The Mother of Monsters

Where am I?

A small voice rang out into the endless void. Darkness. No warmth or cold, no comfort nor any pain. Nothingness. There were memories there, at least, fleeting images of someone's life. Study that amounted to nothing, a mind left unrecognized, grueling work for little reward. The endless monotony of false smiles and unkind visitors. The relief of home. Sleep.

I can’t feel anything. Did I die?

The little voice thought, drifting in the oblivion that surrounded it. Time passed - ages and seconds as one formless whole. Its awareness drifted apart, slowly dissipating into the oblivi-

The little voice more felt the words than heard them. The text rippled through their mind, proceeded by the chime of a bell.

Huh?

“Connection? To what?” It asked, but there was no response. Only the cold emptiness greeted their efforts at communication.

The sensation of falling, space, time, distance becoming relevant. The little voice cried out, searching for an answer as the words bounced in its mind.

None of this makes sense. Why was this happening?

A Vessel? “What vessel?”

The falling stopped; the little voice adrift again in the silent void, yet being bombarded by strange words within their psyche. Confusion and fear ruled their thoughts; the memories of that distant life lost in the moment. As soon as the movement ended, it began again; this time in what had to have been a new direction. It felt wrong; strange, this wasn’t what was supposed to happen. Was it?

“Wait! What’s-”

The ghost of a personality flared up. “Hold up! What do you mean by ‘suboptimal’?”

Faster, it fell faster, uncountable numbers of words and symbols flashed past too fast to make out. This was wrong - it had to be wrong. Something was getting closer, a destination - an ending. This was it. It was finally going to the other side. It wondered what the end would be like. What a vessel was. What it all meant. The fall curved into an ascent, like rushing to the surface of a pool. Faster, until at last, it felt the sensation of breaching the surface.

Ianna woke to a sharp, spasming intake of breath, lungs filling with stale air. Her spine arched painfully, fingers curling like hooks, as her whole body was filled with sudden sensation. Beneath her, something cold and hard pressed against the bare skin of her back. It was flat and smooth; like ice. She cursed colorfully, sitting straight up and opening her eyes. Light burned against her vision. She hyperventilated for several seconds, until she could see again.

“Get ahold of yourself, Kovac!” She thought.

She blinked and her eyes went wide. “This isn- ugh… this isn't Chicago.” The words came out hoarse. It felt like she hadn’t used her voice in ages. She rubbed her throat and took in her surroundings.

The room was enormous, easily a hundred feet across and twice as long. The vaulted ceiling bisected the center of the room. Man-sized rectangular columns lined the sides, spaced at even intervals. Each column looked vaguely doric; with a rounded, inverted trapezoid forming the column caps. Above each cap sat bowls containing an odd light that poured out, illuminating the room. The entire room seemed to be made of the same black marble, marked with golden veins. Ianna thought the room would be rather pretty, if it wasn’t so stark and sterile.

Where the hell am I?

“Hello?” She asked about the empty room. Her voice carried, amplified by the smooth surfaces around her. Great acoustics, she thought absently as she looked down at herself.

“The hell!?”

What she saw raised a multitude of questions. She’d never been shy about her appearance. Quite proud of her figure when she’d come out of college. She knew how things were supposed to look and this, this was not it. Her hands were smaller, her legs, her skin tone was off. She was paler than she’d ever been in her entire life. She reached up and touched her face, looking down at her pale legs. I don’t look like this. This isn’t just makeup, is it?

“This is not happening. this is not happening,” She muttered, looking for something reflective.

That, of course, was when she noticed exactly what she was sitting in. A long container made of the same stone as the rest of the room. The rim was just deep enough to fit her inside with a bit of space to wiggle about if she had to. She closed her eyes, quietly hoping that she was hallucinating. Her hands slid over the rim on either side; the fingers of her right hand brushing over something smooth and hard to her right.

She quietly cursed and opened her eyes, peering at the smooth stone lid to the sarcophagus she’d awakened in. She covered her face, rubbing it as something between a whine and scream of stress bubbled out of her throat.

“Will someone please tell me what’s going on? Is this a fucking prank!?”

As if in response, a floating rectangle of dark blue engraved with text sprung to life in her vision. She jumped, swiping at it once and shifting to the rear of the sarcophagus. When nothing happened, she examined it, reading the text on the surface. She’d seen the text before but she couldn’t for the life of her place where. It was like a memory shunted into the back of her mind, dancing on the tip of her tongue.

“Transmigration? Orum?”

What is this, some kind of hologram? This stuff isn’t real, is it?

The strange message vanished, replaced by another.

“No. No no no. No. No way in hell,” She said, waving her hands at the image.

She raised her eyebrows and scowled. “Wanna bet?”

