Character creation is supposed to be relaxing.
Not life-ruining.
That was William's last coherent thought before everything, his room, his monitor, his existence, erupted into a white so blinding it felt like it burned straight through his eyelids and seared the back of his skull.
The world didn't just blink out; it peeled away, layer by layer, like someone had deleted the entire render.
His stomach dropped an impossible distance.
His ears rang.
Every nerve buzzed with static.
Then came darkness.
Not peaceful darkness.
Not sleeping.
A drowning kind of dark.
Heavy.
Suffocating.
Warm.
His first breath wasn't air.
It was fluid.
Thick, syrupy fluid that slid into his mouth and down his throat, coating everything with a metallic sweetness that made him instantly gag.
He thrashed violently.
His palms slapped against something smooth and warm. It bowed inward like a giant water balloon made of skin.
The surface twitched beneath his touch… as if it felt him.
Panic arrived like an ambush.
He tried to scream, but only inhaled more of the thick liquid.
His lungs burned.
His body convulsed.
Every instinct screamed up, up, UP, but there was no up, just crushing pressure in a space too small and far too alive.
His vision fluttered open.
A distorted green glow seeped through the pod's fleshy membrane. Veins pulsed softly inside it like a slow heartbeat.
Beyond the murky fluid, vague shadows moved, long-limbed shapes with too many joints and not nearly enough mercy.
The pod shook as something massive slammed into the ship outside.
Ship?
How did he even know that?
His chest tightened. His pulse hammered. His thoughts stumbled over one another like newborn deer trying to stand.
This wasn't a cutscene.This wasn't a VR glitch.
This was real.
Something twitched behind his right eye.
A tiny, slick motion.
A wormish curl.
A presence, not conscious, not thinking, just instinctive, nudging at a part of his mind that wasn't supposed to be touched.
William froze so hard the fluid around him rippled.
"No…" he mouthed into the slime. "No no no no..."
The twitch came again.
A wet tickle deep inside his skull.
If he'd had air, he would've screamed.
He kicked backward in pure terror, slamming into the curved pod wall.
The membrane dented, flexed, then pushed back, too tough, too rubbery, too biological to break.
Another tremor rolled through it, almost irritated by his escape attempt.
"Please," he choked into the fluid, knowing no one could hear.
"Please let this be a nightmare. Or an April Fools update. Or… anything without parasites."
Pain stabbed through his skull.
His vision doubled, then tripled.
Strange symbols, alien, geometric, flowing like living circuitry, flickered across the inside of his eyelids.
His heartbeat thundered until even that warped, echoing like a sound trapped underwater in an empty cathedral.
A pressure, not a mind, not a voice, just instinct, brushed against his consciousness.
Curious.
Probing.
Half-formed and struggling, as if the reincarnation had twisted it into something new and unfinished.
He squeezed his eyes shut and whimpered, "I clicked Begin Adventure, not—NOT this! I didn't sign up for seafood-based reincarnation!"
The pod didn't care.
It pulsed again.
Slow.
Rhythmic.
A heartbeat.
But not his.
Another impact slammed into the ship, and the pod lurched violently.
Through the membrane, he glimpsed frantic activity, shadowy silhouettes flapping, writhing, shrieking, while something oily and purple smeared across the dim light.
Then, for one horrifying moment, everything overlapped:
The pod.
The ship.
The half-born instincts of the tadpole.
And the fading echo of the boy who had been in this body before him.
A flash of overwhelming terror.
A dying heartbeat.
A final, silent scream.
William gasped reflexively, dragging more slime into his lungs as the memory shattered like glass.
"No," he thought, dizzy, vision pulsing black. "No, no, no... I just got here. I am NOT dying again."
Something inside the pod snapped.
A wet, organic click.
The membrane shifted.
Small openings formed, as though the pod itself was reluctantly waking up.
A faint tremor buzzed behind his eye, not intelligence, not communication, but instinct reacting to danger.
Or helping.
Or simply changing.
Either way, the pod was opening.
Slowly.
Hesitantly.
Almost… grudgingly.
William coughed, trembled, and pushed forward through the widening gaps, drenched in alien fluid and shaking so hard his bones ached.
And through all of it, one painfully human thought rose clear above the chaos: "I am so unbelievably screwed."
