Anika opened her eyes and stared at an unfamiliar ceiling of stone in a dimly lit room. Beneath her, she felt a cool, impossibly smooth, hard surface. Why was she lying on the ground and not her bed? Why was she lying down at all? She pushed herself up and folded her legs into a criss-cross sitting position on the floor. That’s when she realized she was completely naked. And blue.

  “Why am I a smurf?”

  As she muttered these words, her brain started to register more of her surroundings. She was sitting on a stone floor in the middle of a massive, complicated drawing made of lines, circles, and squiggles that looked like the most complicated spirograph drawing ever created. It was then further decorated with characters from what she assumed was an alphabet… they definitely were not Roman letters, or any other letters she had seen on Earth.

  Small bowls around the edge had wisps of smoke rising that smelled of something pungent that she didn’t recognize. Dozens of grey-robed figures arced in front of her, faces hidden beneath voluminous hoods.

  Anika shuddered involuntarily. She imagined this could easily be the start of a creepy cult movie.

  “What is this? Who dares kidnap me? And what did you do to my wings?!”

  The words were spoken by another naked figure, and Anika turned to see a girl with giant bat wings that looked very cool.

  Anika shook her head, not quite believing her eyes. Cool or not, wings were not something that existed on human bodies. Blue was not a color of human skin, unless she was covered in body paint. She rubbed at her skin and felt none of the signs of makeup or the slightly greasy texture of the body paint she helped her friend apply once at a Sci-Fi convention. Cosplay wasn’t normally her thing, but she’d tried it once or twice as part of a group. This was definitely just her skin. But blue?

  The logical assumption was that she was dreaming. Despite not recalling going to sleep, she admitted to herself it was possible. The last time she’d checked the clock, it had been two in the morning, and she had been gaming for a while since then. It was Thursday night… well, she supposed it was Friday morning now, but she didn’t have any classes until afternoon. She’d been lucky enough to score the afternoon session for almost all of her computer classes, and her only morning class was a boring gen-ed biological science course on Tuesday and Thursday at the unpleasant hour of 9 AM. She must have just completely crashed while gaming, that made the most sense. And her awareness now was just a dream.

  “Whoa… why’s everything so big?”

  Anika turned as quickly as she could, using her hands to push her body up and to the right. She didn’t have any fabric beneath her to easily spin on the smooth floor and rug-burn… or stone-burn… didn’t sound fun.

  Objectively, she probably should care more about being naked. But everyone had naked dreams occasionally. At least this wasn’t the ‘you forgot to put on your pants before going to class and everyone is laughing at you’ dream.

  She laid her eyes on a man who looked like a classic fantasy halfling sitting on his knees looking utterly unconcerned with his, or anyone else’s, current state of undress. She had turned enough to see that she was in a circle, and the robed figures were completely surrounding it.

  Besides the girl and the halfling man, there were two other people in the circle: a pitch-black body still lying on the ground, his hands cushioning his head like a pillow, and a glistening, crystalline form sitting upright and unmoving. Her… well, maybe not…his? Anika shook her head again. Their long hair shimmered, like thousands of strands of the tinsel people sometimes put in their hair for parties and special events.

  Anika was entranced by the level of shimmer in their form and missed the ebony-skinned man moving from his spot on the floor.

  “Aww, I told myself I wouldn’t wake up hungover in strange rooms anymore…”

  Anika snapped out of her trance and looked around at the group. Five strange aliens, herself somehow included in the distinctly non-human category, taking in their surroundings and reacting, or not, to their situation. The first girl she’d seen, the one with the wings, screamed incoherently. The others looked around in wonder and confusion - except the crystalline person. They just continued to sit and wait.

  What is going on, she thought. Normally her fantastical dreams just flew off into wild action sequences full of non-sequiturs and involved characters, or at least alien species, that she recognized. She didn’t recognize any of the races around her. She didn’t recognize herself. Nothing in this room was something that stood out to her as stolen from a game, or a movie, or anything she had experienced before.

  She also realized she wasn’t just observing something from an omniscient viewpoint like she usually dreamed. She was experiencing all her senses and had full, coherent thoughts - something that didn’t happen when dreaming. At least, she didn’t think that happened. She didn’t exactly remember her dreams very well by the time she woke up. But this already felt a lot more real than a dream. And that thought was overwhelming.

