Ingrid reached toward her face and watched the reflection do exactly the same thing, which unfortunately confirmed that she had not suddenly developed the ability to see somebody else’s reflection.
Her cheeks were fuller, her body was dramatically heavier, and even her clothes looked like they were fighting for their lives around her enormous frame.
Ingrid opened her mouth several times, but no sensible explanation came out because she had spent the last few minutes trying to survive drowning while everyone around her acted like this was a normal Tuesday afternoon.
"This isn’t me," she finally whispered, touching her stomach with trembling fingers before looking down at herself again. "I died," she added, although the words sounded ridiculous even to her because dead people generally did not complain about sore asses after being pulled out of zombie soup.
She turned around slowly and looked at the man who had rescued her, intending to demand an explanation, but her brain finally noticed something else that made her forget about her body entirely.
The man standing before her had enormous brown wings stretching from his back, each feather long and sharp enough to make Ingrid instinctively shuffle backward. His skin was covered in tiny golden-brown feathers around his neck and shoulders, while his arms ended in hands tipped with dark, curved claws. A long feathered tail extended behind him, moving slowly from side to side as he stared at her with an expression that suggested she was the most embarrassing creature he had ever encountered.
Ingrid blinked several times, wondering whether she had suffered brain damage before dying and was now hallucinating because there was absolutely no other explanation for what she was seeing.
"You have wings," she said, pointing at him with a trembling finger before looking down at his claws and then back at his face.
The man stared at her for several seconds before his brows furrowed, and Ingrid suddenly had the uncomfortable feeling that he was wondering whether she had always been this stupid.
"Of course I have wings," he replied, looking genuinely confused by her question, and Ingrid nearly screamed.
She spun around and finally paid attention to the other people surrounding the pool, only to discover that the winged man was not the strangest thing in the room.
A tall woman with pale blue skin stood nearby, her hair resembling thick silver fur while two small horns curved backward from her forehead, and her eyes had narrow pupils like a snake’s.
Beside her was a broad man covered in dark brown fur from his neck down, with wolf-like ears twitching on top of his head and a long tail hanging behind him. Another person had the body of a human but the head of a fox, complete with orange ears, sharp teeth, and a bushy tail, while a smaller creature nearby had green scales covering its cheeks and arms.
Ingrid slowly turned in a circle, taking in the collection of humanoid animals surrounding her, and the only conclusion her exhausted brain could produce was that she had finally lost her mind.
"Okay," Ingrid muttered, bending and placing both palms on the floor as everyone watched her suspiciously.
She took a deep breath and slammed her forehead against the ground with as much force as she could manage, producing a loud crack that immediately made several people gasp. Pain exploded across her forehead, and Ingrid recoiled while clutching her head, tears springing into her eyes as she hissed through her teeth.
"Ow, fuck, that hurt," she complained, but when she looked up, the winged man was still standing there, and so was the wolf man, and so was the snake-eyed woman. Apparently, none of them had disappeared, which meant either her hallucination was extremely committed to its role or she was experiencing the worst mental breakdown in recorded history.
She slammed her forehead against the floor again, this time harder, because apparently one concussion was not enough to convince her brain to cooperate.
"Ingrid!" someone shouted, but she ignored them and hit her head a third time before stumbling backward and sitting heavily on the floor. Her head throbbed so violently that tiny flashes of light danced across her vision, and she pressed both hands against her forehead while breathing through the pain.
"I’m going crazy," she murmured, staring at the strange creatures around her with watery eyes, and nobody seemed brave enough to stop her because they were probably afraid she would attack herself again.
"I died, woke up in a pool of Zombie leftovers, turned into a fat woman, and now I’m surrounded by animals that can talk, so yes, I’m definitely fucking crazy." She nodded slowly as though she had just reached the most logical conclusion imaginable, and then a cold mechanical voice suddenly echoed inside her head.
{Host is not crazy.}
Ingrid’s entire body went rigid.
The voice had not come from the winged man, the wolf man, or any of the other creatures around her because it had spoken directly inside her mind with a strange mechanical calmness. Her eyes widened as she slowly looked around, desperately trying to identify the source, while every creature in the room stared back at her with varying levels of confusion.
"Who said that?" Ingrid demanded, scrambling backward until her back hit something, a tree, and her hands instinctively flew toward her head as though she could physically pull the mysterious voice out. Nobody answered, and that silence somehow made the situation ten times worse because now Ingrid was officially hearing voices inside her head.
"Who the hell is talking?" she shouted again, pointing accusingly at everyone in the room. "If this is a hallucination, I would like to formally complain because this is a terrible hallucination!"
{Correction: The host’s mental stability is within acceptable parameters.}
Ingrid stared straight ahead, her mouth hanging open.
"You can hear me?" she asked, although the question was obviously stupid because the voice had already answered her twice. The winged man looked increasingly concerned as Ingrid continued staring at empty space, while the snake-eyed woman whispered something to the wolf-like man that Ingrid could not hear.
"Oh my God," Ingrid breathed, rubbing her face as she wondered whether she had somehow become possessed after dying, and the thought was almost comforting because possession at least sounded more reasonable than resurrection into a world filled with animal people. She looked toward the ceiling and shouted,
"Are you a ghost?" before immediately shaking her head because ghosts probably did not speak in such a painfully emotionless voice.
"Are you some kind of god?" she asked next, only to immediately regret it because if any type of god was responsible for this mess, she had several complaints to file.
{System identification: SSS-Level Revenge System.}
"Uh... What?"