AnimaNova.exe (Arc1:Chp1)

Arc 1

Chapter 1 - The Silent Protagonist

The clamour of pickaxes thudding against bedrock brought Sophia to partial consciousness. In the far reaches of her mind, she was mildly aware that she lay asleep and that she could smell the thick layer of dust in the stuffy air.

Her neighbours had always been great, so it was hard to believe that they’d start construction without giving her a friendly little heads-up about the possible noise. It was so loud that they seemed to be digging right outside her bedroom door.

She was uncomfortable. Her bed was unusually hard and her bedding scratchy. They smelled musty, too. She wondered if she was still shrugging off the effects of a dream she couldn’t remember. Something Sophia didn’t dwell on very long. The thought flitted away as soon as it entered her conscious mind, replaced by an ever-growing alarm ringing throughout it. The dissonance between where she thought she was and the sensory information she was receiving was becoming overwhelming.

Her eyes shot open and darted around. She woke in a warm, suffocating darkness, with a steady blue light blinking against the stone walls surrounding her. The visual stimuli were so unusually vivid and detailed despite the lack of proper lighting that for a split second she wondered if she’d slept with her contacts in. But that was pushed to the back of the mind because on her list of immediate concerns, her strangely perfect sight was near the bottom.

In a panic, she stumbled from the splintered wooden frame she was lying on. It was covered with a smattering of straw and coarse burlap blankets. Wherever she was, it was not her bed or her bedroom.

Sophia's legs immediately crumbled beneath her, and she fell to the hard dirt floor. Her legs felt as if she’d never used them before, as if they’d never carried the weight of her body. Everything about her felt unfamiliar. The length of her limbs, the movement of her body and the sound of her ragged breaths as she crawled to the wall to drag herself unsteadily back to her buckling feet.

There was dim yellow light beyond the heavy metal bars that blocked the only exit she could see.

 Where am I? How did I get here? Why is this happening? A million panicked questions ran through her head and her heart raced faster with each one.

An overlong tendril of hair tickled her cheek, and absent-mindedly, she raked it from her face. The tips of her nails hooked across the skin of her cheek. At the burning sensation of the fresh wounds, Sophie’s eyes dropped to her hand. It was wrapped in a dirty, ragged cloth. As far as she could tell, she had not been injured, so the cover must have been purely for protection. Her fingers remained uncovered, though and each one was tipped with a long, sharp, pointed claw.

She mumbled incoherently. Her mind refused to come up with a logical reason for what she was seeing, and she took in the rest of her body. She had no shoes, only more of the rags wrapped around her instep and ankles. She was dressed in a sack of the same material and the only thing that gave it shape was a thick, frayed rope tied around her waist. The blinking blue light she had spotted earlier emanated from an uncomfortably tight metal collar around her neck. She couldn’t find a buckle, latch or break in its surface to loosen or remove it.

Everything was wrong with her. This was not her body, her hands, her hair. Everything was wrong with this place. This room, the sights, the smells, the noise. And yet... she was getting an uncanny sense of déjà vu, like she had seen this place before.

She heard muffled voices beyond the metal gate, and her ear twitched in response. Sophia froze at the sensation.

She slowly reached up to the sides of her head and found the places where her ears should be flat and covered with more of her long hair. Liquid dread filled her veins. ‘Oh my god!’ she screamed internally. ‘My ears are gone!’ Her fingers roved slightly higher and curled around the soft, fuzzy, conical shape of a cat’s ears.

Before she could launch into full-blown hysterics, Sophia felt something long and furry land heavily on her shoulder, then hit her face and curl around her neck. Her heart stopped and she hissed, violently pushing the thing away from her.

She stilled in shock when she felt the force of her own push and the wind flowing through her fur as it swung away.

Dreading what she would see, she slowly turned to look behind her. It slithered out of her purview and curled around her front. She turned around quickly, hoping to catch sight of it, only for it to disappear behind her again.

It took her a couple of spins in opposite directions before she managed to catch it. She felt the pain of her steel grip shoot up her spine as she did and felt the tug at the base of her tailbone when she pulled it before her disbelieving eyes.

‘I have a tail!’ she thought hysterically. ‘I have cat ears and a tail!’ Her ears were ringing and her breath was short and raspy. ‘I have claws and fangs! How is this possible?’

“A Silvestra Felis playing with their tail. Cute,” a voice glided to her.

She recognised the voice. It was smooth and comforting, like a caress along the skin of your spine but with a hint of threat that reminded you of a poised snake. She swore she’d heard it before.

Sophia released her tail and turned toward the jingle of keys at the exit, searching for the owner of the voice among the shadowed figures standing there.

The door unlocked with echoing metal thuds and creaked loudly as it swivelled on rusty hinges when the foremost figure pushed it open. Five figures entered. She knew only two of them, but the other three wore robes she would recognise anywhere.

Everything clicked into place. The uncanny déjà vu she'd been feeling made sense now. She knew this place! She had seen it many times across multiple characters in the game she loved.

As she stared up into the cold amber eyes of Commander Armin and felt the maniacal malice emanating from the High Priest Gen’varel and his brow-beaten, glassy-eyed subordinates, Sophia had a sinking feeling that this wasn’t some weird cosplay LARP she had somehow gotten dragged into. She was a massive fan, but not as involved in the community to the extent that this would ever happen.

Her head spun in disbelief, struggling to make sense of what was happening. ‘This is either an extremely lucid dream, or I have been transported into the Novus Animus MMORPG!’

 ...

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