//------------------------------// // 01: A Deal with the D // Story: Guffaw at the Grossly // by Weeeman //------------------------------// Chapter 1: A Deal with the D “Yes, kill the Black King! Use your page of rage special power to deal massive damage!” I was shouting by that point. But, who wouldn’t? This session was, by far, the most interesting of S̴̷͞B̶̕U͠R͏̵́͞҉B͞͝ I had seen in centuries. There were a total of 64 players in this one, so the Black King had evolved so much due to the players’ actions that it was impossible to determine his original species. Carapacians resembled humans covered in a black exoskeleton, but the monster the teenagers were fighting only retained the black coloration. Hours later, the players won their game, so I decided to stop watching. The happy ending was always the most boring part. Just thinking of how boring it would be to see sixty-four teenagers drop their weapons and enter a new universe in which they would be able to prosper made me leave. On an unrelated note, I had found a song I couldn’t stop listening to. I wandered in my ethereal form around the Nexus, trying to find anything fun that would make me laugh. I was half-tempted to try assuming a physical form, but doing so in the Nexus often meant immediately dying and then spending several years trying to get out of the dead body you had placed your soul into. I was thinking about why mortal bodies seemed to die so easily when I stumbled upon something that I had never felt before. It was a trail of the magic of another member of my race, but what was unique about the trail was that it clearly signaled that the magic had been to actually leave the Nexus and enter another dimension. That immediately picked my interest. I focused on the trail and soon found that I could follow it and reach that place. “Should I rush head first to an unknown and potentially dangerous dimension?” I wondered aloud. “Well of course I’m going to do it!” I used my magic to travel out of the Nexus and enter a physical dimension. Describing anything that happens in the Nexus is difficult, especially if you can only describe what a human being is able to perceive, so I’ll describe the travel as many blinding lights and an annoying buzzing that lasted several seconds. When it ended, I felt a strong force trying to pulling me towards the Nexus. I had been told by my elders that the force I was feeling would drag me back to the Nexus unless I managed to assume a physical form, so I quickly got to it. To begin with I turned myself into a carapacian Queen, so I could actually see through physical eyes where I was, and because I considered myself closer to being female than male. Being physical felt so weird. I had always been a spirit, pure energy and conscience, but now my intelligence was confined in a brain, and my energy was stored inside my body. I was surprised by the fact that I seemed to know how to breath and how to move, which was great because moving like a newborn for weeks would have been a great annoyance. Just as in the Nexus, my magic acted as I willed it, so I didn’t have to say stupid words or dance around like a clown for my magic to work. I will probably do it, anyways. Doing the dance of rain must be much funnier than making it rain without dancing. I seemed to be standing on a grass plain and surrounded by air with a large amount of oxygen, so I quickly discarded anything that would be useless, such as having gills instead of lungs, and started shaping my body. Firstly came my head. Years ago, I had watched a rather primitive species which I had grown fond of. I liked them so much that I had, in fact, decided that I would like to look like them if I ever assumed a physical form. My magic changed my head until it no longer resembled a carapacian’s. My features were feline, with ears and teeth and all of those weird things animals have so they can, like, eat and see and listen and stuff. White fur covered my new head, and I had a total of two eyes. I considered having more, but what was the point of having so many? I also couldn’t decide which color my eyes should be, so they kept on changing whenever I changed my mind. Secondly, I focused on my torso. I felt my current body to be too restrictive, so I immediately thought of a torso which had a bigger liberty of movements than most: that of a snake. I briefly considered making each scale have a different color, and the thought of different colors made me remember an animal that could change the color of its scales, so I made my scales able to mimic the colors of whatever I wanted. After that I contemplated having more than two arms, but I decided to give myself only two and add more if I ever wanted to. My left arm turned into living water that I could control as if it was a regular arm made of flesh. This living water came from a species I had seen a long, long time ago, which could turn their bodies into ice or even vapour whenever they wanted. They were so cool. Anyways, my right arm remained the same, but I remembered