"I just feel like an idiot for screwing that up," I said, "it's always something dumb. All I had to do was stay put."

Errod shrugged, looking around as if he had heard something that confused him, and then stared at me for a moment before managing to pick up the thread of the conversation. "Right. Well, look, don't beat yourself up about it. We're fine, and there's no permanent harm done."

He had to speak up to be heard over the general commotion in the crowded common room, and was just looking annoyed at the people that kept jostling him when he was distracted by a mug being placed down in front of each of us.

"Finally," I said, "I'm dying of thirst."

Errod dipped a fingertip in his and sneered. "It's warm."

"Oh you big baby, it's fine. Drink up." I went to take a swig, but Errod pulled the mug out of my hand.

"Don't be gross, Calliope. Any establishment this size must have an ice box, they can give us cold drinks."

He took the mugs over to the bar and signaled the barkeep. I glanced over at the musicians that were playing on a raised platform off to one side - the song wasn't great, and to make things worse it was in a language I didn't know. Errod returned with two new pewter mugs, drops of condensation glistening on the sides. I took one, feeling the cold metal under my fingers.

"You have to be kidding me," Errod said, and took it right out of my hand. "Even the the drops on the mug are warm."

"Errod, it's... look, I'm thirsty and if you keep sending drinks back the bartender is going to spit in them."

But he had already put them back on the bar. He sat down at our table, rubbing his temples. "I'm just cranky, I guess. I'm in a bad mood, and I have a headache."

I felt a flash of anger. We both knew why he was in a bad mood, so him mentioning it was just him passive-aggressively reminding me. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Except it was Errod. He didn't do passive aggressive. "It's my fault," I forced myself to say, "I dragged you into this, and got us separated from the group."

He shook his head. "It's my fault too, I... grabbed the wrong rope, I think? Anyway, we just need to get back to the others."

A server with a little wooden tray walked up with some new drinks. "Oh those look delicious! Come on Errod, third time's the charm."

He reached for one, but at the last second his arm jerked and knocked the tray out of the server's hand, dumping the drinks everywhere.

"Jesus, Errod! What the fuck!"

"I'm sorry. I just... sorry. I'm not feeling great. Can we go somewhere quieter?"

It was getting pretty noisy, the crowd laughing and murmuring in that language I couldn't understand. The band was playing louder as well, still the same discordant tune. "Yeah. We can't get back into Nusos from somewhere this crowded anyway. Let's get that drink before we leave though, I'm still so thirsty."

As if on cue, a hand reached out of the crowd holding a drink. It was right there, I could practically just lean forward and sip it. Errod pushed the hand out of the way so he could see me, as well as another hand that was holding a drink out to him. "I don't... I don't like the drinks here," he said, "Do we even know where we are?"

I wasn't certain. We'd gotten separated from the group, somehow, and then we'd fallen out of Nusos at some point and then had - presumably - decided to get a drink and plan. Another hand placed a drink in front of me alongside the other two, and Errod slammed a knife down into the attached wrist before it could pull away.

"Errod! What the actual fuck!"

He looked as surprised as I did, as if he hadn't meant to pin this poor person's hand to the table with a knife. There was blood seeping out, and as I looked at it I had the sudden thought that it looked cold and refreshing, like the drinks. And I was so thirsty. Oh, shit. I looked up into Errod's eyes and he stared back at me, then we both slowly looked around at the crowd of... they were people, right? I fumbled, pulling out one of my new throwing knives, and we both started swinging.

I couldn't have said what it was, exactly. Something just snapped. I punched, and headbutted, and that sweaty mass of bar patrons continued to press in on me - still offering drinks. Nobody screamed, or even really fought back, but it felt like I was being smothered. I slashed and stabbed wildly, and while there was no shortage of targets I didn't feel like I was doing much of anything. There was still just this wall of flesh, bodies closing in from all sides as some still offered me mugs. When I hit the hands it felt different, and I started aiming at arms exclusively which somehow made a difference - the crowd started to pull back as I hacked, and some of them started to press against the walls or even filter out the doors.

Errod was laying about himself with his sword, looking as clumsy as ever but benefiting from the target rich environment. I was feeling overwhelmed by it all, it was too... too noisy. The band was still playing and singing that awful song, and without thinking I threw my knife at the lead singer.

The room was suddenly silent, and nearly empty. The thing on stage, pale orange flesh with dark red veins, writhed noiselessly while its tentacles that had surrounded the two of us retracted. It tried to move away, but the knife had hit something vital that was just gushing ichor and after a moment it collapsed in a heap. Everywhere the tentacles were giving final spasms, and red liquid was spilling out of the cup-like tips.

"Hey," I said, "were we just surrounded by people?"

Errod nodded, panting. "Yeah. Well, no, obviously not. But yeah."

