《The Arkfel Chronicles》


 1 - The Book

    A door clanged shut in the distance. And then, as far as he knew, he was alone.

    It was a strange, not entirely comfortable feeling. The huge bottom level of the Basileus University research library was filled with rows of wooden shelves, each eight feet tall and perhaps forty feet long. The shelves were spaced a bit too tightly, the lights just a bit too dim. It felt like a forest in twilight. Lonely, but with the odd feeling that someone, or something might be lurking just out of sight.

    With a quiet sigh, Leo tried to suppress his overactive imagination and get on with finding the books he needed. He''d only come to the library near its midnight closing time because he''d had work right after class. Now he was fuzzy with fatigue, and kept finding himself reading the titles of books that had nothing to do with what he was looking for.

    Which was Isaac Babel''s "Red Cavalry", a book that didn''t seem to be in the right place. It was difficult to be sure, because a number of the books were old, with worn spines that were hard to make out.

    Hesitantly, he pulled out a handsome blue cloth-bound book with no title at all. Perhaps the cover had been replaced? But it looked old, maybe old enough to be an original edition. He cracked it open.

    Blank on the first page. He flipped forward. There were a couple strange illustrations, then the title page, in an odd, dated serif font:

    "A Summoning to Another World"

    Strange title. He shut the book.

    After a moment, he reopened it. That was just too odd.

    Back on the title page, he noted that there was no author. No copyright page, no ISBN number, no table of contents. The text simply started.

    <hr>

    In another world, there is a library much like the one you stand in. I know this because I am in that library, and you are in yours. My library is part of a school, and so is yours.

    Unlike your world, however, mine is a locus. It can draw people to it. You may think of this phenomena as gravity, or like a river which flows only in one direction, whose eddy may sweep you down an unexpected branch.

    If you have found this book, you have begun this process of being pulled to my world. You will continue reading, as I describe to you the world, and the institution, which you will be entering.

    Our world is known as Grand. Here, humans are powerful. We have magic. My school is the prime institution in our country, Charun. While all people have a soul and the ability to use mana, the graduates of Arkfel are the champions of Charun.

    But we are not alone. The human kingdoms are islands in a sea of peril. The other races are many, and strong. The dangers we face are may be our equals or, often, our betters. Beholders, skinwalkers, orcs, vampires, dragons, elves, trolls, titans -- you recognize many of these names, do you not?

    There is some connection between the legend and myth of your world, and our lived in reality. What that connection is, our best scholars have not yet uncovered.

    Despite our commonalities, our worlds are very different. That is why we summon people from your world: an outside perspective, a divergent viewpoint, is often valuable. And if you are reading this, you can rest assured that you have been well chosen.

    Arkfel is a microcosm of our world, a place where students can gain power -- but also face uncertainty and danger. Be cautious, and clever, and you may do well here.

    Come, step forward through the door of darkness, and join us...

    As he read, numb with lack of sleep, the library had seemed to darken around Leo. Turning the page, he found that the next page was a blank, pure black as if covered with ink. The darkness around him merged with the page, and the world fell away.

    <hr>

    He rushed forward in a tunnel of pure blackness. Leo knew that he had entered and that, somewhere at the far end, there was an exit. Yet the feeling of surging forward he had begun with faded away. Time passed, slowing, until he hung unmoving in the void.

    Hello? Is anyone there?

    The question echoed. Lifetimes crept past. The dark became all, and Leo rested, awaiting the end of the summoning.

    ...

    ....

    ... .. .

    ...... . .

    .. .  .      .          .                .                       .

    Above the old village, atop the cragged cliffs, the old school''s towers rose, high enough to brush the grey clouds that crept down from the Iron Mountains.This book''s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

    Once, it had been a school of magic. But for two hundred years, it had stood silent and sealed, waiting for a time that students would again be ready to learn.

    Wider than the Palace at Aginholm, taller than the Colossus of Shem, more impregnable than the forts in the high passes. Though after the first few attempted intrusions by adventurers and explorers, it needed nothing more than its reputation to be left alone. It was also rather far from the current borders of Charun.

    But for the first time in decades, an expedition had not only made it past the doors, but had alsogotten past the initial dangers -- old defenses and wandering creatures. Now, the survivors were in a chamber on the second floor, gathered around an ornate ring on the floor.

    Within the ring, ancient sigils flared and extinguished, going through a sequence. But there were flickers and apparent misfires. Twice, soft popping sounds had come from the floor after a rune had increased in brightness too quickly then suddenly disappeared.

    "Not a good sign," muttered Nemtal, the expedition leader.

    The group of six had little to do besides feed the ring. It was drawing mana from them at a prodigious rate, manifested as a multi-colored fog drifting out from their bodies and into an invisible vortex. They were chewing vetal leaves to replenish their reserves, but if the ritual went on for too long, they were bound to run out.

    And then, who knew what would happpen? The ring was at least two hundred years old, set in place but never triggered. Had its creators sought to create a weapon? To attract a guardian? Or to simply get advice from beyond?

    Nemtal had decided it was worth the risk. While he didn''t recognize most of the sigils being used, he understood the general setup. It was a simple ring -- not meant to contain or bind what was summoned. The few sigils he knew indicated time and distance, not potential dangers like the elements, spirits, or raw force. And its weathered appearance indicated that it had been used many times before.

    The final point in favor of initiating the ritual was that Nemtal''s expedition was running out of options. Arkfel itself seemed intent on either killing or driving them out.

    The inner third of the ring suddenly flared to life, and a repeating circle of runes began spiraling, around and around. That likely meant the summoning was in a holding pattern until it built up enough power. Sweat beaded on Nemtal''s brow. He noticed that Janso, the weakest member of the group, was having trouble remaining upright.

    If this ritual did summon something threatening, they were done for. Nobody would have the strength left to fight.

    <hr>

    A great distance away, Leo felt something change.

    In the dark, lightless space, he had been in a state near to sleep. Yet he was still aware enough to sense the shift in his surroundings. Something like a breeze seemed to drift past, although there was no air, and he had no body.

    With the resumption of movement, his mind roused from its suspended state. Dreamlike, he began to wonder.

    Where am I? What is happening?

    Light flared. At the other end of the long tunnel he was in, a door seemed to be opening. And as the light reached out to him, his consciousness began to flow toward it.

    The pull became stronger as the door opened wider. Quickly, it became a raging torrent. He hurtled toward the light.

    <hr>

    Janso had long since sagged to his knees. Nemtal couldn''t spare a thought for him: he was digging into his deepest reserves to continue feeding mana to the ritual. Across from him, Suzat was mumbling a strengthening incantation, sweat dripping from her brow.

    In center of the ring, a bright glow was building, expanding outward. But slowly, so slowly. Mana swirled in a cloud around it, above the fading sigils.

    Janso fell over. After another minute, the last of Nemtal''s mana left his body, joining the cloud. He sat down heavily, the strength gone from his legs. One by one, the other expedition members fell, stricken down by mana burn. The ritual glowed on, but the bright shell in the middle ceased growing, starved for power.

    <hr>

    On the other side of the glowing door, Leo felt the pull fade away. The door remained open, but his motion drifted to a halt.

    The darkness had held him in its comforting embrace -- he didn''t know for how long. But he knew it was an old, familiar friend. Part of him wanted that door to close, to let him return to his rest in the familiar void.

    But another part of him yearned toward that light.

    Experimentally, he tried willing himself toward the door, perhaps to peek through it. Nothing happened. He hung in place, motionless.

    Not being able to move seemed to fuel his curiosity. Now he really wanted to know what was there. The light beckoned to him. But he couldn''t reach it.

    He had no body, and thus no way to give himself momentum. Distantly, he seemed to recall having appendages that he could move, something that might let him hurl himself toward that door. Now, he was simply a point in space.

    Or was he? He tried to examine himself, but he realized he couldn''t change his viewpoint -- in fact, he seemed to be able to simultaneously sense everything around him, except for himself.

    What was in that blank spot in the center of his awareness? What was he?

    In his introspection, Leo realized that he could, in fact, feel something. His body, for lack of a better term, was something similar to the light coming through that door. Somehow, Leo knew this was the first time he''d ever sensed himself, at least in this way.

    Experimentally, he tried to direct his light, shining it toward the door.

    As he did, he felt himself diminishing -- but also, beginning to move again! He exulted in the feeling of motion, this time achieved through his own agency.

    The light from his body intermingled with that coming through the door, seemingly pulling both ways. But it was such a long distance away, and Leo felt his essence diminishing. Worse, he somehow knew that he wouldn''t regain what he had lost. If the door closed, and left him in this dark place again, he would be weaker. He might even disappear entirely.

    He urged himself onward, his self awareness ebbing as the light flowed out. With a sense of sorrow, he realized that he wouldn''t make it to the door. He would simply evaporate into that light.

    Frustrated, he almost missed the voice whispering through the doorway.

    "Do you wish to come?" it seemed to say, without words.

    "Yes!" he cried back.

    "It has been a long time. A very long time. Should I help you?" The voice seemed to be speaking to itself.

    "I want to come! Please help me! I''ll be... I''ll be good." Leo wasn''t sure what, exactly, he would be good about.

    A short silence passed. Leo felt like he was experiencing eternity for the first time. He wished himself toward the glowing doorway, but nothing happened.

    "Very well," the voice finally said.

    Suddenly, the door flared, brightness pouring through. The light took hold of Leo, flooding into him and drawing him toward it. He shot forward.

    His last thought was a brief regret for the lost darkness. Then the light washed away everything.

    <hr>

    In the ritual ring, the light grew to the borders of the area, increasing in intensity until, briefly, it seemed to become a solid shell. Then it winked out. Left behind on the floor, there was very naked, dazed looking young man.

    Nobody could see him, though. Arrayed around the ring were six unconscious bodies, sprawled out in various uncomfortable looking positions.

    Leo sat up, rubbing at his head. He looked around.

    "What the hell?"

 2 - Testing

    What should one do when suddenly finding oneself in the middle of what that looks like a demonic summoning circle, surrounded by unconscious robed cultist-looking people?

    Correct answers might include: running away, searching the room for clues, or just getting out of the circle. Leo chose a different option: sitting down in the middle of the circle, and spacing out while he tried to figure out what had just happened.

    His last memory, according to the timeline his brain provided, was reading that strange book in the university library. It had been like he couldn''t stop reading, but he also hadn''t wanted to. What was that the book had said? "If you were chosen, it was for good reason"?

