Chapter 1
The first sensation I noticed was the pounding in my head. An intense pressure, and the thud of my heartbeat drowning out all other noise around me.
I thought I was dreaming. You know that dream you have, when you're lying down, but no matter how hard you try, you can't move your arms or legs?
No?
Well, maybe it's just me.
But, all of that just to say - I couldn't move. I couldn't even open my eyes, I was just a consciousness, floating there. A consciousness with a horrible, terrible headache.
Eventually, though, the pounding in my ears began to subside. I could feel it fading, its grip on my head loosening.
And then, abruptly, it vanished. The sound, the headache, all of it. It was gone.
And, without even opening my eyes, I knew I was in trouble.
The air was the first thing that alerted me, cold and stale and nothing like the air I was used to smelling at home. Then, there was the hard surface I was lying on, despite distinctly remembering having gone to sleep in my own bed just hours before.
At least, it felt like hours before.
I wished I was still dreaming. Wouldn't everything have been easier if I was still dreaming? But I'd never had difficulty distinguishing dream from reality. Even while dreaming, I had always known I was dreaming.
But this? This I knew was reality.
I opened my eyes and saw a dark ceiling above me. It was foreign to me, with its dark wood paneling, not at all like any of the buildings I'd seen back home. Rubbing my eyes, I turned my head to the side and found a large, open room stretching out before me. It was more elegant than I expected, for such a cold, stale smelling place, the wood trim on the walls smooth and intricately carved. A wide staircase sat in the center of the room, leading up to a second floor I couldn't see from my spot on the ground.
I pushed myself up, pleased to find all my limbs still attached and in working order. My head, while pain-free, felt a little woozy, but I shook it off as I took a few steps toward the stairs.
Two green doors sat at the top of the landing on the second floor, gold filigree swirling out from the handles toward the hinges. A shiver went down my spine.
There were some serious bad vibes coming from those doors.
Taking a step back, I turned, looking around the room again. On the far side, across the room from where I had woken up, there were two more doors. But these were different - glass, providing a view into whatever world awaited for me outside. I ran to them, hoping, at the very least, for the twilight sky I was accustomed to.
But it wasn't twilight. The sky was completely dark, and rain came down in a deluge in the courtyard before me. Even this close, I couldn't hear the sound of the rain outside, or the thunder that must have surely accompanied the lightning strikes which lit up the sky. That was worrisome. More worrisome was that, as much as I strained my eyes, looking off in the distance, I couldn't see anything beyond the trees and bushes of the courtyard. A feeling of claustrophobia washing over me, I gripped the door handle, hoping for a miracle.
Imagine my surprise, then, when it opened with ease.
The sound of rain was like relief to my ears, interrupting the noiselessness of the room I woke up in. I stepped outside, underneath an awning, and continued into the pouring rain. The rain grew heavier with every passing step, until I couldn't see even a few feet in front of me. Finding my way away from this place, to any sort of shelter, would have been impossible.
Taking a breath, I turned back toward the building, unprepared for what I would see. I'd been in my share of large buildings over the years, but this place, it towered over me. It reached up into the thundering clouds up above, its top hidden from my sight.
What was this place?
And what were my options? Already I was beginning to feel chilled, no doubt hypothermia would begin to set in if I spent too much time in this rain. Shelter was a necessity. Which meant I had two choices.
Wait under the awning until the weather cleared.
Or go back inside.
Grumbling as I walked back toward the building, I was almost back under the awning when I heard something. At least, I thought I heard something.. Then I heard it again, a faint thud, somewhere up above me.
I took a few steps backward, shielding my eyes from the rain as I looked up toward the floors above me. There were hundreds of windows up there, some lit up, others dark. The thud was coming from somewhere up there.
Figuring the strange noise good incentive not to reenter the building, I started again toward the awning, when I heard a new noise.
Glass breaking. And a scream.
There was a girl, a girl falling from the building, yards away from me and twenty stories, at least, above me. I ran toward her, and watched as another figure fell from the window.
Or, rather, flew from the window?
