3. The gods are playing tricks on us

Munchin looked up and faced Ether. He stopped grumbling and mumbling in himself. His eyes narrowed. He didn't seem to recognize her. Can't say I blame the poor guy. Nobody would be able to recognize us now if it weren't for our voices.

"Do I know you?" He asked carefully.

Ether rolled her eyes. "Common, don't you recognize me?"

"Is that a serious question?" Munchin scoffed.

"Use your ears, jeez!" Ether shot back. "It's me, Ether."

Munchin's eyes went wide. It looked like he almost fell backwards. "Ether?! Is it really YOU?!" He scratched his head. Lucky guy, at least he still could do that. Even had four arms to do it. "I must be dreaming. Ether does not look like a metallic beetle with a scarab head."

Sighing, Ether gave him a whack against the head with one of her 'hands'. Not too hard, of course. Munchin shook his dazed head and glared at her.

"What was that for?!"

"Did it hurt?" She asked, annoyed.

"Hell yeah it did!" He screamed back.

"Then you know, this isn't a dream, unfortunately." She turned to me. "Icarax, get your butt over here."

Munchin looked up. "He's here too?"

As I scurried into view, I nodded. "Yeah, I'm here. No need to sound so disappointed about that."

He looked at me and blinked. Then he snickered and quickly placed a hand over his… Well, I can't say mouth because you couldn't see where that was.

"You've got… four legs!" He laughed. I glared at him.

"So? You've got four arms. Not to mention a seriously deformed face with a stinger on the front." I retorted.

His smile dropped. "Can't argue with you there." He sighed deeply. I looked at Ether, she too sighed. For completion's sake, I sighed too. Ether sat down next to Munchin. I, having difficulty enough to walk, could not sit down so easily, so I just remained standing. Damn having four legs. There was a long silence.

"So… What now?" I finally asked.

"What now what?" Munchin asked, confused.

"Well… What do we do now? We're here, we're insects, we're monstrosities and the entire crap. But what are we gonna do about it?"

My fellow victims both shrugged. "What do you think we can do about it?" Ether asked.

"I wouldn't ask for suggestions if I knew what we could do." I sneered.

She didn't reply, nether did Munchin. My heart sank. It became clear to me that none of us knew what to do. Simply said, at that moment I felt like we were screwed and condemned to spend the rest of our lives as oversized, biomechanical, insect-like freaks in the Nabreus Deadlands. There was a slight rumbling and I looked sheepishly at my stomach.

"Fantastic. I'm hungry and I can't even find my own mouth anymore." I muttered quietly. I looked at my two companions. "Regardless, I'm gonna look for something to eat."

Munchin jumped of the fallen tree. The sight of the two knees on each leg bending was so weird… I'd never get used to that. Insects, they have many knees. We don't. Or well, he did now because he looked like an insect and so did we, but I mean, when we were normal humans we did not have more than one knee on each leg.

"I'm going with you. You never know what one can find when looking for food." He told me.

Ether, not feeling like staying behind all by herself, decided to come along as well. I repelled myself of the ground and soared through the air, over the swamp, Munchin and Ether right at my side.

As the three of us flew over the swamp looking for something we perhaps could feed upon, a shimmering caught Ether's eye. She informed us of her find and flew down to investigate. Munchin and I exchanged glances.

"What do you think she has seen?" I asked.

Munchin just shrugged, then headed off after Ether. I watched him go for a moment, then shrugged as well and followed. When I landed on the swampfloor again, Ether was already trying to pry something out of the grasp of a plant. Yes, you read that right, the plant was actually actively trying to hold onto something.

"Let… go you stupid… vegetable!" She cursed. Munchin went over to help her. His four hands clawed, tugged and pulled at the plant in an effort to make it let go of whatever it was holding. At first I just stood there, watching. After all, how could I help? I needed my limbs to keep myself upright. When they still didn't succeed in making the plant loosen its grip on the object, I suggested to try and make the object repel itself from the plant. They agreed with my idea and backed off.

I now finally could get a look at what caught Ether's attention. It was some sort of glittering stone, perhaps a chunk of diamond or something like that, but with a strange symbol carved in it. I focussed on it, trying to make it repel the plant, but the grasp of the plant was too firm. Even great focus didn't make the stone repel the plant forcefully enough to be free from its grasp. Cursing, I gave up.

"It's no use." I grumbled. "Stupid plant." In my anger, I slammed my right blade-hand-pincer-whatever in the plant. What happened then was too weird for words. At first nothing happened, but then, before our startled eyes, the plant began to wriggle. And then, it began to wither away, like all moisture was being sucked from it. Soon enough, the plant was dead. Sucked dry. And… My hunger was gone. I realized with disgust what had just happened and slowly retreated my 'hand' from the now dead plant.

"Yuck!" I made a noise like I was about to vomit. "I just sucked that thing dry, like a leech!"