    Leo had often felt trapped. He worked two jobs to cover the bills and college. His mother recently passed away, and none of his childhood friends lived near school. No girlfriend, except for an abortive three week fling. His few moments of respite were in the fantasy worlds of games and books. The rest was all work, no fun.

    So he certainly would have chosen to escape that life if possible.

    But had that life really been his? He had another memory, equal in force to the memory of his life but separate, as if his mind were split into two. He remembered being lost in the dark, for an eternity. It was like remembering being in a coma, or being dead. That memory ended with spending his own energies to approach the bright door, then the voice in the darkness.

    He could still feel the strange energy of that dark place, and it was a feeling he''d never had in the other world. The "real" world. Now, he''d gained a sixth sense that applied only to something inside of himself. Or maybe not only inside, since there seemed to be something strange about the air here. He explored that sense, trying to figure it out. Was it more like physical feel? Like sight, or sound? Or none of the above?

    One of the figures on the floor chose that moment to groan, snapping Leo out of his introspection. He also suddenly realized that he was entirely naked, and cold. Particularly where his bare skin met the floor.

    He hastily got to his feet, unconsciously covering his exposed privates with his hands. Some things had to be hidden, in any world. Nether parts shielded, he quietly stepped over to examine the person who had made a noise.

    The man seemed to still be out of it, his eyelids closed, but his muscles were tensed, as if he were about to wake up. He was wearing a heavy, deep green garment that was open in the front. A cloak? A robe? Beneath it was dark leather, and a belt carrying a variety of implements. He looked middle-aged but still in his prime, with a full head of thick hair and a tidy goatee.

    A goatee. That was the facial hair of villains. The man also had deep weathering lines on his face, including the downward marks of a habitual scowl around his mouth.

    Leo looked at the others around the circle to see if they matched that assessment. They were attired similarly to the older man, but most were his own age or younger. He didn''t feel any danger from them. They looked normal, like anyone he''d see at school. Well, the two girls were prettier than average. But that was an improper thought to have while naked, cold and cupping his genitals, he decided.

    He noticed something bright in his peripheral vision, and whipped his head around. It was just a bluish orb of light. Except it was hanging in the air with no support, moving in an agitated figure eight motion, and he could also "see" it with his new sixth sense.

    Once he noticed the orb, it changed its pattern. First, it drifted closer to him, then it shot back toward the door. It then made a circling motion around the doorknob.

    "Okay, pretty obvious," muttered Leo.

    The intimidating man on the floor shifted with a groan. Leo suddenly felt like following the orb. It seemed likely that the man was part of this school the book had talked about, but the fringe possibility of becoming a sacrificial victim of a cult or a soul slave or some such motivated him to leave.

    Before leaving, though, he needed... clothes. He stood in indecision for a moment. Should he strip down one of the young men? That would be pretty rude, if they were in fact innocent. Then he spotted the pile of packs and bags in one corner of the room. Theft. Still rude, but not so much as stripping an unconscious person for their clothes.

    He grabbed a pack by its straps and hauled it up -- it was surprisingly heavy. Also, wearing a backpack while naked was even stranger than just being naked in a room full of strangers. He hastily opened the door, and slipped out into the hallway beyond.

    It was empty, dark, and had a dry, musty smell. The door clicked shut behind him, and a moment later, the light emerged through it, throwing everything into sharp relief. He''d forgotten to let it out, but apparently that didn''t matter. After moving back and forth in front of him to make sure it had his attention, the orb drifted off. Feeling alone, Leo hurried after it.

    Ancient carpets ran down part of the hallway, thick with dust that puffed up with each step he took. Everything else was grey stone, except for the occasional empty, ramshackle display case or closed doorway. The orb took went around a corner, then another, and before long Leo lost all sense of direction.

    Eventually, the hallway spilled out into a grand space. A enormous, corroded chandelier presided over a sweeping spiralled staircase that went both up and down from the level Leo was on. The orb curved down, almost seeming to slide along the bannister.

    "Are we going to stop somewhere?" called out Leo, as he hurried after. The orb bobbed once, as if it had heard him.

    At the bottom of the staircase, rubble from a smashed statue spilled out across the floor, and there was a distinct smell of something burnt. Leo also noticed a torn strip of distinctively green cloth among the rubble.

    "Was there a fight? With those people? Between them and... who?"

    But he had he had to focus on walking without getting rock splinters in his bare feet, while his teeth chattered from the cold. The other statues looming around the open space also creeped him out.

    The orb went behind the staircase, to yet another hallway, this one with no windows and a bare stone floor. After that, Leo walked for a long time through a variety of passageways, wider halls, open chambers and rooms, none of which the orb gave him any time to examine.

    Finally, the orb suddenly shifted to the right and disappeared through a closed door. That plunged the hall into nearly pitch blackness.

    Leo stumbled to a halt, putting out a hand to make sure the wall was still there. Suddenly freed from following the orb, all his thoughts suddenly came crashing back into his head. What was he doing!? Had he gone insane? Where the hell was he? Were those people really dangerous? Was he--

    The orb floated back through the door, bathing the area in a dim light again. It bobbed up and down impatiently. Leo sighed, moving forward to open the door.

    -

    Leo was still new to the idea of magic. He didn''t know what he should expect from it, or what it could do.

    But he hadn''t expected it to break the physical laws of space. The chamber on the other side of the door seemed only notionally connected to the gloomy halls he''d been walking moments before.

    Its walls were high and curved into a circle, with a domed ceiling hanging over it all, like a planetarium or church. No grim grey stone here; the walls gleamed dully, made of some pale material he didn''t recognize.

    But what caught his eyes were the evenly spaced windows around the entire expanse of the chamber, including one on either side of the door he''d just walked through. And on the other side of those windows--

    There was no building. He''d turned to stare through one of those windows. The building he was in was perched atop a rocky, bare hillside. Other hills rose around it, and mountains in the distance. And above it all, the sky was a moody purple, unlike anything Leo had ever seen, except perhaps during a particularly vivid sunset.

    Despite the windows being apparently open, the air in the chamber felt dead and stale, like the rest of the school. Leo raised his hand hesitantly, thinking of reaching out of the window. Was there an invisible barrier?

    The orb bobbed impatiently, off to his side. He turned, looking into the rest of chamber. There were large seats like thrones, some metal construction --

    But it occurred to him that he had a more pressing worry than any of his surroundings. "You''ll have to wait," he told the orb.

    Ignoring the light''s bobbing motion, he dropped his pack on the floor, opened it, and began digging through its contents.

    Leather water flasks, leaf-wrapped rations, a belt, a cloak. Leo almost put that on right away, but realized it had clasps that were supposed to attach to clothing. A dagger in a belt sheath. A long, thin rod that he wanted to think was a wand, but that split into two on its lower half. A rather unexceptional, grayish rock; he couldn''t guess why that was there. Leaves in a brown leather pouch. A journal with some sort of pen held to its spine by a strip of leather, which he flipped open to reveal rough-hewn pages covered in writing he could understand. He read a few lines, but didn''t comprehend what it was talking about. There wasn''t time to really study it, so he set it aside with the rest.Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

    At the bottom of the bag, he hit the jackpot: a pile of clothing.

    Which, it turned out, was made for someone smaller than himself, and very likely female. He realized that as he was hopping on one foot, shoving his foot into the leg of a pair of pants. In the end, he managed to get them on, albeit with the top unbuttoned. Only once he''d struggled into them did he realize there was also a pair of underwear. Thankfully, nothing skimpy, like the women''s underwear he''d seen before. It looked a bit like primitive boxer shorts.

    The orb was making back and forth motions between Leo and the center of the room, but he ignored it long enough to take off the pants, put on the underwear, and put the pants back on. Then the shirt, which was a voluminous, poofy-sleeved affair made out of something scratchy and rough. He covered the gap at the top of the pants by buckling the belt on and strapping the dagger to it, then figured out how to attach the cloak, threading a rope through a set of loops on the shirt.

    In the end, he looked utterly ridiculous, but the added warmth was worth it. He stuffed everything back into the pack, then left it where it lay to follow the orb.

    The chairs he''d noticed were indeed like thrones, rising directly out of the floor. There were eight, arrayed in a semicircle around the dully glittering sculpture of metal and crystal in the middle of the room.

    As he got closer, he stared through the loops and bars of metal. And saw a person.

    Or something that looked vaguely human, anyway. The hairless, grey-skinned thing was sitting in a chair inside the metal construction, as if it had never moved from that spot. Its face lacked ears, had slight indentations where eyes would normally be, and a pair of holes rather than a complete nose.

    Leo hesitated outside of the outer loops of metal, peering through them. The glowing orb simply floated over to the creature, positioning itself above it before sinking down into the top of its head.

    "So... that''s you?" asked Leo. There was no response.

    He''d already made his call to follow the light instead of staying with the unconscious people, he reflected. Ducking down, he made his way into the metal enclosure.

    Once he was inside, the atmosphere changed subtly. After a moment, he realized that he could no longer see the room outside of the metal. It was as if they were inside a dark room, rather than one with windows and natural light.

    The creature in its chair also looked subtly different. Closer up, the texture of its skin looked similar to stone. And it was very obviously not breathing.

    Then the eye on its forehead opened.

    Welcome to the testing chamber.

    The voice resounded in his head.

    Leo nearly fell over. He gripped the strip of metal behind himself, torn between whether to reply or run. After a moment, he realized that nothing unexpected had happened, besides the sort of magical weirdness that he should really be expecting. He just couldn''t calm down fully, with adrenaline flooding his system and his heart trying to pound its way out of his chest.

    Instead of replying immediately, he studied the creature. The eye looked painted onto the forehead, and hadn''t opened so much as appeared. The voice in his head had also seemed oddly familiar, similar to the voice that had spoken to him in the darkness.

    Was the creature even capable of moving? He fervently hoped not. He wasn''t sure he could handle it if the thing suddenly got up.

    He took a few more breaths to compose himself, straightening and letting go of the enclosure, before replying.

    "Um, thanks."

    The creature didn''t reply.

    "Nice to meet you?"

    ...

    "Are you the orb? The light I''ve been following, I mean?"

    Still nothing. The eye wasn''t moving. It looked like it had always been there, in fact. Just part of a statue.

