Arcane Apocalypse

2 – Integrated

[Mana saturation reached minimum levels required for establishing System contact.]

Hearing the words without hearing a voice and seeing them without being able to actually see quickly dethroned being struck by pink lightning was the weirdest thing Mia experienced.

After a moment she realised the words weren’t even English, or German, or any language she could understand, but a strange script that reminded her of old Norse runes. Runes, she would otherwise have no hope of understanding.

[Do you wish to become a Use- error.]

[Query cancelled. Authority override.]

[Proceeding with Integration.]

[Initiating Integration: 3 … 2 … 1 …]

[Scanning …]

Mia didn’t know what to think, so she didn’t think. She just watched … er, experienced everything. She didn’t know what was going on, so she didn’t even try to. This was so damned weird, she knew it would just give her a headache.

It wasn’t like she could do a single thing about anything while still struggling to keep that rampaging energy from … well, rampaging.

Is that Mana? She wondered. Probably to distract herself.

Maybe if she survived this, she would become a mage. Or an arcane explosive if her control slipped. Earth’s first magical explosive, what a title.

[Body and Mind attributes within acceptable parameters. Spirit attribute is NULL]

[Subroutine #1 activated]

[Requesting assistance …]

Mia hummed in her mind. Nope. She saw nothing weird, nothing at all. No notifications barged into her mind like they owned the damned place. Nope.

She especially didn’t hear that her Spirit attribute was NULL. Nope. That was probably normal, totally. 

Even if it was, she didn’t hear it. So it was fine.

[Assistance Granted]

[Solution Found]

[Title: ‘Newcomer’ has been granted to User]

[Scanning … Spirit attribute is within acceptable parameters.]

Mia deflated, slumping in relief as she shuddered. The fullness wasn’t gone, not entirely, but she didn’t feel like an overblown balloon anymore. 

It was great.

[Proceeding]

[Dormant Bloodline detected … Initiating Partial Awaken- ]

[Override: ‘Newcomer’ Title detected]

[Full Awakening Initiated]

Mia readied herself for pain, as the damned thing was doing something weird to her again. She could faintly feel a much more ephemeral and controlled version of ‘mana’ moving through her body and poking and prodding at stuff.

What she did not prepare for was the itchiness. Deep in her bones, her muscles, and especially in her ears. She felt the insides of her skull crawl as if her brain turned into an anthill.

Next came the rest of her body, her whole body lit up with immense discomfort. Her skin crawled, her muscles went sore, and her bones itched. The closest thing she could compare it to the sensation of a limb waking up after the blood-flow had been cut off somehow, usually by the downright contortionist level positions she could fall asleep in while drunk. 

It was like that, but throughout her whole body and down to the marrow of her bones. The insides of her femur itched. She didn’t even know she had nerves there. If it wasn’t so agonisingly uncomfortable that she wanted to claw her skin off, maybe she’d have noted how weird this whole thing was. Again.

It stopped suddenly. One moment she wanted to claw her ears off and the next the itchiness was gone, leaving Mia strangely comfortable and light.

[Awakening Completed]

[Proceeding with Integration]

[Integrating … ]

If the thing was integrating — whatever that entailed — that probably meant she didn’t have any other glaring issues. Ones that would need this thing to fix, anyway.

Her thoughts stumbled over themselves. Why did it help her? Wasn’t it the one to put her in danger in the first place? With that pink lightning?

Hopefully, she would get some answers once this damned progress bar finished loading. Damned loading screens. 

She squinted at it. She swore the tiny line was moving backwards. Nope. She didn’t care. It would load faster that way, right? 

That’s how it worked. Right? Right!

When she next peeked at it, the bar moved. Just about what felt like five percent, but it did.

Yessss. She pumped her fists, though she couldn’t see if she actually did so. Maybe she was in some sort of stasis, or trapped inside her own mind?

Now that nothing too shocking happened for a while, Mia had enough time to be horrified at how unnerving not being able to use any of her senses was.

She saw neither light nor dark. Her sight was just straight-up nonexistent, like how she heard totally blind people describe blindness.

Did that ‘mana’ pop my eyes and ears? But I don’t feel anything. Maybe it paralysed me? Mia wondered. If so, I’d be the lamest mage, even if I learned to control it. A vegetable mage.

Great. She was back to edgy humour. That’s how she knew she was really out of it. Sticking her head into the sand and making inappropriate jokes had been her go-to answer to stress ever since she could remember.

The progress bar slowly crawled forward. It was the only thing she could ‘see’ so ignoring it became harder and harder as time languidly crawled onwards. 

