Transmigrated Teri is an ongoing isekai/portal fantasy series about Teri Graves, an embittered middle-age GenX office lady who gets into a massive car accident and wakes up in the world of the fantasy series she loves to hate, The Allisar Fireborn Chronicles. She knows the characters, she knows the plot, and she knows that its all a massive coma dream…except for how nothing is as it should be. Worse? She woke up in the body of the doomed evil stepmother! She escaped a pandemic for this?

Table of Contents

Previously: “Reborn as the evil stepmother doomed to die!!!!”…

Lady Arnee Elisandar shuffled into the chamber, her hunched frame stooped beneath the weight of years that bent her back but never bowed her spirit. Her wizened face, withered and etched like an ancient relic, once cherubic, now sagged beneath cascades of wrinkles and nearly transparent skin. Her beady, watery eyes gleamed with the curiosity of the perpetually meddlesome, darting around the room with practiced vigilance. Short in stature and plump in the way of the well-fed elder nobility, she scuttled next to Lady Greyrage, clucking softly, her voice a faint rasp. To others, she was a nuisance; to Greyrage, strangely irreplaceable.

~ Allisar Fireborn Chronicles, Book 1: Embers of Destiny

While her thoughts tumbled through her head and Lady Elisandar continued fussing over her, Teri tried to grab onto a plan of action. Any plan of action would do. She stared up at the bed’s ostentatious canopy, which was thick, gathered burgundy silk. It seemed like such an odd detail for a coma-dream to have. Not to mention the talking dog.

:I am not a dream dog!:

“You mentioned that already,” Teri mumbled.

Theo finally turned around, then padded across the bed to flop down next to her.

:Then stop thinking it. I’m your familiar!:

She paused, then tried thinking at him instead of talking. :You’re Mom’s dog.:

:Which mom?: He sounded confused.

:Mom. You know, the deranged person living in my house who hates me?: She frowned. :How many mothers do you think I have?:

:The one there, and the one here!:

:Wait, you know about Lady Greyrage’s mother?:

He nodded his head.

:How?:

:Because I live here!:

That could only make sense in a coma-dream, Teri decided, and dropped the subject. Theo looked at her in confusion for a moment, before his shallow mind cleared and he flopped down again completely.

Which was fine with her.

She had watched enough isekai anime to know that playing the “amnesia trope” card was her best short-term solution, but losing “her” memory would not entirely explain a complete change in personality. She needed a better excuse, and she needed it to be one that she could play out for the long-term if necessary. Who knew how long she’d be in a coma, or what her subconscious would do if she didn’t play along? She’d seen Inception too, after all.

She lay still and closed her eyes, drifting back through pages and pages of the book series and everything she knew about Lady Greyrage, who was not a character she had ever put much thought into before. Like most fans, she hated her, but not to the point of obsessiveness. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much for her to remember, because Fuckin’ Chad had simply never brought up much of her back story. Either he didn’t care or was holding out on purpose. With him, it was always a crapshoot.

What was definitively canon was that Lady Greyrage had been born weak in magic and subsequently developed a major, psychotic chip on her shoulder about it. Collectively, the fandom assumed it was the reason she hated the Allisar children in her care, since they were all fairly powerful in their own ways—especially, of course, Gervyn. Her hatred of familiars was just an offshoot of it. Or so everyone assumed.

While she eventually became powerful enough to be dangerous, when she was a girl she had never been expected to amount to anything more than a moderately powerful witch, with some control over the external magic she connected with. There were a few obscure references in the series to a disastrous shadow hunt in her youth that somehow resulted in her powers being damaged by a void howler, although naturally Fuckin’ Chad never actually explained it... Teri’s thoughts came to a screeching halt.

One of her favorite fanfics had speculated about that event and mixed up some other lore to suggest that Lady Greyrage’s still nascent powers had somehow been made discordant by the foul magic that had commanded the void howler demon she had been hunting. The fanfic writer’s premise was that the discordance had never been properly balanced, leading to her becoming a warped and cruel adult. Teri realized it might just be her way out of her current predicament... at least in regards to tricking her own brain.

“Lady Elisandar,” she said, looking thoughtfully at the canopy again while she tried to pull her ideas together into a coherent plan. “I find that the doctor is right, there are some lapses in my memory. You said it was a void howler we were hunting?”

“Yes, so I was told.”

“And it grabbed ahold of me. By my leg, I presume?” She flexed her right foot, feeling the pain radiate up her leg harshly enough to make her wince.

“Yes, Milady. Until your familiar appeared to fight it off, the demon had the upper hand.” She shuddered dramatically. “Ser Brorwyn said that if your familiar had not joined the fray, you would have likely lost your leg, if not your life.” Her voice trembled a little.

“I doubt it. Void howlers are not blood-eaters, for all that they are related to wolverines.” She squinted, trying to recall anything she had read in the bestiary section of Robern’s Library, a.k.a. the long-running fan wiki. She had been part of the ad hoc emergency team to move it to wikia when geocities was being shut down in 2009, and her obsessive meticulousness about it had earned her no friends, but it meant that she spent months in her happy place: neck deep in AFC lore.

“That is true,” Lady Elisandar said, looking perplexed.

Her plan started to take shape.

:Oh! A game?: Theo lifted his head.

:What?:

:We are going to play tricksies! Like when Mother pretends to throw the ball but doesn’t!:

:Don’t you hate that?: Teri looked over at him.

:I do! I HATE it! Argh!: He barked in annoyance. :But it makes her laugh. That! Makes me happy!:

:Yeah, sounds like Mom.: Teri nodded, turning her mind back to her just-maybe-possible plan. As the idea of what she would need to do started to form in her head, the door swung open and Doctor Dourwin entered, trailing three other bearded men in ostentatious burgundy and pink robes. It looked like an ad hoc meeting of Pretentious-Dudes-R-Us.

“Ah. Milady. Lady Greyrage.” The doctor bowed shallowly and then popped back up, giving Theo a subtle side-eye. “I have brought my colleagues.” He held out an arm, and Teri got the impression that he was getting ready to list off names, ranks, and credentials. She had been to one too many university conferences in life to have to deal with that bullshit in death...or coma, whatever, didn’t matter.

“No,” she said loudly and held up her hand in a “stop now” motion. His mouth clacked shut.

Lady Elisandar was no longer able to hold back her excitement and plucked at the doctor’s sleeve. “Milady remembers!”

He gave the elderly woman a tight smile and gestured to one of his minions to lead her back to the overly-upholstered chair.

“Is that so, Milady?”

Teri reached down to find her most annoying white-lady-speaking-to-the-manager attitude, which wasn’t very far down given the circumstances.

“I remember who I am. I remember where I come from. I remember experiences of my youth, and I remember Lady Elisandar.”

There was a pleased murmuring from her audience.

