Chapter 28: Chapter 27: Gameplay Guide

Of all the things I expected to happen, this one hadn’t crossed my mind for a moment. As I looked at what was probably, by all counts, my old body, the idea that it was still walking and talking hadn’t even occurred to me. The possibility that it would get up and walk up to what was best described as an interdimensional rift between two completely separate realms of existence was at best highly unlikely. But here we were.

 

“What,” I heard my old voice say with a dramatic flourish it had never had before, angrier than I had ever been, harder and yet somehow softer. It was clearly trying not to yell at me outright. “Are you doing in my body?!” The attempt at being controlled had clearly failed. I was thoroughly confused until I realized she was talking to me. This person, who looked like I used to and barely reached up to my hips, was probably queen Eliza. It was obvious, in the way she stood, prouder than I had ever stood upright in that body. In the way she looked up at me and yet clearly with rage and contempt somehow down at me. 

 

“It’s you,” I said quietly. It was like a freezing hand had grabbed me by stomach and squeezed. What had started off as hopeful, the possibility to meet the hero, the person everyone looked up to, had turned into a worst case scenario. What if she tried to take my -- no, her body back? Could she do that? 

 

“Yes, it is me.” She looked past me. “Kazumi, stop hiding behind that person, haven’t you realized that’s not me?” She sounded snide, derisive. I hadn’t even noticed just how small Kazumi had made herself behind me. She tried to become even smaller, seemingly terrified her old queen would reach through the portal and punish her for simply being there.

 

I turned back to Eliza. My stomach was in a knot, and a part of me wanted to curl up and hide. Even at barely half my height, she was an imposing, terrifying presence. And she was terrifying Kazumi. My Kazumi. I gritted my teeth. 

 

“She knows. That’s why she’s hiding behind me. You do not talk to her that way. Ever again.”

 

This seemed to shake her, as if she’d been in a trance. Eliza blinked once, twice, three times, and then her entire posture changed. Her frown dissipated. The angry look in her eyes that could have brought a kingdom to its knees just evaporated and her shoulders slumped. 

 

“Daniel,” she said. It took me a moment to realize why Eliza would bring up the hero then, but I suddenly noticed her reaching backwards, extending her hand, and not-Sally grabbed her hand. “I was… I did it again.”

 

“Daniel?” I said, looking at the other figure. He nodded, then turned to Eliza, gently taking her other hand and looked her in the eye, guiding her to the couch.

 

“Do your exercises, dear. Please sit down, okay. Can you count five red things for me?”

 

She nodded and sat down, caught up in herself. Daniel turned to me, to us. 

 

“I apologize. She’s been… working through things.”

 

I cocked my head. There were a million questions bouncing around my head, and I didn’t know how to formulate any of them. Which was why I was grateful that Sally had one that was at least somewhat relevant.

 

“What the fuck did you do to my body?!” she asked incredulously. “Why am I… why is it so buff? Why do you have a stubble? Where are my tits?”

 

Daniel looked at her for a nonplussed second. Then realization hit as he looked at her, at her horns, her wings, and finally laughed. “Sally Stone, I presume?”

 

Sally just nodded furiously, and then raised her eyebrows, waiting on a response.

 

“Well… I can shoot the question right back at you, Ms. Stone.” 

 

“I…” she began, and then laughed a bit too, with that hint of incredulousness that people get when the situation is so absurd, laughing seems like the only sane thing to do. “Fair enough, Daniel. I guess I eh… I had some magical help.”

 

It was his turn to raise his eyebrows. “It seems like you got a bit more changed than just my jawline, Ms. Stone.”

 

She scratched the back of her head. “Yeah… Happy accident.”

 

He just shook his head but didn’t push any further. “I myself have been on a medicinal regimen of what’s known as hormone replacement therapy. I’m afraid I haven’t had access to your… resources.” He looked at me for a moment, correctly guessing roughly what happened. “But we’re making the best of it.”

 

“We?” Sally looked at Eliza, who was still sitting on the couch with her eyes closed, softly breathing in and out in what I recognized as breathing exercises. 

 

“Lisa hasn’t been… She’s had the same difficulties I’ve had.”

