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Eldritch Horror? No, I'm A Doctor
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Cold.
That was the first thing Colonel Steven Bright felt. Not pain, not fear, just absolute, bone-deep cold that spread from his new eye socket through his entire body.
Then came the light.
Blue light filled his vision, brighter than anything he'd ever seen. It wasn't blinding in a painful way, but overwhelming. Like staring at the sky and seeing infinity.
And then the light faded, and he was somewhere else.
Steven found himself standing in a vast, frozen wasteland. Ice stretched in every direction, crystalline structures rising like towers toward a sky filled with auroras. The ground beneath his feet was solid frost, perfectly smooth like glass. The air was so cold it should have killed him instantly, but he felt nothing. Just the awareness of the temperature.
He looked down at his hands. They were translucent, ghostly. He could see through them to the ice below.
Am I dead?
"You are not dead, human."
Steven spun around. Standing behind him was a figure that made his breath catch.
It was tall, easily seven feet, with a skeletal frame that was somehow still muscular. Its body had no skin, just exposed muscle fiber that had dried and hardened into something that looked like dark leather. The muscles were thick, layered in ways that suggested incredible strength. Frost clung to every surface, crystallizing on the dried tissue.
But it was the face that held Steven's attention. The skull was visible, but the muscle around it was so dense it almost looked like skin. Two eyes sat in the sockets, both ice-blue, both identical to the one now in Steven's head. They stared at him with cold recognition.
Steven's military training kicked in immediately. Assess the threat. Identify the enemy. His hand moved instinctively to where his weapon should be, finding nothing.
"I know you," Steven said slowly, his voice hard. "You're the boss from the frozen gate."
The creature's expression didn't change. "And you are the human who killed me."
The words hung in the frozen air between them. Steven's jaw clenched, but he didn't deny it. The memory was too clear. The final battle. The coordinated assault. His ice-enhanced strike that shattered the creature's frozen armor. The opening it created.
The blade sliding home.
"Yes," Steven said flatly. "I led the raid. My team. My strategy. My responsibility."
"Your kill," the creature added, its voice like ice cracking.
"My kill," Steven confirmed. He straightened his posture, meeting those ice-blue eyes directly. "I'm Colonel Steven Bright, Azareth Empire Military, Gate Suppression Division. I commanded the operation that cleared your gate and eliminated you as a threat to humanity."
The creature stared at him for a long moment. Then it inclined its head slightly, a gesture that might have been acknowledgment or respect.
"I am Vorthak," it said. "Last king of the Skarnoth. Defender of the Frozen Sanctuary. The one you called the Skinless King." It paused. "And the one whose eye now resides in your skull."
They stood facing each other, two warriors who had met in battle. One had died. One had survived. And now they stood together in this place between life and death.
"So this is it, then?" Steven asked, his voice steady despite the surreal situation. "You brought me here for revenge? To kill me in whatever afterlife this is?"
Vorthak's expression didn't change. "If I wanted revenge, human, I would simply let your body reject my eye. The pain would drive you mad within hours. Your mind would shatter as ice spread through your brain, freezing you from the inside out."
Steven's throat tightened, but he kept his face neutral. "Then why am I here?"
"Because you have taken my power," Vorthak replied. "You carry my eye. My legacy. My final gift to this world." He turned away, looking out over the frozen landscape. "The least I can do is show you what you have destroyed. What you have taken from me. What you now carry the responsibility for."
Steven followed Vorthak's gaze across the icy expanse. The aurora lights danced overhead, casting ever-shifting colors across the frozen plain.
"This is your world?" Steven asked.
"This was my world," Vorthak corrected. "My home. My kingdom. Before everything changed."
He began walking across the ice, his footsteps leaving no prints on the perfect surface. Steven followed, unsure what else to do. They walked in tense silence for several minutes, the only sound the faint whisper of wind across ice.
"Tell me something, Colonel Steven Bright," Vorthak said without turning around. "When you fought me in that gate, what did you see?"
Steven considered lying, then decided against it. "I saw a monster. An A-rank boss. A threat that needed to be eliminated to protect my people."