  She tried to focus her thoughts, but a vibrant awareness of everything around her flooded her mind, bombarding her senses. The smell of incense-like burning. The cold floor on her naked skin. The bright lights of the room. The loud screaming of the winged girl.. Her mouth became dry as she ran out of ways to rationalize her situation.

  Panic began to set in, and she became suddenly acutely aware of her naked body. She shifted her position to hug her legs in front of her, her thighs resting against her breasts. At least she was still in a vaguely humanoid shape with female features she recognized. Her multicolored hair fell forward as she looked down and she was momentarily stunned by her previously blonde hair. One arm still holding her legs tightly, her right hand moved across the top of her knees to touch her head and face. She didn’t have a mirror, but everything felt like how her face normally felt.

  Her hand dropped to her shoulder and her fingers brushed against and around her collarbone.

  It didn’t feel right. Her hand pressing against the area, feeling strange ripples and flaps of skin. She looked down and could make out the bottom of the area and saw horizontal slits. She pressed it and it opened like a wound, flaring in response to the pressure. Had someone… or something… cut her open? Was she actually injured and this was a strange manifestation of an oxygen starved brain, the wound intruding on the otherwise fantastical hallucination? This last absurd detail and spiral of thoughts sent her over the edge into full panic. Overwhelmed, she began to rock back and forth, hugging her knees as tight as she could, eyes tightly closed.

  She continued to rock until something fell over her body and she flinched, looking up in panic. She heard a quiet voice from behind her but couldn’t process the words as her hands jerked away from her knees, catching on thick fabric that draped over her hunched form and felt softer and more luxurious than cashmere. Instinctively, she grabbed whatever it was and wrapped it around her, feeling the weighted pressure of the soft fabric as she pulled it tightly to her sides, trying to smother the panic by squeezing it out of her body.

  It helped. Her rocking slowed and she slowly began to process the words around her again. Raising her head and opening her eyes, she realized the crowd of robed figures was no longer standing in a circle around them and, as far as she could tell, most were no longer in the room. Only five robed figures remained, standing outside the circle in front of Anika, and their hoods were now down, allowing Anika to see a mix of skin and hair colors that didn’t quite match those who were naked around her. At least, those who started naked.

  Now that the standing figures weren’t a tightly grouped sea of clones and were, instead, spread out around the circle, she could see that one of the figures had bat wings similar to the screaming girl and one looked short, about four feet tall. She had more awareness of the fabric hanging off her gangly body and looked down to see it was a robe identical to the ones worn by the alien figures that had encircled them. She adjusted the robe so that she was wearing it properly, wrapping her arms back around her body once she had threaded the arm holes. Next to her she saw a simple wood chair, so she pulled herself up into it in a half crawl, adjusting the robe to ensure she was fully covered.

  Looking around, Anika noticed that three of the other formerly naked people in the circle with her were also now seated on chairs wearing robes. The crystalline one still looked calm and composed, as if they hadn’t twitched a muscle while moving from the floor to the chair. The short man looked around aimlessly, idly swinging his feet and eating some type of snack that Anika didn’t recognize. The fiery hair of the last man draped over the front of his face as he held his head in his hands, not looking anywhere. She couldn’t quite make out what he was saying, but he mumbled to himself, occasionally shaking his head. The girl, however, was still standing… and still screaming.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  “I demand that you return me at once! I am Princess Morigan of Kiliria! Tenth in line to the Throne! You have no right to kidnap me from my home! My father will hear about this!”

  The winged figure outside the circle stepped forward and Anika could see long black hair tied in a simple bun on the back of her head. She had grey skin only slightly darker than the grey robe she wore, violet-purple eyes, and iridescent purple bat wings.

  “Please be silent and allow us to explain.” Her voice was soft and stern and she projected a strong, commanding presence. “I am Nilendi, Head Priestess, and I would like to welcome yo-”

  “I don’t care who you are or where this is, I demand you return me to my home immediately!”

