Bailey was frozen where she stood. She looked at the man, Silas, as he just floated there in front of her, lifeless. He didn't move or twitch, not even a strand of hair budged. It was eerie.

  “Heh… okay… wow,” she said nervously. “Why is Silas here?” her voice wavered as she asked the void, daring to take a small step closer.

  >“[Player Character] [Silas Vander’Bludd] has been made to specification made on [Character Sheet]”<

  “No, I get that! Actually not really but… kinda? UGH! I mean why is he HERE! Aren't I just supposed to play him? Like imagining I'm him and moving around a mini figure, not… THIS!” she frantically gestured to all of Silas. “What am I even supposed to do with a life sized character? Pose him like a mannequin?”

  >”[Player Character] [Silas Vander’Bludd] is ready to attune to. Please touch [Player Character] to attune”<

  “This coma dream logic is getting out of hand. We need to reel our mind in here Bails,” she went to slap her cheeks a little with her hands to focus her mind back, but she felt nothing.

  Confused, she moved her hands out to look at them. She felt a cold sinking feeling creep up her whole body. They were now transparent. It was like someone had turned her opacity down to 50%. She tried to touch herself in other places, her arms, legs, her torso, but it was all the same, it was like trying to grasp mist.

  “G-GM…?”

  >”[Player Character] [Silas Vander’Bludd] is ready to attune to. Please touch [Player Character] to attune”<

  The void voice repeated.

  “How? I can't touch anything like this.”

  >”Touching [Silas Vander’Bludd] will attune [Player's Soul] to [Player Character]”<

  “My soul?” She whispered out loud to herself. Bailey wasn't very religious, she may have been when she was a kid and her parents dragged her to church every Sunday till she was 18, but not now. Especially after she did a lot of self discovery. So hearing the voice mentioning her soul was surprising. Perhaps her subconscious still held onto the belief in one.

  “I already made it this far. Might as well keep the dream going. I don't think sitting in a void looking at a motionless body for months is my idea of fun. Ugh… I bet it's someone's though, people are weird…”

  Bailey slowly walked over to the man. Though she hyped herself up to follow the weird dream logic, she was still a little creeped out by it all. She was pretty sure it was because he was just so… motionless… like a marionette with no strings, just dangling there.

  “If you make him move and jump scare me GM I swear…” she threatened the voice. She had no idea what she could even do to a voice in her mind, but the threat made her feel a little better.

  Soon enough she was face to face with Silas. The surprise of how detailed he was slowly overshadowed the unease she felt. He was just so… real. How did her mind imagine this much detail? She could see every strand of hair on his head, every white eyelash, his pores on his skin, even every stitch in his robes.

  He looked like some she would see in real life. Maybe not walking down the street, but definitely someone in a cosplay at the Ren Fair.

  Bailey took a deep breath and slowly reached her transparent hand out to touch his chest. Her spectral hand passed through only a few inches, stopping right around where his heart should be.

  Then everything that came next happened in both an instant and years.

  Silas’ eyes snapped open and looked directly into Bailey's. Before she could fully react or even gasp, she felt herself get tugged forward as if a rope in her chest was yanked. The purple of his eyes glowed and grew all-around her, overtaking the white of the void.

  She felt like she was falling, as if his eyes were consuming her, sucking her into them. She blinked as she saw another void, this one inky black, splashed with swirling purple. She really was falling now, she could feel wind rushing past her whipping her hair around her face.

  This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

  She heard voices of people she’d never heard before. Dozens of them, male, female, young and old, all overlapping each other. They were talking in languages she didn't know… no… she did know them. How did she know them? She only knew English and High School level Spanish, but these were nothing even similar. But she DID know them… Common and Elvish? And someone else was speaking Hellian… her mom?

  What? No. Her mom was human. She spoke English… but this voice and the memory attached to it… he was being scolded for dripping candle wax on mother's grimoire, he wasn't supposed to be touching it and- Bailey shook her head but more memories were being shoved into her mind just as fast as she was falling into this void.

  These memories that weren't her own collided with the ones she knew were. Or did she? They were jumbling up together. She remembered her 10th birthday. Mom and Dad took her to the zoo. She wanted to see the tigers but it rained and… and his father gifted him his own spell book so he could start practicing magic. Silas wanted to be a Mage Scholar like his father and mother-

  “Aahh! Stop it!” Bailey screamed against the rushing wind and flooding memories, she clutched her head, hands tugging at her own hair and curled in on herself.

  She began to feel the memories now. Not just remembering them, but feeling them. She felt love, anger, and sadness that wasn't her own.

  Then she felt it. Memories that hurt. She felt her skin burning red hot… he remembered how he couldn't leave his bedroom, the flames were too strong. He heard his mother and father downstairs yelling for him, Adrian, and Kat to leave-

  Bailey felt it all, every lick of the flames and the smoke in her lungs. She felt tears fall from her eyes and get swept away instantly in the wind. She felt her consciousness fade from her as more memories filled her mind.

  ●■●■●■●

  Bailey woke with a start and a large gasping breath as she breathed in as much air as she could. Her eyes stared widely up at the sky as she blinked against the rays of sun. The sky?

