As soon as she opened the door, Daphne regretted her lifelong desire to get lost in a good story.
At least Mark was standing there, just as she expected. That’s why she had opened the door to begin with: he had just knocked, ready to head down to the corner deli for their lunch date.
But behind him, she did not see the fourth floor hallway of her apartment building. No walls at all, in fact. Instead, she saw a rocky, barren wasteland stretching as far as she could see on either side. Peering past Mark’s ear, she could just make out a purple smudge on the horizon that might be a mountain range.
“Daphne?” Mark sounded more amused than terrified, which gave Daphne hope that maybe she was just seeing things.
She tried to smile as if nothing were wrong. The stalemate lasted for exactly two seconds, until Mark turned around to see what she was looking at… and yelped.
“What the hell?” Mark jumped backwards, knocking into her and sending her sprawling backwards into the foyer. “Daphne, where’d the hallway go?”
She gave a wordless squeak that Mark somehow interpreted correctly as look down here. He looked at the floor where she had landed, and yelped again.
“Where did your apartment go?”
“I don’t know.” Daphne managed to get all the words out this time, which she was pretty darn proud of. Being able to form full sentences when your cheery hardwood entryway had somehow morphed into a dark stone tunnel slanting steeply downwards seemed like an impressive feat.
“How the —”
Whatever Mark’s next question was going to be, it evaporated. A sound was building somewhere deep in the recesses of what used to be Daphne’s apartment. It was like a chorus of whispers, getting louder and louder as more sibilant voices joined the throng.
Daphne scrambled up to a crouch, staring down into the dark tunnel that had, two minutes before, been her foyer and living room. She couldn’t see the source of the noise, and she couldn’t make out any words in the whisper-chorus, but all her senses were in agreement on two things.
The first was that the sound was not only getting louder, but getting closer.
The second was the certainty that this was about to become a very-bad-news kind of situation.
“Mark,” Daphne muttered as quietly as she could, but she still heard a spike in the wave of whispers, accompanied by a cold gust of air from the shadows down the tunnel. Reaching behind her, she found Mark’s hand and used it to pull herself up. Speaking directly into his ear, she tried again, “Mark —”
The whisper-chorus exploded in a howling shriek, and Daphne’s instincts took over. She pushed Mark out through the door and dove to the side, pulling him with her as she half-leapt, half-stumbled onto the rocky ground. They landed on their stomachs and cowered, trying to shield their ears as the sound and wind-wave shot through the doorway where they’d just been standing.
The roar went on and on, like a jet-propelled rocket train that had swallowed a metric ton of fireworks. Daphne pressed her face against the ground and wondered if Mark’s insides were, like hers, attempting a complicated trampoline gymnastics routine.
Keeping one arm protectively over her head, she used her free hand to reach into her jacket pocket. Thank every muse and all the gods. Her special fountain pen was still there, warm and buzzing faintly, like it had a life of its own.
Which it did.
Not that anyone, except Daphne, needed to know that. All that mattered was that it was still safe, and still hers. She wrapped her fingers around it and breathed a sigh of relief.
Finally, what felt like several minutes later, she heard the sound of the door slamming shut, caught in the back draft as the last of the shrieking gale barreled out of the tunnel and faded, slowly but mercifully, into the distance.
She nudged Mark, and they both sat up.
“Shit,” Mark said.
It was a sentiment Daphne could sympathize with. Looking around, they were able to get a glimpse of the whole landscape. The rocky wasteland was only in front of the door, stretching to either side and forward towards those mountains on the horizon. But the door itself was no longer attached to any building or other human-made structure. It was carved into a massive tree, and that tree was surrounded by thousands of other massive trees, each with their own door.
No apartment, or apartment building, or city block filled with shops and people going about their blissfully normal lives. No corner deli. No corner at all — just a vast forest of door-trees on one side and the barren rocky plain on the other, both stretching as far as they could see to either horizon. The air felt barren, too: neither cold nor hot, but a sluggish lukewarm, as if the very idea of ‘weather’ had been carried away by that horrible wind.
