Better Than One - Chapter 1 A Head To Adventure.

The last thing I heard that morning was a warning shout, but it was too late. When I looked up, it was if the world had paused. A blue loaded trash container the size of truck ‘hung’ in mid air several feet above me. I recalled having a sudden realization of what it meant and my heart lurched for the last time. There wasn’t even enough time for my body to fire up the ‘fight or flight’ engine. I didn’t feel a thing.

And then there was darkness.

My consciousness floated in a dark abyss. There was no sound, sight or smell, and I felt a certain uncanny calmness I couldn’t explain.

thump

A distant sound echoed through the darkness, but I couldn’t tell where it was coming from.

thump

The sound grew louder, and the darkness started to take on a grayish tone.

thump

I felt it coming from underneath me. I tried to look down but only saw more of the endless gray stretch out for eternity.

thump thump …

The booming thuds were picking up in pace. The sound growing sharp and vivid.

thump thump thump ….

The world came into being with a piercing pain as light struck my wide open eyes. An unbearable stench of shit and piss assaulted my senses with a wakening jolt.

The thumping noise was from my feet. I was in a middle of a barefoot run through what looked like a sewer tunnel, ankle-deep in sludge. My head was below the ceiling, bobbing up and down with every step. I could feel a sharp pain across my right leg and down my back that throbbed with every move I made.

I turned the corner and a bright light blanketed my vision in white. I felt my hands grip cold steel bars and a voice coming from my left, close to me.

“… no, no, no, no!” a female voice whimpered, and then someone was sobbing. As my vision returned, I saw a forested mountain through a door sized sewer grate. Past the grate was a water eroded path through the snow to the forest line, a hundred yards away. The sobbing continued and I looked left to the source. That’s when I noticed a hideous face looking frantically around, a mere foot from my face.

I panicked, recoiling back, but the damned face wasn’t getting any further away, as if attached to me. I struggled to make my legs move as I backpedaled and ended up falling backwards into the muck. Yet, the ugly head wasn’t any further than before. I laid there a moment trying to catch my breath, while blood pounding noise filled my ears. I sat up and looked over to my left.

“Hi?” I said, almost fearful it would answer, but it ignored me like I wasn’t even there, mere inches away.

“HEY!” I raised my voice, and startled it out of a trance. It turned to face me and the eyes bulged out in fear. It screamed, reeled back and then swatted my face with the left hand, shoving my head away.

“Stop! STOP IT!” I yelled, and realized that not only could I feel my face being pushed back, but that it was MY hand doing it. I was bewildered. Was my hand possessed? In a few moments the hand relaxed, I was able to gain control, and lower it.

In front of me was a sorry sight for a face. It was a mix of a witch’s long protruding nose with a compulsory hairy wart, and a butternut squash. The youthful eyes were large and expressive like blue sapphires under a thick canopy of eyebrows. The large mouth was a sobbing mess of tangled yellow teeth. It looked like a face of a young lady, that took a critical hit with an [Ugly] spell. Even her breath was foul.

She was looking back at me with an equal mixture of fright and disgust written on her face. She sniffled and somehow my arm went up to her face to wipe it. I felt the wet texture of her face as she wiped snot from under her nose. I stared at her, mouth open, unable to comprehend what was happening.

“Who are you?! What do you want from me?” I finally shouted, wide eyed. “What hell is going on?!” I looked down and noticed what ‘my’ body looked like. And it wasn’t a body of my former self, a 26 year old man from Maine. No. It was a hideous thing. A blob of a belly the color of light beige, a slumping hairy chest and scraped up knees that were on fire with pain. I was in a monster.

And besides me was another – her. She was somehow fixed on my? ‘Our’ shoulder? Like we were some kind of mutated conjoined twins. What happened? I was just out inspecting the Morrison building for building code violations … and then I remembered the blue loaded trash container over my pitiful self. Ahhh Shit. Michael will be livid. OSHA is going to be so far up his ass he’ll have a second head on his shoulders too.

“The fuck is this hell?” I asked, befuddled. What kind of a fucked up afterlife is this?!

Subtle scraping sound brought her to attention. “The rats are coming!” She sprang up alarmed, and I moved up in sync with her. She looked over her shoulder.

“Rats!” She screeched, wild eyed and in shock.

