A story starts with a siren’s call, a song of something different—something more. The song reverberates in the souls of the unassuming. Some shrug it off with great effort; some are deaf to it entirely; others are hooked by the siren’s song, baited unknowingly into the portal.

The portal takes many forms; it can be a wardrobe or a rabbithole, a bridge or a train station. Created by happenstance; chance; and yes, even sometimes by accident, the portal promises nothing but danger to those that pass through.

Yet when the siren’s song sounds, there are always those drawn to it. The call to adventure is too compelling to ignore.

___

When the traveller awoke, he was surrounded by cultists. They wore a myriad of pastel robes and glared at him with serpentine eyes. His heartbeat skyrocketed. Blood pumping, his eyes darted every which way. The cultists mirrored him, muscles tensed for whatever was to come.

He was standing in the center of a grand circle. Drawn in blood and inscribed with immaculate shapes and runes, the circle was a work of art—a wonderful patchwork of geometric symmetries. More than that it had a depth. It’s very existence tugged on the traveler’s soul pulling him deeper. Deeper.

It didn’t exist where he was from… and yet his eyes flickered in recognition.

Magic

Not common parlor tricks. This was no coin pulled from an ear or card selected from a deck.

This was something more.

The room itself was made of old stone and smelled of stale air. Twelve figures, perfectly spaced, surrounded the circle. There were no windows, but by torchlight, it was possible to see they were almost human. Almost. With ash-grey skin and vibrant vertical-slit eyes, the cultists focused on the interloper—an uninvited guest if not for the massive work of blood and magic that had summoned him.

The traveler drew a blank as he scoured his memory for any possible clue to his arrival in this strange place. He remembered… something, and also he didn’t.

The cultists shifted, grasping a motley of staves and weapons.

He took a deep breath. His heartbeat pounded in his chest. His hands clammed up. This couldn’t be allowed to come to blows. “Hello, I’m—”

Bang!

… and he was too late.

The traveler’s introduction was cut short by an explosion—felt as much as it was heard. A concussive force ripped through his body, radiating from his back. The force of the blast sent him crashing to the floor. A noticeable, if faint, smell of burnt flesh permeated the stone chamber.

The hooded figures burst into action in a cacophony of sound. One pointed at him and yelled something in a shrill foreign tongue. The words were incomprehensible, but it clearly wasn’t an order to stop.

With a hefty grunt, surrounded and outnumbered, the traveler heaved his sprawled form to his knees as his back hissed in protest.

Footsteps rapidly approached from his side; bloodied and injured, he whirled to meet them. A figure charged forward with a simple workman’s hammer, not the most insidious weapon, but it was enough.

In the close proximity, the traveler made eye contact with his assailant. This attacker was boyish in features, likely even younger than he was. With resolute eyes, the boy cocked back his arm in a deep windup and swung.

Still off balance, the traveler strained as he raised his arms to block. It was not an elegant attempt. With the finesse of a drunken sailor, he slipped as he rose to shield himself. The fight was over before it even began as the hammer found purchase and slammed into his temple with the cold force of steel.

His vision faded to black as his body crumpled. The last thing he saw before his consciousness faded was a simple message:

[Title Acquired: Planeswalker]

“... The hell?”

___

For the second time that day Dion awoke in an unfamiliar place, this time a cage. It was large enough to be called a cell really; though the cage bars were not properly affixed to any wall.

All things considered, his captors had been surprisingly gentle. His shirt had been replaced by a set of bandages, wrapped tightly around his torso. The bandages were still damp with blood, but the fact he had woken up at all was a good sign.

It was more than he could ask for, and also less.

Better still, he had woken up in a storage room of some sort. The door stood ajar, and a torch from the hallway lit the room. It wasn’t modern lighting by any stretch, but it was enough to make out that much of the room was filled with food.

“Don’t mind if I do.”

Through the bars of his cell, he reached out and plucked an apple from a nearby bag. Most of the food was too far to reach, but thankfully at least the one bag was close enough to grab from with only a light stretch.

With a grunt, Dion took a seat and contemplated his situation as he filled his stomach.

He’d acquired the title of ‘Planeswalker’. It wasn’t clear where the title came from, but the title seemed to imply he traveled to another plane of existence. Considering the recent strangeness, that would make a good deal of sense—or at least as much sense as spontaneous interplanar travel could.

The message had been explicit. Like a game announcing an achievement. Would there be levels? Was this a game? How else could he account for his surroundings? I had to be. It made perfect sense—

“...”

