I snapped asleep. The sensation was about as weird as it sounds, a sudden sense of awareness (of moving without movement) while obviously not being awake. The closest description I could think of would be being trapped in an endless black void, except that there wasn't a 'me' to be trapped in it, and it wasn't technically a void, as I could feel the presence of something else.
Although to call it something else was a bit of a misnomer, as it was all me (not the me that I was, but the me that I could be). Potential swirled around me, every choice emblazoned in my mind, and if I'd had a stomach, I'd have thrown up. An overwhelming amount of information pressed in on all sides, option after option shouting their existence at the same time (all wanting to become real), all of them drowning out all of the others until what could have been useful information was just a wall of noise.
It wasn't the first time I'd experienced this, after I sleepily accepted an offer from a voice in the middle of the night I'd ended up in here (but there wasn't really a here, was there) and the pressure of every choice I could ever make bearing down on me had made concentrating on creating an optimal build difficult. It was easier now (many future paths closed by my actions, and far fewer opened up), but that didn't make it pleasant to be in.
The first choice was easy. Half of me reached out (it wasn't half, not really, the soul was not so easily divided, a portion of infinity was still infinite, even if it was lesser) to grab the largest (most chosen, most likely, most resonant) option, the power of the Dragonfire Adept melding like it was always supposed to be there (and maybe it was). As far as benefits went, it was pretty lightweight. The scales it granted didn't stack with my pre-existing natural armour, rendering them functionally useless, so the only bonus was the new way I could breathe destructive power. After a moments hesitation, I went with the cold damage breath. I'd ran into a couple of problems where I'd not been able to use my main attack for fear of setting things on fire, so this should allow me to not have to worry about that, or at least give me a way to put said fire out.
The noise (options, futures) died down slightly as I made that first choice, making it easier for me to think. I knew I had at least one requirement for the other class option I wanted (as I thought that, the noise reduced again, futures I now wouldn't pick vanishing as others became more or less prominent), the memory of Sabrina dropping with her face half-open, blood and mucus spilling onto the ground prominent in my mind. I wanted healing. Ideally from a distance, and ideally the kind of the thing that I could do quickly. Although if I was wishing for everything, I might as well tack powerful, passive, and multi-target onto that.
Clerics and most other divine casters were out (options moved and shifted around me as I thought), given that I didn't worship any of the gods of this place, and didn't even know which ones were here, apart from Pelor. Bard might have worked, but I was pretty sure they didn't get their healing at first level, which wasn't helpful. The Healer class sounded like a shoe-in, but it was very limiting, and weirdly not all that good at healing, outside of basic 'cure' spells.
For inspiration, I tried looking (listening, divining) at the choices pressing into me. Some of them could be quickly discarded (disappearing into nothingness, along with the future they represented), Dread Necromancer, for example, having no appeal to me. A burst of inspiration (of futures aligning themselves) had me remember the Dragon Shaman class. One of the auras it had did almost everything I wanted: distant, passive, multi-target healing, admittedly with the downside of being as weak as it was possible to get, at a single hit point a round, and it didn't heal past the halfway point. Despite those weaknesses, it was an easy way to ensure that other people didn't die, especially as it would automatically stabilise people and stop them from bleeding out.
With a twist of will, I reached out (there was no out, but other futures shrank at my intent, becoming less likely as one path defined itself) and selected Dragon Shaman as the other half (part of the whole) of my level-up (potential stored and expended).
I immediately ran into a problem when I did so. The first choice I had was that of a Totem Dragon, a dragon similar to my alignment that would connect to my spirit and help power my abilities, and while it was nice to know that I was Chaotic Good (purely by process of elimination), it didn't really help that I had the choice of copper and brass, and for the life of me I couldn't remember the difference between them.
It was a lot easier to remember the chromatic dragons, they were all substantially different colours, with clear traits and energy types shared between them. Metallic dragons had gold, silver, and then three different types of brown, and they'd always blended into the same kind of draconic blob in my mind. Unlike normally, I didn't have the ability to check the monster manual, so I was left guessing mostly randomly.