The pod split open with a series of wet, reluctant snaps, its membrane retracting like some unwilling creature loath to release its occupant.
William spilled forward, hacking up thick ropes of viscous fluid, each breath searing his lungs as though he'd just inhaled molten glue.
His palms slapped against the floor, slick, fleshy, and faintly pulsing beneath his touch.
He gagged, dry-heaving, forcing himself not to think about whether the floor actually had a heartbeat.
A deep, resonant hum began to vibrate through the corridor, unnervingly alive, as the walls rippled in response to his presence, faint veins glowing beneath stretched, membrane-like skin.
"What… the hell…" he croaked, his voice sounding far away in his own ears.
Then...
Screeeee-chhkkk!
A shriek ripped through the ship, neither fully organic nor mechanical, but both, a sound that could only mean something big and furious was tearing into the structure.
William flinched, hands clamped over his ears as the corridor shook, fleshy wall-plates shuddering violently, shedding dust and shards of chitin-like armor.
Another sound followed.
SHRRRRAAAAAK-CHNK!
A brutal, gut-twisting noise, like steel beams and bones being torn apart together.
William pushed himself up onto his elbows, blinking through the sickly green haze. The corridor around him seemed to warp and bulge, while strange, massive shadows drifted across the hull outside, shapes so vast and alien he couldn't begin to understand them.
"What is that?" he breathed.
The tadpole's instincts, now knotted deep into his soul, stirred faintly behind his eye, not to warn, not to guide, but simply to react.
Unease.
Pressure.
Predatory awareness.
A chill swept through his nerves, freezing him from the inside out. His breath caught in his throat.
Then the ship shuddered violently again.
This time, something pierced through.
A talon, enormous, scaled, obsidian-black, with glowing ember-like cracks running along its surface, punched through the hull as if it were nothing more than soggy paper. The wall beside him erupted inward, spraying shards of fleshy metal and membrane across the corridor.
He stared, slack-jawed, as the claw flexed just inches away, each tip long enough to impale him in a single motion. Thick, wet strands of purple fluid oozed from the torn hull.
A deafening roar tore through the air, rattling his bones.
A dragon.
A dragon was crawling across the outside of the Mind Flayer ship.
Its red-gold scales blazed as it hauled itself upward, wings clamped tight against the howling storm outside.
Claws screeched over the ship's surface, tearing deep gouges like a furious god crushing a tin toy.
William's heart felt like it was trying to claw its way out of his throat.
"Nope," he rasped. "Nope. Nope. I'm out. I reject this entire timeline."
Another roar thundered through the breach, a blast of heat and smoke shoving its way inside, the pressure rattling the shattered remains of his pod.
In his skull, the mutated tadpole twitched again, pure instinct sparking like a live wire, no words, just raw reaction to the predator looming nearby.
The ship lurched violently as the dragon buried its claws deeper into the hull, tossing William across the fleshy floor.
"WHY IS THERE A DRAGON?!" he shouted to no one.
Scrambling backward, desperate for footing that wasn't alive and shuddering, he caught sight of the dragon inhaling, the air shimmering with heat.
In that instant, he understood, down to his marrow, that he was about to be turned to ash by ancient fire before he even learned to walk again.
He slapped his palm over his right eye, swallowing a scream as the tadpole's instinct flared in panic.
Then, as if insulted, the ship struck back, a psychic shockwave blasted from deep within, slamming into the dragon like an invisible cannon.
The beast staggered, flames sputtering, wings spreading wide as it readied for another attack.
William stared through the ragged hole in the hull, trembling.
"This," he whispered, "is officially the worst day of my life." The Mind Flayer ship groaned beneath him, almost in agreement.
William lurched forward, boots skidding across the slick, pulsating floor as the ship rocked from yet another distant impact.
Every muscle quivered, not from fatigue, but from the raw, primal fear of existing in a place he knew, deep in his bones, he had no business being.
He swallowed hard, swiped more of the alien slime from his face, and pushed himself toward the jagged, gaping hole torn into the corridor wall by the dragon's claw.
Each step felt like walking on someone else's legs, too light, too wobbly, too uncertain of their own strength.
