I saw it twisting into shape before me. The thread of my life, stretching out and out and out. It was unreal, this… eternity that waited ahead of me, matched in its dull inanity by only the eternity that lay behind me. Something had to give. Something had to change. I couldn’t take it. I had to escape.

  Targrin awoke to a low, dull ache in his body. Everything was mildly painful, somewhat sore. Considering the last thing he properly remembered was a knife slipping between his ribs, this dull ache felt… out of place.

  “What… where…” He sat up and his head swam, disoriented and he pressed the heels of his hands against his eyelids, spots twisting in the void –

  Pressure and cold were everything, but the heat of blood, some his and some not, cut through that icy reality. He squeezed a hand, leather and steel slick with sweat between his fingers –

  Targrin’s eyes snapped open, and he shook his head, recoiling viscerally from the memory. It was wrong: the blood and steel he remembered, but it hadn’t been cold in that battlefield. He sucked in a deep breath, a hand on his chest, pushing hard into the soft cotton of whatever he was wearing. His heart was racing beneath his fingers.

  “Eadrin?”

  The voice came from behind Targrin, and he snapped his head around to stare up at a boy. He was young, just into the growth spurts of puberty. The boy’s hair was a dark brown and grown out, sweeping across his eyes and hanging down to his chin. With a smirk, he swept a hand up through it, mussing it and shifting it slightly out of his face, but the dark locks seemed resistant to casual manipulation. His eyes were a hazel colour, and his skin pale, although slightly tanned and dotted with freckles across his nose and cheeks. He moved with an easy, loping gait across the clearing, and Targrin clocked training in every step. Young, but with potential. He was also enormous. Targrin was sitting up, and this boy was easily eight, maybe nine feet tall.

  “What are you doing on the ground? If you stain your breeches, May is going to make you do the washing. Again.” The giant boy laughed, walking up until he was standing over Targrin, thumbs stuck in the loops of the thick belt cinched around his waist.

  Targrin’s eyes raked up and down the boy’s form, taking in the cut of the clothes, the cleanliness, the lack of patches. The boots were well worn, real leather. Marks on the belt indicated it carried a scabbard often enough, but not at the moment.

  “Are you talking to me?” Targrin said, and then his eyes widened as he heard the sound of his voice properly. It was higher, softer, and his hands came up, touching his throat. Thin and soft skin met aching, blistered fingers. He looked into his hands and did not see the rough, gnarled, calloused hands he was used to. He saw soft, thin-finger-nailed digits. No scars, but new blisters, blisters he hadn’t carried since he was a child. His forearms were hairless and thin; the elbow-length sleeves of his doublet were neat, thick, and intricately embroidered. This boy wasn’t a giant. Targrin was small!

  “Of course, Ed, there isn’t anyone else here?” The boy laughed, reached out, and ruffled Targrin’s short hair. It was just long enough that when it fell onto Targrin’s forehead, he could see the edges of the hair: a light blonde.

  Targrin snarled and swung a hand, backhanding the boy’s forearm. The limb moved but was slow and uncoordinated, but still it struck, and the boy stepped back and frowned.

  “Hey! What are you doing, you little brat? What is wrong with you!?”

  Targrin took stock again, looking down at himself: boots a little too big, breeches tucked into the ends. His body was somewhat plump, but the clothing fit neatly, tailored for his shape. Well-fed, with expensive clothes, and someone else who does the washing. Wealthy. Noble. He got up to his feet, pivoting instinctively to face the boy.

  He was in some sort of wooded glade. Trees and rocks are all over; brambles and grass are growing between and over them. He could hear water, probably a stream, nearby. This stranger didn’t appear particularly dirty, and Targrin didn’t detect the specific musk from multiple days of unwashed travel through the wilderness on either of them.

  “I’m talking to you, Ed!” The boy said, stepping up and shoving at the top of Targrin’s head. Targrin grabbed the boy’s wrist as the hand came down, balled his other fist, and punched the boy firmly in the pelvis, right above his groin. It was clumsy, but the technique was right: the fist was tight, and the aim was true, and the sharp punch made the boy yelp and recoil, more startled than hurt.

  “Did you just PUNCH me, like some kind of peasant!?” The boy snarled, hands clapped down over his groin in case Targrin came at him again.

  Definitely nobility. And he’s confused that I did that. I must be nobility. Or… this… Eadrin is.

  Targrin’s musings shifted as he looked down at himself again. This wasn’t his body. It was small, weak, and chubby. It also appeared this body had… a place here. This world emanated a distinct aroma. Thisis a different place. Where was he?

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  Fingers, dozens of them belonging to a single hand, wrapped around him and squeezed him. He stared, aware somehow of everything in every direction, all at once—the hideous, dark void, deeper than the darkness he’d found after the knife found his heart, holding him up. The white marble all around it. A hand that was ten hands that were attached to a thousand arms, all void, all empty silhouettes, pointing out a window, into a world of green and light and music. A question was asked, he could feel it vibrating his prison, and –

  Targrin stumbled, hands to his head, and the boy he’d punched was there, a hand on his shoulder.

