Chapter 1: The Warmth Beneath the Furs
The cold hit first. It wasn't the gentle chill of a faulty thermostat, but a deep, marrow-aching cold that seeped through the heavy layers above me. My eyes fluttered open to darkness, and for a confused second, I thought the power was out. Then the smell registered—woodsmoke, stone, and something organic, like wet fur.
I was tangled, but not in our cotton sheets. My face was buried in a cascade of blonde hair that smelled of Ellie’s jasmine shampoo. My arm was numb under the familiar, comfortable weight of Nancy curled against my side. And a leg was thrown over mine, muscular and practical—Mary, definitely.
“Ellie,” I mumbled, my voice hoarse. “Why is it so cold?”
She shifted, her curvy body pressing closer for warmth. “Did we leave the window open?” she whispered, her sleep-roughened voice confused.
I opened my eyes fully. This wasn’t our bedroom ceiling with its faint crack in the plaster above the fan. This was vaulted stone, lost in shadow high above. Glowing lines traced across its surface, a lattice of faint blue light that pulsed with a slow, steady rhythm. A heartbeat of light in a stone ribcage.
“What the hell?” I said, sitting up sharply.
The mountain of furs—and they were furs, actual pelts—shifted. Mary groaned in protest, her short blond hair sticking up. Nancy’s curly mop emerged next, her artist’s eyes wide and instantly taking in details I was still processing: the intricate tapestries on the walls, woven with silver thread that shimmered; the massive, iron-banded door; the frost etching the edges of the mortarless stones.
“We’re not in Kansas,” Nancy breathed, not sounding scared, but utterly fascinated.
Ellie sat up, the furs pooling around her waist. Her long hair was a mess, gloriously so, a testament to the night we’d had. She looked around the cavernous room, her nurturing instincts switching from family to environment in a blink. “Is everyone okay? Are we hurt?”
“We’re physically fine,” Mary said, her engineer’s brain already kicking in. She slid out from the furs, her lithe body unselfconscious in the chill. She walked to the nearest wall and placed a palm flat against it. “The runes are warm. They’re the heat source. Incredibly efficient. Ambient magic?”
Before I could process the term ‘ambient magic,’ a heavy knock echoed through the chamber. Three firm, measured raps on the thick door.
We froze, a tableau of four very naked, very modern women in a pile of prehistoric bedding.
The door swung open before any of us could speak. Two young women entered, dressed in simple, heavy wool gowns, their hair braided tightly. They dipped into deep, synchronized curtsies.
“Your Majesties. My Ladies,” the one on the right said, her eyes fixed respectfully on the floor. “We have drawn your morning bath. The Royal Courts convene within the hour, and your presence is expected in the throne room.”
Silence. Absolute, profound silence.
I exchanged a look with Ellie. Her eyebrows were in her hairline. Mary looked like she’d been handed a malfunctioning carburetor and told to fix it with a spoon. Nancy just stared at the maids, absorbing the cut of their dresses, the texture of the wool.
The maid on the left continued, still bowed. “Shall we attend you in the bath chamber?”
Ellie found her voice first, warm and diplomatically smooth even in utter bafflement. “Thank you. We’ll… manage ourselves this morning. We’ll be ready shortly.”
The maids curtsied again. “As you wish.” They backed out, pulling the enormous door shut with a solid thunk that echoed finality.
The second the latch fell, the room exploded.
“Majesties?” Mary hissed.
“Courts? Throne room?” I echoed.
“The bath is drawn,” Nancy said, practically. “I’m freezing. And I feel… grimy. In a post-cosmic-teleportation kind of way.”
She had a point. The sensory overload was starting to organize itself into a single, glaring need. Cleanliness. A hot shower—or bath, apparently—was a non-negotiable base camp from which to stage the scaling of this insane mountain.
“Okay,” I said, the project manager in me taking over. “First step: reconnaissance. Find this bath. Get clean. Then we can figure out what ‘Royal Courts’ means and how four women from Portland ended up running them.”
Ellie slipped from the bed, her graceful nudity a stark contrast to the primitive grandeur of the room. She found a heavy robe draped over a chest, thick velvet lined with fur, and wrapped it around herself. “It’s through here, I think,” she said, heading toward a smaller archway to the side of the main door.
We followed, a line of bewildered women in a strange land. The bath chamber took my breath away. It was smaller than the bedchamber, but steam rose from a sunken pool carved directly into the glacial rock itself. The water was milky and swirling with what smelled like herbs—lavender and something earthy. More of those gentle runes glowed beneath the water’s surface, keeping it hot. Towels, thicker and softer than any I’d ever felt, were piled on a bench. It was, objectively, magnificent.
Nancy was already testing the water with her toes. “Oh my god. It’s perfect.”
It was a slice of sanity. A familiar ritual. We shed the fur robe and stepped into the enveloping heat. The silence returned, but this time it was comfortable, punctuated only by the soft lapping of water and sighs of relief. We settled around the pool, the four of us connected by knees and feet under the steamy surface.
Ellie leaned her head back against the stone edge, her blonde hair darkening at the tips in the water. “So. We’ve been isekai’d.”
Mary smirked. “Only you would use an anime term right now, Mom.”
“What else would you call it? One minute we’re in our bed, the next we’re… royalty in an ice palace.” She reached for my hand under the water, her fingers lacing with mine. “Any theories, my brilliant engineer?”
I stared at the dancing steam. “None that make any physical sense. No tech I know of could do this. The energy requirement alone… and the matter reassembly…”
“Magic,” Nancy said simply, squeezing water from her long curls. “The runes are warm. The stones are fit together without mortar. The water is heated from below with no visible fire.” She shrugged. “We have to accept the local physics.”
“Okay,” Mary said, pragmatically. “Assume magic. Why us? And why are we in charge? They called us ‘Majesties.’ Plural.”
The word hung in the steam. It implied a structure. A responsibility. My mind, always building systems, began sketching a terrifying flowchart: Unknown magical event -> displacement of four individuals -> insertion into high-ranking societal roles -> imminent public appearance -> high probability of catastrophic failure.
Ellie’s thumb stroked my knuckle. “We’ll figure it out together. Like we always do.” Her gaze swept over Mary and Nancy, warm and sure. “We’re a family. That’s our operating system. That doesn’t change, even if the hardware,” she gestured at the stone around us, “got a major, bewildering upgrade.”
She was right. The water was washing away the initial shock, leaving behind a slow-dawning reality. We were here. We were together. And soon, we had to go out there and convince a throne room full of people that we belonged.
I took a deep breath, the humid, herbal air filling my lungs. “Alright. First objective: get through this court thing without getting executed for imposters.”
Nancy grinned, a flash of excitement in her eyes. “What’s the dress code for inter-dimensional monarchy?”
We laughed then, a soft, slightly hysterical sound that bounced off the ancient stones. It was the most normal sound in the world. It was our anchor.
The water was starting to cool. The world outside this steamy sanctuary was waiting. We had no clothes, no plan, no clue. But we had each other, messy, loving, and utterly out of our depth. For now, that would have to be enough.