    A testing chamber, it had said. Leo looked around. The inside of the metal structure was spherical -- in fact, he could see where the metal continued down into a slit in the floor. He''d mistakenly thought the interior surface of the metal was shiny, but on closer examination, he could see that it was coated in varying thicknesses of crystalline material. Tiny reflections of himself shone back from a hundred angles. Overall, the structure didn''t remind him of much, except perhaps some medieval astrologer''s tool.

    He had no idea what to do. Which seemed like a reasonable thing to admit, actually.

    "What does the chamber test for?"

    The reply was immediate.

    This is the testing chamber. You will be tested for basic magical aptitude. This is a standard test given to all new students at the School. There is nothing to fear.

    For the first time, he realized that the thing was more or less speaking English, although it seemed to have an accent of sorts. Was that because it was ''speaking'' directly into his brain? Or would the people he''d seen also speak English? And if so, why?

    "How do you do the test?"

    I will begin the test when you or your instructor state that you are ready. During the test, you will receive additional instructions.

    Vague, but helpful enough. He still felt nervous, though.

    "Who are you? Or, er, what are you?"

    I am a golem of the School. There are many such as myself.

    He''d heard of golems, of course. Usually from video games or novels. In older sources, it was an animated servant, usually made by Jewish rabbis and powered by a holy name written somewhere on its body. He dimly recalled a story about one called the Golem of Prague, that supposedly killed a Nazi.

    It also reminded him of the robots you could talk to online, that seemed intelligent only as long as you said the right things. Scripted, basically.

    Of course, the entire world seemed like some kind of weird simulation. Had he somehow ended up in a game world? Was he just a lab rat in some impossibly advanced virtual reality?

    On the other hand, was he accomplishing something useful by getting introspective, or was he just wasting time and avoiding starting? Those people might be looking for him.

    "Okay, I''m ready," he said.

    The golem didn''t reply, but there was a deep click heard from underneath the orb. The metal strips began to move, rotating around an invisible hub. Several screeches rang out, like squeeky car brakes, before the sound of the machine moving settled to a loud hum.

    He watched, not sure what was going on. His reflection danced across the crystaline interior of the strips of metal. As the machine sped up, the atmosphere suddenly shifted. Sound and light both seemed to change subtly. The closest sensation he could think of was being underwater.

    You will now channel mana.

    "Uh... how?"

    You may find it easiest to use your hands. Direct mana into an area between your hands, like an orb.

    What he''d meant was, how did one channel or release mana? Apparently it was a skill anyone would know. He stood in uncertainty, wondering what to do.

    He thought back again to his memories of the long dark, how he''d released light to approach the doorway. His newfound ability to sense mana was giving him a feeling of pressure in the machine, too. Perhaps the mana was denser in the machine, and that would somehow help him.

    The only thing he could do was try. He lifted his hands as if he were holding an invisible bowling ball, narrowing his eyes in concentration.

    He imagined light pouring out of his hands. Nothing happened. Instead, he imagined invisible energy pouring out. Perhaps it would come through his chakras? He couldn''t quite remember what chakras were, but he tried to imagine something pouring through his body, welling up from his torso.

    The golem was silent. He frowned and continued imagining different ways that energy could pour out through his hands.

    The air between his hands stayed stubbornly empty. And his arms were getting tired from holding the position.

    Please begin to channel mana.

    Unhelpful. He looked up to grimace at the thing. As he did, he caught a reflection of himself in one of the strips of metal as it swung by. He was surrounded by reflections, from every angle.

    That gave him an idea. Instead of staring into his hands, he lifted his head and let his gaze unfocus. He was surrounded by flickering reflections of himself.

    He felt the mana all around him. Now that he was really paying attention, the feeling was unmistakeable. And there was nowhere that it was denser than--

    In himself. All he had to do was release it.

    It took some time, but eventually, his efforts resulted in a faint glimmer between his cuppped hands. As he''d suspected, he actually saw it happen in the reflections. The crystals allowed him to see, rather than just sense, his mana.

    That feedback helped him narrow in on what to do. His mana sense helped him feel the energy coursing through his body. No, not coursing -- it wasn''t a raging river. But it was there, and he could direct it.

    Like a toddler learning to stand for the first time, his efforts resulted in multiple flickers and flashes between his hands. Finally, he managed to stabilize a weakly pulsating orb of energy. He was straining himself, but it was there!

    It is sufficient, if barely.

    That almost made him lose control. Did the thing just snark him? Maybe it wasn''t entirely like a robot, after all.

    Beginning analysis.

    The revolving movement of the metal strips began to speed up, and the mana density of the chamber increased. As it did, the strain on Leo eased somewhat. A deep hum of moving machinery and the mana-soaked air lulled him into something like a trance, until he felt like he''d been removed from his own body, and was watching from a viewpoint in the air.

    Now the flickering reflections all around him began to diverge. First the difference was only in the color of the orb between his hands. In some reflections, it took on a tint of orange, green, red, purple.

    The Leo in the reflections drew his hands apart, and the orb broke up. In each reflection, it became something different. One showed a raging torrent of fire; another, twisting serpents of water. Lightning sizzled and arced around him briefly, then was replaced with a spiderweb of bright strands. These eye-catching phenomena mainly focused on recognizable elements, although a couple were less easily identified, like a thick green ooze and swirling specks of dust.

    After a moment of flickering, changing images, the majority of the reflections showed streams of fog, some light and others dark. The fog twisted and writhed, seeming to take on shapes and figures as it passed by. Shapes writhed in several, showing images of animals or objects. Several reflections that whipped by only showed a solid area of blackness, inky and almost solid, while a few others showed strange ripples distorting the air.

    "These must be possibilities for my magic," Leo distantly thought. He felt simultaneously aware of what was happening in several hundred reflections all around himself, though many were incomprehensible.

    Time stretched on, a thousand flickering simulations taking place, until finally the machine began to slow. The golem sat motionless and silent while the pressure ebbed away, and the reflections converged back to a single image of Leo with his hands held in the air, a misty, barely discernable globe between them.

    At some point he came back to normal consciousness, and the awareness that he was dead tired. The orb flickered and disappeared, and he let his hands drop to his sides.

    Strengths identified: perceptual and phantasm. Recommending initial path of shadowmage, crystalmancer or illusionist.

    Leo stared at the eye on the golem''s forehead, his thoughts slowed by fatigue.

    "So... what? What does that mean?" he asked.

    Proceed to the Chamber of Attunement.

    Then, as the machine came to a halt, the eye on the golem''s forehead closed. The orb of light he''d followed to the chamber -- which Leo now recognized as an orb of mana, albeit one stronger than he''d produced -- emerged from the golem''s head and floated off.

 3 - Secondhand Knowledge

    Normally a thoughtful and methodical person, Leo was being rushed along from one place to another with no real understanding of what he was doing or where he was.

    Earlier that day -- or perhaps long ago -- he had been a student at Basileus University. Then he had opened a book and been sucked through a portal into another world.

    Now, he reflected as he hurried after a glowing, at least partially sentient orb, he was supposedly a student at another school. Whose name he didn''t know yet, but that was the least of his worries.

    His number one worry? That the place appeared to be long abandoned and potentially dangerous, with odd cultists and who knew what else wandering around. He had no idea where he''d get his next meal, a bathroom break or some sleep.

    The number two worry was that his world had become ludicrous. A one-eyed golem in a machine had told him he''d pick from a handful of classes. What were they, crystal mage, shadow mage or illusionist?

    But padding along bare-footed after the glowing light, he also couldn''t suppress a constant tingle of excitement. All he had to do was survive, and he would get to do magic. Magic!

    That, in the end, was why he kept following the orb. That, and having no other idea what to do, coupled with a distinct terror of what he might find if he wandered off alone.

    At the moment he was making his way through a long, creepy gallery. Ancient paintings tilted on the walls or lay on the floor, most of them illegible with age and dust. The few he got a longer glimpse of seemed to display the profiles of old men. Not too different from what he''d seen at an old castle during a trip to Europe.

    The creepiness came from the dim lighting and stillness of it all. High on one wall there were recessed windows, and there was one functioning light near the middle of the gallery. Every pillar had its own light fixture, but all the rest were non-functional or outright broken, only useful for supporting ancient spiderwebs. The room was silent as death, aside from the sound of his feet on the cold stone floor.

    That one light proved to be of some interest, as he neared it. It was a perfect (if dusty) glass ball, held in a tarnished brass claw. Oddly, the pillar under it looked like it had been rubbed clean, without the grime of ancient dust that covered everything else. In the center of the glass ball, a yellow light shone, reminiscent of both the blue orb he was following and the mana orb he''d created in the testing chamber. Leo guessed that if he were to take apart that fixture, he''d find that there were no wires, and that if he broke the glass, he''d find it was empty inside. Did that mean that the glass itself was enchanted? Was it drawing mana from the environment?

    His musings got Leo through the gallery without getting too unnerved by the deep shadows at the far end, and through the doorway. Not being focused on his environment also had a downside, though. Because in the next room, there were monsters.

    They were four, huddled on the floor, not moving. When he first noticed them, having come rather close, he took them for dead bodies, slumped in various graceless positions.

    A moment later, as the orb passed directly over them, they stirred. One whipped its head up and opened it. For a split second of cognitive dissonace, Leo couldn''t understand what he was looking at. Then he saw it for what it was: a grey-skinned, wormlike thing with a fleshy maw.

    The others stirred, flailing around until they got their balance. The one with the open mouth leapt at the orb, nearly reaching it. Two others also began writhing forward in pursuit of the orb. The last hesitated, swinging its maw between the direction of the orb and Leo. Then it lunged.

    As close as he was, he couldn''t just jump back and avoid it. By luck, he stumbled to one side enough for it to go flying past. Its tail end jostled him as its front landed, nearly knocking him over. Twenty feet away, one of the worms caught the orb, sucking in its radiance. The room was immediately plunged into gloom.

    Panic gripped Leo. He couldn''t see the worms, but they seemed able to sense him. Worse, he hadn''t gotten a look at the room before the light was eaten.

    Scraping sounds echoed from both beside and ahead of him. He backed away rapidly, one hand in front as if to block something, another extended behind himself, groping for a wall.

    Something landed near him, with a thump he both heard and felt through his bare soles. Acting on instinct, he lurched to the side. His shoulder rammed painfully into a wall.

    Light flared in the darkness. It was the orb, reappearing near the center of the room. The light revealed four worms all terrifyingly close to Leo. He jumped again, and two of the worms slammed mouth first into the wall.

    Across the room, there was a doorway. He ran for it, dashing past the orb in hopes it would distract the worms again.

