The Second Stranger

The world exploded into a burning agony in the pitch-black darkness that surrounded me.

Every fiber of my body screamed as I felt myself being ripped apart. Skin stretched and tore. My joints compressed and twisted all at once. Bones snapped inside my body. Reality warped around me, the darkness shimmered like oil before my eyes. I couldn’t think of anything other than the pain as I fell deeper into the void. It all happened too fast for me to scream.

—‘H-help,’ a pained voice inside my head said.

Then, a chorus of a dozen more voices rang out in my ears. They spoke in an alien tongue, incomprehensible and terrifying. As the pain reached a crescendo, blood spurted from my ears, and suddenly, horrifyingly, I could understand them.

“The interloper must not remain. Metamorphosis has already begun,” a sinister voice hissed.

Another cold and coarse voice replied, “I shall cast him far into the void. He will not hinder our master’s designs.”

“Extermination is the only solution,” a third growled.

“Impossible while he is in the transference. But, I will break him and mold him into a useless worm,” the second voice promised.

A fourth chimed in, a malicious glee in its tone, “Sending him there? How deliciously wicked.”

“He requires observation,” the third voice insisted.

“Is such caution truly necessary? He will be less than nothing,” the second voice scoffed.

The first voice, filled with dread, asked, “What if he ignites with the Ash?”

“Then we kill him, simple. Now silence, I must concentrate,” the second voice declared ominously.

The voices faded into the swirling darkness as my body contorted impossibly. My mind tore apart from the inside like a thousand migraines. A wave of hot liquid engulfed me.

—Blood?

Time seemed to go on forever, and I lost all sense of self.

I could not tell how long it took, but eventually, the pain vanished. My consciousness settled. I noticed cold hard stone beneath my hands and knees. The void had vanished. I was not being torn apart anymore. The air was thick, stifling, and smelled of burned charcoal, making each breath a struggle. Slowly, my vision adjusted and I could see my hands. Hands no longer covered in blood and cuts, nor were they broken. However, they were dirty and covered in red blisters.

—Burn scars? I thought.

I stayed on my hands, and knees as my eyes strained to grasp my current location. Aside from a small cot in the corner, the closet-sized room was empty. Ash on the stone floor shifted as I shuffled my body around. A dim light poked through a crawlspace door ahead of me. I crawled towards it, my knees scraping against the rough stone floor. Each movement sent echoes of phantom pain through my body.

—It’s over…right? Right? I shuddered and shook the painful thoughts of the void away.

The crawlspace door was tiny, no bigger than the door Noah and I used to play under our house as kids. I pushed the door open and crawled through into a larger space. My eyes blinked to adjust to a soft, orange glow from a large stone dome in the center of the new room. The light of dying embers from a forge breathed life into the workshop I found myself in. The heat from the coals hit my skin as I slowly stood up. I wiped the beads of sweat on my brow and took in the rest of the room.

It was a large, square room. One side contained a few window slits, another side featured a large door, and the opposite side accommodated racks of tools lining the walls. Hammers, pliers, tongs, buckets of white powder, and other items that are essential for a proper blacksmith. I’d seen them before in movies, video games, and books from when I wanted to study history in college. Before I dropped out.

A large anvil sat near the domed forge. On top rested a large blacksmithing hammer. I reached out to grab it when I froze, looking at my hands. In the light, I noticed it.

—My hands... these aren’t mine.

The fingers were too thick. Calloused and rough from years of working in a forge. Muscles I didn’t remember having. I looked up my arms. Reddish tan skin painted bulging muscles. I flexed my fingers, watching the unfamiliar sinews move beneath the skin that was tanner than I had been moments ago. Confusion and panic rose in my chest.

—A mirror. There’s gotta be one near here, right? Something I can use to see. I felt my palms sweat. My mind raced.

Twisting my head around, my eyes darted around the room, searching for anything reflective. Then I spotted it - a barrel of water on the other side of the forge. I gripped both my hands on the edge of the barrel and took a deep breath before peeking over into the still water. My heart dropped. The face that stared back at me wasn’t mine, yet it moved when I did. Its confused face matched my confused feeling. I touched my cheek, feeling the unfamiliar contours, the rough texture of scars I’d never had before. The skin where an unkempt beard had been.

—What the hell?

