The floor was cold, and intensely hard. Like, some kind of rock. Jack poked the ground next to his face, still unable to see his fingers. It was rock. Like smooth cement, but without even a hint of grit. It was almost like laying on plate glass. Erin grunted next to him, and he heard Rory choke and breathe in a great gasp of air. Finally, Layla must have come to, because she immediately began to scrabble at her clothing, digging for something in her pockets. He heard the rattle of a medication bottle, then the snap of the cap being returned. She whimpered quietly. She must have spiked a migraine because of whatever happened to them. The meds would take almost half an hour to even ease the pain.

A sudden realization came to him. He was in the same room with his best friends. None of whom he had ever met in person. He and Erin had planned to finally meet this summer, but it looks like that came early. With a side of kidnapping, or alien abduction, or whatever-the-fuck this was.

-----

Layla’s head was a kaleidoscope of agony, auras and bursts of light spreading across her vision, but this wasn’t her first rodeo. She sat up, slowly, and grinned fiercely as the wave of nausea she expected didn’t emerge. Today was a good day. She cracked her eyelids, to find the room dimly lit by some kind of LED strip hung knee height along the wall. Wait, no, they weren’t LEDs. They were some kind of glowing script set into the rock face. The floor was smooth, and the room appeared to be perfectly circular at first glance, with no visible exits.

As Layla watched, the script slowly resolved into something she could read, not because the runes changed, but because her mind began to make sense of the angular scribbles.

-----

Erin grunted loudly and heaved herself up onto her hands and knees, then automatically levered herself into a standing position, where she wobbled for a few seconds before looking around. The walls were glowing. No, they were covered in letters that were glowing. She edged toward the runic script, and her mouth slowly dropped open as her brain started making sense of what she was seeing. It wasn’t that they changed. She just, understood what she was seeing.

“Are you guys seeing this shit?”

-----

Rory pulled himself off the floor and went to stand next to Erin. She was taller than he expected; almost as tall as Jack.

“It’s some kind of story. See, here it describes an eternal cycle, like a part of nature. It says ‘outsiders arrive in the dark, and walk a path of runes, choosing their Fates’. And each time the outsiders arrive, the world changes. ‘A time of upheaval’,” she turned to him.

“You got all that from wiggldy-squiggledy-diddly?” Rory side-eyed her.

“I read, thank you,” Erin shot back.

“Guys, was that door here a second ago?” Jack asked.

“No, there… mmmmng… no exits. I checked.” Layla said, wincing at the sudden flare of pain.

“So, what’s that?”

-----

The green runes had crawled across the wall, upward, until they illuminated a perfectly rectangular door, apparently leading to a hallway that vanished into darkness.

Jack nervously smiled back at the other three, “So we’re taking the scary door, right?”

“Unless you wanna starve to death in here, pretty boy,” Rory chuckled.

“Scary door it is,” Layla murmured.

The three of them slowly edged toward the door, until Erin pushed her way past them and plunged into the hallway. Suddenly the green runes crawled across the wall and burst down the hallway, lighting their way. Some fifty yards down, they could see another room and a glint of gold and glass.

“Oh, that’s not ominous,” Rory whispered.

“C’mon, we’re not gettin any younger,” Erin replied.

-----

The hallway opened into a much larger room, filled almost entirely with a machine of crystalline glass, burnished gold, and glowing stones. The machine almost resembled an orrery, but in the center, on a massive stone wheel, lay a tremendous arrow of iron, chased with gold filigree. At the back of the arrow was a huge ornate lever, seemingly meant to slide forward into the arrow's nock.

“What fresh hell is this?”

“Oh c’mon Rory, where’s your sense of adventure?” Erin laughed, “This is nuts.”

The arrow was pointed at a blank circular depression on the wall. To the left and right of the blank were six similar depressions, three to the right and three to the left, Unlike the blank, the left and right spaces were each filled with a large, ornate rune carved into the rock, gently glowing in six different colors.

“Am I off it, or do these big symbols convey a lot of information?” Rory turned to them.

“No, I can see it too. It’s like, a description of- OH MY SHIT, these are starting zones!!” Layla suddenly shouted, then grabbed the bridge of her nose and screwed her eyes shut. After a moment she whispered, “Mistakes were made.” “Wait, starting zones? What!? Layla, we’ve been kidnapped. We woke up on a stone floor without any of our shit,” Rory snapped.

“No, look. We woke up in a magical cave with moving walls and glowing words carved in the rock, that move around, while we’re looking. This is some anime world traveling bullshit,” Layla shot back.

“Okay, let’s assume I accept that we’re in a magical cave, and this is our starting zone selection… needle… wheel… thing,” Rory gestured around, “Then does that mean the rest of our options are gonna be changed by what we pick here.

“I’d assume so,” Layla smiled, “So what are our options?”

-----

The four spread out in front of the compass needle, looking over the six symbols.

The first, leftmost symbol, was a shining white, and conveyed a sense of stability and innovation. This was Alabastris, the White Empire, ruled by humans, allies of dwarves and high elves, center of all magic industry in Ayrgard.

“I’ve got some kind of techno-magic Gondor place here. It definitely has humans,” Jack called out, before turning and reading the next.

The second symbol was a deep, calming green, different from the violent green of the passageway runes. The symbol of Verdantes, the Greenbough, land of wild elves, dryads, and woodland creatures, conveyed a sense of peace and growth.

“This one looks like sort of a world-tree elf situation.”

Erin touched the next rune, a sweeping yellow character that conjured the sensation of wind under wings, and earth under scales and claws. This was the symbol of Covenant of Scales, an alliance of dragons and other scalefolk.

“This is definitely some kind of dragon city. Do you think they allow humans? Do you think if we pick this one, we can be dragons?” Erin’s eyes were wide.

“At this point, I don’t think a race change is out of the question, legs,” Layla replied.

She stood across the arrow and the central, blank depression, and stared at the pulsing black sigil there. The rune of Necropolis, tomb city of undeath, home to vampires, liches, ghouls, and shades. “This seems like maybe an antagonist faction? Unless undead are playable… Did I say playable? Man, this shit is getting to me.”

Rory stared at the second-to-last rune. “They do seem to be arrayed in a particular order, don’t they?” This rune was the symbol of the Depths, a fortress city set into the vertical walls of a great scar in the world, a canyon of immense size. It was home to dark elves, minotaurs, and even darker things. “This one seems to be some kind of under… dark… place?”

He looked right, staring at the sigil of Ostlin, the Red Stone, land of monsters, of orcs, goblins, ogres, beasts, and savage hordes. “I’m not sure we want to mess with this side of the needle. There’s no guarantee they’ll be friendly.”

“Maybe not,” Layla turned to him, “But when have we ever played the good guys? This whole thing seems to have happened before, according to the wall back there, and I doubt whoever did this would waste us on places where we’d just be ground up and served as breakfast.”

“Maybe,” he said quietly, staring back at the hallway.

He finally looked back at the group, “So what are we going to do?”