I woke what had to have been only a short time later. I wasn’t quite sure how long I’d been unconscious, but I still lay in the same spot where I’d fallen after killing the spider. This time, however, I was surrounded by people. Way too many faces peered at me when I opened my eyes, causing me to try to jump backwards and instead slam my head back against the rock floor. Stars flashed in front of my eyes.

“Easy there! We’re friends.” The voice was the same one I’d heard before I passed out. “I’m Pascal. This is Tania. You can thank her for not being dead, if you’d like.”

I glanced toward the person Pascal pointed out, a woman with shoulder length strawberry-blonde hair and freckles. I tried to speak, coughed, then tried a second time. “Thank you.”

It was more of a croak than anything else. My mouth had never felt so dry, and my head still pounded, although I didn’t know how much of that was because of the poison and how much was because I’d just banged my head against rock.

“Here, I can ease a little more of that for you,” Tania said.

She lay a hand on my forehead and cooling energy flowed through her fingers. I gasped at the sensation. It was sort of like getting a cold, wet cloth placed there, except the coolness seemed to drip right through my skull into my blood, flowing gently through my body.

I tried to speak again and this time found my voice much stronger. “Thanks again. I don’t suppose someone can tell me where the hell I am and what is going on?”

The people around me backed up as I levered myself up, first onto an elbow, and then slowly but with increasing strength I was able to rise to a sitting position. I looked around the cavern.

In addition to Pascal and Talia, there were four other people present. All of them looked like extras from a film set in the Middle Ages.

No, that wasn’t quite right, either. There was one other person I hadn’t noticed at first. She lay on the cold stone a short distance away, eyes closed. One of the other people who hadn’t introduced themselves yet knelt beside her, with...glowing hands?

The giant spider’s body was gone, and that startled me until I remembered it had faded into more of that blue mist when I touched it. The crystals it left behind were still right where it had been, anyway. I considered its absence a major plus. I had no interest in fighting that thing again!

Pascal spoke, drawing my attention back. “Well, you ought to know that you’re not wherever you came from anymore.”

“I think I sort of got that message when a bunch of spiders as big as my head tried to eat me,” I said.

Which was the truth. OK, there might possibly be spiders as big as the large ones I’d fought, somewhere on Earth. But I was pretty damned sure there were none as big as the giant spider, and hadn’t been since before there were dinosaurs. Which meant either someone was playing some truly wild games with genetic engineering, or I was seriously ‘not in Kansas anymore.’

“Fair enough,” Pascal replied. “This place... We call it the Crater, but that’s not especially accurate. You’ll see what I mean. And it’s literally not the same world you came from, wherever that is.”

“This is another planet, then? You’re aliens?” I asked. I was surprised to feel more curiosity than fear at the idea. Although these people didn’t look how I’d pictured real aliens would appear — they looked like regular humans to my eyes — if they’d meant me harm, all they had to do was not bother healing me, and I’d have died.

Talia chuckled. “Not like you’re thinking, no. More like inter-dimensional travel.”

“She’s the expert, so I’ll let her explain if you want,” Pascal said.

I nodded for her to go on.

“I’ll keep it simple for now,” Talia said. “If every universe is like a bubble, then the space between them is the substance the bubbles all float in. Make sense?”

More or less. I just nodded, so she’d keep talking. The more I knew about whatever had happened to me, the better.

“Well, the Crater is some sort of fragment of a dimension, floating around in that same mess,” Talia said. “Because it’s just a fragment, it...bounces around...a little more than most of the dimensions out there. Or that’s the prevailing theory, anyway. We don’t actually know for certain, you understand. Anyway, when it bounces too close to an a non-fragment dimension, the dimension tries to grab the fragment and absorb it. But in the case of the Crater, it can’t. Instead, the Crater actually sucks a little matter out of the dimension it bumped into.”

“That’s me. I’m the sucked out matter?” I asked, beginning to understand.

She nodded. “Yup. You and these other poor souls. Looks like there were four of you this time. One was eaten by a black ooze outside — we found a few bits the ooze didn’t digest. And then the three of you in here. Looks like you and maybe one other will make it.”

“That’s not as bad as sometimes,” Pascal said. “Two out of four surviving is pretty good. Remember a few months ago...”

“I don’t even want to talk about it,” Talia said, a haunted look crossing her face.

“Wait, so this sort of thing happens often?” I asked.

“Yup. And there’s always a telltale lightning storm right over the point of arrival, so we know what’s going on,” Pascal said. “We try to respond as quick as we can. Sometimes we arrive in time. Sometimes not. The Crater isn’t a nice place to be on your own without any weapons, as you discovered the hard way,” Pascal said.

