Aside from the smell, the guy is tall (really tall), fat (really fat), and weirdly proportioned in a way that doesn't match any common body types. He's being sneaky as well—keeping to shadows and doing a much better job of not being seen than that should be able to justify. He should be getting second glances from everyone, but isn't even getting first ones. Except from Sadde, of course.

The guy is also not especially observant. He misses Sadde when he glances around to check for bystanders. Then he steps around a corner.

Yeah, that's weird. That's very weird. Why is there a conspiracy, if this turns out to be something lame like the Free Masons or Rosicrucians or whatever she's gonna be so annoyed.

She doesn't immediately follow, she tries being casual, and just looks around that corner as if she didn't care. Sneakily.

Empty.

No obvious exits, either, just an out-of-the-way dead end north of town.

Okay, what. It's a conspiracy with secret passages, really? For real?

...well, it wouldn't earn her respect otherwise, she supposes. Now, is there a place where a guy that big and weird could fit...?

Nope. He had to be seven feet tall if he was an inch, and he was multiple inches.

Of course. Well, it wouldn't be a very good secret passage if it were obvious where it was. She should go look around. Starting with the walls, and a not totally thorough inspection—she won't touch them but she'll, like, squint at them to try to find, well, something.

As soon as she rounds the corner, it's different here. The sun didn't jump across the sky or anything, but its light seems softer. Straight lines and right angles are less frequent. And was that a scream in the distance?

...different how, exactly? Scream in what distance?

She looks around, and at the sun (not directly, but anyway), and at the walls.

Everything's fine, nothing to see here. Walls are flat at first glance as usual and only look concave or convex or both if she checks closely. The sun is acting well within the range of how it normally does on days with different weather from today.

The sound came from the same direction she did. Back outside the dead end. Maybe it was just a peacock. It's April, and those birds' mating calls can sound surprisingly like a distressed human child sometimes.

A peacock... Okay, sure, why not, but that still doesn't explain the impossible geometry.

So, of course, she's hallucinating. Delightful. A secret passage that causes hallucinations, there must be some gas or something here... But she loses nothing by continuing to explore the non-Euclidean walls closely until she has determined just where the heck this weird hallucinogen is coming from.

While she's poking around, the man she was following returns.

He still looks seven feet tall, but then he stops hunching over and it's closer to ten. He bellows over his shoulder, "we've got a fresh one!" and his mouth opens wider than it should. It even looks like he has tusks, short vertical ones like a wildboar. He lumbers toward Sadde.

Returns from where. And what the hell is that on his face, this halluciongenic thing...

"Excuse me? Fresh one?" she says, taking a step back. If she'd been following a rapist she's gonna be really, really annoyed, but why would a rapist have a hallucinogenic gas around a secret passage...? Wouldn't it be much easier to just knock out his victim? And, of course, other people, he called other people, so he's not alone.

Returns from around the corner, of course. The same one she came in through. It's not like there's any other obvious way in or out. She must have just missed the part where he exited right in front of her eyes.

"You should run, little girl." He continues lumbering, staying along one side of the alley so she can flee past him if she decides to.

"That's becoming increasingly apparent and it annoys the heck out of me but sure why not, toodles!" And she runs, reaching behind her back for her pepper spray in one of her backpack's side pockets.

He gives her a head start.

When she leaves, nothing changes back. The road that was definitely straight five minutes ago now curves slightly and narrows. The background looks weird: some places are dark and others are light and those are occasionally right next to each other without any gradation between. And there are no normal people in view. Any of the several people and animals she can see would qualify as number two hundred twenty-two on their own if she were counting separately. The nearest, presumably the one being shouted to, looks for all the world like a woman with the lower body of a snake.

Clearly hallucinating a lot, she should've left earlier, fuck.

Okay, retrace her steps, run like hell back to school, it doesn't matter of people think she's crazy (she might be, at the moment anyway).

Getting back to the school is complicated. Whether by design or not, the effect of the bent geography is that roads tend to lead further up and further in. Before long she'll be absolutely certain that she's running away from the school, but if she changes direction it won't help for very long.

The tall man and the snake woman are pursuing, laughing as they go.

Okay no this makes no sense even if she were hallucinating she's not that bad about knowing her way, she's sure she's retracing her steps. Even if she was hallucinating about how much she was moving, she can't possibly be hallucinating about directions... can she? Just where is she? Where's everyone else, why has she not run into anyone who would want to stop the laughing people?

Well, what if they're not laughing? Perhaps she's hallucinating that, too, and they're trying to help her...? How do you deal when your senses are lying to you?

Does she at least recognise wherever-the-hell she is?

It all looks familiar, like it's a close analogue of the town it ought to be. But there are no vehicles on the roads, or people who look normal, or reliable way of getting between points A and B.

...she's not hallucinating, is she. She just—dropped into some alternate reality or something.

Ugh. Okay, so she'll have to treat everything as if it was true, at least for now. Her senses are not lying to her. What tools does she have? Pepper spray in her hand, her backpack's heavy enough with books that it could be swung, but might be better to just actually swing a single book than the backpack itself. She can run, she's pretty in shape, so in the worst case she'll go ahead and do that. What else does she have? Anything she can use, around here? Are those two still following her?

They're following, and she might be in shape but she doesn't have inhumanly long stride length. Or whatever it is snake people use for transportation. The ground shakes, and before she can spot anything potentially useful the tusked man rakes a claw across her shoulder. Of course he has claws.

She screams. What the fuck. What the actual fuck. She's bleeding! Also she's on the ground, what the hell, that guy's—

She bolts, dropping her backpack, ignoring the pain caused by it when it touches her hurt shoulder, keeping only her pepper spray can in her hand. Run, and hide, she needs to lose them, it doesn't really matter where.

He lets her go, still laughing.

"You can't get away, little girl! I haven't lost a scent in a hundred years!"

"Then I'm going to be your first," she spits, not stopping or looking over her shoulder to check if he heard it. Just run.

Fuck that hurt. Need to lose them, need to throw something in their way, what does she have.

Books, backpack, blood... the pepper spray is probably pretty much it. Nothing in view looks like it'd help escape or fight off a hostile giant. Maybe there's something useful inside a building? If nothing else he'd have trouble with ceilings.