surprise a couple of steps, taking his hands off of the book. This didn't seem to stop whatever was happening, as the spirals of light constricted themselves around his body, palpably squeezing him briefly before seeming to sink into his skin. "..Ah." Holding up a hand, he could see that his body itself seemed to be glowing the same shade, joined by a not unpleasant tingling which appeared to be signalling the fading of wrinkles, sores and other blemishes from his body—not that he could see most of that, but it was easy enough to guess it was happening from his arms and the exposed parts of his legs.

He next felt something like a hand running through his hair...more hair than he ought to have. Reaching his own hands upward, he found much longer, fuller hair than he was supposed to have floating up around his head; it felt soft and well-groomed, not at all the scraggly mess of a year's worth of hospital bed-head it would have remained if left alone. Moving a hand down as the tingling faded off, he traced the contour of his chin and found it covered in soft, smooth skin, cleaner shaven than he thought he had been in his entire life.

Whatever was making his hair float up in the air like that began to give up at this point; long locks in the same dark brown he'd had as a younger man slid down through the air and fell across his forehead as bangs, then down his cheeks and onto his shoulders before continuing to fall down along his back. He couldn't help running a hand through it again, pulling one of the longest locks around from the back to examine it. Why were they making it so long, he wondered—whoever or whatever 'they' were.

The blue glow had gradually brightened as his hair fell downward, and now Ezra felt a pressing, squeezing sensation all across his body; it covered more of him and seemed somehow deeper than when the spiraling light had first constricted around him, and it had a visible effect almost right away. "Hm...shrinking," he muttered, the pedastal being the only clear reference point for his rapid loss of height. He'd always been pretty well on the tall side before, but...this felt like an overcorrection. Besides that, looking down and patting along the sides of his gown he could see that he was getting thinner and narrower, his arms and legs slimming down as well, rather than merely shorter.

This was about the point where he noticed the pressure getting a little bit sharper in one particular area. "...Ah. 'New life', eh..?" he muttered, sensing something he'd had all his life starting to withdraw itself away in preparation to disappear entirely. Well—while he'd always enjoyed being a man, who didn't wonder what it was like on the other side from time to time? As long as he was being—what, reincarnated?—there were certainly far worse possible results.

Something cold seemed to run across Ezra's neck. "Aah!" He jerked back slightly, startled; the coolness faded to a slight tingling as the shrinking down there continued. "Mmm~mm. Oh, I see." His voice was changing, the masculinity fading out and the pitch rising ever so slowly. "Awful strange feelin'..mm~mmh," he hummed, listening to the change continue. His voice slid steadily over to a dark, mature alto as his body's shrinking finally tapered off; even with very little to refer to, he couldn't help feeling he was going to end up extremely, almost unreasonably short. Then..

"Hhhh!" Ezra gasped at a sudden motion between the legs. "...Ah," she muttered, feeling an unusual tingling down there along with a mild upward motion toward the pit of her stomach. "Yep..there it goes." Her face felt a little warm as she tried to get used to the sensation of being..."flat". It wasn't unpleasant or even particularly uncomfortable...just very unfamiliar. Looking forward, she could see that her height had finally stabilized, too, but the feeling of her body starting to press outward much the same way it had inward during the shrinking made it clear this wasn't quite the end of the change.

"Hmmn." She put one hand on her chest and the other against the side of her hips, feeling each start to press itself outward. The feeling of curves steadily filling themselves into place was strangely pleasant, as her hips spread apart, steadily shifting her body's stance and balance, and her chest gained two small, soft fleshy bumps for the beginning of a pair of breasts. "That's...something.." she muttered, feeling the mammaries spread out larger and larger, new, sensitive skin moving across the material of the hospital gown and feeling the slight press of her hand against it as it needed to cup out more and more to fit the growing globes. It became increasingly clear she was due to carry quite a load, but it was hard not to enjoy the feeling a bit—even as the warmth of a slight blush on her face steadily intensified into the heat of a blazing fire.

