(Dylan)

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Dylan said. “It’s a goddamned mirror.” His plump form scowled back at him, hand still clutching his chest.

Thunder rumbled in the distance. A storm was approaching. “That should help until the fire rescue can get here.” Dylan assumed someone had phoned in the emergency.

Carefully, he walked toward the room’s darkest corner and found the figure still leaning against the wall. A very solid-looking wardrobe had protected them from the blast.

The guy wore an exceptionally detailed fantasy cosplay. He could’ve been an extra in one of the Lord of the Ring movies. Dylan heard the stomping and clomping of boots from the group of people running past his door. They were loud, but he couldn’t make out their muffled voices through the door.

“What the hell is going on out there?” he muttered under his breath, trying to piece together the madness unfolding around him. Dylan narrowed his eyes on the slightly damaged wardrobe, hoping there’d be a pair of pants inside that might fit. He frowned, opening it revealed it was empty.

“Damn.”

“Hey man, are you okay?” Dylan surprised himself when his knees didn’t pop like usual when he crouched beside the cosplayer.

“Oh.” Dylan noticed the guy was actually a girl. “Sorry about that.”

She looked like some sort of ranger or rogue. She wore supple ankle-high leather boots, pants with loads of pockets, and more belts than were probably necessary. A thick padded shirt hid her feminine form well, also adorned with pockets, and a pair of badass looking fingerless leather gloves. An open rust-colored cloak topped it all off. Her head tilted at a strange angle. ‘There’s no way that’s comfortable,’ he thought.

She had so many pockets. ‘Maybe she’s got a phone?’ Dylan wondered, but could he really search her? The idea felt wrong—she was unconscious, and he didn’t know her. He only rifled through his friends’ pockets.

She had short, dark hair in the style of a pixie cut. Dylan thought she looked familiar but couldn’t put a name to her face. Actually, he couldn’t put anything to her face. It was weird, like he’d seen her before, but they’d never met.

‘A bit too old to be into cosplay?’ Dylan was a thirty-five-year-old millennial. She might have been a generation older than him if he had to guess. However, he was terrible at guessing ages.

Disappointment washed over him for the judgmental thought. Cosplaying didn’t have an age limit, and she had done an amazing job in the details of her outfit. He didn’t have a clue which character or fandom she was aiming for, but it was outstanding.

He went to wake her. Regret took hold the moment he touched her shoulder. With a gentle shove, her shoulder moved in a way that felt off—absent of reflex or resistance. He snatched his hand back as if touching a heated element.

“Hey, wake up,” he said, growing worried that something terrible had happened.

He gripped her shoulders and shook. “Please wake up.”

Thump, bump. Her head rapped off the wall twice before Dylan stopped. Dread consumed him as he realized the wardrobe hadn’t protected her—she was dead.

This was the first dead person Dylan had ever encountered. None of the movies or shows had truly prepared him for the experience.

‘How long has she been dead? Does she have a pulse? Where the fuck is my phone?’ He had so many questions.

Reaching out with his fingers, he felt along her throat. Despite counting to thirty, there still wasn’t a pulse. He patted his toga, looking for his phone again. “Goddamnit,” he growled.

‘CPR?’ he wondered. No, that was just a stopgap to buy time for help to arrive, and he wasn’t sure it was coming.

Dylan stood, trying the doorknob, but it wouldn’t budge. Wind whistled through the missing wall as the storm continued to approach. “Locked?”

Running his hand up along the doorframe revealed the deadbolt. With a click, slide, click, the bolt unlocked. The door started vibrating, gears spun and ticked. Six thunks sounded one after the other, clockwise, as rods retracted from the edges of the door into itself. He tried the knob again and the weighted door opened to reveal chaos.

Dylan’s breath caught in his throat as he staggered backward, his mind reeling at the sight. Bright lights flooded his vision. Two men—no, not men, not really—dragged a lizard-like creature between them. His brain kept trying to rationalize it. Costumes. It had to be costumes.

‘Are they supposed to be elves or vulcans?’ He wondered what kind of convention this was. Their long hair suggested the former, while a green substance oozing from an ear and down their neck implied the latter.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

Both had shiny, colorful hair; one was midnight blue, while the other was copper.

The man they were carrying wore a full body suit of emerald and amber scales. Again, he couldn’t tell if it was fantasy or science fiction. It could have been an Argonian or Gorn suit.

‘Why didn’t they take his mask off?’ Dylan hoped the man could still breathe okay in full costume.

“Holy shit,” Dylan whispered, his throat tightening as his eyes locked onto the mangled limb. He had seen blood before, but this… this was something else entirely; the color was wrong. ‘Why is it blue? Is this for real?’

A makeshift tourniquet of fastened belts wrapped tightly just above his knee. A thick limp tail dragged behind, smearing streaks of blue along the wood floor as the leg continued to drip from the truncated limb. It reminded him of the people he saw outside. The trio just walked past, paying him no mind. A crack of thunder brought him back to his mission to get help for the woman in the room.

He stuck his head into the hall and yelled, “Help! We need some help here.” But there was no answer.

