Despite feeling that I had fallen upon a cold, stone floor moments earlier, I felt myself materialize, standing on a plush red carpet before a red rope that blocked the entrance into a hallway full of large, intricately framed paintings. The wall itself was equally grand, with inlaid wood panels and darkly stained, hand-carved crown molding.

  My hand was still outstretched as if to cushion my fall against the stone floor, but I held a piece of paper in it that looked remarkably like a theater ticket. I stood looking at both my hand and the ticket for a moment, puzzled.

  A man’s voice sounded, clearing his throat politely.

  I glanced up from the ticket in my hand to the left at the wide hallway entrance. It was empty, and the voice did not come from there.

  The sound repeated. I turned my head down and to the right, where I saw a very old security guard seated in an antique but comfortable-looking chair. A short pole with a sign was placed directly before him. It read, “Private gallery exhibit by invitation only.”

  Apparently, I stood in an art gallery, and the entrance into the hallway before me was prohibited.

  “Are you going to give me your ticket, my boy, or just stand there? I am fine either way. It's just that I am expecting some others along soon, and they might bump into you if you don’t move forward or move to the side, " the security guard said good-naturedly.

  “What do I do?” I asked.

  “For starters, Master Gwydion, you could hand me your ticket so I don’t have to get up from this chair to fetch it from you, " he said with a smile, speaking slowly as if to a child.

  I moved forward, leaned over the corded rope, and handed him the small, yellow rectangular piece of paper.

  As soon as I moved my hand over the rope, I felt a burning itch that began to sting as if my fingers and palm were covered in crawling ants that started to bite me.

  But just as quickly as it started, the unpleasant sensation ceased.

  The guard looked over the ticket, smirked as he glanced up at me from his cushioned seat, and said, “Seems to be in order.”

  He returned the ticket to me. I was a little hesitant to put my hand back over the rope, but I didn’t feel anything this time.

  He waved his hand toward the hallway entrance and said, “Go on in and be careful. Just because you are joining orientation before your backstory does not mean there is no danger.” He smiled at my surprised look.

  “Yes,” he continued, “we had one lad stalk in arrogantly and had to be carried out on a stretcher to start the whole process over again as a common black cognito hero. Poor boy.” He remarked with a sad shake of his head.

  I was still confused, but I moved closer to the roped entryway.

  “Don’t forget your pack.” The old guard said, pointing behind me on the floor.

  I turned and retrieved my adventurer's backpack. It was magical and could hold far more inside than it appeared. Instead of just holding it, I slung it over my shoulders and buckled its straps across my chest and waist.

  “Good thinking.” The security guard stated. “Those who fancy carrying it over one shoulder end up dropping all kinds of important things.”

  I stared at him, feeling my mind starting to kick into gear.

  He smiled more broadly. “There you are! It seemed you were fading briefly, but you are all together now. Good. You’ve got to keep your wits about you in there.”

  He pointed, this time with a closed fist and his thumb out, toward the hallway before me and at an angle behind where he was sitting.

  “Go ahead and just step over the cord. You have your ticket, so the disintegration trap won’t turn you to ash.” He explained reassuringly. “That way, I don’t have to get up to unhook it and then click it back in place when a tall, healthy lad like you can just as easily step over it.”

  I started to chuckle, but the serious look on his face stopped me cold, suggesting that the threat of immediate danger I had felt moments before had been real. “What do I do when I get in there?”

  He raised his eyebrows as if I were asking the most foolish of questions. “It’s an art gallery. Look at the art. And if you decide to take the plunge, be confident. Now, move along. I sense another citizen is coming in now.”

  I nodded to him and stepped over the corded rope. As I passed over it, I felt another tingling all over my body, but it was not nearly as intense, and nothing dangerous or life-ending happened.

  I let out a breath I had not realized I was holding.

  When my other leg touched the floor and I finished stepping across the corded rope, details of the twenty-foot-wide hallway became more apparent. It was an art gallery and a magnificent one.

  I saw dozens and dozens of paintings all around me. The line of paintings on both sides of the hallway stretched for hundreds of yards on both sides of the wall.

  Each artwork hung on cream-colored walls made of soft sandstone. The paintings varied in size but were quite large, some at least ten feet wide and half again that tall from where they rested just a foot or so off the stone floor. They were amazing works of art, painted by a master’s hand, and seemed to depict scenes of landscapes, castle, or interior rooms and dungeons.

