Zared
Suddenly, the blackness starts to falter. You begin to see more of the defined pixels appearing, dotting randomly across the expanse of all you can comprehend, not just in the corner. Small pockets of shadowing boxes begin to spread.
"Something is changing! Something is happening!"
One by one, every small portion of the blackness around you becomes defined pixelized blackness. You can see the edges of the world in front of you, no longer swimming in a soup of nothing.
You feel a wave of relief. You wait. Seconds tick by slowly.
Ever, so slowly. You imagine the whirring of a machine processing.
You try to remember how long it usually takes to respawn in a game, hoping that's what's happening to you.
You long for the freedom of your seperated, distant self that could turn from the screen, find a text message waiting or a song playing in the distance.
You wonder if you've thought that before.
You cannot remember.
Suddenly the darkness begins to lighten. Pixel by pixel, the scene flows with new life, a change falls over everything.
Then, in front of you, you start to see a familiar shape. The wooden corners of a lean to propped against the stripped trunk of a scrawny tree. The rudely carved sign, staked into the ground with a sharpened stick: "Zared."
"I came back..." You realize, feeling your chest heave with a renewed breath as you looked down to see from beneath you once again. Your eyes flare wide, delighted to see you fur covered hands floating down in front of you.
You wiggle each fingertip, relishing the sensation of motion, the concreteness of being. You see the glint of each claw in the bright sunlight. "It must be afternoon."
You purse your lips, thinking. "Huh, in fact..." Your eyes strain up towards the sky where the sun burns down, oppressive yet welcomed. "The sun was in the same position when we went in..."
"So, it's basically the same time..."
You suddenly realize something is missing. Your hand jolts to your side where before you'd worn a rough rope to hold your few tools and weapons notched in, but your hips were light. Nothing.
"God... I have to remake everything..."
Just as you are feeling a fresh wave of self-pity, you suddenly see a flood of familiar faces closing in on you. Paws wave in the air. "Everyone! Hi!" You find yourself flung into the crowd of everyone, those who had died first on the journey hugging you in hardest.
"What happened?"
"What took you out?"
"Tell us!"
"Yeah, what happened!?"
Eventually, the questions hush and you give a small cough. You realize that you were one of the final adventurous, one of the ones who had lasted the longest.
"We just couldn't handle it with so few. The elves-"
"Elves?" Voice interjected, the less experienced not even knowing of these creatures. You backpedal, describing the lithe creature who had coaxed you forward in your journey. You describe the underground inhabitation.
"It was so hard to fight in close quarters. This body... the design is just too big." You gesture at your long feline torso with a shrug, finding a new confidence discussing your bodies. You find it strange, hard to describe even... but you feel like you understand better the form you inhabit.
Written by Picklessauce69 on 14 May 2017
