EMMA

  The long trudge up the windowlit spiral wrung most of the panic out of Emma's muscles.

  The first forty sets of steps were a fraught experience. Not stepping on Dovin's tail got easier as her pace flagged. Her mind was busy racing through theories— no, not theories, guesses —about what was about to happen.

  These Dragonborn— these people —knew that sometimes people showed up. Had a whole culture surrounding the idea. The total impossibility of being transported to another planet, intact and alive, in a flash of light, was real. Replicable. Regular, even, if that was what Mirri had meant by 'this year.'

  And it kept people together, otherwise Calen and Mr. Isaacson would have landed somewhere else, leaving Emma calf-deep in a freezing river, alone.

  But there hadn't been five billion people scattered around in the wilderness next to them. They should have run into at least a few neighbors from their District on the walk to the tower, if everyone had stayed relatively distributed.

  Instead, the woods had been almost eerily silent under the astronomical display in the sky.

  And five billion was a low number. Too low to be literally everyone on Earth. There was some sort of inaccuracy in the predictions the Venatrix had made, whether their gods were real or just a story to explain the unknown.

  Emma had been sure magic wasn't real either, one whole day ago, but when push had come to shove around the kitchen table, she had still blindly plunged them into this mess, and made the wish as if it could come true.

  It still might.

  Stone grated lightly off the wooden guide rails, several tons of rock smoothly sliding down past Emma's hand on the railing, failing to crush her fingers due to the half-meter gap between the stairwell and one of the elevator's counterweights.

  She lost her count of the steps after that, and started counting windows every fourth flight of stairs. The higher sections of the tower had fewer patched holes in the walls, displaying more of the original architecture and form instead of hastily-mortared river stones plugged into obvious tears, which left the critical apertures lighting their way as a regular occurrence.

  She reached eighty before the builders skipped a floor. Then again, and she realized the pattern had changed, and she had lost track of how far she had climbed since.

  So Emma gave up on counting stairs, and stayed focused on staying ahead of the steady thump thump thump of someone's tail dragging up the steps behind them, always just out of sight.

  Calen was starting to huff and puff for air by the time she almost ran into Dovin, who had stopped on one of the landings.

  The door looked almost exactly like every other portal into the cliffside they had passed so far: Iron-banded oak with a coppery-looking bar-handle, ten feet tall, and wide enough that Emma could probably stand in the doorway and touch the sides, but Calen's fingers would fall short.

  "This is the Warden's Perch. Pay attention once you've caught your breath." Dovin said.

  Fidgeting visibly while Calen caught his breath would have been rude, so Emma pinched and squeezed at the rough, lint-covered pinch of meat she had shoved in her pocket instead of eating.

  "Go ahead boss, read me the riot act." Calen was not so patient, continuing to prod at the complete strangers who had saved their lives, even while hunched over resting his palms on his knees.

  Dovin silently cocked his head.

  The moment stretched, measured in Calen's continued gasping. There was some scraping, and a few footfalls echoed from above, but the elevator had long since stopped clacking.

  A few breaths later, Emma felt herself start to smirk despite herself.

  Dovin finally spoke when Calen was standing up straight, and no longer audibly dragging air into his lungs.

  "Right now you are standing in the fortress of Eastwatch. The moment you cross this threshold, you are accepting hospitality in a very powerful someone's home," The dragonborn said. "Your tour is going to start with the bathroom, so that you don't get mud on the office chairs. Attempt to harm anyone who is welcome here, and you lose guest-rights. Tell me what guest-rights mean in your culture, and I will tell you if there are any major differences."

  Emma opened her mouth to ask about whether socks were allowed, then closed it, remembering she didn't own any more socks.

  They were entirely at the mercy of strangers if they wanted to leave with shoes on their feet.

  "No violence, no stealing, leave if asked," Calen listed out. "Uhhhhh... Wash your hands after you use the bathroom?"

  "Last one less likely to have you taking the fast way down than the others, but still a good idea. Declare any weapons if asked. Without reaching for them," Dovin added. "That's the guest half. Now tell me the rights you think you have in exchange. Not you, her."

  Dovin's was nodding gravely instead of mocking Calen's basic list of obvious courtesies you were supposed to follow even outside of people's houses.

  He also looked like he was waiting for an answer from Emma, who hadn't really thought there was a second part of the question until now.

  "Um, the same?" She fumbled. "Except, we're allowed to leave safely if we want to?"

  Her stumbling answer seemed to satisfy Dovin. At least, enough that Calen wasn't immediately at risk of taking 'the fast way down.'