“But I do not know where I am, who you are, or what year of our emperor’s reign it is.” Which, after all, was true enough. She could tell that the body she currently had was younger than she was, but that was about all. Were they at the start of the book series? Later? Earlier? Not that it would make much difference in the long run, but she wanted to know.

She waved a hand at Lady Elisandar, who had started crying loudly again.

“She looks much older than I expected, which is why I did not recognize her at first.”

This time, the murmuring was dismayed.

Doctor Dourwin, though, was not one of the ones murmuring. He studied her with a critical eye before folding his hands in front of himself.

:This is exciting! What if he doesn’t believe you?:

:Theo, please just lay down and shut up for a minute.:

:Rude!: He spun in place for a moment and flopped back down in a huff. Everyone by the bed flinched, but continued to ignore him.

“And before you ask, no, I do not remember how I got into this situation at all. Lady Elisandar mentioned that I was on a shadow hunt for a void howler?”

Doctor Dourwin’s face turned sour like curdled milk. “Indeed.” He rolled his shoulders.

She just stared back at him, hoping she looked imperious and demanding, and not constipated.

“What imperial year do you last remember?” he asked.

Well, she knew she had forgotten something. She gnawed at her cheek for a moment, trying to do math and figure out when Lady Greyrage was actually about thirteen. There was a reason she wasn’t in the accounting or financial aid departments.

The first novel started in the 250th year of Nikodosis’s reign, when Gervyn was fifteen, and Lady Greyrage was assumed to be thirty-five. She was killed by Rustad two years later when she was about thirty-seven? Or thereabouts. She subtracted thirty-seven from 252, but that was confusing, so she thought about subtracting thirty-five from 250, no, twenty-five from fifty was twenty-five, plus ten? Minus ten?

:228! You were thirteen in 228!: Theo grumbled at her.

“Two hundred and twenty eight? Nine?” She did not have any problem looking confused and just hoped her dog--who was a dog--was good at math.

Lady Elisandar paused in her crying jag long enough to gasp loudly.

“That is a while ago. You would have been about...a girl.” Doctor Dourwin apparently was as good at math as Teri was.

“Thirteen! She was thirteen! It was when!” Lady Elisandar cut herself off and covered her mouth with a handkerchief, eyes wide.

“When, what?” He glanced over at her.

“When her courses started,” Lady Elisandar said through the material. “They started early due to her fight with a void howler!”

Everyone looked shocked by the revelation.

Bingo, Teri thought with triumph. Her plan was coming together.

:It’s not a plan, it’s a badly thrown ball.:

:Close enough!: She glared at Theo. :I have to tell them something or they will think I’m possessed!: She was not looking to get burned at the stake, even in a coma dream.

“You are not behaving like a thirteen-year-old maiden,” Doctor Dourwin said critically.

“When I woke up, I somehow knew that I was not that same girl. I’m just saying that is where my memories get cut off.” She huffed and resettled the bedcovers around her. “It’s like being in two places at once,” she offered, which was not a lie, at least.

“Hmm,” he said cryptically, eyeing her.

:He’s not catching the ball.:

:I know that!: She pointed at him. :Stop distracting me.:

The damn dog actually rolled his eyes at her.

Doctor Dourwin and his minions watched the byplay with interest, so she straightened up and focused back on the matter at hand: making headcanon her reality.

“Do you remember anything about your current life?” Dourwin finally asked.

It was a valid question, but she debated what to say. She did not remember anything about Lady Greyrage being injured on a shadow hunt while mistress of Luttiron Castle, but it hardly mattered to the inciting incident of Robern finally dying, which provoked Gervyn’s rebellion against his father.

So many terrible fathers in the Allisar Fireborn Chronicles, she mused. Not that mother figures got off much better.

No, ignorance was her best bet.

“Things look familiar, but I don’t know why. I know I am not actually thirteen years old. I can tell we are not in my rooms back in Zyphyrehon, but I am not expecting my mother to visit me.”

Everyone, including Theo and Lady Elisandar, cringed.

“Indeed,” Doctor Dourwin said after clearing his throat.

“But I’m also sure I have never borne a child.” She put a hand over her abdomen like a delicate Victorian heroine insisting she wasn’t with child. Which she knew full well Lady Greyrage had not, since her infertility was yet another contributing factor to her hatred of her stepchildren. “Yet, you mentioned children earlier.”

He opened his mouth to respond, at which point the large, heavy door to the room burst open as several of the aforementioned children tumbled in, yelling loudly and tangled up together like a ball of knotted rope, with two castle guards trying to yank them apart.

Subscribe now

NEXT: The Wildings Appear

Thank you for reading! 🎊 I’d love your comments and feedback! ☕

Find KimBoo: Notes • Bluesky • Tumblr • Facebook • House of York

Support my dog! 🐶: Ko-fi • PayPal

Table of Contents

Previously: The whole situation was the weirdest part…

As Lady Greyrage swept into the cold stone chamber, her towering figure cast an imposing shadow, silhouetted against the flickering torchlight. At a glance, one might think her beauty carved of marble—her hourglass form draped in silks and velvets, dark hair cascading in waves scented with the oils of distant lands. Yet her emerald eyes, flecked with venomous intent, betrayed a soul as pitiless as winter. Around her waist, coiled like a serpent awaiting release, hung her infamous whip, its magicked barbs gleaming with malevolent promise. Lesser men shuddered, for Lady Greyrage wielded it not with grace, but with ruthless precision and unrelenting cruelty.

~ Allisar Fireborn Chronicles, Book 1: Embers of Destiny

Teri slowly laid back down as the woman, who was likely some version of Lady Greyrage’s long-time companion, Lady Arnee Elisandar, wept over her.

She was in a coma, and apparently imagining a whole world to keep her brain active while she…recovered? Died? Lived on in a vegetative state? Although, as she thought about it, there really wasn’t any difference between those options for her. Whatever was happening to her body, in her mind she was stuck in the world of Allisar Fireborn Chronicles.

Of fucking course.

She had loved the first book, Embers of Destiny, when it came out in 1993 with an all-consuming obsession, and eagerly devoured every book as they were ever-so-slowly released because of the amazing cast of characters: Gervyn’s stubborn, hard-fighting sisters, the twins Aurguth and Vycett; their older brother, the quiet and soft-spoken Robern who died too early; Theodorian, the tragic lost prince of the Virendorian Empire; and of course, Valerontarius, the masked and enigmatic mage who was Gervyn’s mentor and, for half of the series until Gervyn came of age, the main foil for the evil Emperor Nikodosis. There was literally a cast of hundreds of side characters who made the world of Virendor vibrant and fascinating, despite the predictable “hero’s journey” plotline.

For all that everyone decried Fuckin’ Chad’s use of cliches and over-wrought prose, no one could deny that he had a gift for writing great characters.