  The girl, Morigan, continued to yell as Anika tried to process without entering panic mode a second time. The ‘this is a dream, probably?’ part of her mind was losing out to the ‘this is definitely real’ part of her mind and the girl’s ranting only solidified that. Listening to someone throw an exceptionally loud tantrum was absolutely not something she would dream about. And why would she dream about other people having similar reactions to her own, at least as far as the unbelievability was concerned.

  The princess really believed she had been kidnapped. Anika had no idea how she was here, or what had happened, but that reinforced that wherever ‘here’ was, it was her new reality. The thought made her breath catch and she felt herself being pulled into a spiral of panic again. She willed the thoughts away and took deep breaths, focusing back on Nilendi, who was stoically gazing at the screaming Princess like a parent waiting for a toddler to cry herself out.

  As Morigan seemed to lose some steam, panting from her long-winded tirade, Nilendi continued as if she hadn’t been interrupted.

  “-you to Etalen. We have summoned you here because you were chosen by the gods as the mages with the strongest potential in your generation. They foresee a grave problem in our future, as the Chaos magic of our world threatens to erupt and cause calamity not seen since our world’s founding, where powerful monsters once roamed the lands and destroyed our fledgling towns. We have noticed problematic signs already, with the dungeons that contain the Chaos magic producing more and stronger creatures than they have in the past.”

  Nilendi paused, making eye contact with each of the five heroes. “The gods do not know the cause of the growing magic and fear the worst. They have thus expended considerable power to bring you here, across the cosmos itself, to be our Heroes. You will help us discover the cause of this change to the magic of our world and prevent our people from coming to harm by defeating the strongest dungeons, thus preventing a repeat of our history and quelling the magical destruction facing us!” Nilendi finished her speech, clearly having prepared the words in advance.

  To Anika, it sounded like the start of an epic anime or rpg video game. She had many times dreamed about being a magical hero… how was this now her reality? It didn’t make sense! Magic? Her, a powerful mage? Dungeons, real dungeons? Somehow she, a junior in college whose most pressing question was whether or not she was going to try to find a summer internship in Data Science, was now supposed to save the world? And it wasn’t even her world! What the actual… She didn’t have any magic! As fantastical as this was, she had a list of questions, and the top question wasn’t even ‘what is this growing magic we are supposed to fight’.

  “What are you talking about? While we’re at it - Where are we? What are you? What am I? How do I go home? And how can I even understand what you are saying?” Anika was not able to hold back the explosion of questions once Nilendi finished talking,

  “Ah.. well,” Nilendi paused, as if never considering that summoning random people to her planet would result in anything other than exuberant excitement and immediate understanding. “I suppose there are some basic questions we may want to address first…”

  “I’m not some peasant you can put to work fighting monsters for a living! That is for soldiers and common folk, not people of my standing!”

  The princess was at it again and Anika had a feeling she was going to become very tired of her. Anika wondered if she could get away with slapping Morigan across the face to make her calm down. Then again, if magic was real, she wasn’t sure she should be starting a fight. She’d be lucky to hit the princess without hurting herself in the process, and the potential for magical repercussions gave her pause.

  “I don’t know much about dungeons, but you seem nice, so I’ll help!” The halfling, having finished off the last of the snack he had been given, bobbed his head happily as he volunteered as tribute.

  “Do you have headache medicine here? This is too much.” The black-skinned boy was still nursing his hangover from whatever it was he had taken at the aforementioned party. Anika felt sorry for him. She’d seen some of her friends come back from crazy frat parties and it had not been a pleasant time for them in the morning. She wasn’t interested in experiencing that kind of ‘fun’.

  “I am ready to serve. Equip me and show me to the dungeons.” The voice came from the crystalline person, who until this time had been silent.

  Anika turned and gaped at them, “You are just going to accept this and trot off to fight evil?! What kind of crazy person are you?”

  “I am trained to fight and it is my duty. This is the way I was raised.”

  “This is good to hear,” Nilendi interjected before Anika could speak. Morigan was still ranting about being a princess and wanting her attendants summoned to her. Anika chose to ignore it, and it seemed Nilendi was making a similar choice.

  “I will answer your questions,” Nilendi nodded to Anika. “I think, most importantly, you are able to understand us because of an enchantment cast as part of our ritual of summoning. The enchantment allows you to understand any language, and speak it in return, by creating connections between words in both languages. If words do not have a comparable pair in your language, however, you will hear our native tongue instead. Please inform me if we must explain any words or concepts that you do not have. What is your name?”

