The rope ladder was a long one, and eventually led to a treehouse made from some sort of wattle and daub creation. The hatch was open and there was a pleasant aroma seeping out from it and a nice warm glow of what looked like a fire.

  Though, I had not smelled wood burning while walking through the forest.

  Curious, cold, and a little sketched out… I kept climbing and hoisted myself up into the house.

  For a treehouse, it was well appointed. A big hearth stood on one side of the wall, a big black cauldron positioned over the fire which was crackling merrily and giving off an inviting and delicious wood smoke aroma.

  In the corner, there was a modest cot with a handmade looking quilt covering it, looking something like the three little bears’ coziest bed. A table sat in the middle of the house, two wicker chairs on either side.

  On the table lay a pair of grey trousers, a green looking tunic of sorts, a big black belt, a knitted green cap, a wad of what looked like bandages, a dark ruby liquid in a small bottle, and a light blue and bubbly looking liquid in a triangular shaped container.

  Next to the clothes, there was a note.

  GZELLE – Put these on, patch yourself up, drink these, and then help yourself to the stew in the hearth. I left you a bowl and spoon. Once you’re fed, healed, clean and warm, I’ll be back and explain everything. – T

  I eyed the note suspiciously. Not only had my weird eye HUD map thing led me to this spot, but there was a letter written and addressed specifically to me… with my nickname, no less.

  Weird fucking nickname, right?

  Well, other than it being my first initial and my last name jumbled together… some dude early in my career said I walked like a Gazelle and there came the name. He thought I’d hate it, but I actually loved it. Take that, bully. Anyway, GZELLE.

  There ya go. Spooky right?

  Shaking off the creep factor, I saw no harm in putting my dick away, so I moved to don the clothing.

  Before I did, I stopped myself.

  Get cleaned up?

  I eyed the two bottles on the table. I picked the dark ruby red one first. The semi translucent text came into my vision, once more.

  Common Health Potion. Drink to heal your wounds.

  I downed it. I felt my skin flush with energy, my pain slipping away like the world’s fastest narcotic, and the hole in my leg closed up. A few minutes later, my shoulder was as good as new.

  “Well, if I’m dreaming… I don’t want to wake up.” I said to no one in particular.

  Then I picked up the blue bottle. The text came back.

  Common hygiene drink. Drink to reset your body to its cleanest state.

  “Like a shower in a bottle? Where the fuck am I?”

  I shrugged, and downed that too.

  My body tingled with delight. The sticky, gross, coppery matted monstrosity that was my hair bubbled and fizzed. My once bruised knuckles prickled with a minty freshness, and suddenly all the blood, mud, and dirt disappeared.

  My entire naked body, once looking like a post modern art masterpiece of disgusting manliness was now comically clean. I don’t think I’d ever been this clean.

  Well, maybe I had, before becoming a medic.

  I moved for the clothes next. Though they looked scratchy, the fabric was surprisingly plush once on, and fit perfectly… which was weird.

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  I’ve got this long torso problem that makes finding the right clothes tough.

  Now warmer, healed, and cleaner… I peered into the pot in the hearth. Bubbling inside was what smelled like a delicious meat stew, though I couldn’t place all the ingredients.

  It looked like… mutton?

  Maybe?

  There were big chunks of potatoes and onions and other things I recognized, and given I had just thrown up my lunch I wasn’t about to scoff at a free meal. Whoever set this up, knew my name and my clothing size.

  So, without any other options… I was just going to see where this went. I just hoped they weren’t going to try to eat me, sell me, harvest my organs, or anything else nefarious.

  The stew was really, really, good.

  Belly full after just a few minutes of inhaling my food, I looked around the treehouse a bit more. The interior was cozy, modest, but not poor.

  Each piece of furniture looked handmade, but by an expert craftsman with love and care. There were little filigrees when appropriate in the table’s legs, small and delicately painted flowers at every corner of the room, and even the flooring was polished.