 

“Lisa?” Kazumi said from behind me, and she shuffled forward. “Queen Eliza would never give up her title, let alone her name, like that!”

 

Daniel sighed and lowered his head a bit. “Not the person you knew, no. But I like to think she’s becoming a better person. She’s… not that person anymore. By choice.”

 

“I find that hard to believe, Sir,” Kazumi said, her voice sharp and on the edge of breaking. “Queen Eliza was a cruel, hateful woman, who reveled in the power she had over other people. She wouldn’t just give up like that.”

 

Daniel was about to respond, but he was interrupted.

 

“I’m sorry,” a voice that had once upon a time been my own said very softly from behind him. 

 

“You’re.. You…” Kazumi began. She clearly couldn’t believe that the Demon Dragon Queen was apologizing, let alone to her. She was taken aback, and then angry. “You’re sorry?!” she snarled, and now, her voice cracked, and tears started to well up. I very softly touched her arm, and she reached up and took my hand. Daniel’s eyebrows went up again, but he clearly didn’t want to interfere. Good. Queen Eliza had done a lot of wrong to a lot of people, and even though she hadn’t had the opportunity to unleash her brand of cruelty on Wydonia, Kazumi deserved… something. Closure. 

 

Eliza-now-Lisa just nodded, her hands limply in her lap. This didn’t seem like the person who put fear into people’s hearts. I didn’t know what she looked like, except for, well, me. A little broken, perhaps. 

 

“I… You…” Kazumi tried again, and then turned to Daniel. “You’re him, aren’t you? The Hero? The unifier? The savior everyone is so crazy about?”

 

Daniel nodded sheepishly. He was clearly uncomfortable with the praise. 

 

“She’s… She’s really….” Kazumi’s question hung in the air, and Daniel seemed to pick up on it well. 

 

“Yes. She’s no threat to anyone. She’s trying to do better. And I think,” he said, and a very slight smile played around his lips, “I can keep her on the right path.”

 

The look on Lisa’s face is what struck me the hardest. Clearly, Kazumi was equally startled, because it was a look we were all intimately familiar with. Lisa, once the great and powerful and terrifying Queen Eliza, looked up at Daniel with nothing but admiration and gratitude. Kazumi deflated. 

 

“I hope, for your own sake, that you’re right, hero.”

 

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Daniel nodded. “Thank you.”

 

There was a small pause in the air. 

 

“Why?” Lisa finally said. 

 

I looked at her. It was so hard to see her as the person who once inhabited this body, to hate her or fear her. She just looked like someone trying to find herself, someone who’d clearly been hurt and damaged. She looked… I recognized the look in her eyes from a million accidental glances in mirrors and car doors. 

 

“Why what?”

 

“Why… this? Why this… message? What’s happening? Why is this happening?”

 

In the shock of the moment, the expectation of summoning Daniel and instead seeing my old face, inhabited by the great scourge of this world, had made me completely forget about why we’d done this in the first place.

 

“I’ve been… trying to make things right. In your place.”

 

She looked a little bewildered. I recounted, quickly, how I’d tried to rebuild her territories and foster peace between the new kingdom and Wydonia, the disbanding of her armies, how the region was now prospering, and how the peace talks had gone spectacularly up until the letter.

 

“A coup,” Daniel muttered. We all looked at him. He didn’t seem to realize for a moment, so lost in his own thoughts. He seemed to snap out of it and looked at us. “I… I spent some time in the company of Queen Anastasia.” Something about the way he said it felt a little strange. Clearly there was some history there, and I wasn’t going to pry. “Her council consists of sycophants and old men who wouldn’t shy away from… underhanded methods if it kept them in power. From what you’ve told us, they’ve used this opportunity to depose her and rule in her stead.”

 

I nodded. “We’re… we’re at a loss. Peace was so close…” It was hard not to get despondent when thinking about our efforts being undone. 

 

Daniel chewed his tongue for a moment. “Queen Anastasia is… she’s young. A little naive. But she’s smart, smarter than people give her credit for. And Wydonia adores her. She’s nothing like her father, and the people love her for that, too.”

