Jake Brookes stirred restlessly in his sleep.

The day before had been long, arduous, and tiring. He and the fourteen other counselors in training had spent the day helping over a hundred campers move into their new living accommodations at the LARP camp where they worked. Even less than a day into camp, they were running into roadblocks; several problem campers had already been identified, one CIT hadn't returned for session two, and one was running late. Even the counselors seemed short-staffed. Despite the rough start, however, all the CITs knew the exhaustion would be well worth the excitement and fun that the summer promised.

With the hopes of an amazing month, Jake should have been sleeping soundly. But he wasn’t, far from it. Not that he had trouble falling asleep; rather he couldn’t awaken. He tossed and turned; his legs seized up painfully in his sleeping bag. His dream turned into a nightmare where his legs burned and something bored its way out of his head. He turned over again, giving a small whimper. No matter how much he tried to will himself out of this nightmare, waking was impossible.

His eyes flashed open, and he found himself in a dark room. No noise came from inside the room but outside roared a thunderous rain. The continuous pounding drowned out his thoughts. He gasped for breath, taking in heaving pants, numb from the rush of adrenaline coursing through his system. His forehead was slick with sweat, his thick, dark, curly hair was damp and tangled. Slowly, he reached a hand up to his face, to wipe it clean, but he stopped when he felt something on his forehead. Something that shouldn’t have been there. His eyes widened in fear as his senses finally responded, sending shock waves of pain through his body. He curled up under his blankets, trembling as the pain intensified.

“Oh god,” he whispered, terror in his voice. “Oh god, something is not right.”

---

In her bed, at the other end of the building, a young woman was having similar trouble sleeping. She gripped her sheets, her knuckles white. Her body contorted, twisted, strained against itself as she tried to wake, as she tried to free herself from the torturous sleep. Finally, she wrenched herself awake, panting. Tears welled up in her eyes as she combed an unsteady hand through her matted brown hair. When she reached one of her ears, she let out a whimper of pain. In the pitch black of the dorm, no one stirred at her quiet sound of distress. Her breathing quickened. The girls’ dorm wasn’t pitch black. They had a clock, and the hall light, and the windows.

Fiona Lewis shrunk lower under her covers, shaking in terror. What had happened? Where were the others? Where was she? Outside, a huge roar of thunder exploded, and she scrunched her eyes shut. The room had no windows to let in any flashes of lightning to give warning of oncoming thunder. She was alone, in a strange place, with a huge storm thundering overhead.

Her ears caused her the most distress. They burned and throbbed, as she clamped her hands over them, trying futilely to contain the agony. Falling back asleep in this amount of pain proved impossible but staying awake was torture. She spent the rest of the night drifting between terrifying reality and the horror of her nightmares…

On the second floor, in a room at the far end, a boy with notoriously poor sleeping habits awoke just as the sun broke the horizon. He sat up on the edge of his bed, tapping his fingers together nervously. He was on edge, more so than usual. His fingers moved quicker as he examined the unfamiliar room. It was small. Not cramped, but small. He had a bed in one corner with a medium-sized trunk at the foot, and along the wall was a mirror and a small window. The wall across from the one with the mirror held an open door, revealing a small closet, and another small window. A larger window took up almost the entire third wall, with a small bench across the base of it. The fourth wall had only a wooden door, presumably leading outside the room. Nothing else in the room stood out.

He tugged on a strand of hair, nervous. While curious about what lay outside the room, he refused to leave his bed. With curiosity came apprehension, because curiosity existed in conjunction with the unknown. And it was impossible to tell what dangers the unknown might hold.

Jasper stayed in his bed.

---

Morgan Blake’s eyes snapped open. New day, first day of the second session of camp, she was ready to face the world. She hopped out of bed, stretching, giving a wide yawn. With a characteristic grin, she blinked a few times as she looked around. Slowly, her smile faded as she realized that the room surrounding her was empty of anything familiar. Was this the room she had fallen asleep in last night? She didn’t remember - maybe she was getting yesterday confused with one of the bizarre dreams she’d had last night? It’s not like they’d given each counselor in training their own room. The CITs always shared cabins with the campers. But there definitely wasn’t anyone else in the room. Eyes narrow, Morgan took a quick look around the room before flinging open the door.

