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The god’s head exploded in a shower of—
I would always open up the door, always looking up at higher floors
STARS.
Millions, maybe trillions of them glittering on a vast, eternal black palette.
I was soaring at superluminal velocity, headed straight for a fantastical pink, gold, purple, and orange cluster of nebulae.
This time was different. In the past I’d always felt oddly disembodied.
I didn’t now. I flexed my hand and glanced down. I had a hoof of sorts with black talons. It was steaming like dry ice, leaving a trail of sparkling frost in my wake. I glanced back over my shoulder and simply stared for a long moment.
I had the body of an enormous black, leathery skinned and scaled, icy, majestic dragon.
Holy hell, I was a Hunter.
I glanced right and left to see my beautiful wings. Though I’d known it was going to happen, knowing wasn’t the same as seeing.
I was no longer human. And never would be again. This was my body now.
I focused on curving one of my wings. It not only obeyed, it nearly sent me into a tailspin. I snapped it rigid and pulled out of it moments before crashing into a small meteor sailing by.
Oh, God, I was in space.
I was a Hunter.
It was too much to process. I’d been too quickly ripped out of one reality and crammed into another.
My body was gone. My red hair, my arms, my legs, all of it. Just gone. Forever. I would never lace up sneakers on my feet again. Never slip into a sexy dress and high heels. Never gorge on Pop-Tarts, or access my brand of the slipstream. Never pet Shazam with a hand.
They say we deal with death in stages. I always thought I’d belly up a laugh and plunge into it fearlessly, but now I felt appallingly normal for the first time in my life, as I flashed instantly to denial. “I can’t be this. Send me back!” I protested. My words came out as a deep, resonant gonging, not words at all. Where were the Hunters? They’d come in the past. Why weren’t they here now?
Anger reared its fiery red head. “You can’t do this to me! I had a life!”
Silence.
In case they were nearby, listening, I moved to the next stage: bargaining: “Please! I just need to see Ryodan one more time, and I need to tell Shazam what happened! I’m not ready!”
You wouldn’t be here if you weren’t.
The voice echoed inside my head and I turned to find a great black Hunter dropping into flight pattern beside me.
A huge Hunter! Twenty times my size. I was tiny in comparison.
It chuffed with laughter. You’ve just been born. What did you expect? It will be eons before you’re fully grown.
I blinked, suffering a mind-bending disconnect. Part of me was still human, back on Earth, torn from battle, desperate to know if I’d succeeded in killing Balor, desperate to see Ryodan and Shazam, to know which of my sisters I’d lost. Another part of me was simply stupefied, trying to process and accept that I was a Hunter now. I had a new body that, fortunately, seemed to understand instinctively how to fly itself.
“Where did my other body go?” I boomed.
The Hunter snorted a tendril of fire. Silly question. Part of you.
“I need to know if I killed—”
Balor is dead.
“How do you know?”
