Another world. A fantasy where I could learn magic and put aside my responsibilities. Yes, please.

The world was frozen around me, but I wasn’t panicked. I’d imagined this moment my entire life. Not exactly, but I had daydreamed. Some had called the time wasted, but happiness and productivity correlated, and it was just too fun to give it up, even if I knew it would never happen.

But it had. Dismissing this chance as a dream or hallucination might be more accurate, but I took the tiny chance that it was all real and put myself in the moment. The faint buzz of the air conditioning had stopped. Jeb was stuck in the middle of reshuffling a stack of papers, while Aaron was busying himself in work during one of the rare times he wasn’t coughing.

My heartbeat was shockingly loud as I stared down at the small blue dragon.

“I have time, right? I can ask you some more questions before I decide?”

He wobbled in midair and gave me an exasperated look. I didn’t question my strange understanding of the alien dragon’s facial expressions. No, I was more focused on how adorable he was. He had cute little fangs and twitchy ears and big round eyes. I immediately wanted to pet him.

“I … suppose. I’m just an inhabitant of the world you’d be put in, though, so I can’t tell you too much. All I really know about the system is that you can’t just tear through dimensions like I did. I need to send something back—someone back. You’ll get the local language just like I’ll get the one here. Look, this needs to be done fast or the system will find me.”

“What is the system? What’s it do?”

“Well, from what I can tell, it’s the controls to the multiverse.”

I tried to tilt back in my chair, only to hit something that felt more like steel than stuffing. Right, that whole time stop thing. That was annoying. I made a decision and got up, approaching the tiny dragon.

“Well, you might be fine to be a fugitive, but I’m not. Whatever this system is, it isn’t something I can support. So help me break it.”

He eyed me. “You want to break the control system to the multiverse. That would be … completely catastrophic.”

I shrugged. “We could just beat up whatever’s controlling it.”

“Hah. You’re quite audacious. How about I make you a deal.”

His eyes glowed. I backed away and got my chair between us just in case he was about to explode or something. The glow spread across his body until his small body was completely surrounded by the blue haze. His wings stilled then stopped. It almost looked like he had been time stopped like everything around me. Which, by the way, completely violated the laws of physics as I knew them unless the entire universe was a simulation the whole time.

“As it is, you are weak. I’ll hold on to a piece of your soul and check on it every so often. Become powerful enough and I’ll allow you to help me take over the multiverse.”

That sounded like the kind of deal a supervillain makes. But whatever, supervillains were cool.

“Deal. So what kind of magic systems are we talking? Is it like Dungeons and Dragons, or what?”

“We don’t have time. Do you fully understand and accept the agreement?”

“Fine, but can you tell me—”

“The deal is verbally sealed. Do not worry, your soul grows back over time.”

The dragon’s eyes glowed even brighter and in a blink I was sucked into a space way too small for me. My last thoughts I had while in that plane adjacent to reality was an annoyance that I’d forgotten to ask the dragon’s name, and then panic that after I’d learned I had a soul I hadn’t actually acted like it.

At least it would grow back.