that carapacians seemed to lose limbs very often when anything attacked them, so I made it bulkier and with a sturdier exoskeleton just in case. Then the fingers looked weird, so I made the index and middle finger fuse into a single finger, and then I did the same with the other two fingers. For the legs I quickly decided what I wanted. My left leg turned into a female human leg, because female human legs seemed to have the power of sexy, and I wanted to try what wearing high heels was like. For that, I made my human leg wear a black fishnet stocking and a red high heel. My right leg turned into a mechanical limb, which resembled the skeleton of a human leg, but with the toes ending in huge claws. Then I decided that metal was too plain so I painted it neon green. With pink dots. “I think that’s it,” I said aloud, my voice sounding more high-pitched that I expected. “Wow, so that is how my voice sounds, it’s ratheee...” I felt a desperate need for something as I found that I couldn’t speak anymore. Then my new body’s instinct kicked in and I started to quickly breathe. “Oh, I need to breathe now,” I told myself, my breathing slowing down. “I need to remember that. Now, what else?” “Maybe you could add wings. Flying is useful.” “Sure! Wings wings wings… Oh!” I gave myself the right wing of an albatross, which was noticeable larger than my insectoid hand. The left wing was that of a hummingbird. I made it many times larger than it should so it would actually stand out, but it was still much smaller than the other wing. “Alright, now what?” “A tail?” “Meh, tails are kinda useless… Wait, I have an idea.” A large tentacle sprouted from my lower back, its suckers shaped like hooks that could cut through flesh. “Well, I think that’s all I need.” “What about some horns?” “Horns? Why would I even want horns? Worst idea ever,” I stretched my new limbs for a few seconds, then I realized something. “Hold on, who am I talking to?” I looked in front of me and found another mix of several different creatures facing me. The facial features were masculine, so he probably considered himself a “he”. His head had a vaguely equine shape, with sharp carnivore teeth and two long fangs. The coat on his head was grey, his mane was black and he also had a small black goatee. His eyes were yellow with red irises under his thick black eyebrows, and he had an antler and an uncommon blue horn sprouting from the top of his head. His torso was long and slim with dark brown fur. His left arm was yellow and resembled the foot of an eagle; while his right arm was yellowish and similar to the arm a large feline would have, such as a lion. He had two small legs, one green and covered in scales like a dragon’s, and the other covered in brown hair and ending on a cloven hoof. He had two wings on his back, one with light blue feathers and the other dark blue and leathery. His tail was covered in red scales and ended in a tuft of black hair. I felt small, since he was twice as tall as me, even though I had made myself around 85 inches tall. Or was it 2 meters and 15 centimeters tall? There are few things I hate more than measurement units. Especially human's. “Hello, fine lady!” he exclaimed. “I didn’t expect to see another draconequus around here. May I have your name?” “Draconequus?” “Well, miss ‘draconequus?’, you may call me Discord,” he said. “By the way, draconequus is the name the races of this world have given to our kind.” What a silly name. Mortals are so unimaginative. “You could have started with that, Discock,” I replied, annoyed. “My name is G̨̈̊͑̎ͣ̽̾ͦ͌͛̄ͥ̽͢҉̯̮̖͔̟̺̪̗̮̗͙͕̺͍̮͎̖̩̭́û̢̋̔́ͬ̇̀̔̍͞͞͏̼͖͚̭̬̱̗̼͔͟f͐͆̈́̈ͮ͊̈̂̉̚͘͡͏̛͉̱̙̖͖̜f̴̸̨̣̬̖̜̞̖͉͕͚̝̝͚̲̳̰̫̫͛̈̃͛̀ͧ̓ͩ̏́aͣ͑̒̆͛͑ͧ̈̓͂͌̒ͮ̉̈́ͧ̽́͏̴̯̺̣̯̞̘̯ẁ̴̢̀̑̌̾̂ͭ̍̎͐̓ͬ̚͞͏̮̲̮̹̦̮͎̥̗͈͎̹̠̰̙̳͙.” Saying my name hurt my throat, so I started coughing in slight pain. “A good name, but I fear saying that to a mortal will only make him develop a headache, and it will hurt your delicate vocal cords.” “Ugh, if I had known the physical world was so limited I would have stayed in the Nexus…” I said. “Call me… Guffaw?” “Guffaw? Why not Chuckles? Anyway, I must say I was surprised when I felt you breaking through the dimensional barriers the same way I did all those centuries ago. Why have you come here? Are you a fangirl of mine, maybe? I don’t sign autographs.” I just had to roll my eyes at that. “I just happened to find traces of your magic and decided to take a look around. I was curious about what having a physical, mortal body was like.” “Well, now that you are here… Would you like to play a game?” “About time you said something interesting, old man! What is this game about and how do we play?” I asked with eagerness. “It’s rather simple: you become my champion, you go to a giant floating island, you win if you are the last champion alive or the remaining ones surrender to you,” he explained. “Sounds fun! When do we start?” “That’s the spirit! Now, I regret to tell you that, in order to participate, you need to have your power weakened. Most of your opponents are