Once again I was floating, weightless in a sea of darkness. The pain was at and ebb, letting me rest on the cusp of life and death. I stayed that way for a while until I became bored of it and opened my eyes. My body was just below me, still wounded yet breathing.
This was the first time I could really look at myself. I had scale patterns of tan and light browns fading into dirt brown and yellows roving up and down my body, colors that blinded nicely with the desert that once was my home. The hood of my race lay flat against the sides of my head looking like ears of a sort, folded and curving like the humans that once traveled along side me. Finned spines curved back forming my dorsal that would trace down to the mid of my back. The wounds that once covered my body were still there, though patched up with a white cloth that was starting to show red from the blood.
I lay in a bed in the center of a room with a curtain hanging in its center, cutting off my view of the door. A few chairs sat along the wall facing the bed I was in, none were occupied. I floated over myself and wondered if I had died, seeing as how a tube was hanging from my snout. Several dots of cloth connected to cording were on my chest. The cording was attached to a box that looked to contain some form of magic, the thing beeped and was putting of a faint light. It was then I noticed the slight rise and fall of my chest, signaling that I was breathing (though I new not how).
I look upon myself and wonder if my tail made the journey here with the rest of me when a lump under the covers twitched. Yes, my tail had come with me and nothing about me had changed much. The linen cloth around my right arm told me I might never use that limb properly again and that my wounds were still there, though less life threatening than I thought. Maybe I could find a cleric in this place to heal me faster.
As I assessed myself, the light in the room grew steadily until I felt someone standing beside me.
“You look like ten weeks of hard travel, Starclaw.”
“I'm still alive to do your bidding, am I not, Luna?”
I turned to see her, standing in all her godly glory. She was slightly shorter than me in this form, maybe sixteen hands high to my twenty. She was standing in a flowing cloth made of moonlight that pored over her, looking like a toga made of quicksilver. Her silver hair flowed out as if blown by a breeze I couldn't feel. Her pail skin shimmered as if giving off its own light. But what intrigued me the most about her were her eyes, large and silver orbs that shifted to black like the fazes of the moon.
“You are indeed alive but I can not help you in this world. You are alone here, save for the blade you held onto in death.” Her voice sounded as bells chiming a sweet song in my ears.
“Why?”
She smiled at my body.
“I have an avatar in this world, one that will need help defending it from what is to come. But you must not tell them why you are here.”
I raised an eye ridge at her.
“Do not question me in this. Others are watching and will be judging you, some of them you have angered.”
This brought a wicked smile to my muzzle.
“You disobeyed them, and proved them wrong. Something that no mortal should ever do, and you did it with that crocodile grin on your smug snout. Even when they took your life you smiled and deified them.” She smiled at that thought.
“And that is bad why?” I asked.
She covered her smile with a finger and shushed me.
“She's here.”
As she said that she started to fade into nothingness. She left me, floating over my body, with more questions that answers. Why gods love doing that, I'll never know.
I heaved a sight and turned back to my body. It lay there, covered in scars and bandages, barley breathing. Struggling to keep going as it healed from the beating I took before I got here. For the first time in years, I felt uncertain. My course was shadowed and hard to find, let alone fallow. What did this world hold for me? Could I overcome the challenge Luna had hinted at? Was I strong enough to complete the task she had given me?
I was starting to fallow that thought down a dark path. I couldn't afford to do this, not right now. My body shuttered in it's sleep as I processed the facts that Luna had given me. Something in this world was putting it in danger, I needed to help them find it and kill it. But what was it? Could It be killed? That was what was scaring me. I could fight a war, carry boulders up mountains, hunt any beast that reared it head, but I couldn't work in a court of nobles. I once tried, only to rip the arms off of an elven ambassador and nearly start a war between them and the temple of the Cog.
My thoughts were interrupted by something entering the room. I could only feel it enter, but there was something there. It stepped up next to me, bending the light around it giving it the appearance of invisibility. I could feel it breathing, feel it's eyes on me. I waited for it to do something, anything, before I reacted. It did nothing but sit there and stare at me for over an hour.
My temper was never easy to hold back, especially when I think I’m being watched. This thing was not moving, shifting or twitching. I could hear a settle breathing, smell the slight musk that fell through the veil, but if it held still I could see nothing of it.
This started to get on my temper. It did nothing, just sit there and look at me. It didn't say a word, or move or just do anything. I couldn't help start to growl a little. I felt the snarl build in my chest like a rolling wave of sound. It built until it crescendoed into a rawer of frustration.
“DO SOMETHING, WILL YOU!!”
This popped whatever power it had running, reveling what was hidden from me.
What I saw, strange as it may be, made me start to crack up.