I was confused.

I had just been walking out of the university administration building for my lunch break. The facilities management office, where I was a student worker, was on the bottom floor. Meaning it was technically below the ground on one side of the building. Often when I exited from the gloomy basement, especially in the middle of the day, the light outside was blinding.

Today it had been so bright it had hurt my brain and my ears to pop and whine. I had needed to stop to catch myself, closing my eyes tight, and waiting a few seconds for my brain to stop hurting from the light.

And when I opened them, I was staring into the moon. Well, a moon. It looked really wrong to be Earth’s moon. It was too large and filled my entire vision. There were no craters either, it looked more like it was covered in glitter. I couldn’t take my eyes off of it.

But it was also really confusing. Why was there a moon outside the administration building? Some sort of modern are?

There were also people shouting, the sound had come back after a few seconds. It wasn’t any language I knew. That wasn’t saying much, I had only taken the two linguistics classes, and I didn’t actually speak any other languages. It sort of sounded like it had an English phonology, but there were some extra palatal fricatives in there.

The moon was beautiful and was making my mind drift to weird esoterica, but I decided to pay attention to the shouting instead.

There were six people around the moon. The moon was actually a giant ball in the center of a flat thin doughnut shaped platform. It was also slightly higher than the platform. There were stars in all directions. Yep, just a platform hanging in space around a mini-moon, totally normal. I was having trouble processing the geometry of what I was seeing compared to where my brain still expected me to be. Which was out side the university administration building.

But there were six people on this impossible platform. Dressed in a variety of clothing somewhere between renaissance faire and convention cosplayer. Some of them were in armor, two in plate and two in studded leather, others in robes, a garish lime green one drew my eye so much I forgot what the other had. Some of them had swords, others had bows. Some of them were bleeding, others were… Wait. Were they fighting something?

I began to realize they were fighting some things.

“Fucking miscast!” someone shouted.

I snapped my head to look at the man in the lime green robes, complete with matching stove pipe hat. He was also carrying a cyan and orange plastic stick, that looked more like a cheap broom handle than anything, including a little loop on one end where a string tied it to his robes. The one who had shouted. In English. He looked back at me.

“Well summon, attack!” he shouted at me while pointing to where the others were fighting something I could only see flashes of. They were like pieces of glass that I could only see at certain angles.

“Who, me?” I asked him, pointing at my own chest.

“Attack!” he shouted again at me while pointing. His lips didn’t match the word.

“No?” I replied with a shrug and open hands. Trying to convey my confusion as best as I could.

“Fuck.” he appeared to say to himself, before continuing, “Stephan, I am low on aether and my last summon was a miscast.” gesturing to me as he spoke loudly looking at a man in gouged armor. This time as he spoke I realized the language was clearly not English, his lips definitely did not match, and I could even hear the not-English he was speaking at the same time that I understood what he was saying.

The man replied in the same language. But I couldn’t understand him. I could only understand the man in the ridiculous hat.

I wasn’t even sure he could understand me.

I mean, I was pretty confused in general. The things these ridiculous people were fighting seemed kinda scary, and maybe I should pay some more attention to them. But if literally only one person could understand me, that seemed like the place to start.

“Hey, dude in the atrocious lime green hat, can you understand me?” I shouted at him.

He glanced in my direction but didn’t respond. That seemed like a reaction one would give if they couldn’t understand. But also if they were ignoring you.

I would need to try a different tact. I started walking towards him. He was only a few strides away.

“If you don’t reply to me I am going to take your stupid hat!” I said as loud as I could as I approached.

I reached for his hat. He had given me another glance as I approached. But then turned back to listen to something Stephan was saying. I quickly grabbed his hat and jumped backwards.

“Hey, what the heck are you doing?” he said as he spun towards me.

“Say ‘yes I can understand you’ and you can have the hat back.” I said to him shaking the hat towards him.

“Give me my hat back, you fucking miscast,” he said as he walked towards me.

“I will if you just say ‘yes I understand’,” I continued desperately as I stepped backwards. Desperate that he could understand me.

“Stay. Stop. Hold.” He was saying the words like commands as he advanced more.

“Dammit, here!” I shouted as I threw the hat back at him.

He fumbled with it for a moment, before putting it back on. And then keeping one eye on me he rushed off to join the others who I realized had been slowly retreating while I fought this man for his hat.