"And if I had tried to drink from that mug, was that actually going to be... tentacle juice?"

Errod looked like he wanted to throw up. "Yeah. Um. Now I really do need a drink. An actual drink."

"Why didn't it just force feed us?"

He shook his head. "I don't know. I've heard stories about monsters and some... you have to agree, to be at least somewhat willing."

"Oh my god," I said, grabbing Errod and squeezing his shoulder, "You... you saved my life, for sure. I was so angry at you for stopping me, I didn't understand why you wouldn't let me just have a damn drink."

"I... didn't understand either. It was just wrong. It was warm, for one thing."

I sat down, hands shaking. "Mine wasn't. I could feel it, nice and cold. Temperature was for sure something that thing could make us imagine, so if you thought it was warm that was... you. Some part of you, fighting it."

Errod carefully collected my knife from the thing's corpse, and sat down next to me. "So... we're still in Nusos. We... oh, no."

Oh no was right.

The memories came back all at once - they'd never been completely gone, just somewhat muddled. I'd woken up early that morning and told Sige to take a turn sleeping, because there was this awful ache in my chest that wouldn't let me go back to bed. I couldn't say where, exactly, the sensation was coming from - if I tried to visualize it I found myself picturing a sort of hollow sphere where my chest was, and the pain felt like cracks around the edges. It wasn't even really pain in the traditional sense, just a throbbing sense of... wrongness. And so I sat up, watching everyone else sleep, until I finally couldn't wait any longer.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

"Katrin. Hey."

She'd cracked one eye, and then sat up very slowly. "Why are you whispering at me?"

I gestured to the other side of the room and Katrin slowly nodded, still not fully awake. When she stood it woke Errod, who wordlessly joined us while looking totally lost.

"Guys, I saw something when we were just stopping here."

Errod nodded and stifled a yawn. "The glowing thing."

"Right," I whispered, "That was a light from Earth. I'm certain of it. And the door underneath had words on it in my language."

Katrin sat up straighter, the fog of sleep vanishing. "We can get to rooms from Earth here?"

"I guess? I don't know if they're always here or if this place just plucked it out of my brain or what. But if they're as real as the other rooms here, I might even be able to find a phone charger. I know you can't take matter out of Nusos, but if I could charge my phone here maybe... I don't know."

Errod looked worried. "Cyne said we should tell him if we saw anything odd. But we can't tell him about Earth, right?"

"Right," I said, still not sure what the consequences would be if people started trying to cross back and forth between worlds. Best to not talk too much about it, although the Eternal Empire already knew. "I don't know, I guess we have to ignore it for now. But I really want to get a closer look."

"It's a bad idea," Errod said, "either we'd have to let the others see or we'd have to split up. Either one has problems."

I looked over at the sleeping forms of the rest of the group. We were in some sort of stone-walled basement, crates and shelves full of supplies scattered around. We'd chosen it as our stopping point for the evening because it wasn't too far off track from the vibe we were looking for and there had been a big pile of soft furs in one corner that we were able to use as bedding. Everyone looked very comfortable, surely they'd stay asleep if we weren't gone long.

"Well. We could look at the hallway where it was before. That's just right outside, and we know the rope reaches."

Katrin looked skeptical. "Cyne says everything moves around, though. It's been hours, that same hallway won't be there."

"Sure, but he also said it's based on what you expect to see and what you're picturing. So since I can clearly visualize it, there's a good chance it'll be there again - or something similar, anyway."

She gave me a kind of sour look, and then slumped a little in defeat. "Maybe. But we're not getting out of sight of this room."

So I concentrated, and opened the door - it led to a hallway that didn't look particularly Earth-like, but there was an intersection up ahead. Katrin stayed at the room we'd slept in and maintained line of sight to Errod, who in turn kept a hand on my arm and watched behind us so he could see Katrin at all times. With this foolproof arrangement keeping us from being separated, I walked down to the intersection. There, further down the hall, was a door that I knew instantly belonged to a room on Earth. There was no writing on it, but the door was just... door-shaped. Every door I'd seen since arriving on this world had been a slightly different height, width, or even shape - but this thing was the standard American door in every way.

"I can't reach it without going around the corner. But I have to look inside."

Errod shook his head. "I don't know, Callie."

"It's so close. I'll be in sight the whole time, you can kinda stand at an angle and watch me and Katrin both so we can't get split up."

Errod clearly didn't approve, but he was curious too. After a moment he sighed, and pulled me back towards the room we'd come from long enough to run inside and emerge with a rope. Handing one end to Katrin, we both went around the corner. It wasn't quite long enough, as it turned out. I told Errod to just stand there holding the rope and watching me, but he was worried about monsters so he hooked the rope to a peg that was sticking out of the wall to get his hands free and draw his sword, then rested one hand on the rope - ready to lunge towards me if something attacked.