Sadly enough, one of those great characters was the one everyone, including Teri, hated as much as they hated Emperor Nikodosis: Lady Bonarae Greyrage, the Venomous Whip of Luttiron.

She was one step beyond the typical, Disney-fied wicked step-mother, with her barbed cruelty and her actually-barbed whip that she used to punish, and often kill, servants and commoners. Not simply cruel, she was vicious with it, delighting in making the lives of the children in her care miserable. Universal opinion in the fandom was she had gotten off light with simply being strangled to death, and really should have been publicly humiliated and gruesomely executed.

Of the tens of thousands of fanfic written in the fandom, there were probably less than twenty that even bothered to give her a redemption arc. The very few fans who liked Lady Greyrage kept to themselves, and Teri had certainly never been one of them.

Overall, Lady Greyrage’s life and death was a minor plot point, as she had served her role as a pivotal negative influence in young Gervyn’s life with her cruelty and abuse.

Teri sat up again so fast she felt dizzy and her ribs contracted in pain. She stared at the fancy, brocaded bed drapes in sudden fear, stuck on the fact that, now, her death was a minor plot point in book two.

Had she “woken up” in a fantasy world just to die in it too? Was this her brain’s way of dealing with her inevitable death?

She took a deep breath, staving off a panic attack. She took another as she slowly laid back down, her right leg throbbing and her entire torso flaring in pain.

She had read and seen plenty of movies and shows where dying in your dream world meant dying in real life, and given the terrible accident she had been in, it made sense. She laid there, waiting for everything to dim out like an old CRT television being turned off.

Instead, her leg continued to throb in pain while Theo panted next to her.

As she waited, she considered what it meant for her to die. Theo was obviously dead, which at least meant her brothers wouldn’t dump him at the local kill shelter. Her brothers would have their hands full stepping up to take care of their mother one way or another, although they would probably do the human version of dumping her at the local kill shelter just to reduce any inconvenience for them. It was not as if they had not talked about putting her in a nursing home before. Teri wondered what would happen to her house and her belongings, and that was a dagger to her heart. She had worked hard to buy that house, and she had lived there for nearly twenty years.   

But what did any of it matter if she was dead?

She continued to lie there, staring at the opulent drapery over the bed. Part of her just wanted it to be over.

But on the other hand…being alive? As the old ad campaign said: Priceless.

Teri was not too pleased with what her subconscious was saying about her, given that it put her into Lady Greyrage’s character and not, say, Aurguth. She would even have been up for some gender-bending in the form of the heroic yet mysterious Valerontarius.

But no, apparently, she had to live out coma-dreamtime as a minor villain who everyone hates. It was the worst version of a transmigration web comic: “Reborn as the Evil Stepmother Doomed to Die!”

On the other hand, her own mother treated Teri as a minor villain, so maybe it made sense.

The real problem, she realized quickly, was that Lady Greyrage was genuinely horrible: a narcissistic, abusive jerk with a cruel streak a mile wide. Fuckin’ Chad had never confirmed it, but the fandom as a whole just assumed she was a sadistic psychopath.

Teri considered herself to be curmudgeonly from the time she was ten years old, but she wasn’t willing to go that far.

Lady Elisandar was still weeping next to her, while Theo had shifted to sitting up as Teri’s brain worked overtime. He was staring at her with his too-intelligent eyes, and she thought if anything was off-script, it was the talking dead dog.

:I’m not dead! I’m right here!:

She huffed at him and looked around the room carefully, but nothing seemed to float unnaturally or otherwise break the laws of physics. Again, aside from Theo. The only animals that talked in the Allisar Fireborn Chronicles were the dragons, and that one butterfly in book four for some reason (was it really a clue about Valerontarius’ secret identity? Fandom was divided). Even the familiars of the powerful wizards only seemed to communicate via emotions. Theo just wasn’t normal.

:I am perfectly normal!:

“I’m sure you are,” she said, rolling her eyes at the projection of Theo—

:I AM NOT A DREAM DOG!:

“Okay! Fine!”

Subscribe now

Lady Elisandar pulled away, wiped her face with the hem of a long sleeve to clear her tears, and looked askance at Theo. “Is he…is he bothering you, Milady?”

“No more than usual,” Teri said, without thinking.

Lady Elisandar nodded thoughtfully, edging away from Theo’s direction warily. “He is very…ah, new, I suppose.”

“New?”

“As a familiar.”

“As a familiar,” Teri repeated. “Wait, no. Lady Grey—uh, I’ve never had a familiar.”

She patted Teri’s hand gently, and either did not notice the slip up or thought it had something to do with her injuries.

“It was very surprising to us all! But you called out for him as you fell, and there he was! Fighting off the void howler that attacked you!”

:I fought hard! I used my teeth! It was very exciting!: His tail thumped against the covers. :It tasted terrible, though.:

Teri tried to look interested in what Lady Elisandar was saying, and not confused. The more she could keep Lady Elisandar talking before the doctor returned, the more she would learn.

The woman in question made a tutting noise. “Naming him after the lost prince, though,” she said, then paused, giving Teri a surprisingly fierce glare. “I expected you would know better than that.”

“Oh. Theodorian.” Teri tried not to grimace. “I’m sure I was, uh, thinking of honoring Our Great Emperor at the time of crisis.” She had been thinking at the time that Theo was a cute puppy.

:I was so cute! The cutest!:

Lady Elisandar frowned, her disbelief clear. “I would have thought you were thinking more about the void howler trying to eat you.”

Teri primly adjusted the sheets covering her. “Thinking of His Imperial Majesty’s grace and forbearance in his lost son’s name is quite appropriate, I would say.” She tried to sound as prissy and haughty as possible, but it just made her sound like her mother.

:You really do sound like her,: Theo said, looking up at her with big, limpid, apologetic eyes. Teri could not hold back the full body flinch.

“As you say, Milady,” Lady Elisandar said while arranging the top quilt around Teri like she was a child. “What’s done is done. You have a familiar at last!” She gave Teri a smile that was far more brittle than sincere. In fact, she did not sound too happy about the turn of events at all.

It took a moment for Teri to mentally screen through the entirety of AFC lore to remember why: Lady Greyrage was a witch who was only ever able to call on natural magic around her, and even then not reliably. She had never become magically balanced enough to manifest a familiar of her own. Her anger and frustration over that had led directly to a nearly obsessive hatred of familiars in general, strong enough to drive her to damage a few before she, herself, was summarily dispatched.

Would Lady Greyrage have been happy about finally getting a familiar?

Probably. But it would signify a major shift in her powers as a witch, and that would no doubt give everyone within arm’s reach of her pause. While familiars manifesting during a crisis was not unusual, it was not something a witch as mercurial as Lady Greyrage did very often. If Teri remembered correctly, familiars born out of discordance and not alignment usually signaled a lot of bad shit for everyone in the future.