“What rats?” I said, and as if called, they answered back. It wasn’t a squeaking noise of a harmless mouse, but guttural growls of a vicious dog. We both rushed in panic to turn around only to fumble up the delivery, fall, and end up on our left side.

“Stop! Stop moving! Just don’t move!” She yelled at me. I listened and felt the body somehow move on its own, standing up. It seemed like I was sharing control of my body with her somehow.

Down the tunnel from us were three savage creatures. They looked like a successful experiment by a mad scientist to make wild hyenas even more ferocious. These were not rats. I seen rats before, and these were not it.

A bright orange red glow started forming in the tunnel, and to my surprise it was coming from the raised left hand. Before I could flinch the hand back, the formed ball of fire shot out into the group of rats. It created a booming explosion that propelled us back with a gust of hot wind. We crashed with our back against the wall. Of the rats, there was nothing left, or they ran off. I hoped it was the former.

“The hell was that?” I said, sitting on our collective ass, back against the wall, aching with every rib. I saw Fireballs before, but in video games. And this looked way more impressive than what I had seen on a computer screen.

“I need to get out!” She whimpered while frantically looking around, ignoring me. She brought us up, we approached the metal bars, and examined them in detail. They were old and rusted, but built solid enough that pull and push as hard we could, they didn’t budge. We tried ramming our shoulder into it, but only managed to get yet another bruise.

She stood there chewing her lip. After a moment of thought she backed up ten yards and shot off a [Fireball] at the gate, followed by two more. The bars were glowing red with heat.

Sewer ‘rats’ growled behind us after the third [Fireball]. A dozen of the beady red eyes glowed a distance away in the darkness. She hesitated, considering whether to shoot the rats or the gate. She decided on the gate.

The fourth [Fireball] had turned up the brightness of the metal bars to a glowing bright yellow color. We picked up speed and with a resounding tackle the metal gate sprung out of the doorframe. We were flung to an unwelcoming steep decline.

After the second roll we managed to veer off from the eroded rocky channel into soft, cold snow. It was a grace because our right shoulder was a blistering mess with a pattern that you could play tic-tac-toe on.

The rats didn’t follow after us. I was in a lot of pain, and so was she, judging from her contorted face, but ‘we’ were alive. She picked us up, and we trudged barefoot through snow towards the forest line. Looking back, I saw the tall gray walls and towers peeking out above, and after that we were amongst the trees.

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“This this isn’t possible it can’t be.” She muttered while steering us through the forest. On occasion she’d walk my head into low hanging tree branches. Her gaze was blank, preoccupied with something on her mind. Likewise, my mind was frantic with thought. Where had I ended up? The forest was unlike any that I had seen before, and it wasn’t anything major that set it apart. The trees weren’t growing upside down, nor were they talking or had eyes. None that I saw anyways, though all that was quite possible given the events of today in a world with magic.

It was the small details, like the unfamiliar shapes of the leaves and their yellow tinge. Or all the new undergrowth I never seen before, and I have been to many forests. The sky at least was the same color blue, and the clouds were the familiar white fluffy sort.

“It’s just a dream.” She giggled and a worrying smirk crept up her face. “A nightmare at worst That’s all it is I need not worry. I just need to-” She said in a soothing, persuasive tone, like shushing an infant.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“Get out of my dream!” She yelled at me, and went back to her reverie.

“Dream? I thought … Isn’t this the afterlife? Is this … is this heaven?” I asked. It didn’t look heavenly, especially her. She was the opposite of angelic. There was snow on the ground, and the air was cold – not typical for hell. No lava or brimstone, either. I thought I was ‘good’ in my previous life, but this face next to mine and the demon rats from before, are straight out of a horror movie! I was beginning to doubt myself. Could this be a Norse Hel? I double checked above me to be sure. I’m not underground, that’s a relief.

“What? I died? Oh! That’s it that’s .. argh!” She sounded relieved and angry at the same time. “I don’t understand.” She paused lost in a thought. ” Who are you?” She sounded confused, and had a look on her face like she was expecting to wake up.

“I’m Kevin.”

“Kev-een? What an odd name. Are you from the South?” She put on a delightful facade and calmly carried the conversation forward as if all that has happened and is happening is but a dream.

