It’s different. She controls me. When I move on my own it’s by my design each step. A perfect placement. Thought over a thousand times or as many a moment can. This is different. Insidious. Delusional. She taints me by restricting my bound. I’ve a mouth with no teeth. I can act but my actions are on a muted beat. If I know the line I must go I am merely playing along with the show. I am a tool. Expendable. Easily replaced. 

There is nothing more vulgar than the ties of a summoner. She bounds to her at whim and they must obey. It hit me then and then again. Now. I’ve no control of my actions when she says it's so. 

So… I go to bed and rest my head preparing to defeat a demon I do not know in a land foreign to me. This isn’t me.  Get out of my bRAIN!

Locke demanded as he plunged his fist to the floor in desperate defiance. 

“I am not a slave to you!” He screams out and pours out both light and shadow throughout the guest house. Stirring to wake the One Lancaster Progeny.

“Oi, what the fuck?” Tye says to Locke. 

Before Locke lays a girl more beautiful than anyone he’d ever seen. Disgusting. Obnoxious. Weird. Should he laugh or cry? An angel with those devil eyes. Still blue. Still true. Infinitely more funneling down an ocean. A sea. A universe… Corin was telling the truth there is magic in these eyes… Tye blinks. 

“Tye?” Locke exclaims, shooting his gaze upward and then downward. Anywhere not those funneling blue eyes. To cleavage it would seem. They’re bigger than he’d expected. Perfection isn’t something one should strive for because life is hard and long but…

“What?” Tye fiddles about as if dodging some invisible attacks along the floor of this guest room. Her clothes. Now a bit too big drooping and revealing but not quite. Her hair is the same. Longer maybe by an inch? It’s blond and almost shimmering. 

Locke’s Heart thumbs once aloud. So strongly it had to be swallowed down. Digested and reassessed. 

“Holy shit!” Tye proclaims acknowledging the evident change of their body from his to her.

“Do you have a mirror or something?” He asks excitedly.

It’s the giant that then materializes from within the guest room. The silent giant producing a phone. Tye looks at him dumbstruck and disheveled but those seem to be compliments in Locke’s eye. 

No.. Locke quakes to himself.

Brent snaps a picture on his phone with a flash. Dumbstruck they all look at the device. The image it relays being the image that currently is One Tye Lancaster. 

“I’m Fucking gorgeous!” She falls flat onto her backside.  “Hahahaahhaahhaa”

“Hey, Locke. You want some of this.” He muses, shifting his body in an obnoxious fashion.

“Holy shit dude!” Locke screams with hands to head. 

Brent's hands fall atop his as well. What is this madness? Phasing Sickness…

Brent and Locke lock eyes. 

“Well boys, I can’t say it’s all that bad.” Tye declares as she cracks her knuckles and kinks her neck. “I actually feel pretty go-“

Tye turns green and proceeds to vomit everywhere. 

“Oh, great…” Locke laments…

————————————————————-

The Estate is lively as the sun rises over their first morning in this new world. Two women, two men  of human origin stand before the Olcan clan.

“Every time you sleep huh?” Tye asks Corinin hushed voice as Nora addresses the crowd assembled before them.

“Yeah, every time.” Corin acknowledges. Keeping still and peering out at all the watching eyes. These beings are larger than they are save Brent. But who isn’t smaller than a giant by nature or stature?

“So why aren’t you a guy right now?” Tye percists.

To which Corin wilts ever so slightly. Not wanting to appear anything less than opulent for the fan fair. 

“With these new creatures pulled from the depths of reality by sheer will of our Lady High Summoner Nora Nebula…” Paliues decrees out.

“I’m not tired. So I didn’t sleep.” Corin replies calmly.

“Huh, after all that shit we went through?” Tye replies.

“What are you trying to say?” Corin inquires under her breath as she scans the horizon and everything before it. Again and again. As if something might suddenly change.

“I think you like this new body.” Tye replies with a smirk. Catching Corin off guard she looks away for a moment as Palius continues his speech to the gathered crowd. “I mean, I can understand cause look at me I’m, of course, awesome still.”

Corin rolls her eyes hearing Tye’s gloating. She can’t help herself. A chuckle slips from her mouth. 

“What’s so funny?” Tye inquires

“It’s just, I thought of you as a girl right now so naturally.” Corin responds. 

“Weird.” 

“Yeah.”

“Have you…”

“And I give the floor to your new High Summoner, first of her name Nora Nebula, savior of our people!” Palius finishes. 

“I know you all have a lot of questions but…”

“We love you Nora!” One of the children shouts.

“Here here! Our Lady has Arrived!” One of the elderly men shouts out.