"Mh—mmn~nh." Finally, Ezra's body finished changing, leaving her with a voluptuous figure indeed; her hand slowly drew away from the enormous pair of globes adorning her chest to slide down the sharp inward curve of the side of her waist and beyond that to her wide, womanly hips. She realized she was panting, and tried to catch her breath, dropping her hands to the sides and looking down to assess her new appearance more..calmly, if it was possible. Even through the gown—which was starting to glow blue itself—it was clear: When she was a younger, unattached man, she might have killed to get with a girl this pretty. At least with all that talk of 'potential' they hadn't reduced her to a child or anything; she felt young again, full of energy and even ambition—though what sort exactly it was hard to put her finger on—but was clearly still an adult.

No more time for that now, as her clothes began to reform. The gown's sleeves and lower portion both tore off, pulling away and turning entirely to blue light before returning, wrapping themselves around her arms and legs and changing into armored leggings and gauntlets with long cloth gloves and gartered stockings beneath. The central mass turned to light on her body before reforming into a tight-fitting top with a detached collar and a deep cut between that and the bit around her generous chest, a very short skirt that revealed a bit of her thighs above the armored leggings, undergarments appropriate for her body's newfound sex and figure, and even a sort of cape flapping itself out behind her back. Last of all, she saw that the book on the pedestal had turned entirely into the same bright blue light, and now it quickly flowed over to her, placing itself on her left side as a long sheath attached to her clothes, complete with the hilt of a sword sticking out of the top and all the expected weight for such a hunk of metal.

Despite being aware of the weight of metal on her arms and legs—and from that sword as well—Ezra found it all terribly light to her new form, as though she'd been carrying the likes of it for years. She drew the sword, holding it upright and regarding it suspiciously. Its balance and weight felt comfortable to her; although she had never handled one before she immediately felt she understood the basics of using the weapon effectively. “Guess there ain't no escaping some war after all,” she muttered to herself, watching the reflection of the fair, young, altogether unfamiliar face in the lustrous metal of the flat of the blade. Her eyes were most unusual now—one green and the other red.

Well—she had already made her decision, and seemingly received the benefit for it. Ezra sighed, putting the weapon away as she strode forth toward a new set of doors in the wall before her, mentally preparing herself to see what sort of world it was that required her help, and to contend with this strange body she'd been given...

Days and weeks—as much as a month or two—blurred by, before stopping abruptly again. She was walking on a path, next to a tall elvish psion named Ron, in the middle of a conversation. "I just don't see no sense, in changin' our names," she was saying. "With our bodies so altered, they're all we have left of our old selves."
"Well, sure," the tall elf said, putting up his arms. "But at the same time, it's an opportunity to name ourselves, to something that suits us or fits our new identities here a bit better. Our astronomer friend is still honoring Earth, or at least something reasonably close by..though she hasn't decided which one to go with quite yet. I'm pretty sure Randall agrees with you, or at least doesn't care to put in the effort so long as the—ahem—other ladies still like him."

"Is he still obsessin' over that?"

"Heheheh. You should've seen the look on his face, Ezra. Maybe I'll just show it to you sometime we're not busy walking. At least it got him to stop flirting, right?"
"Didn't do much for the other two ladies."

"I could tell him they're the same way if you want. Not sure he'd buy it, though."

"What about you, then? Thinkin' of some other name?"

"Well, everyone likes to call me some variant of 'Ron', so I figure something that can still be shortened to that would be best. Maybe 'Tsaron'."
"Ron." Ezra stopped in her tracks to glance up at him. "That sounds ridiculous."

"Hahah, that's just what I thought you'd say! But ridiculous is the flavor of things for all of us now, in my opinion. Besides, it sounds nice and mystical. As for the surgeon.."

"What do you want?" she cut him off.

"Hmm?" Ron was (understandably?) confused, stopping instead of resuming the walk and prompting her to take a few quick steps to keep up, like how this was supposed to go.

"You heard me. How much of this do you intend to force me to relive?" Ezra demanded, taking a couple of steps back and giving a far less friendly glare. "What is your purpose for this? To torment me like you did Randall? Am I going to have to watch him tear Valorum to shreds again!? Or Ceres bleeding out?" Even though it meant very little, Ezra drew her sword and pointed it up at his neck. "I'll ask you again: What do you want?" she said, her voice flat and dead-serious.
"...Oh." Something about Ron's face changed; the confusion was gone, as though he had just realized something. There was no fear either, instead a sort of organized, self-assured calm that surpassed that of even the real one's usual demeanor.