Based purely on my speculation that copper dragons were more powerful than brass ones, I went with copper, and moved to picking my auras. The aura of vigour was the obvious pick, Fast Healing 1 was the reason I picked the class, after all, but I still had two more picks after that. Energy Shield wasn't the most obvious of picks, doing two points of damage every time an enemy hit you or someone else in your aura wasn't bad, but generally being hit was a bad thing, and after being hit the healing would be a hell of a lot more useful than a small amount of damage. There was a very specific use case that I was thinking about, though. If we were attacked by another spider swarm, or any other massive group on small insects or animals, then it should wipe them out fairly easily in situations where I couldn't use my breath weapon. If giant spiders were that common, it was worth having some kind of defence against them. The final pick was Presence, I was already specialising in the social skills, I might as well double down.
After that, it was just skill points left (knowledge claimed from the future, things I'd never learnt entering my mind), and that was fairly easy. The face skills were a must, one point each into the three of them, and from there, given that Tumble wasn't a class skill for either of my classes, I went with the arcana and planes knowledge skills, along with Spellcraft. I'd been playing the knowledge expert with the others, especially given what I'd seen of their general adventuring knowledge, so anything that could help me remember more of the monster manual was good in my book.
As I made my last decision (winnowed the futures down to one) the dream started collapsing (potential paid for and spent, the debt of the world paid back) and the nausea that had been slowly retreating as the noise had lessened (as information stopped being available) surged back as everything slammed into my mind, the way to breathe, the connection to the totem spirits of the dragons themselves, the way to shape that into auras, all of the information at once and so much more overwhelming me, and as I did my best to grasp it (the essence of everything reaching out to me as I reached out in return) the sheer mass of everything was so overwhelming that I fell awake.
I was stiff and itchy as I woke up, memories of a dream fading as I slowly blinked my way back to consciousness. I remembered levelling up, which classes I'd picked and the benefits I'd gained, but everything else, how it had happened and any of the other specifics, slipped out of my mind like drops of water in my hand, disappearing more quickly the tighter I tried to hold onto them. Still, my new healing aura would be very useful, and I was that much closer to a more powerful breath weapon.
Idly scratching my chest as I swung my legs around and off of the bed, I was mildly disturbed when a chunk of skin the size of a couple of my fingers flaked off, the tough and leathery material falling off at the slightest touch. As I looked down at what the hell just happened, doing my best to not keep scratching my itches, I wasn't sure whether or not to be relieved or concerned at the brownish scale that had appeared under the area where my skin had come off. I knew that I got scales, but I'd not really thought about how it would happen, especially since it wasn't actually providing any bonus to my armour class, and I definitely didn't expect it to be in the form of moulting.
There was a brief consideration to not scratching all of my skin off and leaving me with scales, but at the same time, bits of my skin falling off wasn't great, especially if I absent-mindedly scratched at an itch and a huge chunk of skin came off in my hands. I had the feeling that might go down badly.
The next few minutes were therefore spent with me scrubbing at my body with my hands, bits of my own skin hitting the floor in droves. The scale effect wasn't actually that noticeable, looking at a wide section on my chest. Knowing that they were copper scales made it very easy to figure it out, but if I didn't already know, the lines between the scales were so small and seamless that I'd have thought it was just a deep tan. Admittedly, the difference was striking on my pasty-white, Irish heritage self, but people who didn't know me beforehand probably wouldn't think 'dragon'. I wasn't sure if it was from it not providing any actual bonus, or if it was part of the feat I had that made me strikingly beautiful (although if I had to bet, I'd probably have gone with the second), but I wasn't going to complain about not immediately looking inhuman.
It was only after I'd built up a pile of skin on the floor at my feet that it occurred to me that it might be easier to get rid of all of this using the spell I'd come to rely on a lot for keeping me in the manner modern convenience had accustomed me to, and cast Prestidigitation. The itching slowly ceased as I ran the spell up and down my body, although the fact that the cleaning caused the dead skin to simply disappear did raise a couple of questions in my mind. I'd never really noticed when my cleaning had simply removed dirt rather than moving it, but as the pile of shed skin on the floor slowly shrank, it was hard to argue that yes, it was just deleting small amounts of matter. It wasn't really more physics defying than a lot of other spells, but there was something about having it thrust in your face that really brought the weirdness home. Although given that I was shedding my skin to grow scales, I guess there wasn't really much I could say about weirdness.