The tendons behind his knees fluttered like overstretched rubber bands, and he half-expected them to snap at any moment.
"Okay," he muttered shakily. "Just… look. Don't fall out. Don't get eaten. Easy goals." He reached the breach, and the world hit him like a fist.
A blast of blistering heat slammed into him, furnace-hot, stealing his breath and scalding his eyes.
The air reeked of burning stone, boiled blood, and sulfur so thick it felt chewable.
His eyes stung instantly.
He jerked back, throwing an arm over his face.
"Gah, WHY?! Why is it SPICY?!" Still, he forced himself toward the gap again, squinting through the shimmering waves of heat.
He had to see.
He had to know where the hell he... oh.
Oh.
He was in hell.
Outside the torn hull, the Mind Flayer nautiloid tore through an infernal sky streaked with volcanic clouds and rivers of lava that carved molten scars into a shattered wasteland.
Jagged iron spires jutted upward like the ribs of some colossal demon's corpse, while lightning split the horizon in crimson flashes, each strike echoing with distant screams carried on the sulfur-choked wind.
And the sky?
The sky was pure chaos.
Thousands of winged silhouettes swarmed the ship, moving like murderous hornets, leathery wings thrumming in frantic bursts.
Long, whip-like tails ended in venom-dripping barbed spikes, and tiny horns caught the glow of the hellish light.
Imps, actual, shrieking, fire-flinging imps, swooped in to claw, bite, and spit curses vile enough to sour the soul.
Some hurled blazing orbs of infernal fire toward the dragons wheeling above the battlefield.
And the dragons, plural, naturally answered in kind.
Red-scaled behemoths carved arcs through the sky, intercepting imps mid-flight, snapping clusters into their jaws, and unleashing gouts of flame that detonated swarms like popcorn kernels.
Their titanic wings churned the air into hurricane gusts, shaking the blasted land below.
Mind Flayer turrets answered the onslaught with searing bursts of psychic lightning, erasing imps in puffs of black smoke.
It was war sculpted from nightmares, and William stood squarely in the splash zone.
"Oh my god…" he breathed. "This isn't just the worst day of my life. This is the worst day of everyone's life."
The ship jolted hard to the left, nearly tossing him straight out through the gaping breach. His shoulder slammed into the inner wall, sliding across a slick coating of slime.
A sharp, instinctive twitch rippled behind his right eye.
Alarm.
Survival.
Shelter.
The tadpole inside him wasn't truly thinking, but its primal instincts flared like an animal cornered by fire.
Fantastic. Even the brain parasite was losing it.
William staggered upright, chest heaving, lungs still burning from whatever fluid he'd been drowning in minutes ago. Gripping the jagged metal edges of the torn hull, he leaned just far enough to look out.
The hellscape below sprawled endlessly, rivers of lava snaking through the land like glowing veins, titanic chains stretching across vast chasms, holding down something massive and thrashing beneath clouds of ash.
A dragon tore past the breach, so close its scales glittered like thousands of molten mirrors. The roar that followed rattled his teeth in their sockets.
He jerked back, nearly landing on his rear.
"Right," he muttered shakily. "So… I'm on a Mind Flayer ship… in Hell… mid–aerial war… with actual dragons… while partially fused with a brain-eating tadpole…"
He swallowed hard, voice cracking.
"Yeah, I'm going to need… so much therapy."
Another brutal impact rocked the ship as a fresh wave of infernal fire slammed into its side.
Something metallic yet alive screamed through the floor.
And somewhere deeper in the ship, something began to stir.
The next explosion was anything but subtle.
It slammed into the ship's underbelly like the fist of an angry god, sending the world careening sideways.
William was lifted clean off his feet and thrown backward, hitting the floor with a wet smack that knocked the breath from his lungs.
"OW! Okay! THOUGHTS LATER! MOVING NOW!"
His ears rang, the walls around him seemed to pulse in what could only be described as panic, if a ship could panic, and the psychic hum underfoot spiked, turning into a sound that felt like a migraine stabbing through his skull.
He staggered upright, boots sliding on the slick, living floor, and forced himself to take stock of the room he'd stumbled into.
Then he froze.
Pods.
Hundreds of them.
They lined the walls, dangled from the ceiling, and jutted from the floor like grotesque glass-and-flesh cysts.
