—Young Drakeling—

  Everything felt… hazy, my brain loose and stuffy, like my senses and ability to think were hidden away behind a wall of clouds. Always just out of reach. I think the closest I’ve ever been to feeling like this before was when I had a fever and got severely ill. For that day, I was only able to exist in an uncomfortably sweaty space, trapped between being awake and asleep.

  It made me think of a clockwork creation, with pieces stolen out of its chassis and other rusted by time. Some spun uselessly, the thoughts missing the necessary gears to reach their designated outputs. Others unable to even be moved, frozen by time. Or in this case by sickness.

  But at some point, I felt my body be picked up by something much larger than it, like a doll in the hands of a child, powerless to resist being moved and arranged against its will. I felt myself get laid down and then my limbs were touched and pulled roughly, manipulated without my permission.

  It was rough enough that it dredged together the scraps of my consciousness to the surface, and I opened my eyes. They could only open partially, and I glimpsed the Ranger above me, his stoic face almost seemed worried. I doubted that.

  The brief stint of consciousness disappeared just as quickly as it arrived, my stuffy brain only barely capable of parsing the fact that the Archer had begun to speak, but in words still unknown to me.

  After an unknowable amount of time, a strange hallucination appeared before me. It was a semi-transparent flat screen of pale blue-tinged white light, like the moon reflected off of a body of water. But it was only like that for a few seconds, the serene, calming shade becoming a deep orange, similar to sunset. The new colour had forced itself to the front and overwhelmed the blue like a flower blooming from the centre.

  It had words on it, in a language that seemed eerily familiar. It took a few seconds to decipher them, and realise that these were English words presented before me.

  It was a lot of words for me to read, and many of them beyond me at the moment, slipping out of my mind as soon as I read the next word. But I did get the vague notion that it wanted me to agree to something, and another read confirmed it, that it wanted me to accept the Path, whatever that is.

  The middle one was a bit weird, it felt like it was asking me to marry this Orion person. Which is really strange, cause 'Orion' sounds like a guy’s name.

  But before I could get even more distracted by strangely worded questions, I needed to decide whether to accept the Path. Hmm, it does sound kind of cool, like some sort of special skill or tool, or magical thing-a-ma-jig. The name is also vague and mysterious, I mean, what is it the path to?

  So, why shouldn’t I accept the Path? It sounds good-

  Hmm… Ahhhh… screw it. I haven’t exactly got much else to live for. So sure, why not.

  Hey! I’m not – I’m not… not what?

  What… does any of that mean.

  ‘Huh?’ was the last coherent thought to go through my head before I slipped back into unconsciousness, my body going limp before I could puzzle out any of the strange messages I just saw.

  ***

  I awoke again with something prodding me, an incessant poking that demanded me to wake up, like a sibling that couldn’t take no for an answer. But unlike the hazy state I was in before, I actually had the mental clarity this time around to feel the amount of pain and misery I was in. My body ached—probably in no small part to getting kicked like I was the ball in a penalty shot—my head felt nauseous and my mind tired. But most of all, I felt ravenous, my body screaming at me to sustain it in some way.

  I looked up to see that the Ranger was above me, his hands hovering about me, like he wanted to touch me but was nervous to do so. I glanced down to see his lap beneath me, and that we were inside his tent—fortunately no-one else from his insane group here.

  As much as I despised my current position, my body protested even the tiniest movement and I was unable to even lift my head more than an inch. My mind, while clearer, still struggled to remember things properly, which didn’t help the sensation that I was forgetting something important.

  A prod to my nose however distracted me from the thoughts swirling in my head, and my attention was returned to the outside world. The Ranger was holding a bowl of minced meat, and the bloodied, pulverized flesh was more tempting than it had any right to be.

  The Archer having noticed my rapt attention on the food, brought out a wooden spoon and scooped some of the disgusting yet delicious looking meat. He held it up to my mouth, patiently waiting as if asking for permission.

  I… wanted to refuse, mostly out of personal dignity about eating rat, and fortunately the food being served with a different method reminded me of the incident less than before. But it didn’t matter how much I hated the situation, the simple fact of the matter was that I needed to eat. My decision definitely wasn't made because it smelt tempting as well.

  After a few tense seconds of consideration, I decided to finish my journey into resentful helplessness, opening my mouth and taking a bite. The smell paradoxically excited my stomach, but also made me feel sick. But the moment that the meat touched my tongue, all hesitation disappeared, dismissed by the simple fact that it tasted fantastic.

