Alexis "Valkyrie" Huntingfield

I found myself incredibly underwhelmed by the motley procession as soon as they entered the building. It was annoyingly hard to see in the stupid, dim lighting, but the people that entered looked absolutely nothing like foreign dignitaries or even the retainers of a minor noble.

Not that I should know what that would look like—but surely Hollywood hasn't lied to me. However, they did look quintessentially like something closely related—they looked like half starved peasants.

I wonder if they'll turn out to be half starved peasants?

As they got closer, I realized that they were no ordinary humans—which made sense, because why would they be? If anything, what was weird was that they were human shaped at all, or that any of us could so much as breathe properly.

However, I had to keep in mind that this was an entire alternate reality. Based on that knowledge, Violet's earlier explanations, and my observations so far, I hypothesized that this place was something more like an alternate, conceptually shifted version of Earth than a full alien planet.

The most obvious feature setting them apart was the presence of demon-like horns. They were fairly small—just polished, pointy nubs, basically—which made the armchair biologist in me suspect that they were a vestigial feature that may or may not have been maintained to some degree by a form of sexual selection.

Adding to the demonic impression was that the visible skin of their faces was much more colorful than that of typical humans. It wasn't quite candy apple red or anything that extreme. It was more like someone had cranked the saturation slider in a photo editing program, massively amplifying the existing hues in the range of human skin tones.

Beyond that, there were a few minor differences I could pick out—it was a bit hard to judge their size from my current perspective, for instance, but I felt like they were all a bit smaller than a typical adult. Not enough to stand out individually, but all together—hmm. Is that intrinsic to their biology, or is that just the effect of modern nutrition.

I recalled seeing old historical clothing in museums and being rather shocked. Many old corsets looked too small for many middle schoolers, and not just because of the tiny waste. Even the military uniforms from the second world war looked oddly small.

What was so remarkable was that it wasn't just people today being fat or something. Disregarding rising obesity rates, people were just bigger even when skinny.

Beyond that, there were incredibly minor things that subtly added up. Identifying any individual difference was challenging, though, and the only things I was confident about were the more colorful skin tones, the little horns, and their smaller size.

Oddly, I found myself greatly bothered by one thing that was exactly the same. Why the hell do their ears look completely normal?

Their ears weren't pointy, or fluffy, or on the top instead of the sides, or literally anything to differentiate them from normal human ears. Given the other changes, that sameness felt weirdly wrong. Like, if you're going to have mostly human looking fantasy people with horns, why the fuck are the ears not at least a bit pointy or something?

It was outrageous. How dare reality not conform to modern aesthetic tropes? I also couldn't help but start thinking about how weird and complex the human ear shape was to begin with. The more I thought about it, the more regular ears seemed weird and kind of gross.

That line of thinking continued to bother me so greatly that I just kept staring at this one guy's ear. The procession had come to a stop just a dozen or so feet away from the throne at this point, giving me a good view from above. It was also brighter lit near the throne, making it easier for me to see the details.

I also realized that I was wrong about my eyesight not being much improved by hatching and growing into my true nature. Yes, my vision was basically just as good as it always was in my smaller, human forms, but it was much better now in my enlarged form.

I attributed that difference to each eye simply being way fucking bigger now. That's how it works, right? I knew that with telescopes, bigger was basically always better, at least in terms of light collecting area—so suddenly having an eye as big as my face should be a big upgrade, right?

I knew it was a big upgrade because I could easily see the individual threads on that one guy's cloak. It was a coarse fabric with thick threads, true, but being able to see the individual weave and not just a generic texture was something that I definitely couldn't have done under these lightning conditions from this distance normally.

People were talking and gesturing, but I had a hard time keeping myself from getting distracted again by looking at the guy's ears or marveling at individual strands of his hair. The ear thing continued to weird me out, and I quickly resented the realization of just how weird and gross normal ears looked.

I am never going to be able to unsee this.

Asher

The dragon spirit continued to stare intently at him as the proceedings went on, causing him to struggle to pay attention to anything else. It was hard for him to interpret the spirit's gaze, but he was certain that it was fixed on him and him specifically.

One simple question bounced again and again against the walls of his mind. Why?

The only thing special about Asher was that—at least in his opinion—he had a natural gift for thaumaturgy and the diligence to make use of that gift and the right opportunity. But why was that enough to draw the attention of this spirit?

Surely his master was more interesting to the arcane senses. Gallgahan was both a proper sorcerer and spirit bonded, while as of yet, Asher was neither.

Ignoring that kind of attention was quite challenging, but Asher forced himself to pay more attention to what was going on around him and the real purpose of his presence here.

Even if it weren't for their strange appearance, it would be obvious that these people were unfamiliar with the region. None of them knew even a fragment of the local tongue, and the same held true in reverse.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Even his master had no knowledge that could help them understand who these people were or where they came from. As a result, it wasn't long before both groups were talking freely among themselves while a select few members from each worked to establish some basic shared communication.

It was likely going to take a while.

Alexis "Valkyrie" Huntingfield

By the time I stopped focusing on that one guy's ear—and the fact that ears were extremely weird in general—I realized there was a small problem. We didn't know their language and they didn't know ours.

I was definitely a bit late on the uptake, since everyone was already well into establishing the basics and Violet was looking incredibly bored. I imagine I would soon feel similar.

I watched and listened for a little bit. I observed that we'd already done a decent enough job communicating the basics of the situation, and it seemed like everyone was now just trying to get better at it and firmly establish more details.

These people looked like half starved peasants because yes, that's what they were. Most of the group traveled from the single nearest village, which was, by the vibes I was picking up, about a few hours hike from here.