Ianna scrambled to her feet, glancing over the side of the sarcophagus. This had to be some kind of prank, a sick joke. Last thing she remembered she'd closed her store for the night, went home, and crawled into bed. She hadn't even had the energy to boot up her PC. She frowned, trying to make sense of her surroundings as she hauled herself over the side and placed an uneasy foot on the cold marble floor below.

It was solid enough, if a bit chilly on her bare feet. She turned around to see if she could get a good look at her face on the side of the sarcophagus. The surface of the sarcophagus was just polished enough to provide at very least a rudimentary reflection. The face that stared back was truly not her own. Ianna pinched her cheeks, rubbing the features about. “What the hell is this?”

The face staring back at her was narrow and youthful, with bright blue eyes. Full lips spread into a near face-splittingly wide grimace beneath a button nose with a long bridge. Beautiful. She reached up and ran her fingers through ash blonde hair. She tugged at her face one more time before letting out a breath. This was one very real hallucination.

“This is so messed up,” Ianna muttered, turning back to the room. She glanced at the window that still hung in the corner of her vision. There was a lot to unpack there -likely more than she could handle in just a few minutes. At the very least, though, she didn’t live under a rock. She knew enough about RPGs to draw some conclusions. She had… abilities that she had to familiarize herself with. That meant there was a list somewhere.

Another intrusive tone startled her from her thoughts.

Ianna scoffed in disbelief. It had read her thoughts. Despite the disbelief, a small part of her squealed with delight. She let out a long-suffering sigh and scrunched up her face; Here goes, Ianna thought, before putting the idea of a character sheet at the front of her mind.

She was ready for the bell-like chime this time. The sound accompanied the appearance of yet another window. This one was significantly larger than the others and contained more information than she could even begin to ask for. Her eyes widened - it was indeed a character sheet. Not any system she was familiar with… but the hallmarks were there. Six base attributes, player name, character levels. There was even a reputation and alignment section.

“Name… Unknown?” She murmured, canting her head to the right. She pushed the thought aside and took it all in.

There weren’t any immediate details on the traits, but several of them seemed important. She needed details.

To her surprise, she got what she was looking for. A chime heralded a comprehensive list of her traits.

She gasped.

No. No. Ignore it.

Ianna closed her eyes and focused on the list from the top down. The first trait was self-explanatory. A human racial ability. She furled her eyebrows. Didn’t they normally get extra skills or something? The others needed a bit of time and thought to wrap her head around. [TOOLS OF THE WANDERER]. She vaguely remembered something about a compromise, but the memory was muddy at best. As her thoughts dwelled on these… “abilities”, another window appeared.

So - a journal, an inventory, and a navigation tool. Made sense. Based on the description of the [TATTERED JOURNAL] It sounded like something she could use right now.

As if to confirm her suspicions she felt a warmth rise from her fingertips. The next thing she knew a small, ratty notebook was in her hands; small motes of dusty light rising off it. Startled, she let it go and stepped back. It remained suspended in the air where she had left it; waiting for her to retrieve it. Ianna blinked a few times, ducking beneath the book and waving her hands around it. No strings. Nothing. She took it in one hand and lifted it. It felt like she’d taken it off of some sort of invisible podium.

…Magi-no.

Nope.

Nuh-uh.

She forced herself not to scream out the M-word. Not yet. She was not ready to accept something so utterly beyond reason.

She opened the book and inside was written her current quest with a few more details.

“Huh,” She murmured.

She closed the book and looked around for a place to put it down. it vanished in another burst of dusty light. Her fingers tingled a little at the sensation. Not a bad feeling, but still disconcerting.

Next, she read the description of the [OLD SATCHEL]. It sounded like a bag of holding. She was optimistic, in a multi-layered existential crisis sort of way, but she had real questions about what it meant by looting ‘entities’. Was it implying that there were monsters around here?

As if the world itself was listening to her every thought she heard a low droning tone echo out from somewhere near the center of the room. The hairs rose on her skin as something metallic scraped across the floor. She gasped, reaching for the edge of the sarcophagus on instinct and pulling herself into the relative safety of the rim. She felt heat immediately rise to her ears; it was like she’d ran to bed and thrown herself beneath the covers.

The noise stopped as her heart thundered in her ears. She lay there for a while, her skin crawling with the chill of terror. After a few minutes, she caught her breath enough to peer over the side. She couldn’t see anything. Was she going crazy? She rubbed her eyes and fell back into the sarcophagus. Her mind cast back to the [OLD SATCHEL] and she pulled the description up again, looking more for a distraction than anything else.

She focused on the idea of the Satchel, just like she had with the Journal. She shuddered just in time for another wave of warmth as the bag appeared in her hand.

Was all this real? She gulped, and hoped that someone came in soon and told her it was all one very impressive prank; she had to admit the sensation of standing naked in a giant marble tomb felt about like what she imagined. At this point, playing along was the only thing she could fathom doing that didn’t involve curling up into a ball and weeping. No one came.