  I wolfed down the rest of the meat still on the spoon, discarding my human hesitance for the voracity of the beast, practically attacking the spoon like it could escape from me. However one of the most interesting things about the meal was the lack of chewing. Only halfway through eating my meal did I realise that I was doing it in a completely different way to when I was a human.

  The way I now scoffed down food reminded me of reptiles. Instead of biting, chewing then swallowing the mashed meat, I was snapping down on the food. Instinctively twisting and jerking my head back like I was trying to rip it off. Then, without chewing, I threw it to the back of my mouth with my head and then swallowing it, my tongue being mostly unused throughout the entire process. It felt completely natural to do—thinking about the change in habits was when the discomfort manifested.

  As soon as I finished the first spoonful, the Ranger offered me another and I thoughtlessly ate that one too, and it repeated until I finished the bowl of food and ended up with a bloated stomach. I let out a satisfied sigh as the hunger finally faded, relieving only one of the many stresses on my mind.

  “Sally?” I heard the Ranger say, and for the first time I understood what he was saying. My head immediately turned towards him in shock and awe. But why would he say a name like that? Who was he referring to?

  And he was looking directly at me, not at some stranger that’d entered the tent while I’d been distracted. But before I decided to try to answer that question, I examined the man that had ruined my life, and then made sure I didn't die in the process and be spared any pain—my captor and warden—for the first time in detail.

  To put it mildly, the man was unfairly attractive. His face was a marvel of sharp cheekbones, with a defined jawline that’d put most marble statues to shame. His skin was olive, probably tanned under countless days in the sun. The hair consisted of curly black locks, cut short enough that it didn’t cover his eyes, but still tumbled over his ears partially. The eyes—always slightly obscured by the constant tired squint he had—were blue, tinged greenish brown by the olive specks in the iris.

  He faintly reminded me of eighties action heroes, in a ‘if they were a few decades younger, had a normal haircut, and worked on a farm instead of taking steroids.’

  Upon seeing me respond to the name he said, he smiled, or at least I think that he did. His ‘smiling’ was a small and tenuous thing, most of it being a small squint of the eyes and the barest upturn of the ends of the lips. Much like his face, his emotive abilities seem to have been chiselled from stone.

  This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.

  “Ywhay, ellohay Sally.” He whispered to me, that name directed at me. There was something about the word that… caught my attention, like an ephemeral tap on the shoulder or someone saying my name in a crowd.

  Why could I understand that word?

  I tried to remember what happened before this, since the cave-let’s not think about that, what happened since I got to this tent-NO! Not that either.

  What changed? I tried to remember what happened before I woke up, and faintly recalled a dream. It was weird and nonsensical, probably based off of my overly optimistic thoughts from back in the cave, revolving around a strangely considerate computer screen called the Path.

  I jerked back in shock as a deep red screen shimmered into existence before me, and watched it struggled to manifest. First it wavered like an old TV inbetween stations, then the border stopped moving and the front of the Path was filled with white boxes separated by black lines. It heavily reminded me of a certain program I’d only touched before for a travelling budget, but what was something as mundane as Excel doing in this fantasy world?

  But then it fully manifested in all of its glory, and I eagerly looked through it.

  What the fuck. Why the fuck more importantly. I immediately skimmed through the mystical screen that’d appeared before me. A number of things immediately stood out to me, mostly how it described me as this Orion person’s 'animal companion', my soul was bonded to his and that my name is now ‘Sally’.

  How. The. Fuck. Did this happen?

  You know what, maybe it would've been better to just starve to death and not have to bother with whatever kind of pile of shit that'd been flung at me.

  The only vaguely positive thing about the system was that it described my pathetic stats, and my [Soul] was the highest one—which was good… I think? What does ‘soul’ even mean in the context of a measurement?

  [Unlock the full version for more details.] A little red window popped up and told me, a bit too similar to a pop-up add for it to be a coincidence. And shouldn’t the system come fully paid for, it should be a package deal with my Isekai, so why is it acting like I only have a free trial, why would it even have a free trial built in? How could I even unlock the full version?

  … Intense much. Is there some way to get rid of question marks over my race at least?

  And how do I do that?

  Oh come on, give me something to work with. Could I speak to whoever’s in charge, maybe your manager?

  Huh? Am I… getting put on hold? Who the hell is the designated representative?

  Fucking yippee, is it broken? I mean it tracks from how horrible this life has been so far, I shouldn’t be surprised if all it did was remind me of my place.

  Oh shut up. What's the point in a broken thing like you? Just leave me alone.

