Peyton and Lexie were shown to the two private rooms on the level of the tower where we had the conversation, and Greyjon escorted me a floor down to what appeared to be a very similar set up. The spacious landing opened onto a common space with a dining table and chairs, and cupboards for storage. The private room on my side of the tower was larger than I had been expecting, and fairly plush. There was a large bed, at the end of which was a chest, an armoire, a nightstand, and an empty tub. A counter had some personal care items on it. There was no window here, and I hadn’t recalled seeing any windows while walking down the stairs either. I wondered what the sky looked like in another world. I wondered if I would get the chance to even see it.

The bed was almost uncomfortably fluffy, but the bedding seemed clean enough. I had checked obsessively for bugs, wondering at the quality of life in a fantasy place like this, but everything was clean. The chest was empty. The towels were clean and soft, smelling faintly perfumed. I tapped the tub, which was made of smooth wood, and wondered how hard it was to fill without running water.

After I had searched the room as thoroughly as I could, I walked to the door and peaked out into the hall. It was empty, which surprised me because I had half expected to see Greyjon lounging at the table, pretending he wasn’t standing guard. Curious, I walked over to the other door and opened it to find a room very similar to my own. I wondered if this had been meant for our lost companion, wondered what kind of experience they were having and where they had ended up.

The chest was empty there too. Then I examined the cupboards in the common area, to find extra wash basins, towels, linens, and dishes – cups, plates, bowls, jugs. For a moment I felt ridiculous, opening every cupboard in the place, but I justified it as wanting to be familiar with my surroundings. Besides, if this was a game of some sort, it wasn’t unusual to check every area thoroughly, and I had always been a bit of a completionist when it came to games.

I stepped out onto the stairs, listening for footsteps. When I heard nothing, I turned and made my way down. After about four more floors, I arrived at a door that closed off the stairwell. But as I reached out to see if it was locked, my hand hit the air in front of the door instead. I placed both hands out and pressed – a full 3 inches from the door, there was a solid invisible barrier. We weren’t free to leave after all. Frowning, I turned to make my way back up the stairs and almost ran directly into Peyton.

She gasped and pushed herself back against the wall of the stairwell. “Sorry, Lucas. I didn’t mean to sneak up on you like that,” she said softly, almost in a whisper. She glanced at the door behind me. “Is it locked?”

“I’m not sure. There’s a barrier of some kind.” I wasn’t sure if we needed to, but I also felt the need to whisper.

She tilted her head, her bright blue eyes full of curiosity as she stepped past me and placed a hand out. She was tall for a woman, maybe only a few inches shorter than me. At 6’2, I tended to tower over a lot of people. But then, actors and actresses were usually fairly tall. She reached, checking every inch of the door frame’s space. “Solid,” she noted, stepping back. She sighed, then turned and walked back up the staircase. I followed her.

“Think they’ve put a barrier up somewhere above us?” she asked.

“Possibly. I’m gonna look in here first though.” I stopped to check the first floor we came to – it opened into a currently dark kitchen, though embers did burn in what appeared to be a stone oven, warming the entire room. It smelled faintly of food, though it did not appear that anything was currently being cooked. The next floor was storage, full of barrels and baskets and sacks of vegetables and dried goods. There was a door that was very unnaturally cold to the touch – when I pushed it open, I could see that the entire room had frost and ice lining it, and there was meat stored inside. I ran a finger down the frost-coated walls, and wondered if magic kept it cold. The next floor had a similar set up to my own floor, but the doors to the rooms here were locked.

We walked up to the floor Peyton and Lexie were staying on. Lexie was standing at the entrance to the stairwell, bouncing on the balls of her feet in nervous excitement. “Nothing?”

“No exit, at least,” Peyton said. “There’s a kitchen and some supplies. We could probably make some food if you’re hungry.”

“Maybe later,” Lexie said, looking disappointed.

I nodded briefly to the girl, who smiled nervously at me for a moment. Then I continued up the stairs. “Oh, you’re going that way too?” Lexie asked.

“May as well,” Peyton said, following me. But I didn’t make it very far. Just around the bend, we met another invisible barrier. Or rather, I met it, intimately, face first. Peyton chuckled as I rubbed my face, and checked this one for any gaps as well. “Starting to feel a bit like a prisoner,” I said.

