The world was a foggy blue. Light from some ethereal source shone through Whiskers's closed eyelids. Across their surface, like everywhere else on his body, he felt the tickle of effervescent bubbles breaking on impact with him. He did not know how long he had been out, or exactly where he was, but he did know he couldn't quite control his body.
Limited to just his autonomous actions, like the steady breathing when his face was above the surface, Whiskers simply drifted. One would think being locked within your body and drifting away on the open water would fill one with panic and terror. But something about the water, the air, and the light of this strange place abated these negative emotions.
The light began to fade, and with it a warm pain throbbed in Whiskers's body. His head ached, his joints whined, and his eyes itched. The sensation grew as the light dimmed. More and more the pain bloomed and swelled like a burning fire. In his mind Whiskers screamed out, and while no sound left his closed mouth, sound did rush his ears.
The sound built like a crescendo of wind whipping itself into a hurricane. He was deafened by the sounds of voices, fires, movement, and animals. The sound was as deafening as the pain was overwhelming. More and more it built up, and just when death seemed to be reaching down to pluck away all nine lives at once—it stopped.
Whiskers lurched forward, gasping for air as he sat upright.
His breath was deep. Whiskers panted as he looked around, head snapping left and right. Everything around him was wrong. The buildings were not made of steel and glass. Instead, they were made of wattle and daub. The ground was not asphalt, nor concrete, but cobblestones with a dense mud grout. The air lacked the acrid smell of car exhaust and factory smog and instead smelled of natural scents like manure, wood, and open-fire cooking. He could see what looked like floating rocks in the distance, their image clouded by atmosphere, and since when did everything get so small?
As Whiskers moved to stand he nearly jumped out of his fur as he saw the pale skin of a human hand pass by. He flinched and threw himself to the side, grunting as he slammed against the opposite wall of the alley. His body slid down the whitewashed daub and he froze as he caught his reflection in a puddle that he hoped was water.
The human hand that he spotted in his periphery wasn't the hand of some errant grabber trying to pick him up. It was his own paw, or rather, his own hand. The world wasn't the only thing that was wrong. Whiskers no longer had the features of a feral street cat. His face was that of a human's. A sharp nose with a broad bridge fit cleanly in the middle of his now much flatter face. His fur was gone save for the mop of hair on his head. Instead of fur, he now had fair skin that was just the slightest bit sunkissed. He had thumbs! Whiskers never had his dewclaws removed and those were the closest he'd ever had to thumbs. But now he had proper opposable thumbs.
He grabbed his head and gasped as he found that, atop his orange and white mop, were two familiar ears with a soft fur that blended seamlessly with his hair. He flicked one ear, and then the other. The ears were not his only feline feature either. Whiskers's nails were long and came to a sharp point, rolling along the edges to give them a sturdiness that turned them into effective claws. His pine-forest-green eyes had black slitted pupils, just like he had as a regular cat. From his lower back sprouted a familiar tail, an orange-furred length that terminated in a white tip.
It was all too much for Whiskers. He began to hyperventilate before he scrambled out of the alley on all fours, the motion awkward with his new bipedal body. In his panicked haste, he ran into the legs of a stall vendor, hawking his wares to the passersby in the street.
The words the vendor screamed at Whiskers were foreign, which wasn't anything new for Whiskers. Many people back home had yelled at him, baby-talked him, and occasionally spoke to him with a respectable tone and volume. What was new was that, for once, Whiskers knew the words as more than noise. He understood them. And as he tried to remember how he knew the words, his head felt like it would split open.
Clutching his head, Whiskers ran off, leaving the man to curse him and yell obscenities about his mother. He pushed on, stumbling through the crowd and earning dirty looks and glares as he stumbled into pedestrian after pedestrian. Whiskers never noticed that, as he made his way, he began to stand, shifting from all fours to walking upright. The transition came so naturally it was as though he had been bipedal his whole life.
He collapsed to his knees beside a fountain in the middle of the town's crossroads. The water was clear and spilled from stacked bowls, filling a basin at the bottom. Whiskers plunged his head into the ice-cold flow, seeking relief. After a couple of seconds, he removed his head from the drink, panting for breath as he let the cold water sweep away his headache.
As he caught his breath, he stayed limp against the edge of the fountain basin. The ripples in the water cleared slowly from his plunge and he saw himself again, still changed, still unfamiliar.
"What am I?" he whined under his breath. As he spoke the words, he touched his lips, finding the sensation of speech strange. His mouth felt all sorts of weird. Normally his tongue would be rough and barbed, perfect for grooming his fur. Now it was soft, pliable, and he could move it in distinct positions and shapes. Using his tongue he felt the roof of his mouth, and noticed that the rear was soft and squishy while the front was still hard, albeit smoother. His teeth had changed too, looking more like a human's but with longer canines, only just so.
As he stared in his reflection, he saw the approach of two forms behind him. As he turned, he felt the thump of heavy hands on his shoulders.
"Oy, lad. Been swimming in the flagon, have we?" asked the man on the right with a false sympathy that oozed mockery. He was as human as humans came, though he wore a coat made of many metal rings.
The other metal man, this one possessing long ears that came to a point, spoke next. "Now, now. I've not seen you before. From the looks of it, the kit's probably on his first ever bar crawl."
Whiskers blinked and looked between the two with a confused squint. He didn't know what they were talking about, and he was so hung up on one detail he couldn't help himself. "I don't like swimming."
The human's brows furrowed with an incredulous confusion. This made Whiskers worry. Did he say something wrong? Was his pronunciation off? Speaking was too new and confusing.
"I can't imagine you would, Sealgari," said the pointy-eared human. No. Not a human, an elf. That's what he was called, an elf!
How did Whiskers know this? Speaking of knowing, how did Whiskers know what a Sealgari was too? That's what he'd been made into—a cat Sealgari.
"Either way, we simply cannot have you stumbling around out here. You've been knocking people down and causing a nuisance," continued the elf. "We've no choice but to take you with us where you can sleep it off."
As fast as he'd been dropped into this crazy new world, Whiskers was picked up by his arms and dragged off. The men were surprisingly strong. Struggle all he could, Whiskers could not wiggle free of their grip. Worse than that, his struggling earned him a smart smack upside the back of his head that left him stunned.
The two men—the two guards—dragged Whiskers to a building on the other end of town. It was a boring building but it was wider than the others. Inside he saw multiple men in metal-ring armor. Chainmail, he remembered it being called.
Much to Whiskers's dismay, he saw all too late where he was being taken. They dropped him in the middle of a room surrounded by thick metal bars and promptly locked him inside alone.
Whiskers grabbed the bars in both hands, slumping against them as his feline ears drooped down in his downed mood. He hated being locked up, and now he was locked up for no good reason. He was a good boy. He didn't do anything wrong!
"Welcome to the tank, lad," croaked a gravelly voice behind him.