(Dyn)

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Dyn said. “It’s a goddamned mirror.” His plump form scowled back at him, hand still clutg his chest.

  Thunder rumbled in the distance. A storm roag. “That should help until the fire rescue get here.” Dyn assumed someone had phoned in the emergency.

  Carefully, he walked toward the room’s darkest er and found the figure still leaning against the wall. A very solid-looking wardrobe had protected them from the bst.

  The guy wore an exceptionally detailed fantasy cospy. He could’ve been ara in one of the Lord of the Ring movies. Dyn heard the stomping and ping of boots from the group of people running past his door. They were loud, but he couldn’t make out their muffled voices through the door.

  “What the hell is going on out there?” he muttered under his breath, trying to piece together the madness unfolding around him. Dyn narrowed his eyes on the slightly damaged wardrobe, hoping there’d be a pair of pants ihat might fit. He frowned, opening it revealed it was empty.

  “Damn.”

  “Hey man, are you okay?” Dyn surprised himself when his knees didn’t pop like usual when he crouched beside the cospyer.

  “Oh.” Dyn noticed the guy was actually a girl. “Sorry about that.”

  She looked like some sort er ue. She wore supple ankle-high leather boots, pants with loads of pockets, and more belts than were probably necessary. A thick padded shirt hid her feminine form well, also adorned with pockets, and a pair of badass looking fingerless leather gloves. An open rust-colored cloak topped it all off. Her head tilted at a strange ahere’s no way that’s fortable,’ he thought.

  She had so many pockets. ‘Maybe she’s got a phone?’ Dyn wondered, but could he really search her? The idea felt wrong—she was unscious, and he didn’t know her. He only rifled through his friends’ pockets.

  She had short, dark hair iyle of a pixie cut. Dyn thought she looked familiar but couldn’t put a o her face. Actually, he couldn’t put anything to her face. It was weird, like he’d seen her before, but they’d never met.

  ‘A bit too old to be into cospy?’ Dyn was a thirty-five-year-old millennial. She might have been a geion older than him if he had to guess. However, he was terrible at guessing ages.

  Disappoi washed over him for the judgmental thought. Cospying didn’t have an age limit, and she had done an amazing job iails of her outfit. He didn’t have a clue which character or fandom she was aiming for, but it was outstanding.

  He went to wake her. Regret took hold the momeouched her shoulder. With a gentle shove, her shoulder moved in a way that felt off—absent of reflex or resistance. He snatched his hand back as if toug a heated element.

  “Hey, wake up,” he said, growing worried that something terrible had happened.

  He gripped her shoulders and shook. “Please wake up.”

  Thump, bump. Her head rapped off the wall twice before Dyn stopped. Dread ed him as he realized the wardrobe hadn’t protected her—she was dead.

  This was the first dead person Dyn had ever entered. None of the movies or shows had truly prepared him for the experience.

  ‘How long has she been dead? Does she have a pulse? Where the fuck is my phone?’ He had so many questions.

  Reag out with his fingers, he felt alohroat. Despite ting to thirty, there still wasn’t a pulse. He patted his toga, looking for his phone again. “Goddamnit,” he growled.

  ‘CPR?’ he wondered. No, that was just a stopgap to buy time for help to arrive, and he wasn’t sure it was ing.

  Dyn stood, trying the doorknob, but it wouldn’t budge. Wind whistled through the missing wall as the storm tio approach. “Locked?”

  Running his hand up along the doorframe revealed the deadbolt. With a click, slide, clibsp;the bolt unlocked. The door started vibrating, gears spun and ticked. Six thunks sounded oer the other, clockwise, as rods retracted from the edges of the door into itself. He tried the knob again and the weighted door opeo reveal chaos.

  Dyn’s breath caught in his throat as he staggered backward, his mind reeling at the sight. Bright lights flooded his vision. Two men—no, not men, not really—dragged a lizard-like creature between them. His brairying to rationalize it. es. It had to be es.

  ‘Are they supposed to be elves or vuls?’ He wondered what kind of vention this was. Their long hair suggested the former, while a green substance oozing from an ear and down their neck implied the tter.

  Both had shiny, colorful hair; one was midnight blue, while the other was copper.

  The man they were carrying wore a full body suit of emerald and amber scales. Again, he couldn’t tell if it was fantasy or sce fi. It could have been an Argonian orn suit.

  ‘Why didn’t they take his mask off?’ Dyn hoped the man could still breathe okay in full e.

  “Holy shit,” Dyn whispered, his throat tightening as his eyes locked onto the mangled limb. He had seen blood before, but this… this was something else entirely; the color was wrong. ‘Why is it blue? Is this for real?’

  A makeshift tour of fastened belts ed tightly just above his knee. A thick limp tail dragged behind, smearing streaks of blue along the wood floor as the leg tio drip from the truncated limb. It reminded him of the people he saw outside. The trio just walked past, paying him no mind. A crack of thunder brought him back to his mission to get help for the woman in the room.

  He stuck his head into the hall and yelled, “Help! We need some help here.” But there was no answer.

