What HAD he gotten himself into?

John’s body felt stiff as his consciousness returned. His senses felt strangely muted and he was utterly exhausted, both physically and emotionally. He had half a mind to just fall back to sleep, but there was still so much he had to do. Gradually, his vision cleared. It became apparent that he was not in Lorelei’s chambers, though he was back in the material world. Instead, he found himself sitting upright at a table in an unfamiliar room.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” he muttered darkly, or tried to anyway. No sound escaped his mouth. In fact, it felt like he didn’t even have a mouth. John couldn’t even so much as move. That was certainly a cause for panic. He was being far too optimistic about waking up to a normal situation.

Even without turning his head, John could still ascertain some of his surroundings. He appeared to be sitting down at a table in the middle of a room. The room seemingly had no internal lighting, leaving much of it unknown in the shadows of his peripheral vision, but thanks to a window which cast a pale moonlight into the room, he could see one other humanoid figure sitting. The figure was still, not even so much as slightly showing signs of drawing breath. Maybe it was just the dark, but John thought the figure had slightly strange proportions; the face was too wide and the shoulders too square. The gentle and mildly chilling sound of a music box idly chimed from somewhere outside of the room.

‘Okay, calm down, John… figure out what’s going on,’ he told himself as he attempted to pull up his status screen.

‘So at least that works,’ John thought with relief, though that quickly dissipated as he checked his stats. ‘Well, shit… net one in all my physical stats… and m-my libido… nooooooo! God, why?!’

John had to take a moment to calm himself. Libido aside, the situation did seem pretty dire. He didn’t know exactly what the ‘disembodied’ condition meant for him. It was clear, however, that he couldn’t move, apparently had the physicality of a piece of paper, and would have to wait just under half an hour until he could regenerate mana again. The fact that he was around as tall as Saccharine was also a cause for concern — not to mention his apparent lack of a penis. On the bright side, if there even was one, he’d levelled up somehow. John opened his quest menu to find out why.

‘Of course,’ John sighed. ‘Red and Chey are going to **** me when they find out.’

As he closed the quest notification, another spark of light, like the one that appeared to him when he’d unlocked Lorelei’s Arcana, flickered into life and fell towards him.

‘So I just get a shit power I already had?’ John groaned. ‘Lame. But I’m so glad that I have to deepen my bond with this mystery hate goddess to unlock all the cool shit.’

John closed the Arcana window and turned his attention back to his menus. Without his mana, there was little he could do in terms of spells. Flicking over to his inventory page, John looked for anything that might help. He couldn’t exactly use his swords without use of his arms and he very much doubted the slime goo and animal pelts he forgot to sell would help out now. Instead, he just tried summoning the core of the apple he’d eaten at the hospital, just to see if it worked. To his surprise, the core thundered onto the table, at least twice its size, and nearly rolled onto John before he unsummoned it. Either the apple core had grown in size inside his inventory or he’d had grown very small and was now stuck in a proportionately downsized room. In any case, he was still stuck, god knows where, with no obvious way to escape.

From somewhere outside the window, John heard the light rapping of a fist on wood, followed by the creak of a door opening. As far as John could tell, nothing had entered the room with him. Even so, he could feel a strange presence close by. He strained to listen as best he could, but heard nothing save for the chiming of the music box. Then the music box abruptly stopped, and soon after something loomed by the window, continuing past without pause. Whatever it was, it was large enough to momentarily block all light from entering the room John was confined in.

“Good morning, Acedia,” a motherly voice cooed, and John heard vague sounds of stirring as if something was being woken up.

John would have frowned if he could. ‘What the hell is going on?’

“How are you feeling this week?” the motherly voice continued.

Something else let out a guttural groan that, strangely enough, transitioned into a feminine yawn. “Mm?” The change in her(?) voice from strangled tuba to harmonious and sweet left John perplexed. She sounded young yet surely nobody under the age of 90 could produce such a throaty sound.

