Something rumbled through the ground, making Jorge look up from his breakfast with a frown. This had been happening too often recently. Every few days his farm experienced a miniature earthquake, leaving torn-up ground in its wake, and he just knew it couldn’t be anything natural.

He got up and walked to the window to look out, but by then the rumbling had subsided and he knew it was too late. A cloud of dust drifted in the air, slowly settling back to the ground. He shook his head and noted down the time and date. This had been happening for two weeks now, but he had yet to form a proper hypothesis.

The times varied wildly, but a clear pattern was emerging. There were outliers, but on the whole, the instances grew closer together.

Jorge couldn’t help but worry. What was all this heading to?

He grabbed his rifle and headed out, checking on the spot where dust was visible. He’d found tracks once before, and not tracks of any critter he’d seen before. Whatever was stampeding through, it wasn’t ordinary.

This time, though, in addition to the strange torn-up trail, there was something else in the dust.

Footprints.

Was someone driving strangely-shod cattle across his land on the regular? That just weren’t right.

Scowl firmly in place, Jorge followed the tracks across the field and toward the scraggly trees that bordered his land.

His neighbor wasn’t the neatest man, his land generally ill-kept around the edges, and it only made Jorge scowl harder. At least Snideley had finally drug that old car outta here.

But when Jorge saw the doorway, he couldn't help but stare. It stood like one of those decorative installations that folks made in cities for whatever crazy reasons city folks did stuff. Just a doorway without a door. Stone, but it looked seamless.

Jorge walked closer, hesitating only a moment at the edge of his property line before crossing into Snideley's land. If Snideley thought he could drive cattle across Jorge's land without so much as a by-your-leave, then Jorge sure wouldn’t worry himself over a little tresspassin'.

A slow walk around the door and, yep, it was a single solid piece. He ran his hand across it with a frown. How had this been made, drug over here, and set up without him noticing? ‘Cause it sure hadn’t been carved here, he’da seen a block of stone that big for sure.

He might have thought settin’ this thing up was the source of whoever kept tramplin’ across his land, if not for how seamlessly integrated the door was with the ground. The grass was grown around it as though it had been here for years, and he could have sworn it wasn't here a month ago. He'd have noticed. Sure, it sat in a little valley, but the top still stuck up pretty big.

Jorge stepped into the space inside the door to look more closely at the carvings on the interior, and the world spun into madness.

He felt like he'd fallen into hell. There was no better word for it. The room was dim and expansive, full of screams and clashes and sizzling and the sight of people and monsters cutting each other apart.

Two men fought in the midst of a roiling mass of... creatures. He saw centipedes longer than cars, little stabby creatures running among the feet of the others, a couple of giant floating eyeballs that looked straight outta a horror flick...

Jorge pulled his rifle and backed away to line up a shot, but with so much going on he wasn't even sure where to aim.

Before he could decide, he fetched up against something that squished. He wasn't ashamed to admit he yelped and jumped back - with bugs the size of buses who wouldn't be a little spooked?

The caterpillar on the wall behind him wasn't just squishy, however; it also was electric, and even as he jumped away lightning surged through him. Jorge tumbled to the ground, stunned and twitching.

"Damn it, someone else is in here! Can you hold them?"

He could still hear, and see, though his body refused to move. He had to run. The caterpillar opened an entirely impossible mouth full of oddly slanted teeth, broad and edge-on, curving away into the recesses of its maw like the blades on a too-big food processor. It let go of the wall, leaning that horrible mouth out toward Jorge's face.

His gun lay on the ground, well within reach. He could blast that sucker if only his body would move. It weren't right for a man to die like this.

If Jorge survived this, when he got home he’d have to ring the governor first thing. The world had gone mad. What was the point of having a governor if he weren’t going to do something about things like this?

Then one of the guys - the one who'd spoken, he guessed - jumped over his still-convulsing form and slammed a pair of glowing swords right into the evil caterpillar's ugly mug, cracking lightning sparking out harmlessly against his armor.

Armor?

