Titus opened his eyes and was immediately met with a searing headache.

Leaning back on the hard object he was sprawled on, he put a hand to his head and groaned. Something jumped away from him, something small by the sound of it. A clank followed it, and he cracked one eye open to take a look at the offending creature.

He was in a dark alleyway of some kind, the walls built from a hodgepodge of brick, stone, and some material he wasn't familiar with. The object he was lying on was what appeared to be a giant square trashcan made out of metal. The air smelled terrible and tasted far worse, and Titus nose wrinkled as the smell set in. To add to it, there was a perpetual rumble of a multitude of heavy objects, and the rolling thunder of tens of thousands of people.

Sitting up, he saw what had caused the offending clank. Claire's mechanical lizard was scooting across the ground, using its prehensile tail to move lumpy black bags out of the way. Claire's foot was visible, poking out from underneath the pile.

Titus blinked slowly, processing the fact, and then hurled himself forward. Going to one knee, he started tossing the bags aside, each one containing different objects that broke and squished as he threw them away. After only a moment or two, he managed to get the majority of the trash off of his friend.

She was bleeding from a gash on the head, motionless where she lay. The majority of her apron was singed and smoking, her devices having been fried by whatever transportation spell they had been hit with. Titus put a finger on the side of her neck, paused for a moment, and then sighed in relief.

Standing up, he looked around the alleyway once again. There was brick and stone, he recognized those, but there was a strange sort of very smooth stone underneath his feet that he couldn't identify.

Another one of the large, square trashcans was lifted into the air and crushed by a mess of black and crimson tentacles, which rapidly retracted to reveal Borug. Physically speaking, he looked unchanged, but there was a harrowed look in his eyes. "Titus? What happened?"

Titus shrugged. "Don't know yet. I only woke up a moment ago. Where's Marie?"

Borug looked around as a small bulge appeared in the back of his skull, but immediately winced, the bulge disappearing. "There is too much interference for me to tell. I can't find her."

The sound of shifting trash came from behind them, and they both turned to see the matronly woman rising out of the trash, checking herself over with a clear expression of disgust. "Kings above, it's a mess! Where'd we go? And where's that backstabbing traitor of a monarch?"

Borug explained the situation to her while Titus checked up on Claire. The injury didn't look too serious, which was good news. Even considering the age-old adage regarding head wounds, it wasn't bleeding too badly.

Marie stomped over, frowning at Claire's unmoving body. "Huh. She's lookin' a bit pale, ain't she? I got something that'll put some hair in her nostrils." Titus and Borug hastily backed away from Marie as she removed a thankfully unbroken vial from inside her apron. Marie's concoctions were infamous for having disastrous results... and those were the ones that worked.

Unstoppering the vial, she hove it underneath Claire's nose. The woman's eyes snapped open as she scrabbled backward, tears rushing to her eyes. Marie started laughing, and Claire grabbed her nose. "Marie!" She started, and then gagged. Leaning over, she coughed into the ground and croaked, "What was that!?"

Marie put the stopper back in the vial's top, grinning at the small green-brown pile at the bottom. "Trust me, hon, nothing ye'd want to know about." Pulling a roll of bandages from somewhere in her apron pockets, she started binding Claire's head. "Just relax yerself and we'll figure out what's goin' on after that."

Borug made his way closer to the entrance of the alley, squinting outside. "I am not normally one to repeat myself, but does anyone know where we are?"

Claire winced as she stood up, grabbing onto Marie's shoulder to support herself. "I'm as clueless as you guys here. I've never..." She trailed off, staring at the walls, and then looked around her. "Wait a minute."

She started stumbling her way towards the alley's entrance, unsteadily moving forward. Marie put a firm grip on her shoulder. "Hon, you just took a hit. I told you to relax."

Waving it away, Claire made it to just inside the alley and stared out. The other three followed, and looked at the new world they were in. There were fast-moving chunks of metal, wheels made from some sort of black material with a shining centerpiece. The buildings here soared up into the sky, blocky things covered in windows and crammed next to each other. People walked busily on by, flat rectangular devices either held to their ears or in their hands, tapping furiously at the surface with their thumbs.

Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

"Holy crap," Claire breathed. "I'm in New York."

Everyone looked at her in surprise, and Titus was the first to ask, "You know this place?"

She nodded slowly, seeming to be in shock. "Yeah, it's... it's kind of a long story. Do you remember where I told you I come from?"

Borug nodded. "Of course. You tended to avoid the subject, but finally told us you originated from a distant colony called America."

Claire smiled awkwardly. "Yeah... this is America."

There was a long silence where they all stared at each other, the silence only broken by Claire's lizard scrabbling back into her apron's front pocket. Finally, Titus asked, "Do you mind explaining that?"

She leaned against the wall, staring at her feet. "Look... you guys definitely deserve an explanation, but..." She closed her mouth, opened it, and then took a deep breath. "No, screw it. Look, I was born here. I still don't know how I got from here to Kellaris, but it wasn't on purpose. That aside, you guys were the best friends I've ever had, here or there, and I wouldn't trade you guys for anything."

