I don’t actually remember how I got here.

I’m in… I think it’s a bedroom? Well I don’t know what else I’d call it to be honest. It’s small and there’s really nothing going on except for a strip of warm yellowish light at the top, a small cabinet on the opposite end of a metal door that probably slides open with a fsshhh, and the overly soft bed I’m lying on. 

I take in a deep breath and the air smells sweet, but a bit stale underneath it. Like… I don’t know actually, how am I doing this in the first place? I’ve gotten used to not thinking about it and there really wasn’t much time to do it earlier but I can smell again, and I really should be freaking out more about it now but, oh God if that’s real then everything else was right? 

Where do I start? I’m no-I know I’ll have to go back in there but someone’s got to tell Aliyah’s family that she- no, she could still be alive, she has to be, God please. And my family needs to know that I-FUCK, what do I even say to them about all this? That I’m what? Going to conquer the entire planet and fight giants from other star systems for a living?

I need to take it one step of a time, one step at a… yeah this could just be a trick right? Another way for Typh-Ea to brea- No. There’s this sense of heft to everything that I didn’t know I could miss back when I was still in there. Gravity, it’s actual real gravity, I’m being pulled down even when I stop thinking about being pulled down or start thinking about being pulled up instead.

So; I’m somewhere real, and whoever put me in here also made sure to… I think they didn’t bathe me for whatever reason but they put on an orange shirt with yellow palm tree motifs, a hawaiian shirt out of all things, and blue jeans a few sizes too big for me, I look like someone’s gross aunt, fuck. The cloth does feel good on my skin though, it’s shockingly well made.

I glance around to find any obvious cameras before I slide out of the bed, fumble on a pair of sandals they left behind for me, and I am suddenly struck by the sight of myself in the mirrored door. The golden circlet is still on my head, now proudly bearing two curved horns that I’m sure weren’t that long when I put it on to begin with. I move a hand up to take it off and it feels like trying to tear off a piece of skin, shit. I’ve gotta get that checked later, leaving it on all the time can’t be good for me.

I walk up to the door, and struggle and fail to push it open and a bit of panic seeps back in because I’m trapped aren’t I? I got abducted against my will and taken away to God knows where by unseen but probably criminal hands who want to sell me off into slavery or force me to do their bidding or tear out the secrets of how to ‘wield’ Typh-Ea out of me and there’s noth- 

Oh there’s a weird latch down there, I just have to click it open and-huh.

I’m staring out at a much larger room, it looks kind of like a lounge? Decorated by twinkling, clinking glass decor and weird sculptures surrounding a long sofa that wraps around a central pit. I can see a few other doors in the view across me, and also people of course, familiar people thankfully. Their outfits and style are different, Ms Tzeitman in some sort of loose white blouse and light green pants, and that professor from earlier, Cynthia I think? She’s wearing surprisingly rough looking blue coveralls with brown gloved hands and a sturdy looking hat set aside on a nearby table, but I remember their faces and voices clearly enough. 

They’re both seated on the couch, and I overhear a glimpse of whatever their conversation was before I caught their attention; Cynthia was talking about a worksite and needing to call up more people to sort through the ruins as quickly as possible, while there’s still time to find more of something, I don’t get to find out what that something is though because Ms Tzeitman cuts her off with a wave:

“Oh uhh-are you sure you should be walking already?”

It comes off as being… awkwardly casual? I guess there’s nothing not awkward about me being here, huh? Wherever this is, and Cynthia does just sorta stare at me when she turns around a bit to face me. I don’t really know what to say really.

“How are you holding up? Any pain or discomfort or anything?” Cynthia offers, looking up and down my body in a failed attempt to try and not stare at my horns.

I shake my head, hand moving up to scratch a slight itch at the base of the circlet, “No but where is this? Who are the two of you exactly?”

Cynthia’s expression shifts, I guess she’s thinking about it? “Oh, di-do you remember anything about the exhibit? Anything at all before the… attack?”

I squint at her, “No that’s not what I… you all must have known about all of this before didn’t you? About the empire straddling the galaxy, and the sleeping giant lurking beneath the dunes waiting for some fool to embrace her power so she ca-”

I am very suddenly cut off by Ms Tzeitman clapping her hands together and saying, “Holly, Holly, that’s your name isn’t it? What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Wh-huh?” 

She holds her face in her hands for a bit, before she makes a show of rubbing her temples, “I have a headache Ms Holly, a hundred meter tall headache bearing a face I put my name and artistic reputation on all over the, the news, the social media, the adverts, you understand right?”

I don’t, but she does not give me the time to really reply as she drowns out anything I could say with, “This headache I have has turned a exhibition I’ve planned for months into a slaughterhouse, and oh so many people than I would have ever wanted are dead or missing and I need you to understand that I spent a lot of money on making that number zero Ms Holly, zero.”

Cynthia squirms a little in her seat as Ms Tzeitman continues on, “I have hired men for fire, men for people getting lost in the hills, men for fights and flus, but I do not have men for mechanical abominations strafing people from the skies Ms Holly, and you are, you are very lucky that the men I hired for earthquakes did their job when their world was burning, because that headache turned the ground into liquid when it flew out to, to fucking kick another giant man across th-.” 

She lets out a pained sigh, “Do not give me another headache Ms Holly, none of us know what is going on, no one except for you, so please, sit down, take a deep breath and fucking relax okay? You are in my yacht, it is a big, beautiful ship I had to bring all the way over frI-it’s not important, just, sit down Ms Holly.” 

She’s taking a deep breath herself, and a phone on the table starts buzzing and she makes a few movements near it that shuts it off completely, and the silence lingers until I speak.

“A-okay? I’m.”

I awkwardly shuffle into the room, brushing past and mumbling an apology to a suited woman I hadn’t notice before that had apparently been standing guard I suppose near the door to my room, and I take a seat somewhere I could face I guess all three of them and… there’s a weird thought that comes into my mind, neither of these two look like real fighters, I think I could just kill that guard and take the more expensive one hostage to make my escape and… fuck, that means she’s watching again isn’t she?