Riley woke lying on her back in the grass, staring straight up at a sky she didn’t recognize.

  It was the wrong shade of blue.

  Too bright. Too clean. There was none of the washed-out smoggy haze she was used to seeing between city buildings. Even the clouds seemed strange, they were too crisp, like someone had increased the saturation on reality and forgotten to turn it back down.

  She had no idea how long she’d been there.

  For a few long seconds she just breathed, feeling her chest rise and fall, waiting for the memory of how she’d gotten here to slot into place.

  Nothing did.

  Her head felt light and floaty, like the world might tilt sideways if she tried to move too quickly. She knew this feeling. Fainting wasn’t exactly a hobby, but it also wasn’t a stranger in her life.

  Riley took a slow breath and forced herself to roll carefully onto an elbow, then push up into a seated position. She paused there, legs stretched in front of her, palms flat against the grass.

  When she’d passed out before, low blood sugar, anxiety, that one time in gym class, she’d learned to sit first. Sitting gave the blood time to catch up. Also, if she did keel over again, sitting was closer to the ground than standing.

  She blinked against the sunlight and took in her surroundings. She was in a clearing, a near-perfect oval of vibrant green grass surrounded by mature trees, their leaves stirring gently in the faint breeze. Above, the sun was high and bright, warm against her face and arms. The whole scene had that postcard quality: idyllic, peaceful.

  The kind of place couples might bring a blanket and some overpriced cheese.

  Too bad Riley wasn’t remotely an outdoors person.

  If life had given her a “choose your battlefield” option, she’d have picked a dim bedroom, a charging cable, a bag of chips, and her phone. Preferably with a new real-time strategy event running and enough stamina potions to keep her up way too late.

  “Where the hell am I?” she murmured.

  Her own voice sounded small and strange in the open air.

  She squinted up at the sky again, then around the clearing, as if some street sign or billboard might have spawned while she wasn’t looking.

  Nothing. No buildings, no benches, no trails. Just grass, trees, occasional birdsong, and the distant murmur of what might have been water.

  “What was the last thing I remember?” she asked herself.

  That felt like a solid question. Or at least a solid place to start.

  She frowned, trying to rewind. Her brain offered flashes: her room, the familiar glow of her phone screen, a notification from Warfront: Kingdoms, the alliance chat screaming about a mass rally, coffee, her hoodie, annoyance at someone’s bad troop composition.

  Had she gone to bed?

  Had she eaten?

  Her stomach chose that moment to growl, long and low, like it was offended she hadn’t prioritized it sooner.

  “Oh, great, you’re awake,” she muttered at it.

  She glanced down automatically, and did a double take.

  Her hoodie and jeans were gone. The faded logo from that community college she didn’t attend anymore was gone. Instead, she was wearing…this.

  A plain, loose, off-white tunic with ties at the neckline and sleeves rolled to the elbow. A rough, dark skirt that hit mid-calf. The fabric was coarse, like discount Halloween costume meets handmade Ren faire booth. Someone had cinched the tunic at the waist with a rope.

  It was not her first fashion choice.

  It wasn’t even her seventh.

  “Where’s my hoodie and my jeans?!” Her voice leapt up an octave. “What the hell is going on?”

  She plucked at the tunic, half expecting a plastic “Made in China” tag to pop out and scream “PRANKED!” in Comic Sans. Nothing. Just stitches and rough weave.

  Riley wasn’t overly picky about clothes. Clean and comfortable usually cleared the bar so she absolutely would have remembered choosing an outfit that made her look like an underpaid extra in a low-budget Hamlet production in a junior high gymnasium on a Thursday night.

  And she wasn’t an actor. That implied socializing. Projecting. Sharing a stage with people. Riley’s preferred activities were almost aggressively indoor and stubbornly solo.

  Mobile gaming was her thing. Specifically, real-time strategy. Resource management, base building, army training, alliance diplomacy, maps and carefully timed taps.

  Not…this.

  A cold, creeping unease slid into the back of her mind. She pushed it away and started patting herself down.