“Shit,” Mark said again. Then, in a carefully calm tone, “Daphne, what did you do?”
“Hey!” Daphne protested. “How do you know this is my fault?”
“Because you’re a writer, and I am a very good boyfriend,” he replied. “I’ve read every book you’ve ever written, and this — this place — is one of them.”
“Oh yeah?” The pen was buzzing so violently in her pocket, Daphne wondered if Mark could hear it. “Which book?”
“A series, actually. Rise of the Wordmaster.” Mark pointed at each incriminating piece of evidence as he listed them off. “That forest is the Wander Wood, with the doors in the trees leading to the tunnel network and the different sections of the Under Library. These are the Silent Plains. I’m pretty sure if we crossed them, we’d come across the dried-up remains of the Pool of Eloquence, or at least the trenches that used to be its streams. And those mountains — they’re purple, aren’t they? That’s where the griffins live. The heart of the resistance after the Wordmaster… y’know, brings about the apocalypse.”
“The partial apocalypse.” Daphne didn’t want to admit that Mark’s assessment of the situation was correct, but she also couldn’t let the nuances of her own work be misinterpreted, however slightly. “It’s also where the Wordmaster sets up his fortress, to remake the world in his own image.”
“After obliterating it.”
“After mostly obliterating it, yes.” Daphne sighed. “I haven’t thought about that series in years. How are you such an expert?”
“It’s my favorite,” Mark said simply. “And you have thought about it. You think about it all the time. I’ve always thought it’s your best work. Way better than Lizards in Space.”
“Wordmaster never went anywhere,” Daphne pointed out. “Didn’t sell. Lizards is a smash hit.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
Daphne laughed bitterly. “Easy for you to say. I’m a writer. It’s my job to write things people want to read. If the readers don’t like a book, that means the book’s no good.”
“Not always true,” Mark argued. “Sometimes it’s just not the right time. Wordmaster is great, and you know it. Lizards is just luck heading your way.”
“Yeah… maybe.”
It had absolutely nothing to do with a magic fountain pen that showed up at my desk in the library one day, Daphne thought, saying it had been sent to me for a limited time to ‘jump-start my dreams’...
The pen buzzed angrily in her grip. Her fingers were going numb.
“Anyway,” she said as she stood back up, “comparative analysis aside, what makes you so sure we’re in a fictional world right now at all, let alone my particular fictional world?”
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“Check your pocket.”
Her heart tripped over itself. “What?”
Mark reached into his own jacket pocket, where he usually kept his phone, and pulled out a slim leather-bound book.
“When your main character got pulled into the Wordmaster’s world, her phone turned into this.” Mark opened the book and held it up, forcing Daphne to watch as words appeared on the first page in neat, printed rows.
Welcome to Euloban!
Name: Mark Sanders
Class: Reader
Level: 1
Wisdom: 2
Strength: 4
Intelligence: 2
Dexterity: 2
Aesthetics: 6
Daphne whistled. “You already have six points in Aesthetics? Nice.”
“Well, I’m a Reader. I appreciate a good story.” Mark closed the book and put it back in his pocket. “What about you? Bet you’re a Wordsmith.”
Keeping her right hand in its pocket with a death-grip on the pen, Daphne reluctantly reached her left hand into her left jacket pocket and pulled out her own status book. Flipping it open, she glanced at the first page.
“What?” Her mouth and brain froze at the same time, unable to find words sufficient to express her outrage. Finally, they settled for a strangled, “Come on!”
“What?” Mark grabbed the book from her hands. “I was right! You’re a Wordsmith. What’s the matter?”
“I’m level ONE!” She snatched the book back, staring at the offensive numbers with rising fury. “Amelia was level THREE when she got pulled into Euloban. And my stats — all my stats are twos. All of them!”
Mark made a coughing sound that could have been a laugh. “What’s so bad about level one? I’m level one.”
“But I created this place, dang it! I’m basically god!”
“Well, everyone’s gotta start somewhere. I’m sure you’ll level up fast. You know all the Words of Truth, right?”
