If the world outside had been hard to understand, a strange labyrinth of roads and broken geometry, the inside of the castle was even more confusing. Some of it was fine, and normal — long halls with windows and bizarre paintings with too many eyes (okay, mostly normal), and rooms with lots of desks (...classrooms?), but then there were also these massive halls with staircases and doorways everywhere, in every  conceivable orientation (along with orientations you can’t conceive — don’t even try)... it felt like he was in a completely non-euclidean space, an M. C. Escher painting, but... with even less comprehensibility, somehow. 

“Shhh! Behind here!” Ulisa suddenly whispered, yanking them all behind a series of statues depicting huge, floating eyes.

Click. Click. Click. Click.

Terisse huddled behind one statue, Ludi behind another, and he and Ulisa together behind the third. Josh, for his part, couldn’t help but wish he was so much smaller than he actually was. He wasn’t even the biggest in the group — Ludi was much taller than he was — but at that moment, as they hid from... whatever it was that these eldritch girls were afraid of... he felt very small inside, and like his entire outside was betraying that.

“Stop moving!” Ulisa hissed in his ear. “You’re like a glowing beacon of unbelonging energy; if you move too much you’re going to get us caught!”

“U-unbelong—?” he started, but her hand suddenly covered his mouth.

Click. Click. Click.

Ulisa stared at him with seven unblinking eyes. He stared back, but with only two. She didn’t seem to be looking at him, though; her eyes unfocused as she held her lip between her teeth.

What was she afraid of? Was she afraid of it in the same way that he was afraid of them? No... she was probably more afraid of it than he was of her... He had no idea why he was here, but it wasn’t like they were treating him like they were going to eat him anymore. They were just treating him like... an animal that could talk. Which... well... that wasn’t great, and… he supposed that animals were definitely eaten, but... Ugh. Either way, he’d become less afraid of them, and he supposed that was par for the course while sneaking around and being on the run alongside them. Even if the reason he was doing that was because he’d been kidnapped by them... 

Was this Stockholm syndrome? Was it Stockholm syndrome to start seeing eldritch horrors that kidnapped you less as... well, eldritch horrors that kidnapped you, and more as... pretty girls with too many eyes?

Her third eye blinked. Then the eyes on her temples. Then the eyes on her cheeks. Her main eyes were last, and then they focused on him, almost as if they were piercing his outer shell, staring at the small creature inside... laying bare his innermost thoughts... bringing everything forward he couldn’t help but hide. He swallowed, looking down, his heartbeat increasing in tempo.

At that moment, Josh Holliday, for the first time in a long time… felt different. He couldn’t place how exactly he felt different… but it was a good different.

What even was it? Did he enjoy being in mortal peril?

…No, that wasn’t it. So then what was it? He looked back up at Ulisa, and she was giving him the dirtiest glare he’d ever seen, even worse than Terisse’s had been. 

It didn’t matter, though. Seeing her as just a girl, just as much of a person as he was... it didn’t really affect him more than anything back home. So seeing that glare, and her staring at him... He just felt… strange. 

Click. Click. 

His mind was quickly brought back from the strange thoughts spiralling inside it, and instead focused once more on the... entity. Whatever it was, the thing was directly in front of their statue, less than a metre away. If it could see that glow that Ulisa had been talking about... was there anything they could even do? 

Ulisa shook her head, and then grabbed him in her arms and — fwoosh! — with a rush of black particles, everything went dark. Josh couldn’t see where he was, or where Ulisa was... or even sense much of anything, really, besides maybe which way was up and which way was down. 

Click. Click. Click.

The sound echoed oddly through the inky black reality, almost as if it was both underwater and stretched on to infinity. 

A pinprick of light appeared, somewhere at the edges of his vision. Then another, then another, forming a constellation in a somewhat familiar shape... Eyes. They were eyes, and they were staring directly at him. Ulisa? No. Not Ulisa. Vaguely, echoed almost like that sensation was also underwater, he did somewhat sense that she still held on to him.

 So instead... There was something else, and it was staring at them.

...Until it wasn’t anymore.

Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click.

The sound retreated down the hall, rhythmic clicks as it did, until it had become inaudible. Ulisa let go of Josh, and they fell back into reality together, still huddling behind that same statue, the moment and connection past.

“D-did you...” Josh started. “Did you save me?”

She only shook her head, pointedly avoiding his eyes. “I saved us, extraplanar. And I saved my extra credit. Nothing more.” The eldritch girl didn’t spare him another glance, either; she simply walked past, leaving him feeling... confused... and empty once more.

👁👁👁👁👁👁👁

“Home sweet home,” Ludi said, the four of them arriving at the top of the staircase.

Ulisa breathed a sigh of relief, “Thank Odd, we’re not going to be caught this time.”

Josh glanced back down the staircase by chance, and immediately felt a wave of nausea and dizziness. For a moment he was frozen there, unable to pull his eyes away from the empty void and castle far below. “How did we get here...?” he started, trailing off. “Are we in one of the towers?”