“Of course it doesn’t!”

Dion banged the back of his head against the cage bars.

But maybe his title came with a description?

“Status!”

A moment passed before it was clear there was no response.

“Inventory! Map! Uh—System?”

Nothing. If it was a game it was a shitty one.

“Should probably make sure of this one: Logout!”

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No change.

Dion tossed the core of one apple to the side as he stretched to grab another.

Guess I’m on my own.

A new world of endless possibility and he was stuck in a cage smaller than his bedroom. Where was the adventure? He needed to get out. Bandaged or not, he couldn’t trust whoever threw him in this cell. Ignoring the blistering headache and tearing pain in his back, that magic circle had been drawn in blood.

Nothing good gets drawn in blood.

Working his way through his third apple now, he climbed to his feet and began inspecting the cell more thoroughly. One by one, he grabbed each cell bar and pulled. It was iron—or at least he assumed it was. It was a new world after all. He didn’t expect any of the bars to give, but it might work, and if it did that would make his life a hell of a lot easier. He pulled each bar lightly, looking for any weakness.

On the third bar he found give, just not where he hoped. He felt a tearing in his back and warm blood pooling in his bandages.

“Ow! Can I stop getting hurt for one second...”

It wasn’t so much blood he was in any danger, but his body was in even worse condition than he’d thought. With a sigh, he sat back down. The wound would congeal again if he just stayed still and gave it time.

The cell seemed robust enough anyway. He wasn’t hulking his way out any time soon. He was going to have to make peace with the idea that if his captors wanted him dead right now, he would already be dead—best to wait, eat, and heal.

Maybe he could figure out if his title did anything while he waited.

The next couple hours passed uneventfully. He worked his way through the bag of apples, eating nearly two dozen before he was too stuffed to continue. By the end he felt bloated, stuffed like a turkey on Thanksgiving—waiting for evil serpent cultists to eat him. Was that why they’d left him food? Hansel and Gretel really should have complained less. All things considered, death by snacks would be a pretty good way to go. With his appetite now satisfied, he fluffed up the canvas apple sack, making it look fuller than it was; tucked the discarded cores behind the bag; and took a seat as far from it as his cage would allow.

Draw as little attention to his food source as possible—it wasn’t the most complex survival plan, but it’s the one he had.

He tried to test his title while he waited. He hoped for magic teleportation. That’d be a power fit for a planeswalker. It’d also solve a lot of his problems. Well—maybe not actually? It’d solve his cage problem at least. He’d still be in deep shit literally a world away from home, but at least he’d have cool teleportation powers.

He focused and pointed at a spot just outside the cage.

“Teleport! Translocation! Planeswalker! Swippity spoppity, swap me with that spot!”

Dion blushed at the last one.

Try as he might, he didn’t discover any new powers; that is, unless looking constipated while focusing counted as a power. Even using game logic his failure made sense. He’d gained a title, not a skill.

With his time, he questioned what to do when his captors came back. Whatever language they’d spoken, it certainly didn’t sound familiar. Assuming they would know English was a stretch. This could always be an incredibly elaborate kidnapping. It was still possible he hallucinated the message about becoming a planeswalker, and yet he was absolutely certain it was real. Some part of him instinctively knew this was not the world he came from. The creatures had been too decisively non-human and the magic circle had been too… real.

The best bet under normal circumstances might have been to try and talk his way out of his current predicament; however—ignoring the ridiculous hurdle of talking yourself out of jail in the best of times—he was currently stuck on the much lower hurdle of just communicating. He didn’t like the idea of diplomacy via Charades.

Maybe he could pick his way out of the cage? He’d need to find something suitable as a pick and then attempt to open an outward facing lock from inside the cage, all while learning to lockpick. It was probably possible at least, but he certainly didn’t like his odds.

He was scanning the room for anything that might be workable as a lockpick when he finally heard the footsteps of someone returning.

Dion quickly set his back against the bars of his cell and tried to assume a more natural pose than he felt. It was uncomfortable and, frankly, a bit ridiculous to rest his injured back against the cage bars, but it helped him feel in control, and some part of him refused to look weak in front of his captors.

Fake it ‘til you make it—or something like that.

Around the corner came the youth from before. He’d traded out his robes for thick cotton pants, his hammer hanging from a loop on the side and a much thinner cotton shirt laced together loosely at the top.

“Oh—wow… you’re already awake. Good morning. How are you feeling?”