"A monster," Vorthak repeated, his tone unreadable. "Nothing more?"
"What else should I have seen?" Steven shot back. "You killed dozens of my soldiers. Good men and women who were just doing their jobs. You were the enemy."
"I was," Vorthak agreed. "Just as you were mine."
They reached a point where the ice rose in crystalline formations, creating structures that looked almost architectural. Vorthak stopped and raised his hand.
The frozen landscape shimmered. The ice didn't change, but figures appeared throughout the scene. Creatures that looked like Vorthak, but different. They had the same build, the same skeletal structure, but they were covered in thick, white fur. Beautiful, soft pelts that moved in a wind that Steven couldn't feel.
"This is what the Skarnoth were," Vorthak said quietly. "Before the calamity. Before we became the monsters you hunted."
Steven stared at the ghost-images. The furry creatures moved through their frozen world with grace and purpose. Families huddled together for warmth. Children played in the snow, their laughter silent but their joy evident. Workers built structures from ice and stone with careful precision.
"You had skin," Steven said, understanding beginning to dawn. "You weren't always like this."
"We had more than skin. We had fur." Vorthak's voice grew softer, almost wistful. "Thick coats that protected us from the cold of our world. White as fresh snow, soft as clouds. We were adapted perfectly to this place. We thrived here for thousands of generations."
The scene shifted, showing what looked like a celebration. The Skarnoth gathered in a large circle, their voices raised in harmony. The sound didn't reach Steven's ears, but he could see the joy in their movements, the community in their gathering.
"We had culture," Vorthak continued. "We carved sculptures from ice that would last for centuries. We sang songs that echoed through the frozen valleys. We told stories around fires made from frozen methane, tales of our ancestors and heroes." He paused. "We were people, Colonel. Not so different from your own kind."
Steven felt something shift in his chest. Guilt, maybe. Or recognition of a truth he'd been avoiding since the moment he'd stepped into that frozen gate.
"We raised our children to be strong," Vorthak said, gesturing to a group of young Skarnoth learning to hunt. "We honored our elders for their wisdom. We built homes and communities. We loved. We laughed. We lived."
The scene showed more details. A couple nuzzling each other affectionately. An elderly Skarnoth teaching a young one to carve ice. A group working together to haul a massive block of frozen stone.
"You were civilization," Steven said quietly.
"We were civilization," Vorthak confirmed. "And then, three weeks ago, it all ended."
He gestured again, and the scene changed.
Steven watched in growing horror as the Skarnoth's beautiful white fur began to fade. Not fall out. Not burn away. Simply disappear, as if it had never existed. The ghost-images went from whole to exposed in seconds, their muscle tissue suddenly bare to the freezing air.
The celebration turned to chaos. The singing stopped, replaced by screams that Steven couldn't hear but could see in every expression, every movement. The Skarnoth collapsed, clutching at their suddenly exposed bodies. Parents grabbed their children, trying desperately to cover them, to protect them from the cold that had never been their enemy before.
"It happened simultaneously," Vorthak said, his voice flat now, emotionless in the way soldiers get when recounting unbearable trauma. "Every member of our race, at the exact same moment. One instant we were whole. The next, we were this."
The ghost-images of the Skarnoth writhed on the ice. Their exposed muscle tissue began to darken, to dry out. Some of them stopped moving almost immediately, their bodies unable to handle the sudden exposure.
"Children died first," Vorthak continued. "Their bodies were smaller, less able to retain heat. I watched infants freeze in their parents' arms within minutes. Toddlers who had been playing just moments before went still, frost forming on their exposed muscle."
Steven's hands clenched into fists. He'd seen death. He'd caused death. But this was different. This was a genocide that came from nowhere, for no reason.
"Then the elderly," Vorthak said. "Those whose bodies were already weakened by age. They couldn't fight the cold. Couldn't generate enough heat to survive without our fur." He paused. "By the end of the first hour, half our population was dead."
The scene shifted, showing piles of frozen Skarnoth bodies. Families that had died holding each other. Warriors who had survived countless hunts falling to an enemy they couldn't fight.