“By running, and yes,” Terisse said, sounding extremely peeved.

Josh pulled his eyes away to meet her frown with his own, and she tilted her head at him before looking away. “I know, I know, I’m asking stupid questions,” he groaned. “But cut me some slack, I’m just a dumb tiny human and I’ve never been to any alternate dimensions or weird magic castles bef— Oh god is this place like Hogwarts but for eldritch beings?”

Terisse stared at him. “That question is nonsensical. Hog warts is a condition, not a place, let alone being one that ‘eldritch beings’ have. Which, assuming you’re talking about us… no. That’s not a real thing,” she growled, taking a step closer to him. “You are right about one thing, however. You are a dumb, tiny human, extraplanar.”

Josh stared back at her for a moment, before shaking his head and going into the main room. Even if she didn’t know what Hogwarts was… He had a gut feeling he was right — that this place was like Hogwarts. And now he just needed to prove it. “So this is a common room, right?” he asked.

She sighed. “Yes.” 

“And look,” he said, chuckling as he shook his head again. It was so obvious! “There are two spiral staircases on either side. My guess is that if you go up one staircase you go to the boys’ dormitory, and if you go up the other staircase, you go to the girls’ dormitory. And if I went up the girls’ dormitory staircase, since I’m a boy, it would turn into a slide and I’d slide back down. Am I right? But wait! I don’t even go to school here. Where am I going to slee—”

“What are you talking about?” Terisse interrupted, her voice a hoarse hiss. Grumbling in pure frustration, she stomped over to the staircase on the left, then gestured up them. “These are the stairs of eternal torment,” she said, her eyes burrowing into him. Then she stomped back across the room, and gestured up the second set of stairs. “And these are the stairs of instant, explosive death.”

“Wh-what happens if you’re a boy and go up the—”

“They have nothing to do with your gender! Why does your microscopic mortal brain require gender validation from a set of stairs?”

Silence... broken only by Ludi chuckling behind him. “Wow, I’ve never seen someone get Terisse going like that before.”

The smaller eldritch girl in goth clothing then harrumphed and turned away, throwing open a door and stomping out.

Ludi patted Josh’s shoulder. “If you haven’t figured it out yet, you absolutely can not ask questions around her; she can’t help but answer. Unless you want to make her mad, I suppose.” The tall girl shook her head and chuckled. “She’s riddleriddled, it’s in her blood.”

“Riddle... riddled...” he mumbled to himself. 

“Anyway, I’m off to bed as well. See you on the light side of the centimillenia, Ulisa,” she yawned.

“W-wait,” Ulisa said, suddenly looking panicked again as she glanced back and forth between Ludi and Josh. “What do I do with the extraplanar?”

Ludi stared at her for a moment, before bursting into laughter. “You didn’t plan this far ahead, did you?”

“N-no, I... I was just... I was focused on keeping us from getting caught breaking curfew,” she said, her cheeks flushing a bit. Wow. These girls were so weird, but... deep down they didn’t really act all that different from the people back home, did they? 

But then Ulisa caught him looking at her and hissed, all nine eyes opening. “What are you looking at, extraplanar?”

“Alright, bedtime for me!” Ludi said, closing the door behind her.

“I’m sorry!” he gasped out, holding his hands up in surrender. Either Ulisa didn’t know that gesture, though, or she absolutely did not care. She disappeared and reappeared directly in front of him, her tentacles lifting him up in the air before her. 

“I didn’t... I... I didn’t mean anything by it...” he mumbled, his breathing quick and shallow, looking away as a strange heat spiralled around in his chest.

There he was. Josh Holliday, perfectly normal, very dumb mortal. Hanging in the air, a strange, eldritch being holding him in the palm of her hand dark tendrils snaking out from behind her back. 

He felt really weird. Again. Just like earlier. It was… her. Something to do with Ulisa.

He didn’t mind her thinking the worst of him, or hating him altogether — he thought pretty badly of, and hated himself, after all — but... there was something else here, something he didn’t quite understand. It wasn’t just him wanting her to be mean to him because he deserved it, or something. It was... something else.

“Whatever,” she finally grumbled, putting him back down on the ground, but not letting go; instead leading him to one of the doorways behind her. “Come on then. For the dark side of this centimillenia… I suppose you’ll have to stay with me.”

Josh Holliday followed the pretty eldritch girl, the one who kidnapped him — who treated him like an object, like he couldn’t even think for himself — and deep inside… 

He did not feel hollow.

ChiriVulpes

Thanks for reading! Just a reminder that if you want to see the rest in advance, it's available for just $3 on itch.io! I'm trying to immigrate to New Zealand early next year to live with my girlfriends, QuietValerie and LuminaMystere, and any little bit helps.

Even if not, I hope you're enjoying the story so far at least!