Raden was dead.

He was. Really and truly. He'd drawn his last, rattling gasp around his nemesis' blade. There was no coming back from that--not even if Elmira had exhausted her magic a thousand times over to try.

And yet.

He also. . .wasn't dead.

He could feel. Even if that feeling was not quite what he was used to. The air was cool--something like mid-autumn, that perfect week where the air holds no chill nor warmth. Soft cotton sheets whispered against his skin. His chest rose and fell--it was heavier than he remembered. And his hair was different. A little long, tickling the tops of his shoulders, the sides of his neck. He lifted an arm to scrub at his face, trying to wake up. His palm was soft. His face was soft.

His eyes blinked open, and--

A ceiling. At least, it looked like a ceiling. Except that it was smooth and flat and white, and there was a strange apparatus in the middle that whirled at a high speed, producing a low whoosh and looking fit to shred him.

Survival instinct kicked in before logic, and he rolled off the bed onto a strange, soft floor.

"Oof." He coughed--his voice strange in his throat--and got to his hands and knees. Rubbed a palm over the strange ground. Perhaps it was the pelt of some unknown creature?

Then he looked at his hand properly, and something shriveled in his heart.

It was small, and skinny, not a callous to be spotted anywhere on the damned thing, and with nails clipped to neat, useless perfection. He couldn't gouge out eyes with hands like this. He couldn't wield a sword, or fire a bow, or heft an axe with hands like--

"Oooaaaakleeeeey! Sweetie, you gotta get up! You'll be late for school!"

Raden flinched. Thin, smooth strands of brown fell into his vision. He shoved them back; they fell down again.

He became aware, quite suddenly and with no small amount of discomfort, that he could remember things, if he wasn't thinking too hard. Like that the spinning death trap was called a fan, and that the pelt covering the floor was a carpet. His brain helpfully provided more info: fans were used to cool air in a room and blow it down onto the room's inhabitants. Carpet was a flooring option for those who despised cold feet in winter. His was made from eighty-percent-recycled materials. And school was--well, not like the schooling he knew about.

He got up, slowly. This body was obviously nothing like the one he'd possessed prior. It was thin and wobbly and fleshy around the hips and belly. No muscle in sight. His feet were dismally small and unweathered. He was short, as well--probably only as long as his beloved Kingfeller.

He looked around the room. It was a disorienting mess of styles and aesthetics, all clashing like they were at war and none of them were winning. Necromancic here, clericlike there, paladinite over in that spot.

He froze.

There on the wall--a stunningly accurate rendition of himself, Kingfeller in his hand, blood decorating the glorious blade. The words--in an unfamiliar script, yet somehow legible to him--A Game of Kings etched across the top.

Raden stared for a long time before numbly turning away.

Raden found that the clothing in this world--which quite obviously, was not his--was much less complicated. It was also a hundred times more bizarre.

He ended up with a band tee (as his brain supplied him), cargo pants, belts--oddly he had the urge to add one after another until they occupied the space from navel to hip--high-tops, bracelets, a black denim jacket with the sleeves cut raggedly at the shoulders, covered in all manner of wild pins, and underneath all of that a packer and a binder.

He had discovered, to his immense horror, that this body was female.

There was one final accessory he placed upon this unfortunate new vessel, whose significance he wasn't exactly sure of, but it nagged at him until he fished out a white beaded bracelet with a question-mark charm from a messy pile of--fronting bracelets, his brain said, but the meaning of that term evaded him.

Then he mustered his courage--which once had carried him across raging battlefields--to go downstairs.

Oh, how mighty men fell.

The half-hour between Raden descending the steps to the first floor and Raden descending the steps to the road were chaotic, to say the least. The mother of the vessel spouted off a constant stream of things she had to do, things Oakley--which, he deduced, was this vessel's name--had to do, what she was going to cook for dinner, what scent of air freshener should they have next time, blah blah blah. He paid it little attention and instead focused on eating. The food was familiar, yet not. He was reluctant to try it--

He'd cleaned the plate five minutes later.

Oakley's mother--under no circumstances was he going to think of this vessel as himself--chided him not to eat so quickly, then handed him a paper bag which contained his next meal. His brain told him this was a fortunate thing which he should express gratitude for. He ignored it. He was not going to be beholden to anyone until he understood how this world operated.

The irritating part was that if he left the vessel alone, it more or less knew what to do all on its own. He'd have been doomed if he tried to find this world's schooling place. But he found that if he 'zoned out' (again, words which his brain provided him with) and just started walking, the vessel would follow the correct path of its own volition.

Thus how he reached the school within the hour, as opposed to within the decade.

He allowed the vessel to find its classroom. When he walked in, the mentor was in the middle of a lesson. He looked at Raden over the top of a pair of glasses that were ill-fit to his face and said, "Late again, Mr. Smith."

Raden pulled his lips back over his teeth and growled at him.

The teacher--who, he was informed, was named Mr. Stettsman, dropped his piece of chalk and spluttered indignantly. "That's detention, Mr. Smith, and you had better sit down."

Raden skulked to his seat. The inhabitants of this world were harder to deal with. He suspected it was because of this nonthreatening, weak vessel he was stuck with. Well, that was fine. He'd just have to get himself a new blade. Perhaps he'd call this one Worldsplitter. Yes, that had a nice ring to it.

Lunch crept around slowly.

When it finally latched at Raden's heels, he had settled quite thoroughly into despair.

If he'd been given a choice between this second life and death, he'd have happily jumped into his own grave and lay down to be buried.

Alas, he was stuck here now, and he'd be damned if he gave in without a fight.

At the very least, Oakley's mother was an astonishingly good cook.

He was halfway through demolishing the food she had given him when a fellow sat at his table. He prepared to defend his food, and he was ready when--

"Feeling soupy today, huh?"

Psst. His brain poked him. Which was a strange thing for a brain to do. That's our friend. Be nice to him.

Raden blinked at the other boy. "What?"

He cringed at the sound of the voice that came from this vessel's throat. He'd never manage a war cry with vocal chords like these.

"Ohh. You're new, huh?"

Raden's heart jumped. "You mean this is normal here?"

"Slow down, buddy." The other boy took a bite of food that looked considerably less edible than Raden's. "Lemme guess." He pointed his fork at Raden. "You were just going about your life as usual and now suddenly you're stuck in some new place with new people and it's weirding you out."

Raden stiffened. It wasn't completely accurate, but. . . "Can you. . .read my mind?"

"Nope. I just know Oak." The other boy--Asterisk, his brain told him--shoved more maybe-food in his mouth. "Don't worry. They'll explain later."

"Who is they?"

"Your buddies. Look, you're better off asking them when you see them, I'm not an expert on all this stuff. I just know what I've been told." Asterisk frowned. "Speaking of, what's your name, new guy?"

"It's Raden." He tried not to growl it, which wasn't hard as this vessel was hardly capable of such a thing anyway.

Asterisk snorted, laughed a bit. "Makes sense. Well, welcome to our world, buddy. You're gonna love it here."