  “Anika.”

  Nilendi’s words were a lot to process. Anika had always wanted to be able to speak other languages, but now she basically had a babel fish in her head to translate everything she heard. That was almost cool enough to make her forget she had woken up naked in a magical fantasy land a short time ago.

  “I do not know what your body used to be, but you are now of the Mizeta, created by the goddess, Water. Our gods told us that the heroes we summoned would be transformed into native races of our planet to ensure compatibility with our world.”

  “That… actually makes a lot of sense.” Anika had no idea what the atmosphere or gravity of this planet was, but she was fairly confident that the odds of five random beings surviving from randomly selected worlds were in favor of at least one person dying a horrible death.

  “Oh.. is that why everyone is so big?” The halfling behind her spoke with a voice of revelation.

  “Perhaps, I do not know about your world. You are a Degeta, created by the god Earth. What is your name?” Nilendi gestured to the others, except Morigan, who had included her name multiple times by now, “And the rest of you?”

  “I’m Philip,” the Degeta replied cheerily. “Nice to meet you!”

  “Zola.” The crystalline figure responded with no inflection.

  “The name’s Panu.” the sable-skinned man half grunted his name as he moved one hand from where it held his hung-over face to give a loose wave.

  “Who cares what any of you peasants are called! The only worthwhile question is how can I go home?” Morigan moved to stand between Nilendi and the rest of the group. “Do not ignore me!”

  Nilendi ignored her. “Morigan and I are Kaseta, the children of the god of Air. Zola, you are a Kineta, the race of our god of Aether, and Panu, you are a Pireta, favored by the goddess of Fire. The ritual matched your new bodies to the race of the god who imbues your Primary magic.”

  That little tidbit was both interesting and highly confusing. Anika could maybe, just maybe, believe that there was magic here and she had been summoned by some elaborate ritual. It’s not like she hadn’t watched isekai anime! Conceptually, it was absolutely insane, but at least being portaled to a new world involved magic external to her. The idea that she had some… innate magical power inside her was unfathomable. Everyone wished for magical powers at some point in their life, but they didn’t actually wake up one day and find out the magic was inside them all along.

  “I’m sorry… Primary magic? What does that mean?”

  Nilendi moved to the side of Morigan to stare at her. Even the Princess paused her ranting to turn and gape at the former human.

  “You… are a water mage, yes?” Nilendi stated.

  “Uh… not last time I checked. I don’t have any magic. I’ve never seen magic. Magic isn’t actually real.”

  “But everyone has magic.” Philip stared at her, his face rife with confusion.

  “Well that’s news to me.” Anika shrugged.

  “Your ritual was clearly broken! It summoned some magic-less peasant, not that Water magic is even worth considering compared to elements like Air. And worse, it falsely summoned me. I demand to go home at once!”

  “Our gods assure us that you do indeed have Water magic. I do not know what kind of world you come from, but everyone has an innate magic power.” Nilendi attempted to gain control of the situation to prevent Morigan from entering another long-winded rant. She continued speaking.

  “As far as going home, I’m afraid that right now there is no way to do so. Our gods have expended their accumulation of cosmic power to bring you here, so there is no way to power a ritual to return you to your own world. Perhaps once you have fulfilled your duties as a Hero to our world, the Primaries will find a way to power a ritual to return you to your home.”

  Anika felt like she had been hit in the chest by a 120-pound dog leaping from a full sprint chasing after a frisbee - the air in her lungs suddenly was insufficient and exited her mouth with a whoosh, yet her body failed to draw in more oxygen… or whatever she was breathing now. There was no way to go home? She was stuck here? Even if she was beginning to believe this new reality, she would at least expect that magic could send her home.

  The overwhelming anxiety and panic started to course through her body again, waves of hot fear and cold dread combined with the breathing of everyone around her that seemed suddenly loud. She wrapped herself tightly in the robe, trying to suppress the feeling.

  And then Morigan screamed with ear-piercing rage and lashed out with… something. A gale of wind blew past Anika towards Nilendi as the Princess launched a magical attack on the head Priestess of Etalan.