Warmth and light enveloped Rosalyn like a soft blanket, pure unadulterated comfort making her chest swell. She couldn’t remember where she was, what she’d been dreaming about, or was she still dreaming...? KC’s laugh echoed somewhere far away, wisping away with the wind, becoming so faint she wasn’t sure if he’d actually existed.

Something suddenly felt so urgent, this desperation consuming her, a pulsing warning that something was wrong, something needed her attention, something intense that she needed to—

Any comfort or happiness evaporated from her as she opened her eyes, lurching to one side, her stomach rolling with her. The game. The capture. The escape.

Rosalyn cried out as she rose right out of her sitting position, the top of her head smacking into the ceiling of the cavity she was in. Was this some kind of turbulence? Attack? Or a crash?

Smeesh curled against her belly, as if trying to slither into being shielded from the chaos, and Rosalyn extended her limbs to press against the walls, hoping to brace herself enough to keep steady. Her palms shrieked with the pricking of a thousand shards of glass, her heart rate tripling, and for once she was glad for her empty stomach as her ride did a barrel roll.

A grunt flew out of her lungs. “My noodle arms aren’t built for this!” she huffed, and as if on cue, her hands slipped from another violent pitch forward, sending her face first into the wall, or whatever it was. Stars exploded behind her eyes, and her ears rang, and everything began to move in slow motion, the flopping of her body sluggish as if it were in water.

And then, friction before a great thump, and they came to a stop with her crunched up on one shoulder, half upside-down, Smeesh still tucked safely against her stomach.

Rosalyn wasn’t sure how long she laid there. Time didn’t feel relevant anymore. She opened her eyes, but then, she couldn’t have had her eyes closed before, because she’d seen only black. And when she closed her eyes, there wasn’t supposed to be blackness anymore. There wasn’t supposed to be a dark void. She wasn’t supposed to be alone.

She closed her eyes.

No chat. No nothing.

“What the fuck?” she choked. “What. The. Fuck.”

She blinked rapidly, as if this were just a glitch she could rejig and fix.

“No.” She blinked until tears streamed down her face and her eyes were raw razorblades in her eye sockets.

Still nothing. She couldn’t help but wonder, had there been anything there at all? Had her mind fabricated the chat as a comfort mechanism, so that she could deal with the absolute insanity of the situation she was in?

“How fucked up am I?” She swallowed, muscles working hard at the motion, throat thick. Maybe the stream cut out. Maybe the power went out. Maybe my computer needed to reboot. Maybemaybemaybe—

As comforting as it was to think these thoughts, to think that she hadn’t fabricated it all but instead there was a logical explanation for the completely illogical fact that she’d been seeing a fucking chat window behind her eyelids, it brought another theory that sent ice spikes shooting through her body.

What if whatever link between home and here is gone? She brought her shaking hands to her face, pressing them against her temples as if she could hold her brain inside her skull. If the portal theory was right, and she’d been sucked through it...what if it had an expiry and the window was closed? What if there was no way home now?

Rosalyn’s chest burned. She squeezed her eyes shut. She couldn’t remember how to breathe.

Something soft brushed against her arm, curling into the crook of her neck. Smeesh.

“What a stupid name,” she groaned through her tears, but the creature didn’t seem to care. He just snuggled her.

She leaned into the fluffy fur, allowing herself to be comforted by the alien critter. “I don’t know if you can understand me,” she said, threading her fingers through the soft fur, nuzzling her cheek against it. “But I’m gonna talk to you anyway. I’m just used to talking to someone. Thousands of someones, all the time.”

A gaping void of emptiness settled in her gut.

“It’s sad, isn’t it?” she whispered. “That I feel this lost with nobody watching?”

She took in a deep, ragged, healing breath, evening out her gasps from the crying.

“Pull your shit together, Rosie.” Another deep breath, and she swiped at her cheeks, wiping the salty tears on her satiny jumper. “We haven’t moved in a while, which means we should get out of here, right? Didn’t feel like a nice landing.”

She felt along the walls, hoping for some kind of seam she’d missed the last time. There had to be a way to open it again, since it had been open for her to get inside…although searching for logic in the sheer madness of this place was maybe a fruitless pursuit.

“I think I need to figure out a better name for you, little dude,” she said as the critter slithered up around the back of her neck, coming to rest like a scarf. “Not only is Smeesh a dumb name, it was given to you by a psycho demon bitch.”

Rosalyn’s finger brushed up against a little nub, and she stopped moving, picking and pushing at the area, hoping it was some kind of button. Nothing happened, so she kept poking around with one hand while holding on to the nub with the other.

To distract her racing brain, she kept talking to the furball. “I found a nipple on the wall. I don’t know if I should try like…pulling on it?” She snorted at the mental image, her loopy brain apparently on the edge of hysteria, and shook her head.

She opened her eyes, but the darkness was still so disorienting. It was so black in the space that she couldn’t adjust, and despite knowing that it just felt like she should have been able to by now. She had a feeling that if she got outside she was going to burn her eyeballs out with any amount of light.

“When I get outside,” she said firmly. “When.”

Rosalyn dug her fingernails around the nub and pulled. There was only a tiny bit of give, but it was enough to give her hope. She clawed at the space with both hands, ignoring the discomfort in her palms.

