Getting to the peak of the hill was worse than having my hand torn off.

Rain poured down on me, soaking me worse than the bathtub had. A steady drumbeat on a borrowed poncho, the occasional splatter hitting like a rock on top of my head. It had thrown me off balance three times so far.

It threatened to do so again as I tried to gauge the distance between the long plank I was on and the next properly this time. Two feet ahead, half a foot up. Should be an easy distance to make. It wasn’t going to be one.

Wet wood creaked as it shifted underneath me as I hesitantly stepped forward. A misjudgment here would be bad. The continuing torrent of water had turned the side of the hill to a slowly collapsing pile of muck. Pounds of dirt were swiftly heading downhill beneath the planks, moving in a continual landslide of watery mess.

It hadn’t carried anyone down with it that I knew for sure, but I’d seen a few shapes

thrashing. I could only hope they hadn’t been people.

“You have got to be kidding me!” I yelled back, straining my voice to be heard over the pounding of the rain.

Behind me Ildat was nothing more than a rain-splattered poncho back on another plank. The rain’s assault obscured everything else, reducing my hulking companion to nothing but an indeterminate mass. I thought I heard them yelling, but I couldn’t tell what. The crackle of lightning and the roar of thunder was joining the rain now.

Ildat stepped over to my plank, wood straining under the weight as he grabbed my shoulder. His attempt to balance himself resulted in me spending an uncomfortable second swaying on the plank. The mud continued its free slide downhill and I did not want to join it. It looked like the distance to it was even longer than a few minutes ago. How much of this hill had been carried away by the rains?

Eventually Ildat found his balance and that wasn’t a concern. For now. The way the plank was ominously creaking I wanted to spend as little time on it as possible.

“Do they have lightning and thunder packaged in with the water plan for this hotel?” I half-yelled at Ildat, who gave me a confused look in response.

“What? Oh, that. Local storm must have formed. Bad luck, but it’s not usually this bad.”

I didn’t know what was weirder, that this cavern somehow had storms inside it, or that the hill getting eaten away by the rain qualified as a mere “bad”. Then again, the distance to the muck was the same it had been at the start all of a sudden. It was vanishing again, but there was clearly more hill than there had been before. Probably something equally as strange. But I didn’t stay to ask any more questions.

The plank creaked as I tried to step up to the next. I managed to get the tip of my boot onto the plank, only for it to slide across the slick surface. I went plummeting to the muck down below, screaming. Then I stopped. Ildat hauled me back up. I’d stopped before hitting it, but still, way too close. My heart pounded in my chest.

“Thanks,” I yelled into his ear, getting an unexpected hand gesture in response. I’d just assume the devil’s horns were this place’s version of a thumbs up for now.

Helping each other, we made our way up the hill. If anyone else was still trying to make the trek, I didn’t see. The storm made it hard to tell, but I hadn’t seen anyone else as we had made our way up. They clearly had more sense than we did.

The shacks and other buildings thinned out as we made our way up. Made sense, in a way. I wouldn’t want to trek up a hill every time I went home either. Larger shacks, actually closer to proper houses now, even if they were still made out of the warped wood. Multiple rooms, at least.

Another ten minutes of trudging. At minimum that long passed. I knew for sure that the eroding of this bill had been cyclic. It was hard not to notice, considering most of them time had been spent staring at the drifting hillside while making I got my feet on the next plank.

The planks became level with each other again, and after I took my next step, the rain was gone. Someone had put up a canopy at the top of the hill. The pounding of rain on canvass still made a racket up above. Parts of the canopy that had torn let water pour in. But it was a million times better than being caught in it.

Ildat took a step on the plank next to me. The wood freaked ominously once again and I looked down at it nervously. The plank was bending where he and I stood. I moved to a side, away from the middle which didn’t really help.

“You know, I’ve never had a plank collapse under me,” He said teasingly, grinning as I quickly moved to another plank. “Besides, it’s just mud.”

“It’s just mud up here,” I countered. “Down there I’m pretty sure I’d have drowned by the time I reached the bottom.”

“I won’t argue with that, although typically people hook on to a plank before they end up in the sea.”

I stared in a mixture of horror and disbelief at Ildat. I had been joking but was it enough of a regular event for him to know that?

“I really hope not too many people die from that,” I said somberly.

Ildat chuckled, then when I shot him a horrified look added in a jovial tone “We’ve got a good system. And the Hotel has some degree of insurance for us when we die doing our jobs. So it’s mostly just an inconvenience.”

“That, that’s not how insurance works,” I said, stumbling over my words. What was wrong with this place?

“Maybe where you come from. We can talk about it later. Sofi is waiting.”

I resisted the urge to press him for details. I’d find a time to bend someone’s ear to find out what the hell this place’s deal was. Soon. Just not now.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

We had finally gotten to the crest of the hill, and it was smaller than I imagined. Only a few buildings up here. A series of smaller shacks, then in the middle of the flat hill a single house a few feet off the ground. It was one of the bigger buildings I’d seen so far, which meant you might see it in a suburb back on earth.

I paused at that. I hadn’t really had time to think about it, but my knowledge was weird in itself. Basic concepts like insurance, or a suburb, or how big your typical suburban home was? I knew those. But then there was the weird tendency for encountering anything vaguely resembling part of pop culture to ram that piece right into the forefront of my mind.

“You coming?”

Ildat had made it three more planks while I had been lost in thought. I nodded and leapt to the next one. I needed to focus on what was around me. An attempt to puzzle this out would be saved for when I had time. If that ever happened.

