Chapter Text
I’m not sure how exactly it starts, probably very similar to another inter-dimensional story I wrote, but Ericka somehow gets teleported out of her dimension into another one where she’s a White Husky. She gets teleported into an alleyway and is very confused. She realizes she’s a dog once she sees her paws and sees herself in a puddle on the ground. She starts running around on the streets, yelling her family’s names, but everyone around her can only hear her barks as she runs past.She carelessly jumps into the street and almost gets hit, but she safely makes it to the other side, and doesn’t stop running.
She finds a less busy, more quiet neighborhood to stop and take a rest in. She misses home and isn’t quite sure where she is, she feels sick. After about ten minutes someone must have called animal control since a van pulled up. Two men came out and tried to catch her, but she escaped and fled into the forest behind the neighborhood. They didn’t chase after her. She ran until she came upon a stream. She took a drink and rested for a second. Feeling odd. She followed the stream, which led to a river. And the river lead to a really big lake, or what she thought was a lake at first. When she stood on the bank she could clearly tell that it was man made, and looked like a moat. She walked around it and climbed up some semi-steep cliffs. She found a beaten path that had been slightly overgrown. Then she found a stone bridge, which led to the hotel. But it somehow looked...different.
She ran across the bridge in joy and burst through the doors. She was confused to find that the hotel had been abandoned. Everything almost looked normal, except there was a giant crack in the floor of the lobby, and some of the walls were partially destroyed. She wandered around, seeing all of the dust that had collected. She took the stairs and walked through every floor, seeing not a single soul left. She found her old bedroom that she shared with Drac and went inside. She tried the light switch, but nothing happened. She saw her phone and his resting on a nightstand that seemed to not have been dusted in years. She felt so alone. She decided to rest there until night fell. She curled up on the bed and quietly whimpered to herself as she fell asleep.
Once night had fallen she headed back out of the hotel to see if she could find out what happened, when she heard a very faint howling in the distance. Her first thought was to run, but she remembered that she was a dog, and that she might be able to talk with them. So she headed in the direction of the howling. It eventually stopped but she still headed in that direction. Eventually she heard something pass by her in the forest, she froze, not sure what to do as more figures surrounded her. One asked what she was doing in their territory, and the voice sounded super familiar. She was too focused on the two figures in front of her, she didn’t realize that one was right behind her, sniffing her, like dogs do.
“Scared, much?” One asked in a feminine voice. Cause Ericka to spin around, snap her jaws, and snarl in defense, she immediately stopped when she saw who was talking to her. It was a small, elegant black Wolf, with sparking blue eyes.
“M-Mavis?” Ericka asked, causing Mavis to growl,
“How do you know my name, outsider?!”
“No! You don’t understand I’m-“ Ericka tried to understand that something really weird was going on, when a Saint Bernard looking dog with slightly unusual blue fur coloring walked up behind Ericka and started to sniff her too.
“You smell of milk,” the Saint Bernard said, causing Ericka to spring away and snarl again, “do you have pups?”
“NO!” she yelled, despite trying to look tough with her hackles up, her tail was tucked between her legs, she was terrified and confused.
“PACKMATES!” A strong accented voice said above all of them, “STEP DOWN!” A giant black Wolf leaped over Mavis and confronted Ericka. As soon as she could see his face in the moonlight, she knew exactly who he was. “And who may you be?” He asked, his voice not angry, but curious.
“M-My name is Ericka.” She stuttered out, causing everyone to quietly gasp and exclaim, and for Drac to look shocked.
“Everyone, head back to camp, you, come with me.” He grabbed her scruff with his teeth and dragged her to a small clearing a little deeper in the woods. He released her and she sprang away from him. “When did you get here?!How did you find us?! ” He asked, making her ears perk up.
“...You know that I’m-“
“From another dimension?” He finished her sentence, strolling around her, “yeah no SHIT.”
“then...why are we all dogs and wolves?”
He sighed, “...a couple years ago everything was the same as it was in your dimension. We were all living fine...me and you even got married. A few weeks later, you became pregnant! We were so happy...but…”
“But what?” She asked, sitting next to him as the breeze ruffled their fur.
“...your fertility was...questionable. You weren’t quite fertile, yet you weren’t infertile either. I didn’t want to risk it...so I cast a spell so that we wouldn’t have to worry about not being able to have kids. But to every spell, there’s a catch. I...didn’t read it. Days later, it happened. This...thing, crawled out from a crack in the lobby floor. And whoever it touched, it turned them into a dog or a wolf. And, then it would eat them. But then it just disappeared, it vaporized into dust, and it released some kind of shockwave of energy. Even if it didn’t touch you, the shockwave turned you instead. We didn’t know if it would come back, so we fled into the forest, which is where we’ve been ever since.”
“Oh...well then where’s me? Can I see the puppies?!” She started to become excited, but lost her enthusiasm when she saw Drac’s sad face. “...What’s wrong?”
He flattened his ears and looked at the ground, “she...you…” his voice started to tremble as Ericka snuggled up next to him, “...you died having the pups due to exhaustion...none of them made it either.” He started to sniffle and cry, as Ericka just sat next to him, taking in all of the information.
“..o-oh...I’m...sorry for your loss.” She whimpered, licking his cheek, and pressing her head against him. He didn’t say anything for a while, hanging his head in sadness. But then he whispered,
“...I’m the reason you’re here.”