Diz landed hard on her hands and knees. Her guts felt like someone had unraveled them to play jump rope before sewing her back in one piece, and the instant she began to regain any sense of time or space she vomited. She pushed herself into a sitting position and, through force of will, began to take slow, deep breaths until her heart-rate stopped jack rabbiting. Then she took stock of where she was.
Some kind of alley, one that smelled of piss and decay dotted by objects that looked simultaneously familiar and foreign; huge bins made of metal, shiny black sacks, and scraps of colourful paper littered the immediate vicinity. She could hear nearby the sound of a busy street, and the sun shone high overhead. But it wasn't right. It all felt different in some fundamental way, like waking up in a room that was the mirror image of the one you went to sleep in. She tried to think, to remember anything about how she got here. She had been moving through the Wyrmwood Swamp, but everything after that was blurry, like her memory had been stretched thin and twisted by the idle hands of some higher power.
Diz forced herself upright. Her pack and weapons had landed nearby and she quickly collected them and headed to the alley's mouth. Nothing could have prepared her for what she found there.
It was some kind of city, but unlike anything she had ever seen. Metal rectangles on wheels zipped past and multi-coloured lights twinkled everywhere her eyes fell. And there were people. There were more people flowing this way and that than she had seen on even the busiest market days in Marona. There was a metal sign on a post coming out of the ground that read "11th Avenue." She reached for a wall to steady herself. She must have hit her head. Or was dreaming. Or something. But there was no way any of this could be real.
"Hey, neat cosplay. Are you like, Mollymawk?"
"What?"
She had been a approached by two boys, teenagers from the look and sound of them. They were both wearing shirts decorated with colourful patterns that her brain was having a hard time processing.
"No way, Molly was purple." The second boy rolled his eyes at the first. "It must be some kind of OC costume. How did you do your makeup? It looks incredible."
Diz blinked at the two boys, then turned and walked down the street and away from them.
"Hey! Jerk!" One of them called after her but she didn't stop.
She followed the sidewalk until the end of the block, drawing the occasional glance but no further questions. There was some kind of cafe on the street corner, and rather than try to cross the road she decided to go in. Maybe she could get information from one of the locals.
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