Which led to a closet. Rolling her eyes, Morgan turned away, but not before the glint of something metal caught her eye. A wide grin spread across her face. Whatever happened last night to land her in this unfamiliar room left her with quite a nice sword. She picked it up, checking its balance in her hand. Unlike most of the other CITs, hell even the campers and counselors, she was reasonably familiar with blade craft and forging. After all, it was her love of medieval weapons that led her to dedicating her summers to a live-action role-playing camp.

Ready to face whatever this world could throw at her, Morgan strapped the sword to her hip and left the closet. The CITs had never been allowed to even hold real weapons while at camp. Safety had always come first. The others would be so crazy jealous.

It was thinking about the others that made her stomach skip a beat, as she reached to open the door. The sword had taken her mind off her predicament for a moment but she still was probably not at camp, unless something had happened that she really didn’t remember. As she opened the door, her stomach flipped. Scratch ‘probably’, she was definitely not at camp. That was no cabin that she had woken up with. Ahead of her stretched a short hallway, with stone floors, stone walls, a stone ceiling, and torches lining it. There were two doors on each side and circular stairways at each both ends. Stupidly, her brain jumped to imagining how cool a LARP would be in this building, but she slapped some sense into it. No time to waste with silly thoughts when there was a lot to uncover. She headed down the hallway, moving silently. The room next to hers sounded empty, as did the room across the hall. At the next door, however, she picked up a slight sound. It sounded like muffled crying.

Morgan opened the door cautiously. The sun had risen enough to illuminate the rooms, revealing a figure huddled under the sheets. All senses alert, Morgan approached the figure. If this was one of the girls from camp, she could easily guess who it was, but there was no given that she knew this woman at all. She cleared her throat, hand on the hilt of her sword, prepared but not excessively so. After another second, she nudged the figure, and after another second, pulled back the covers. As she’d hoped, it was one of the other CITs from camp. It wasn’t, however, who she had thought.

“Fiona?”

The terrified girl looked up, blinking a few times. Her body was shaking and her hands were clamped to the sides of her head. “M-Morgan?” she choked.

Morgan perched on the side of the bed. “Is it the storm?” she asked, puzzled and a little impatient. “Fiona, that’s been over for hours. Come on, it was just a little thunder and lightn-”

She stopped short, as Fiona shakily removed a hand from her ears.

“Oh.”

They were beyond recognition, long and pointed, extending nearly past the top of her head.

“M-Morgan,” she whispered. “Morgan, they hurt. Really bad. It-it’s like they’re on fire.” She coughed, and swallowed hard, her eyes welling up with tears again. “What happened last night?”

Morgan gingerly touched one of her new ears, which caused Fiona to yelp, and slap her hands over them again.

“Don’t! Jesus!”

Morgan held her hands out in front of her. “Right, sorry, stupid.” As the sun continued to climb outside, she noticed that more than just Fiona’s ears had changed. Her features were overall different, sharper, more angular than they had been before. Had they been kidnapped and experimented on? Had someone given Fiona extensive plastic surgery? “When did this happen?”

“Last night,” Fiona said. “I woke up during the storm feeling awful. Everything hurt. Everything.” she took a few panicky breaths. “There’s something wrong with them. They feel different.”

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

No way would surgery scars have healed so fast. Had they been unconscious more than a night? Had anything changed for Morgan? “Ok. I think we have to check out more of this place. We don’t have any phones or any reason to think anyone is coming for us. We’ll find out what happened to your ears and find a way to fix them and make them not hurt. But we’re not gonna find that out sitting here. Plus if you’re here, there’s a good chance maybe the others are too.”

Fiona blinked a few times, clearing the tears from her eyes, before shakily climbing out of the bed. Instantly she staggered, grabbing onto Morgan’s shoulder. She squinted in the sunlight from her bedroom window, a puzzled frown crossing her face, but the look cleared after a second.

“What do we know?”

Morgan shook her head as two stepped back out into the hall. “Not much. Actually nothing, except that I’m pretty sure we’re not at camp. And I got a cool sword. But if you’re in this room, and I’m in that room, then there are probably others in the other two rooms. So let’s see who’s in here.”