  I looked back toward the security guard, whose name and appearance I couldn't recall. Oddly, when I turned to look at where I knew he would be, I realized that I was in the middle of an incredibly long hallway and must have walked a couple of hundred feet away from the entrance without realizing it.

  I paused a moment and shrugged my shoulders. I would just have to get used to this kind of magic. It was a fantasy world, and this was just how some things worked.

  I noticed some shadowy images moving around me. They were wispy, and although we were not so crowded that we bumped into one another, they were a little unnerving. It reminded me of the other personas during my creation, and I realized these must also be heroes that had not yet entered the world.

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  The images were shades of black, gray, and white and were slightly blurry to my eyes. Their movement did not seem natural. At times, they slowed down and seemed to stare at me, while others seemed to move more quickly than they should.

  I could make out mages from warriors by their wispy attire, but I could not quickly tell genders or racial features, other than some of the shadowy images were relatively short, while others were my height or taller.

  The images kept my attention for a few more moments before I dismissed them with another shrug and a grin. The good news was that my mind was clear, and I recalled who I was and why I was here. It was time to move things along.

  I began strolling along the hallway, moving down its center between the left and right walls. I did not know specifically what direction I was going, but it was to the right from where I had been standing a few moments ago.

  There were so many paintings along this hallway. I didn’t know what else there was for me to do in here, so I began looking at the paintings as the security guard suggested. I examined paintings on either wall as I walked slowly along.

  In one painting, a wintry scene depicted a glacial backdrop against a giant stone wall, situated near a wide, crystal-blue lake. It was so lifelike that I swear I felt a cool breeze nearby. The glaciers were enormous, but there were natural or carved switchbacks along their vertical surfaces. It would not be easy, but I was fairly certain I could make my way along them given enough time and warmer clothing.

  The artwork was titled “The Breach,” according to a nearby brass plaque, and I could just barely perceive a crack in the distant glacier that suggested something mysterious beyond both it and the nearer stone wall. There was something about the wall that hinted it served as a barrier of some kind.

  Moving along, another scene had an outdoors motif and showed a murky forest full of choking vines and long, wispy hanging moss. The colors were all subdued, in browns, dark yellows, and grays. The artist captured a group of short, menacing-looking creatures in a way that their movement looked like they lurked and prowled through the undergrowth.

  The creatures varied widely in their appearances. All were armored, but it looked random or haphazard. Most wore a kind of crude leather, much like the hides of animals. But some wore dull metal plates across their chests or chainmail that was bent and tarnished bronze. A few had helmets that looked like the skulls of large animals.

  But despite their oddly random dress and armor, they had one thing in common. They all looked grotesque. And now that I think about it, they were also well armed. Their faces were deformed and asymmetrical, as were their weapons. Some had tusks, but mostly they had lots and lots of sharp teeth.

  And blades.

  The more I looked in the foliage, the more of them I noticed. What I thought was perhaps a little more than half a dozen could be closer to twenty, maybe even more. It was a hunting party, and I did not want to think about what they might be hunting.

  The scene was titled “The Gloom,” and it did not give me a warm, fuzzy feeling.

  Yet another painting further along showed what looked like the entrance to a castle that had seen better days. It was not quite in ruins, but it was in a sad state, looking hard-worn through intense weathering or time. I could see through a wide archway whose protective doors had long fallen off their rusted hinges, and into a courtyard beyond.

  The central open space was bordered by walls and distant towers to the left, straight on, and to the right. I imagined that if there were towers to the immediate left and right of the gates, the fortress might be in the shape of an enormous pentagon. The brass plaque on the wall beside the painting was titled “Elemental School.”

  I was curious, so I approached the painting more closely. As I drew near, I could see into it, and its depth changed from flat to three-dimensional. A gentle breeze blew through the courtyard, causing tufts of grass to sway and a little dust devil to dance merrily before me.

  A smell of dust, grasses, and something slightly foul made me hold my breath and then sneeze loudly. I glanced around hurriedly, but none of the wispy shadow heroes seemed to notice. In fact, none were nearby at the moment.

  The archway that once held gates into this fortress had carved runes long its surface. The runes were too faded to make much out, but they had a feel of magic about them.

