Blink of an Eye - a Guild Wars 2 Fanfiction

Prologue

Light, everywhere around me. Flashing in bizarre colors that I had never seen before, with such speed I could not comprehend.

It felt as though I was being dragged forwards, but at the same time, there was an invisible force pulling from the other side as well.

"This must be what time travelling feels like", a thought briefly flashed through my mind.

As fascinating as it was, I had no idea of what was actually happening to me. The last I had remembered was that I had been on my way home when it had started to snow again.

Then out of nowhere, something had dazzled me.

At first I had thought it was the lights of the nearby cars passing.

But all of a sudden, I was stranded here - in this chaos of light and noise which I was not able to discern. The sound around me was a mixture of crackles, crunches and squeaks. Somehow it sounded familiar, but there were far more unknowns in this cacophony of new noises.

The lights had been a sheer white color for the first few seconds of my strange journey, but now they were taking on every imaginable color possible. They changed with no recognizable rhythm and pulsed with no real consistency.

Finally parts of the pressure left from my body, and I used the opportunity to let in a deep breath into my lungs. Now the threatening part was gone – at least so I thought.

But then the pain started.

I felt the sudden urge to scream, however the pain in my ears made every sound fade out, and it caused my face to twist into a grimace. Every muscle in my body had clenched up like a tight coil, and they seemed ready to explode at any moment now. Beneath the aching muscles, my bones felt as though they were threatening to split in half.

I tried to blink, but my eyes had to burst from the amount of pressure on them any moment now.

With every flash of light dashing towards me, a needle invaded my skin. And within the blink of an eye, nothing inside my body felt the same as it had before.

Slowly, the pain faded. The yearning scream that had been building in my lungs finally burst out. It was near-deafening for my wounded ears, and it sounded way too foreign.

That was not my voice! Was it? It had never sounded as strange as it did now. Deeper... or just different. Whatever the light tunnel had done to me, it had changed something. And not just my voice, but possibly my body as well.

The lights faded, and I was left in a room filled with nothing.

My strained eyes relaxed in the welcoming darkness, and everything around me seemed to have disappeared. The warped and torn landscape from the vision before had been replaced with more recognizable colors and discernable shapes.

Suddenly I collided with something, my body jerking when it landed upon something really hard. Still full of dizziness, I raised my head and took a harsh breath - only to be immediately shaken by an enormous coughing attack. It took a few moments to calm my breathing down far enough to breathe normally.

I wiped away a few tears out of my eyes and then used the opportunity to look around.

I had escaped the light tunnel - but I was not at home anymore.

Broad arches surrounded me, and from far away I could see the distant shapes of mountains. Their peaks were scattered with the occasional waterfalls and encircled by forests.

I looked around more, immediately taking notice of how the green meadows surrounding me were teaming with flowers and life. It was a sure enough sign of a blossom spring, wherever this was.

The nearby animals that were grazing on the spring bounty were not familiar from the ones I already known. Not far from me flew a rather large beetle, but I was too much in a state of shock to care about the abnormal size of these animals.

"Where the hell am I!?" I thought to myself.

With one hand I ruffled through my hair - and stopped immediately.

I glanced at my right hand in disbelief, struggling to recognize there were only four digits now instead of the usual five. Not only that, but they were unusually thick for human proportions and had claw-like ends to them.

Besides that, the skin covering them was also way too dark! Instead of the pale white skin that did not see much sun all year round, my new skin was a dark bronze.

A quick glance to my other hand soon told me of the same transformation.

Everything else had changed as well. My arms had become way too short, and my forearms were much more broad and thick than before.

I grabbed at my hair, staring at the long red strands in confusion. It had never been this length or color before.

Everything seemed familiar to me in some strange way, but it seemed that secret didn't want to reveal itself quite yet. It was only when I glanced at my feet that I finally got some semblance of recognition.

"Three big claw-like toes and a clumpy shape. These are Asuran feet!" I thought, my eyes widening like saucer plates. It also helped explain the new unusual body structure.

But how was this possible? I hadn't taken any kinds of drugs, nor did I ever try virtual reality. I had just been walking home from a normal work day!

"Maybe someone had mixed something into my drink?" I mused, a concerned look on my new Asuran-features.

Though I couldn't quite explain the situation, it all felt extremely real.

I was inside the body of an Asura, and I was sitting amidst the fields of Metrica Province. A feat proven by the iconic geometrical shapes and floating cubes nearby.

Somehow... I was stuck right in the middle of Tyria, in a game called Guild Wars 2.