  I sullenly dismissed the floating box with a thought, the hope that I’d once had for it disappearing with it. Before I could mope any longer, the Ranger, whose name had been revealed to be Orion, picked me up off his lap and put me back into the nest of blankets.

  He then got up and left the tent, leaving me by myself with my thoughts once again.

  The one thing that scared me the most about the appearance of this system—not that the insanity of the dozens of other things that'd been tormenting me weren't terrifying me—was my name. Every time I tried to think of the one I'd had before being in this tent, of the one I'd had for a couple of decades, it'd been replaced by 'Sally'.

  Not the mildly masculine name that I'd grown up with, but Sally. When I tried to think about when the teacher called out my name in school—the name I remember being a bit embarrassed by—it was scrubbed out fully and replaced with Sally.

  When I thought about my parent's calling it out to get my attention—Sally. A classmate mentioning my name across the classroom—Sally. Every single mention of my name that I could remember, it'd been replaced with Sally. I could notice the strangeness and frayed edges of the operation the system had put me through that'd changed my name posthumously.

  I despised that this system thought it had the right to mess with my memories, that it'd sifted through my memories and tainted most of them with its touch. I could do hate, I could thrive on hate alone. But it wasn't the change that scared me. What terrified me was… I didn't hate that it happened.

  I couldn't bring myself to dislike the name 'Sally'. Honestly it felt apt, getting a new name for a new life. But shouldn't I hate that it was a sort of feminine name? I could easily muster anger at the fact that someone had forced the name on me, chosen it for me, but why couldn't I hate the word itself?

  I would've suspected that the system had messed with me in the same way it'd changed my memories, forcing me to like the name. But the feeling didn't have that dirty, artificial sensation the memories had—the enjoyment I got from the name, it felt like it was mine, natural.

  That scared and confused me far more than the invasion of my mind did. How could I ever like it? The product of a violation on the highest scale shouldn't ever even have the slightest bit of silver lining to it.

  I only realised that I’d let out a whimper after I heard it. The noise was miserable enough that I decided to put away these thoughts for now, they couldn't help me and they can't change what's already happened.

  I curled up into a ball and clutched my tail tightly, pretending it was a pillow, doing my best to not think about it. The void inside me where I shoved the thoughts I'd rather not confront becoming a little fuller.

  ***

  After the silence started to get to me, Orion returned, and with him were the two of the people I hated most in this world. To the left was the man who kicked me like I was a stray dog, and the right was woman who tried to… do that thing.

  Orion gestured to me, his face stoic as he tried to point something out to the pair of humans. The two had a similar height and build, and also wore the same priestly garb, though their clothes seemed oddly… tight, the slender forms and curves of both genders on display. I couldn’t really tell if their god had some interesting preferences, or if it had some sort of battle application excuse. A couple of shows I'd watched were guilty of the—'oh? We have to be half naked for our powers to work'. I guess that at least here there was a bit sarcastic gender-equality to how both of them were equally subjected to the 'writer's barely disguised fetish' style of clothes.

  The woman leaned forwards, and while I’m sure most people would call her attractive or cute, all I could see was a horrid carelessness at the harm she caused, a rotting corpse of a personality dressed up in a lovely disguise. Before she could try and touch me again, Orion intervened, grabbing her wrist and stopping her from getting closer.

  I wonder if the Ranger realised that if she got any closer that I would’ve bit her. To be honest I’m surprised at how willing I was to just bite things now, but with it being one of the few ways I can express myself, it's quickly become one of the core staples of my personality.

  “Iyay oughtthay ouyay aidsay at'sthay it'syay afesay?” With a frown the woman retreated, and the man beside her let out an angry tirade.

  “Onay. Iyay aidsay atthay iyay usedyay ethay athpay onyay erhay, ityay oesn'tday orcefay erhay otay oday anythingyay.” Orion calmly said, before stepping in between them and myself, shielding me from the wrathful gaze of the pair.

  After some more hushed words between the three of them, the pair of priests from the same brother-no, that doesn't sound right… Sibling-hood? After they left, Orion returned his attention to me and hesitantly extended the back of his hand towards me, like he was introducing himself to a dog for the first time. I moved my head back in tandem with his encroaching hand, the two of us dancing around each other until eventually he gave up.

  While feeling pretty childish in the moment, I blew a raspberry at him without much thought behind it. I got caught up in the moment, that's all that really happened. But he acted like it was a strike to the heart, his breathing accelerating as he took some hurried steps backwards, like he’d burned his hand on the stove. I tilted my head in confusion as the Ranger froze for a few seconds, his eyes darting back and forth as if reading an invisible bit of paper, then shakily walked out of the tent.