Should I follow? I had a lot of questions, like what did it mean I was a miscast… and uhh he said ‘summon’ right? But what I should do right this moment was probably the most important question. On the one hand these people kinda seemed like assholes. On the other, mostly invisible combative glass things.

Yea, I followed them.

They had all walked towards a specific edge of the doughnut platform, and then took a step over the edge falling face first. Mr Lime Green Stove-pipe Hat was apparently second to last and had just gone. One of the people in plate didn’t even spare me a glance before stepping over the edge themselves.

An old argument my mom would make jumped to my mind. ‘If every one jumped off a bridge, would you?’ to which the answer was apparently: maybe. If that bridge was a doughnut platform in the middle of space around a giant moon orb. And if there were glass monster things that I could now see were coming towards me. Yes, yes I would jump off a bridge exactly like everyone else had.

As I approached where they had stepped over the edge I saw that the doughnut platform had a little rectangular divot cut out of it where they had gone. I stood at the edge and looked down. All I saw were stars. I couldn’t see any falling lime green men, to say nothing of the rest of the people. I feel like one of them would be seen. Something was going on here.

Fuck was I really going to do this.

I looked behind me. The glass monsters were almost on me. The closer they got the more often I would see their outline in the diffraction of star and moon light. It seemed the glass would only flash light at very certain angles, and be almost perfectly transparent otherwise. And they were definitely monsters, at least three meters tall, four legged, sort of like giant glass wolves. A few more seconds and they would be on me.

That sealed it. I took the step over the edge, falling face first like I had seen them do. The stars whirling in my vision as I fell forward.

And suddenly I fell down. Instead of gravity being the direction I was looking, it became the direction under my feat. I was not prepared for that, and neither were my legs. I landed in a heap on a new floor.

The brief flash I had gotten before falling on the floor had shown me another platform hanging in space surrounded by stars, but this one also had colorful nebulas everywhere. The platform itself just ran straight and flat before coming to a hexagonal platform. A long way down it I had seen the rest of the people, including Mr. Lime Green.

I got up quickly, still worried about glass monsters, and I began running down the hallway after them. They were so far away. How were they moving so fast? I may not be particularly athletic, but I was no slouch. I jogged three times a week, and my job involved a lot of manual labor. I was sure they are moving way faster than even the best sprinters at the college.

They took a right after getting to the platform and they started running on space, turned slightly away from me. Not space I realized, other long platforms. The hexagon was actually a six way junction of long platforms. They had taken the farther right turn.

It took me a bit to get to the junction. Way longer than I had been indecisive at the edge of the doughnut, and therefore, the time it should have taken them. I was halfway there when I realized that they were gone. I had checked the path they were on, and then looked forward, and then checked the path again and they were gone.

Shit. I guess I would just have to hope I could see them and the way out when I got to where ever that hallway went. I kept jogging as I stared at the end of the platform where they had been on.

I stared too long, once I glanced back to the intersection I saw that there were glass monsters on it. Or perhaps they had always been there and I just hadn’t noticed?

Either way I would have to get around them.

I entered the hexagon and immediately hugged the edge. One of the glass wolf-monsters had swung one of it’s massive barely visible paws, with it’s imperceptibly flat claws right where I would have been.

I noticed that another wolf was moving to block off the hallway the others had taken as I passed the hallway between them. With the speed it was moving, it had technically left me enough room to get by it. But I didn’t trust that, I had seen how fast they could move, it was definitely wait for me to try and get past it.

Instead I jumped “over” the void between the hexagon and the hallway shooting off from it that I wanted to get to. I was momentarily weightless as I left the platform, which caused me to float further forward which was good, and upward which was not. Once I floated over the hallway gravity reasserted it self and I fell in a heap.

I scrambled back to my feet, trying to run away from the wolf that was surely behind me. I spared a glance behind me when I didn’t feel any crystal claws cutting into me. The crystal wolf was just sitting at the start of the hallway, guarding it.

I kept running anyway, hoping to see where the people I was following had gone.

As I did the hallway began to twist in front me. It was always straight directly in-front of me, but ahead it would bend and warp. Like being in one of those bendy buses.

I just kept running forward and eventually the effect stopped.

And then there was an octogon ahead of me, here there was a background of floating rocks, too dense to be an actual asteroid field. No wait there was a giant yellow-orange ball below me, these were rings.

I glanced around for the people. There to my left, just one hallway over, Mr Lime Green had just ran into a door carved in one of the ring rocks.

If I ran all the way to the octagon and then down the hallway I would never see where they went next.