“If any part of my body has any fucking strength it’s my…” she grunted as she dug, “…gaming fingers…” Something tore, and the sound was less like cloth and more like flesh, somehow, and it sent shudders through her but she couldn’t stop. “I can’t stay in here. I can’t die in here and end up back with evil wizard dude.” She ripped some more, encountering a hard surface, but it felt thin, she could almost taste the air on the other side.

She punched it, and immediately regretted the decision as her knuckles exploded in pain. She leaned back, pressing her spine against the back of the space and kicking hard with her feet where she thought the breach was.

“If somebody saw this thing go down, then they could know I’m here, and they could be just as batshit as the rest of the demons I’ve met,” she huffed as she continued to slam against the wall. Her bare feet screamed, but it wasn’t as bad as her throbbing knuckles, and this was the best she had, this was all she could do. “If there was a way into this thing there’s a way. Fucking. OUT!”

She screamed as she kicked with all her might, and something crunched, one of her feet scraping through to the other side. The jagged edges of the hole she’d made weren’t pleasant as she jerked her limb back inside, but the last thing she wanted was an exposed appendage to whatever lurked out there.

She peered out the hole, thankful for the dim light of dawn. Or at least, it felt like dawn. If the dewy fresh scent of plants just waking up to a pinkish glow on the horizon was the same here as it was at home, then it was morning and not evening. In any case, it wasn’t super bright, so her eyes didn’t melt as she looked around.

Before she could take in enough of the lush greenish-blue foliage in front of her, the furball slid from her neck, pushing past her cheek, and scurrying out the hole.

“Hey!” Rosalyn cried, panic gripping her chest. “Where are you going?!” Her throat constricted.

This thing had come with her, comforted her, made her feel less alone, and now he was just going to leave? Had he just wanted a ride out of Rhizi’s museum? She supposed she couldn’t blame him, but that didn’t make it feel like any less of a betrayal in that moment. Selfishly, she just didn’t want to be alone.

“Fuck.” She gritted her teeth, and leaned forward, hoping to survey her surroundings a little and catch her breath before trying to widen the hole.

There was nothing really to see other than dense trees, with giant turquoise and teal leaves covered in water droplets. She peered up, and couldn’t see the top from the angle she was at, and imagined that she was in some kind of jungle. But there must have been a break in the trees nearby, since enough light filtered through.

“How long were we travelling that we managed to make it from a like regular forest to a damn jungle?” she wondered out loud, and then pressed her lips together, shaking her head slowly. No stream. No chat. No Smeesh.

Nobody to talk to.

She closed her eyes gingerly, as if experimenting, as if to see if she’d been wrong.

But it was still dark.

Fuck.

She took a deep breath and braced herself against the back, readying for another set of kicks to try to widen the hole, but movement made her freeze.

What the hell is—

Something long and thick slid against the hole, poking and then bonking as if it were trying to come in but unable to make it through. Her breath caught in her throat. She wasn’t sure if she should try to grab it or not, maybe it wouldn’t be able to reach in?

Her heart thundered in her ears.

Light flickered as the thing disappeared, and a soft thunk echoed. She gasped as the furball appeared in the side of the opening, peering in at her with something akin to indignance in its expression. She wasn’t sure how she managed to get that from the thing, but she could almost feel it.

“Were you trying to give me something?” Rosalyn asked, leaning forward.

The critter disappeared from the hole, scurrying down, and then seemed a lot slower coming back up, something clanging outside. She reached out to assist this time, and wrapped her hand around a thick branch. It wasn’t too heavy, but it felt solid, and she pulled it in, taking care not to scrape up her arm. The satiny bandages around her palms helped, though she was loathe to admit to herself that anything Rhizaid had done for her was a boon.

When she got the branch fully inside, she realized it was more like a club. It was thick and long enough to do some damage, but short enough that she could rear back and jab it forward, instead of using her aching feet.

“Thanks, buddy,” she said, and she swore the little guy nodded at her before getting out of the way. “Okay, here goes.”

She sucked in a deep breath and pulled the branch back as far as she could, then slamming it hard right next to the hole. It gave off a metallic noise, and she wondered again at the physiology of this craft she was in.

Ignoring the burning in her palms, she jabbed again, this time missing and shoving the branch out the hole, nearly throwing it clear out with the momentum of her thrust. Muttering curses under her breath, she shoved again, this time hitting at the edge of the hole and cracking aside another chunk.

“My head’ll fit through that, but not my tits and ass,” she quipped, and then heaved again.

She fell into an almost zen-like state, stabbing, jabbing, trying to ignore the pain in her palms, her foot, the general exhaustion of her entire damn body. It was akin to what she imagined was what runner’s high was, that blissful place between adrenaline and exhaustion and pushing your body to its very limit…

Finally, she dropped the branch, using it as a footstool to propel herself up and through the ragged hole. She toppled headfirst to the ground, which was a lot further than she’d anticipated, curling just enough so that her shoulder took the brunt of the weight.

She groaned and rolled, the critter crawling all over her chest and running circles, as if cheering her on. Rosalyn might have laughed, except her breath whooshed from her lungs as she came face-to-face with the cold dead eyes of the creature she’d just clawed out of.