The open planks got closer together before becoming an actual walkway. I’d ask why the entire hill wasn’t like that but I’d probably get another urging not to waste time. Which, fair. I’d imagine there was a pretty busy schedule in making sure the rain got itself turned off.

The door to the house was the best of those I had seen on the hill. Which meant it didn’t have a hole in it and mostly fit snugly into its frame. Ildat rapped on it twice, producing loud, resonating thuds as two fingers hit the door.

I am so glad I decided not to fight him after all. Whatever Ildat was, watching him easily move between planks and cause them to nearly snap with each step had made that clear. Even without the cleaver he probably could have plucked me apart.

Ildat paused, then without even a word from inside opened the door, strolling inside. I paused on the outside, not sure why he had just barged in. There was no yelling or other signs he wasn’t welcome, so I followed in.

There was an actual hallway, if a narrow one, a pair of doors and a few openings into different spaces. There were muffled sounds of someone talking from somewhere in the house as Ildat hung his water-logged poncho from a coat rack. I quickly went and did the same, then wiped my boots clean on a rather pitiful looking welcome mat.

Ildat strode through the house with familiarity, beckoning for me to follow. Above the creaking of the wood, I could hear someone talking. It was a one-sided conversation, the same voice starting then stopping a few different times.

Ildat went over and opened one of the doors,the talking now clear. Firm politeness permeated the tone.

“-trying to reach your quota, but please inform the Night Manager that the current amount of water is not helping with this. I understand it is a punishment for not meeting the quotas of yesterday but they will prevent us from-yes I know questioning these decisions are going to upset her, and that is not my intent-“

Ildat was already inside and I quickly followed after, into a cozy little study already occupied. At the desk, a young woman was talking into an old rotary telephone, beckoning for us to be seated.

She was young, probably as young as I appeared to be, darkly olive skin freshly wet as if it had just been washed. Loose shoulder-length dark brown hair going down to her shoulder, maybe half a head shorter than me, but a lot more curvaceously put together. She was wearing clothes that looked even older than my clothes, maybe Victorian in style and era, what you’d see a dockworker wearing in the background of a movie, with minor tears and wear.

I went to one of the two seats in front of the desk, Ildat claiming another as his own. Who I could only assume to be Sofi was listening to the phone intently. I could barely hear the other voice, harsh and tinny although maybe that was just the phone.

“We’ll do our best down here. Just do not expect miracles,” she said before hanging up the phone and turning her attention to me.

“I see you’ve finally awoken-“

I would have paid more attention to whatever she said next if my brain hadn’t decided those words were the perfect ones to trigger another wave of information to flood into my head. The roaring of dragons, a theme song I was not going to get out of my head and about five hundred arrows delivered into knees, among other things were now bouncing around in there.

“God. Damn. It.” I said, “It’s not even the same phrase used at the start!”

“Are you feeling okay?” Sofi asked, sounding amused.

“She had a similar experience earlier. I think she might have hit her head too hard on the way down,” Ildat said, eyeing me.

“Not possible. Everything was healed. Only the fingers should still be fixing themselves up.”

I managed to force my head off of the latest piece culture to be forced into it.

“I’m sorry about that. Things are triggering memories….it’s a mess in here,” I muttered.

“Triggering memories?”

“She claims to have lost her memory Sofi. Completely. Woke up in a bathtub no idea who she is. It gets better. She thinks she’s from earth.” Ildat chuckled.

“Claims?” I shot him a dirty look “I’m not claiming, it is what happened.”

“If you are telling the truth, otherwise claim is the best you get.”

“It is rather convenient for you that your memory goes missing right when you, as a person, are at your most wanted status,” Sofi opened a drawer on the desk, pulled out a stack of papers and started leafing through them.

“Is it convenient for me to pretend to be completely ignorant? To the point I went tumbling down a laundry shaft into a lake?”

“Desperate people have done dumber things in the past. Besides, you have insurance,” Ildat gave me a grin as I glared at him.

“Stop that. Please. Stop saying things like I’m supposed to know what they are.”

“You claim no memory at all then?”

“No. I know things, just things from earth. And no specific memories, just general knowledge. Occasional bursts of specific knowledge when I encounter something similar to it. No…experiences or anything like that.”

“Hmm. And you recently got body-sculpted as well.”

“I what?”

Sofi had stopped leafing and took the topmost paper from the pile. She placed it facing me on the desk, a poster with a picture of what my mind informed me was a pastel lolita nightmare. Also a bounty that I really hoped wasn’t in dollars, because that was a lot of money.

“I used to look like this is what you are claiming?”

“Claiming? No. I’ve had the displeasure of fielding complaints from you twice in the hotel proper from you. Once in your old body, once in this one.”

Okay. There wasn’t much I could say against that. What was I going to say, that I didn’t think I was the suitcase killer because I had woken up in her room, in what was her body? Not even I believed that.

“So..am I her, just without any memories? But then why do I know about earth?”

Sofi seemed lost in thought. Ildat seemed mostly just confused.

“A matter for another time. We will proceed assuming you are not the Suitcase Killer attempting some kind of ruse. I am Sofi, Manager of the Underneath Department for the Hotel. I was going to start this off by leveraging your forced debt to us to get your help. Now that might not be needed.”

“We were going to blackmail you with the debt you owe, but you seem slightly more personable than you normally are. So we don’t hit with as big a stick.”

“Thanks, I think.” That was a little off putting for its sheer honesty. Or maybe just the glee that the grinning Ildat said it with.

“You aren’t aware of the fact you are obligated by the divine to owe us service in return for patching you up.”

Well that sounded horrifying. “What kind of service would that be?”

“We want your help deposing the Night Manager."