Kyle pondered what the voice meant by ‘none of his kind’. He figured if this was a dream, then it didn’t really matter. He was gonna wake up from a dream or, worse, find out that he really had been shot and was dead or in a hospital bed. Or just maybe, some really weird shit went down, and he was now in a weird magical world with a bunch of short people.
Either way, one thing was clear. The voice had the right of it. He had never been this tired. Not after running fifty wind sprints. Not after the worst workout in spring training. None of it compared to this. Kyle was dead beat, down to the bottom of his feet.
So he went with it. Kyle laid his head down next to the fire. One of the little girls shyly brought him a small blanket that she folded up. She gestured for him to use it as a pillow. He thought it cute, but then sleep hit him and everything else went dark.
Chapter 3 - Reincarnation?
When Kyle woke up, he felt strangely refreshed. Sunlight came in from the hole in the house’s thatched roofing. It looked like someone had hung a blanket up to try to cover the hole, but it only worked partially. Rays of light streamed in through the gaps.
That answered the question about if there was a normal day and night cycle here. Kyle wondered if he had just been overreacting. Sure, this seemed to be a wild fantasy world, but maybe there was a simpler explanation. Maybe he was stuck in some remote part of the world.
Of course, there was always the simplest explanation. He may just be dreaming.
He lifted his head, first, and then sat up. Honestly, dream rules aside, Kyle had expected to feel sore, but other than the usual need to stretch out in the morning, he didn’t feel different. Well, that wasn’t quite true. He felt stronger, better than usual.
His attention was taken up by looking around the small one-room house in the light of day. None of the small people were there, neither the children nor the adults. That made him think that they must be early risers and off to work or school or whatever it was that people in this world did.
This world.
Those words, thought in the privacy of his own head, were enough to startle him. If this was a dream, wouldn’t he have woken up already? Dreams didn’t work like that, right? Normally they were one set of events and didn’t cover a long span of time.
“Just finally coming to that conclusion, are we? What a scholar you must be, but then again I don’t suppose that is a requirement for this job description.”
It was that same velvet, feminine voice from the night before. That had definitely been part of the dream though. At least Kyle thought it had been. It called into question whether he was really awake now or not.
He shook his head. Nothing for it but to roll with the punches. If it was a dream, it didn’t matter, and if it wasn’t, then he needed to get all the information that he could. Kyle was just glad that he seemed to be able to communicate with the voice silently rather than having to speak out loud. Otherwise, he just knew he would have looked like some kinda homeless person wandering around mumbling to himself. Although which was worse, having a voice in your head or looking like a vagrant, was anyone’s guess.
“So, you said your name is Eleanor?” Kyle asked, cringing. He had never been good at remembering names, not even with the women he had—how should he put it—been intimate with. He decided that the voice being inside his head probably constituted being intimate.
“You make it so hard to respect you. This is a new experience in the history of Verden. No, I said you could call me Ild’engel. If I think you might actually survive this transformation, then I will tell you my name. As it is, you should know that I am no happier than you are about this. Nor do I have any idea what Krig was thinking when he passed his mantle to you.”
Kyle blinked. “Okay, slow down. That was too much to take in all at once. I’m a fast study, but before we unpackage everything you just said, I need some basic information. You know, stuff like who, what, where, when, and why? But for now, I will be content to start with where.”
The voice laughed and, for some reason, Kyle thought he would be happy to go through fire to hear that laugh again. It was laden with so much fun and the promise of things to come. Despite the weird circumstances, this was definitely a girl he wanted to meet.
Ild’engel replied, “You are in the world of Verden. I can’t see much from your memories while you are awake, but was able to get some sense of your world from your dreams. It was very confusing. You seem to be some type of gladiator in your old world, but the competition was baffling to me.”
“Gladiator?” he thought back to the voice. There was no way he could keep from laughing. “I was a pro ball player. The best there ever was. I was the one who made people forget about names like Ruth, Mantle, Jeter, and Trout.”
“Ball? Player? So you didn’t fight?” For the first time, the voice in his head sounded confused.
“Yeah, we played baseball. Yes, we fought to win but it wasn’t like actually we were trying to hurt anyone. I mean, if you