  "You won't be harmed or stolen from. You will not be fed tainted food, and are entitled to protection if someone with ill intent shows up looking for you," Dovin's eyes narrowed. "Ideally, you warn your host if you know something like that is going on, so they can make a decision and prepare, but even the best of us make silly mistakes sometimes."

  Emma gave a slow blink at the strange statement.

  "Sorry?" She hated squeaking. "We don't really—"

  "Our most recent guest ignored that one. You just got a shield out of it," Dovin sighed, then clarified; "Did you have enemies on Earth that would be dangerous to you here, if they knew where you were? Anyone who stands to gain from your death?"

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  "Got a shield out of it?" The strange questions just kept coming, but Emma barely heard them.

  Mahira had only passed Emma the shield to keep it out of the hands of the Warlord. Dovin couldn't mean—

  "No. We were nobodies. Today was the first time anyone has tried to kill either of us directly." Calen spoke up.

  Dovin's nostrils flared with a huff of air that seemed almost... amused?

  "Nobodies, or well-protected." He said.

  Emma almost opened her mouth to tell Dovin that it was both, but he was already swinging the door wide and looking up the stairwell in front of them. The dragonborn from the elevator were helping two new strangers wrestle different ends of two different wooden boxes.

  "First door on your left," He said as Calen led the way. "Don't undress yet, he'll be able to heat the basin with his hands if the water chills. Viran, check on Mirri, she'll help you find them clothing while I handle this."

  "Okay." Someone rumbled, way too close behind Emma.

  She strangled the shriek an instant too late. The pathetic noise that resulted still managed to warble its way out of her throat. Her feet had scrambled the rest of the way across the threshold by the time she finished turning.

  Viran had been completely silent until Dovin had addressed him. Emma hadn't noticed the steady thump thump thump of his tail disappearing during all the questions about guests and rights.

  And now two completely alien faces were pointed at her, tilting oddly in completely unrecognizable expressions.

  Calen's hand wrapped around her elbow, dragging her out of the way, because she was still standing in the doorway while he made excuses for her.

  "Thanks, got it, we'll figure the running water out. Come on Em, we're gonna go find out what a toilet looks like and get all the mud off our feet."

  Emma let herself be dragged across the windowless hexagonal entry hall, and fought the urge to look over her shoulder until Calen stopped at another door. The first one on the left.

  A shock of steam passed over Emma in a wave as she stepped inside after him, and hung hazy over the rest of the room. Decorative stones studded the walls and floors, forming clean lines around the utilities of the room, and otherwise dancing across blank walls in looping swirls that were just imprecise enough to tell her the art had been done by hand with leftover materials.

  The opulent space was utterly dominated by a bathtub large enough to double as a grave for a horse. It was set deeply in the floor against the back corner opposite the door, and seemed to be the source of all the steam.

  To her left, the geometrically tiled mosaic on the wall terminated at an alcove that contained... a bench with a hole in it. Which at least sounded like it was constantly 'flushing'.

  It was almost the last thing Emma had expected after the graying daylight slipping through the too-thin windows and the brutally efficient architecture of the stairwell.

  The sound of running water filled the echoey space after the door shut behind her. Emma closed her eyes, and leaned back against the strange green bricks of the wall, trying to stabilize.

  Sha managed a whole three breaths worth of peace before Calen demanded an answer.

  "Em, are you okay?"

  One more breath. Count to five.

  "No." Emma said firmly, and it felt good.

  She did it again.

  "No I'm not okay, Calen. Earth is gone, magic is real, and a ten foot tall cannibal dragon tried to bite my head off," It felt even better the second time. "Is that even cannibalism? Or are we just part of the food chain, here?"

  Her voice climbed embarrassingly high by the time she got to the questions, but she didn't care anymore. Didn't care who heard, didn't care who knew, didn't care if anyone saw her grasping at the air like she could rip some sense out of the world.

  Nothing that had mattered a day ago was even real anymore.

  Almost nothing.

  "Both, I think. That snake was definitely above us on the food chain." Calen's reply was too lackadaisical.

  He was hamming it up on purpose. Or dissociating more than her. Maybe a little of both.

  "That's not—"

  Emma pressed down on her frustration, flexed her fingers some more, and took another breath. Calen was only half-joking, anyway. The other half of him was right. Humans weren't at the top of the food chain on this planet, dragonborn or not.

  "I thought I was going to have to do this alone. When you fell." She started again.

  "That was only for like, three seconds, and it's over now," Calen shrugged, "You bullied Mirri into catching me, remember?"

