//------------------------------//
// Chapter 2: Jordan 
// Story: Forbidden Places 
// by Starscribe 
//------------------------------//

Jordan Little hacked and coughed, fighting the burning in his lungs that came from water swallowed where it shouldn't be. The body spat it back up well enough, but the danger was in the second half of that reflex, trying to take in more. He bit down hard, hard enough that he tasted coppery blood against his tongue.

But it worked. Despite the strange numbness in his limbs, and the weight of fabric and gear trying to drag him down, he finally broke the surface of the water. He gasped, and allowed himself to suck in desperate breaths. 

His eyes strained in the sunlight. Yet what he saw was impossible.

This wasn't the bottom of some narrow crag of shattered Paris limestone, perhaps fed by a stream untainted by the sewage that had been Jordan's reality for the last day. There were no rock canyons, no skyscrapers and Parisian streets packed dense with history and interesting people.

Instead he saw a wasteland, extending away from the spring he had emerged from within. These were dunes straight out of Saharan nature documentaries, rising to great heights and humming with the wind off their tops. Only the occasional cactus or bit of stubborn brush fought the overwhelming force of nature.

But that was all further away. Jordan paddled awkwardly to the edge of a spring, and his limbs struck against a low brick wall. The water here was clean, with a few wide lilies and green grass against the walls. A few squat buildings hunched together nearby, made of adobe or some other mud brick. "Why didn't you tell me you found the set for 1001 Nights?"

But something must've been wrong with his throat, because it sounded nothing like his voice. Apparently he'd bitten his tongue hard enough to jump two octaves.

He turned, preparing for Ryan's usual pessimism—and didn't see his friends there.

There were two shapes clinging to the wall beside him, and neither of them looked even remotely human. They shared the same basic body plan: quadrupedal, hunched over, with flat hooves emerging from under bodies that didn't quite match Jordan's conception of what a horse ought to look like.

Both the creatures looking at him had crooked, misshapen horns emerging from their heads. But that was where the similarities ended. The closer of the two creatures was more familiar, with fur soaked down with water and a thick reflective line of scales on their face.

The other, floating further away, was like something out of a nightmare. Its skin was black and reflective, and he could see through gaping holes in its forelegs. Its eyes were the worst by far, multifaceted and insectoid and reflecting the sun from overhead.

This was the first to speak, his voice reverberating through the water and echoing until it sounded like a dozen other monsters were speaking along with him. "Oh god, what's going on. What kind of poison was in that bathwater?"

Under all that noise, Jordan could almost make out something familiar. Did he somehow recognize the voice? He knows about the bath. How?

"There has to be a rational explanation," the furry one said, in Blake's voice. He flopped up and over the edge of the low wall, then heaved.

Apparently Jordan was in the midst of a stroke, because the animal was dressed. He recognized those jeans, even if they were more like leg-braces, running halfway up the waist but not actually meeting at the rear. Jordan got a face full of things he'd rather not think about, along with Blake's familiar survival pack stretched across his back. 

Of course now that he saw it could be done, Jordan wanted to be out of the water just as much himself. He turned to the side, so he could climb without looking so closely. As he did, he saw the real reason his hands were numb.

He didn't have them either. He saw silvery fur instead of naked skin, then flopped awkwardly to the side. Wet sand stuck to everything, but for the moment he didn't care. From his back, Jordan felt more sensations that didn't make sense, as a vast flat surface of skin pressed between his wet clothes and the ground. He twisted his neck to the side, struggling to get a good look.

There were wings emerging from between his jacket and his pants. Purple skin stretched between a membrane of bony outlines. Those shouldn't be there. I don't have wings. As if responding to that thought, the wing twitched, right along with its twin trapped under Jordan's torso.

He felt it. The skin was tough, but far more sensitive than an arm. It would probably have to be, without the muscle and flesh underneath to give it greater strength. We swam through a hole in the wall into a sun that shouldn't be here. Now we're somewhere else, and we don't look like ourselves.

"There's no explanation. This shouldn't be happening." That was the bug again, which had somehow managed to escape the well on the other side. "I'm an alien. You're all aliens. What happened?" Then, more fearfully, "Where's Kaelynn?"

There were only three of them. Had the best swimmer in their group, at the front somehow been lost in the tunnel?

Jordan tried to stand up, and failed spectacularly. But the body moved on its own, and what should've been his arms caught him before he could fall completely. He stood then, and found the position entirely natural. His wings twitched again, and he shook off a curtain of sand and dirt from that side. 

Then he turned, searching the spring for any sign of motion. They hadn't been out of the water for that long, if she'd somehow went down, it probably wasn't too late to save her.

He didn't actually have to search for very long. There was someone in the water, and like them she was dressed in modified versions of exactly what Kaelynn had been wearing when she crossed. She looked much like they did, with a longer, quadrupedal body plan with limbs trailing from her torso.

She was longer and leaner than either of them, with a body that glittered where the sunlight struck it. She had a tail too, though unlike the hair trailing from Jordan's own ass, Kaelynn's was webbed and membranous, trailing lithe muscle that twitched with each foot forward she swam. 

Why are there openings in her neck?

Jordan got his answer seconds later, as the swimming creature finally noticed them. She looked up, with Kaelynn's vivid green eyes, rather than some insectoid monster. She swam upward, breaking the surface and resting her forelegs against the stone wall.

