Silas squeezed his eyes shut as light hit his face. "Five more minutes, Mom."
Only, he wasn't at home, was he? He was on a flight to Boston for that summer camp… Right?
Getting into the camp was a Big Deal, at least in the competitive world of high schoolers applying to Ivy League programming programs. Only a few kids got accepted each summer. His parents had thrown a party for him and everything, not that he'd even wanted to go, or tried to get in. His parents filled out the application without asking him, recycling some old projects he'd made the mistake of leaving on a shared drive. They packed his bags while he ate breakfast cinnamon rolls downstairs like a fool, then dragged him to the airport, forcing him to act all reasonable, else risk the TSA dragging them all off to some dank holding cell.
The carpet pressing against his face seemed to disagree with his expectations of falling asleep on an airplane. Or, had he fallen on the floor? How embarrassing. Why hadn't the stewardess—flight attendant—woken him up? Was the floor always this soft? It felt like a dense cloud.
Someone cleared their throat. Whispers. Was someone crying? The crier sounded too big to be a little kid. How awkward, for them. Had they smacked their shin on the walkway? …Probably while trying to avoid him… But what was that smell? Rusty nails and rotten eggs?
Silas felt proud of himself as he sat up and opened his eyes, for not screaming or breaking down in tears at what he saw.
Heart pounding, he focused on controlling his breathing before he hyperventilated. He clutched the handle of his carry-on bag, finding a strange comfort in the idea he at least hadn't lost his laptop, wherever he was now.
He'd only had this particular laptop for half a year or so, thanks to his generous Grandma Poppy buying it off his Christmas list, despite him not really expecting anyone to gift him the beast of a machine, the most expensive model offered by Xenothings, after he added it on a whim, thinking it was his "wish list" after all. Once he transferred over everything from his old laptop he'd grown rather attached to the thing.
The room was rather spacious, in each corner a fancy bed, wardrobe, and ornate desk and chair. The scattered clothes, heavy books, and chalkboards covered in esoteric shapes and squiggles made Silas think of a messy Ivy League dorm room.
The presence of three young men in blue bathrobes strengthened this assumption.
Had he made it to camp then partied so hard he experienced memory loss?
Or… Was he abducted by some strange cult? Did these guys 'roofie' him?
Silas studied the geometric shapes encircling him on the floor. Based on the smell, he didn't think the dark red smears were made from paint or fruit juice. Right on the tan carpet, too. This is why we can't have nice things, he thought, and would have chuckled if it wasn't for the nearby pile of red meat and bone mixed with bits of fabric that might have once been the same shade of blue as the robes the three guys wore, before getting tossed into a blender with its wearer.
One of the three studying Silas as he surveyed their room finally said something, short and hard sounding. Silas didn't recognize the language.
One of the other boys spoke up in the same harsh language, sounding alarmed, as the sniffling boy shrugged.
The first one, a tall, fair-skinned boy with blue hair and silver eyes, muttered something with his hand held up, like he was telling Silas to stop. …Or like he was in some anime and about to gather his energy for a ki attack.
Silas's mind went blank as a ball of swirling black energy formed in front of the boy's hand.
The second boy, shorter with curly brown hair, shouted something as he tackled the boy forming the black sphere. The ball of black energy zipped past Silas, briefly yanking him towards the sphere as it passed. The ball impacted one of the desks, which crumpled in on itself in a blink, leaving behind a ball of splinters and crumpled pages that hovered in the air for a moment before falling down to the ground in a pile.
The crying boy, pudgy faced with shoulder-length blonde hair, grunted, then wiped his tears and gestured at the two fighting boys.
At first Silas didn't think anything happened, until he realized the two boys were now perfectly still, their fists raised for blows that didn't fall. Then the red-eyed boy gestured at Silas, and—
----------------------------------------
The world shifted.
Again, Silas found himself somewhere else, somewhere unfamiliar, somewhere inexplicable.
He lay at a slant on an unstable, uneven surface which shifted beneath him as he tried to move, his surroundings dark and smelling like… Yeah, he was probably in a dumpster.
Had he been put out with the trash?
He still held his carry-on, praise the ephemeral spaghetti overlords in their great pasta strainer upon high. As long as he still had his Xenothings laptop everything would be okay, somehow. He'd make it back to campus and find someone in charge, then explain he must have had a bad reaction to something someone slipped him at the welcome party, probably those three foreign kids.
As for the rest, he suspected all had been a bad dream, a hallucination thanks to whatever someone gave him filling in the blanks, his time between landing and arriving on campus lost. Roofies could do that, make you forget things from before you took them; he felt certain he'd read that somewhere online. Magic wasn't real, people don't just turn into piles of meat or shoot gravity balls or freeze time.
He righted himself and pushed through the layer of trash covering himself, then froze, staring up at the midday sky.
