My Name is Eris

by megabyte97

A Second Chance

I look out across the multiple cosmos that I am floating through and try to find a reason to care about the countless stars drifting past… It’s hard, finding a reason to go on any longer, to prolong my existence. Many of my peers are gone, simply fading away once they are forgotten, and I am honestly thinking about letting go of the few holdings I still have in this universe to let sleep take me on the next great adventure.

My name is… Eris Baker, yeah, that sounds right, not that it matters anymore. Most of my peers just called me Eris. I was mortal once, young, bright, and ready to take on the entire universe by myself… Yeah right, the truth of the matter is that I got railroaded when I poked my nose where it shouldn’t have been. One minute I am trying to spy on the high priestess of Hecate, and the next I am being sacrificed on an altar because I made a stupid mistake and interrupted a sacred ritual.

That should have been the end of me, but Hecate had other ideas, I was made into her familiar, and it was not a pleasant experience. I learned everything that my Mistress thought important to teach me, doing exactly what she told me to do, all the while unable to scream.

I bewitched a young maiden to disgrace her father by defiling Zeus’ temple, and set a boy down a path that led him back to his mother’s bed to keep her warm… I created storms to rain brimstone down upon my Mistress’ enemies and created poisons that could kill with a touch…

I finally make a decision and push the memories away to see the universe once more. Summoning my magic, I quickly cut the ties tethering me to the past. My entire being jerks as my legacy fades away and history is rewritten… No one will remember me in this reality, but I am not finished.

Summoning my magic once again, I steel my nerves and cut the ties to my future. The reaction to cutting off my future is much more violent than cutting off my past. I feel almost all of my magic leave me and agony laces through my being, almost as if I still had a body to feel it.

Struggling to keep myself together, I reach out to the magic sewn into the fabric of the universe and freeze. I am in a single moment, two strings straining to keep me tethered to this reality, but in this moment… I can see everything.

I can see what my life would have been like if I didn’t spy on the sacred ritual that ended it. I can see exactly what is happening to history, I can see what my future would have held if I didn’t cut it off early, but the most important thing to me… is that I can feel everything. I can feel every strand of magic in the universe, I can feel every living being and deity…

‘In this moment,’ I think, ‘I can do anything… but only once,’ I finish while looking down at the two strings keeping me tethered to this existence. If I still had eyes I would probably be crying, but… ‘This is MY moment… and… and…’ I craft a pair of ethereal hands, the right one grabbing the two strings and the left bending every strand of magic to my bidding.

‘I wish for a second chance, I wish for enough power to make my own way…’ I can feel the magic of the universe bending to my will, recreating the past, the present, and the future.

‘I… I want to make a difference.’ One of the strings in my ethereal hand snaps, and every single strand of magic jumps into action as the final string breaks.

I find myself looking into what could only be called a void. Nothing existed except for me, and it was certainly trying to remedy that. I could feel myself being erased bit by bit, my memories slowly leaving me, but before the void could finish me off something yanks me out of it.

I scream as agony wracks through me, I don’t know how long I scream but it feels like eternity before it starts to die down, leaving me utterly exhausted, and a single thought enters my mind before sleep takes me.

‘...Why am I falling?'

---

I groan, feeling something bright and warm on my face chasing away my sleep, and a throbbing in my skull like someone hit it with a warhammer. I bring an arm up to my face before I freeze and realize three things. One, I have an arm, one that doesn’t feel human. Two, I can feel the magic around me without concentrating, something I was never able to do. Three… I have a body again, and there are a lot of sensations I don’t remember.

I don’t know how long I just laid still just trying to sort through all of the sounds, smells, and thoughts, but I eventually open my eyes and…

‘Okay… Wow,’ I think in response to an orange and white tiger paw being inches away from my face. The surprises don’t stop as I move my right arm down and the tiger paw follows it, I get a strange thought and start waving my right arm around before finally come to the conclusion that I have a tiger’s paw as an arm after it mimics my movements perfectly...

Lifting my left arm I am shocked once again to find a jet black talon sporting three sharp digits in front and one to the side resembling a thumb in front of me. Performing my makeshift test again I discover that it is mine… Something catches my eye as I perform my test and looking down, I can see something at the bottom of my vision, lifting my talon up I cautiously poke at the grey… thing… and find that it is actually part of my face.

I blink, and let my new mismatched limbs fall to… whatever I’m lying on. I just lie there looking up into a cloudy sky between some trees as I try to sort through the various emotions and thoughts I am experiencing.

My thoughts are jumbled again when I move my new tongue around and find it similar to a serpent’s… oh… and apparently my teeth aren’t consistent. I think I have three fangs with two in the very top back, both left and right sides, and a slightly off-centered one in the bottom front scraping up against my mouth. I also have canines and… molars, spaced out randomly throughout my mouth.

‘By all the gods… what the hell am I?!?’ I puzzle before I shake my head- that is certainly a new feeling!

...Alright, let’s just get this over with. I bend my legs and find that I wasn’t mistaken. My legs bend the same way, but they’re different lengths. Lunging up, I’m surprised at how well I remember to move after so long without a body of my own.

I probably would have been surprised at how my lower body looks, but at this point I’ve just given up on trying to make sense of anything. My right leg resembles a black and white zebra back hoof and my left leg seems to resemble some kind of blue reptile with two claws in front and one in the back.

‘Because why the fuck not?’ I think with a roll of my eyes. My midsection is also quite curious as every limb seems to end very abruptly. My tiger arm doesn’t seem to have any fur from my grey top half and the top half of my torso doesn’t have any orange or white showing through either.

My lower torso seems to be similar to that of a green snake… which my new tail confirms with the black and green rattler at the end of it as it swings back behind my back.

Glancing back to get another look I find that I am also sporting a pair of mismatched wings, the right being a large multi-toned brown wing similar to an owl’s and the left one looking like an oversized bat wing made out of water… I could even see little bubbles flowing along the edges!

I slap my forehead with the pad of my tiger paw as I come to the conclusion of what I am.

‘...I’m a damn chimera… what the actual fuck…’ I silently ask the trees surrounding me. Placing my mismatched feet on the ground I try to stand up, only to fall down a second later on the bottom side of my tail. I sigh when I realize that I have to relearn walking.

“This is going to be a long day,” I mumble, and just when I say that thunder rumbles in the distance, and it starts raining…

Author's Note:

Alright, Finals are OVER! I can finally unwind and relax with some writing!

If you have the time leave a comment down below telling me your thoughts on the story.

Thank you for reading, and have a wonderful day! I know I am.

Comments

[EveningShadows]

Looks interesting. I'll give it a shot.

[Darkest Dreams]

I just want to point out there are some issues with the grammar your description.
You may need to read up on the use of the comma as that seems to be a problem. I can give a few pointers if you like.
Otherwise, this looks interesting. I will read it later today if I remember.

[Emeraldleafeon]

Have a like on me!

[Mikleo]

What about this:
img11.deviantart.net/99a6/i/2014/199/f/3/eris_by_electrixocket-d7r80z2.png
source

Nice story so far.

[Charedfirescale]

Seems interesting, I'll give it a shot.

[Direct Access]

Kinda dumb beginning.
Whole lot of useless information, and almost none of useful one.
I can cut it down in two and it will still make it better and more readable.
You have a nonsense sentence in the first paragraph already, btw.