Jason's eyes shot open. Feeling disoriented, he gnced about to discover that he was in a rge, dimly lit chamber illuminated by light coming from the ceiling. Still, everything felt wrong; his mind was muddled and odd, making the discomfort he was experiencing even worse. Who were those people?

  Suddenly, looking down, he realized he was on top of a pile of decomposing bodies. In disgust, Jason scrambled away from the heap, heading for the other side of the room and vomiting, gagging on the overwhelming stench of decay. But, stopped, like most college students who knew the sound of their own retching intimately, something was instantly off. The pitch was wrong, too high, and too girly.

  Like a switch, the nausea vanished as he gnced down; his small, filthy hands caught his eyes. Delicate. Not his own. Even worse, the objects on his chest were an impossibility: female breasts in a ruined and torn blouse with a cy bck bra beneath.

  "Holy shit, what… the hell…?" he mumbled as he cupped them in his hands.

  Then it dawned on him: this wasn't his body. His mind had finally become clear of the confused fog. As his sanity began to unravel, edging toward bckness, he pushed it away. Instead, he took a deep breath and centered himself. He couldn't panic now. Even with what happened between the two of them st week, he couldn't just switch off his emotions overnight, no matter how angry he was; he was still missing someone he cared about.

  His hand grasping the wall, a girl's cry screamed from his throat. "Annabeth!"

  "Jason!" A vaguely armed but familiar voice came from across the chamber. "Wait, why the fuck is my voice like this?!"

  Crawling over the bodies, he came across the face that he had seen every morning in the mirror for twenty-three years — and he was sitting there, covered in filth, staring in horror at his hands.

  Annabeth looked up, gasping in confusion. "Who?"

  Eagerly, he fell into her arms.

  "Jason?" she grunted, questioning.

  After a moment, he leaned back a bit and let out a breath. "Yeah, it's me. Sorry. I'm just gd you're alive."

  Annabeth looked about the room without releasing him. "What's going on, Jason? How is this possible?"

  "I don't know. Nothing about any of this makes sense, especially being inside my ex-girlfriend's body.

  Former. He had heard her whisper, painfully.

  Sitting back, he pondered, "Did we get kidnapped for an experiment or something? No… that doesn't fit. There was something said about summoning—magic, not science."

  Annabeth blinked at him in surprise. "Like the ones your friend Neil reads?"

  "Yeah, but it's like a creepy Alice in Wondernd."

  The two then became overtaken by the horror of what had occurred, realizing the world had gone mad as the bodies of their neighbors and friends y around them. Ken, one of his gaming buddies who was usually up in the mornings running with Jason, y barely disturbed while most of Mrs. Jacobson, who Annabeth once considered a close friend when they lived next door to one another, was sliced clean in half at the torso.

  Just a short distance from the two y Billy, the Vietnam vet who now had no arms or legs, beside his wife's severed head. Even the mutited bodies of their two dogs had been cast into the pit.

  Jason looked away as Annabeth's stomach emptied itself, and when she started retching and sobbing on the chamber floor, he knew they had to get out of this nightmare of a pce. Sitting amongst the rotting dead here were no answers, just madness and sorrow.

  His lighter body moved gracefully, which allowed him to avoid nearly falling over a strange body that had been thrown into the pit with them. The name Arzbea came to mind. Mage, they called him, but the man wasn't a wand-waver from a fantasy novel; in fact, he looked less like a wizard and more like an extra in some Shakespeare production.

  And since Jason was currently cd only in a bra and panties, which was already insane, it gave him an idea. And the look on Annabeth's face told him she was about to lose it, so he pressed on.

  "Hey, let's get this stuff off this guy. Maybe he has some things that are useful to us."

  "But Jason, our neighbors?" She cried out.

  "I know, but please concentrate on this; we need to get the hell out of here," he said, reaching over to help her up.

  "Give me a hand with this body; I believe this is the guy who summoned us here. Since I'm standing here almost naked, I want the man's clothes."

  Annabeth wiped her mouth and nodded. "Pretty ghoulish."

  "But practical."

  Jerking the body off the back of his coat to remove him from the pile of corpses had the two of them falling to their knees, almost, but it wasn't because of how heavy it was.

  "Have you always been this strong?" Annabeth asked, surprised.

  "I was going to ask you the same."

  That aside, they weren't interested in wearing the woolen coat spttered with decomposed fragments of their friends. The tunic, though, was promising because a cotton undershirt had kept it mainly clean. The mage also had a few unexpected things hooked onto his belt. Why hadn't they been removed? They didn't know, but who were they to argue?