“You’re not wrong,” Peyton noted, her tone wry. We made our way back down.

The rooms for Lexie and Peyton were similar to my own, and they had already checked their own personal spaces as thoroughly as I had checked mine.

We were left fairly unsupervised through the rest of the day and the evening, which I found surprising. I thought we’d at least see people going up or down the stairs of the tower, but there was no sign of anyone. I wondered if they were having a meeting about how to handle things going forward. Although a part of me wanted to hole up in the room that had been assigned to me, another part of me wasn’t willing to move very far from the other people from my world. In a strange way, knowing that we had the shared history of our homeworld made them feel safe. The feeling must have been mutual, or at least they didn’t retreat to their own space – we had settled into the common area on their floor, where the chairs had more cushions. I had chosen a seat where I could stare out the door in case anyone did happen to pass by.

Lexie had laid back on the couch that we had shared with Chase earlier, staring absently at the items we had emptied out of our pockets. We had discovered that our electronics were completely fried and wouldn’t even turn on, and I think Lexie was still pouting over the loss of her phone. She had also arrived with a wallet that had a card that could access the funds she earned from streaming online, her state ID, and some pictures of her friends and family. Most of Peyton’s personal items had been in her purse, which hadn’t arrived with her, so she had left her baseball cap and smart watch on the table. For myself, I had a wallet stuffed with cards, a bit of cash, ID, and other detritus I had collected and hadn’t cleaned out recently – business cards, appointment cards, scraps of paper with important phone numbers. My keys were also in the middle of the table with my own non-functioning phone, and a tin of breath mints. “Who do you think the fourth person is? Someone else from the plane?” Lexie asked, as she absently reached out a hand to tap at the dark screen of her phone.

I thought about the strange popping noises I had heard on the plane. Three before me. “Yes, I think it was someone else on the plane.” I tried to remember if the first person I had seen disappear had been either of my current companions or someone else completely, but I hadn’t paid that much attention. All I had been aware of was that a person had been there one moment – and not the next.

After several more moments of silence, Lexie sat up. “Man, I can’t believe I was on the same plane as Peyton freaking Hobbs and would never have known!”

Peyton smiled. “I try not to advertise my travel plans. Sorry.”

“No, I get it. I bet the paparazzi are a pain in the ass. I’ve been getting recognized a bit, especially when I show up at cons, and it really freaks my parents out.”

“I bet.”

“Why were you heading to Reno anyway?” Lexie leaned forward as she talked. I continued to stare out the door, but was listening curiously as well.

“We were going to shoot parts of a film I’m going to be working on out there.”

“Wow, really? What movie? I bet it’s going to be…” Lexie trailed off midsentence, a frown creeping across her features, and she plopped back, slouching low on the couch. “Well. I guess it’s not going to be made now.”

Peyton sighed. “Oh, it could still be made. They can just find someone to replace me.” After several moments, she added. “Honestly? I’m not too upset. This could be interesting. A real life fantasy adventure.”

Lexie seemed to perk up at that a bit. “Yeah, like an RPG isekai.” I could see her head turn to look at me from the corner of my eye. “Do you ever play video games, Lucas?”

“Some,” I said. They both stared at me a moment longer, maybe expecting me to elaborate. But when I didn’t, they engaged in some other small talk. About an hour later, Lexie’s stomach grumbled, and the girl looked a bit sheepish at the volume of it. “I suppose we should see what we can make in the kitchen,” I said, standing and walking to the stairs.

I could hear Lexie immediately pop up to follow me, and Peyton trailed after. As we approached the kitchens, we heard voices, and I could smell food. I stopped at the doorway, feeling almost like an intruder – inside were two people, a man and a woman.

“Wow, that smells great,” Lexie said, peering around me to look into the kitchen. It was brighter and warmer, with a fire going under a cauldron and the stone oven was red hot.

The woman looked up and smiled at Lexie warmly. She had long brown hair tied back into a messy bun, and was absolutely covered in freckles. “We’re in the middle of preparing a supper for you lot right now. If you want to return to the room with the dining table, we’ll bring it up in a few moments.”

Lexie nodded enthusiastically and hopped back up the stairs, taking them nearly two at a time. Peyton lingered a bit, and when we were out of earshot of the room, said quietly, “Do you think it’s going to be safe to eat here? What if that’s what makes it so we have to stay?”