  Anger reared its head again as he turned around to face the reflective bronze disk mounted to the wall directly opposite the door. Water burbled through a trough from right to left below as Calen began to trace his finger over the fogged-up mirror. Doodling instead of looking at her.

  Emma took a second to really examine just how much of his shirt was gone in burned tatters. Even if the sleeves had had time to slide down his arms, almost the whole back was gone. There was no more hair on his back above the twelfth vertebrae, and the mole he used to have below his right shoulder was now a semicircle.

  Like a chunk of him had been ripped away, leaving a blank slate behind.

  "Why are you being so calm about this?" She demanded.

  "Priorities. I talked to Mr. Isaacson last night, before we went to bed," Calen said cryptically. He spaced his next three words, still talking to the mirror. "Are. You. Okay?"

  Emma waved steam out the air like it mattered that she could barely see him right now.

  "So?" She asked. "I already told you—"

  Emma stopped, and swallowed the lump in her throat.

  Calen had finished tracing on the steam-fogged bronze mirror, and stepped aside to reveal a crude drawing of a noose, with a small question mark inside the loop.

  "That's going to show up again if it re-fogs." She whispered, buying time. "And it doesn't matter."

  Calen's lip curled, and now *his* teeth were showing, just a little while he dashed his flattened palm over the crude drawing in the beaded moisture.

  "It does to—" he started to snarl.

  "It. Doesn't. Matter," She overrode him, crossing the space to grab him by the tattered and burnt undershirt. "Because what are we going to do? There are no more antidepressants, if the world is over. Even on Earth. I would be dealing with this anyway. I'll just deal with it here."

  None of the anger left his face up close. Not for one breath, or two, but by the third it had shifted. He had that look in his eye, like he had a plan.

  Emma braced her feet, and stuck out her chin, daring him to say the wrong thing.

  The plan started with a question instead.

  "Okay. So what do you want to do?" He asked. "We're currently locked in a tower, just as predicted, by the way."

  Relief flooded through her when she saw the tiny little smirk at the corner of his mouth. He was still scoring points, so they weren't going to fight about this. They were going to solve it, the same way they had solved everything else.

  One day at a time.

  "Find out what's going on, and do... whatever gets us not-eaten," Emma swallowed another lump. "And maybe find out who else made it, and find them too."

  A delicate knock followed her whisper, ringing through the space, but neither of them moved while she waited for his reply. He knew who she meant.

  She didn't have to say 'mom and dad', or talk about how they might be dead.

  "Okay," Calen nodded. "Okay, we can do that, once we figure out what's going on."

  Emma cracked the waiting door about six inches, and came face to face with a stack of folded cotton that slowly extended. As the pile of clothes stretched through the door on top of a massive, gray-scaled hand, she noticed a weight on top.

  It was a knife. Not a kitchen knife, or a butter knife, just a scratched, dented, and slightly uneven gray dagger with a blade that stretched about the length of Emma's hand.

  "In case you need it to fix your hair," Viran explained through the gap in the door, when Emma stared instead of reaching out to take the pile. "You should wash it before you use it to eat, though. There's a little bit of blood on the tip, but it will come off easy. It hasn't been dry long."

  Emma forced herself to move forward, and started to take the stack of cloth. Drawing closer proved him correct. There was an erratic rust-red stain around the tip of the battered blade.

  "Is... are they okay?" She asked.

  If the blood was recent, Viran would know. And if he refused to tell her...

  Well, that was its own kind of answer.

  The cloth dropped to rest on her outstretched arms as Viran withdrew his hand and replied.

  "I'm fine, it didn't go very far into my leg." The dragonborn said.

  By the time Emma finished processing that, he was still standing there with one foot in the door, his head turned to the side instead of looking at her. Or maybe he was, just with one eye. His face wasn't set up for depth perception unless he stuck his snout through the door, to point both eyes at her.

  She was glad he wasn't doing that right now. It might have been too much to handle.

  "Thank you?" She tried weakly.

  Viran nodded and hesitated again as he grasped the handle.

  "Sorry for being scary." The mountain of muscle rumbled.

  The door shut firmly before Emma could even begin to formulate a reply.

  Skyscrapers featuring iron frames, deep foundations, elevators, and electric lighting first appeared in Chicago in 1885 when the Home Insurance Building was finished, though the term 'skyscraper' was not commonly used to describe them until 1888.

  Hospitium, was the practice of treating strangers in need as guests under the protection of Zeus. Hosts were expected to clothe, feed, and otherwise entertain guests in need on the road before inquiring about their names or relations.