Jorge stared up, wondering how someone carrying a couple lightsabers and wearing honest-to-god armor didn't get noticed by someone.

"Little help here?" the other man sounded a bit frantic.

"Coming."

The caterpillar hissed and lightning snapped in a ripple down its back. The man with glowing swords slashed it again and it bit down on his arm in retaliation.

Jorge jumped back in shock, only then realizing his body was responding again. "Hah!" He grabbed his rifle, aimed it straight down the caterpillar's gullet, and fired.

The bullet left a furrow down its side, a tiny scrape that hardly seemed to hurt it. Undeterred, Jorge went to rechamber, but—

"Don't bother," grunted the swords guy. "Leave it to us. And you should go. The exit is there." He pointed to a patch of wall that was a little blurrier than the rest of the wall. "Stay out and you'll be safe. I promise."

Jorge aimed anyway, but before he could get off another shot the caterpillar hissed its last and fell to the ground, split in two pieces that stopped crackling and began to disappear.

The man turned away and jumped - actually jumped, flying like some kinda olympic long-jumper gymnast swingin’ off a high bar - back into the fray of madness at the far end of the room.

A bird's screech of triumph lasted only a split second as it snatched up one of the little monsters on the ground and clawed at it, only for it to retaliate in kind. Both plummeted from the air.

Jorge wanted to yell at the men to get out of there and leave the monsters to fight among themselves, but found his voice stuck in his throat.

They were moving so fast. So confidently.

He'd never seen anything like it.

Even in movies there was a falseness to the characters' confidence, that niggling sense that if it were a real actual fight they'd never be really movin' like that. The way choreography worked made for pretty lookin' fights, but this... this was raw and brutal and strangely mesmerising.

The sword guy jumped again, somehow grabbing hold of another one of the birds though Jorge couldn't tell how, his weight dragging it down and slamming it into the wall. He whaled on it with his swords a little, then spun away to intercept another attack coming for his back as though he could sense everything going on.

The other guy wasn't quite as fancy or acrobatic with his fighting, but he still moved with steady confidence if a bit more defensively. He had a massive sword in one hand, too long for any human to swing so casually, and a blurry knife in the other.

Then one of the giant centipedes pounced on the bird-thing, while the little stabby one joined in.

It took a hot minute for Jorge to make out the lines of conflict here, but he was starting to figure that the monsters weren't all wild. Some of 'em were acting awful protective toward the two guys.

Were they like guard dogs? Guard giant-centipedes?

"Hold that one," ordered sword-guy, and the centipede nodded and held it down, parking itself on top of the injured bird-thing like a cat on a spot of sunlight.

That answered that question.

Jorge was starting to feel lightheaded. This place was insane. These people were insane.

Maybe he'd gone insane.

Then one of the bird-things came right at him, claws out, lightning sparking off its bladed wings, and he raised his rifle and fired. The bullet didn't seem to impact it at all, disappearing into its body without even slowing it down. Jorge reloaded and fired again, point blank, the critter's claws right in his face.

"Not today, you don't," shouted the jumping lightsaber guy, stabbing down on the bird-thing - harpy? Was that what they were called when they had hands and legs? - with both swords and driving it to the ground just short of where he stood.

Its claws left a swipe down Jorge’s shirt, but didn't even break skin.

He fell back and sat down hard, no longer able to process all the chaos. He looked around for the fuzzy patch of wall the guy had called an exit. Maybe he should get himself outta here.

With one last glance back to the fight, that seemed to be winding down by now, Jorge turned and unashamedly ran for it. He didn't even stop to think about the fact that he was about to slam face-first into a wall, but kept right on going.

Jorge emerged back into Snideley's overgrown fringe, right beside the crazy doorway that was definitely a real and magic and terrifying doorway.

He didn't wait around a minute but took off back for home at a dead sprint.

He no longer had any interest in investigating the mysterious earthquakes. If it was anything to do with... that, then he'd just say a prayer and get on with livin'. Nothing a guy like him could do anything about.