Introduction
I’m sure everyone remembers the day, the day the world went crazy. I know I remember that day like it was yesterday, even though it has been ten years since then though to be fair I haven’t forgotten much since that day.
I was six then and I had just gotten out of school. My parents were driving me home and I was wondering what i would bring for show and tell tomorrow. I remember the sky lighting up like someone had released thousands of fireworks into the air. The world seemed like it was covered with a giant rainbow which flickered and danced. The colors grew brighter and brighter until I couldn’t see anything. It felt like I was drifting in space, though then I wouldn’t know to make that comparison later.
When the light dimmed I first thought I was dreaming, and maybe I still am. The sky had returned to normal, but the rest of the world had gone crazy. I don’t know how to explain my first impressions of what happened. I remember the smell of sulfur, the flashes of red. How does one explain their mother turning into a demon? How does a mother explain turning into a demon? Pointed horns poking out of her black hair, a black tail snaking its way across the floor of the car, large bat-like wings carefully folded up. Her shirt even had neat incisions on them to allow her wings through.
I suppose the strangest part was that my mother didn’t seem to notice her own change, she was gaping at my father. My father had abruptly stopped the car and was staring out into the street. My father had always been bushy man who was quite proud of his beard. At first I wondered if his beard had grown to cover most of his body. Almost all of his skill had grown brown hair, his face was now a muzzle and a bristly tail now stuck through a hole in his pants. A wolf-man and a demon, what a strange couple.
I suppose you now want to know what happened to me. I’m sorry to disappoint you but I didn’t change. Well, that isn’t exactly correct, I didn’t outwardly change. I still looked the same but I was different then before. My memory is much better then it used to be, I hardly ever forget anything anymore. I’m smarter and more popular then I used to be, though how much of that is because of the change or if it was just chance.
My family wasn’t the only ones that changed, everybody and everything changed. Now there are Vampires, Fairies, Cat-people, Werewolves, Demons, Magical Girls, Wizards, Superheroes, and anything else you can imagine and quite a bit you probably can’t.
Those first few weeks were crazy, everyone was understandably freaked out. Yet, strangely, almost everyone accepted what they had become also as if they had always been that. I remember meeting with a my best friend a couple of days after the incident, like everyone else she had changed. You know how I mentioned Cat-people earlier, that is what she had become. Sharpened nails, an enhanced sense of hearing, and a funny looking tail suited her wild outgoing personality to a T. I’ve always been more prim and proper myself, but I have always been attracted to her carefree lifestyle.
She later expressed to me how she was disappointed that I didn’t change outwardly. Apparently she had hoped that I had become a Mouse-person so that she would be able to chase me around and pull my tail. I had hoped that she would be more of the “sleep on my lap and purr” instead of the “ruin my couches” type of cat, but neither of our hopes were granted.
Eventually life returned to a certain amount of normalcy, however that would soon change. A mere six weeks after the Change rumors began spreading, they spoke of a strange new world that was hidden just beyond ours. Something that would have been dismissed as impossible six weeks ago now seemed quite plausible. The rumors continued to spread as more an more people claimed to have entered this ‘New World’. It wasn’t to long after that that the first World Gate was discovered. World Gates allow unlimited access to the New World and soon the United Nations formed an expedition visit the New World and discover what was really there.
This expedition became know as the Unknown Expedition and it was the first official account of the New World and what it revealed made everything we had experienced so far not seem so strange.
However I’m not going to explain what the Unknown Expedition discovered, you can find that out yourself if you want to look though old news records. What this book is about is my own experiences and what I found in the New World and Beyond. It wasn’t until ten years after the Change that I first entered the New World. It was just after a new year of high school had started. It started when me and my best friend (You know, the Cat Girl) were walking home from school and it ended new friends, new enemies, and a prophecy which would change how I thought about the world (Again).