    Confused by the darkness, he had no idea whether the doorway was different from the one he''d come through. He quickly realized it wasn''t. It led to another room, dim but not utterly black, with a ceiling high enough that he couldn''t see it and dim shapes arrayed around the walls. Running into the center, a glance back told him the worms hadn''t gotten through the door yet. He looked around, breathing heavily and searching for the next place to run.

    There were several doorways, but only one showed a hint of light. He made for it, just as one of the worms came wriggling through the doorway. The room behind it was dark again.

    The next hallway proved to have a small chandelier with a couple of working lights on it. He was through the room too quickly to catch and other details, headed into yet another passage.

    This one was dark and narrow, but with some squinting, he was able to see just enough to make his way down it, trailing one hand along the wall. A light flickered ahead of him, at nearly the same time as a scraping sound came from behind. He sped up, his heart hammering.

    As he burst into the next room, he heard indistinct voices. He froze. The light he''d seen -- not the blue color of the magic orb -- was bobbing up and down, shining into the room from another doorway. With little time to think, he looked around for hiding places. There were two pillars, and a table that had collapsed to the floor. He ran behind one of the pillars, positioning himself so he couldn''t directly see the light.

    Before long, he could hear both the sound of quiet footsteps from multiple pairs of feet and, through the doorway he''d come from, the scraping of the worms. The two groups reached the room at nearly the same time, and he heard an exclamation.

    "Shit, Eaters! Get back, set up a position."

    "I''m still low, Nemtal!"

    "Use your spear. They aren''t that bad."

    There was a loud scrape, then a strangled curse and the sound of feet retreating. The scraping sounds followed.

    Leo risked a peek around the pillar. He saw all four worms struggling to fit through the doorway. Beyond them were the robed people from the summoning chamber. One''s hands flared, and a fiery projectile streaked out, meeting a worm''s hide with a loud crackle. Leo ducked back behind the pillar.

    Thinking quickly, he decided he had two options. One, he could wait for the battle to finish and, in the apparently likely event the people won, try talking to them. Or two, he could go back and try to find the orb of light, which had been able to reform itself after the worms ate it at least once.

    Wandering back into the dark seemed more than a bit terrifying, but at least he knew the monsters were gone, now. And if he found the orb, he could get to the Chamber of Attunement.

    In the few seconds it took him to come up with his plan, more strange sounds rang out, along with some incoherent yelling. He risked another quick peek -- the worms had gotten past the doorway, and one was writhing as it was stabbed by two spears. With a quick prayer to whatever deities this world had, Leo turned and dashed back toward the dark doorway he''d entered the room from.

    Retracing his steps was nerve wracking, but not as difficult as he''d thought it might be; he''d only taken a few turns, and there weren''t as many doorways and alternate paths as he''d worried. Partway to the large chamber the worms had been in, he found the orb.

    "There you are!" he cried out, despite feeling a bit silly. Was it a person? Did it have a name? Or was it just an animated light?

    Whatever it was, the orb had apparently been looking, or at least waiting, for him. It drifted near, bobbing up and down in front of him a couple times before floating away again.

    "Don''t lead me into any monsters this time, alright?"

    He wasn''t sure it understood him, so Leo paid closer attention to his surroundings. It wasn''t something he was particularly used to doing -- in his own world he tended toward the absentminded professor stereotype, always likely to walk into a pole or a glass door because he was lost in his thoughts.

    The first thing he noticed was that the walls and floors weren''t much like the castles he''d seen. Despite being built of a fairly drab stone, they were finely made, every block precisely formed and fitted.If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

    Here and there, old furnishings moldered. Remnants of hanging drapes or art often looked like piles of litter, fallen into shapeless heaps beneath the walls. But overall, the place was fairly empty. Maybe it had been mostly cleared out before being abandoned, or maybe something living in the school consumed or used the remnants lying about.

    That brought up the question of what those Eaters -- what the group had called the worms -- actually ate. Leo wasn''t even an amateur ecologist, but he knew that in his own world, something like an abandoned castle or a closed cave complex could support only tiny creatures. So either that wasn''t true in this world and magic could sustain creatures, or there was more to this school than he was seeing.

    Despite himself, Leo ended up pondering the Eaters and not paying enough attention to his surroundings. Before he knew it, the orb had stopped by a doorway, hovering there until Leo caught up.

    It was a huge double door of wood engraved in a motif of trees and stars. Curious, he touched the wood. It seemed unweathered. Shouldn''t these doors have long ago rotted off the hinges?

    The light bobbed again. Feeling a thrill of nervousness, Leo licked his lips and tried one of the handles. Locked. The other one turned with some effort. He pushed to swing the door open, which it did with a protesting creak.

    He was expecting a large room beyond, like the testing chamber. Instead, it was deep but narrow. Warm light spilled out from between the bookshelves that lined the walls. The shelves appeared to be mostly empty.

    At the end of the room, there was a chair with an immense, arching back, made of some gleaming metal. Another golem sat beside it, in a smaller chair. As before, Leo''s guide orb floated toward the golem, hovering above its head before sinking into it.

    Leo stopped to close the door, wincing at the loud clank it made as it closed. Then he turned and approached the golem. On the way, he noticed that the shelves were warped, as if they''d once held a substantial weight.

    Welcome to the Chamber of Attunement.

    The golem spoke into his mind as he neared. While its grey skin, sealed eye sockets and unmoving posture were similar to the first golem Leo had met, it didn''t open an eye on its forehead.

    "Um, thanks. So this is where you teach me something about magic?"

    This is where your mind will be attuned. It is not teaching, but rather a process of instilling knowledge and power that is unique to this school.

    He thought about that for a moment. "Can I ask you some questions?"

    You are a student, but there is no instructor with you. And this Chamber also looks somewhat different. Did you not have anyone you could ask questions of before coming here?

    Could the golem be unaware of what had happened to the school? "Um. Well, the thing is, it seems like this school has been abandoned. I was summoned here by some people, but I guess they''re not instructors. And they may be dangerous."

    I see. That is unfortunate.

    "You didn''t know about the school being abandoned? You seem, er, smarter than the other golem I met."

    I am built for a purpose that requires more intelligence. However, I am not aware between my sessions. How long has the school been empty for?

    "I have no idea. There was, um, a glowing orb that I was following and it went into your head. Is that... you?"

    There was a long pause before the golem spoke again.

    Curious. Normally, I would be activated by a dean or professor. I cannot sense anything of this orb, but it seems I have been powered as usual.

    So where did the orb come from? Clearly, it was powered by something else.

    "I don''t know where anything is, here. And there are monsters. Can you help me?"

    My only function is to attune students and, if necessary, help teach them about their choices of class. I am not aware of the layout or operation of the school otherwise.

    That seemed like a dead end. But he was still curious about the golem itself.

    "You seem almost like an, um, normal person. No offense. What is a golem, exactly? What does it mean? Uh, assume that I don''t know anything."

    If you truly know nothing, it will be difficult to describe. I am a construct, which means I have a soul that was created for me, not given by birth. I was also given the understanding necessary to guide students'' minds through their attunement, and my personality was modeled on my creator. I am not alive.

    That was a strange note to end on. Leo hesitated, then decided to try a different tack.

    "What is attunement? What do I do?"

    It is a process structured by Archmage Randumel, with the assistance of many others. I am a comprehensive index of lower powered human soul archetypes. This allows me to structure your soul to a named archetype. In past times, Cognition Tomes could accomplish the same task, but only for individual archetypes.

    That took a long moment for Leo to grok. First, the knowledge that in this world he had a soul. He''d been agnostic in his own world, so he hadn''t believed in souls. But in a world with magic, it made sense.

    Then there was the rest. Human soul archetypes? Lower powered? So there were higher powered archetypes? Of course, you had to start at the bottom of the ladder, or pyramid, or whatever it was.

    After a silence, the golem spoke again.

    Have you been to the Chamber of Testing? Do you know your recommended soul archetypes? I cannot help you without this information.

    Leo sighed, trying to focus back on the conversation at hand. "Um... I think it was shadowmage, crystal mage or illusionist."

    Crystalmancer.

    "Right, right." So a golem could be pedantic.

    Unusual paths, for a human, but not unknown. Perhaps some experience you had shaped your soul. Do you understand these choices?

    "No," answered Leo. "I don''t know anything about classes."

    And do you have a memdex?

    "I don''t know what that is."

    Very well. You can read, yes? This room contains a copy of the Encyclopedia Compleat. Those... ah, dear me. The shelves are empty, are they not?

    Leo sighed, looking over at the bookshelves. He saw a few scraps of paper near the end of one and a thick layer of dust, but nothing else. "Yeah, they''re empty."

    A verbal explanation would be time consuming. Sit in the Chair of Randumel and I will convey the necessary information to you.

    He looked at the large chair to the left of the golem. Now that he was closer, he could see that the high metal back had a curve to it, which took it over the head of its occupant. A subtle stippling covered the surface, which was free of dust. The lower half of the chair was made of the same metal, and looked fairly ordinary.

    Without any excuse to delay longer, he hesitantly sat down. The metal wasn''t as cold as he expected. He settled back, the curve forcing his head to bow forward.

    The golem was silent. But after a moment, he felt a prickling in the back of his head.

    Was it like an MRI machine? Should he keep his head still? Uncertain, he tried to stay motionless, but he couldn''t help swivelling his eyes to look at the golem. As he did, he noticed that it was like the world was receding, becoming miniaturized.

    He''d had a similar feeling when pulling study all-nighters. Alice in Wonderland Syndrome, right? But this time was intense, almost like he was flying backward away from his own body. The disorientation forced him to close his eyes.

    The feeling of his mind being stretched continued, until foreign thoughts begin to invade. After a moment, it began to feel more natural, like he was remembering something long forgotten.

    The soul archetypes. He understood what they were, now. All three of the ones he''d named existed in a world of light. Crystalmancy, for instance, didn''t use actual crystals. But in this world, light could have weight and substance. Those properties were what crystalmancy relied on. He imagined razor edged crystalline structures flickering into existence, cutting through the air or blocking off areas.

    The trance lasted for some time as he absorbed information, learning the general strengths and weaknesses of each type of magic. Then it suddenly eased off, and he returned to his own mind, blinking as if he''d suddenly come awake.

    What is your choice?

    "Wait," said Leo. "Can I have some time to decide?"

    Yes.

    The golem fell silent.