She walked up and rapped on the door next to her own. “It’s not seven, is it?” came a tired voice with a yawn. “Did my alarm not-” Morgan couldn’t stop a grin. She could literally hear the waking girl’s eyes open. “Um, wait, who’s how there? Where am I? What’s goin-”

“Violet, it’s Morgan and Fiona.”

“Oh shoot. Where the hell are we?”

“So I’m taking it this isn’t some elaborate trick of your mom’s?”

“To kidnap us?”

“Yeah figured that was a no.” Morgan hadn’t really expected Violet to know anything, but it was worth an ask. If the daughter of the camp owner didn’t know anything, they really could be on their own.

“Definitely a no.”

If Violet was in this room and Fiona was in the other room, then the fourth room belonged to Sam, Amanda, or Meredith. Well, one way to find out. She knocked a little louder at the final door. No response. She knocked again, louder. No response. “Hey, whoever’s in there. You need to get dressed and come out, we have important stuff to do!” No response. Not even a single shuffle of sheets. So, either empty or Meredith. Sam was too light of a sleeper and Amanda would have snapped at her by now. Meredith was infamous for always being the last up.

“Hey, Fiona?” Morgan said. “You want to go wake up Sleeping Beauty in there?”

Fiona had slumped against a wall as soon as she left her room. “You’re on your own here,” she managed, her teeth grit in pain.

Morgan sighed. “Meredith, wake up. Just open your eyes for a frickin second and look around. If that doesn’t freak you out, fine, go back to sleep. If not, get up and meet us out here.”

A pause. Then a shuffle and thump. “Jesus Christ, what the fuck?!”

Satisfied, Morgan glanced down the hallway. If Meredith was in there, and Violet was in the other room, and Fiona was here, then where were Sam and Amanda? Violet’s door opened and Morgan smiled, relieved to have at least one other person here that was composed. A tall, slender girl with a short, striking red bob stood in the hallway, looking alert, but curious.

“Good to see you’re awake,” Morgan said.

Violet smiled. “So what’s going on?”

Morgan shook her head. “Haven’t found out yet. I only know where the girls are. Some of the girls.” She glanced over at Fiona. “And Fiona…”

Violet’s eyes widened as she saw her friend on the floor. “Fiona are you ok?”

“It’s j-just-” Fiona broke off, gritting her teeth to stop the chattering. “Just my ears.”

Violet’s mouth fell open in shock. She gave Morgan a confused, concerned look. “What happened?”

“Ok, what the fuck is going on?” a tremulous voice asked, as the last occupant entered the hallway. “I am seriously very fucking confused and scared right now, so if someone would like to clue me in on where the fuck we are, I would appreciate it.”

Violet and Morgan both looked up at the small figure that had entered the hall from her room. Meredith was frantically twirling a lock of her impossibly long hair around her fingers, eyes filled with panicked, angry tears.

Morgan brushed a hand quickly through her own, impossibly short hair. “God,” she grumbled, before forcing a smile. “We’re not sure anything yet. But we’ve got each other, which is a million times better than being alone.”

“At least four times better,” Violet concurred and Morgan grinned. At least Meredith’s weepiness was enough to spur the other girls to calm down a bit. Even Fiona held herself up a bit straighter, giving Meredith a weak smile.

“We’re gonna need to find the others,” Morgan continued. “I’m not sure what else could be here, but good odds are, the others are somewhere. Check your rooms for anything that could be handy. Weapons, for example.” She rested a hand on the hilt of her sword, fear tangling with excitement. “There might be danger.”

Violet and Meredith exchanged glances.

“But I don’t want to fight!” Meredith said. “I want to go home!”

“Obviously that’s the goal. But unless you want to jump out a window and haul ass in any direction til you find civilization, we’re a little stuck. Plus, if we can find the others, we might learn a bit more.”

“Power in numbers too,” Violet said. “More people, less chance you have to use your sword.”

It was a little sad that Violet, the youngest of the four, was the only other one holding it together.

Meredith squared her shoulders, a stubborn look on her face, but she turned heel and headed to her room nonetheless. “You know, there’s a reason I was a mage at camp. I couldn’t even defend myself against a throng of ten-year-olds with foam swords.”