Dion flinched. He does speak English? That doesn’t make sense. Why would you speak English in another world? It was a welcome revelation in a way; it meant negotiation might be possible, but why the hell hadn’t they tried talking things out earlier? Cultists—why can’t they just be nice or something? The fact he cared about his injuries was a good sign at least.

“I’m doing… alright.”

With an intensity that rivaled his attempts at teleportation he followed the boy’s every move.

The cultist nodded. “Indeed. Indeed.” His eyes wandered, mysteriously refusing to meet Dion’s. “I apologize for your injuries. My companions and I were concerned you may have been casting a spell. I felt compelled to unweave your spell matrix before you did anything dangerous”

Dion’s brow furrowed.

“You just hit me over the head.”

“The application of physical force is a most effective form of spell breaking.” If he registered the complaint, he didn’t show it. “When our summoning failed we knew not what evil we’d wrought. Seeing a human, we worried you may have been a demon in a mortal’s guise or an ancient magus.”

That explained why they’d all been so jumpy when he appeared. It was also an explicit confirmation of magic. Internally, Dion did a fist pump.

“Who is to say you weren’t right?”

Dion lowered his voice, a half-hearted impression of an ancient mage. For a second the cultist pondered what had been asked.

“It is a good question. Ignoring your absolutely pitiful amount of mana and the fact you were bested by a scholar in combat, we both know if you were someone of power you would never have been confined so easily.”

Ouch.

“I wouldn’t really say bested—I was pretty outnumbered...”

The cultist paused for a moment and his face scrunched before letting it go.

“Regardless, I really am sorry we dragged you into this.”

The cultist made a bitter smile and his eyes flashed with pained resolve. All the while, Dion’s stomach lurched.

A statement like that should’ve been a good sign—a sign of possible reconciliation—but something wasn’t right. The boy had every reason to be guilty. Dion had been dragged here by god knows what, assaulted with explosives, beaten with a hammer, and locked in a cage, but that wasn’t what the boy was sorry about. They might not be able to send him home, but if it was all a mistake, they shouldn’t need to keep him in a cage.

“Are you going to let me go?”

The boy paused, and again, his eyes drifted as he shook his head solemnly. “I apologise, but what we’re attempting here—it must stay secret. It took a great deal of convincing to prevent your immediate execution.”

If the kid was trying to endear himself, he wasn’t doing it very well. ‘Not killing’ wasn’t really where the line for ‘good person’ began. Dion’s cheeks flushed.

“So how long do you plan on keeping me locked up here for? Do you plan to let me go?”

The kid visibly winced at the questions.

“We’ll keep you until—” He paused, steeling himself. “Until you starve.”

He delivered the sentence with as much conviction as he could manage. It obviously pained him to say, but it matters not if the executioner sheds tears, the axe falls still the same.

“The coven has chosen to let you live only since there is no cost in doing so, but they—we agreed that any food offered to you is food wasted.”

They had no intention of even feeding him. Dion’s face drained. The boy rushed to continue.

“I will still bring water. There’s plenty, and the only cost is the time I will spend fetching it.”

It made sense in a twisted way. Someone has a secret you can’t risk getting out, you don’t want the guilt of killing them, and you don’t have the resources for indefinite confinement. It all adds up to death by starvation.

“Do you think you’re doing me a favor? This is an execution, don’t sugar coat it.”

The boy blanched at that.

“No, I just thought—I just thought you might want more time. With water it is likely you will live weeks, perhaps longer.”

“Ah yes, weeks. What a wonderful long life ahead of me.”

Dion didn’t even notice he’d stood up and approached the bars. The boy quickly backed away from the cage.

“I apologise.”

“Then don’t do it!”

There was a pause, a small beat of silence.

“What we are doing here is essential to the survival of my entire people. If an innocent has to die for that—it’s for the greater good.”

Dion gripped the cage bars tightly, his fingers turning white from the pressure. He wanted to explode, to tear through the cage and then his captors. And yet when he took a look at his captor, a real look—

He deflated. The boy was just that—a boy. He was sweating, grimacing, pained by every word that left his lips. He’d said it himself, he was an academic—not a warrior.

“You don’t believe that.”

If there was life left in his captor's eyes, in that moment it left.

“I’ll bring more water tomorrow.” Defeated, he placed a waterskin just outside the cell. “You don’t deserve this, but morals are a tool of the strong, and—” His gaze lingered on Dion confined to his cage. “And I don’t have the strength to keep mine either.”