Near the overhead sun two shattered halves of an enormous red moon hung in the blue sky, the pieces broken apart like his hopes of still being on Earth, with everything having been a bad dream or hallucination. The hemispheres seemed large enough Silas worried they might be in the process of falling to the surface, though after studying the objects for a moment he decided this wasn't the case, as he detected no sense of motion from them, no telltale glow of incandescence from a celestial object falling through the atmosphere, and, more importantly, the people of whatever city he could hear around him weren't freaking out about the moon-halves falling out of the sky in the middle of the day. It was probably fine. Just your normal shattered moon hovering in the sky. Nothing to see here. Move along.
The town sounded active, merchants hawking their wares, people laughing and shouting, the clangs and thumps of industry in progress.
Nearby a man raised his voice, and Silas turned to meet the gaze of a wiry old man with a scowl on his face as he alternated between shaking a cane in Silas's general direction and at some sign on the fence of this apparent dumping area.
Probably the sign said no diving into the trash, or no trespassing, or no sleeping, or some other rule Silas had violated by waking up inside the dump, as if he had a choice in the matter. Not feeling like getting into it with an old man, Silas nodded and shrugged in a "what can you do" kind of way, not wanting to deal with the whole language-barrier problem as he freed himself and his carry-on from the trash pit.
Yet, this seemed to incense the old man, who approached waving his cane, shouting back behind himself as if calling for help. As Silas approached the edge of the mess the man tried beating at him with his walking stick, seeming to aim for Silas's right arm, the one holding his carry-on bag.
"I'm not stealing this, you old grump! It's mine!" Silas caught the walking stick, then was in a bind because he really shouldn't start his life off in this strange city by fighting an old man, no matter how annoying he was. He couldn't even yank the stick away, as he'd likely knock over and injure the frail guy.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
Then a hulking mass of fur and muscle came into the enclosure, some kind of bear-like monster walking on two legs, the beast wearing some sort of poncho, like it wanted really hard to pretend to be a person yet didn't know quite how to fit in.
Silas screamed in absolute terror and pointed, letting go of the old man's stick as the old-timer turned around to find the source of Silas's fright.
Silas ran as hard as he could, leaving behind his other concerns, barreling around the path along the edge of the dump next to the fence. He didn't need to outrun the humanoid bear monster, he just needed to outrun the old man.
Out of nowhere part of the fence opened up, held by a literal rat-faced kid, with whiskers and round ears and everything, rags over his short gray fur. The rat-boy hurriedly waved at Silas, encouraging him to run through the gate with a circular motion of his tiny clawed hands.
Vermin children were not an encouraging sight, yet what was he to do?
Figuring whatever the kid had going on, it was better than dealing with an angry manbear, Silas ran through the opening and just kept going on past the freaky kid, a clang behind him as something metal fell back into place.
He sprinted towards the closest path between what seemed two rundown tenement buildings, places designed to cram in as many people as possible as cheaply as possible from the look of all the tightly packed windows, half filled with various almost-people looking out, people with an assortment of animal features laughing and chatting amongst themselves as they watched Silas run away from what apparently passed as a normal kid in this dump of a city.
The rat kid caught up to Silas far too easily, chittering at him in an odd, fast paced speech, waving for Silas to run after him instead of continuing towards his intended alley, frantically tugging on Silas's hand to hurry him along around the dump's outer fence line.
Silas gave in and followed, any place where someone wanted to help him seeming like a good place for him to start in this crazy new world. He followed the small kid, turning here and there, as the kid continued to tug on Silas's hand. Silas noted how the kid used the flats of his clawed fingers to gently hold his hand, yet when Silas attempted to let go the kid adjusted his grip ever so slightly, using the points of his claws to ensure Silas couldn't break their grip without risking a few uncomfortable scrapes.
Maybe the kid worried they'd get separated?
…Yeah, he'd go with that. And he certainly wasn't getting a bad feeling as he was led through a hole in the side of a building and down into a cellar, not at all, not even a little bit. After all, the kid had just saved him from—
Nope nope nope! Silas ripped his hand free in a rush, ignoring any pain as he bolted back up the ramp and sprinted away from insanity as fast as his two legs could carry him.
A bright red half spider woman had been down there, flanked by what appeared to be some kind of dark armored beetle man and a yellow cobra dude, and he'd caught glimpses of other creepy bug and animal people in the room, including a scorpion-tailed girl sitting and chatting with a cat girl over some board game, those fluffy triangular ears almost enough for him to stop and go back until he reminded himself all of what he'd seen down in that spaghetti-forsaken basement. The spidery woman sitting on a slightly larger crate than the others, like some sort of ghetto throne, had given him all kinds of nope vibes. More so had the human-sized cocoons hanging from the ceiling, some still wiggling, fighting for freedom, others still as the dead.
He tried to decide if he'd been overly judging people by their odd appearances, and, yeah, maybe a bit, but no matter how he looked at it those creepy creepers had been some criminal gang or worse, which he most certainly wouldn't have wanted any part of, no matter the color or texture of their skin. Exoskeleton. Whatever.
Also, bodies in cocoons. Hard to forget that bit.
