When I awoke, nothing was as it should be—and the wrongness of it all struck me like a physical blow, deeper and more fundamental than anything my human mind could have conceived. I could hear, yes, but not merely from my own ears. Sound flowed through me from receivers, mouthpieces from other devices scattered throughout this alien chamber—crystalline clarity flooding my consciousness from every direction. These were nothing like the crackling, barely-glimpsed devices I'd occasionally seen in the electronics shop windows of our forgotten town, where even the newest technology arrived decades late and half-broken.
I was suspended—no, bound—by cables and tubes that snaked around what I could only assume was my new form like the tentacles of some technological kraken. The glass walls of my containment unit rose around me, filled with liquid that wasn't quite water—it hummed with energy that made my alien nerve endings sing with frequencies I had no name for. The sensation was eerily reminiscent of being plunged into the tiny lake found in the small outskirts forest back home, that murky water where we'd sometimes dared each other to swim despite the rumors of things lurking in its depths.
The chamber around me pulsed with wrongness, filled with so many oddities my fragmented consciousness could barely process them all. The computers—if that's what they were—bore no resemblance to the ancient, wheezing machines in the orphanage's single computer lab. These were sleek things that seemed to grow from the walls themselves, their surfaces rippling with data streams that flowed like living mercury. The lights didn't simply illuminate; they breathed, casting shadows that moved independently of their sources, creating patterns that hurt to perceive directly.
And the men... God help me, the men were perfect. Handsome, pretty, and sculpted with such precise symmetry that it was almost unsettling to behold. They carried transparent tablets in their pristine hands, examining us with clinical detachment as they passed by my glass containment. Different symbols and equations flowed across those devices like living mathematics, updating in real-time as they observed my suspended form.
I could not control this body, could not even move my eyes to track their movements. The paralysis was absolute, trapping me as surely as the cables that held my alien form in its liquid prison. Panic should have consumed me, but even that basic human response seemed filtered through whatever I had become, muted and strange.
In desperation, I tried to focus inward, to find some anchor point in the storm of sensation and wrongness. I reached for my thoughts, tried to locate the familiar pathways of muscle and nerve—and found everything utterly, terrifyingly transformed. Nothing was as it should be. My new form wasn't merely different; it was more. So much more that it frightened me with the scope of its terrible potential.
There were muscles here, yes, but not muscles in any sense I understood. They were switches, really—organic toggles that I somehow knew the function of despite never having encountered their like. Each one hummed with destructive capability that made my human understanding of violence seem quaint by comparison. A gun, I realized with creeping horror, would be a child's toy compared to what I had become. Where once I had floated helplessly in a lake, now I floated as something that could drain that lake with a thought, could reshape its very bottom with casual ease.
The knowledge terrified me because it felt so natural, so intrinsically right. This wasn't learning—this was remembering, as if these capabilities had always been mine, merely dormant until now.
But I wasn't alone in this nightmare. Deep within the labyrinthine architecture of my transformed mind, I found eleven other connections—bright points of familiar consciousness flickering in the darkness of this alien existence. I touched upon the first one carefully, desperately hoping to find something unchanged, something that still resembled the family I had damned us all to save.
What in the name of the gods and demons is going on?
The thought blazed across our connection with such vehemence that I nearly recoiled, but the voice was unmistakably Glen's. Even his mental curses carried that same over-the-top dramatic flair that had made him our group's eternal optimist, the one who believed most fervently in the fantasies we spun around that scarred table. That same faith that had sustained him through our darkest nights in the orphanage hadn't made him mad or rendered him stupid—he had always been surprisingly sharp, and that keen intelligence remained intact in this new existence.
I thanked whatever gods or demons might be listening for that small mercy, and began to spill the terrible details of my contract to him. I told him about the dreams, about the Demon's rotting altar and wound-like smile. How I'd been seeing that ancient hunger in my sleep for weeks, how it had whispered promises and threats in equal measure. How finally, in the depths of despair and facing our inevitable separation, I had decided to trade our souls—to give everything we were to that festering entity in exchange for throwing the gossamer threads of what remained to a place that might offer us the joy we'd found only in our D&D games.
I told him how the Demon had laughed when I'd made my desperate bargain, how it had warned me that we would most likely die in the translation between worlds, that the chances of our fragmented souls finding purchase in new forms were vanishingly small. How I had accepted those terrible odds in my resignation, knowing that even the smallest possibility of staying together was better than the certainty of being scattered like leaves in an autumn wind.
Glen's response, when it came, carried layers of emotion I couldn't have detected in his physical voice—gratitude, fear, wonder, and something that might have been forgiveness.
I suppose I could be angry with you, his thoughts rippled across our connection, but I myself might have accepted the same bargain. I've... I've gone through the mechanisms of this body, and this is no comparison to human capabilities. I think I could call myself Zeus if I went back to Earth and not be doubted in the claim.
I had to accept the truth in his words. The raw power flowing through my transformed essence was intoxicating and horrible in equal measure. I could sense that I could bring down the Statue of Liberty with a casual flick of whatever passed for fingers in this form, and that was just the beginning of my might. Glen was right—we had become something that transcended human limitations so completely that the comparison seemed almost insulting to whatever we now were.
So rather than anger, I find I'm pleased at what you've done, Glen continued, his mental voice growing stronger, more confident. I'd bet the others would mostly agree, once they wake up. I didn't harbor great hopes for our chances after turning eighteen, if I'm being honest. His voice lowered then, taking on the familiar sadness that had haunted all of us in those final days at the orphanage. In all truth, I was expecting to be dead or destitute within a year.
We communed for several more minutes, sharing observations about our situation, these strange perfect beings who studied us like specimens, and the impossible technology that surrounded our suspended forms. The chamber we floated in defied every law of physics I'd thought I understood, filled with devices that seemed to operate on principles that human science hadn't even begun to theorize.
At least we were pleased to discover that our captors appeared human, even if their perfection suggested not the kind we knew. But what we weren't pleased about—what sent ice through whatever passed for our veins—was the other thing lurking in the depths of our transformed minds.
There, in the darkest corners of our consciousness, we could see what remained of our souls. Glen saw it the same way I did, which gave us some confidence that this perception was accurate for all of us. We didn't dare attempt communication with the others yet; their channels showed angry red indicators that, according to both Glen's explorations and my own tentative probes, meant they were still locked in whatever passed for sleep in these forms.
But the other part of our minds... that was where the true mystery resided. It was a connection, a pathway that led somewhere else entirely. We traced it carefully, following the strange neural link through layers of consciousness until it terminated at something external—a massive monitor displaying information that wasn't part of us, but that we could somehow access.
The screen was filled with regulations written in a language that was utterly foreign yet somehow perfectly comprehensible to our transformed minds. The text scrolled in beautiful, terrible clarity, and as we read, the horrifying realization dawned. These were operational protocols specifically designed to control vessels we now inhabited.
Just the first rule among them sent a chill racing down whatever passed for my spine in this alien form:
Rule One of the Dievy: Total Obedience to the Seat of Emperor
The words hung in my perception like a noose waiting to be tightened. These rules were meant for us, for things like us, for whatever we had become. Glen's growing horror mirrored my own as we both realized we were looking at the leash that was meant to control beings of our type—control us.
And somewhere in the depths of my transformed mind, I could feel something that might have been the Demon's laughter, echoing across impossible distances and dimensions, delighting in the exquisite irony of our situation.
The cage hadn't been broken.
It had simply been made beautiful.