The room was empty.

Completely, totally, empty.

Except for my friends, that is.

But something was amiss. I felt a presence, but I could see no one. A ghost? Some fairy or other super-normie? Maybe I was just being paranoid.

I approached my friends carefully. Slowly. They were tied with a mass of those interlocking bike chains wrapped in plastic. As I began to cut them free, Felix said, “Look out!”

I heeded his warning too late and was smashed in the head. I stumbled back. Swirling colors of vague swam in my vision as I tried to reposition myself in a perspective that offered little in the way of strategic positioning. But I could at least tell this much: my enemy was in front of me. They had not managed to slip behind me for an attack. I knew that wasn’t possible as I would have seen it— all of my world, after all, in this two-point-five dimensional land, only goes one way.

But I also knew that my foe had not slipped behind me because he was right in front of me. He was charging and—

Then nothing.

I had expected another clash, but nothing came. I knew he was still here, but he was hiding. Why couldn’t I see him?!

“What are you waiting for, you donut— get it!” Felix said, his hoarse voice refreshing to hear.

“But I can’t SEE anyone or thing— what the heck is this shit?”

“Stay on your guard. And I dunno. Be careful!” Kush yelled as both he and Felix were struggling to remove the remnants of their bondage.

I looked straight ahead of me, and for a moment, I glimpsed my foe.

Well, not my foe exactly. Not in the sense of me seeing everything about them. Instead, I only just glimpsed their arm. Maybe a leg, a dash of hair.

“What was going on, here? Was I somehow afflicted with a status ailment? Wait, no. That’s video game talk. Was I somehow blinded? Or under some shit spell?” I asked myself.

You would know if you were under a spell! Bring your dagger to bear!” Felix thought back to me. Man, it felt nice to hear his echo in my brain again.

Snapping back to the present, though, I did as instructed, and brought my dagger to bear upon this new foe. I could tell that my foe had lunged at me, but instead of clashing into my weapon, he vanished; in a tuft of a turn, my attacker took his whole body and simply disappeared, as though there were a passage to my right that I did not see, and he just fled down that way.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

(But no, I checked, Felix, and there is not passage there!)

Okay? Sure.

I caught my breath and then helped my associates untie themselves. Finally, my friends were free.

Or, my close associates were free.

Regardless, there were questions. And I needed answers.

“So, what the fuck, guys?” I asked.

Stumbling about, there was something especially awkward about watching two people weirdly step about in partial dimensional space. As though they were sprites in a video game performing an inpatient idle animation.

“We were ambushed.” Kush said. “Which should be impossible.”

“Impossible?” I asked.

Kush looked at me and said in the utmost seriousness, “Marcus: if you take anything away from my training and education, it is this remainder— the under-reality is not like your world. Crime, here, does not exist. There are no warlords or gangs here to cause mayhem. Every super-normie you see exists to do a job and they do that job mechanically with but a semblance of sentience. Us Caretakers are not warriors, not really, not outside of culling, and even then, culling is merely an execution of a diseased super-normie, not actual combat. Our world and purpose here in the under-reality is to remove a substance called ‘Negativity,’ from the world. There is nothing beyond that and everyone with an awareness of Negativity is aware of the importance in removing it. No super-normie has any reason to assault us, even one scheduled for execution. Everyone knows their place, here.”

I tried to comprehend what that meant. Outside of me not knowing what in the heckarooni negativity was, I understood Kush’s meaning. “So that means you were lame ducks that never touched water before?” I replied.

“Weird way to put it,” Felix said, using his actual vocal cords to respond “but, yes. Even my activism is not violently antagonistic, Marcus. Or at least, not outside of the night we met. But that was a special circumstance. What happened to us I am still trying to process. Stuff like this does not happen, lame-wad.”

“Any idea who would want to attack you?” I asked.

“No. And that is a problem.”

“Why?” I asked, trying to not dismiss their concerns despite the fact that I had no idea why any of this was so important. “Can’t you just lock your door? And come on, surely, there have been instances where super-normies attack you in a frenzie or out of some desperation to not be killed.”

“Admittedly,” Kush said as he examined the room he had been brought to and freed in by my heroism, “but those moments were rare. More to the point, moments like that are just aberrations. A frenzied or desperate super-normie once in many, many years, does not equal a planned, violent assault. What happened was not a wantom act, but a purposeful one.”

“Fuck, then. Lock your doors tight and practice more on the blade?” I said, not knowing why I was suddenly being so snarky with Kush. Maybe I was taking some vindication in seeing Kush’s world turned upside down like my own had?

“True words. True. Together, we will better our bodies for self-defense, Marcus. But, before that happens and we dedicate ourselves to improvement, who is your sneaker buddy down there? Some snack clanner?”

I looked down. Chippy was bright and earnest, not unlike a youth who got their first job.

“My name is Chippy, and my game is rescuing my clan. Something awful has happened, and I need your help.”

Kush looked concerned. “Let’s retreat to the higher levels of our humble outpost and return to the office. It seems we have much to discuss.”