  There was a dagger in a sheath, a leather coin purse, and a bag made of long, cloth-like material shaped like a cylinder. Opening it, they found inside a crystal rod, which, when they touched it, almost blinded them. So perhaps some kind of magic light?

  Jason, now dressed, the tunic falling nearly to his knees, his waist bound in the leather belt, began exploring for better footgear.

  "What are we going to do now?" Annabeth whispered, looking for an exit.

  Sitting down, he pulled off the soft leather boots and knee socks of the mage. They might even be a little rge for him, but they would certainly offer more protection than the damaged sandals he was wearing. Or worse, going barefoot.

  "Get the hell out of this chamber, then, I don't know." He grimly wiped the slime from his feet with what was left of his torn blouse and then slipped the boots on.

  "Any chance you think there's a way out of here?" Her voice panicked.

  "There has to be," Jason's response was more of a prayer.

  Both were now up, clothed, staring down at the darkened exit. It could be worse; if this had been an oubliette, they'd probably be stark raving mad by now. But still, they didn't go far. Once, outside the horror of the corpse chamber, the gravity of everything pressed in on Annabeth.

  Catching herself on the wall, she slid to the floor sobbing. "Why? Why did this happen to us? This is madness. How can I be you?

  Jason sighed, gazing at the woman he loved as she suffered. He paused, then knelt, putting his arms around her. Holding himself was freaky and uncomfortable, to be sure, but he didn't think about that. Right now, she needed him. How long they remained like this, he could not tell.

  Finally, Annabeth gave one st shuddering breath and sat back, her eyes full of regret.

  "Thank you for that."

  Jason nodded slightly, suddenly feeling better himself. With a groan, he got himself up, snatching the crystal rod that lit the corridor.

  "Come on," he said. "Let's go."

  As darkness receded from the soft, white light of the crystal rod, it became apparent that the walls and floor, although crafted from stone, were composed of precise, carefully fitted blocks.

  Jason muttered to himself, rubbing his hand over the wall. "Someone built this."

  Annabeth looked thoughtful, staring into the darkness. "It's a necropolis. Like the one in Paris."

  "Maybe," Jason frowned, noticing two new exits.

  "Where to now?" she asked, taking a few steps forward.

  He frowned, following and studying both. "Left or straight ahead."

  Annabeth sighed. "Does it really matter?"

  "I guess not."

  As they approached the other side, Jason slowed down and then stepped through into something that looked like an ancient guardroom, Annabeth trailing behind. Rotted banners, worn and covered in grime, lined the walls; their colors faded with age. Empty racks of stone armor and stone weapons stood under them, with a great deal of rubble covering the floor.

  Jason whispered, his gaze fixed on the exit ahead of him. "The guys that summoned us didn't seem too friendly. But we have nothing. No weapons, no supplies.

  "We arrived with nothing but the shirts on our backs. Or one we borrowed." Annabeth smirked a little.

  Jason snorted, relieved to find she'd cheered up somewhat.

  Clutching the hilt of the dirk at his small sword belt, he drew the bde. "I mean, I do have this, but it's more for slicing fruit than fighting.

  Annabeth looked at it, giving him a bnk look. "And what are you going to do with it, Lancelot? You can hardly tell which end is up."

  "Pointy end toward the enemy."

  "Funny. Well, if this was a guard post, maybe they left something behind that could be useful." She said, nudging some of the debris with her foot. "I mean, you're always supposed to search every room in a dungeon, aren't you?"

  Jason stared at his ex-girlfriend in disbelief. "That was a role-pying reference, wasn't it?"

  She shrugged. "Well, Neil had some strong feelings about the games you both pyed. Must have picked something up from hearing him."

  "Right, well, that sounds like a good idea; let's take a look."

  Digging among the remains, they were startled to discover a couple of things. Jason found a set of leather gloves and examined them before putting them on. While Annabeth uncovered a nearly two-foot-long, narrow dagger, it didn't have an edge, but the point was needle sharp, obviously built to penetrate armor.

  "Nasty." She handed it to Jason, who motioned for her to keep it.

  "I don't know how to use it either," she whispered.

  "Who knows what's crawling down here?"

  Annabeth nodded, then sheathed the knife in her belt. "Did you look at that bde? Doesn't it look brand new? Not a speck of rust on it."

  Jason shrugged. "My leather gloves, too. But I'll take eerie over unarmed."