“South? What’s in the south? I’m from Maine.” Is this even Earth? There were those nasty demonic rats I never seen the likes before and she shot [Fireballs] from her hand, like magic! They have magic! I got so excited I didn’t even hear what she had said.

“I’m sorry. What?” I asked her.

“Are you a prince?” she spoke slowly and with emphasis.

“A prince? No, where is this? Where are we?”

“My father’s kingdom, Lancaster.” She said it like it was obvious.

“Kingdom? So, your father’s a king?” A monarchy? Did I also go back in time?

“Of course, King Auster the third.” She said with pride. Despite her outward appearances, her voice was young almost melodic.

“So that would make you a princess?”

“Princess Estra.” She beamed. A troll princess? Is this a troll kingdom?

But first thing first. “What’s going on here? Why are we ?” I lifted up the right hand and gestured at our two heads with the common shoulder to which we belonged. “How are we attached like this?” How is this even possible? It must have been magic, or something.

She opened her mouth to respond, but was internally interrupted. Her face turned quizzical as she considered my question. Something was slowly dawning to her, suddenly, a look of realization snapped to her face. Her face grew from realization to anger, and then awoke with fury.

“No! Argh!” She snarled.

“He is so dead!” She yelled, yet on a verge of crying.

“What? Who, who’s dead?” I asked.

“My Argh! My brother! Now he’s done it!” She yelled. “I can’t believe it He is sooo dead. We need to go back! I must see my father.” She turned us around and walked us back the way we came from, following the humongous footprints we left in the snow.

“What? Why? What did he do?”

She sighed. “My brother! He did this to-” She stopped us, alarmed. “How do I look?” she asked abruptly.

“Ahh ” I froze. How do I put this gently? There was an accident at the chemical plant? There was no easy way about it. “Not good.” I wished there was a mirror. “What about me?” I asked and raised the right hand to feel my face. It felt bigger, like I was wearing a mushy mask over my face. It felt like my nose got bigger. My right hand wasn’t my own any longer. It seemed larger, fatter than what I was accustomed to. I ran my tongue inside my mouth and it felt like I was tongue-fucking a gearbox. I had worn bracers years back, but now it was an utter mess. I got a strong hunch that I was as ugly as her.

“What the hell happened to us?” I asked.

“I got cheated!” She said, sighing. I described her facial features to her, down to the hairy wort, while she confirmed it by feeling her face with the right hand. It was the lowest I had ever seen her. She slumped down on the ground and cried like a child. I didn’t understand what was going on. Was she not supposed to look like a troll? She calmed down after a few minutes and was wiping snot from her nose.

“So, this is you’re not from a troll kingdom?” I asked her.

“NO! I was I was beautiful.” She went back to crying.

“What happened? What happened to us?” I had to ask several times, before she finally could hear and responded to me.

Through sobs and nose clearings she told me a story of deceit and sorcery that had befallen her, a few hours prior. She was a human princess, twenty years of age. Her father being of old age and in poor health was soon to perish, and she was the next in line to the throne. Her younger brother had other plans. He conspired with a sorcerer to have her kidnapped and had her soul placed into a freshly emptied vessel – this two-headed body. How I also got sucked into the same body is unknown to me, and she doesn’t understand it either.

She was let loose into the sewer to die a gruesome death by rats, or exile. In the games of succession, directly causing death of another royal family member could be magically revealed. A more subtle, indirect death was the way to do it. Asking her about what happened to her human princess body only brought on more crying.

“Alright,” I said. I had to make sure, “So nobody looks like us, in this here kingdom?” I hooked a thumb pointing at us.

She looked at the thumb then back up at me. “No, of course not!”

“What would happened if we were to say, show up at the front gates of that castle we ran from? Hmm?” The Lancaster kingdom was a human kingdom. And we were not.

“They would ” She stared out blankly into the snow in front, downcast. “I I don’t know what to do. You need to help me! I’ll make you a knight. No, a lord! Please!” She pleaded.

Lord Kevin had a nice ring to it, but I had no idea what she expected me to do about all this. If anything, she knew more than I did. “You can count on me, we’ll tackle this mess together. Alright?” I said in an assuring tone, which appeared to improve her mood. We turned back, and walked off towards the mountain again.

As we were walking, the hand on her side glowed in a yellow green flame. In response, the pain down my back, shoulder, and right leg decreased.