  There was a very well-appointed bookcase, filled to the brim with leatherbound books. I walked closer and inspected them, bowl of stew still in hand.

  As a bit of a book hound, I’m always checking out people’s bookshelves. I feel like you can tell a lot about a person based off the information they consume.

  For instance, someone who might take themselves entirely too seriously and who is overly concerned with their own destiny might have a shelf full of memoirs and autobiographies.

  I was at this one party in SoHo where I found a bookshelf packed entirely with books about Bill Gates, Elon Musk, and Zuckerberg. I left that party pretty quick after seeing those.

  That guy sucked and really just wanted everyone there to invest in his startup.

  Of course, if there are multiple shelves then they might have multiple interests and various uses for the books. A psychologist with books on the gut brain connection, for example, might also have another shelf with fiction filled with Tony Hillerman novels.

  Context and placement in the home mattered.

  This bookcase, however, was eclectic, being the only one in the small treehouse. Scanning through, I saw books on herbalism, foraging, woodworking, and other self-sufficient sort of texts you might expect in a forest dwelling. The treehouse did feel like someone’s lovingly adorned bushcraft hobby house.

  Everything made sense up until I saw another book—

  Natural Practices, and the Magic of Fauna.

  And then another—

  Transformations: How to Access Your Inner Bird.

  That last one gave me pause, but I kept scanning.

  Increase Your Mana Capacity in Three Simple Steps.

  Okay, cool. Magic was…real? Couldn’t be… right? But given what I had just experienced with the two potions, my brain was crackling with what was possible.

  Metallurgy: More Than Just Blacksmithing

  Getting increasingly curious, I picked up the first I had seen. A book on local Fauna seemed like a good place to start, if anything. If I was going to be here a while, I should know about what dwell in the forest below. You know, besides pricks with swords trying to murder me.

  So, I resolved to take a peek.

  Whoever owned the treehouse said they’d be back in a bit, and picking up a book from someone’s shelf wasn’t exactly rude. But when I went to open it to the first page, it wouldn’t budge. Instead, that same semi-translucent text appeared in my vision.

  Congratulations! You’ve found a legendary discipline book! This is your first book, earning you the achievement: Literate and the passive perk: Reader. To learn more about your newly acquired passive, go to your character page under passives.

  Would you like to read the text Natural Practices, and The Magic of Fauna? Doing so will select the Fauna Discipline, which is an irreversible and body altering decision.

  Yes/No.

  “What the fuck?” I mouthed under my breath and put the book back on the shelf. The text in my vision faded away and I wiped at my eyes.

  What the actual fuck was going on?

  The mini map and text in my vision was one thing. That could have been an overlay from contacts someone put in my eyes when I was knocked out. The potions? Drugs… maybe? I don’t know. The passive perk thing?

  Did that mean what I thought it meant? I was plenty familiar with the concept, being an avid gamer. But my brain still couldn’t entirely wrap my head around the idea of magic, other than I was sleeping and in a game type dream scenario.

  I used to lucid dream in the past, so I tried a few of my tricks to see if I was actually in a dream.

  The easiest method was to see if text was legible when read, but I had already read that note from the mysterious “T” earlier. I tried pinching myself, grabbing my nipple and twisting hard (don’t judge me).

  OW.

  Okay so, pain was real. Which meant that I wasn’t in a dream. I could be in a medically induced coma or something, keeping my brain from dying as doctors rushed to repair my broken body after that fall. That seemed unlikely, the shattered glass from the mirror and the wrought iron it was set in would have sliced me up pretty good and had me bleeding out in minutes.

  My mind could just be somewhere else entirely. Afterall, no one really knows what happens to a consciousness after death. Whatever was happening, was real. One way or another. And that whole glowing thing?

  Real.

  And the current situation I was in, wasn’t exactly a bad thing, though. Well, it was earlier. Fucking sword guy. But it was good, again. No harm done, right? Some harm done.

  He was dead.

  But I wasn’t!

  So, I picked the book up again.