mortals in rather frail bodies, so you could just kill them in the first day of the game without these limits.” I frowned. “What limits? If I’m going to be forced to live like a boring powerless mortal then there’s no deal.” “Well, your raw power is fine as it is, but I fear you won’t be able to teleport or heal your injuries. I mean, these bodies of ours, they are simply too hard to kill for mortals,” he said, and to prove it he disemboweled himself, did some skipping with his intestines and then instantly healed. “What do you mean ‘your raw power is fine as it is’?” I demanded. “You are calling me weak? I’m going to wreck you.” I summoned all my power as an aura around my body to impress the older draconequus. My smug smirk dropped when I noticed that Discord had done the same and his was way, way bigger than mine. “Alright… Maybe I’ll let it slide this time.” “So, do we have a deal?” he asked, the glow on his eagle claw slowly vanishing. “What will happen if I die? I don’t want to find myself trapped in some sort of afterlife from which I can’t ever leave.” “Well, you are as immortal as I am, so the worst your opponents can do is killing your body. If that happens you will be taken back by the Nexus so you will be disqualified for leaving the game zone.” “Then it’s a d… Wait, what do I get for winning?” “You? If you win I’ll let you stay in this world instead of kicking you back to the Nexus.” I shrugged. “Alright, I’ll be your champion or whatever you call it.” “Great! Now, let me link our minds. That way I’ll be able to communicate with you as if we were in the Nexus. I’ll give you more details while you fly towards Atlantis, the flying island.” I nodded and allowed his magic to enter my body. He snapped his eagle fingers and I felt a small shiver when he blocked my ability to teleport and heal myself, but it only lasted a second. Where is this ‘Atlantis’? I asked him, directing the thought at him. Discord surprised me by grabbing me and throwing me to the air. Fly in the direction I threw you and you will find it! he explained via our mental link as I began to flap my wings. Go eat the hairballs of a dozen fat cats… Wow, this flying thing IS fun. I told you about it. Wait, what is this? I feel like something invisible is touching my face! What’s happening? That’s the wind. Oooooooh. Hehe, it sorta tickles. So, this dimension… What kind of mortals live here? Humans, maybe? No, not humans. Then I’ll have to change my sexy human leg into… Hey, I can’t change it! Damn you, your magic doesn’t let me change my body! Changing an old limb into a new one counts as self-healing. Damn. So, who lives here? Well, the history of this young planet, by the way the name of the planet is Equis, is rather complicated. You see, in the beginning there was the Perfect Race, which- Abridged version, please. Killjoy. There are three sapient races. Dragons are the first one, they are very powerful and all the things you can expect from a dragon: flying, fire-breathing, hard to damage, nasty and long lived. Oh, and in this planet they can use magic by talking their native tongue. Then there are alicorns. Alicorns are horses with horns and wings. Their horns let them use magic that can rival ours. Well, not mine, but you won’t find it funny if they attack you. Lastly, there’s the cynogriffins. Cynogriffins look like wolves with wings, and they can fly really, really fast. On a related note, if they break the sound barrier in this world they create a huge energy shockwave. If they manage to move at twice that speed, they create an even bigger shockwave, and so on. Wow, this world is so weird… I love it! So, Discord, what happens when one of them travels at, like, a hundred times the speed of sound? I have no idea. I have tried making them travel at insane speeds with my magic but it seems that they must reach these speeds on their own for the magic to happen. Wait, so you took these wolves and propelled them into the air fast enough for them to leave the planet’s atmosphere? Yeah, isn’t it fun? You bet it is! Alright, now I have some questions about not dying. Because you want me to win, right? Yeah… How much should I eat everyday? Do I even have to eat or can I sustain myself with magic without it counting as self-healing? Yes, you really should eat or you will starve. I like big butts and I cannot lie, so you better keep that rear properly fed. And using your magic to replace any of your body’s functions, such as breathing or eating, counts as self-healing. OH COME ON! It’s not that bad. During the following weeks most of the limits will disappear. I’m also limited in how much I can tell you, but I can say that the god who started this game made a rule so no piece was stronger than his at the beginning of the game. That is why I have been forced to limit your powers, so that you can’t defeat that piece right now. Grumbling to myself, I kept on flying towards Atlantis, a part of me wondering if this game would be fun enough to compensate the constraints that it had placed on me.