Alone Beyond Death

A Grave New World

  Heat so much heat. I woke burning on the outside as well as the in. I gasped filling my lungs with hot acrid air. It smelled of sulfur and rot. Hacking I took in my surroundings.

  I was in a room made of cobbled together brick and wood scraps. The air was smokey and the room was lit with a strange fluctuating and flickering orange and yellow light.

The most notable feature was that there were no features at all. It was an empty room with no clear source of the strange light. Also no clear way to get out.

  I stood unsteady on my feet. My body shook with each wave of pain. At least I can move again, I thought. Where the hell am I?

  There was nothing. Absolutely not a damn thing. The patchwork stone and wood almost seemed to sweat what from a distance in the weird light looked like tiny droplets of dark blood. The heat quickly evaporated them into the strange smoke.

  "Well that is just gross." I muttered to myself. "What am I going to do now?"

  "Now that is a great fucking question!" The voice of the gangster rang in my head.

  "What the hell? Where are you?" I spun in place looking for the man, almost falling over. He was nowhere to be seen.

  "That's doesn't really matter, look over there on the wall. Looks like a hole." I looked ahead and could see something that looked like where the stone had shifted.

  With great hesitation I stumbled and there was indeed a small hole in between the wood and stone. I peered through the hole.

  At first I saw absolutely nothing. Just a strange gray shadow. Then the shadow moved. It became a glowing orange and red eye with a slotted pupil like a goat. A very very large eye.

  "What the fuck?" I groaned aloud. I had just long enough to start considering the sound of my voice. It was strangely raspy and androgynous. Definitely not my voice.

  "That's weird." I said. Then the wall exploded. I threw up my arms to block my face from flying bits of debris.

  A massive furry hand wrapped around my waist and yanked me through the rubble and into the air. There was fire and thousands of screaming voices all around me.

  The walls of a grand cavern had a great many naked and struggling human forms nailed to it. In the center of the cavern was a lake of fire and molten rock filled with chained screaming black corpses. Standing among them was a hairy giant with a nasty rotten goats head. Curved horns and all. And I was in it's hand.

  "Oh fuck me, I'm in hell!" I squeaked in terror, as I locked eyes with the giant goat demon.

  "Welcome to Ghamorrah!" Said a chipper young female voice.

  "It's a female?" I asked truly surprised. Because I could clearly see, even from the height the beast was holding me, the distinctly male equipment that it possessed.

  "Female sex chosen!" Declared the pretty voice.

"What?"

  "Please designate preferred race." The voice responded.

  "Uh? I don't know."

  "Gnome race chosen!" The voice sang merrily. "I do like them little cuties! Please choose your preferred class!"

  To late i figured out what was going on. A lifetimes worth of books, video games and table top games came flooding back into my mind. I fucked up.

"Mage you bitch, a mage!" I was truly in panic mode. A fucking female gnome? Oh fuck no! "And make me a male human!"

"Class chosen! Mage, sub-class witch!" The voice sang. My heart sank. "Affinity chosen, Veil alteration! Yay, that's a good one!"

  "Oh come on, that last bit wasn't even close!"

  "Ta-ta, cutie! Enjoy your new life!" The voice said. With an earth shaking  roar the great goat demon hurled me straight at the flaming wall.

  "Fuuuuuuck!" I screamed as I passed straight through the stone and into a tunnel of roiling flame.

.....

  I rode the twisted blazing tunnel for what seemed like hours. Long since had I quit my screaming. Now I was just bored. Flying along at an impossible speed, yet anything no matter how amazing just loses its charm after while.

  I had called out several times to the strange gangster who by this point I was pretty sure was Satan. Nothing for hours and as should be expected, once I gave up. Speak of the devil.

"A fucking female gnome Bill?" He just appeared in front of me. Arms crossed with a scowl on his face.

  "Fuck you! I have no idea what's going on, and you've certainly been no help!" I took a swing at him but my fist just seemed to pass right through him. He didn't even blink.

  "Calm down toots, im not even really here. I think it'll be ok though. At least your a mage. Not sure about the whole witch sub-class though. That one is new."

  "Toots, really?"

  "Yeah, and speaking of which." With that he snapped his fingers.

  My body began to shift and itch in a strange way. I looked down at myself for the first time and realized that I was not myself. I had a body but it was like a strange clay doll made of flesh. Vaguely humanoid in shape but with no detail.

  Before my eyes my body shrank in on itself and began to shape into something completely different. In moments I had curves in all the wrong places and had lost certain equipment and gained others.

  In short, I was a girl. Comparison myself to the gangster, I was a very short girl. Maybe a little more than three and a half feet tall.

  "What the... you know what? I don't even care anymore. Whatever, I'm definitely in hell and this is some kind of twisted punishment." I said in a very high and feminine voice.

I looked down at my tiny girl hands. It was better than looking at my newly acquired small but proportional breasts. Also better than seeing my lack of junk. Or body hair... of any kind.

  Thinking of hair I reached up to my head and found hair, a lot of hair. Long dark brown almost black hair that ran down to my small round bottom. Oh fuck I'm checking myself out. This isn't good. "Gaahh!"

  "Calm down tiny toots-"

  "I swear to fuck, if you call me that again I WILL find a way to stab you right in the junk!" My tiny squeaky girl voice stole most of the threat and venom from my words.

  "End of the line pretty girl!"

  I was engulfed in flame and then everything was was a tangle of flashing images, horrible twisted abominations reaching out to grab me. I tried to scream, but my voice was trapped in my throat.

  As quick as the horrors came they were gone and I landed hard on my chest and face. After the vertigo and pain subsided I realized I was laying on grass. I rolled over to see a sky filled with far to many stars... and a massive moon. Easily five times the size of the moon I was used to.

  "Fuck me."