There was a solution. I didn’t like it, it involved too many assumptions. Also it was scary.

Fuck, no time to think this through.

I backed up as much as I could in the hallway, aiming for the door, thankfully on a giant rock. I got as much of a running start as I could and jumped through the void. Weightlessness hit me.

It was a lot farther this time, but I felt like I was mostly on the right trajectory. As I got closer I realized I was a bit off and was going to hit the rock at an odd angle, and probably miss the hallway.

Shit.

There was a slight ridge I would hopefully be able to get my arms around. And with an awkward push it should bring me to the hallway. I twisted myself in the air, clumsy, but it was good enough (thanks gymnastics!), but I was able to get a better angle.

And then the ridge hit me in the stomach, which had not been planned, and did wind me. I had already planned what to do and was able to follow through despite the pain. I pushed off the ridge my elbows, which brought me mostly over the hallway, and then I fell onto it.

That overall, hurt. Nothing felt broken, but I definitely felt sore, maybe bruised.

Okay, gotta get up and follow these assholes. That was the plan.

So I did, through the doorway I went.

A square this time. No wait. A rectangle, this hallway was short and connected to the long edge of the rectangle. Below me was a planet, it was huge. Or no, we were very close, I could see clouds, rivers, and mountain peaks. In the center of the rectangle were some shallow steps up. The people were taking turns to gently hop closer to the center of it. As they did a beam of light appeared below the rectangle and struck the planet.

Ok, that was easy enough. It looked like a way to escape the geometric hell scape for a planet. I was on board for that. No glass monsters on the rectangle it looked like, also on board for that.

As I jogged forward, I tried to communicate again, “Hey assholes, can you understand me?”

Mr. Lime Green hopped into the pool without even a glance. The person in plate who had been in the rear the whole time did give me a glance this time, before he hopped into the pool himself.

Dammit.

I hopped into the pool, just like they had. I was treated to a blinding light, behind which, for half a second, I appeared to be rocketing towards the ground in the fastest elevator imaginable. And then I landed on my feet, for once.

There was a stone ruin around me, beyond which was dense evergreen forest. It was dark out, a full moon hung in the sky above me.

Ahead of me a pack of wolves were being fought by the group of six people. Thankfully of the more fleshy looking variety… though their eyes were glowing as brightly as the moon above. The people were talking among themselves.

“It might be able to follow, but so far all it’s done is steal my hat,” shouted Mr. Lime Green. Probably in response to something someone said.

I was only half paying attention as I slowly backed up and looked for a way out of here.

“I mean it was supposed to be a Minotaur, not some human girl, it miscast” he was talking again.

The walls of the ruins were mostly missing, it would be easy enough to run into the forest, but with the trees it would be dark out there. And there weren’t any obvious paths away from this place.

One of the people in studded leather cut a wolf’s head off with their sword, the blood sparkled in the moonlight as it gushed from the body, probably sparkled brighter than it should have.

The other people were talking, but I could understand them. It just sounded like gibberish English.

“You can eat shit Sander. But fine I’ll try again. Summon, Attack.” He said again with those words that felt like they should hold power but didn’t.

I definitely wasn’t doing that. Maybe I could climb one of the trees and wait for the day? Wolves couldn’t climb right?

“See, nothing, just a dumb stare.” He said.

I made a break for the forest instead and began climbing the nearest tree that looked good for it. I had climbed plenty of trees before and this one was perfect for it. It was difficult in the dark, but definitely doable.

Thoughts of how crazy this was were still swirling around in my head, just minutes ago I had been on campus heading for lunch, and now this. Whatever this was. A few minutes later I was high up in the tree, at least 10 meters. Nice sturdy branch under me. Hopefully safe.

I had gotten up here just in time to catch a glimpse of the end of the battle in the ruins—I could see over it’s walls from here—the people finally killed the last wolf with a stab to the chest. And then there were dings in my head.

I watched as the people turned and ran off towards the mountains in the distance, at their much too fast jog. Straight through the forest.

Okay dings in my head, what was that.

And suddenly displays appeared in my head, that I could read. But also didn’t appear in front of me. It was a strange feeling, like having scraps of paper, or a phone I could glance at, while still being able to see in front of me without any issue.

Were there not humans here? I was pretty sure that guy in the stupid hat was human, though I wasn’t paying close enough attention to anyone else. Maybe a side effect of how I got here?

More questions for the pile.