Ten percent, twenty percent, fifty percent … eighty percent.

She stared at it. Something was happening to her, she could feel it. Something weird and strange and unnerving. Parts of her she didn’t even know existed were poked, prodded, and somehow changed … or maybe just turned on?

Mia chuckled to herself. What was she? Some cyborg to have parts of her offline and in need of turning back on?

Still, that was the closest analogy she could find. She felt … stuff. Stuff she couldn’t place. If she had to put a name on it, the nerd in her would have said it was her soul. A deep part of her that felt somewhat detached and unreal.

Ninety percent, ninety-nine percent … ninety-nine point nine percent.

Mia’s face was twitching uncontrollably by that point. The damned progress bar spent about as long in the last ten percent as it had for the previous ninety.

Come on, you slow piece of shi-

[Integration Completed]

[Initializing System Interfacing]

[System Port installation: In Progress]

Mia was sure she was screeching like a banshee, even though she couldn’t hear it. Something pierced into her very being, that ephemeral part of her she came to think about as her soul.

The pain stopped, only having lasted for a split second but Mia twitched from the phantom pain still ravaging through her body in waves.

She thought breaking her arm was bad. This … this was indescribable. Pure agony the like of which no amount of physical torture could achieve.

[System Port Installed]

[Final Scanning … Exit Code: 0]

[Welcome to the System, Maria Vexley]

All at once, her absent senses burst to life, bombarding her with all sorts of stupid information. Her knees buckled, and she fell face-first onto the floor, her wrists scraping against the rough carpet.

“Urgghhhh,” said Mia, eloquently.

Mia heard another thud next to her and a series of gruff swearing in an alien voice. She jumped, propped herself up, and scuttled back to the corner in fright.

She didn’t know that voice.

The hairy midget — because that’s all she could call it — apparently heard her and stopped cursing. It turned towards her.

“What the fuck,” said Mia.

The man was five feet tall at most with a bulbous nose and long scruffy hair and a beard the colour of the muddy earth. It was a fucking dwarf.

Not a human with dwarfism, but an honest-to-god Tolkienian dwarf. It even spoke in a slight Scottish accent.

“Why do ya have pink hair?” The dwarf asked.

Mia blinked. Was he talking to her? She supposed he was, but she had dark black hair. She grabbed a lock of it and checked just to be sure before asking the dwarf whether he had problems with his eyes.

Then she saw the bright, vibrant pink lock held in her fingers. The same colour as the bolt of lightning that struck her.

“What?” Somehow this felt just as weird as that strange hallucination she had after getting her brain fried by the lightning. Also, why was she even alive after getting her brain fried?

“That’s what I'm askin’.”

The dwarf stumbled to his feet and stared at her as she hugged her legs in the corner. He was stocky, about a quarter as wide as he was tall. The proportions were all fucked up.

In her shock, she loosened her grip on her ‘mana’. 

Mia yelped, feeling as if someone punched her in the gut, but from the inside. She quickly tightened her mental hold on the energy with a pained grimace. 

Okay. That might not have been some delirious hallucination … and neither is this.

“What’s wrong Mia?” The dwarf asked worriedly, and she stiffened.

“Why do you know my name?”

“What?”

“Also,” she slowly rose to her feet. She wasn’t good at any martial arts, but she should be able to beat up someone a head shorter than her. “What are you doing in my apartment?”

“What are you talking abou-,” the dwarf started. “Why are you so damned tall?!”

“Answer the question,” she said, hand already raised to wrap around Mark’s stupid baseball bat that he insisted had to be held in the living room.

“Hey, hey, leave my damned bat alone,” the dwarf growled and glared at her. “The fuck’s wrong with you Mia? Did that bolt fry your tiny brain?”

Mia had the urge to smash his face in with the bat for an entirely different reason than before. This feeling was familiar though, and she slowly relaxed.

“Mark?” She stared dubiously at the dwarf. She had pink hair now … and Mark turned into a dwarf. Yeah, that totally made sense.

“Who else would I be?” He half grumbled, though his confusion was clear on his hairy face.

“Grumpy?” Mia asked with a twitch of her lips, her nerves slowly easing. It was just Mark, but tiny and hairy. She could deal with that. “Does that make me snow white?”

“The hell are you talking about?” He huffed, his silly moustache flaring. 

Is he messing with me? There is no way he didn’t notice anything. She stared at him. “Check a mirror.”

“What?”

“Go see for yourself?” She said, “In a mirror.”

He scampered off, though his steps slowed as he came up to the table. The table which reached up to his chest.

Then he dashed off to the bathroom like a miniature rocket.