Great.

Lady Greyrage whose powers as a witch were aligned and amplified by a familiar would have been a major villain in the story, not some sad-sack second-stringer who got strangled by her own lover before Gervyn even turned sixteen.

Teri’s thoughts came to a complete standstill. She looked, actually looked, at her hands.

There were no fine lines of age on the knuckles. The slight crepe-texture of her skin was gone as well, and her fingers were long and tapered like a pianist’s, ending in strong nails that were filed to look like claws. She inspected them closely, but they were not paste-on or acrylic or anything of the sort. She had worn gel nails for a time in her thirties, but she had usually kept them squared off.

They were the hands of a much younger woman.

She looked down at her chest and realized that part of the weight on her chest was, well, her own. Distantly, she thought that her days of shapeless jog bras were over. Her breasts were currently unsupported under her nightgown, and swayed as she moved. It was disconcerting.

Suddenly she felt her body in a way she had not when she had woken up expecting to be in her own body. She had always run to the lean side, although short, which was why she had done pretty well in gymnastics as a kid (not that it had translated to any useful adult skill set). But now she had breasts and hips and long legs and, it seemed, a long torso as well. Where was her center of gravity?

“This is fucked up,” she said, and Theo barked.

Subscribe now

NEXT: The Doctor’s Opinion

Thank you for reading! 🎊 I’d love your comments and feedback! ☕

Find KimBoo: Notes • Bluesky • Tumblr • Facebook • House of York

Support my dog! 🐶: Ko-fi • PayPal

Table of Contents

Previously: Teri woke up, kinda sorta…

Teri felt herself awaking up again, somehow aware that time had passed but not how much, as if she was coming out a deep sleep but not a normal one. She felt unmoored from her sense of self, from her body, from time.

Even before she opened her eyes, she knew she was alone, and that room was dark. She took a deep breath and waited for a moment, bracing for another migraine. It had been years since they were regular occurrences, thanks to the prescription from her doctor that she had started on when she was thirty-three. She was nervous about whether it was being administered while she was in hospital, and that thought led to the question: was she in a hospital? Where else could she be after an accident like that? And how long had she been unconscious, or possibly in a coma?

Slowly opening her eyes, she saw the same room she had woken up in earlier, only shrouded in darkness. Heavy and ornate curtains had been drawn tight over the tall windows, and she only noticed that because there was a low lamp on a side table casting a warm, cheery but limited glow. It looked like a damn oil lamp, the idea of which made her stare at it for a moment until she realized with a gasp that she was not alone, after all. A small, elderly woman sat in a heavily upholstered chair across from the table holding the lamp, listing to one side, her mouth slightly ajar as she slept on. She looked like an extra from Game of Thrones, her dress a costume amalgamation of historic eras, with a tight, high-necked bodice and a lacy housecoat…or something. Even from a distance and in the dark, though, Teri could tell that it was well made. If it was handmade, it had to be worth a lot of money. Not something any nurse would wear on shift.

She took a deep breath again, and consciously tried to move her fingers, then her hands, then her arms. Her body was sore, as if it had been trampled by a mule or something, but not like she had survived a head-on collision with a massive truck doing fifty miles an hour.

That was the weirdest part.

On second thought, she decided that no, her lack of injuries was not the weirdest part.

The whole fucking situation was the weirdest part.

It was all equally bizarre. Where the hell was she? Was this the fanciest hospital in the country? For a moment she toyed with the idea that the delivery truck’s company was putting her up in an exclusive hospital, but given that she was at fault, why would they bother? And what hospital, filled with oxygen lines and bottles for patience, would allow a god-damn oil lamp in any room?

Rolling carefully to one side, she let out a groan. The pain was lessened from what she remembered, replaced mostly by a general bone-deep ache, except for her right leg. The doctor had said something about not being happy with how it was healing, which matched the sharp pain shooting up from her foot.

She stopped for a long moment, taking deep breaths as the realization sunk in that there was no way she was getting out of the bed alone. Or possibly at all.

There was a tap-tap-tap noise from somewhere outside the room, as if an animal was walking down a tiled hallway. It was followed by a creaking noise and then Theo was there, sitting in the middle of the room, looking at her.

“Theo?” She called in shock.

:I am here, mistress! I am here!: He bounced up and down for a moment and then bolted, running around the room once before jumping on the bed and licking her face in excitement.

“Argh! Dog! Bleah!” She pushed him away.

:I am so happy you are awake! Everyone here smells so weird! I had some chicken for dinner! The cook’s children shared with me. They are good puppies!:

“What. The. Fuck.” She stared at the dog, who was now talking inside of her head. He stared back with a broad doggy smile on his face, his tongue lolling out.

“Milady!” The old woman called out loudly as she pushed herself up out of the chair and hobbled over, squinting, more asleep than awake. “Ah! Please, do not strain yourself!” She patted the bed coverings.

“What is with the ‘milady’ bullshit?” Teri snapped at the woman. “And who the fuck are you?”

The woman gasped and clutched at the, yes, literal pearls draped around her neck.

“You are not a nurse! I demand to speak to the managing nurse on duty!” Teri said, cringing a little inside at becoming a real Karen about the situation. Needs must, she figured.

“I will get the doctor, Milady!” The woman tottered out like a high-speed turtle.

Theo plopped down next to Teri and looked up at her. :You are so grumpy! Leg hurt?:

Teri stared at him. “This cannot be happening.”

:I don’t know about that. Seems to be happening! Did you know there are a lot of cows around here? They are so funny!:

“Cows.”

:I’ve heard about them! We eat them, don’t we? They are much bigger than I thought, and very dumb.:

“Milady!” The same so-called doctor from last time rushed in, outrageously ornate robes flapping. “How are you feeling?” He peered at her but made no move to check her pulse or anything resembling medical care in general, seeming more concerned to keep his distance from Theo.

“My dog is here,” she said, pointing at Theo.

:I am here!:

“Ahem. Yes. As unusual as it might be, in your situation, he is, ah, yours, after all.” The doctor looked very uncomfortable about it.

Teri narrowed her eyes at him, and he stepped back.

“This isn’t a hospital at all, is it?”

The woman gasped and clutched her pearls again, her eyes going wide. “Milady! We would never dare take you to a lowly hospital! You are here in—”

She stopped talking as soon as the doctor held up his hand, his own eyes narrowing. He still had not made it to the edge of the bed.

“Milady. If I may ask: can you tell us where you are, right now?”

:Home home home!:

“We are not at home!” She snapped at Theo.

More gasping from the woman, and the doctor’s hand dropped. “Do you know who I am?”

“Not really. I heard those kids call you doctor, but I don’t know you.”

“Those kids?” The doctor repeated weakly.