 

That made sense. Every interaction I’d had with her made me believe she was clearly not just a competent, but a just and kind ruler, as well. Back in the game, Wydonia was a lush country under her rule. It made sense that people cared about her.

 

“The problem is that you… well… that Queen Eliza,” he looked apologetically at Lisa for a moment, then continued. “The problem is that she’s an effective deterrent. People have no idea what you’re capable of, but enchanting the queen sounds entirely possible. The only person they’d believe would be Queen Anastasia herself.”

 

That was, of course, the problem. Anastasia was the one who could clear my name, and with the simplest of lies, the Council of Wydonia had found a good excuse to keep her under permanent house arrest. 

 

“I mean…” Daniel said, holding a hand up as if offering us a solution on a platter. “It’s obvious then, isn’t it?”

 

“What is?”

 

“You’ve got the, eh, the ‘Queen’s Escort’, isn’t that right?” he said. “Keep them at the border. I feel like you had the foundation of a plan there already. Buy yourselves some time.”

 

“To do what?” I asked. This was the same problem we’d had before, as well. 

 

“To rescue Queen Anastasia, obviously.” Daniel smiled. It made sense that an action hero would try to save the queen. 

 

“But… how…”

 

Daniel shrugged. “I’ve been in the castle enough. I can probably draw you a map from memory. If you get Queen Anastasia out of there and in front of the people, she can speak up against the Council. You’d have to be discreet, of course.”

 

“Of course,” I mumbled. I wasn’t very good at discreet. 

 

Daniel immediately began to draw up plans, verbally. He was clearly a good leader, and a charismatic man. I could see why people had been drawn to him. In the game, that had seemed like a gameplay contrivance, but here, you believed that a man like that would draw all kinds of companions to him. The way he spoke electrified us to jump to action, to be hopeful. I glanced at the others and the look I got back confirmed that, despite the rough patch, contacting him had been the right idea. Slowly, a sliver of hope, that had started outside of Whitehallow, was starting to light itself. Kazumi had recovered a bit, and was taking notes, copying the layout of the castle and the Queen’s private chambers as best she could. Lisa just sat on the sofa, her legs pulled up, just listening. She seemed to realize that this was Daniel’s wheelhouse and was comfortable to just let him freewheel. 

 

Things calmed down. 

 

“Will we be able to talk like this again?” Daniel asked. “I have questions.” He looked at Sally. “For both of you.”

 

Sabine piped up. Since she was sitting on the other side of the portal, Daniel and Lisa hadn’t seen her. “Yes. But not soon, and not often.”

 

“I… take it you’re the mage responsible for… this?” Daniel asked. Sabine responded in the affirmative, and Daniel nodded. “In that case, I have a few more questions I’d like to ask.”

 

“Go ahead,” I said, smiling. Daniel had been a very pleasant man to meet. He looked at Sally, then myself, and then finally at Lisa. 

 

“Sally’s been… Well, let’s agree that there’s not a lot of Daniel left in that body,” he said with a chuckle. Sally nodded with a toothy, cheeky grin. “And I’ve done a lot of work to look and feel like my old self. It’s been a hard and painful road, and I think I can speak for Lisa when I say it was that way for both of us.” Lisa nodded. She seemed small. It was still strange to see her like this, but for some reason, it made more sense in that body. “She’s getting there, and getting more feminine by the day.” Lisa smiled softly. I nodded in approval. Good for her.

 

“So why, then, Liz,” he turned to me, “Did you not change anything?”

 

“What do you mean?” I asked, but my scalp was starting to burn because the question had been casually bounced down the road for months now.

 

“Why, Liz, do you just look like Queen Eliza? Why do you look like a woman, and seem comfortable with that? Why not change your name? Change your body, your look? You probably have the power to do so. But your old body... wasn’t… well…” He seemed to carefully weigh his words. “Feminine.”

 

The air felt thick and it was hard for me to breathe, but it didn’t seem to bother Daniel in the slightest. 

 

“Were you a woman before? Did you know? When did you know?”

 

Kazumi, Sabine and Sally all looked at me with compassion, because they knew the answer to Daniel’s questions and I didn’t realize, until they rushed over in concern, that I’d begun to break down completely.

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