“Yeah, that’s for sure,” I said. I pushed myself to my feet. My limbs still felt weak and shaken, but I was standing, at least. The sword I’d used to slay the spider was a short distance from me. I leaned back down to pick it up. “I’d have been in trouble without this.”

“Yeah, lucky find. You can keep that, if you want. It’s not as high quality as you can get, but it’s better than nothing,” Pascal said. “It’s a long hike back to Artensia, and it’s never a bad idea to carry a weapon. That’s the city we come from.”

Seeing I was on my feet and more or less in one piece, Pascal turned to the person treating the still unconscious spider victim. I realized that had to be the person in the other cocoon. They’d saved her, too. I felt an instant connection with her as she lay there, still as can be. She was the only other person from my world in this entire place, most likely.

The whole thing was still a lot to wrap my head around, but I’d seen too much since waking up to a spider wrapping me in silk to not believe what Talia said. It might not make sense, and if I hadn’t seen all I had maybe I would be more skeptical. But when nothing made sense, even a nonsense explanation was better than nothing.

I leaned back against the cave wall and tried to collect my thoughts. Talia joined Pascal beside the unconscious woman. The two of them seemed to be discussing whether it was safe to move her yet or not. I guessed that she’d been poisoned worse than I had, which was why they couldn’t just cure her and have her walk out on her own. Instead Pascal had two of his people breaking out a set of poles and some fabric, putting them together into a sort of stretcher.

One of the squad came over to check on me. He extended a hand, which I shook gratefully. At least some things were still the same.

“I’m Pete. Nice to meet you,” he said. Pete was a black man, over six feet tall and built like a Mack truck. His shoulders looked like he belonged in pro football. Instead, they were covered by heavy plates of steel, as was his chest, his arms...pretty nearly all of him.

“Dylan. Wish I’d had armor like that a little while ago!” I replied.

Pete laughed. “I bet! Yeah, arrivals here always suck. I’ve helped rescue scores of people like this, but it never gets any easier.”

“How was it when you got here?” I asked, curious for another perspective.

“Oh, I was born here,” Pete replied. “All of us were. Most people in Artensia were born in the Crater.”

“Arrivals are pretty common though, I thought?” I asked.

Pete frowned. “They are. But...the life here is tough. Some arrivals don’t survive long enough for us to rescue them. Most others just...don’t last. Either they get sloppy, and something eats them, or they can’t handle the mental transition and just don’t make it for very long.”

That didn’t sound good. My smile faded, my lips forming a firm, thin line instead. I was one of those arrivals, after all. If most people couldn’t handle this place, what chance did I have?

“Don’t worry too much,” Pete said, slapping me on the shoulders. “You did well for yourself, already. I think you’ve got what it takes. Stick with us, we’ll show you the ropes, get you settled, and then you can figure out the rest as you go. Meantime, you should loot those crystals. They count as currency back home. Or you can use them to rank your sigil.”

“My what?”

“Sigil. Tattoo looking thing?” Pete said. He pulled up his sleeve to show a string of tattoos. There was an axe, done up in blue, what looked like a gust of wind in purple, and a green bear. “You should have one, too. Most new arrivals appear with one.”

“Yeah, this thing,” I said, showing him the weird symbol on my arm.”

“That’s the one.”

“So that tattoo…sigil…thing. It’ll let me do magic? How? And why are yours colored in?” Personally, I thought the bright green bear was adorable, but I wasn’t going to say that to Pete. Didn’t want to offend the guy!

“Don’t worry; we’ll show you when we get back to the city. Your sigil isn’t colored because it isn’t ranked yet. There are levels to each sigil: clear, violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange, red, and black.”

Color coded ranks made sense. Almost automatically, I began putting them together in my head like they were video game skills or powers.

“Yeah?” I asked. I scooped up the little pile of crystals the giant spider dropped. “Thanks for that.”

“No problem. Loot the other spiders, too. You killed ‘em, you get the rewards. It’ll help you get started when we get to the city.”

I did as he suggested, quickly walking around to touch each still spider form. They all faded into the familiar mist, and each left about half a dozen of the small, clear crystals behind. I gathered them all.

By the time I was finished, Pascal was calling everyone over as they prepared to vacate the cave. Pete gave me one more nod before going over to help lead the way out of the cavern complex.

I hadn’t even been able to ask about how to get back home, but given the fact nobody had mentioned it as an option, it sounded like I was going to be stuck in this place for a long time. Well, fine. I’d be screwed up about that at some point in the future, I was sure of it. But for the time being, I needed to retain the same instincts that kept me alive when I was on my own in this place.

I wasn’t going to let this place kill me. “Not going to happen,” I muttered under my breath as I followed the others outside.