Meredith did have a good point. She probably thought that Morgan, with her decade of weapons training, was going to dash into combat and effortlessly disarm any assailants they ran into, but a sword was a poor match for modern weapons. This place may look like a castle, but the people who created it probably hadn’t limited themselves to swords and knives.

Still, swords were better than nothing. Maybe whoever kidnapped them would commit to the bit and only use standard weaponry. Morgan turned to Fiona's room. Fiona might be incapacitated now, but when they found a way to get her functional, she’d want to be armed. Morgan found her sword in her closet. Not being able to resist the curiosity, she drew the blade. Its make resembled that of her own, ornate and deadly, but Fiona's sword seemed to have seen little actual combat. She slid it back in its sheath and slung it around her waist, before heading back out to the hallway.

Violet was standing in the hallway, armed and ready. Her short pants had a belt with bunches of throwing knives in clusters and a longer, curved dagger in a sheath. Meredith rejoined the hallway a second later, dressed in a dark dress with a belt holding her short sword and a small velvet pouch. She still looked doubtful and nervous, but she stood a bit straighter and her fingers no longer pulled anxiously at her hair and rather played across the rich fabric of her dress. She managed a determined smile. “Are we ready to go?”

A slim figure, dressed in black, sat on the edge of her bed, swinging her feet over the edge. In her lap lay two silver daggers, which she traced a single finger over. They were both very real and very sharp and just a little foreboding. She reached up to comb a hand through her hair, finding the single lock of orange that stood out from her jet black hair. Giving it another tug confirmed again that it was real, not the clip-on extension she’d borrowed from Violet upon learning that she was, in fact, supposed to bring her own costume to camp. She flipped the lock over again, before pushing it out of her face. Whoever had done all this was very thorough. She sheathed the daggers and climbed to her feet. It had been some time and no one had come, but with the sun flooding the room, she had very little reason to stay and wait.

She was halfway to the door when it banged open. In a movement completely foreign, but effortlessly natural, Sam drew both her blades and held them defensively in front of her. The intruding figure was taller and broader than her, with long, sun-colored hair pulled back in a braid and a sword drawn offensively.

“Sam?”

“Amanda!” Sam dropped her blades to her side, letting the brief relief wash some tension off her shoulders. She stood on tiptoes to look past Amanda’s shoulder. “What’s going on? You alone here?” She laughed quietly. “You could have knocked.”

Amanda slowly lowered her blade. “I didn’t know who’d be in here. I wanted to take them by surprise.”

“Hmm,” Sam raised an eyebrow quizzically. “Maybe a bad idea. These things are sharp.”

Amanda shrugged. “I’m at least as good a fighter as you.” She turned from the room, back to the hallway.

Sam joined her, poking her head around the corner. “Anything interesting out he-” she started, but Amanda cut her off, raising a hand.

“Do you hear that?” she whispered.

The two stood still for a moment. There were voices coming up the hallway. Amanda motioned for Sam to step back into the room with her. The two girls cracked the door, listening intently.

“-don’t know. This floor looks really similar to ours,” a familiar voice said.

“So who do you think is up here? Amanda and Sam?” another asked.

Amanda nodded towards the door and slowly opened it. The girls’ voices died off instantly, replaced with the sound of swords being drawn.

“Hey! No need to panic,” Sam called. “It’s just me and Amanda.”

There was a slight pause before the sounds of running feet. The two walked into the hall in enough time to be tackle-hugged by Meredith.

“Oh thank god,” she said. “I was worried.”

Amanda turned to Violet. “You alright?” she asked, her tone serious.

Violet nodded. “We’re fine. Most of us, at least. Fiona not so much…” She gestured at Fiona.

The girl had trudged up slowly behind the other three and wasn’t talking. She was doubled over, eyes puffy, clutching the sides of her head. Violet gave them an overview of their morning while Meredith and Morgan checked out the hall. It was like theirs, with two doors on either side.

“What’s in here?” Meredith asked, gesturing at the doors. “Not Patrick?”

“Empty bedrooms,” Amanda said. “They’re dusty, clearly unused. He’s not up here.”

There was no wall at the end of this hallway, so the girls headed back downstairs. They could continue further down this stair, or cross the lower hall and go up the stairs at the other end. Ignoring Morgan’s suggestion of splitting up, they decided to go up the stairs at the other end of the lower hall first.