“What was that?” I asked her.

“Oh, I [Healed].” She smiled with satisfaction. She had healing magic. It was amazing! I had worried that we’d catch an infection and die. From then on, ever so often when her mana regenerated, she’d cast a [Heal] on us. In time, blisters and cuts were good as new. While pain was gone, scars remained.

When I asked Estra about mana, she told me to look it up from the status screen. Turned out I had one, and so did everyone else in this world. It was like a video game world of a sort, and I was familiar with video games. I didn’t have a single spell or profession, but only one skill: [Inspect]. After all the nasty surprises, starting with the trash container above my head, finding out that I had a status screen wasn’t all that shocking. It was reassuring, exciting even – a video game afterlife!

From the status screen I also learned that we were the ogre variety of two-headed monsters. This explained our appalling looks. I have seen some ogres in video games, but we were not the gigantic variety. This body was young, only seventeen years old, and at 6 foot 2, and 270 lbs, we were more of an obese man than a giant. We would probably grow and get bigger still.

While we walked, we came to an agreement that she’d control the left arm, while I would control the right. She insisted to be in control of the legs because a commoner like myself couldn’t be in charge. It wasn’t a hill worth dying on, so I let her have it. It didn’t matter much anyways because I felt every bit of the rough terrain on the soles of our bare feet as much as she did, as if I was walking myself. Sometimes I’d get confused and try to move our legs, which would cause us to freeze midstep. After a short lifetime of moving legs yourself it was hard to let go and have someone do it for you.

Aside from a grimy old loincloth to hide our shame, we were naked. Which if the status screen was believed, was male, but I didn’t peek inside to confirm. Despite the cold and howling wind weren’t freezing, thanks to the ogre’s [Tough Skin] perk. Also, we were obese. We couldn’t go back to the castle, two-headed anything is a big no no in the kingdom, as in, ‘kill on sight.’ We had nowhere to go. For now, she had us going towards the mountain, for some reason, or none.

“Where are we going?” I asked to see if she finally decided on something.

“I already told you, I don’t know!” She said, fuming.

“We have been walking for hours. We need a plan.” I told her firmly.

“And I need to murder my brother!” She retorted. At least we haven’t been walking in circles. I kept correcting our direction by keeping the sun just past her head, on my left. We were heading north and the sun was setting.

“It’s only going to get colder, so we need to find some shelter for the night.” I told her. “Also, how far is the mountain, and have you been out here before?”

She ignored my question. We had another three hours of light judging from the location of the sun in the sky. That is, if it was anything like the Sun I was familiar with. I took over the legs, stopping us from moving.

“We need shelter.” I told her in a slow, firm tone.

“Fine! You want it, you find it!” She said, and looked away from me, showing the back of her head. It had a long dirty braid of brown hair going down the middle.

The snow was only ankle deep and the temperature outside was close to melting point. I was getting thirsty, so I grabbed a handful of snow to chew on. It occured to me that probably shared the same stomach. I picked up our pace hoping to make it towards the mountain before nightfall. I hoped we’d find a cave for the night.

“Keep an eye out for any decent branches we could use to make a spear or club.” I told her, but she only snorted and kept looking to the side, muttering to herself. I don’t get it. First she was begging for help, now she’s ignoring me. The forest was sparse and varied in trees. I spotted squirrel-like rodents in the trees, and strange colored birds, but nothing bigger. The place felt empty otherwise.

It was getting late when we came upon a small river, and followed it upstream towards the mountain. Down a distance I spotted a small lithe creature with what looked like a fishing spear. I pointed it out to her.

“I think it’s a kobold.” She said loud enough that the creature heard us, because it stood up from its rocky perch above the water to look at us. It didn’t seem alarmed or ran off.

“Would such creatures be friendly to Ogres?” I asked her.

“Maybe. You’re not considering going to talk to it, are you?” She said, but I ignored the question.

“We could go back to the castle, instead?” I said.

“Are you stupid, they’d kill me!” She responded with irritation. Arguing with her was pointless.

“I don’t know about you, but I’m getting hungry, maybe it has food.” I said and moved towards it. The creature stood up tall as we approached, watching us. I waved my hand, and it backed off a step.

“Hello!” I said, loud enough that it would hear me, and it darted into the woods and was gone.