Chapter 3 - "Friendly Fiends"

                                    

                                          
   I wake up to my first morning in the underworld. Nothing has bitten my head off, and as far as I can tell, all of my limbs are intact. As my eyes open slowly, my heart begins to beat fast. Krom is fast asleep, but he's so close to me that it almost scares me to death. He has an arm under his pillow while the other rests on it. I stare at his claws, wondering how fast he can rip the skin off my bones.
   I shake off the thoughts. Despite the fact that I don't know him, he has proven to be more than just a kind soul in a grisly world. At any point during the night, or even when we first met, he could have killed me, raped me, tortured me, but instead he offers me a safe place to sleep. If it hadn't been for him, I might have woken up cold and alone, missing a leg or two, while two rat boys devoured my flesh like jerky.
   I stare a bit longer, studying his wolf face up close. So far from what I've seen, he's the least scary thing I've come across. But since hell is large and ever expanding, I wonder what actual terrifying things I'll witness.
   His ears twitch and I wonder if he's dreaming. Perhaps it's even a nightmare. I raise a hand, about to brush my hand through his fur, when I stop dead still at the sight of my fingers. My hand looks different, and I can't explain how. It somehow looks . . . smaller.
   Panicking, I sit up and feel a strange weight on my chest. I look down and scream until there's no air in my lungs. I fucking have boobies! This wakes up Krom, and his eyes are big and alarmed as he stares up and down at me.
   We both scream at the same time. I don't know why he's screaming, but I'm screaming because his eyes turn red and that to me just doesn't seem very cash money of him.
   "WHO ARE YOU?" he roars, his voice sending spooky shivers down my spine.
   "WHAT?" I scream back, confused.
   He gets on all four and I try not to giggle at how beastly he looks. He carefully crawls out of bed, keeping an eye on me. This makes me feel as if my life is in jeopardy. This is the first time he's acting like an actual animal.
   "Where is Sinneas?" he growls, almost demonically.
   "I am Sinneas," I tell him.
   He closes his eyes and sniffs the air for a moment. "You smell like him, but you don't look like—wait, no . . . you do look like him."
   I'm curious about the nonsense he's talking about, so I bolt out of bed and run to the bathroom. As I enter, the candles floating on the ceiling magically light up and slowly reveal my new identity.
   A few things like my skin and hair color are the same, but the rest is new. My hair is long now, so long that it floats just below my waist. My body and face structure have all changed and are smaller, more feminine. And then I stare back into my new eyes. They're blue, but a blue so bright it can compete with a star.
   "What is going on?" I ask as I feel my new body. "Did us fucking do this to me?"
   He shakes his head as he stands safely outside of the bathroom door.
   When I look at myself, I wonder how someone can pull a prank like this, but I know it's not the case. It's a strange feeling to see yourself in the mirror and feel like an uncomfortable presence is watching back instead. Physically, it doesn't feel any different than my previous body. There are a few additions, and a few other ones that are gone, but it's not like I'm trapped somewhere I shouldn't be—it feels natural, and that's why my head is about to explode.
   "Your identification card has changed," Krom says, passing me the card.
   "What the fuck?" I say as I read the word Female where once was a question mark. Not only that, but the photo has changed. It's the same pose, the same me, but female. "Hell makes no sense."