  “Hey, are you alright?” The annoyance, the teasing, the tones colouring his voice had faded, leaving only concern. “Did you hit your head? Or perhaps Cenric ran you too hard this morning? Occasionally I get funny when I haven’t had enough to eat or enough water. Come, maybe Lesy can sneak us a biscuit or something?”

  Targrin, disoriented, head swimming a little with another memory of a dream, or perhaps a daydream about a memory, allowed himself to be steered by the boy, and fell into step alongside him, quiet.

  ~

  Targrin sat on a stool in the kitchen, chewing on a delicious, flaky bread of some kind, with a slab of salted meat on the plate for after. His eyes were narrowed, focused, watching the boy, Wulfric, eating his own snack while standing. The cook, Lesy, had called out his name, then pinched the boy’s cheeks and called him a ‘good older brother for watching out for little Eadrin.’ So Wulfric was his older brother, and these were their servants.

  They spoke with an accent he couldn’t recognise, but he understood the language well enough. And the more he listened, the more he was picking up the vocal cues. He’d have to practice parroting it properly, but he’d had a knack for mimicry before. He hoped that would follow through in this new body. Wulfric had told the cook that he was ‘talking funny,’ which meant his own accent was coming through.

  He’d also figured out why he was aching all over. Eadrin had been training with someone named Cenric before and had only started training a few months ago. He was sore from exercise. From the blisters on his fingers, he assumed he was learning a weapon.

  Better bruised from training than bloody from battle, at least.

  “Are you feeling better, Ed?” Wulfric asked, through a mouthful of bread and meat. Targrin’s eyes snapped to the boy, peering up at him with his brows furrowed, eyes narrowed.

  “Yes. Just hungry.” He took another large bite of his sweet bread, as if to emphasise the point, and when Wulfric’s expression creased into a wide smile, Targrin knew he’d gotten away with it.

  “Good! But you’re going to have to tell me where you learnt to punch like that. Thank [[GOD]] you missed, or you might have ended my line before I even got old enough to try for sons!” Wulfric snickered and the cook gave him a stern look, and started waving her towels in his direction, and shooed him out.

  “If you’re going to talk all crass-like, then do it among the Knights, instead of in my kitchen!” Her dense, hearty accent rolled out, sharpish, and Wulfric continued to laugh, sliding his empty plate into the wash basin as he was chased out.

  The servants are comfortable with their masters. Interesting.

  Once Wulfric was out, the cook turned back to Targrin and fixed him with a light smile, then stepped up to him, reached for his head, and Targrin fought down the urge to smack her hands away. She tilted him forward, gently felt at his scalp and temples. She had the practiced hands of an old-hand battlefield medic, and something about that relaxed Targrin, just a little. THIS, at least… was familiar. He let out a low huff, eyes moving from intentionally-narrowed to half-open, and when she pulled back, his expression didn’t twist back into the almost hostile glare he’d been resting in for the last twenty minutes.

  “Doesn’t seem you have any bumps or scrapes, little Master. So-”

  He almost lost it at what she said next, as a wave of hot rage rolled up through him. He was a child to this woman, but he was a man. A grown adult, older than she was. He’d killed more people than she had years of life. How DARE she-

  He sucked in a breath and forced himself to grip the edge of the table, white-knuckled, instead of chopping her in the throat with the blade of his hand. This was humiliating, infuriating, but he was in no position to… push things. He forced himself to tune back into her words.

  “—Then go wash the woods off you before your studies with Lucian.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He said, pushing his voice a little out of his comfortable natural tone and towards parroting Wulfric’s accent. His teeth, grit tight together, struggled to let the words out. Still, she gave him a slight smile, and his decision for vapid politeness seemed to have been the correct choice, and she turned, leaving him alone with his food and his thoughts.

  So, he was in a new body. He didn’t recognise the accents, but they were speaking his own tongue (or some magic was at work, allowing him to understand and speak with the people this Eadrin could have spoken with before). He was a young boy, of noble birth, in a wooded realm of some kind. He’d seen guards, but only the simplest of armour: breastplates, helms, and shields. Not at war, but prepared to fight. He hadn’t gotten a good look at the grounds of this estate (Wulfric had hauled him to a back door straight into the kitchens) from the woods that appeared to be within the estate’s grounds. He hadn’t seen a wall yet, but presumably there would be boundaries to the noble estate he was part of.

  Why he was here, he didn’t know. Every time he tried to think about before, he had splitting headaches and some sort of vision that he couldn’t always remember fully afterwards. He hadn’t seen anyone wielding magic who might be able to catch him or help him.

  Targrin polished off his food, slugged back the water in one long series of gulps, then hopped off the stool to leave. What he needed was information. He was a spy. That’s what he’d have to be if he were to survive. He rolled his shoulders, cracked his neck, shook out his hands, and then walked through the kitchen, head held high, and marched out into his new… home.