  I began to reach forward, trying to get a closer look or maybe even a feel of the stone, when I noticed that the entire painting was outlined in a red light. I suddenly felt the presence of imminent danger. My stomach clenched, and I felt nauseous. Not so bad that I felt like I would pass out or throw up, but it was rapid and uncomfortable.

  I quickly stepped back, and the feeling faded, as did the scarlet-colored light around the painting.

  Turning around, I put my back to the scary painting without even looking for its brass plaque. I steadied my breathing and looked upon a more tranquil scene of gently rolling waves along a wide, white sand beach.

  “That’s more like it,” I spoke out loud for the first time since leaving the security guard. “I nice, safe, sandy beach is just what I need.”

  With a smile, I walked forward, and two things caught my attention.

  First, as the scene became three-dimensional, I felt the heat coming off the sandy beach and could smell the salt water on a gentle breeze. But that wasn’t the only sense to be affected. I could also hear sounds. The sounds of enormous crashing like giant footsteps smacking against the sand.

  I caught some movement from the right side of the painting and couldn’t believe what I saw. Rushing toward me along the beach and directly where I was standing in the hallway was what looked to me like a T-rex.

  Like a lot of kids when I was younger, I loved playing with home-printed dinosaur figurines and watching vids or reading screen stories about the Jurassic age.

  And that creature was a T-Rex, or maybe an Allosaurus. Either way, it was big, ferocious, and moving toward me.

  The second observation was that the painting glowed red again, and the nausea was kicking in. It seemed less pronounced than the castle painting, but my adrenaline was kicking in, so maybe that affected it.

  I backed away quickly, and the painting returned to a two-dimensional appearance, but it now showed a hungry dinosaur that had gotten far too close to the painting’s edge, where I had been standing for my comfort.

  The brass plaque read, “Monster Island.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said as I looked around. I half expected someone to jump out and yell, “Surprise!” or discover I was the butt end of some hoax or prank.

  Nope. Just paintings and some distant shadows moving along the hallway.

  I shook my head and continued walking down the center of the hallway.

  Another peaceful-looking painting caught my eye, but I was far more suspicious of its gentle hills and tall grasses.

  I moved slowly forward, being careful to get close enough for the three-dimensional effect but not so close that I couldn’t back away to the center of the hallway rapidly if needed.

  As the effect occurred, the grassy scene did not make me sneeze. It looked relatively harmless, and I almost moved on when I noticed a boy fast asleep against the trunk of a large, shade tree that stood on a high hill and was the only plant taller than the grasses that could be seen.

  Curious, I stepped forward a bit closer and watched as the image took on an even richer and familiar three-dimensional depth. Much like the other paintings, I noticed the wind blowing, although this time, it was through tall grasses. I could smell the fresh air with a slightly chilly nip around the early morning dew-covered ground.

  A dark movement caught my eye. A shadowy shape crept silently to the right at the edge of the boundary between the tall grasses and a short grass and rocky jag. A large wolf was stalking the unwary boy.

  I glanced at the edges of the painting, which magically flickered between blue and yellow.

  “It’s not red,” I commented out loud.

  Somehow, I knew that the color scheme suggested the difficulty of the challenge facing me if I decided to enter this painting alone. And I suddenly knew that I could walk right into it and let it take me wherever it was located.

  The question on my mind, however, was whether this was an entrance into a repeating pocket universe that served as some kind of quest, or if it was a window onto our current world, but somewhere else in the realm.

  The answer to that question was more than academic interest, since if it was just a repeating scene, I could walk away from the boy, and the scene would reset when someone else came by. However, if it was a magical window that transported the viewer to its location, that small boy was about to be in the belly of a large wolf if nobody intervened.

  The wolf crept closer, and as it drew nearer, I could see it was huge. It resembled a woolly pony in size more than it did a wolf, but it was far more muscular than a pony, and the sharp fangs did not suggest it would care to find itself saddled with a foolish apprentice enchanter upon it.

  Glancing down at the painting's title, I saw it read “Shepherd’s Hook.”

  I needed to decide whether to defend the sleeping boy or move on and leave him to his fate.

  The wolf crouched, ready to pounce.

  If it were real, I could not just stand here and watch the boy die horribly.

  I took a deep breath and plunged through.