"The weak went next," Vorthak continued relentlessly. "Those with illness. Those with injuries. Those whose muscle tissue was thinner, less able to form a protective barrier against the cold. By the end of the first day, ninety percent of our race was gone."
Steven watched the ghost-images fade one by one. Two million people reduced to scattered survivors in less than twenty-four hours.
"Two million," Vorthak said. "Reduced to fifteen hundred. That is all that remained of the Skarnoth after the first day. Fifteen hundred of us, all with the thickest muscle fiber. The strongest bodies. Those whose tissue dried and hardened fast enough to form a crude barrier against the cold."
The scene showed the survivors now. They huddled together in caves, wrapped in animal pelts that were poor substitutes for the fur they'd lost. Their exposed muscle was dark and leathery, nothing like healthy tissue. They looked like corpses that had somehow kept moving.
"I survived because my muscle fiber was the thickest," Vorthak explained. "The densest. When it dried, it formed a better barrier than most. I could move without freezing. I could hunt. I could protect what remained of my people." He turned to face Steven. "So they made me king. Not because of any royal bloodline. Not because of wisdom or charisma. Simply because I was the strongest. The one most likely to keep them alive."
Steven looked at the ghost-image of Vorthak among the survivors. Even then, even with exposed muscle and no skin, there was dignity in his posture. Authority. The bearing of a leader who carried the weight of his people's survival.
"What caused it?" Steven asked. "The skin disappearing like that?"
"We do not know." Vorthak's fists clenched. "Some cosmic force. Some law of reality that decided we no longer deserved our skin. There was no warning. No sign. One moment we were whole, and the next we were dying."
The scene shifted again, showing the survivors desperately trying to adapt. They burned everything they could find for warmth. They killed the animals of their world to wrap themselves in foreign pelts. They huddled in groups, sharing what little body heat they could generate.
"We tried everything," Vorthak said. "We burned our sacred sculptures for fuel. We destroyed our art, our history, anything that would give us even a moment's warmth. We killed the last animals of our world and wore their skins. But it wasn't enough. We were dying slowly, degree by degree."
The ghost-images showed Skarnoth collapsing from exhaustion and cold. Warriors strong enough to survive the initial catastrophe falling days later as their bodies simply gave out.
"And then it appeared," Vorthak said quietly.
The scene changed. Darkness spread across the frozen landscape, and in that darkness, something moved. Steven tried to look at it directly and couldn't. His mind rebelled against what his eyes were seeing. It was a shape that had no shape. A presence that hurt to perceive.
"What is that?" Steven asked, looking away.
"I do not know," Vorthak replied. "An unknown being. Something beyond my comprehension. It spoke in a language that caused pain to hear, but I understood its meaning."
The darkness swirled around the huddled survivors. The ghost-image of Vorthak stood to face it while the others cowered behind him.
"It offered us a deal," Vorthak said. "A gate to another world. A warm world where we could survive. Where the cold wouldn't kill us."
"My world," Steven said.
"Yes. Your world." Vorthak's voice grew heavy. "But there was a price. We would have to conquer it. Take it by force. Become invaders. Become the monsters we looked like."
The scene showed the ghost-image of Vorthak arguing with the incomprehensible being. His posture was defiant, resistant. But behind him, more Skarnoth were collapsing. Dying. The choice was clear.
"What else could I do?" Vorthak asked, and for the first time, Steven heard real emotion in his voice. Pain. Guilt. Desperation. "Watch the last of my people freeze? Let our entire race go extinct? Or take the deal and become what we had never wanted to be?"
Steven looked at the ghost-images. The dying Skarnoth. The impossible choice facing their king.
"I would have made the same choice," Steven said quietly.
Vorthak turned to look at him, surprise flickering in his ice-blue eyes.
"If it was my people dying," Steven continued. "My daughter. My soldiers. My country. If some cosmic force took everything from us and a devil offered a way out, I'd take it. Even if it meant becoming the monster." He met Vorthak's gaze. "I'd do whatever it took to save them."