After a quick check to make sure I'd got all of the old skin (and in the process, found out that the scales went everywhere, with even my testicles and penis being covered in a very fine, soft layer of scales), I started to get dressed again, in the process diving into my cloak for the water bottle and draining it twice. I'd not noticed over the sensation of itchiness, but once that had gone, I'd suddenly become aware of how thirsty I was. Given that I'd not had anything to drink since last night, and today had included a fight, a lot of walking, and a vigourous round of sex, the fact that I was somewhat dehydrated shouldn't have been a surprise, I just hadn't really noticed.
Once I'd finished getting dressed, I briefly considered putting on my gambeson and chain before deciding against it. After all, we were in (probably) friendly territory, with a bunch of guards around. What were the chances that something bad was going to happen in an inn, in the middle of a town?
Halfway to the door, I turned around and went straight back for my armour. I'd had enough of tempting fate for one week, no sense in pushing my luck.
A few minutes later, armoured up and with my daggers strapped to my back (I considered bringing the hammer and axe, but I didn't have any frogs or ways to hang them off of my belt), I activated my Presence aura, left the room, and went downstairs. I didn't know how much time had passed during my nap, but I was hungry, and while I could sustain myself with trail mix and other rations from my cloak, I'd much rather eat real food, especially as I hadn't eaten all day.
Downstairs was somewhat more full than it had been when I'd gone upstairs, there only being a couple of empty tables rather than a couple of full ones, but it wasn't packed, and I found it relatively easy to move to the bar counter. The heavyset man behind the bar, who, despite the fact that he wasn't doing anything, had my mental image of him immediately fill in with him wiping down the bar counter with a dirty cloth, blinked at me a couple of times, before shrugging.
"What'll it be, love?" He asked, tone almost aggressively chirpy. "Got a selection of drinks if you're interested, we've got the house special, a bowl of perpetual stew and a hunk of bread for just two silver?"
I resisted the urge to ask what was in the perpetual stew (as I was pretty sure there wasn't an answer that I would like) and instead just ordered a bowl of that, along with another mug of mead, and wandered over to an empty table to dig in. Sitting down, I had my first spoonful, and immediately had to resist the urge to pull a face. More sodding turnip.
After a quick cast of Prestidigitation, as subtly as I could, I continued eating. Sure, now it tasted like someone emptied a herb jar into it, but at least it didn't taste of turnips. I pondered the options available to me as I spooned herby soup into my mouth. It didn't look like any of the others were back yet, so I could either wait here for them, slowly getting drunk, I could go out looking for them, or I could poke around the nearby marketplace. Given that I had the key to the room, the second could well result in them waiting for me to get back while I looked for them if we missed each other, so that one wasn't ideal, and as fun as sitting in silence and getting drunk was, I was feeling a lot better than I was this morning, so wandering around the marketplace seemed like the best one of the three. Hell, if nothing else, I might be able to pick up more cultural clues from watching people interact, and while I'd already decided that I wasn't going to go out of my way to conform, it was always worth knowing when I was actively flaunting a convention of some kind.
My took me all the way through the bowl of stew, and I was sipping at my mead, working up the energy to head outside and interact with a bunch of strangers, when a woman sat down at my table. Looking up from my drink, I saw she was flanked by a couple more women, one standing on either side of her. They were all young looking, maybe eighteen or nineteen at most, and they were all wearing nice clothing, although the one who'd sat down (and who I'd immediately mentally dubbed the leader) had clothing that was a cut above that of the other two.
The leader might have been attractive, were it not for the ill-fitting look of smug superiority on her face. It didn't look like it was natural on her, giving the air that it was something she was deliberately doing, rather than a natural expression. I didn't know whether or not that made the fact that it was directed at me better or worse.
A moment of silence stretched uncomfortably as she stared at me, while I took another drink of mead. After a few seconds of me drinking and her not doing anything, she sighed loudly. I didn't react, continuing to drink. If she wanted to come over and bother me, she could damn well start the conversation and introduce herself. I wasn't going to make it easier for her.
About half a minute after she'd come over, she finally broke.
"Very well, I see you are either ill-educated, or not interested in pleasantries, so I shall skip to the point. I trust five gold will be satisfactory to hire you for the night?"
Well, motherfucker.