  “Phone,” she muttered. “Please tell me I still have my phone.”

  She checked the rope belt. No pockets. Checked under the tunic. Nothing. She patted her sides, her legs, ran her hands along the grass where she’d been lying.

  No familiar rectangle. No reassuring weight.

  “Shit!” she yelled.

  The word echoed faintly off the tree line.

  This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

  Riley hated being away from her phone. Loathed it. The device was not just a gadget, it was an extension of her body. She took it everywhere. Into bed, into the kitchen, when she showered balanced on the sink. The phone definitely quadrupled length of her bathroom visits. The longest she’d willingly been separated from it in the last year was the time she dropped it behind the couch and had to move furniture.

  The idea that it was gone, really gone, pressed on her chest like a weight.

  “Okay,” she said aloud. “Okay. Breathe. Maybe it’s just…over there.”

  She pushed herself to her feet, wobbling for a moment as her vision narrowed, then steadied. She turned in a slow circle, scanning the grass.

  Nothing but green and a few scattered wildflowers staring innocently back at her.

  Her breathing hitched.

  This was bad. This was beyond bad. This was “I woke up and my inventory was wiped out” bad.

  She swallowed, the dryness in her throat making it feel like she’d swallowed sandpaper.

  Somewhere in the distance, something roared.

  Riley froze.

  It wasn’t a car engine or a plane overhead. It wasn’t a lawnmower. It was…deep. Raw. Too animal and too powerful to be anything familiar from her neighborhood.

  Her brain, helpful as ever, rifled through its sound library.

  Zoo. That was the nearest match. The big cat enclosures, maybe. Lion. Tiger. Something with teeth longer than her fingers.

  Her skin prickled.

  She slowly turned toward the direction of the sound, heart rate spiking again.

  There, between two of the thicker tree trunks on the far side of the clearing, movement. Dark shapes shifting against the dappled green.

  Riley squinted, squashing down the urge to duck immediately.

  Three figures emerged from the shade of the trees.

  They were tall. Wide. Too broad across the shoulders to be anything she’d want within high five distance. For a fraction of a second she thought they were men in fur vests.

  Then they stepped fully into the sunlight.

  Their skin was gray. Not pale, not ashy, gray, like weathered stone or old concrete. They wore animal skins slung over one shoulder, rough leather and fur, exposing thick, corded arms.

  Whatever they were, they weren’t human. Their teeth too sharp, eyes too yellow. Their faces looked like someone had tried to sculpt a monster from memory, then let it rot.

  They must have heard her shout.

  The three of them fixed their gaze on her. Even across the clearing, she felt pinned, like the moment in a strategy game when the enemy army’s arrow of movement suddenly angled toward your base.

  They started toward her.

  Not walking.

  Running.

  They moved low and predatory, covering ground with terrifying speed. Grass rippled in their wake.

  Riley’s body answered before her brain finished panicking.

  Nope.

  She pivoted on her heel and sprinted for the tree line behind her.

  Her heart slammed against her ribs. Her lungs protested the sudden demand for oxygen. The clearing disappeared in a blur as she dashed toward the shelter of the forest, the only thought in her head a bright, screaming neon sign:

  Get away.

  “Rrrrroar!”

  The sound rolled over her back like a physical shove.

  She didn’t know what those things were and she had absolutely no intention of holding a meet-and-greet to find out.

  Branches and leaves closed around her as she plunged into the trees. The air turned cooler, shadows dappling the ground. Underfoot, roots and rocks tried to grab her ankles. She leapt and stumbled and shoved through low-hanging branches, unwilling to slow down.

  Behind her, heavy footfalls thudded against the earth. Closer than she liked. Much closer than she liked.

  She risked a glance back.

  They’d reached the edge of the clearing and followed her without hesitation, barreling between trees, muscles bunching as they dodged trunks with ugly grace. Up close they were worse, eyes bright with hunger, claws flexing, mouths open in snarling grins. They were built like linebackers and nightmares.

  Riley’s adrenaline flooded her system, turning her limbs light and her fingers numb. Every breath scraped her throat raw. Her heartbeat roared in her ears, threatening to drown out everything else.