Leaning in for a closer look, I studied myself. My face was younger, much younger than I was. A teenager, even younger than Noah, maybe 16. Red-tan skin, with freckles at the corners of each eye. And the hair looked like dark green grass.

—Green hair? Who am I? What in the anime is this? I thought, hearing my voice echo in my head. I could feel my pulse quicken. Blood pumped in my ears loudly with each heartbeat.

The eyes caught my attention next. Once brown, now a bright, almost glowing gold in the dim light of the coals. Scars crisscrossed the forehead, nose, and cheeks.

—I’m…in someone else’s body? I gently tapped my face, tilting to examine each new angle.

I backed away from the barrel. My hands were dampening with sweat. I forced myself to take a deep breath. I pinched the side of my thumb with the nail of my forefinger.

—Ground yourself, Erik, deep breaths. One, two, three, deep breath in and deep breath out.

I filled my lungs with the warm air and focused on the rising and falling of my chest. As my panic subsided, I noticed several small windows on the far side of the forge. No glass, just openings to the night air. It looked like old medieval windows. I approached cautiously, took another steadying breath, and looked out.

A cool breeze caressed my face as I gazed upon a cityscape unlike any I’d seen. Hundreds of squat, stone buildings all in the shape of rectangles poked and jutted out from the base of a deep canyon. Above, past the high walls of the canyon, the night sky sparkled with thousands of stars absent of light pollution.

A huge blue moon hung in the sky, partially obscuring a smaller, pale green one. The city streets below were lit by the warm glow of torches, and in the distance, I could hear muffled sounds of people walking and talking throughout the long canyon city.

—Well, shit. Two moons, a canyon city, and no streetlights or cars. I’m not on Earth anymore.

I stumbled back from the window when a sharp pain ripped through my head. A voice, different from mine, exploded in my head.

—‘What happened to me?!’ Words echoed painfully inside my skull. Words of a young man.

I cupped my ears and pressed my palms into them.

“So loud! Who’s there?” I shouted. My voice was strange - it sounded like the one that had just spoken inside my head.

My words bounced off the stone walls of the forge, met only by silence. For a moment, I thought I might go crazy.

“Hello?!” I shouted. The room remained silent.

—‘I demand my body back!’ The voice in my head roared.

Before I could respond, a thunderous bang made me jump. The large door, the only other door in the forge, flew open, slamming against the wall. In the doorway stood a woman. Her face scowled at me, her hands clenched into shaking fists. Her hair was green like my own.

“Fern!” she bellowed, her eyes locked on me. “You must be out of your cursed mind to be out at this hour. Why are you shouting so loud? Do you want the neighbors to ask questions again?”

I opened my mouth to speak, but no words came out. The voice in my head started begging and shaking with fear.

—‘Please Mother I’m sorry! It wasn’t me, I swear Mother!’ The voice quivered. My stomach was reeling and my legs shook. I fell to my knees. An unknown fear paralyzed me.

“Fern, you worthless child, answer me right this instant! Why are you out?” The woman stormed up to me and stood above me. She had unclenched her hands and in between her fingers I saw a glimpse of golden light.

“I-I’m not…look, miss, I can explain,” I stuttered and backed away.

SMACK

A flash of hot flesh slapped across my face. The force from the green-haired woman’s hand knocked me back across the ground.

—Holy shit, that hurt.

—‘No Mom please!’ The voice choked up with tears I could not see.

—Mom? Really? I asked the voice.

A cold sweat crept up the back of my neck when I looked back up at the woman. A sense of familiarity washed over my eyes. She was the voice’s mom. This was…I am…Fern.

She leaned over me. “Miss? Is this some sort of joke to you? Must I remind you again of what happens when you don’t answer our questions?” She raised her hands in the air and in each one, a bright silver strand twisted around each finger like string.

The magical threads shot out from the woman’s hands, wrapping around my wrists and ankles.

“Hey wait a minute!” I shouted. The extended string flickered between me and her stretched-out hands. They glowed in the dim light.

Fern’s mom flicked her hands up. I felt myself being lifted into the air, suspended like a puppet on invisible strings. Her eyes darted to the open crawl space door, and before I could brace myself, she jerked her hands to the side.

The threads tightened, yanking me through the air. I slammed into the wall above the crawl space door with a loud crash. The impact knocked the wind out of me. Gasping for breath, I struggled against the magical bindings as the woman stepped closer. I tried to move my hands, but the strings held me down.