“The what?”
“Words of Truth,” Mark repeated. “The combat system you invented? People discover these chains of words that have power, and speak them to have different effects, and add onto them with each level-up?”
Daphne gave her pathetic status sheet one more scowl before snapping the book closed and shoving it back in her pocket. “Sure. Words of Truth.”
“You know them all, right?”
“I— I guess. I mean, I wrote them.”
“Exactly!” Mark actually held up his hand for a high-five, which was so surprising that Daphne found her own hand responding automatically. “So you’ll be able to defend us if we run into any baddies. Speaking of…” He turned, gazing at the door-tree they had emerged from. “If we’re in Euloban for real, that sound-wave must have been a Devouring Wind. Right?”
A chill settled in the pit of Daphne’s stomach. “I guess. If the Winds are abroad, we’d better get under shelter quick.”
Mark nodded. “That makes sense.”
Daphne gave another bitter laugh. “Something about this makes sense to you?”
“Sure,” Mark said, as if it were all… well, sensible. “The story starts with the characters going to the library, right? That’s the best place to gather knowledge about the world and learn how to survive it. For us, it’s probably our best bet for figuring out how to get home.”
The library.
How to get home…
The chill was spreading up through Daphne’s chest, creeping towards her throat. With it came an inescapable tide of memories, flashing across her mental screen in a relentless flood.
She remembered sitting down at her special spot in her favorite library back home six months ago, trying to work up the strength for another morning’s work. The pen was just sitting there, in a shaft of sunlight, like someone had left it behind. Except, when she picked it up and uncapped it, it drew her hand down to the paper and began writing its first message:
I am The Prism: a pen for capturing lightning. I travel through time and space by the magic of libraries, always appearing where and when I am most needed. Use me to jump-start your dreams and make your stories come alive in the minds of readers.
Daphne remembered the whirlwind of the next few months: inspiration flowing through her, stories pouring through the pen faster than her hand could fly across the paper, and the response from readers.
The overnight success.
The weeks of topping all the sales charts.
Crowds of adoring fans.
Fan art of her characters posted everywhere.
Finally having the time and emotional energy to say yes to a date with her best friend Mark. Finally giving in to the feelings she’d been pushing down, and letting herself fall head-over-heels in love. Weekly lunches at the corner deli turning into for-real lunch dates. Mark showing up at all her book signings with roses.
The life she’d always dreamed of, somehow… real.
Then, a month ago, when she sat down to begin the next book in the now-famous Lizards in Space series, something strange had happened. She’d picked up the Prism, and immediately dropped it. The pen had felt colder and heavier than a bag of ice. Her hand quickly went numb, and that deadweight chill spread rapidly up her arm, accompanied by a roaring in her ears like wind through a tunnel…
But it only lasted a few seconds. She blinked, shaken out her hand, and tried again. The second time, the Prism had felt normal, all warm and slightly buzz-y. The writing session that day had been particularly fantastic: productive, effortless, FUN.
A teensy-tiny part of her wondered if the episode had been some kind of warning. But one month had passed, and nothing bad happened. Her sales were still amazing. Her readers still adored her. Her relationship with Mark just kept getting better. She even managed to convince herself that maybe she’d hallucinated that weird feeling. It sounded an awful lot like a panic attack, and fame was stressful, after all…
Except she was here, stuck in an old failure of a book. From the moment she first started writing Rise of the Wordmaster all those years ago, she’d loved this story-world with all her being. Its rejection by readers had shattered her heart. She hadn’t been able to write for months. Now she was trapped inside that open wound, forced to relive the heartache all over again.
And she’d dragged Mark with her.
“Daphne?” Mark’s eyebrows were crinkled in concern. “You okay?”
She took a deep breath, forcing that chilly feeling back down towards her stomach.
“No. I mean, yes, I’m okay, but no — we shouldn’t go to the library.”
Even if I failed it, this story is still mine, she told herself. I wrote it. I know what to do.
“Not the library?” Mark asked.
