This smell never quite went away either, and the odor of the college dorms always had a certain similarity to a heady cocktail of instant noodles, old wooden desks, and energy drinks steaming in the stale air.
Logan sat cowering in his ever-squeaky desk chair, the cushion on which he sat almost as thin as the battlefield of some long forgotten war. He was focused in the zone, and his fingers were dancing upon the keyboard as he flew his Yasuo through what he believed were high-level plays in Summoner Rift.
At least, that is what he said to himself.
"Blitz! Are you trying to hook the air!?"
The scream was like a hand grenade in the stuffy room.
His next door in the room whapped his hand and shook the whole row of monitors. I said hook an enemy not to play at a blinking game with the air!
Logan didn't even glance over. He was doing that because he had bigger problems, namely, the enemy Lee Sin chasing him down the river to his turret.
The man was walking as though he had installed a cheat card in the hyperspeed. His fingers had the touch of some sort of gaming gremlin.
A single smooth Q on part of Lee Sin and Logan was already witnessing his life pass in front of his very eyes--with a melodramatic reading of his will and testament.
"Wind Wall! Dash again! Did you ever hear of positioning? It was high and excited, and it had a nervous tone to it as though Micah were recording the bint of noise in the background which he could not quite suppress.
The enemy was not here to play about.
Lee Sin struck a clean W + Q + R combo, and Yasuo, that Logan was playing, was flying like a trash bag that had been kicked off the curb--right back to the heart of the wave of minions.
"Logan! Counter-kill, damn it!" his roommate screamed and his voice broke that of a Quidditch commentator in a frenzy. There you said you were the best Yasuo in the dorm?
"Chill, chill, I got this! Watch me turn it around!" Logan said, and with the assurance of a man moved to the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, he waved his arm in a flourish, on the point of pouring forth a glorious EQ combo.
His blossom was, unfortunately, somewhat too beautiful.
His arm struck the top of the desk causing a poor, unsuspecting bottle of Coke to be knocked over. Brown fizz, down the table-top, and fizzed its way into the jumble of wires down below--a mush which seemed as though it had been there ten years, the result of unsuccessful dark magic experiments.
Then came the sound.
"ZzzzzZZZTTT!"
A scintillation of electricity flew out as a curse swearing to break free, and with a cracking sound it hit on the face of Logan.
Everything went black.
It was as though the ult of Lee Sin had manage to smash through the fourth wall and send him out of reality.
When his consciousness drained away downwards, Logan did not think about dying. He also did not consider the report he had to make tomorrow morning.
His final thought was:
Had I gotten a second, I tell you I could have turned that fight....
Then--total blackout. As though somebody pulled the Ethernet cable out of the universe.
...
The consciousness of Logan was drifting in emptiness which strangely resembled a hangover in hell.
There was a sound of voices in the distance, subdued and indistinct, as though one chanting some old spells with a heavy comforter over his face.
His mind had got totally checked out. What was going on in his soul was like a game client on a slow Wi-Fi network that was lagging at 999 ping, and could not load whatever those voices were saying.
Not even provided that it would come up, he was unlikely to be able to make sense of a word.
{Why him, of all people?}
His body is so weak he could not even take a little current.
{Whatever. He's here now. Let's just try him out.}
The voices were exhausted, as air passing through a broken door.
...
Time had gone--how much he knew not. Then as though somebody had flicked a re-boot switch, the consciousness of Logan opened its eyes with a jolt into online reality, where he struggled through a fog of dizziness and blackness.
Cold was the first thing he experienced.
Not "the AC's too low" cold. This was cold as deep as the bottom of the freezer of the supermarket, the kind where you are sandwiched between two packages of frozen fish and asking yourself what you did wrong in your life.
Then came the pain.
Like the beating of war-drums in every quarter it struck him, and at once, right up his nerves. His eyelids jerked open and were almost flung back into the fainting away again by the intensity of the emotion.
"Rrgh--guh, guh--RRAAUGH?!"
A growl, alien, guttural, came out of his throat, and shook the air.
{Wait. What the hell was that? Was it kaijiu clocking in to work that I just roared?
His mind was slow as an old PC that wanted to start with a busted motherboard, yet it was there, scratching at answers.
{Did someone steal my kidneys? Or did I come with the wrong dismantling and reassembling? Why does everything hurt?!}
By swearing in his heart--or so he tried--he tried to raise his hand.
Except... it wasn't a hand.
What came into sight was something cold, hard and sharp-edged. It was like a metal flashing, round like a claw.
He froze.
Then attempted to open his mouth--and instantly perceived that something had gone wrong with it.
His jaw moved wrong. His teeth were excessively numerous, too keen. His entire mouth transpired to have been replaced by that of a predator.
"RRAUGH?!"
{What the actual--?!}
Panic surged through him. He attempted to get on his feet, but the members were not acting in unison. His body was like a game mod that got out of control after unsuccessful update.
He fluttered, awkward and disoriented, as totally untidy as a rock rolling down a hill.
And indeed he did roll down there.
Clumsily stumbling over each other, thump, thump, thump, he made his way down till he came with a wet splash into a shallow pool of water.
The cold shock startled him half-waking to sanity.
He jerked his head up, and peered through the mist, and began to see himself in the disturbed water.
It was not Logan Pierce staring back.
It was the long whiskered black-scaled face of a dragon.
It had a long neck, which was thin and sinewy, and then the head was topped with jagged horns, and its mouth was full of razor-sharp teeth glittering like a warning. His eyes--no its eyes--were a deep, dangerous red, and shone like two bad attitude rubies.
The neck was delicate, almost frail, yet there was something vicious in it as though it might spring or attack at any second. And honestly? He looked... skinny.
Not "I skipped lunch" skinny. More so "you would be side-eyed even by other dragons at the buffet table" skinny.
Well, tried to, Logan clenched his teeth, and wound his new serpentine neck round to look behind him.
Torn and battered bat-like wings black.
A very dragging tail, scalded and burnt.
Scales burned and cracked, as though somebody had attempted to barbecue him and had relinquished half way.
Each jerk was another shock of pain to his body as his nerves were being rubbed off like sandpaper.
The lesson was agonizingly obvious:
He was a black dragon.
But not the cool kind. Not that black dragon of burn cities, melt castles, make knights cry.
No he was the swamp-dwelling, acid-spouting, even white dragons do not bother with you kind of black dragon. The type that is excluded in epic ballads and boss battles.
Seeing that he could hardly shovel the idea that he had been a student at college and now a crispy lizard, something struck his eye, the dim glow of purple at the far end of the cave.
It throbbed out of a fragment of moss that hung to the wall of the rock, and diffused a faint light over a somewhat curled-up form.
A girl.
She was huddled in the shadows, and wrapped up in the folds of her knees like an old porcelain doll. Her hair was white, and she had two ears of a fox which shook over her head. She had the curling fluffy tail around her like a blanket.
Her eyes were enormous and red pitting and shining with tears that had already done fine cuts down her cheeks. She had the appearance of being picked out of a fairy tale and placed in the wrong story.
She was dressed in a frilly, ornate dress--princess-level--but the hem was scalded and singed, as though she had passed through fire to get this far.
She looked terrified. Confused. Similar to the fact that she did not even know what she was doing sharing a cave with a black dragon, half-charred, half-dead.
On his side Logan stood gawking at her, his head swirling like a runaway runaway horse.
Then--as though somebody had flung open a flood-gate--his memories crashed back.
...