I watched in horror as her lips curled into a vicious grin. She leaned in close and flexed her fingers. My bindings burned. I screeched in pain.

“Let’s pretend this was just a bad dream, shall we? Pull a stunt like this again, and you’ll earn a dozen more burns,” she hissed. Her fingers danced through the air in intricate patterns, and the mystical cords obeyed her command.

The strings pushed me along the ground and through the small door. When the strings shoved me into the room, I could feel ash coating the side of my face. The voice in my head - Fern’s voice - moaned in agony. I gritted my teeth, enduring the pain. Compared to the void I felt earlier, this was nothing.

The threads bound me to the bed, burning into my skin before vanishing. I watched the woman’s feet as she walked away, slamming the door behind her. In the silence that followed, I heard a quiet sobbing in my mind.

“Ahh fuck, that wasn’t fun. Hey kid, are you Fern?” I whispered, careful not to draw attention.

—‘Stop talking,’ the voice sniffled. ‘I can hear your thoughts. She can’t.’

I froze for a moment and then closed my eyes and thought like I would speak.

—My name is Erik. I don’t know how I ended up in your body, but I’ll tell you what happened to me.

Throughout the rest of the night, I explained to Fern who I was, where I came from, and what happened for me to end up here.

—‘That’s…impossible, there’s a place, another world other than Morne?’ Fern said.

His words were silent in reality, and I only heard him in my mind’s ear. I decided I should probably keep that knowledge to myself, given the incident that occurred with his mom, and how strange it would be overall. I also discovered that when I think in my head and talk to myself like I normally do, he hears it in my normal voice from my old body.

—Morne? That’s the name of this planet? I asked Fern.

—‘Um, yes? I suppose it makes sense why you wouldn’t know if you come from this…Earth?’ I could feel Fern nod as if I could see him.

—I have so many questions. I scratched my head and gazed up at the short ceiling. The glow from the forge had died down and my eyes adjusted to the small dark closet Fern called his room.

—‘Well, you should probably try to blend in like you’re me before you get distracted with your questions. It’s almost time to get up,’ Fern said. ‘Don’t get me wrong, I still want my body back, but I’d like to avoid another beating by Mother.’

A chill crept up my spine. A flash of Fern’s mom flickered before me.

—Already? But, it’s still dark out.

—‘I always get up this early to start the forge again for Papa,’ Fern prodded in my mind as if he was pushing me out of bed.

It was like he was pacing in my head. My feet itched, and I heeded his warning and got moving.

Out in the forge, I followed his instructions on how to start the forge with fresh coals. My body, well, Fern’s body, knew what to do. He had been doing this for years and although I never have even seen a forge in person; I moved with precision along with his instructions.

—‘I need my body back, Erik. I hate this feeling. It’s like I am trapped in the darkness looking out at a window of what you see.’

—I understand Fern, I do, and I’d give it back to you if I could, but do I look like some wizard?

—‘A what?’

I sighed.

—A person who uses magic, ya know, like your mom?

—‘She is a Mageblood.’ He said.

—OK, well then that. Same fucking thing. I rolled my eyes and finished up his instructions before walking over to one window to see the canyon city light up with the morning sun.

—Hey, what is this place? This city? I asked Fern.

—‘It’s Corello. The central trade city of Stylos. Now stop gazing. I would never do that and we don’t know when she might come in.’ Fern grew tense, and I walked back to the forge prodding the lit coals.

—Are you a Mageblood?

Fern paused before answering me.

—‘If I was, do you think I would be a slave to my parents? I am a Voidblood, the unfortunate minority of the population born without magic. Therefore, I am only useful as manual labor.’ Fern’s voice was rigid.

I imagined his fists clenched inside my head.

—Of course, you are…why would I get put into a cozy new life? I thought sarcastically.

The door opened and Zola, Fern’s mom, stepped into the room. She wore a classy blue work dress with gold seams down the side. Next to her stood a small boy, maybe ten years old.

—‘My brother, Lotrick, the pride and joy of my parents.’ Fern said sternly.

“Get dressed in your good work slacks, boy. You need to accompany your brother today,” Zola said.

I nodded my head and looked back at Lotrick. The young boy gave me a puzzled look and then he squinted his eyes as he stared me down.

Does he know I’m not Fern?