The lady pushed past him to lean on the bed. “Milady! You know who I am, at least, don’t you?”

Teri looked at her for a moment, dragging it out as she thought of every answer she could give that would not be in some way wrong, and possibly inflammatory. There was none.

“I have never met you before in my life.”

The woman collapsed on the bed, wailing, and it was the doctor’s turn to gasp in horror.

:You really upset them! Why are you so mean?:

Teri fell back on the mattress and yanked the cover up over her head, only for Theo to grab the edge of it with his mouth and pull it down.

:Hide and seek?: He looked so damn hopeful.

“No!” she snapped at him and he scooted backwards quickly. She only had a moment to feel a twinge of guilt before the doctor cautiously approached the bed again, eyeing Theo warily. He had apparently stuffed the weeping woman back into the chair she had been sleeping in.

“What?”

“I fear there has been some…ah…memory loss?” He smiled uncomfortably.

There was no memory loss that she was aware of, only a great deal of confusion, but she wanted answers and arguing with him would not get him to tell her anything. She waved at him to get a move on.

“Well! I would like to ask you a few questions? Just to establish a baseline, you see. To make sure—”

“I know what the fuck a baseline is!”

The woman sobbed louder, face hidden in a massive, lacey handkerchief.

“Okay, fine, get on with it.” She rubbed her eyes, grateful that at the very least she was getting some control of her body back. She expected he would ask her the date, as if she could forget that, and possibly who the president was (as if she could forget that horror either).

“What are the names of your stepchildren?” He asked, eyebrows raised. He obviously thought it was a softball of a question.

Her jaw dropped.

Step children? Who the hell did they think she was? Was there a mixup? How many cars had ended up piled up in that accident?

Subscribe now

“Milady?” He prompted, hope fading in his eyes.

“I do not have any stepchildren.”

He stared at her in frank horror. She stared back in annoyance.

He snapped his jaw shut, glared at Theo one more time, spun around, and marched out. The woman in the chair held her handkerchief held up to her quivering mouth.

“You truly do not recognize me, milady?” She whispered into the fabric, muffled to the point that Teri could barely make out what she was saying.

“No.” Teri stopped there, suddenly struck with inspiration. If the so-called doctor was even marginally proficient at his job, he would not tell her anything. He was probably setting up a whole battery of tests to find out what she could “remember,” which Teri knew was “absolutely nothing,” because she was not the person they thought she was. The key to getting out of the whole situation was to find a way to get her bearings, and the little old lady was probably her best bet.

:Oh yes! She cares about you a lot. I don’t know why; you’re mean.: Theo was still on the bed but had turned around and was sitting with his back to her. She ignored him.

Instead, she put on her most simple smile and tried to look forlorn and confused. “Can you please tell me who you think I am?”

The woman lowered her handkerchief and eyed Teri warily. Maybe she was not as much of a pushover as she thought.

:You’ve known her since you were a puppy!:

Thanking Theo silently in her head (Theo’s tail thumped happily a few times, but he did not turn around), Teri tried to blink up some fake tears like she did every year on her mother’s birthday.

“You seem familiar…as if I’ve known you for a long time?”

:You are such a liar!:

She kicked her good leg out to bump Theo, who grumbled. The woman, meanwhile, sniffled a little.

“Oh, milady! Yes! I have been your lady-in-waiting since you were but a child! Before even your very first shadow hunt!”

Teri paused. “Shadow hunt” was a term coined by Fuckin’ Chad for the Allisar Chronicles, his take on the idea of mages hunting down demons and other dangerous creatures. She had a sinking feeling in her stomach.

“And this would be…back when we lived…in Zyphyrehon?”

She brightened up even more. “Yes! Yes! Are you remembering?”

Teri let out a gusty sigh.

So, apparently, she was in a coma and this was a dream world.

:I am not a dream dog!:

She ignored him as he flopped down and put a paw over his face.

The woman had perked up and was sitting on the edge of the giant upholstered chair, looking expectantly at Teri.

“How could a daughter of the ferocious Crimson Viper ever forget?” She tried not to wince as she spoke, testing the waters, but also afraid of how deep her fucking brain might go.

“Oh! Lady Greyrage! You do remember!” She toddled over to the bed again and grabbed Teri’s hand, her face alight with joy and relief.

Teri wondered how much she had to hate herself to dream up possessing the body of one of the most loathed step-mothers in modern fantasy: Lady Bonarae Greyrage, the Venomous Whip of Luttiron.

Subscribe now

NEXT: Welcome to Luttiron

Thank you for reading! 🎊 I’d love your comments and feedback! ☕

Find KimBoo: Notes • Bluesky • Tumblr • Facebook • House of York

Support my dog! 🐶: Ko-fi • PayPal

Table of Contents

Previously: Teri's first day of pandemic lockdown gets worse...

“Gervyn! Gervyn!”

Teri felt herself waking up, which was a very weird sensation. It was if her brain was in the backseat, watching her drive her own body. Not that she was doing much other than laying there and fighting a migraine. Everything was sluggish and light hurt her eyes, so she kept them closed.

“Gervyn! Stop! She’s resting! You can’t—”

“I just need to see if she’s okay!”

“Doctor Dourwin told you that she is recovering! Come on!”

“You both need to shut up. I have a headache,” Teri grumbled. She wanted to rub her temple, but her body was strangely reluctant to comply, and she was determined not to panic about it. Instead, she concentrated on moving her arm to shoo at the kids who were fussing next to her…bed? Was she in bed? Was she in a hotel room? She thought that was weird for a moment before her memories unspooled altogether, all at once.

She jack knifed up in bed and her body spasmed in agony.

Subscribe now

She fell back down, clinching her jaw to keep from screaming. In her mind’s eye, she saw the delivery truck headed straight on at her, Theo scratching at the car window, and heard the horns blaring. Did Theo sit on the car horn?

“Theo!” She gasped again, and again her body spasmed in agony.

“What are you two reprobates doing here, bothering milady? She is grievously injured! Out!” An older voice sternly commanded, followed by feet shuffling across the room and a door slamming shut.

“Milady, you should not have moved so much. You are still healing.” The man made a tutting noise. She still kept her eyes closed, but she could tell he was standing next to the bed. “I am relieved that you have finally awoken.”

“Mmph.” She grumbled, trying to gather her thoughts. She had obviously been in a catastrophic accident, and she was mostly surprised she was alive at all. She had to assume Theo was dead, which made her stomach flip a little. He had been dumb and annoying but he had been her puppy, once upon a time, no matter that her mother had basically stolen him when she moved in with Teri five years ago.

“Can you tell me how you feel, currently?”

“Headache,” she rasped.

He hummed, and she assumed he was probably writing a prescription. She wondered if she had any IV lines, which seemed likely but she could not feel them. That brought up a new worry.

“Paralyzed?”