He caught the girl mid-fall and hovered there for a few moments, his wings beating under the force of the rain coming down. There was some shared glance between the him and the girl - relief, perhaps, that he'd been able to catch her. I sighed, glad to see them safe, and glad to know that I was not alone here in mysterious place.
Just then there was a pop from the window where they'd fallen, one, two, then two more. And with that last pop, I heard the bird-man yell out, and the two began to fall again. I ran toward them, their descent growing ever faster. One of my feet slipped out from under me, and I used my hands to keep barely upright, before reaching out to create a portal underneath them. It materialized just in time, and they fell through, the girl's cries vanishing at once. Throwing another portal over the bushes nearby, they tumbled out, landing in a pile of wet leaves and branches. I heard voices coming from the broken window up above, unintelligible at this distance, but it wasn't difficult to tell they weren't happy. I ran to the bush.
"Come on, you two," I said, pulling on the girl's arm. She looked a little dazed. "We need to get you to shelter."
The girl's eyes locked on to mine, focused, and she tilted her head, before turning her attention to the bird-man she was sitting on top of. She reached over and began pulling on the collar of his tunic.
"Quill, she's right, we need to go."
He shook his head, wincing as he moved his winged arm, and finally lifted his head. Wariness washed over his expression when he saw me standing next to him, but he nodded nonetheless.
"You might have to help me up," he said, taking notice of the branches around him.
I took the girl under her arms and lifted her off of the bird-man - Quill, I supposed. She was much lighter than I expected, no more than thirty pounds, and I set her on the ground next me. Together, we helped clear the branches away, both of us casting glances up toward the window above as we worked, in case of any other signs of trouble. Quill sat up once he was able, and I put his arm around my shoulder and helped him from the bush. He was a little wobbly once on his feet, having taken the brunt of the fall.
"Can you walk?" I asked him. He looked down, doing his best to steady himself.
"Just help me back to the tower."
"You want to go back inside?" I asked, incredulous. The girl rounded behind both of us and tried her best to push us forward.
"We have to go back inside!" she said, nearly buckling my knees under the surprising force of her push.
"All right, all right, we'll go," I said. The girl ran out in front of us, motioning for us to follow all the while. Quill and I made our way forward slowly, one step after another. Still the voices murmured from up above, unhappy, but no more pops rang out.
The girl opened the door for us as we neared the awning and we shuffled inside. With no other places to sit in the room, I helped Quill ease onto the steps of the wide staircase. It was only once I took a step back that I noticed the blood streaming down his white wing.
"Quill, your wing!" the girl said, racing toward him. She bounded up the step and touched his arm, only to draw her hand away once she realized what was wrong.
"They shot you!"
I tore a strip of fabric from the bottom of my tunic and knelt in front of the pair. "Can you hold out your arm?" I asked Quill. "I can tie off the bleeding."
Grimacing, Quill nodded, and the girl helped him extend his arm. I had to part through his feathers to find the wound. It was a graze - a deep one, albeit - but one that shouldn't have any difficulty healing. But the size of the wound was most surprised me, far smaller than any arrowheads I was used to seeing.
"Just what was it that shot you?" I asked as I wrapped the strip around his wound. The girl rolled her eyes, while Quill took a deep breath.
"There are some unusual weapons on the higher floors," he said, not wishing to elaborate.
"The weapons aren't anything compared to the floors themselves," the girl muttered as she watched me wrap Quill's arm. She had an interesting look I hadn't noticed while outside in the rain, her hair and skin both a vibrant shade of blue. Her wide eyes, contrastingly, were a rather dull shade of brown.
"Do either of you know where we are?" I asked as I knotted the fabric. "What's going on?"
Quill and the girl stared at me, before looking at one another.
"She doesn't know?" Quill said. The girl looked at me, studying my face.
"How could she not know?" she asked.
"Some of the other realms didn't show up until a few days ago." Quill said as he examined the fabric surrounding his arm. "Maybe she's from even further out."
"Uh…" I said, holding up a finger. "Would one of you tell me what's going on?"
The two turned toward me, the girl's face becoming more grave as seconds passed.
"Tingle stole my power, and we're trapped here until I can get it back."