  On instinct alone, she dodged sideways around a thick copse of trees, then ducked under a fallen trunk. Her shoulder scraped bark. A branch snagged at her hair. The world narrowed to movement, obstacles, and that horrible, rhythmic thudding behind her.

  Luck, for once in her life, was on her side.

  She was small and slender enough to slip through gaps between bushes and trees that her pursuers had to shoulder their way around. Thorns grabbed at their skins; branches slapped their faces. Their snarls turned frustrated.

  Grunts and growls echoed between the trunks, tinged now with fatigue. But she was no athlete, either. Every step burned down her thighs, her lungs felt like they were trying to escape through her ribs, and spots danced at the edges of her vision.

  She pushed anyway.

  Do not fall. Do not trip. Do not let the angry murder-beasts catch up.

  The forest thickened, underbrush grabbing at her ankles. She burst through a patch of heavy foliage and some kind of thorn bush scraped her arms and snagged her skirt. She heard one of the creatures behind her crash into something with a pained bellow.

  Temporary slowdown. Not enough.

  She heard something else now under the pounding footsteps and her own ragged breathing.

  Water.

  A steady, rushing roar that grew louder the further she ran.

  White water.

  She veered toward the sound because doing nothing was not an option, and any terrain that sounded like “things you put warning signs next to” might at least complicate the monsters’ lives too.

  The trees began to thin.

  Her muscles screamed in protest. Her foot caught on a root and she lurched forward, catching herself against the trunk of a young tree. The slender trunk bowed beneath her grip, but it was enough to keep her upright. She staggered on, teeth gritted.

  Behind her, the three gray-skinned things smashed through the undergrowth again, their second wind apparently very much in effect. For every stride she made, they made two, no, three. The heavy thuds grew louder, closer. She could almost feel their breath on the back of her neck.

  “Come on, come on,” she gasped at herself, at the forest, at whatever cosmic force was responsible for this disaster.

  She burst out of the last row of trees and skidded to a stop so fast her feet slipped in the dirt.

  The ground simply ended.

  The forest opened onto the edge of a cliff, rough rock dropping away sharply beneath her toes. Below, a river boiled in white water rapids, smashing itself to froth. Mist rose in cool bursts, dampening her face.

  There was no gentle slope. No convenient path. Just empty air and a long, unpleasant fall into chaos.

  The roar of the water swallowed all other sound for a brief moment.

  “LEAVE ME ALONE!” Riley screamed, voice raw and high and shredded with panic.

  The three creatures did not appear concerned with her wishes.

  They crashed out of the trees behind her, fanning slightly to either side, hemming her in. One sniffed, wrinkling its snout. The one in the middle, the largest, with an ugly scar running from the corner of its mouth up toward its ear, lifted a hand to its back and drew a club from a crude leather sheath.

  The club was a knotty piece of dark wood studded with what looked like bits of metal or bone.

  “Roooar,” it said, voice booming over the river’s rush.

  It didn’t sound like a word. Just raw aggression shaped into noise.

  Riley backed up until her heels found nothing but crumbling stone. Pebbles dislodged beneath her and tumbled into the rapids below.

  Her legs shook.

  The one to the right took a step closer, its clawed hand reaching out, fingers spread, ready to grab.

  No phone. No hoodie. No safe bedroom. No alliance chat to ping for reinforcements. No screen to tap and send an army to intercept.

  Just her, three monsters and a cliff.

  Her mind, traitorous and utterly useless, supplied: This is what you get for leaving the house.

  As she jerked away from the reaching hand, her foot slipped on the loose edge and gravity did the rest.

  There was a brief, weightless moment where her stomach tried to climb into her throat, as if it were trying to claw its way back to the cliff’s edge.

  Her arms flailed instinctively for something to grab. Air rushed past her ears. The gray faces of her pursuers vanished from view as the sky filled her vision, then the ragged rocks, then the churning white water below.

  She had just enough time to think, “This is going to hurt,” before she hit the river, and everything went cold and wild and loud.