Prelude

At 5:30 her alarm screeched to life, waking Lila from a deep sleep. She pretended at first not to hear it as if by ignoring it, it would shut up on its own. Several minutes of incessant beeping, however, caused Lila to cave, and she rolled over half-heartedly to silence it. With the last of her dwindling will power, she managed to push herself out of bed, into her workout gear, and off to the gym for spin class. So began a seemingly normal day.

Lila was a high school literature and French teacher by day and an aspiring singer by night. Essentially, 5:30 was the only time Lila had for herself, but she was spread so thinly lately that she nearly fell asleep perched atop her stationary bike. Most days she'd rather get the extra hour or two of sleep, but the familiarity of a schedule gave her an odd sense of peace. She appreciated routine, and nearly all of her days were mapped out and consistently followed the same rhythm.

After a grueling class, Lila showered and prepared herself for work. Normally, she arrived at school an hour or so early to grade a few papers before school began. Today, however, she left the gym feeling more like a zombie than usual and decided to shift her course to include a drive through the coffee shop on her way. Unfortunately for Lila, that's when things got interesting.

She slid into the driver's seat of her navy blue Mini Cooper and turned the key in the ignition. There was a flash of white light that encompassed everything, and she felt as if her body were being sucked through a vacuum tube. Her scream was caught in her throat, and for one terrifying millisecond, her world shifted around her. And then there was sand… miles and miles of sand. Lila's mind was racing, trying in vain to piece together how she got from the gym parking lot to the middle of a desert. She finally decided that she must be dreaming. She'd been juggling so much and not sleeping enough, so she must have fallen asleep. She closed her eyes and pinched herself, but when she opened her eyes: sand. She tried pinching herself harder, smacking herself, hitting her head against the steering wheel, anything she could think of, but still sand. Frustrated, she punched her steering wheel and blared her horn.

Suddenly in the distance there was a black spot on the horizon. Lila straightened to attention and watched the spot slowly approach closer. She quickly abandoned her car and began running toward the dot, watching it shift into the outline of a person on a horse. She waved her arms frantically and screamed to get his attention. The person came into view, and Lila's heart skipped a beat. It was a man in some bizarre armor, sword drawn, and closing in on her. She turned to flee to the safety of her car, but the blue machine was nowhere in sight. Still, she ran, the sound of galloping drawing closer and closer until...

"Halt!" Lila noticed the bizarre language, but somehow she understood it. She immediately stopped and held up her hands. The man guided his horse in front of her and held his sword up, poised to strike. "Who are you?"

Lila was visibly shaking, and she felt lightheaded from the mixture of confusion and fear. She didn't understand what was going on, where she was, why she was there, how she got there… a million questions flooded her mind. It was too much to process. He said something else, but she couldn't make it out through the ringing in her ears. Then her face hit the sand, and she was out cold.