Sighing, Ianna glanced down at the bag. It had a bit of heft to it, despite its’ small volume. She pulled the worn-looking item open and peered inside, only to get nearly blinded by yet another ‘system window’. This one contained about twenty tiny boxes, all but two of them being empty. The two boxes that were occupied contained the images of paper-wrapped parcels.

She cracked a grin. she was unable to restrain herself at this point.

Haha! no way! “Let me guess.”

She reached out and touched the first parcel. A twinge of excitement grew within her as the parcel grew to the size of a banker box and fell to the ground with a soft thud. She touched the second item. This time a smaller parcel came out, about the size of a loaf of bread.

Absently, Ianna let go of the sack, kneeling and examining the first box. She placed her hand on it and a prompt appeared.

Ianna threw her hands up and let out a whoop.

“Woo! Hell yeah! Pants!”

She eagerly tore into the paper wrapping, tossing it aside so she could get to the neatly folded gear within. Her priority was getting some clothes on, quickly slipping into the shirt and pants. They fit well enough, eerily so. She froze midway into putting the sandals on. This is getting more ridiculous by the minute. She adjusted the tie on the sandals. After that, she picked up the small dull hunting knife.

I’m going crazy.

She looked at the second package and gave it an experimental tap.

Food and water. The mundanity of food and water made her situation begin to sink in. She stared at the walls for some time. Now she had enough supplies to last her for a good while.

I need to… survive here. But who am I?

She stared at the window for a while. After a while, she began to sob.

My life. My family. My friends. Are they going to come back? Where am I? What happened to my body?

She eventually stopped crying. She sighed the longest sigh she’d sighed in a while.

Ianna picked up the parcel and held it up to the floating window containing her inventory. She tried to ignore the irrationally floating hemp bag beneath it, as well as the insanity of flailing a paper sack of magic food at a floating hologram and hoping it would-

With a tugging sensation, the item vanished from her hand and reappeared in the window.

“Okay, yep, that’s it, I’m going nuts.”

Without thinking, she climbed back out of the sarcophagus and settled on the steps leading up to it. She’d barely moved since she awoke inside the big, scary thing. Her mind drifted to the quest and the journal appeared in her hand. She opened to the first page. The “Acquaint yourself with your Traits and Abilities” task still hadn’t been fulfilled.

“You aren’t going to give me anything more until I go through all these, aren’t you?” She said to the book before shutting the crazy magic thing.

The worn compass appeared in her hand next, the object small enough to fit in her palm. The arrow spun helplessly and gave her not an ounce of inkling what to do with it. She willed it to go away, thoroughly annoyed at this point before moving on to the last three of the traits.

Reading [ADAPTABLE], it implied she could build up resistances to just about anything if she survived exposure enough times. She wasn’t sure how much that made sense, but she wasn’t about to argue. If the other traits worked the way the [TOOLS OF THE WANDERER] did, it went without saying that this would do exactly as it described.

As she re-read [SPARK OF THE OUTSIDER] she felt her heart slow a bit in her chest. “Another world,” She murmured, glossing over the remaining details of the trait and moving on to the last one. [CORPSE OF THE ANCIENT QUEEN] explained a few things, though she didn’t like the implications. First off, this body had been dead at one point. She reached back and rapped her knuckles on the side of the sarcophagus.

“So ‘Teyva Rani’ was buried here? Pretty name - though she should have been named ‘Teyva Rani-way, from life, because she’s dead,” She said to the book before making a face; “I can’t believe I just said that.”

She rubbed her eyes and looked back at the glossy surface of the sarcophagus. That same cute face looked back at her. Not her own. She sighed again, shaking her head.

“Does that mean I’m a zombie?” She asked herself before remembering that her race had said ‘human’ on her character sheet. She groaned, resting her head on the sarcophagus. “None of this makes any sense! Why me? What did I do?”

As if to respond to her shout, a prompt appeared in front of her face.

“What?”

Before she even had an instant to think, a moment to feel, a second to take one last breath, a sudden flash of pale light erupted from the other side of the room. Cold, biting through bone and flesh, enveloped her body and her world went dark.

Ianna woke with a ragged intake of stale air, the thick scent of ozone assailing her nostrils, pushing her over into a coughing fit. She rolled onto her side, breath wheezing out of her lungs as she tried to catch her breath. Then she dry-heaved. She rolled onto her back, breathing hard, trying to process what had just happened. She looked left, then right. She was back in the sarcophagus. Cold black marble pressing in on all sides.

She tried to remember the notification but only three words stayed with her;

You have died.

Her chest heaved again, a struggled breath of waning self-control. Then the first sob came, followed by a deluge. She lay in that place of death; her body unmarred, even her clothes untouched, and wept.