"What in the tantric sex and torture room is this?" Lee said as he walked into the room Rein had designated for this experiment. "Man from the camera recording us. to the weird blankets and the knives. This feels less science and more kinky."

Rein could understand his sentiment after reading the description, this method threw him off at first. It said, "You must put yourself in a state of extreme fear while being very sleepy; when you feel a tug, just let it pull you; let the feeling of sticky tendrils take hold in your brain and pull." The rest of it was his idea with the rugs and beds; he had wanted to make Lee comfortable, but he hadn't realized he would make such a weird association.

The book talked about the most tried and true method, known as the thin knot method. It went like this:

First:

Get a knife and a piece of string thin enough to hold it... but not well enough that you'd trust it.

Second:

Tie a mostly secure knot; it could have more to be desired, but it gets the job done.

Last:

Try and fall asleep, and hope that knife doesn't drop.

Reading beneath that passage, it mentions there is no consistent way to get there, and all prior studies were just hopes, but here goes nothing.

As he tied the knives, Rein had already started to get afraid; he could see Lee putting on a straight face, but he felt the tension in the air. They were both scared, but Lee was at least willing to try if Rein had They made sure to keep the knives above their chests but away from the heart for obvious reasons; they didn't go for the throat. After roughly a few minutes passed, they were both lying down, their palms growing every day.

"What are we supposed to be seeing anyway?" Lee was clearly skeptical.

"See, I'm not sure, but whatever it is, I hope it makes this whole mess worth it."

They had lied down for a bit over an hour, only recently starting to get tired. This was completely normal, as they had been resting for so long.

Lee had done well hiding his fear; one of them needed to be the pillar. As he started dozing off, not believing in Rein's plan and still afraid of the knife hanging above him, he turned on his side to sleep and noticed Rein taking down his knife while huffing for air. Rein had beads of sweat running down his face, large blood vessel's popping out of forehead.

'He was afraid'

Rein couldn't stand the knives; they were much too worrisome and made his heart hurt, while his skin never stopped tingling. As he noticed Lee's eyes slowly roll back mid-conversation, he could see an almost blueish haze to his eyes.

"Hey Rein, what are you?"

Rein could tell; Lee had tried not to fall asleep, but it seems his need finally overtook his want and forced him. Rein had felt bad for him, forcing him to participate in his strange experiment, but as he just stood on his feet, he heard a voice.

"Not so fast; I'm not letting you leave that easily." The voice had been a deep, sweet one that almost captivated him. "Not when we were just getting reunited, my child, and I see you brought a friend home to play."

Rein had hit the ground hard; he knew he had, as the last thing he remembered was standing up before falling asleep.

As he opened his eyes, a murky feeling surrounded him, accompanied by a slight tug—a feeling akin to a slight breeze constantly blowing him in one direction. As he stood up, he finally saw Lee looking into the distance, a questioning look in his gaze but not a startled one. He started walking over to him, but it was more of a challenge than he had anticipated; a feeling of walking through water but not as intense, like a layer of mucus was always around them.

"Well, Lee I guess I am a genius after all. I mean, I don't see a dark tower, but I still managed to get us lost in another world. So that's something." Rein said, with a bit of worry in his voice.

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Lee looked back at him, but turned his head with no response.

"Hey! Lee, you there." He was beginning to wonder if this was just a dream he was having alone. It all felt too real, too much like he was really here, but if he was alone in this...

"Sorry," Lee finally said. "I was ignoring your brag about getting us lost in a strange dimension, and yes, this is really me. I see that worried look on your face. But let's get moving. I'm not sure where we are, but with this murky feeling, I feel like I won't be able to move against the tug, so let's move with it."

They began to move in the direction they were constantly being pulled in. When they first came to this world, they were in an open patch of grass, not very large, but the grass had been extremely long, almost as tall as Lee, so they couldn't see ahead of themselves. But eventually Rein kicked something.

