The sky outside was nearly entirely dark when I finally came to. And I had no idea where I was! We were all gathered in a warehouse with high windows, through which I was able to tell that the sun was nearly set. It was kind of warm inside, and I found myself sweating profusely. It was not helping my anxiety any. And then I saw that I was also tucked into a sleeping bag.

“Uh? What happened?”

“Excellent, you are awake,” the man’s voice from earlier exclaimed. “We have our Scribe back!”

I finally got a good look at the guy. He had slightly wavy, sandy hair and a pointy nose. His eyes were deep and dark, somewhat menacing. He also wore a creepy smile. He was not what I had imagined him to be like, but there he was, still wearing a suit. Even after a deadly, dangerous car trip!

The Sphinx.

Zipping right to his side was a beautiful lady with small glasses and frazzled dark hair that reached down to her shoulder blades. She gave me a very stern look, and she was fingering her phone nervously.

I later learned that she had been working with Naomi’s mom to get the cameras and light all finagled to our needs to escape the Syndicate. The guys have had friends within the FBI and Homeland Security who have been incredibly helpful in keeping us as safe as someone can from the other side of a computer screen. And I don’t think that I’m risking any of them by mentioning that…

“Agents Miles and Conturbatio,” I finally ventured, looking up at them.

“In the flesh,” the Sphinx replied, reaching out his hand.

“Again, I feel like I got you guys wrong,” I said, taking his hand. As he hauled me up, I continued, “That, or you guys got the descriptions very wrong as you set up this very over the top kidnapping. And I really don’t appreciate it if that is what this is.”

Conturbation wiped his hand off on his pants as he said, “No, this is sadly very real.”

I wasn’t sure how to reply to that. I looked around and I saw Trick and Naomi resting together. Susan Brown was not far, checking out some weapons that she had at the ready. I did not like the sight of that.

“Expecting trouble again soon,” I asked.

“Yes,” Miles said, almost snapping. For the past two weeks they have been hounding us! The Syndicate.”

“I’m still unconvinced of that name,” the Sphinx sighed. “These killers are not something out of a movie or spy show. They are the real deal, and they are getting help from the Realms. And something about that makes my skin crawl in a way I cannot fully describe. Like there is something else at play.”

“We can’t just go off of hunches, you know,” Susan replied from where she was.

I whooshed my hand over my head. “Look guys, I am seriously out of the loop. If everything that I have written is real, then I am so very sorry for putting you all through everything I wrote. And honestly, I just want to go home. I’ll stop writing immediately and never come back to this story! I really want nothing more of this.”

“Look at who thinks he’s at the center of everything,” Naomi suddenly sneered.

“Sorry Ruben,” Trick yawned. “But our story would have kept going on no matter what you wrote. You just happened to see what was going on and wrote them all down, even if you got some things kinda wrong.”

“Oh,” I said, somewhat uncertain.

“And that is why I called you our Scribe,” the Sphinx said. “That is at least the kind of name that I found among the old records in Egypt.”

“A Scribe?”

“Yup,” Trick answered simply.

“Meaning?”

Naomi rolled her eyes and asked, “How dense are you? A scribe is someone who writes down stuff for people. And you are our Scribe! You have been writing our stories as they have been happening, or just right after.”

Now it all started clicking and making sense. I asked them how such a thing was even possible, and Conturbatio fixed his creepy smile on me and started explaining.

“Ruben, you are someone who can touch the Realms of Imagination, but you have ye to become a true Crossover as they call them. That is someone who can slip in their sleep into this other universe where all the world’s collective imagination pools. It is a dimension of infinite possibilities worlds, dimensions, people, ideas, and more! But, instead of going into this other place, you have been able to peer through it into the events our lives. At least it seems ever since we started encountering the Realms and denizens trying to escape them.”

“Um, right… So I can see all of these things, but that still doesn’t mean that it makes much sense to me. I was just writing what came naturally to me in the moment,” I tried to explain.

“Which makes sense,” the Sphinx replied.

“And… Does the Syndicate know who, or possibly what I am? At least according to you folks.”

“We believe they do,” Conturbatio said heavily.

“They have been hunting down everyone who we have interacted with during our missions and cases,” Susan interjected. “So many people have gone missing and their records disappeared. We know that they have been using a ton of resources to perform this incredible task. We don’t know why they are going after these people, but we suspect that the Syndicate are trying to harness the powers of the Realms.”

“Naomi and I had to use our D&D forms to fight them off when they first came. They had summoned a Grey Bubble through a special talisman. We destroyed it, but then we got chased by a bunch of Matrix-like goons. And then our forms stopped working. The Bubble was gone.”

I looked over to Trick and whistled. “You guys have terrible adventures.”

“I wouldn’t say that. They’re just extremely dangerous,” he said with a shrug.

I felt a little incredulous to see his mother and I guess his girlfriend giving him affectionate looks. Naomi went to hold his hand.

“So, you’ve said that I got some parts of your stories wrong. Can I ask what?”

Naomi was eager to answer and just unloaded. So, to make a long story much shorter and manageable, I’ll sum it up: Naomi reiterated that she and Trick had started dating almost immediately after their first case. And they even kept in touch with the punks who started summoning the werewolves and vampires to make sure that they never pulled any similar stunts again. That was actually helped tip them off to something going dreadfully wrong; they lost all contact. And so did the FBI.

The whole theater affair had been much goofier. Characters had flickered when they had come out of the screen. There was also more to the letter that Trick had gotten from the interdimensional being in the mailbox. But it had all been in code. It had taken them a ridiculously long time to solve it. It had led them on a strange chase through multiple books to piece together a message to say that they needed to summon Bill Cipher and ask a very specific question.

They were not too keen on trying that out…

The Mother Jed still gives them nightmares. Apparently looking into the Mother Jed gave them looks into stories they would never have imagined. But they were sure it was locked away in another world. In another story.

That part had confused me, but I guess that when people dealing with the Realms refer to stories, they are often looking at the combination of not only worlds, but the flow of events that create, well, a story. It makes simple sense at face value, but trust me, it starts causing a headache when you think more about it.

I also completely left out one of their adventures in the Dungeons and Dragons-like story. They at one point when on a full dungeon raid in a basement set in horror movies. From what they told me, I am very happy that I missed out on all of that. But everything else was spot on. That furry convention still gives me the shivers...

And for the cursed prom, there was apparently a lot of crazy things that the FBI had to deal with before and during the raid on the shed. And I missed an entire dance that Naomi and Trick had to do at the behest of the fae. They needed to do an interpretive dance of making a sandwich from scratch. Such as harvesting and grinding the grain, and churning the butter.

In my defense, all of this would have just bogged down what I had already written!

And get off my case about the lichen =/= lycan!

Well, after getting all of that the sun was completely gone and it was pitch black outside. That meant it was getting pretty late. Part of me was entirely exhausted, and yet I was energized with fear and wonder. I did not want to trust them, but I found myself believing these crazy people.

“So, what do we do now,” I found myself asking. “And sorry, I know that is super annoying to be bombarded with so many questions.”

“No, it’s all okay,” Susan answered. “We can’t give many more answers but to your first question. We run. They’ve found us again.”