"I am terribly sorry to have distressed you," he said, dropping his hands to his sides. "I needed to come in myself, you see, to speak in person. I have no body, you know. When I am outside, I can see a dream for what it is, and shape its experience and meaning as needed. But with no 'real self' to keep me tethered, entering a dream means taking on whatever role it gives me. I chose some deeply familiar memories for you in hopes of catching your attention quickly...which it would seem I did," he continued, placing a palm on the top blade of her sword and pressing down to lower it, suffering no injury in the process.
Ezra sighed, letting go of the weapon entirely and crossing her hands. "Do I have to repeat myself again?"
"Well—I wanted to talk. You...wanted to talk," he corrected, pointing. "Right? You have questions, and I can answerrr...some of them," he said. "Not that I don't know the answer to all of them, but..there is some information which—while I believe you are ready for—the others won't allow me to tell you. They don't want that knowledge getting out into other minds yet, and for as much as I don't believe you would, they fear you telling the wrong person the right thing too soon."

"Fine," she nodded slowly. "Fine. So: What are you gathering the others to my town for?"

"To complete the mission we set you on long ago, with the aid of some new heroes," Bimorphaeus responded. "...The mission I still cannot tell you the details of, for the reasons I just outlined."

"So we failed."
"I don't think that's fair to say," he said. "It is...our failure. Mine. I volunteered to be the one to contact you, despite the added difficulty, so that I could at least try to apologize. That man..." The god wearing Ron's skin shook his head and sighed. "I saw all of his mind, as I did everyone's, before we chose you. He had some dark, sick, twisted fantasies in there, but never in his entire life had he acted upon them. I convinced...myself first, and then the others, that he never would. We needed...we thought we needed somebody with medical experience, to be a healer for you. We offered him the Potential of Light, or Empathy, or...a number of other things, all of which he turned down in favor of that one. It was concluded that pairing his old skills with the new ones of that sort would make for a versatile member, so we let him do it. The fact that he would grow much faster than the rest of you was known, but Sophol estimated it at a very low risk—based on the evidence of my, erroneous, conclusions."

"You didn't kill him. Or try to stop him," Ezra said. "Strike him down where he stood, once it was clear what he was doing. How long did you know before we did?"
"Not...long," Bimorphaeus said evasively. "We helped where we could, but he was already extremely powerful, enough that intervening ourselves was a high-risk option. We thought we would try to help you take him out, keeping as many as possible alive, and then...plan B."

"Plan B," she questioned by way of repeating.

"When we chose you, we thought we were selecting heroes from Earth. People with exceptional skill, ability, and/or intellect, who would be able to put Potential to its greatest use. We assumed a transactional way of doing things was best—a new life and great power in exchange for what we needed done," he said. "It was our first try, getting help from another world. We chose to claim the souls of people who were dying, and bring them here, as this was by far the easiest and safest way, and seemingly the least obtrusive to your world as well. We chose to do it a long time before you would be needed, in order to minimize the power we would spend granting you that Potential and maximize its chances to grow. And...to hedge our bets. We thought..." Bimorphaeus shook his head slightly, "we thought, if you didn't work out, we could buy ourselves all the time we needed to get new heroes. About this, we were wrong.

"Sophol perceived new information which...you understand, I cannot go into much detail, but...our 'plan B' to buy ourselves new time? It wouldn't work; at least, not sustainably. We would be spending more power than we could afford to delay things nowhere near enough to build that power back up again. And we had never thought up a 'plan C' because we were always supposed to have more time..." For a deity, he looked suddenly very tired and worried for a second or two. "This was right after you took him down. Our best-laid schemes were shattered, and while your group was tearing itself apart we were still trying to pick up the pieces and work out what to do about it."

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Well, this one's been a long time coming. This image has been in the folder for this story since I started it, although it was a little while before I worked out all the details. I had planned on placing this whole thing at part 100, but simply ran out of things for everyone to do before getting here. And of course this came out to be far too long to even fit reasonably in a single "part", so it's been split. At any rate, we can consider 98-99 to be a sort of "end of a season" thing at least, before things crank up again at 100, which is at least something. Stay turned for 99 tomorrow.