She was entirely furless, with a body that was reflective and lean. She opened her mouth, and water dribbled out of her lips, along with sound so feeble that Jordan couldn't even hear it. Then her eyes went wide, and she gasped. Kaelynn clutched at her neck for several long, painful seconds. She's drowning.

Then she stopped fighting, and dropped back into the water. She relaxed instantly, her forelegs falling away from her neck. She began to swim again, circling the little pond twice as fast as before.

"So let me get all this straight," Jordan said. As before, the voice was entirely foreign, with only vague resemblance to what he expected. Not just the difference of hearing himself recorded. This voice was at once much higher pitched without sounding childish.

Like a woman. Neither of his companions sounded that way. "This doesn't look a damn thing like Paris. That wasn't a secret bathhouse, it was a kind of... temple. Going through it took us to... the desert."

"It looks that way," Blake said. "That you with holes in your legs, Ryan?" At the nod, he continued. "And now you've got bat wings, Kaelynn? Which means Jordan must be the unfortunate fish."

Jordan felt his ears press flat as he spoke. His tail did something too, whipping about in a way that was somehow self-conscious. "I'm Jordan. Of course Kaelynn would be the fish."

"She's the... but you sound... not like her." The horse-thing that was Blake began to pace back and forth the way their leader sometimes did. In doing so, Jordan got a better look at the strange mixture of horse and reptile that Blake had become. He had no wings, but did have sturdy looking scales along his back, and a whiplike tail ending in a spray of fur. "You sound like a chick."

"Thanks for pointing that out," he snapped back. "I had no idea. You gonna tell Ryan he sounds like a bug?"

"I don't know what a bug sounds like," Ryan said, sounding very much like a bug. And out of the water, he looked more like one too. He had thin, transparent wings to go with those multifaceted eyes. He had a tail in the same place as Jordan's, but it was made of a thin green membrane that pulsed subtly darker and lighter as he watched it.

That's his heartbeat, isn't it? That's so creepy. Just another detail to the list of how uncanny Ryan had become.

"Fish make noise," Ryan continued, as though trying to distract from his own change. "I bet I can hear Kaelynn if I'm submerged."

He leaned down over the edge, sticking his head straight down into the water. Apparently it worked, because Kaelynn spun on him, swimming over to Ryan and remaining there. Blake and Jordan gathered behind him, though not right behind. Jordan had no desire to see what was under that tail. One face full of alien junk was enough for the day.

Ryan stayed under for long enough that Jordan finally touched one leg against his shoulder, preparing to yank him up. The bug reacted instantly, jerking upward and looking between them.

This close, Jordan could watch a second, fully transparent eyelid move sideways from those eyes, uncovering them. His stomach twisted into another knot. "While we've been up here, Kaelynn explored the whole spring. She thinks its fed by an aquifer in the rock on this side, and it drains back into our universe."

Jordan's mouth fell open, but he didn't have the chance to further question. 

"The hole we came through is at the bottom of the well. Bends down instead of sideways, but there's no resistance. She thinks we can swim back through."

"We transformed by coming to this side," Blake said. "It stands to reason that we can reverse it by going back the way we came."

Ryan nodded. "That's what Kaelynn thinks too. But she didn't want to go without us, in case it lets out somewhere else. Also yes, she's a fish. She can't breathe the air at all. Zero."

"We're going back." Blake stepped sideways along the wall, then flung one leg over. "Come on."

Ryan began to obey, but Jordan hesitated. It was certainly true that there were things about this place he didn't want to investigate too closely—mostly about his own body. But at the same time. "Hold on. Look around you for a second, guys."

He pointed upward with one leg, and found his wing on that side did the same. He could probably learn to control the way that moved, with a little more practice. "That's an alien sun. There are buildings right here. A civilization on another world. Forget Aldwych station. We've upgraded to Stargate territory here."

Blake clambered back over the wall, then rested one leg on his shoulder, yanking him forward. Up close, Blake's breath was uncomfortably hot against his skin, like it might burst into flame at any moment. The horse-creature growled at him, every word a threat. "We're out of our fucking depth, Jordan. We don't know how long there will be a way back. Have you looked around? We're in a fucking desert. One of us is a fish. How do you think this goes if we get stuck? We aren't gambling with Kaelynn's life."

Jordan's retort died in his throat, and he nodded weakly. His friend was right, however much it would sting. I'm going to regret leaving this place without looking around, probably for the rest of my life.

But he had no choice. Jordan clambered over the wall with the others, splashing awkwardly into the water.

Kaelynn appeared beside them, swimming lithely between them before finally offering one of her hooves towards Ryan. The bug thing touched it in response, but couldn't grab on. Grabbing took hands, which none of them had anymore.

"We'll have to swim as far as last time," Blake said, returning to his usual tone. Commanding, the way he always was in emergencies. "Practice until you're confident, then we go. Unless you think we should get out the rope and have Kaelynn pull you."

None of them needed that. Despite every medical suggestion to the contrary, despite any rational belief about how long it should take to learn to move in a totally alien body. After only a few minutes, they'd learned enough to sink straight.

"Together," Ryan said. "See you all when this nightmare ends."

Together they sunk into the sunlit spring, guided by a glittering fish that was also their friend.