    Feeling hurried anyway, Leo tried to organize his thoughts. After a moment, he leaned forward to dig around in his pack, pulling out the journal and pen. He flipped it open to the first empty page and began making notes with the pen, which was quite unlike a pen from home -- he forced himself to stop looking at it and jot some notes.

    Shadowmage

    For shadowmages, shadow is like a liquid. Controlled by caster''s will. Typical attack: wrap enemies in living shadow to choke them. More advanced: animate creatures with special abilities and some intelligence. Like Shadow Panther and Stygian Crow. At night or in the dark, it''s more powerful, can also conceal the user. Countered by light, so shadowmages also learn debuffs for materials that create or reflect light. E.g. can cause objects like mirrors or metal armor to react violently.

    Benefits: Creature summoning looks powerful; seems useful in the current situation, since it''s dark everywhere.

    Drawbacks: Very vulnerable to light. Seems overly specialized. I''m kinda afraid of the dark. Maybe.

    Writing the notes helped organize the information dump the golem had given him. It was also making him excited for these "archetypes". He scribbled on.

    Crystalmancer

    Opposite of a shadowmage, sort of. Shadow is soft and liquid; crystal makes light hard and sharp. Typical attack: use blades and spikes of crystal to cut and pierce enemies, or forms glittering shields to protect self. Helps to be in well lit surroundings. In full daylight, can use attacks like Rain of Shards. Not directly countered by darkness; a crystal can cut through shadows. But there has to be a light source. More advanced crystalmancy can create permanent artefacts and structures, like the Prison of Yelth... not sure exactly what that is, though.

    Benefits: Could cut an Eater in half. Maybe I could figure out how to make a lightsaber with it.

    Drawbacks: Seems more limited than the shadow, somehow. Because it''s more focused on offense, maybe? And bad in the dark.

    Illusionist

    The weirdest one. Directly affects minds, or maybe it creates light and shadow in a parallel reality? I think whoever recorded this information didn''t know, exactly. The downside: no substance or solidity. An illusionist can create phantasmal animal or plants, disguise themselves, or conceal parts of an environment. Can also create larger effects, like the Mists of Disarray. Advanced illusionists learn to cause deception and confusion, making their enemies become panicked or lost in waking dreams. Master illusionists are rumored to be able to fool the Gods themselves. NOTE: there are gods in this world?? Of course there are.

    Benefits: More open-ended than shadow or crystal magic.

    Drawbacks: How would I use illusion against an Eater? Do they even have eyes or a brain? It doesn''t seem to have any direct offensive power.

    The knowledge Leo had gained was like a pinhole view into a larger picture: he knew names of spells or places without the context of what or where they were, and some of the info somehow felt based on rumor and hearsay. He thought the memories might have been directly taken from someone, maybe the Archmage Randumel who had created the golem, complete with the sorts of uncertainties anyone would have about fields they weren''t necessarily an expert in.

    But it was enough to work with. He spent a while mulling over his list, jotting additional notes here and there beside the entries, until he''d made his decision. Feeling a wave of nervousness, he flipped the journal closed and dropped it to the floor.

    "I''m ready," he said. That wasn''t quite the truth. He was still mentally flip-flopping between two of the choices. But he''d learned a long time ago than when he was stuck in analysis paralysis, he just had to make a spur of the moment decision.

    And what is your choice?

    Taking a deep breath and closing his eyes, Leo spoke a single word.

    And with that, the chair activated again and his mind receded from his body, not to return until his very soul had changed.

 4 - A Light Mistake

    Night had fallen, and the abandoned school was filled with endless darkness, its corridors and rooms bathed in impenetrable shadow. In one of these, an ancient hall ringed with threadbare tapestries, a human crouched. His eyes were fixed on a group of strange creatures in the distance.

    The tiny humanoids, broad and short-limbed, were jabbering at each other in low tones, pointing at a glowing orb that was floating serenely past. In their hands they held crude knives and clubs. The blue light of the orb distorted their features into fierce masks, sending a thrill of fear through their unseen watcher.

    Leo wasn''t about to run away, though. He had new spells burned into his soul, and he needed to learn to use them properly to survive in this strange place.

    He took a deep breath, reviewing his newfound knowledge. Although that was difficult, in a way. Understanding the inner workings of his soul was like understanding how his heart beat, or how his stomach digested food.

    That thought reminded him that he hadn''t eaten in what felt like a full day. He''d drunk some of the water from the flasks he''d found in the backpack, but hadn''t yet gotten up the nerve to try the leaf-wrapped rations, which were made of some thick, utterly dry substance and smelled like wood chips.

    Shaking off the intestinal distraction, Leo considered what each class he could have chosen would have allowed him to do.

    For a shadowmage, the darkness in the room presented an obvious avenue of attack, allowing him to coalesce a creature of living shadow that would wrap around the short humanoids, binding their limbs and choking them.

    Attacking with crystalmancy would be even more straightforward. The creatures -- Leo wasn''t sure whether to call them goblins, imps or maybe even dwarves -- had small lights hung around their necks. Even though he couldn''t quite make out the form of these lights, he thought crystalmancy could probably cause them to burst into jagged-edged, shredding stars of light.

    Either approach had a downside, though: Leo had no desire to kill or seriously injure unknown humanoids, who might or might not be hostile. Certainly, they must be at least somewhat intelligent, since they were using tools and communicating with each other.

    Seriously, what were they? Given their general ugliness and small stature, he wanted to call them goblins. But they weren''t green, and their bodies were too thick and stocky to fit with his mental image of a goblin. He decided to call them imps.

    He took a deep breath, trying to control his racing mind. There was nothing for it but to start with his plan.

    "Phantasm," he muttered, his eyes unfocusing as he pushed his palm out toward the group.

    Roughly ten feet in front of him, a Labrador-sized creature materialized. It looked like the forbidden love child of a porcupine and a wolf, about half as tall as the imps, covered and spines and with a lolling, dripping maw full of needle-sharp teeth.

    The creatures had their backs turned, and didn''t notice the low growl that issued from the creature''s mouth. With a look of growing strain contorting his face, Leo repeated his spell. "Phantasm." Another creature, identical to the first, shimmered into existence.

    He panted out a breath when it was done, sagging to support himself with a hand on his knee. Then he straightened up, waving a hand and whispering. "Ready. Attack!"

    The two creatures each let out a warbling, high-pitched howl. The imps jerked around, lifting their weapons and staring wildly into the darkness. A moment later, two bundles of jagged energy bounded into the light, each launching itself at an imp.

    The jaws snapped shut, one grabbing onto an imp''s raised forearm, the other grabbing a thigh. The caught imps screamed, trying to pull back, but the creatures tenaciously hung on, even as the other imps reacted by bashing and stabbing at them.

    Maintaining and directing the illusion required concentration. But even as focused as he was, part of Leo couldn''t help but marvel at how complete the conjuration was. Illusion magic was more than just smoke and mirrors. It affected the victim''s mind. The caught imps seemed to feel real pain. And while the blows raining down on the illusory creatures weren''t making contact, or were even passing through and hitting the imps, they were too panicked to notice.

    But the spell had a limited duration. He needed to move on to the next part of his plan: testing another spell. He moved forward, coming into the light. The imps were too distracted to notice as he chanted.

    "Dread Aspect."

    Then, because the imps were still distracted, he shouted to get their attention. "Hey! Assholes!"

    The first imp to see him screamed. It was a shrill sound, even louder than the snarling and yelling of the ongoing fight. The other imps jerked their heads around.

    It was chaos. All five imps attempted to run simultaneously in different directions, bumping into each other and staggering about in an effort to get away. One fell to its hands and knees and, rather than getting up, began to crawl and scoot as fast as possible to get away from Leo. After a moment four of the imps managed to coordinate enough to dash toward the nearest hall, which the orb had floated down. The last imp dashed off into the dark, his screams of terror receding down a different hall.A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

    Leo stood staring, slack-jawed. His illusory creations had been forgotten in the mix-up and now stood without moving. By happenstance, one was facing in the direction the imps had run, its slack-jawed look miming Leo''s own amazement.

    After a long moment, Leo snickered, then began to laugh, sounding slightly unhinged. He shook his head, not noticing as the Phantasm spells ended and the odd porcupine wolves shimmered out of existence.

    "Well, that was effective."

    He looked around. Several items lay scattered on the ground where the imps had dropped them, but it was dark again, the only illumination coming from an adjoining chamber that had a working light orb in it. He sighed at the thought of having to feel around to identify and collect the objects, or do anything other than lie down. Magic wasn''t tiring, exactly, but it left him feeling strangely tired and cold. Maybe he just didn''t have enough mana to power more than a few spells.

    But there was a chance that the imps had dropped something useful, and another chance that some other monster or creature had heard the noise and would come to investigate. He had to move, so he did.

    Groping around, he found a knife by its foot long blade, which didn''t cut him because it was quite dull. His other hand snagged against some cloth, which proved to be a bag with some unknown items in it.

    He settled for those two things, gripping one in each hand as he rose and looked around. His guide orb had disappeared down the hall the imps had fled down, but he wasn''t worried about running into them again. Without any better option, he set off down that hallway, the knife extended in front of him and the hand holding the bag trailing along the wall to keep his balance.

    He couldn''t see much, so a significant amount of time passed as he slowly made his way along, his fears of what might be lurking in the dark growing with each step. What if one of those worms--

    A light grew ahead, and he could suddenly make out his surroundings again. There was a closed door straight ahead, where the hall took a turn to the right. The light coming from around the corner, steadily brightening, was blue. His guide orb. With more confident steps, he made his way toward it.

    He turned the corner, locking his eyes on the orb of light twenty feet away and starting toward it.

    Which blinded him for a moment to the fact that the orb was not quite his orb of light, and that behind it, there was a group of three people staring at him.

    Everyone froze for a long moment. There were two men and a women, all part of the group that had been in Leo''s summoning chamber, wearing their heavy robes. One was a young man with blond hair and a scruffy beard. A girl stood beside him, long brown hair tied up in a braid that was draped over her shoulder, with an oval, alert face and a short spear in her hand. Slightly behind the two was a tall, broad-shouldered man with a crew cut and a harshly planed face, also holding a spear. He reminded Leo of a Marine, in part because he was giving a very stern look that might even be called an scowl.

    "You!" said the large man, in an angry voice. He reached to brush the younger man aside, starting toward Leo.

    Leo stayed still for a moment, his brain kicking into a full fight or flight response as it searched for his to respond. How he arrived at his new spell as the proper permutation of ''fight'' was uncertain, but it was likely that some memory of its recent use played into it.