“What? Oh no, milady, you are not paralyzed. Battered, with some internal organ bruising, and I’m…displeased with the healing of your right leg. But it is early days yet.” He sounded too cheerful about all of that, but then, every doctor she ever known was a ghoul at heart.

She was already dreading all the physical therapy in her future. And she was a little creeped out by all the fedora-nice-guy “miladies” going on. It was extremely unprofessional. She already knew his name, thanks to the kids who had clearly come into the wrong room, but she needed more info. “Hospital?”

“Hm?”

“Which…hospital? My mother, she’s home alone.”

There was a long pause. “Your…mother?”

She took a deep breath and forced herself to open her eyes. Light hurt, and she knew she was opening the door wide for the migraine to come in and have a seat instead of hovering around the edges of her consciousness, but she needed to figure things out.

Squinting and blinking, she looked around. “Am I…am I actually in a hotel room? What the actual fuck? I can’t afford this!”

It was gorgeous. She was under a heavy and heavily embroidered, brightly colored quilt on a gigantic four poster bed, brocaded curtains tied back with fancy, twisted cords. The room itself had several tall, narrow windows that were edged with stained glass, bright and sparkling in the nearly-pink sunlight. Everything in the room screamed expensive and tacky in the way of a tourist-trap-style European castle trying for a “medieval but make it luxurious” vibe. Not that she had ever been in one, but she enjoyed travel websites as much as the next middle class working stiff.

“Cannot…afford? Milady, if you please—” the doctor said, leaning over her with a hand held out cautiously, as if he was wary of touching her.

“What are you wearing?” She tried to pull back from him. He was dressed in a burgundy red and pink outfit that looked like three layers of fancy bathrobes with a belt so wide it could have been a girdle. Maybe it was. She blinked her eyes.

“My robes of station?” He frowned at her.

She tried to flap her hand at him, but her body screamed in pain. Collapsing back down all the way with a gasp, she stared at the lovely and ridiculous draperies covering the bed before closing her eyes again, taking a deep breath to focus. The migraine was marching up on her consciousness at full speed.

“Look, Mom is home alone, and—” she started to say, but then felt a hard tap in the middle of her forehead and everything went dark again. She thought she heard barking as she drifted away.

Subscribe now

NEXT: Familiar

Authoria:

I should probably have mentioned this earlier, but the incredibly popular, world-wide best-selling series The Allisar Fireborn Chronicles by Chadwick Jarvaldson is entirely made up by me, KimBoo York!

The series is based on all those wildly popular, overwrought, epic fantasy “Chosen One” Tolkien ripoffs from the 1980s and 1990s with cover art by Larry Gilmore or the Hildebrant brothers. Yes, that one, and also that other one. You know the ones I mean.

Did I actually have to outline the whole series and develop all the canon story elements and character profiles for it? Yes I did. Fuckin’ Chad owes me a drink.

Thank you for reading! 🎊 I’d love your comments and feedback! ☕

Find KimBoo: Notes • Bluesky • Tumblr • Facebook • House of York

Support my dog! 🐶: Ko-fi • PayPal

Table of Contents

Previously: Teri had a bad feeling about this…

It was not fine.

Teri sat in her car in the overwhelmed parking lot at Barkingham Palace, her hands once again white knuckling the wheel for no reason, since she was parked. The place was crawling with panicked people coming to pick up their dogs, and Teri thought that she should have expected as much, given how close to the university it was. She had already recognized three professors, a dean, two students who clearly lived off their parents’ money, and the vice-president of the student affairs department go inside.

She had made the mature decision to just wait out the rush, mostly because her incipient rage might end up with her breaking something if anyone gave her attitude. All she wanted to do was go home and lock herself in her bathroom so no one, absolutely no one, could talk to her.

Her phone pinged and she instinctively tapped the screen to answer it.

“DID YOU HEAR THE NEWS?” Her mother shouted.

“Mom, what are you doing in the kitchen?”

“IT’S MY KITCHEN!”

Teri counted to five as she took a deep breath. “I saw the news and I’ll be home with Theo soon.”

There was a long pause…too long. Teri knew her mother had already lost the thread of the conversation.

“Theo isn’t here. I think he got out!”

“No, Mom, he’s at doggy daycare. I’m picking him up now.”

“Why did you take him there? DID YOU STEAL HIM?”

“I did not steal our dog! Oh my God, just hang up. I’m coming home with Theo.”

There was another long pause, then what sounded like the receiver being put down on the counter.

“Mom? MOM!”

More rustling sounds, and then she picked up the receiver again. “He’s not out back! Theo got out! We have to find him!”

Teri clinched her jaw. “I’ve got Theo with me now. I’m coming home. Hang up the damn phone!”

“DON’T CUSS AT ME, I’M YOUR MOTHER!” Her mother shouted and then slammed the receiver down to hang up the phone.

Teri once again debated the merits of just pulling the ancient landline phone off the wall, but it was the only phone her mother could figure out how to dial anymore and even Teri could not stoop to leaving her mother with no way to call 911.

Thinking about serving time trapped in the house with her mother for an indeterminate lock down, Teri clutched her phone so hard she heard the case creak. Looking up at the entrance to Barkingham Palace, she saw the line for pick up was still out the door.

Resigning herself to at least thirty more minutes of waiting, she pulled up her audio book app and punched at the screen until the dulcet tones of baritone Harold McGuire filled the car. He was reading book four of the Allisar Fireborn Chronicles, The Forge of Fate. It was the start of the scene where Gervyn comes into his fireborn powers, just after his sisters Vycett and Aurguth die protecting him from a direct attack by the evil Emperor Nikodosis.   

It was the penultimate scene of Gervyn’s character arc and Teri hated it and hated Fuckin’ Chad for fridging great characters like the Allisar twins and really, it was the worst section possible to pick up on, given her mood.

But it was the Allisar Fireborn Chronicles, and if nothing else, Teri’s antagonistic loyalty to the book series meant she could not skip a chapter, even if she hated it. She mouthed the words along with McGuire, who had once in his younger years been tapped to play the rakish ‘mentor’ character Valerontarius, before the movie series went into perpetual “development” and he had eventually aged out of the role. Still had the voice for it, in Teri’s opinion, and clung to the hope that the rumored animated series would be picked up by Netflix and they would hire McGuire as the voice actor for Valerontarius.

Despite the twins’ terrible and completely unnecessary demise, Teri found herself relaxing as she listened along, the familiar words and scenes washing over her. Her mind drifted to her favorite fix-it fanfics. There were so many. Sometimes she suspected the legendary fandom, which was over twenty years old, kept going strong on spite alone. She certainly did.

She honestly hoped that the delayed (and delayed and delayed) publication of the final book in the series would spell the end for the massive popularity of the story. Not that it would alter her own perverse dedication, though. No. It might be due to a sunk cost fallacy, but she had been invested in the story since her twenties and she would not drop it just because Fuckin’ Chad kept screwing it over.