Every one of them held a person.
In one, a male elf floated limp, fingers curled mid-spell, faint arcs of magical static still flickering over his arms.
In another, a pink-skinned woman with horns curling defiantly toward the heavens looked as though she'd been caught mid-rebellion.
Several humans drifted in their capsules, some in armor, some in robes, others looking like they'd been plucked straight from their dinner tables.
And then, William's breath caught.
A man covered in gleaming golden scales, his sharp, reptilian features marking him as dragonborn, floated silently in the nearest pod.
Even in slumber, his claws twitched, as though locked in some dream of battle.
William found himself drawn closer, unable to look away.
Then...
BOOM.
The far wall erupted in a violent geyser of fire, shredded chitin, and shrieking metal.
Pods tore loose from their sockets, hurtling toward the gaping breach.
One ripped free and shot past William like some grotesque, fleshy missile.
The vacuum seized him next, air roaring past as his feet skidded on the trembling floor.
"Nope nope nope nope!!!" he blurted, sprinting for his life.
The deafening wind drowned out all else as pods ripped free around him, their occupants vanishing into the hellish sky beyond.
He spotted a sphincter-like door, disgusting, yet in this moment, the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen, and dove toward it.
He slammed into the fleshy threshold just as another dozen pods screamed into the void.
With a wet, meaty slap, the door sealed shut behind him.
William collapsed against it, gasping for breath.
A moment passed, just enough for him to think: Okay. Safe. Safer. Safe-ish.
The ship lurched with a bone-rattling shudder. Across from him, the wall shredded like paper, torn apart by another blast from the nightmare raging outside.
A fresh gap gaped wide beneath his feet, opening onto an endless plunge into rivers of molten rock and the deafening howl of infernal winds.
"Oh, COME ON!" The pull came immediately, a force so strong it nearly ripped his arms from their sockets.
He latched onto the first thing within reach, a glowing bulb of bioluminescence, pulsing softly in shades of blue, and clung with every ounce of strength.
His legs whipped upward, feet dangling over the yawning mouth of Hell itself, as the wind shrieked past, dragging him closer to oblivion inch by inch.
His grip faltered, then the ship itself began to sing.
A low, thrumming wave of blue and violet energy surged through the Nautiloid, threading the walls with veins of psychic fire.
The pulse crashed over William, sparking along the tadpole-laced nerves behind his eye like raw electricity.
It didn't just touch him, it synced with him, locked onto him.
And before he had the chance to scream, the view outside shifted in an instant.
Hell was gone.
In its place stretched a vast expanse of emerald forest, glittering rivers, and mountains in the distance, their peaks bathed in gold by the setting sun.
William's mouth dropped open, then his grip gave out. In an instant, the pressure shift ripped him free from the bulging wall-mouth, and he shot into open air like a cork from a very confused champagne bottle.
He spun helplessly, wind howling in his ears, the sharp scent of saltwater and pine rushing toward him.
Below, a crescent of beach hugged the edge of a dense forest.
"Oh shit! Oh shit! OH SHIT!!!"
The Nautiloid roared overhead, engines screaming, tentacles flailing.
It tore past him so close he felt the heat of its thrusters, then slammed into the next beach in a cataclysm of sand, rock, shattered trees, and raw psionic force.
William barely noticed.
The ground was coming, fast. Too fast. Pure instinct made him cross his arms over his head, fueled by hopeless optimism.
"As if THIS helps…"
Just before impact, something inside him detonated.
A violent psionic surge burst from his palm, a blast of purple-blue energy roaring like a broken world.
The beach below flattened instantly, sand fusing into a smooth, glassy sheet that cracked and slid beneath the waves.
The shockwave slowed him just enough. Instead of splattering like an overripe fruit, he slammed hard into the sandglass.
His shoulder popped with a sickening crack, and blinding pain flooded his vision.
He hit, rolled once, and came to rest on his side, gasping. Teeth clenched, eyes streaming, his useless arm screamed in agony. He stared up at the sky, tasting salt and blood.
"…Ow," he croaked.
Gentle waves lapped at the ruined shore, mocking the disaster he'd just endured.
"…this adventure," he wheezed, "has terrible onboarding…"