    "Dread Aspect!"

    The imps had run like hell. That was close to, but not quite, how the humans reacted. The large man uttered an oath, leaping back and reaching for the spear strapped to his back. Beside him, the slimmer, younger man rapidly backed away, half turned as if to run but still staring wide-eyed at Leo.

    The girl, on the other hand, stood as if rooted, a look of utter terror seizing her features. But another part of her had a different response. Her free hand whipped upward, open-palm toward Leo. "Firebolt!"

    Leo''s own reflexes were pretty good; he managed to half-dodge the shaft of bright flame that materialized in front of he girl''s hand and shot toward him. The bolt still skimmed along his chest and shoulder, there and gone in a flash, but seeming to carry the heat of the sun itself with it.

    -

    Getting a severe burn really hurts. But that''s not the only reason to avoid being burned. There are, in fact, other bad things that go along with having part of your skin literally cooked.

    Like the fumes. In an instant, Leo''s stolen shirt caught fire, and as he breathed in to scream, he sucked in a mouthful of smoke and superheated air from the Firebolt''s pasing. That instantly set him to coughing.

    He didn''t stop, drop and roll. In fact, he probably did more damage to his charred skin by reflexively clawing at his chest, trying to get the burning cloth away as he hacked and wheezed.

    There was one positive effect to the very sudden, unfortunate event of being set aflame, though. That was completely losing control of his Dread Aspect spell, which caused him to suddenly reappear to the three other humans as a young man in rather desperate straits.

    The large man cast down his spear with a clatter, rushing forward. He grabbed the hem of his robe, jerking the heavy garment up and around his body. With his other hand, he knocked Leo''s hands aside, using the robe to smother the flames.

    Leo had never experienced much pain. His friend had punched him, once, during a particularly stupid fight. He''d had a mole removed without enough anaesthetic. He''d broken his wrist once, which hadn''t hurt as much as he expected. He had, of course, given himself minor burns while cooking, like most people have. Small things.

    He still wasn''t fully feeling the burn as he looked down at his chest, after the large man stopped patting the flames out with his robe. But from the look of what was there -- charred cloth, blackened flesh around edges, dark red and already weeping fluid in the middle -- he knew this was going to be bad. Really bad. That was just based on looks; the smell was a separate issue, even more upsetting that the appearance of the burn, in its own way.

    After a few moments, the screaming of his remaining nerves began to reach his brain. The fact that he was still coughing, making his chest tense up, only made it that much worse.

    For some reason, his teeth began chattering. A strange whine issued from his throat. The world swam around him.

    The large man managed to get Leo''s arm over his own shoulders before Leo fell down. Maybe he was about to pass out, or maybe he just wanted to lie down and writhe around in pain. He wasn''t sure, since all capacity for thought was being driven out of his mind by the growing faultline in his chest. He couldn''t feel anything at all in the center of the burn, but the edges felt like they were being held over an open fire.

    "Janso, get over here and help me," snapped the large man. His younger cohort scurried over, taking Leo''s other hand and looping it over his shoulders.

    His vision misty with pain, Leo stared straight ahead as they helped him along, fixing his eyes on the mana orb controlled by the large man. Both its shape and color, he realized, were slightly different from the orb he''d been following.

    And just once, as they turned a corner, he thought he saw his orb. The blue guiding light that had led him so far. Where else would it have taken him? But now... he''d been captured.

 5 - Other Peoples Rules

    "Soothe"!

    And just like that, Leo''s pain faded. Not completely, but enough that he could once again begin to put together thoughts.

    He was sitting on a bedroll in a small room that smelled like a gym, full of stale sweat and body odor. Five of the seven people in the room were gathered around him in a semicircle, watching him. One was lying on a bedroll, apparently unconscious. The final person was kneeling in front of him, a dark-skinned, balding man who appeared to be in his early thirties. He was holding his hand out toward Leo''s burned chest, but not quite touching it.

    "Better?" said the balding man. Leo nodded, shuddering as he scrubbing the back of his hand against his still damp face. The memory of the pain was slower to fade than the pain itself. He couldn''t meet the eyes of the girl who had cast the Firebolt.

    "I''m going to cast Mend next, so I need you to put your hands down and sit up straight," the man said. The man had a tone of voice that reminded Leo of doctors. A good bedside manner, he thought, rather inanely.

    Leo followed the instructions, and the man looked to the wound. He half-cupped his hand, slowly moving it back and forth along the length of the wound, a look of concentration on his face. The moment dragged on until Leo wondered if the man was already doing something, but he managed to keep himself from looking down, instead locking his gaze on the top of the man''s head. It had a few locks of brown hair combed over, in a futile attempt to cover the gaping bald spot.

    "Mend".

    Leo''s hands twitched. He wanted so badly to scratch. The wound was suddenly itching like it was one enormous mosquito bite. He controlled his hands, looking down instead.

    The wound appeared more or less the same. Maybe a bit less red?

    Harald had slumped back, looking drained. He sighed, shaking his head. "It will take some time to heal, and there will be a sizeable scar. Mend isn''t instant healing."

    Leo nodded. The look of the burn deeply disturbed him, but he could try to ignore it for now. And there were other important things to pay attention to. Like the matter of his... captivity? He supposed there was no need for him to be in chains if he was, in fact, a prisoner, since there were so many of them and just one of him. On the other hand, the assembled people looked more concerned than hostile. It occurred to him to just ask.

    "Am I a prisoner?"

    The others immediately looked to the large man. That probably meant he was the leader.

    "No. But you are not free to go, either." He paused. "We have many things to speak of. Are you hungry? Thirsty?"

    Leo thought about that for a moment, then nodded. He didn''t know anything about their culture, but sharing food was usually a good sign.

    Nothing more was said while someone fetched him a cup of lukewarm, overbrewed tea and some jerky. Leo looked at it uncertainly before taking a bite. The long, uneven strips looked handmade, and he thought he even spotted some fur on one. Definitely not Jack Links. But at least caffeine existed. He wondered if there was coffee.

    Both the jerky and tea tasted divine, at least at that moment. And chewing helped distract him from the urge to scratch at his chest.

    After he''d had a few bites, the large man motioned around the circle. "I am Nemtal, the leader of this expedition. Harald here is our healer. These others are Janso, Lidya, Karn and Suzat, and she," he waved toward the prone figure on the bedroll, "is Tanya. May we know your name?"

    Some of the names sounded familiar to Leo, similar to American names but subtly different, while others he couldn''t quite place. He swallowed his jerky. "I''m Leo. Leo Bailey."

    "Now, may we know why you ran away when we summoned you, Leo? And stole Lidya''s pack?"

    Lidya was the girl who had burnt Leo and, apparently, whose clothes he''d stolen. So he was wearing her underwear? Now that was embarassing. He glanced quickly at her but couldn''t quite meet her eyes.

    "Umm... sorry about that. It''s hard to explain. I''m from a different world--"

    There was a murmur from everyone at that, but Nemtal silenced it with a short motion of his hand.

    "I got summoned, I think. But then I was in a, um, dark place for a long time, then there was a voice. Then when I, ah, arrived? Was summoned. There was this ball of light and it seemed to want me to leave. And I didn''t know who you were or what part you had in summoning me. You looked, er... Well, in my world, if you''re wearing clothes like those," he paused to gesture at the robes everyone was wearing, "you might be a bit dangerous. Or at least strange."

    Nemtal was leaning forward. "A ball of light? It wanted you to leave?"

    "Like the ball of light you had when I ran into you in the hall. But a bit different."

    Nemtal frowned at him. "That is a Light spell. I''m afraid they don''t wander around on their own. You''re certain this was real?"

    "It was the only way I could see to walk around. It''s dark here, right?"

    "It makes sense, Nemtal," Harald chipped in. "We all ran out of mana before the ritual was over, right? Something must have helped it to finish. Maybe it was the owner of this Light."

    "Also, it led me places," said Leo.

    Now Nemtal was leaning forward so intently he was in danger of tipping over. "What places?"

    Haltingly, Leo explained his adventures with the orb of light. When he reached the part about the testing chamber, the expedition members began looking at each other in excitement, but they otherwise stayed silent. He described running from the worms and seeing the expedition members fight them off; Nemtal grimaced at him. Then he began to talk about the Chamber of Attunement.

    "Hold there a moment," said Nemtal, cutting him off. "Are you telling me that before this Chamber, you never had a magical proficiency?"

    "Um. In my world, we don''t even have magic."

    "What!?"

    There was a moment of pandemonium as the expedition members made excited exclamations, shifting about. Leo realized that, besides Nemtal and Harald, they all looked rather young. Nemtal was waving them to silence.

    "I have to explain something to you about magic. You see, it is not learned in a moment. All of us you see here have practiced from childhood. And yet, you''re telling me that the spell you cast on us was something you learned hours before?"

    Leo nodded.

    "How is this possible?"

    "The golem in the Chamber of Attunement, it said it could shape my soul, and it mentioned something else it was based on called Cognition Tomes. I don''t understand exactly what happened, though. In my world, I don''t think we have souls, either?"

    Harald was nodding. "Cognition Tomes are real. It''s rumored the royal family has one, or even several. And we knew the School had some better way of training new mages than we''ve been able to replicate."

    Nemtal shook his head, bemused. After a moment he went on.

    "If that''s true, this place is an even greater treasure than we thought. But let us hear about your world. We thought you were summoned, perhaps, from some other nation of men in this world. What is this world you come from? With no souls and no magic?"

    "Well, um. We had technology." Leo paused, gathering his thoughts. How do you explain a completely different world in a few sentences? "We had myths of magic, but I don''t think any of them were true. But over thousands of years, we learned to build things. Tools and machines and medicine to make our lives easier and better. It''s all very complicated, so we have to go to schools to study the field we choose. I was a university student." He trailed off.

    "This sounds familiar, too," said Harald. "Supposedly, Archmage Adnan came from a world with no magic."

    "I believe I''ve also heard that legend," said Nemtal, nodding. "Adnan the Outsider, that''s the inscription on his statue in the Great Court. But this matter of Leo learning his magic in a day, and an art lost to us, is the most important detail. The value of such a thing is incalculable. More than ever, we must unlock the secrets of this school." The other expedition members nodded, looking excited.If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.

    "By the way, um... where am I?" asked Leo.