Her phone chimed, and she looked at the text on the screen.

HI, Ms. Graves. It’s Louis at Barkingham. We’re closing in fifteen minutes and Theo is ready to go.

Startled, Teri realized she had been sitting in the car listening to the audiobook for nearly forty-five minutes.

She stumbled out of the door and clattered up the stairs and into the lobby to find a very exhausted Louis holding Theo’s leash like the last soldier standing. He all but tossed the leash at her.

“Good-bye and good luck,” he said and spun around to disappear into the back again.

The front desk was empty, and as she stood there, the lights shut off.

Theo was just smart enough to realize that things were not going as they normally did and walked all hunched up with worry, whining forlornly when Teri buckled him into his security harness in the front seat. She might have felt worse about it if he weren’t so dumb. As it was, she just slammed the door in his sad face.

Getting home was the priority, and fortunately she was not even worried about their toilet paper stash since she had grabbed as many rolls as she could the previous Friday, when it had finally sunk in that a lock-down was likely to happen.

Unfortunately, the traffic situation had not calmed down. As the clock ticked closer to 4:00 pm, it was clear that more and more businesses around town were sending people home. Teri drove along the main drag back to her subdivision, but it was moving at a crawl. Despite the AC running on high, Theo was panting heavily, his eyes a little wild as he strained at his harness, getting more and more freaked out by the chaos of the day.

Seeing an opportunity, Teri took a right turn and went into a maze of back roads through older parts of the city. Harold McGuire was still talking through the car speakers, and she found herself pacing her turns and speed to his voice.

In that pivotal moment, amidst the swirling chaos of battle, Gervyn felt a surge of energy welling up from deep within his very core…

She ended up on the two-lane frontage road that ran parallel to the highway and gunned it. There were a few other locals who had the same thought she did, and everyone was jockeying to get ahead. She managed to speed around one slower car, but found that just ran her up against another one.

“Oh for fuck’s sake!” She slapped the wheel with the flat of her hand and Theo startled. “Oh, stop it,” she snarled at him, although it felt more like she was talking to herself.

The air crackled with anticipation as his trembling fingers reached towards the heavens, their tips igniting with an ethereal flame. The sheer intensity of the power coursing through his veins sent shivers down his spine…

She hit the brakes as the car she was tailing suddenly slowed down to take a turn. Theo panicked as he bounced in his harness and started jumping around.

“Would you STOP?” she shouted and pushed him into the seat with her free hand.

He stood unwavering, his eyes blazing with a newfound resolve. The forces of fire answered his call, bending to his will like loyal subjects. With a single gesture, Gervyn the Fireborn unleashed a torrent of scorching flames…

Theo barked and jerked away, and Teri heard a tight, plastic snap. She only had a moment to realize something was wrong before she had eighty pounds of panicked dog in her lap, yanking her hands off the wheel, making the car veer wildly. Time slowed down as she made a grab for the steering wheel. Her eyes darted up over Theo’s back and she saw a large delivery truck barreling towards them, its horn blaring. Her breath caught and a surge of terror overwhelmed her as she realized what was happening.

The forces of Emperor Nikodosis’ army were engulfed in a blazing inferno, heralding the dawning age of Gervyn’s destined greatness. The howls of the dying surrounded him but he held strong, determined to wring justice from the blood of his enemies…

Everything went black.

Subscribe now

NEXT: Waking Up is Hard to Do

Authoria:

I should probably have mentioned this earlier, but the incredibly popular, world-wide best-selling series The Allisar Fireborn Chronicles by Chadwick Jarvaldson is entirely made up by me, KimBoo York!

The series is based on all those wildly popular, overwrought, epic fantasy “Chosen One” Tolkien ripoffs from the 1980s and 1990s with cover art by Larry Gilmore or the Hildebrant brothers. Yes, that one, and also that other one. You know the ones I mean.

Did I actually have to outline the whole series and develop all the canon story elements and character profiles for it? Yes I did. Fuckin’ Chad owes me a drink.

Thank you for reading! 🎊 I’d love your comments and feedback! ☕

Find KimBoo: Notes • Bluesky • Tumblr • Facebook • House of York

Support my dog! 🐶: Ko-fi • PayPal

Table of Contents

Teri pulled into the parking lot at Barkingham Palace with a white knuckled grip on the wheel. In the passenger seat, her mother’s dog Theo sat looking out the windshield expectantly. He absolutely loved doggy daycare and had pretty much forgotten that she existed, his tongue lolling out as he panted with excitement.

“Yeah, yeah. Hold on.” She took a deep breath to steady herself. There was a 100% chance that the university was going into lock-down that day or the next in response to the threat of COVID, but everyone was pretending that it was business as usual in the meantime. She did not want to drop Theo off knowing that she would probably just be back to pick him up in a couple of hours, but her options were limited.

They walked in the front door to see Angie on the phone, already looking aggravated, and it was only 7:30 a.m.

“Yes, Mr. Durwin, we’re open, but as I’ve explained several times, I can’t guarantee that we will be staying open. Yes, I know it might be inconvenient. Yes, but on the other hand, if we go into lock-down, will it matter? Yes sir, I’ll write down that complaint and give it to my manager.” She wrote absolutely nothing down and then hung up. “Okay, boomer,” she hissed at the phone before looking up with a smile.

“Teri! And Theo, yes, good boy, Theo! Good boy!” Angie cooed at the ridiculous dog from over the counter, making faces at him as if he was a toddler. Theo, predictably, bounced around with joy and headed immediately for the door leading to the play area. Teri tugged at his leash to hold him back for a moment.

“Angie, I don’t know when they are going to call the lock-down, so I’m headed in now but might be back early for pickup. I know I’ll be paying the full day’s rate,” she rattle off to forestall the lecture.

The door flew open and Louis, one of the dog handlers, spread his arms wide. “Holá, Theodorian!”

Teri just let the leash go, since it was hopeless to try to contain eighty pounds of excited doggy joy. He was half Chocolate Lab and half Great Pyrenees and 100% feather-brained exuberance personified, and far more popular than Teri herself would ever be. Theo scrambled across the concrete floor with a bark and disappeared with Louis into the back.

“Do you think you can keep him out of the pool today?”

Angie grimaced. “Probably not? But we’ll dry him off completely, I promise!”

Teri sighed. “Fine.” She turned and stomped out, fully expecting a slightly damp wet dog smell to ruin her day later.

By the time she got to work, it was exactly 8:01 a.m., but as usual she was the only person in the department who bothered to show up on time. She eyed the empty front desk critically as the phone rang and rang, but she walked straight past it instead of answering. It was probably a panicked parent calling for information about the assumed lock-down and, more importantly, information on how to get a refund on the dorm room if the school closed for longer than a month.

