Cold Iron, Warm Grip, Utter Confusion

Awareness bloomed in utter darkness. Not the darkness of closed eyes, but a profound, absolute black that pressed in from all sides. There was no up, no down, no sense of body or boundary. Just… me. And who was ‘me’? The question echoed in the void where memory should have been, finding only cold, smooth emptiness. I felt… hard. Metallic, perhaps. And decidedly chilly.

Well, this is a bit of a pickle, I thought, though ‘thought’ itself felt new and strange, like flexing a muscle I didn’t know I possessed. Assuming I can even be in a pickle. Am I a pickle? Unlikely. Too… pointy-feeling.

Faint sounds began to filter through the oppressive silence. A distant drip… drip… drip. The almost inaudible skittering of tiny claws on stone. The air, if one could call this sensory nothingness ‘air,’ carried a damp, earthy smell. A cave, then? Wonderful. Just peachy. If I had thumbs, I’d be twiddling them. Or, more likely, trying to figure out what thumbs were for.

Then, a new sensation: pressure. A clumsy, fumbling sort of pressure, accompanied by a grunt that sounded like a piglet being sat on by something considerably larger and less considerate. The leathery grip tightened around my… well, around me. It was surprisingly warm, that grip, and unpleasantly damp.

Suddenly, the world exploded.

Not literally, thank goodness – I suspected explosions would be even less pleasant from this perspective – but light, sound, and a cacophony of smells slammed into my nascent consciousness. It was like being slapped awake with a wet fish in a room full of strobe lights and angry badgers. My vision – or rather, the vision I was now inexplicably borrowing – resolved into a dim, wretched cavern. Water dripped from slimy stalactites, pooling on a floor littered with bones and unidentifiable filth. The air stank of mildew, something vaguely rotten, and a powerful, personal odor of unwashed… creature.

Oh, joy, I thought, as my wielder – for what else could this be? – held me aloft. I saw myself, or rather, my current physical form, through his eyes. A rather plain-looking dagger, somewhat marred by rust, with a simple leather-wrapped hilt currently being squeezed by a grimy, green-skinned hand tipped with cracked, yellow nails.

The creature holding me, a goblin if my sudden, inexplicable understanding of basic creature types was anything to go by, grunted again. "Huh. Pointy. Might be good for… pokin' things."

Pokin' things? I mentally sputtered. Is that my grand purpose? To be a designated poker for a creature whose primary mode of self-expression appears to be smelling bad? And is that… is that moss growing in his ear? This is suboptimal. Vastly, overwhelmingly suboptimal.

He gave me an experimental wiggle. The world swirled sickeningly.

Right, I decided, as he tucked me none-too-gently into a makeshift sheath that smelled suspiciously of dead rat. New life goal: figure out what in the seven hells is going on. And possibly invest in some earplugs. If I had ears. Which I don't. This is going to be a long eternity.