Daphne pointed back towards the door they had come from. “The Winds are abroad, remember? And they’re coming up through the tunnels. They’re already in the library, and we can’t tell which sections they’ve already taken over. It’s too dangerous. Besides, it’d be a waste of time.” She turned, pointing to the mountains. “We need to confront the Wordmaster.”
Mark’s eyebrows not only uncrinkled, they shot up in excitement. “Oh, right! Cool!”
“Cool?” Daphne echoed, her voice high with incredulity.
“Absolutely! That makes way more sense. The Wordmaster is stealing all the knowledge anyway, right? He’s collecting all the power. So if we get to him, we can use that power to get home!”
The pen had stopped buzzing. It felt strangely cool in Daphne’s hand. “How are you so okay with… all this?”
Mark smiled. By all the muses and every god, he smiled.
“Hey, I thought today was going to be normal. Great, but normal. Now I’m actually INSIDE my favorite story, with my favorite girl.” Mark took Daphne’s hand, and her heart tripped over itself again. “What’s not to like?”
She took another breath, this one much more shaky. “O–okay…”
In that moment, the landscape flickered in front of their eyes. A city block appeared in the middle of the Silent Plains: a very familiar city block, with shops and an apartment building and a cute deli on the corner. The image lingered for only a few seconds, but that was long enough for Daphne and Mark to see four people run out of the corner deli… four screaming people, running as if they were being chased.
Before Daphne could shout a warning, another figure emerged from the deli. This figure was at least ten feet tall, walking on long, thin legs. Though it was too far away to see much detail, Daphne knew the figure’s skin was absolutely colorless, shiny, and had a strange rippling appearance, like it was made of liquid metal.
She also knew (though she really, really wished she didn’t) that this figure had no eyes, ears, or nose, having forfeited all such features for the sake of a gigantic mouth: a mouth designed to devour sound, not make it.
The figure silently snatched up all four of the screaming, running humans in its long, fluid arms, and the image vanished. Daphne and Mark were staring out at the Silent Plains once more.
“Shit,” Mark said for the third time. “That was a Daydream. A Rabid Daydream. Oh, shit…”
Daphne couldn’t speak. She tried to clear her throat, but it was like trying to swallow a marble.
“It’s— it’s not just us, is it?” Mark’s voice sounded like it was coming from faraway. “We weren’t sucked into the story. The story… it’s taking over the world.”
The mountains loomed in the distance. Daphne knew that nothing could possibly see that far, but she still had a strange sensation of being watched. If she concentrated, she could almost hear a familiar voice in the back of her mind. A voice that had sent shivers down her spine even as she chronicled its owner’s megalomaniac escapades.
Your move, little Wordsmith, purred the voice of the Wordmaster. This time, I won’t stop with this world. I shall take your world too.
“You can try,” Daphne said, not realizing she was speaking out loud.
“Huh?”
Mark’s hand felt cold and clammy. She gave it was she hoped was a comforting squeeze.
“The book is trying to take over the world. It’s not fully there yet. We can stop it.” She glared at the mountains, picturing the horrible fortress she had designed for the Wordmaster, from its high cruel tower to its dungeons full of creatures being slowly drained of their words — their thoughts — their stories. “We just have to get there, and then we can make everything right again.”
A loud CRACK resounded across the Silent Plains. It took Daphne a moment to realize it was the sound of a tree-door slamming open, this one a few yards to their right and further back among the trees. If she strained her ears, she could just make out the whispering chorus that signified the rising of a Devouring Wind.
“That’s our cue,” Mark said. “Right across the plain?”
Daphne nodded. “There should be some trenches, or boulders. We can find cover if we move fast.”
“Then let’s move fast.” Mark leaned over, giving her a quick kiss before tightening his grip on her hand. “Lead on, Wordsmith.”
Another door slammed open, this one to their left. Daphne didn’t wait around to hear the new set of voices begin their hungry whispering. She squeezed Mark’s hand again and took off at a sprint, guiding him across the Silent Plains, the magic pen like an icy bar of lead in her pocket.