"Just in case," he said nervously. "Okay, open it and take a quick look. But regardless of what you see, you come right back."

"Absolutely. Just a peek, and then back to the rope."

I strode forward, and threw open the door. It was a bit of an anticlimax, revealing a totally empty room - no furniture, no other doors, nothing. But then again... not really nothing. There was, on the far wall, a little white rectangle. An outlet. It was strange, with the holes in a configuration I'd never seen before. Maybe it was from some other country, or maybe it was just an impossible shape caused by the glitches I'd seen in other spaces we passed through - but it was still absolutely a power outlet. Satisfied, I walked back to Errod and gave a thumbs up. He let out a held breath, put his sword away, and we both took the rope.

It was attached to the wall.

Errod had loosely looped it over a peg, but that peg was now a metal ring and the rope was tied securely to it. The other side of the ring had another, similar rope which extended along the wall to another ring - this continued all along the wall, like some sort of decorative rope railing. It most certainly did not lead back to the room we had been in, where Katrin was hopefully still waiting for us. Errod was just staring, like his brain had shut down.

"I... hung it right here. I only looked away for a moment."

"Errod," I asked, "was that a rope from our gear that we brought from the material plane, or was that some rope from the storage room here in Nusos?"

Errod didn't answer. His eyes were wide, and his mouth was just opening and closing silently as if he was unable to speak.

"Great. Okay, well. It's fine. It's okay. We know what room they're in, and it was close. Just picture that room - it should be easy, we slept all night in there. We'll be back in no time."

Which at some point led to us being in a gore-soaked tavern surrounded by feebly twitching tentacles.

We didn't leave right away - the thing was dead, and rushing off into the maze of endless rooms and hallways might just mean running into another one. "We need to decide where we're going," I said, "since at this point I think we've lost that room we slept in."

"I think we should keep trying for it. They'll be waiting for us there, don't you think?"

"Maybe. Probably. Yeah, they won't want to leave without us. But Errod... the longer we walk around without finding it the less sure I am that I'm even remembering what it looked like right." I let my head thump down onto the table. "I'm starting to feel like I can never just go from one place to another without something going wrong. Try to get an apartment, end up chased by the police. Try to get down off the mountain, giant bat bear monsters attack. Then those guys in the alley where we met, then Telen killing that governor, then Theramas being attacked, then... it's just been one thing after another. This was supposed to be the easier part of the trip. A quick stroll through Nusos, probably not even a full day, and then we'd be out. Instead... well. If we can't find the others we might be here for a while."

"Forever, I would assume."

"Well no, Katrin seemed sure you could get out of Nusos without planar magic - even by accident. I assume we can do it on purpose if we try hard enough. When we were talking about the schedule Cyne said Nusos would be aligned soon. We didn't want to wait, but with the delay from -" Connie dying, Connie is dead "- uh, switching towns after that attack, it's almost time. I think tomorrow?"

"So we try to find them today, and if we don't find them then tomorrow we try to find the vault?"

"Right. And if we can't find that either, well, before the end of the day is over we'll just try to get out wherever we can. I guess that might mean we end up halfway around the world or something, but... one step at a time."

Errod stood up and looked at the oozing tentacles all around us. "Do you have any way to tell what time it is, so we know when the planes are aligned?"

"None whatsoever."

He wiped one last bit of ichor off his sword and nodded. "Okay. Let's get going."

I imagined not only what I could remember of the room we'd slept in, but also the people - I wasn't sure if that was how Nusos worked, but it didn't seem like it would hurt to try. If they were still there waiting for us, picturing the room with them in it could conceivably help.

Of course, by a similar line of logic thinking about the hideous tentacle monster thing would draw us towards one which wasn't reassuring, and trying hard to not think about it was useless. Focusing on our destination was exhausting, to the point that we had to take breaks just to allow our brains to unwind and think about other things before we started walking again. Still, it seemed like it was easier to get somewhere with just the two of us.

"Okay this is close," Errod said, "This is really close. The walls were stone though, these are some sort of plaster."

I looked around, trying to overlay them in my mind. "Yeah, you're right. And there was a fireplace."

"Yes, on that wall," Errod said, gesturing with his sword, "But the size is right, and the floor is the same."

"Okay. Yeah, let's do this. Ready to be super confident?"

He smiled. "We're about to walk into the room we've been looking for."

I forced myself to return the smile. Happy thoughts. "No doubts. That door absolutely, positively, will open to where we wanted to go."

Joining hands, we opened the door - and it led to the room we had slept in the night before. One of the backpacks was even still there with food and water, but otherwise the room was empty.

"Well shit. They left without us."