“Even if we’re in Hades or the Feywild, we have no way to get out that I can see, and I don’t really want to starve to death.”

She raised an eyebrow and smiled. “I suppose you’re right. Besides, it smells really good.”

We continued up to the floor my room was on, where Lexie was already seated at the table, swinging her feet absentmindedly. Peyton and I both sat as well. Soon, the people that had cooked were bringing the food up to us. Lexie’s eyes boggled, and I’m sure I had the same look on my face though Peyton continued to maintain her composure – they had already served up the food to individual bowls and plates, and instead of carrying the items up on a platter, they were using magic to float them through the air. There was a faint light enveloping them, what I assumed to be a visible sign of their use of magic. A bowl of thick, white soup was settled in front of me, as well as a small plate of some sort of meat drowned in a brown gravy and two biscuits. A knife, fork, and spoon settled neatly onto the table next to the plate, and a cup also settled nearby.

The male cook waved a hand absently – the cups filled with water. “Wow,” Lexie whispered, and I felt equally awestruck.

“We do have some other options for drinks, if you want us to grab something for you,” the man said as the cups filled.

Peyton had grabbed her cup and taken a brief sip from it. “Water is fine,” she said, sounding impressed.

“I kinda wish I could have a root beer,” Lexie mumbled, grabbing a spoon to enthusiastically try the soup.

“Beer? Like an ale of some sort?” the man said, a bit confused.

Lexie’s face lit up again and she sat up straight and opened her mouth to speak. “No,” Peyton and I both said firmly at the same time. She rolled her eyes at us, but didn’t attempt to argue. I cleared my throat and avoided making eye contact with Peyton as I picked up the knife and fork and began sawing at the meat. It tasted like a regular steak. I wondered if it was probably just cow after all.

“We’ll have some proper bread prepared for the morning, got to let the dough rise. The biscuits should be a quick fix though. There’s more of the potato soup in the kitchen, and you can help yourselves to anything else you’d like.” The woman dusted her hands on her apron, and cast her eyes about the room as though she was wondering what she had forgot. “Oh, and water, of course.” She moved to one of the cupboards and pulled out three empty jugs. I watched her carefully as she summoned more water to fill the jugs for us. She didn’t say anything, but she was enveloped in light again, and the jugs filled to the brim. “Feel free to drink from these. I’ll go around shortly and fill the tubs, don’t worry about the water in them, we’ll remove it tomorrow.”

And then she bustled down the hall to my room to do just that. As she passed by us again to head upstairs, I asked, “Are we prisoners here?”

She looked startled by the question. “Why… of course not!”

“Then why the barriers?”

“They’re just for now. I understand something went wrong with the ceremony, and instead of settling you in proper they’ve been having meetings all day to try to figure out how to fix it. Spell creation and alteration is no mild feat, takes brilliant minds and lots of time.” She smiled reassuringly at me. “They’ll want to give you the grand tour tomorrow, I’m sure, and then start your lessons.”

“I see. Thanks.” She nodded, and continued out of the room and about her business.

After eating, Lexie and Peyton said goodnight and left, each carefully carrying a jug of water with them to their rooms. I did hear Lexie fuss about spilling some on the stairs, but didn’t hear any dramatic clatters at least. I sat in silence for several moments, staring at the dishes and leftovers. Feeling guilty to leave anything, I gathered the dishes and walked them downstairs. There was a large basin that seemed to be for washing dishes, so I set the dishes near that and went back up to my room, grabbing my jug of water on the way.

I set the water on the counter and checked the tub – it was halfway full of steaming water. It was too hot for my tastes, but it had been a long day and I didn’t want to stay up much longer. I stripped my clothes off and set them on the counter, and climbed into the tub. A small table set next to the tub had a few soaps and herbal smelling oils on a tray. I scrubbed myself down thoroughly, then got out and dried myself and pulled my boxers back on. Then I settled into the bed to sleep.

My mind was racing with so many thoughts about the situation. Usually when I get this distracted before bed I doomscroll or play games on my phone. But the phone didn’t work anymore. I thought about it, sitting upstairs on a table, next to my wallet full of things I couldn’t use and my keys to doors I’d never be able to unlock again. I stared at the ceiling of the unfamiliar room in an unfamiliar world and wondered what was going to happen to us.