Vorthak stared at him for a long moment. Then something in his posture changed. The coldness, the distance, it thawed just a fraction.
"You understand then," Vorthak said. "The weight of that choice. The burden of it."
"Yeah," Steven replied. "I understand."
The scene shifted one final time, showing the Skarnoth stepping through a gate. Fifteen hundred survivors, all that remained of a civilization of millions, becoming refugees. Becoming invaders.
"We claimed the frozen gate as our territory," Vorthak said. "We defended it against your hunters. We killed your soldiers to protect the only warm place we had left in any world." He paused. "And you came, Colonel Steven Bright. With your team. Your strategy. Your determination to eliminate the threat we posed."
The scene showed the final battle. Steven could see himself now, leading the assault. His team coordinating. The fight that raged through the frozen halls. And there, at the center, Vorthak fighting to defend his people one last time.
Steven watched his own ice-enhanced strike shatter Vorthak's armor. Watched the opening it created. Watched another hunter drive a blade through the king's chest.
Watched Vorthak fall.
"You were good," Vorthak said, his voice carrying a note of professional respect. "Disciplined. Coordinated. You fought as a true warrior, not a glory-seeking fool. It was an honor to face you in battle, even if I lost."
Steven felt his throat tighten. "You were protecting your people. I was protecting mine. We were both just soldiers doing our duty."
"Yes," Vorthak agreed. "And I hold no hatred for you, Steven Bright. You did what you had to do. As did I. War leaves no room for grudges between warriors who fight with honor."
The ghost-images faded, leaving only the frozen landscape and the two of them.
They stood in silence for a moment, two soldiers from different worlds, sharing the weight of impossible choices and necessary violence.
"I am sorry," Steven said finally. "For what it's worth. I'm sorry that your world was destroyed. That your people died. That you were forced into a position where you had to become what you never wanted to be."
Vorthak looked at him, and something like gratitude flickered in his eyes. "Thank you. That means more than you know."
He extended his fist.
Steven recognized the gesture. A fist bump. A warrior's acknowledgment. He raised his own translucent fist and bumped it against Vorthak's.
The moment their fists touched, warmth spread through Steven's entire being. Understanding. Respect. A connection between soldiers who had fought on opposite sides of an impossible conflict.
"Use my power well, Steven," Vorthak said, using his name with respect now. "The eye will grant you abilities born from my frozen world. Control over ice and cold. The strength of the Skarnoth. The endurance of a king who survived when his entire race died around him."
"I will," Steven promised.
"But hear me well." Vorthak's voice became firm, carrying the authority of kingship. "Do not bully the weak with this power. Do not use it for cruelty or conquest. You have seen what I was fighting for. What I lost." His ice-blue eyes bore into Steven's. "Kill only those who deserve it. Those who would harm the innocent. Those who refuse mercy when it is offered. Please, Steven Bright. Carry my legacy with honor. Do not let the Skarnoth be remembered only as monsters."
Steven straightened, his military bearing returning. "You have my word. As a soldier. As a father. As a man. I'll make sure people know. That you were more than just monsters. That you had a home. A people. A reason for fighting."
Vorthak's expression shifted into something that might have been a smile. It was hard to tell with exposed muscle instead of proper facial features, but Steven thought he saw warmth in those ice-blue eyes.
"Thank you, Steven," Vorthak said softly. "Carry my power well. Protect those who cannot protect themselves. Fight with honor. Show the mercy that was never shown to my people."
The frozen landscape began to fade, the ice and aurora lights dissolving into blue light once more.
"Go now," Vorthak said. "Your body awaits. The transformation is nearly complete."
"Rest well, Vorthak," Steven said. "You did what you could. You protected your people as long as you were able. No one can ask for more than that."
"Farewell, Steven Bright," Vorthak's voice grew distant as his form faded. "May you be a better king than I was. May you have better choices than I did."
The last thing Steven saw before the light consumed everything was Vorthak's face, the exposed muscle shifting into what looked like peace.
Then everything turned to brilliant blue light.
And Colonel Steven Bright opened his eyes.
Both of them.