Prologue
Bizarre flashes of light, dashing towards my direction in an incomprehensible speed. The feeling to be dragged forwards, though simultaneously an invisible force pulled me to the other direction. That's what time travelling must feel like, a thought flashed through my mind. Thinking clear was not the problem, I just had absolutely no idea what was actually happening to me. I had been on the way home, it had currently started to snow again. Then something had dazzled me, first I thought it would be the lights of the cars passing. But then, all of a sudden, I stranded here - in this chaos of light and noise, which I was not able to associate. It was a mixture of crackles, crunches and squeakes, everything known somehow, but all together more than unfamiliar.
The lights, which had been sheer white for the first seconds of my strange journey, now took on every imaginable color, changed with no recognizable rhythm and pulsed, more and less. The pressure let go of me a bit, and I used the opportunity to let in a deep breath inside my lungs. Now the whole thing seemed way less threatening.
That was when the pain started. As suddenly and not less intense as the light tunnel. I felt the urge to scream, but pain in my ears made every sound fade and my face twisted into a grimace. Every muscle in my body clenched up and seemed to crack at any moment now. My eyes felt like they would burst instantly under the pressure lasting upon them, and every single bone threatened to split everywhere at the same time. With every flash of light dashing towards me, a needle invaded my skin, and within the blink of an eye, nothing inside my body felt the way it should have anymore. But the pain faded slowly, and finally the yearning scream evaded the full to bursting lungs, way too loud for my wounded ears, and way too foreign.
That was not my voice! Was it? It had never sounded as strange as it did now. Deeper... Or just different. Whatever the light tunnel had tone to me, it had changed something. And not just my voice, as far as I could tell by the feeling inside of my body.
The lights faded and left me in a room filled with Nothing. But shortly after my eyes had relaxed in the welcome darkness, everything around me disappeared, warped, was ripped apart and replaced with colors and shapes, which I could only see blurred. My body jerked, as I hit something really hard, what appeared to be a green meadow only seconds later. Still full of dizziness, I raised my head, took a harsh breath - and was immediately shaken by an enormous coughing attack.
It took a few moments to calm my breathing down a bit. I wiped away a few tears out of my eyes and used the opportunity to look around. I had escaped the light tunnel - but I was not at home anymore. Broad acres surrounded me, far away I could see the shapes of mountains, spiked with scattered waterfalls, here and there a few forests and it definitely was spring time. Everywhere I could see flowers blooming and the meadows brimmed over with life, though the animals looked not quite familiar with the ones I knew. Not far from me flew a big-sized beetle, but I was too much in a state of shock to care much about the abnormal size of these animals.
Where the hell am I!? With one hand I ruffled through my hair - and stopped immediately. I glanced at my right hand in disbelieve, as it definitely had only four fingers, that were unusual thick for human proportions and tapered like claws. Besides, the skin was way too dark! Instead of the pale white skin, that did not see much sun all year round, my new skin was a dark bronze. A quick glance and I knew that the other hand was changed like this too. Anyway, my arms were way too short and the lower arms too thick! And my hair had never been this long, and since when it was red?
It all seemed familiar to me in some ways, but the thought would not want to reveal itself for now. Only when my glimpse lighted to my naked feet, which had no resemblance with human feet at all, the scales fell from my eyes. This were the feet of an Asura! Three big claw-like toes and a clumpy shape. Which would explain the urged body structure of course.
But how was this possible? Neither did I take some kind of drugs, nor did I try virtual reality. I just had been walking home from a normal work day! Maybe someone had mixed something into my drink?
Though I couldn't explain it to myself, it felt extremely real. I was inside the body of an Asura, and I was sitting amidst the fields of the Metrica Provence, which was proved by the geometrical shapes and floating cubes.
I was in the midst of Tyria, in a game which is called Guild Wars 2.