  A tall peared from around the er at the end of the hallway. The heels of her boots struck the floor as she ran his way. A ptinum blonde ponytail bounced behind her with every step. She also had pointy ears. In an instant, the woman was nearly upon him. He stepped bato the room to avoid getting barreled over.

  Just before she plowed into the three slow-moving vention-goers, she called out, diving up and over them. Her maneuver would’ve been impressive with a springboard, but she pulled it off without one.

  The hallway rattled as she ug into a roll befetting back up. The maneuver barely broke her stride. Her figure disappeared dowairs at the end of the hallway.

  Dyn stepped bato the hallway and saw another very tall dragon cospyer walking his way. He wore some kind of prosthetic stilts; the guy was almost eight feet tall. The e had white scales and the crest oop of his mask had four sweeping horns that went backward, close to his skull.

  Those red lizard-slitted eyes activated an a part of Dyn’s brain stem. Something so primal that the rest of his evolved brain didn’t reize, raising the hair along the back of his neck.

  Ign those instincts, Dyn ran up to the massive cospyer. He was five feet ten iall, and this guy towered over him by almost two feet. The white scaled lizard-man wore a bck robe with gold embellishments, simir to the diplomats on Star Trek or Star Wars. He really wao ask which kind of vention this was supposed to be, but more urgent matters demanded his attention.

  “There’s a woman who needs help. I think she might be dead,” Dyn said as he approached.

  The cospyer stopped, gnced down at Dyn, and started speaking in Klingon, Arabic, or one of the many uages he didn’t know. Dyn just shook his head, uo uand what the lizard-man tried to say. Unsure how to reply, Dyn simply looked up at him with pleading eyes.

  Thunder cpped, louder tha, interrupting the pregnant pause.

  The lizard-man motioned with his cwed hands for Dyn to lead the way. He double backed toward the room, pointing through the open door when they got there. Brushing Dyn aside, the man hurried into the dark room and kneeled beside the g his hand on her shoulder.

  Dyn stood in the hallway, wringing his hands, reduced to observation as he watched the cospyer. He heard the storm arrive. Fat drops of rain came down, tapping and spshing on the floor of the exposed room.

  Nothing happened when the man touched her. He reached up and ran his gloved fingers along her rounded ear, between his thumb and index finger.

  ‘Way to be a creep dude,’ Dyn thought.

  Light from the hallway exposed what he’d missed earlier; the dried blood that ran down her ears and the side of her neck. The cospyer swiped two fingers across the blood and then s them.

  Dyn marveled at the impressive prosthetid Hollywood studio makeup the man had, but surely the snout was just a prop? The cospyer withdrew his hand, lowered his head, and sighed.

  ‘Fug method actors,’ Dyn thought, shaking his head. This guy’s refusal to break character issing him off. “Quit messing around. Call an ambunce, or the police, or someone!” he shouted.

  A shiver ret shot down his spine as the tall lizard-man stood up and moved toward him. Before Dyn could react, a massive hand cmped down on his head, sending a shiver of disorientation through him. The surreal sensation of being handled like a basketball made him questioher his brain had officially checked out—maybe this wasn’t a a dream after all?

  This cospyer wasn’t some normal guy swimming in a big body suit. His hands were as rge as they looked. They forcefully maniputed Dyn as they manhandled him to get a better look at his ears.

  They were in the middle of a goddamned emergency, surrounded by injured, dying people, and all this guy wao do was get his ear freak on.

  The cospyer’s grip tightened around Dyn’s wrist, cold and unyielding. Dyn winced as the cws brushed over his skin, silky smooth and unnatural. His stomach ed—who the hell was this guy? He tried to pull back, but the grip was like iron. Without letting go, the cospyer used his free cwed hand to grab Dyn’s wrist and examihe dried red blood on his fingers.

  “Let go of me,” Dyn gasped, his voice strained as he struggled against the lizard-man’s grip, feeling the tightening cws around his wrist.

  The cospyer let go of Dyn’s head and stepped out into the hallway, dragging Dyn by the wrist. He called out to a shirtless guy with short, spiky, emerald, anime hair, who was attempting to make his way down the hall, leaning against the wall. Sounds of the rain faded as they walked away from the promised room.

  The shirtless elf stopped when he heard the cospyer call out to him. Unsteadily, he turned around. Makeshift bandages ed around his head, soaked in green stains. The same colored blood ran down his bare chest. Grave injuries aside, that wasn’t even his most strikiure.

  ‘Holy crap, that guy’s ripped!’ Dyn thought.

  The guy must’ve been one of those fitness freaks that never skipped ab-day. With his improved sight, Dyn ted a pack.

  ‘How is that even fair?’ He retty sure that wasn’t even anatomically possible—humans didn’t have that many abdominal muscles.

  The cospyer tinued dragging Dyn around by the wrist, ag like he didn’t just abandon the poor dead woman in a room. When they got to the maimed elf, the lizard-man reached out and cupped the elf’s face with his free cwed hand.

  Dyn heard a grinding sound, like gravel, as smoky gray energy flowed from his hand into the elf’s face. The stained bandages fell away to reveal half of his head, including one eye, was now made of gray stone. Amazed, Dyn watched both the stone eye and the normal one move in sync.