    "This building? It''s part of the Arkfel School, to the northeast of our kingdom of Charun. We''re an expedition from the kingdom to reclaim the school, which was lost to us two hundred years ago during the Fall of Great Charun. We aren''t the first expedition, of course, but we have survived the longest, so far."

    "Survived? Are there a lot of monsters like those worms?"

    Nemtal snorted. "The Eaters? They''re barely a nuisance. There is much worse here. But the true problem is that Arkfel seems to be warded against outsiders. We''ve run into traps, guardians and wardens that may be similar to those golems you met. We''ve only survived by mapping out a few safe routes around the school, and that leaves us with less than a fraction of it explored." He trailed off for a moment before continuing.

    "In fact, that''s why we summoned you. We found the summoning ritual primed to begin but never completed, and we believed it might summon something that the school would recognize. And from your story, it seems that the school does recognize you as a student."

    "Me? I guess, well... Nothing besides the Eaters attacked me, and there is that ball of light."

    "Yes. Perhaps it''s a manifestation of one of the golems, although I do not know how they would guide the spell from a distance. Also, there have been several rooms we have been unable to enter or even force our way into. Those may have been rooms with golems in them, or something else of value. Having you with us may allow us to enter the parts of the school that have been barred to us."

    Thinking, Leo absent-mindedly reached up to scratch at his chest. Then he winced, as Harald leaned forward to smack his hand away. Looking down, he saw that the skin was pink with several puffy, fluid-filled blisters, as if his severe burns had been healing for days.

    "There''s something I don''t get. How is the school even standing? And how big is this place? If it were a building in my world, I think it''d be in a lot worse condition after two hundred years of being abandoned."

    The expedition members glanced at each other. Suzat, a pretty, ash-blonde girl with curves that showed even under her shapeless leathers, spoke up for the first time. "We expected it to be more ruined, too. I think there might be someone still living here. Or some thing. Something that takes care of the school."

    Nemtal gave Suzat a look before glancing back to Leo. "To answer your other question, it''s massive. This building alone is larger than the Royal Palace in Adinok. There are other buildings, though they are in worse shape. And legends about the school suggest there''s even more to it. Catacombs, we''re fairly certain exist. There''s even an old tale about a forest inside of the school, although I''m not sure how or where it would be."

    "I remember something about, um, the book that summoned me from my world. It said something about Arkfel being a microcosm of your world? It mentioned a bunch of monsters, and it said students had to be clever."

    "A book?" Nemtal was looking at him blankly. Then Leo had to explain the book, all while Nemtal shook his head. "Our ancestors truly had magic beyond our understanding."

    "Why was Arkfel abandoned? You said something about the Fall of Charun?"

    "Great Charun. It had the same name as our kingdom of today, but our forefathers were vastly more learned and powerful. And they expanded its borders over many generations, against the outside world. As they grew in power, they invented art and magic that are now forgotten and lost. They didn''t build Arkfel itself, but after they claimed it from the Elven Aristocracy, they greatly expanded it. And then..."

    Nemtal sighed, looking down. He twisted a ring on his finger, looking rather pensive.

    "In five years of flame and terror, the Fall happened. First, the Host of Dagurath attacked from the west. The Titan Balfages expanded his territory, to the north. Then from the east came the wraiths and the King of Tears. In the last year of the Fall, Arkfel''s students, professors and archmages gathered for the final defense of Adinok. They lost, and the city was destroyed, without a single survivor. The Host withdrew, but the King of Tears spent another ten years hunting down human survivors outside the capital. The kingdom was reduced from millions of people to a handful. The Thousand, we call them."

    Silence reigned after Nemtal finished speaking. Leo shivered. The expedition members all seemed so depressed by the story that he didn''t want to ask more questions about the Fall, but he''d already learned an important difference between this world and his own. He didn''t know what wraiths were, or a Titan, or the Host, but whatever they were, they were terrifying enough to wipe out a powerful kingdom of humans. Here, humans were apparently not the top of the food chain.

    After a while, Nemtal spoke again. "Well? What else would you like to know?"

    "I have a few more questions. First... why do you think we speak the same language? We''re speaking English, right? That''s my own language, from my world."

    "This is simply Manhuil, not English," said Nemtal.

    Harald shook his head. "Perhaps it is the same language," he said. "Charun is distant from the other human kingdoms, but we all speak the same language. My teacher believed that it''s because the memdexes have kept the language from changing, since ancient times."

    "Oh, right," said Leo. "One of the golems asked if I had a memdex. What is it?"

    In answer, Harald reached into his robe, unbuttoning an internal pocket and pulling out something that looked like a small, slim book. He held it toward Leo, but quickly retracted it when Leo reached out to take it.

    "Ah, no, sorry," said Harald. "It''s impolite to touch another person''s memdex. I''m just showing you what it looks like. A book. Even if you opened it, you wouldn''t see anything but blank pages. But when I open it, I can read about my soul, at least in a manner of speaking."

    Leo blinked at the book, looking between it and Harald''s face. "So it''s magic? Is there a way I can get one?"

    "Not magic, no. They are a blessing of the Gods. Not everyone has one, but we''ll certainly try to find one for you."

    "The Gods," echoed Leo. He started to ask, then shook his head, sighing. His head was already spinning from information overload.

    Still, something was bothering him. "We don''t have anything like a memdex in my world, either. English is just the language that we speak in my country. Other people have different languages. Even our ancestors spoke differently. English is only something that exists in a specific place, at a specific time."

    "That''s interesting. But perhaps you only think you''re speaking English? Maybe the summoning changed the language you know."

    Leo thought about that for a moment. He felt like he was speaking English, but how was that something you could prove? If another language had been transposed for English in his brain, he''d remember the words as if he''d always spoken them. Perhaps there was some test. Like... poetry? Something that had rhymed in English? On second thought, he didn''t know any poems. But he might be able to remember some song lyrics.

    But that line of thinking brought up other questions. What if this was all some kind of simulation? Or, like he''d thought right after he was summoned, a mental break? Wouldn''t details like the language he was using prove that it wasn''t real?

    Nemtal derailed his train of thought.

    "Plenty of time to discuss such things in the future. But it''s not material to our current problems. You see, Leo, this expedition was originally twelve people. We''ve lost five so far, and would have lost Tanya yesterday if not for Harald. We are slowly running out of people, and supplies."

    "And you think I can help? But I only just learned magic."

    "Yes. We need to find a way to make peace with the golems, or whatever force still drives this school. Perhaps you can be our envoy to these creatures, since they seem to recognize your presence."

    Leo thought back to what Nemtal had said when the conversation began. "You told me I''m not a prisoner, but I''m also not free to leave. So I don''t have a choice whether to help?"

    "No." Nemtal regarded him evenly. "Perhaps things are done differently in your world, but here, it is your duty to work for the benefit of humanity. And because we summoned you, you are Bound."

    The way he said the word put Leo on edge. It wasn''t that he had any plan of turning these people down; their story was reasonable, their need was obvious. But what the hell was being Bound? That sounded like...

    "Does that mean I''m a slave?"

    There was a general shaking of heads around the semicircle of people. "No," said Nemtal. "Humans cannot be slaves to other humans. To be Bound means a life debt is owed, in your case because we summoned you here. Because we are an expedition of Charun, you are Bound to the King."

    Leo frowned. It still sounded bad. After all, he''d come from a place where "freedom" was a sacred word.

    "I didn''t ask to come here. In fact, you jerked me out of my life in my own world and forced me to come here. It''s like you robbed me then told me I owe you money!"

    Suzat sucked in a breath, recoiling slightly, and Nemtal gave him a thunderous glare. "That is not the case. It can be an honor to be Bound. Both Suzat and Karn are Bound to the King as well, and they have little to complain about."

    "What''s so honorable about being a-" he almost said ''slave'', then stopped himself. He took a deep breath. "You still haven''t told me exactly what it means."

    "Hm, that is true. Well, Leo, this is how it is. In this world, all humans must work to improve the fate of humanity, as a whole. That is true even if you are a farmer, or, let''s say, a tailor. Each finds a way to contribute."

    Nemtal glanced around, and the others nodded, seemingly approving his phrasing.

    "But for you, your life must be dedicated to actively improving the lot of humanity. As such, you will lead a privileged life, free from ordinary drudgery. Think of it as if you are in an army -- you have those in your world, yes? But that means you must follow the orders of those whose duty is to guide humanity. Perhaps someday you will report directly to the King. But in Arkfel, I am his representative."

    Leo chewed that over. The expedition members seemed satisfied with Nemtal''s explanation, as if he''d succinctly explained the basis of morality. An eleventh commandment, to put it in Christian terms. Thou shalt not murder; thou shalt serve humanity.

    But they were wrong. The injustice of it all just grated on him. He hadn''t asked for any of this, and they had, at best, glossed over the reasoning behind his being Bound.

    On the other hand, he got the feeling that further arguing his case wouldn''t get him un-Bound -- and worse, it would make them begin to view him negatively. And without their help, he might not survive. And, to add one more point, if Nemtal was their leader, he would have ended up following Nemtal''s orders anyway.

    Leo wasn''t a conniving person, by nature, but he felt the sudden need to be diplomatic. So he swallowed his arguments.

    "How long am I Bound for?"

    "It is not a thing to seek to end or escape," said Nemtal. "In Charun, the Bound are honored above ordinary citizens. But to answer your question, it is for the rest of your life."

    Wrong, wrong, wrong! Nemtal''s answer had set him off again. There were arguably slaves who weren''t complete slaves: indentured servants with a five year term, for example. But this was permanent!? He was a slave. In a damned magical world!

    But he bit back his reply, reiterating to himself: be diplomatic. Don''t fight a battle you can''t win. And, for the first time, he truly understood a basic fact of life he''d heard before: people with power made the rules.

    And that simply meant that he''d have to become one of the people with power.

 6 - Sitting In Darkness

    It had been no accident that Leo was the victim of a magical burn, rather than some other attack. Charun, it turned out, was a nation of fire mages. Janso, Lidya and Karn were all focused on fire magic, and the other expedition members had at least some minimal ability with it.

    "It''s a side effect of the Fall," Harald whispered to him as they made their way through the darkened halls of Arkfel. "Most of the Adepts, the skilled mages, died during the war or in the final battle. But by some fluke, several proficient elementalists survived with the Thousand."

    They''d run into a pair of Eaters as soon as they set out. The freakish worms were apparently attracted to the scent of mana lingering around the room the expedition was camped in. A hail of fire bolts had quickly filled the hall with a more tangible smell: burning worm. Then they''d had to spend time dragging the acrid carcasses further away from the room.