She came to a halt as she slid down the wall, putting a hand to her injury. "Guys, I'm... I'm really sorry I didn't tell you sooner, but I thought you wouldn't believe me, and then I got to know you all and felt like you'd be mad that I hadn't told you sooner, and I thought that-"

Her breath was forced out of her as Titus wrapped her in a hug, easily lifting her off of the ground. She tried in vain to suck air into her lungs, but it wasn't until he set her down that she could breathe again. Gasping, she put her hands on her knees and stared at the ground for a moment. Borug's rough hand rested on her shoulder, and it was nice until Marie slapped her on the back. Squeezing her eyes shut, Claire tried to force back the tears, straightening. "I thought you'd be furious."

Marie shrugged. "A little, yeah, but you're way more important. If we couldn't handle each other's secrets, what kind of friends would we be?"

Pulling Claire to her feet, Borug looked her in the eye. "You are not the only one with secrets, Claire. Yours was simply forced into the light by necessity. Rest assured, I am not mad at you. I doubt any of us is truly furious to the point that we would make any rash decisions." He indicated himself with a rare smile. "I am a shapeshifter. I am by nature a creature of secrets, and yet you trust me, do you not?" When she nodded, he continued. "Then rest assured, I will once again rest my trust in you."

She rubbed at the corner of her eye with a rueful grin. "Wow," she chuckled sadly. "Thought I was supposed to be an adult."

Titus patted her shoulder with a wide smirk. "I don't know about that - you all look like children to me."

Claire snorted in spite of herself, smiling. "Thanks, guys. I really appreciate that."

Marie tucked her hands in her pockets, looking around at the unfamiliar landscape. It was far from their first time being in strange lands, though this one looked stranger than most. "All right, Claire. You're the one who's been here before - where do we go?"

Shoulders squaring, Claire put a finger to her chin as her mind raced. "Well, first off... Borug." She pointed at the cleric with her hands clasped, index and middle fingers close together. "Unless something went really wrong here at some point in the last fifteen years, orcs don't exist. Or dragons, or elves, or dwarves. It's all humans and animals."

Borug shrugged. "That's fine. I've got a few good shapes I can use." His skin promptly bubbled, and his bones turned to rubber, his whole shape blobbing downward into a pile of simmering, roiling matter.

Claire sighed in relief. "Okay, that's really good. I wasn't even sure magic would work here, so I'm glad you can still shapeshift."

A mouth formed on the side of the pile, full of shapeless teeth. "I'm not using magic to change my shape. It's just how I am made."

She blinked. "Huh. Learn something new, as they say. Does anybody have their Docket on hand?"

Titus fumbled for a moment before pulling a small bag with a drawstring out of his pocket. "I have mine. I assume you want me to see if it works?" Claire nodded, and he carefully put his hand at the entrance. There wasn't any noticeable change in the air, but his hand disappeared at the wrist. Rummaging around, he shoved his arm in a little deeper and grinned. "And you said I was too careful." Extracting his arm from the Docket, he withdrew a colossal polearm. It had an ax blade on the front, a hammer on the back, and a razor spearhead on the end. It was a full fourteen feet and one inch long and weighed well over four hundred pounds. Titus had been one of the few people capable of wielding it back in Kellaris. Here, he was uncontested.

Flipping it over, he put it back in the Docket and tucked the dimensional bag into his pants' pocket. "All right, magic works. Anything else we need to know?"

Claire nodded thoughtfully. "Yeah, one thing. Technically speaking, that's an artifact. It's imbued with magic, not outputting it. Borug?"

She turned around to find an unfamiliar man patting himself down. He was wearing a black business suit, which he'd probably copied from someone walking by. With straight black hair and cold brown eyes, his gaunt cheekbones accented his sharp features to create a frankly menacing overall appearance. Straightening his gray tie and rolling his shoulders experimentally, Borug asked, "How is this?"

She appraised him critically. "Pretty good, all things considered. You may want to make your facial features a bit more inconspicuous - we don't want to draw any unneeded attention." She had no scruples about critiquing his appearance. Since none of them were really his, it was more like giving advice to an art piece. Albeit a very complicated art piece. "More to the point, can you cast any spells?"

Borug frowned. "Good point. I'll modify it later. As for the spells..." His forearm bubbled, and his wand pushed out of it. A tendril of cream-colored flesh deftly flicked it into his hand, and he pointed it at Claire's bandaged head. A green globule of shimmering energy sprang from its end and sank into her head, glowing briefly.

Claire pulled the bandage off, not even bothering to check the healed wound. If anybody knew what they were doing, it was Borug. "Great, so magic works. Now then, one final problem..." She turned to look at Titus, craning her neck back. "You are the literal definition of noticeable."

He shrugged. "Hard to change that, Claire. I can't exactly shrink."

He flinched right after he said it, and nobody had to look at Marie's face to see the gigantic smile on her face.