Things hadn't been going too well prior to our arrival because the local Big Man was an incompetent dickbag who would probably get himself killed sooner or later. These folks were hoping for sooner, but in the meantime, there wasn't much they could do.

Clearly, we were dealing with a small feudal community. I also got the vibe that things were better before because this guy's—dad, I think, which would make sense—was just a better local ruler in literally every way.

I bet it would be pretty easy for us to just roll in, murder this guy, and win a bunch of local political favor. I considered suggesting that to sound smart.

By this point, most of us weren't directly dealing with the formal talks. The peasants were setting up some kind of temporary camp in the apparent courtyard right beyond the doors they'd entered through. Meanwhile, only a few of the Bouquet members were actively working on learning the local language.

And in my opinion, they were doing a pretty poor job of it. First, their pronunciation was atrocious. Granted, I had a pretty unfair advantage there, with how good I'd gotten at mimicking things—but still.

Also, it was starting to get annoying listening to them spending minutes at a time stumbling over obvious semantic mistakes. They seemed to be continually laboring under the impression that the area had been captured by some kind of bandit chief. I wasn't an expert in the language by any means, but I was near certain that was wrong.

The vibe simply didn't match.

Finally having enough, I lowered my vehicle-sized head into the middle of their shrunken gathering, surprising literally everyone. They understanding you wrong, I rumbled in my best attempt at the alien language, they understand you be fighting bandit. Wrong?

After recovering from their initial shock, the two not-quite-humans who'd stuck around both gave me a thumbs up, one after the other. Somehow, our own thumbs up or down gesture had evolved into the de facto method for an unambiguous yes or no.

Meanwhile, the two Bouquet people, neither of whom I actually knew, looked at me with confusion. "Stop talking about bandits, you have it all wrong. The local Big Guy just kicked the bucket recently and his idiot son is ruining everything and taking too much from everybody. Though I guess that's not too different from a bandit chief at the end of the day."

Satisfied with my contribution, I retreated back into the space behind the throne. I was tired of sitting here at this point, so I was going to shift back into a more manageable form.

Shrinking down to a human size didn't take any longer than it took to grow into a massive fucking dragon, but despite that, I found myself assailed by several different people at the end of it.

"How did you know that?"

"What are you doing?"

"I think that—"

I growled to shut everyone up. "Everybody shut up," I ordered, "and leave me alone."

Slipping away into the shadows on the outskirts of the grand hall, I pondered what to do next. After a moment, I decided I wanted to take a look at the world beyond this building. I still hadn't seen any of the natural terrain.

I was deliberately not seeking out Cassandra to ask her to take me home. I knew that my hunger would immediately return in full force the moment I returned, and I had no idea how much longer it would be between then and the next chance I got to travel to a reality highly saturated in Anima like this one.

So I instead wandered by way over to the exit. I did my best to be fairly discreet about it but also didn't go out of my way to hide what I was doing. I merely wanted to take a good look—I'd firmly decided long before this point that I wasn't going to just run off into the wild.

The first thing I noticed upon slipping through the massive, corroded metal door was that it was night time. There was also no moon, but the landscape was still relatively visible with just how many stars were visible.

Even though I could barely make out the details of the land at a distance, the sheer contrast between stars and no stars made discerning the overall shape exceedingly obvious.

It looked like we were in a fairly mountainous region with flat plains stretching not too far below us. It didn't look like there were many trees, but I wasn't particularly confident about that. The only indication for that claim was that the edges between stars and pure blackness seemed way too straight and sharp. I would have expected a bunch of trees to make the boundaries at least a little bit more squiggly and bumpy.

The next two things I noticed were that one, it was fucking cold as shit, and two, the area right around me was covered in sand. That was more evidence for it being a desolate, rocky place, though distant foliage was still a possibility.

The sand was also a distinctly deep red color. I wasn't used to sand looking like tiny rubies. The literal planet Mars wasn't even as red as this, which I knew firsthand because I'd been there.

As for the temperature—well, Mars definitely still won in that category. I doubted it was below freezing, and the usual temperature 'extremes' were a total non-issue for me at this point. Feeling how cold it was didn't bother me anymore. Benefits of magical heat manipulation, I suppose.

Besides those things, there really wasn't much to speak of. I could barely see anything. Why did they choose the middle of the night to visit us? Maybe the trip took longer or shorter than expected and they just happened to end up arriving in the middle of the night.

But that doesn't make sense either. I was fairly sure about my earlier interpretation of the journey being just a few hours, roughly speaking. I guess I can just ask?

Everyone had already noticed my presence, humans and locals alike. A lot of the latter had been staring at me, though many quickly tried to hide it.

One of them went back to drawing something in the sand near a pile of sticks. I realized he was the same guy who I'd used as my reference for how fucking weird human—or alternate reality human—ears looked.

He'd definitely been staring at me.

A few seconds later, though—just when I was about to move on—I saw a weird ripple pass through the sand under his finger. I also felt a tiny, not quite tangible popping sensation, much like the opening of a breach or how it felt when I triggered Luna to hatch. It was just much, much smaller.

Almost at the same time, a bright light flared up, sputtering against the sand and then leaping into the pile of stacked kindling. Holy shit.

I quickly tasted the air to confirm I hadn't missed anything. He's not even a Guardian or anything. Was that—did I just see actual magic?

I decided to go ask. Approaching the young man—he kinda seemed like a late teenager—I took a seat a polite distance away from him. He looked equal parts excited and nervous at my presence.

Hi, I attempted to say in his own tongue, I come talking to you?

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