Heart still thundering in her chest, Gale breathed a sigh of relief as she stepped unharmed in the grass. At the very least, the stranger had been telling the truth about there not being some sort of barrier surrounding them.
The grass rustled on either side of Gale as Marianne and Leyna both stepped down after her.
“Do you really trust this guy?” Marianne asked, not even bothering to lower her voice.
Shaking her head, Gale answered, “No, but I’m not sure we have much of a choice.”
The stranger took the lead, marching back into the trees. The three of them filed in behind him with Gale taking the rear. The light from her phone barely made an impact against the impenetrable darkness of the forest, but it was enough to light the ground beneath Gale and Marianne in front of her, as they tried their best not to fall behind and become irrevocably lost.
“Watch your step,” the stranger instructed, stopping and stepping aside to illuminate a large root pushing up out of the ground, but despite the warning and watching both Leyna and Marianne step over just fine, Gale managed to catch her foot on it.
Falling against Marianne was like hitting a wall instead of a person. Marianne didn’t even wobble when Gale’s whole weight slammed into her.
“You okay?” Marianne asked, steadying her.
Gale nodded as she righted herself. “Yeah. Thanks.”
When the stranger took that as permission to start moving again, Marianne waved Gale to walk in front of her. “You first.”
“But I have a light.” Gale held up her phone.
“I’ll be fine,” Marianne said, shooing her forward.
A stone building waited for them in the next clearing. It was too dark to take in the details, but the few narrow windows glowed with an almost welcoming warmth.
“Quickly,” the stranger insisted, pushing open the heavy wooden door and ushering them inside just as the clouds broke open.
After the darkness of the night, the light of the entryway was nearly blindingly bright. It was a steady glow like an electric light, not the flicker of the flame or magic Gale had been expecting.
The rain followed them in, slapping the dusty titled floor and splashing up onto the dingy plaster of the walls. The stranger heaved the door shut against the weather, and Gale and the other two barely managed to get out of his way.
The narrow rectangular room was divided in half by two different floor levels, an upper level higher than Gale’s knees and the lower half the four of them were squeezed into that barely had enough space to allowed the door to open and shut without squishing any of them in the process. That small amount of floor area was even more restricted by a long wooden bench that sat just outside the swing of the door.
“Watch it!” Marianne snapped with a yelp that let Gale know she wouldn’t be the only one to have a bruise on her shin tomorrow from slamming into the bench while trying to avoid the closing door.
The stranger shoved a massive bolt across the door, and Marianne and Leyna both tensed beside Gale.
All three of them staring between the stranger and the bolt.
“There is no other lock, ” the stranger said. “It slides open for anyone on this side.” He removed the cloak and hung it one of the pegs set into the wall.
While the untidy plait down his back was far more grey than black, Gale thought he didn’t look more than forty years old.
He was clad only in violet leggings and a long, pink shirt with sleeves smocked from his wrists to just before the bend of his elbow where the fabric ballooned extravagantly. The same smocking started at his neck just under the embroidered stand collar and spread in a circular yoke to the points of his shoulders. The hem hung loose, inelegantly brushing this thighs, with creases around his waist like he’d been wearing something belted over it.
Why had he taken off clothes before heading out into the woods at night?
“Who are you, and where are we?” Marianne demanded, fists jammed hard on her hips as she glared down at him. She was easily the tallest person in the room, even if only by a few centimetres, and she was using every bit of it in offence.
“You can call me Gryth,” the stranger answered as he calmly slipped off his shoes, delicate things with lattice and embroidery that had not really survived their trip into the woods. “We’re in the Eolas Forest. This building is called Anumwold.”
Using the wooden bench as a step, he climbed onto the upper floor and turned back towards them, looking unsettlingly like some sort of gameshow host on a stage framed by three doors, one on each of the walls.
“But the answer you actually want is that you are in the land of Aeterna.” Gryth held up a hand, cutting off angry noise from Marianne before adding, “I am not the one who summoned you. I am as much an unwilling participant in all of this as you are.”
Before anyone had a chance to reply to that pronouncement, Gryth opened the door to the left and announced, “This is the privy. The spells need repairing, so despite there being multiple stalls, you should only use it one at a time.”
Taking two strides toward the middle door, he pointed to a small circular plaque beside it. The metal frame and glass centre looked like motion sensor. “Every room has light controls like this. A simple tap will turn the lights on and off fully.” He demonstrated this by tapping it and plunged them into complete darkness before immediately returning the light with a second tap. “I did charge the lights when I arrived, but please turn them off when you leave a room. I do not wish to charge them again.”
Ignoring the middle door itself, he opened the door on the right next. “This is the dressing room that leads to the bath. This is where you will find any toiletries you might need while you’re here.”
“Stop talking up amenities,” Marianne snapped. “This isn’t some sort of hotel.”
“I am explaining the workings of this building, so I don’t have to answer the same question three times.” Gryth said with the tired annoyance of someone who had had this same conversation a dozen times. He stepped into the dressing room, and called back, “Get in here if you want to know how anything works. I won’t explain it again.”
Marianne and Leyna took off their shoes and climbed up to follow him.
Gale was halfway to sitting down on the bench to untie her own shoes before she changed her mind and checked the door. The bolt was stiff and moved slowly, but it was some relief to find she could move it and open the door.
Shoving the door shut against the wind that was trying to wrench it open again, she slammed the bolt home and then hastily removed her shoes and followed the others.
A waist-height, trough-like stone sink took up much of the wall directly opposite the door they entered. A narrow shelf above it held several glass bottles and what looked like a simple bar of soap on a dish.
A floor-to-ceiling shelving unit took up most of the wall to the right. Neatly organised cubbies were filled with an assortment of toiletries and linens.
Gryth only explained the contents he felt they needed know about, shampoos, soaps, and the different types of towels before ending with a set of shelves to the bottom left. “Nightclothes are here. They are arranged by size—smallest on the bottom, largest on the top.”
He brushed past them to the double doors opposite the shelving. They slid apart to reveal a washing area and a soaking tub large enough for all of them to not only use comfortably but to spread out while they did so. He took it for granted that they must understand the social rules of communal bathing and simply explained, “The spells are also failing in here. The water from the taps will not heat up, so there is a bucket if you want to pull hot water from the bath to wash yourselves.”
Gale wondered how the other two could be so calm about all of this when it was clear Gryth expected them to be staying there for a while, especially when Marianne had been particularly cross about missing deadlines only a short while ago.
There had to be some sort of spell on this place making it feel safe and familiar. Just like what ever aura this stranger put out.
They weren’t meant to leave, were they?
Panic tightened like a vice around Gale’s chest as she struggled to catch her breath.
She didn’t have time to be trapped here, she had to finish the game. If she didn’t get back, it would decay on her hard drive and disappear. No one else would even remember it had existed in the first place.
She couldn’t let Quinn be forgotten like that.
Every word out of Gryth’s mouth became little more than a buzzing noise over the thundering of the heartbeat echoing in Gale’s ears. This had to be some sort of stress induced nightmare that she would wake from at any moment, but the reality of this strange world kept pressing its heavy weight against her chest, making it difficult to breathe.
“I can’t be here,” she croaked, barely manage more than a gasp when she tried to get air into her lungs. “I need to go home.”
Gryth turned, and those hauntingly familiar eyes filled with heartbroken compassion. “I’m sorry, but you can’t go home.”
His voice was nothing but gentle, yet the words crashed into Gale’s chest like a battering ram, slamming the last oxygen out of her lungs.
The floor shifted beneath her feet just before everything went dark.