“How are you feeling?” the motherly voice repeated patiently.

“...ired… m’st ...eep… ...eave… m’lone,” the girl struggled to put together a coherent response, causing the motherly voice to tsk.

“Acedia,” the motherly voice took on a serious tone. “I’m worried. This melancholy is unusual, even for you. It’s been a month since you’ve left your room… and months since you’ve seen the sun. Why don’t you come out today? We’re putting on a show this evening; come and watch, it will be good for you to feed again.”

“Leave m’lone…” the girl repeated gloomily. “Want… sleep.”

“I do hope you change your mind,” the motherly voiced urged kindly, but did not press the issue. “In any case I brought some tea… your favourite — made with smiles. I’ll put it by the bedside,” the motherly voiced paused and John heard the sound of clinking porcelain as she presumably put down a cup, followed by a splash as tea was poured from a pot. “I’ll leave the pot here in case you want more… would you prefer to remain on the floor or shall I carry you to the bed?”

There was a long pause as the girl named Acedia mulled over her answer. “...Bed,” she finally muttered.

John listened intently, but only heard more vague sounds as the motherly voice settled the girl in bed, wherever that may be.

“Would you like anything else? One of your toys perhaps? Where’s Stitch?”

“Dollhouse… dinin’ room” Acedia mumbled wearily.

“Ah,” the motherly voiced clacked back over towards John. Her giant silhouette momentarily blocked the window again, leaving John in total darkness, before the entire wall was abruptly pulled away.

John’s confusion over the strange circumstances he found himself in twisted into fear as sharp claws reached into the room and delicately plucked him from his seated position. With no ability to struggle, he was pulled helplessly out of the room, coming face to face with a porcelain white mask as large as he was tall.

The mask was shaped perfectly into that of a beautiful woman, with gorgeously proportioned cheekbones and a comely nose. The mask’s lips were curled into a smile that might have meant to be warm, but it was not matched by the eyes, which were empty sockets. The absence of eyes was perhaps not the strangest thing he’d seen in these past few days, but it was nonetheless unsettling. A wild growth of luscious, black hair curled and flowed freely in defiance of gravity, fluttering and twirling in all directions — not unlike hair underwater. The woman wore a luxurious dress that matched her hair, sharing even its gravity defying properties as it gently swayed as if in a gentle breeze. Beginning at the neckline, a collar of sleek black feathers spread over her shoulders and down her back into two loose, cloak-like pieces. It wouldn’t have surprised John to see the feathers suddenly surge into life like a pair of wings.

“Here you are,” the motherly voice resounded from behind the mask, as she gently pressed John into the arms of a girl.

Snuggled between the bedsheets, John could not discern all that much. This one had a young and gaunt face, looking to be no older than John, though he suspected otherwise. Her eyes, bleary and half lidded, were wrung with weariness, but they sparkled with a faint warmth as she grasped John and pulled him close. Any further chance to get a good look at her was interrupted as she hugged him tightly, pressing him lovingly between two pale breasts.

It wasn’t as fun as that might sound.

“I wish you well, sweet child,” the masked woman sighed. John heard a slight whirring sound, before the music box chimed back to life. “Good night.”

“G’night,” Acedia mumbled back.

John did not even realise the masked woman had begun to step away until she had closed the door, leaving them alone. John found himself awkwardly pressed into the girl’s bosom, still unable to move. Gradually, the girl relaxed and drifted to sleep to the sound of the music box. Her hold on John slackened, dropping onto the bed and causing him to roll in such a way that allowed him a view of his new surroundings. It was clear now that this was, indeed, a girl’s bedroom.

Notably, nestled against the wall across the room, John saw an incredibly large gothic dollhouse, with a steep rooftop and conical spire built onto one side, looking almost like a steeple. One part of the wall had been opened up to a modest dining room, where a porcelain doll sat alone at the table, staring out at him.

Beside the dollhouse, John saw a mirror...