Mia stumbled over to the couch and slumped down, then gingerly ran her fingers through her hair. It was long, longer than she remembered and had a divine silkiness to it she never achieved before with any hair care routine she tried.

It was also gloriously pink. A vibrant Barbie pink. 

Mia groaned and buried her face in her hands. It was so damned lame. She always thought even blue or green dyed hair looked lame and overly artificial, but pink? It had the added benefit of making her look extremely childish.

Though, this pink somehow managed to look natural. Maybe because it was natural now. Still, she would have to see whether she could dye it back to black. 

“WHAT THE FUCK?!”

She chuckled. 

“Why am I a DWARF?!”

Mia giggled, then broke down into hysterical laughter as Mark swore like a sailor in that new Scottish accent of his. Her sides hurt, her eyes teared up, and she just laughed.

“Shut UP!” He glowered, now standing in the doorframe and glaring at her. Mia just laughed harder and rolled off the couch.

He came to stand next to her, glowering at her as she continued to laugh like a lunatic. Then she caught his eye and saw that amused glint in it that usually preceded her getting hit with a vicious comeback. Her laughter died down, though she continued to giggle as she laid on the carpet.

“Could have been worse,” Mark mused. “At least I’m not the one who looks like a ten-year-old trying to cosplay an elf.”

Her breath caught in her chest, her giggles instantly transforming into choked coughs. “What?”

“Go see for yourself?” He said, audibly relishing every single syllable that left his hairy mouth. “In a mirror.”

Mia threw herself onto her feet, almost planting her face back on the floor as she miscalculated her momentum, then rushed off to the bathroom.

When she arrived at the mirror above the sink, she was greeted by a sight that blessedly held some familiarity. Her face was the same … mostly. A birthmark she had above her eyebrow was gone and, along with it, went all the tiny acne scars and other blemishes.

Her skin was smooth, so much so that she could barely even see the pores on her hand when she checked.

What wasn’t familiar was the flowing curly pink hair that held some bluish highlights here and there. They only showed when she swung her hair about, peeking out from under the cascade of pink curls.

Also. Ears. 

She held her hair up and just stared at the two triangular ears standing perpendicular to her skull. Thank god — or maybe that magical system — they weren’t as obnoxiously large as she’d seen in anime, though they were still larger than the tiny ears elves had in the Lord of the Rings.

In size, they were about twice as large as her regular human ears were, and much more pointy.

Mia heaved a sigh of relief. Then shuddered as she realised she could have ended up as a hairy dwarf. Or a catgirl from some furry wet dream. Or a goblin. Or a gno-

Okay, stop. Mia closed her eyes, and habitually twisted the facet to wash her face in cold water, but nothing came.

She opened her eyes and sighed again. No running water.

That thought made something snap in her. The reality of her situation crashed into her like a freight train and rolled over her, then put itself in reverse and rolled over her again for good measure.

All the water they had was what was in the tub. All the food they had was slowly spoiling in the fridge, now that there was no electricity. No internet, no mobile service.

Grocery shops were going to be raided quickly. She just knew some people who were quicker on the uptake were already rushing to loot the nearest supermarket, ready to fight tooth and nail for every can of beans and roll of toilet paper.

Mia walked out of the bathroom with a lost look on her face. Would the government have a way to keep order? To feed the population? Would they stop a couple of assholes from hoarding all the food?

Was she going to starve to death?

Probably. The rational part of Mia told her. She wasn’t much of a fighter, and turning into whatever she was now certainly didn’t give her bulging muscles. Hell, she was still only a bit over a head taller than a dwarf.

A regular human could easily beat her black and blue with little trouble, but what if some people lucked out on this awakening lottery and got turned into giants, orcs, or minotaurs.

Not that she would ever willingly turn herself into one of those things. She would have loved to stay as she was, but she knew not to look a gift horse in the mouth. She was overall quite happy with what she got. Who needs bulging muscles if they came with a fur suit?

 Yep. Starving to death in a few days beat living for the rest of her life suffering from horrible body dysmorphia.

Speaking of. She glanced at the now tiny, hairy Mark. “How do you feel?”

“Weird? Great?” He ran his finger through his beard with a hand while he continued hopping up and down in the centre of the room. “Weirdly great?”

Mia thought for a few seconds before nodding. “Same.”

Out of curiosity, she too began hopping in place. She quickly concluded that she was either much lighter than before or her muscles had been switched up with some futuristic super muscle when she easily hopped high enough to hit her head into the ceiling.

The room was only about two and a half metres high, but damn, she was barely trying.

Also, now her head hurt, and she was probably going to have a bump. What a great start to the apocalypse.