The crowd is of thirty or so. Another thirty are at the wall defending the estate and the rest are asleep. Ninety souls are what remain of the Olcan clan. 

“Quite the crowd” Locke muses. 

Brent simply towers over them all unmoved and awed upon by the children.

They stand larger than humans. Six foot by average and covered in a coat of hair. Different colors denoting different attributes Corin speculates? Almost like a video game.

“What is to be done now. The waters have begun to run and the ground returns its saturation. I can even hear the sound of wildlife in the forest.  Has the curse naught been already lifted?” One from the crowd inquires. An elderly fellow. A farmer by trade by the look of him Corin imagines. Beside him his wife and a few kids. They gauk at Brent’s stature incredulously.

“Indeed things seem to have changed but the curse has not been abated and the demon still remains.” Declares the lone goblin matriarch at the back of the crowd isolated away along with Tetters. “She is awakened but not here yet, we must go it alone it would seem.”

“How can you tell?” He inquires back to her.

“Gregory, a goblin is one thing but a Matriarch is wise beyond our years. It is wise to heed her wisdom.” Palius says aloud to the man. 

“I tell you now for I have seen it in the bones!” The Goblin matriarch declares as she casts from out her bag an allotment of goblin bones flung from her to the ground. They fall this way and that and she circles it in deep contemplation. The alignment at which they landed so happen to resemble the metropolis ever so vaguely. 

They do not exactly simply lay flat and still. Some of them twitch and tumble trying to find their proper place till it all comes aligned.  

“What sort of goblin sorcery is this my Matriarch?” Palius asks, astonished and yet disgusted.

“If Feralis has awakened then there is a path to be taken. Nora should go to her and aid her in this battle. As should your men and anyone able to take up arms against this foul miscreant.” She declares. 

The crowd is in shock. The words she says. The gravity of it all. Is not lost on any of them save the four humans who watch in perplexed bemusement. 

“They’re throwing bones?” Tye chortles to the gang both astonished and aghast. “What is this?”

“Tye shut up and just watch.” Locke admonishes.

Brent agrees.

“We can’t just send people off into the woods. We’ve things here that need doing and not enough hands to do them. Winter comes and there will be mouths to feed.” The Captain of the gaurd interjects. Black. Corin sees Nora rolling her eyes and the disgusted look on her sisters’ face. 

“You waist because she is everything and without her we are not anything!” The matriarch reprimands.

“But you see the path don’t you!? As do I. The map you lay out before us. It is doom.” He replies

“I don’t understand. What’s going on?” Corin asks Locke as she nudges him.

“I’m as new to this as you are.” He smiles back. 

“The path you must take goes through the oasis and Ferralis and all her might may be enough i grant… but here this point. Peaks Cliff. The bridge we broke to cut off the hordes from our side. You cannot cross it. You must go into conquered lands and back again. You’ll have entered the old world and they will not aid us. They hate us. Will kill us on sight. We are traitors to them.”

“He’s right.” Another shouts from the crowd.

“We need to rebuild the bridge.” Another one interjects.

“But the horde of goblins are too strong and too lost on that side we cannot stand against that. The goblins here are mad. Those goblins are insane and organized. Traitors they are. Traitors are their kind!” Someone else screams. 

The mass begins to broil with words tossed in anger and resentment. Obviously this battle of attrition has many things she is unaware of is all Corin can think to herself. 

“Silence. Silence. Time is of the essence.” Palius declares. 

“Maybe for you old man, but I am young and strong. I can bide my time.” A youthful looking man from the crowd declares. “I might not wish a pointless death for expedience.”

“Here here!” Another shouts.

“Ugh this seems to be getting out of hand.” Tye states scratching his head in irritation..

Corin nods in acknowledgment. 

“The path to Feralis is made clear. Who is willing?” Matriarch insists. 

“Shut that goblin up. Traitorous race. We’d have defeated that demon if it weren’t for their fall.” Someone screams.

There is a tension growing. An anger that’s been here. Finally surfacing. 

“I will not have words like that said in a discussion of this format!” Palius demands.

“Let’s get out of here” is the thought Nora sends to all her summons. As she grabs the hand of her sister. 

“Hear me now! I will vanquish this demon for I have my summons and they are strong. Have faith in me because I have been true.”

“Yes my lady.” A man replies followed by the others as the seem to admonish themselves before her. She’s like a holy woman to them and of higher rank to boot. This class system is strange and foreign to Corin. It’s hard to get used to. Strange to stomach the range of emotions. 

Subservience. All of that. Reminds her of being commanded by Nora once again. Then the thought she sent to them to leave enters her mind again and she obeys. Such an uncomfortable feeling. Corin doesn’t know if she could ever become accustomed to it…

Intermision.1.0