A tall woman appeared from around the corner at the end of the hallway. The heels of her boots struck the floor as she ran his way. A platinum blonde ponytail bounced behind her with every step. She also had pointy ears. In an instant, the woman was nearly upon him. He stepped back into the room to avoid getting barreled over.

Just before she plowed into the three slow-moving convention-goers, she called out, diving up and over them. Her maneuver would’ve been impressive with a springboard, but she pulled it off without one.

The hallway rattled as she landed, tucking into a roll before getting back up. The maneuver barely broke her stride. Her figure disappeared down the stairs at the end of the hallway.

Dylan stepped back into the hallway and saw another very tall dragon cosplayer walking his way. He wore some kind of prosthetic stilts; the guy was almost eight feet tall. The costume had white scales and the crest on the top of his mask had four sweeping horns that went backward, close to his skull.

Those red lizard-slitted eyes activated an ancient part of Dylan’s brain stem. Something so primal that the rest of his evolved brain didn’t recognize, raising the hair along the back of his neck.

Ignoring those instincts, Dylan ran up to the massive cosplayer. He was five feet ten inches tall, and this guy towered over him by almost two feet. The white scaled lizard-man wore a black robe with gold embellishments, similar to the diplomats on Star Trek or Star Wars. He really wanted to ask which kind of convention this was supposed to be, but more urgent matters demanded his attention.

“There’s a woman who needs help. I think she might be dead,” Dylan said as he approached.

The cosplayer stopped, glanced down at Dylan, and started speaking in Klingon, Arabic, or one of the many other languages he didn’t know. Dylan just shook his head, unable to understand what the lizard-man tried to say. Unsure how to reply, Dylan simply looked up at him with pleading eyes.

Thunder clapped, louder than the last, interrupting the pregnant pause.

The lizard-man motioned with his clawed hands for Dylan to lead the way. He double backed toward the room, pointing through the open door when they got there. Brushing Dylan aside, the man hurried into the dark room and kneeled beside the woman, placing his hand on her shoulder.

Dylan stood in the hallway, wringing his hands, reduced to observation as he watched the cosplayer. He heard the storm arrive. Fat drops of rain came down, tapping and splashing on the floor of the exposed room.

Nothing happened when the man touched her. He reached up and ran his gloved fingers along her rounded ear, between his thumb and index finger.

‘Way to be a creep dude,’ Dylan thought.

Light from the hallway exposed what he’d missed earlier; the dried blood that ran down her ears and the side of her neck. The cosplayer swiped two fingers across the blood and then sniffed at them.

Dylan marveled at the impressive prosthetics and Hollywood studio makeup the man had, but surely the snout was just a prop? The cosplayer withdrew his hand, lowered his head, and sighed.

‘Fucking method actors,’ Dylan thought, shaking his head. This guy’s refusal to break character was pissing him off. “Quit messing around. Call an ambulance, or the police, or someone!” he shouted.

A shiver of regret shot down his spine as the tall lizard-man stood up and moved toward him. Before Dylan could react, a massive hand clamped down on his head, sending a shiver of disorientation through him. The surreal sensation of being handled like a basketball made him question whether his brain had officially checked out—maybe this wasn’t a coma dream after all?

This cosplayer wasn’t some normal guy swimming in a big body suit. His hands were as large as they looked. They forcefully manipulated Dylan as they manhandled him to get a better look at his ears.

They were in the middle of a goddamned emergency, surrounded by injured, dying people, and all this guy wanted to do was get his ear freak on.

The cosplayer’s grip tightened around Dylan’s wrist, cold and unyielding. Dylan winced as the claws brushed over his skin, silky smooth and unnatural. His stomach churned—who the hell was this guy? He tried to pull back, but the grip was like iron. Without letting go, the cosplayer used his free clawed hand to grab Dylan’s wrist and examine the dried red blood on his fingers.

“Let go of me,” Dylan gasped, his voice strained as he struggled against the lizard-man’s grip, feeling the tightening claws around his wrist.

The cosplayer let go of Dylan’s head and stepped out into the hallway, dragging Dylan by the wrist. He called out to a shirtless guy with short, spiky, emerald, anime hair, who was attempting to make his way down the hall, leaning against the wall. Sounds of the rain faded as they walked away from the compromised room.

The shirtless elf stopped when he heard the cosplayer call out to him. Unsteadily, he turned around. Makeshift bandages wrapped around his head, soaked in green stains. The same colored blood ran down his bare chest. Grave injuries aside, that wasn’t even his most striking feature.

‘Holy crap, that guy’s ripped!’ Dylan thought.

The guy must’ve been one of those fitness freaks that never skipped ab-day. With his improved sight, Dylan counted an eight pack.

‘How is that even fair?’ He was pretty sure that wasn’t even anatomically possible—humans didn’t have that many abdominal muscles.

The cosplayer continued dragging Dylan around by the wrist, acting like he didn’t just abandon the poor dead woman in a room. When they got to the maimed elf, the lizard-man reached out and cupped the elf’s face with his free clawed hand.

Dylan heard a grinding sound, like gravel, as smoky gray energy flowed from his hand into the elf’s face. The stained bandages fell away to reveal half of his head, including one eye, was now made of gray stone. Amazed, Dylan watched both the stone eye and the normal one move in sync.