He made a few turns while heading towards the general murmur of traffic until he found a more populated street, then slowed down and tried to walk like he knew what he was doing, like maybe he could actually belong in this town, with his pale human skin and totally normal Earth clothes, consisting of white tennis shoes, plain jeans, and a black t-shirt with "There's no place like 127.0.0.1" on the front, which, as he clutched his carry-on, seemed just a bit funnier than it ever had before.
Trying to distract himself from the fact he had between two and twelve hours of battery life remaining before he'd need an AC outlet, depending on whether he played one last round of his favorite ARPG—or not, since it required an internet connection—or finished a few quests on one of the many single player RPGs in his collection, or watched some downloaded anime, or only ran a text editor while shutting down everything non-essential as some kind of digital diary to gather his thoughts before losing access to his laptop forever, he instead focused a bit more on his surroundings in case any of the many monster people walking the street tried to accost him.
Strangely, the odd menagerie of humanoid creatures on the road didn't seem put off by his appearance, his shirt seeming of more interest than his face to the few who gave him more than a passing glance. A few even tried to talk to him, probably about his shirt, which would have been awesome if they could read it and get the joke, yet he doubted such was the case considering they all spoke in an odd mishmash of hisses, clicks, growls, and unrecognizable harsh, quick vowel/consonant combinations which sounded vaguely Slavic, at least when compared against his knowledge of such languages, his only exposure the occasional video seen from time to time online.
He did his best to ignore the comments, shaking his head and focusing on a nearby storefront, as if he had a destination in mind, as if shaking his head still functioned as a nonverbal negative in this strange new reality. Maybe it did, as those trying to talk to him continued on their way once it became clear he wouldn't respond, some shrugging or shaking their own heads as they walked away.
He seemed to be in some sort of crafting and trade district, full of various simple buildings of wood and stone, stores where they made things on site, from furniture to weapons to clothing to flasks of various sizes holding colored liquids—potions, he assumed—and more. These buildings all had at least three floors, with the work happening on the ground floor, most out in the open where customers could view the work through open windows and doorways—no glass or screens in sight, though some windows remained barred, with no ground entrance for customers. The storefronts all started on the second floors, accessible by external stairways or ladders, or just a dangling rope with knotted handholds in a few cases.
As Silas continued to walk around the trade district he began to notice the occasional human—or rather, people who seemed human as far as he could tell at a glance, though quite a few had eye, hair, or skin colors far outside the expected norms, typically their eyes and hair being some neon, almost glowing shade. Others looked like people he might see anywhere back home, fashions aside. At a Renaissance Fair they'd fit right in.
Seeing such people reminded Silas he had in fact seen three quite human looking boys when he first arrived in this world, boys in some sort of magic school setting, who, somehow, if he wasn't mistaken, had managed to summon him into this world.
Obviously the process had not gone as intended, if the schoolboy-sized pile of gore in the room had been any indication. The remaining three clearly hadn't been happy to see Silas, and, apparently, had decided to put him out with the trash, or at least one of them had. Which wasn't very nice all things considered, though they didn't kill him either, so perhaps he shouldn't complain.
No, they didn't kill him. They just left him stranded in another world, a world where he couldn't even communicate with the locals. Worse, he didn't have any local currency. Where was he going to sleep tonight? Where should he even start to—
A wall appeared before Silas, leathery with a heady scent of musk, attached to the limbs and head of a bear.
Silas turned to run, only to find his feet tangled up, needles stabbing into his ankles as he fell. He curled up into a ball while clutching his carry-on, screaming as something prickly climbed around his legs, screaming all the louder as another one wrapped around his neck.
People nearby also raised their voices, until one man shouted above the others, after which it sounded like the forming crowd just dispersed, ignoring whatever was going on with the kid getting attacked in the middle of the street.
Someone tried to yank away Silas's carry-on, as he'd half-expected. As a compromise he'd already slipped his arms inside and wrapped them around his laptop instead. They could have the rest. Most of it wouldn't be of much use now in any case, though he'd miss his new e-reader—its battery would probably be good for a few months of light reading, and he'd filled it with tons of books recently, to maybe be a bit more social by reading outside or something instead of reading on his laptop in bed.
A clattering of metal had some of those nearby gasping in shock. Silas opened his squeezed-tight eyes to see what fell out of his bag, and was confused to see an assortment of gold and silver coins. He also noted the painful restraints growing around himself were vines covered in inch long thorns.
As he struggled on the ground, part of his mind idly noting how the black stone had a wavy traction pattern on top like some concrete roads might, someone tried to take away his laptop, his one last piece of home, often his only companion for eighteen plus hours a day between taking notes in class, doing homework, studying, watching anime and other shows, reading, and gaming.
Silas held on for all he was worth. He held onto the pictures and videos of his family he'd never see again, programs he'd never run again, games he'd never play again, personal projects he'd never debug again, games he'd never play again, music he'd never listen to again, books he'd never read again, games he'd never play again, videos he'd never watch again, and games he'd never play again. Without his laptop he'd truly be lost and alone, the thing practically a part of his soul.
A searing light flashed, and maybe someone screamed, perhaps even Silas himself, before everything faded to black.