"Who cares, it's the result that matters." Ether snapped. She picked up the stone in her left pincer and looked at it curiously. "I wonder what this thing is. It's not a normal stone, that's for sure. Why is it here? What is it for? Why did that plant seem so eager to hold onto it?"

"Does it matter? Normal or not, it's still just a rock." Munchin sneered. "It won't change us back to normal, or take us home."

"Actually, it just might." A voice behind us said. We whirled around, startled. The sight that greeted us was that of an Occuria. And by the looks of it, it was the Leader of the Occuria, Gerun. If we still would have had them, our jaws would have dropped.

--

"YOU DID WHAT?!" The three of us shouted in unison, furious. If looks could kill, Gerun would have been ten times dead already. The Occuria sighed.

"I brought you here and made you into what you are now. Or actually, we Occuria did, though it was my idea."

Munchin cracked his knuckles, Ether snapped her mandibles and I slammed one of my handblades hard on the ground. "You've got some nerve!" I hissed. "If it weren't for the fact that you're an Undying, I would have killed you a hundred times by now!"

"How can you just float there saying calmly you made us monstrosities?!" Ether screamed, enraged. "I swear… I'd so strangle you now if I could!"

Munchin opened his mouth – well, he would have if he still had had it - to utter his own way of killing Gerun, but the Occuria spoke first.

"Would you just shut up and listen?!" He shouted. The three of us made a sneering sound, but fell silent. "Good, now listen up." Gerun continued. "We were bored, okay? You have no idea how boring it is living eternally up there in the clouds doing nothing. We can't even twist our thumps because we don't have those."

"Oh, so you thought, 'Hey, let's have a bit of fun and change three random people from another dimension into insect-like freaks!'. God, I wish I would get such brilliant ideas!" Ether snapped. Her anger hadn't decreased in the slightest, and nether had mine or Munchin's. Gerun ignored her comment.

"So I came up with a fun idea. We messed you up and dropped you in here for our amusement. Of course, that's not the amusing thing. The amusing thing will be watching how you gather the rest of the keystones." The Occuria continued. The nerve to say, with amusement, in our faces that we were changed into these freakish shapes for the amusement of some stuck-up gods… Still, with great difficulty, I forced myself to calm down and asked:

"And, pray tell, what are these keystones you're talking about?"

Gerun nodded at the stone Ether held in her pincer. "It's a stone like that one. That's one of the six. There are five others hidden in the swamp here, guarded by all kinds of things. If you can find them, and bring all six together, then the game's over and you can become normal again and go home."

"You call this a game? Oh my, why didn't you tell us sooner that this was supposed to be fun?" Munchin said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. "Then I wouldn't have wasted so much time being freaked out!"

Gerun remained unfazed. Though we couldn't see his face, we could feel he was smiling. "Now, now, young insects, why waste time being angry at me? If you want to get out of this game, there's only one way to do it. So get to it! Chop, chop! Amuse us with your struggles."

And with a plop, he vanished, leaving us behind, miserable, furious and still looking like monsters.

--

Ether had a fit. And a big one. She was pacing around on the swampfloor, only stopping to rip a tree in half, toss a huge boulder in the swamp, rip a monster to pieces or to glare at us and shout something. She was constantly shouting actually, cursing Gerun and telling us over and over again how she'd kill him if she got her hands, excuse me, pincers, on him. I have to admit, some of her ideas were as cool as they were gruesome, and I couldn't blame her for having them.

"I was right." I whispered to Munchin as we watched Ether kick a rotten tree into the swamp. "This all IS some kind of sick joke."

"Those Occuria have some messed up sense of humour." Munchin agreed. "Oh how I wish we could get our claws on them and do all those things Ether is thinking up right now."

"Yeah, well… As much as I would like it, the chance we'll be able to do that is as good as zero." I looked at Ether, who was still taking out her rage on her surroundings. I looked nervously at Munchin. "Do you think I should try to tell her to calm down so we can start looking for these keystones?"

"Seriously?" Munchin asked, his eyes wide with amazement. I nodded. "No." He said, matter-of-factly. I dropped my head and sighed.

"Man, this sucks." I was about to say something else, when another shout could be heard all over the swamp.

"YAHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!"

Munchin, me and even Ether all looked in the direction of the sound. The mist had become less thick, allowing us to oversee rather much of the swamp. As of such, we could clearly see a red and silver figure searing over the surface of the swamp, shouting and laughing in excitement. I groaned inwardly. What now?

--

So yeah, that's pretty much it. The Occuria were bored and now we're trapped in their sick joke. To make matters worse, a silver and red dude who's laughing like an idiot is now flying all over the swamp. Just as I thought things couldn't get worse, they DO get worse. Dear heaven, why us?

Next chapter: we get another shock as we discover the identity of the red and silver guy. What's worse, he isn't all that fond of our idea to gather the keystones and go home.