  She didn't have much time to think about it as a large wave of nausea hit her. She quickly rolled off her back and onto her hands and knees, vomiting into a nearby bush, startling a few birds that were hiding in it.

  Bailey stayed like that for a few moments trying to collect her thoughts. Her hands and arms were shaking as flashes of those memories popped into her head.

  “What… the fuck… was that…?” She questioned out loud. She froze. That wasn't her voice. She said that, but that wasn't her. And on top of that, it wasn't English, it was Common. How did she know it was Common?

  “H-hello?” She tried again, and heard a young man's voice. It was soft yet had a sharp edge to the end of his words and an accent she couldn't place… vaguely British? She spoke again “Is someone here?”

  Yeah, it wasn't someone else speaking, it was her, it had to be. She looked around at the forest she woke up in and-

  >[Witts +1] - [18]: “You see nothing unusual, just the trees and forest animals.”<

  She blinked. It was the void voice, or the GM as she began to believe it was. But it was different. It was no longer stilted and almost robotic, but now had the tone and inflection of a woman talking.

  “This is… too much…” she said in her unfamiliar voice. she flopped herself down onto her back, hitting grass and moss of the forest, and unfortunately landing on her tail- HER TAIL?

  She instantly bolted up into a sitting position and whipped her head around to see that she, in fact, had a tail. It was purplish gray, a little thicker than a cat's, and as long as an arm, the tip had a spade-like point… just like how she drew Silas's. She looked down at the rest of herself. Purple and black robes, purple-gray skin on her hands, she touched her ears and felt them go longer than she was used to and ending in rounded points. Using her tongue she felt around in her mouth and found her canines were longer and sharper. She'd bet every cent she had that if she looked in a mirror, she'd have black and purple eyes looking back.

  “Ha…hahahaha…” she laughed, not out of humor but out of disbelief and a touch of hysteria. She sat, crossing her legs, her head in her hands, as she collected herself as best she could.

  Dreams, even lucid coma ones can't be this intense, could they? She felt a sinking feeling grow inside her. She's never vomited in a dream before, and the gross taste that lingered in her mouth was far too real.

  Bailey sat there for a longtime. She slowly took her head out of her hands. She touched the soft moss and grass of the forest floor, feeling every blade against her skin… Silas’ skin? She tried to sort out her memories of what just happened in that dark void. It was all so… vivid.

  Bailey could feel his memories in her mind, like they were books on a shelf next to each other. If she focused hard enough, she could remember his memories-

  >[History +2] - [19]: “You remember a time in a forest just like this back home.”<

  (“Adrian dared me to climb a particularly tall tree. I unfortunately slipped halfway up and fell on my ass, and broke my tail. Adrian and I lied to mother, saying I just tripped on a root. She never liked us climbing unsupervised.”)

  Bailey heard the memory in Silas' voice, and as she heard him recount it, it cemented it in her own memories. It was like her brain hit copy and paste.

  She really was Silas. She could dip into his memories whenever she wanted. No, not his memories, her’s? Theirs?

  She stood up on wobbly legs, head still reeling, “Ok… this is real, probably. The GM said my soul was going to attune to Silas before I touched the body, err…his body? My body? Ugh! Whatever! But, I guess that means souls exist, chalk one point up to the spiritualist…”

  “So if my soul is in this body, that means it's not in my real body anymore. And that would mean… aw shit, am I dead?”

  >”Current [Health Points] are [20]”<

  “NOT what I meant,” she said with an eye roll “Is my old body dead GM?”

  >”Current [Health Points] are [20]”<

  “Why did I even ask?” She threw up her hands in frustration. She began to pace back and forth, her footsteps crunching the foliage under her boots.

  She had to be dead. That was the only explanation. Too vivid to be a dream, too real to be a coma induced fantasy. She died in that storm drain when the lightning struck her. No. It struck Dylan and since he was touching her it hit her too. Dylan. Fucking Dylan.

  “Dylan you motherfucker! If you just left me alone like I told you too I'd be alive!” She yelled up at the sky. In her anger she punted a nearby rock, sending it flying into the dense brush of the forest.

  Dylan must have died too, he was hit first. Was he here in this world with her, or did he get blasted into a totally different one? Half of her hoped he got sent to his own little world where he could do all his little broken M&L ideas and she didn't have to deal with them. But, on the other hand, a small, scared part of her hoped he was in this one. She didn't want to be the only outsider in this place.

  Should she look for him? How would she even do that?

  “Not like I can just go up to every person I see and ask ‘Hey were you isekaied into a TTRPG and happen to be named Dylan?’ That's an express ticket to the fantasy medieval world equivalent to the mad house… which is probably just the dungeons or a stockade.”

  “There's got to be some way-”

  >[Witts: Passive +1] - [11]: Fail <

  A whizzing something flew right at Bailey, and hit her in the shoulder, the object sinking into the flesh with a *thunk*.

  “Son of a BITCH!” She yelped out as her hand instinctively went to the pain. A simple arrow that looked carved from a sturdy stick stuck out of her shoulder.

  >”Current [Health Points] are [18]”<