No one knew the answer to that, not even the university president’s office. She sure as hell wasn’t going to waste her time saying as much over and over until the student intern-du-jour came into work (if they did, which she doubted. Half the school was already fleeing homeward).

“Teri! Hey.” Devon called out as he walked through the front door. “You haven’t—”

“I have not heard anything. No news, no updates, nothing.” She kept walking. Devon was a good kid who at least showed up almost on time for work, but Teri was already done with all the questions. She was not looking forward to going home to re-explain it all to her dementia-addled mother, who would just badger her for answers, over and over and over.

As she stopped to get her keys out to open her office, she glanced over at Ellie’s office door. There were two new photos of her kids plastered there, and Teri swallowed the bitter pill she swallowed every morning, looking at Ellie’s door. She jammed the key in and swung the door open, stopping for a moment to take in the space. It was a small office, but it had a tall window overlooking the math department’s hideous, brutalist architecture, all geometry and concrete and pretentiousness.

But what caught her eye was the extravagant pothos plant draped over the top of her desk’s hutch, along with her sansevieria, her parlor palm, and her two boston ferns in pots. She realized she would need to take all of them home, since they would not survive a long lock-down.

Her boss had said the other day that he assumed it would only last a few weeks but she was betting on three months, at least, so she started packing up. Aside from the awkward plants, everything she would need to work from home fit in a banker’s box, so she spent the rest of the morning cleaning up and organizing.

Ellie came in and stood in the doorway, watching.

“You really think this is going to go on for a while, don’t you?”

“Yep.” Teri continued dusting the bookshelf. “I honestly doubt I’ll be back here anytime soon.”

Ellie sighed. “I hope not. The boys are really enjoying third grade.”

Teri braced herself for another long-winded information session about “the boys,” including their grades and which sports they loved that week and how much their grandmothers doted on them. Instead, Ellie straightened up and peered at her.

Teri did not bristle. “What?”

“How’s your mother?”

Teri slapped the wad of paper towels she was using to clean onto her desk. “The same.”

Share

Ellie wrinkled her annoyingly adorable button nose and pushed her long blond hair out of her face. Then she put her hands on her hips with a sigh.

“Look, I know we don’t always get along, but this a pandemic, right? So if you need anything—”

“We’re fine.”

She got a slanted look of disbelief at that. “Dementia is rough for everyone, Teri. My great grand-uncle—”

“I appreciate the sympathy, Ellie, but there is nothing you can do. You’ve got your boys and your husband and that all takes priority.” She turned back to wrestling the largest fern out of its corner. It was too heavy to carry, but facilities was too busy to help her move a plant, most likely working to prepare the campus for a completely unplanned, history-making crisis. She tried to remember if there was a dolly cart in the storage room.

“Sure, fine. Okay.” Ellie grumbled and finally left Teri alone.

Teri closed the door and put both of her hands on her desk, bowing her head and taking a deep breath. Her mother was not doing “the same,” she was visibly worsening by the day, her dementia turning mean and chaotic. Her mother had always shaded toward narcissism, but in the past five years that had dialed up to where she was more like a spoiled toddler than a 72-year-old woman.

The idea of being trapped in the house with her deteriorating mother and a rambunctious dog, who was going to miss seeing his friends at doggy daycare every day, rattled her hard, but she reminded herself that there was nothing she could do about it. They were both her responsibility and there was no one else to do it…as if her brothers would even offer.

Sometimes, very rarely, Teri was glad she never had children because she could not imagine trying to deal with kids and her unstable, nasty mother all at the same time…and now, a fucking pandemic.

She took a deep breath, stood up, and got back to prepping her office for the duration, however long it might last. She stopped and stared for a long time at the small, framed poster hanging discreetly next to her desk.

It was something she had bought on a whim at a comic-con years and years ago, right after the release of the second book in the Allisar Fireborn Chronicles. She had been younger and the series had not gone off the rails the way it would in books three and four, so she had paid a lot for the fanart of Valerontarius and the three surviving Allisar children: the hero Gervyn and his twin sisters, Vycette and Aurguth. The artist had done it in a fantastical art nouveau style, all bright colors and excessive details. Valerontarius, the mysterious wizard who wore a magical full-face mask and was Gervyn’s mentor, was standing tall in front of them in an outfit that looked a bit like it came out of The Three Musketeers, holding a lantern as they traveled through the Caves of Melifinaar—not entirely canon accurate, but a stunning portrayal.

She ground her teeth thinking about the fridging of the twins in the fourth book, along with the sidelining of Valerontarius himself in order to turn “chosen one” Gervyn into even more of a larry stu. Despite everything the author, Chadwick Jarvaldson, had done to ruin the series, Teri still clung to it like a scorned lover. In an early Yahoo group for fans of the series, Teri had called him “Fuckin’ Chad” after the weird turns the plot took in the third book, and the name stuck. Over fifteen years later and it was all the fandom used to talk about him, and she was pretty sure no one remembered that she had coined it. As popular as the series was, the fandom turned over on a regular basis every time a new book was released.

She wondered if the upcoming pandemic lockdown would finally see Fuckin’ Chad finishing the fifth and final book in the series. Like most things in her life, she loved the potential of it more than how it actually panned out, and she expected that she would writing another ten thousand word meta essay on how wrong Fuckin’ Chad was about everything.

Maybe the lockdown would give her time to get jumpstarted on that, she thought as she took down the art and tucked it carefully into her packing box.

Finally, at 2:41 p.m., they were all told to go home. Indefinitely.

Everyone else was gathered around the front desk, slightly panicked and making some attempt to bolster each other’s moods. When Teri rolled the dolly cart past them with her box and her plants, Ellie gave her a polite wave and Devon called out good luck, but everyone else ignored her.

It was fine. She was fine. It was all going to be fine.

Subscribe now

NEXT: 3/16/2020: Heading Home

Thank you for reading! 🎊 I’d love your comments and feedback! ☕

Find KimBoo: Notes • Bluesky • Tumblr • Facebook • House of York

Support my dog! 🐶: Ko-fi • PayPal

Transmigrated Teri is an isekai/portal fantasy about Teri Graves, a middle aged GenX office lady who worked at a large university up until the first day of the pandemic lockdown.

After a major car crash on her way home, she wakes up in the fantasy world of the book series she obsessively loves to hate, The Allisar Fireborn Chronicles. She knows the characters, she knows the plot, and she knows that its all a massive coma dream…except for how nothing is at it should be. Worse? She woke up in the body of the doomed evil stepmother! She escaped a pandemic for this?

Table of Contents

1. 3/16/2020: Going to Work

2. 3/16/2020: Going Home

3. Waking Up is Hard to Do

4. Familiar

5. Welcome to Luttiron