"Shit, what the hell was that? It felt like a goddamned rock was just placed in his way. "He yelled. As he looked down, he noticed it was the root of a tree—the first tree they were seeing here. But the root wasn't just an average-sized root; Rein had raised his legs high to avoid tripping in the grass. The root was roughly two feet by two feet thick—a true monster of a root. As he looked up, he saw they were no longer in the light; no, they were in a forest with trees that stretched so far up that they reminded him of a tower.

"Where the hell did you take us, Rein?" For the first time, Lee had dropped his façade, fear was beginning to overtake him, Rein even noticed his eyes begin to quiver as he took in the forest in front of them . He was shocked, not only were the trees overwhelmingly tall, they also blocked any potential light, but they were also so thick that it would take tens of people holding hands to wrap around every tree.

They continued walking through the forest, rolling over the roots like an obstacle course.

"Hey, at least we were not dealing with 30-foot branches down here," Rein said jokingly. As they continued to trek, they climbed over a particularly large root, only to see in front of them a small village. just a few homes, not so large that they resembled the trees, but large enough for it to worry both Rein and Lee about the people that could be living there. They slowly came upon the houses, making sure to look as non-threatening as possible. They didn't want to get off on the wrong foot with whatever lived here. As they got closer, Rein could see the house in better detail; it almost looked like a traditional log cabin. But, rather, the logs were just two single logs stacked on each other—two of those enormous logs. After a closer look, all of the houses had been made like this: all of the houses had four walls, with each wall comprising of two logs.

"What the hell was able to lift that log?" he unexpectedly heard Lee say.

"Well, I guess our only option is to find out now, not like we came to this world to play survivor," Rein chimed back. They finally approached the front door; it had been roughly 15 feet high but was slightly cracked in the middle, most likely from age.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

No answer. They knocked a few more times, but nothing seemed to come of it. Lee had a puzzled look on his face, but that quickly shifted to horror as he saw Rein shimmy his way through the crack.

"What the hell are you doing? I don't think our Giants are going to be pleased if they come back and see you break into their homes."Lee was shocked Rein would even think to do this; to him, it felt like a suicide mission.

"Lee, this place hasn't been inhabited in a long time; come in here."

Rein watched as Lee squeezed his body through the cracks and could see him visibly calm down. It seemed the giants had truly put some deep fear into him, but not Rein; it almost felt like such a thing wasn't meant to scare him. Lee had then joined him in looking for clues, trying to find out where they were and what this had to do with the book of the dark tower.

"Aha, I found something." Maybe about as big as half of Rein's body, it seemed like a journal. After Lee had helped him move it outside, the cabin had almost no light, as he assumed they would need to light the fireplace that was about 20 feet tall to get any. But the outside had plentiful light, so they would be able to read.

After opening the book, Lee realized an issue: "We can't read this damn thing; what's the point of it?" Rein could hear Lee getting frustrated but tried to ignore him as he stared long at the text.

After a few minutes it felt like words scrambled together into a semi-cohesive form, he started to mumble out the words, not too sure what Lee would think of it, "Mom and dad said we are finally moving to the grand city; I'm so excited."

"I could tell they were skeptical about it and still were. They didn't believe in this false god; no, the real god was the god of the lake, and bless his power for protecting us, mom always tells me to say that after I mention his name."

Rein had continued on; he could see Lees questioning look; it was more of an I think your making this shit it up look though, but he continued.

"The only reason we are finally going is because all of the other villages have left; mom and dad hate missing their friends. But they don't know that I've been hoping to move to the grand city, like tales of what the humans had—at least that's what our shaman told us. And a grand tower one that will be built by us and stretch so far into the sky we can finally see over the trees." Rein had stopped reading and looked back at Lee. "I don't know how I can read this; it just felt natural, like if you looked at English and began to read."

Lee had grown even more skeptical when his best friend was able to read an alien tongue. But before they could finish that thought, they heard screams, and they were awoken from their dreams.