    Through it all, Leo kept an eye out for his guiding orb of light. But it didn''t show up. He blamed that on having other people with him, not that he had a choice in the matter.

    Now they were headed for a chamber the expedition had been unable to enter on their own. The theory was that Leo, as a student, could unlock the door. But they''d been moving so slowly, and under nearly absolute silence, that Leo was torn between feeling bored and creeped out from imagining what might lurk in the darkness.

    To distract himself from the eerie feeling, he was holding a whispered conversation with Harald while Karn scouted ahead.

    "But you''re a healer?"

    Harald nodded, then shrugged. "I''m one of the best in Charun, but that doesn''t mean I consider myself a true example of a healer. That burn of yours looked bad, but it was mainly a skin wound. I''ve spent most of my years studying with other healers to discover better spells than we have, but we haven''t been successful yet. That''s why I came with the expedition."

    Leo rubbed at his chest. With the effects of Soothe worn off, the wound hurt again, but it felt several weeks old rather than fresh. At least it wasn''t exposed to the air anymore. Janso had rather meekly accepted Nemtal''s order to hand over his spare clothing to Leo, while Lidya had accepted back her soiled, burnt clothing with much less grace. He wondered if she hated him.

    He brought himself back to the conversation, considering his next question. "How many types of magic are there?"

    "It depends how you classify magic," said Harald. "Humans aren''t the only intelligent race, and even unintelligent monsters can sometimes use types of--"

    He broke off as Karn emerged from the shadows. The lean, silent scout motioned for the group to follow before turning to lead the way again.

    Everyone had come along except for Tanya, who was in something like an induced coma, recovering from severe wounds she''d taken during some encounter with monsters of a sort Leo hadn''t seen. The others hadn''t hesitated to leave her behind, simply locking the door and putting some kind of magical ward on it. Leo''s head was spinning with all the minor uses of magic he''d seen, including heating up breakfast.

    Now Karn was leading the group through an echoing hall, dimly lit by high windows on one side. Leo recognized it, having passed through while following the orb. A huge, tilting chandelier hung over the grand staircase they were headed toward.

    "That was a guardian," said Harald, as they passed what looked like chunks and small fragments of statuary littering the floor. "We ran into it on the first day. It killed Getta and Brin before we broke it apart. Fire didn''t do much to it."

    So this place had living statues? Leo shivered. He''d passed a number of statues while following the orb.

    "As I was saying, if you include monsters and other races, there may be hundreds of types of magic. If you limit it to humans, we know of references to several dozen types. Perhaps twenty actually exist in Charun. But you said there is no magic in your world. You should know that many people can mana to some degree, even a blacksmith or tailor. Or a fighting man, like Nemtal."

    "Nemtal said I''m using a lost art."

    Harald nodded. "Illusion, right? I''ve read about it, but we don''t have it in Charun."

    "That''s what the golem called it. It said I could also choose shadow magic or crystalmancy."

    "I''ve never heard of crystalmancy."

    "I wrote down some details in, er, Lidya''s journal."

    Leo lowered his voice even more, making sure he couldn''t be overheard. Harald chuckled softly. Unlike Lidya herself, several of the male members of the expedition seemed amused at Leo''s theft of Lidya''s pack.

    "I''ll ask her for a look later." The group finished moving up the stairway, and set off down the same hallway that Leo had emerged from the day before. The hall they entered it was sepulchral, quiet.

    He was harboring a hope that he''d get to use his magic. He''d showed off a Phantasm to the group before falling asleep, again summoning the image of a porcupine-wolf thing, which he''d decided to call a "spikejaw". He wasn''t quite sure what dark corner of his subconscious it had crawled out of, or if it was his invention at all. The spell allowed him to summon anything up to the size of a large dog, so of course, he''d imagined something of that size appearing. Maybe the spell itself did the rest? The mechanism of casting was also something of a mystery. It felt like stepping through a pattern of thought that had been alien to him until the golem reordered his soul, but ''thought'' wasn''t quite the right word, either.Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

    Ahead, Nemtal came to a halt, lifting a hand. They hadn''t moved far down the hall, but the man was at a door that Leo didn''t remember passing. Nemtal beckoned for Leo to come forward.

    The door was dark wood, apparently unaffected by the passage of time. It had a recessed rectangle in its middle. Another recessed area near the frame held the metal handle, which was a design Leo wasn''t familiar with; it looked like an inverted obsidian pyramid, with the sharp point facing the hallway. There were scratch marks across the stone near the handle, although the metal itself still looked flawless.

    "This is one of the doors," Nemtal said quietly. "We tried to open it before, and then we tried to force it. Without any luck."

    "So what do you expect me to do?"

    Nemtal reached forward, indicating the air above the pyramidal handle. "This is an artifact of some kind. Our guess is that it has an identify spell bound to it. When you take hold, it will draw some mana from you."

    "Draw mana from me? Like a spell?"

    "Your golem may have shaped your soul, you probably don''t have a good sense for mana yet. You''ll learn that later. This isn''t the place to talk about it." Nemtal waved impatiently. "Try the door."

    Feeling a bit of trepidation, Leo reached out, taking hold of the handle. It was hard and sharp-edged under his hand, and cold.

    The coldness quickly intensified, until it suddenly felt like something -- not heat, but similar -- was being drawn from him. Then the sensation abruptly stopped. The door softly clicked, and the others gave a soft murmur of relief.

    Leo turned the knob. With only the slightest push, the door slowly swung open.

    Different world, or not, he immediately recognized what lay beyond, dimly illuminated by Nemtal''s Light spell. A classroom. Not so different from one he might have sat in at Basileus, in its basic details. Dark wood tables with several chairs lined up at each, all facing one side of the room, which held a podium. All the furniture was somehow still standing, albeit colored grey from a thick layer of dust.

    Karn pushed past him, warily entering the room with a short blade in hand. After a moment, Nemtal followed, then everyone else entered.

    The classroom was windowless, and smelled like it had likely been completely sealed for all its years of abandonment. It was surprisingly spacious, which after a moment Leo realized was because it held more than tables. The back wall, to the left of the door, held a large, empty bookcase, while the wall facing the door held a line of cages.

    Cages? While the others spread out across the room, searching for any threat, Leo moved over to investigate. At a glance, he counted eight cages.

    The first one he peered into had strange lumps in the bottom. After a moment, he realized that it was a skeleton, hidden by a cloak of dust and, perhaps, some kind of mold. The two cages on either side of it proved to be completely empty, though.

    Moving along the line, he found that one of the cages had something other than dust or bones in it. It looked like a small statue in a seated position, although like everything else, it was covered in the grime of ages.

    Wishing he had his own light, Leo peered in through the bars. Then he thought of something he could try.

    "Phantasm."

    A luminescent orb, much like Nemtal''s, popped into existence in the cage. It was bright, but didn''t seem to shed much light. Some limitation of the spell?

    "Here," said a voice behind him. Nemtal''s Light floated over to the cage, and with a thought, Leo directed his counterfeit orb away. He wasn''t sure how to dismiss it before the time ran out on his spell, but he made it go hide in the corner.

    The increased light revealed more details. The being in the cage was humanoid, but noticeably different from a human. Its legs were short and thin, drawn in against its chest by long arms. Both hands and feet were tipped with long, jagged claws. Its hairless head was bowed forward enough that its face was hard to make out, but it had a forehead that sloped backward like an ape''s, with three horns projecting out in a row.

    By now, everyone was gathered around the cage. He squatted to get a better look at the face.

    Karn stepped forward, slapping away the hand that Leo had unconsciously put on one of the bars. "Don''t touch anything. Could be dangerous."

    Feeling somewhat ashamed, then silly for being ashamed, Leo leaned down to get a better look at the creature''s face. "What is it?"

    "No idea," replied Harald after a moment. "A wight, maybe? But... hm, no. Why didn''t it rot?"

    Leo got the answer as he finally leaned down enough to peer into the face. The creature''s eyes were open, just slightly. And a pair of luminous green eyes were staring back at him. As he met the gaze, the eyelids slid open further.

    The freshly healed skin on his chest suddenly felt like it was pulled tight. He fell backward, resisting the urge to scrabble away from the cage. The creature hadn''t moved at all, aside from the eyes.

    "It''s looking at me," he said, feeling chills.

    Hands grabbed him under the armpits, hauling him upright and away from the cage. As they backed off, the head slowly raised, just enough for the eyes to track their movement.

    It made no other motion. And once it had lifted its head, it froze in place. The only hint of life was the glistening of its eyes. It seemed to be staring at Leo, the first person it had seen.

    "How is that thing alive?" breathed Janso.

    Breaking his eye contact with the creature, Leo quickly glanced to his sides. Karn and Nemtal had moved forward, both now holding long knives, in a pose of readiness.

    "It''s possible, if it''s a mana born creature," said Harald. "We''re probably just seeing automatic movement. It may be waiting for a command word."

    "Let''s kill it," said Lidya. "That''s just safer."

    "No," said Nemtal, looking through the bars. "The cage is intact. There''s no reason to fear it." He sheathed his knife, seemingly having already regained his poise. Leo wished his hammering heart would slow down. The steady stare of the creature was still unnerving him.

    "What next, then? There''s nothing else in here," said Harald.

    "You''re right. I would have thought more would be left behind, in a sealed room." Nemtal looked thoughtful for a moment, then directed his attention to Leo. "In the chambers with the golems, was there anything?"

    Leo thought back. "Not in the first one," he slowly said. "It didn''t look like anything was ever there, except for chairs and the golem''s machine. But in the second golem''s chamber, there were bookcases. Those were empty."

    Harald spoke up.

    "Everything we know about the Fall suggests the school was abandoned too quickly for them to pack up and move things. Not to mention that we don''t have any surviving examples of Arkfel''s books or artifacts, even in the royal library."

    "And the stories say that the entire body of students and teachers went to the defense of Adinok, correct?"

    "Correct. Even the youngest students and the Arch Dean, who was well over a hundred years old," said Harald.

    "Perhaps the stories aren''t correct, then."

    "Or they are, and someone looted the school while it was abandoned," offered Suzat.

    Leo looked back into the cage. The creature was still staring, not having moved at all. Did it understand them? Was it alive at all? He had to ask what a mana born creature was.

    "We''ll find out the answers soon," said Nemtal. "For now, there''s nothing usable here. We''ll spend the afternoon hunting and restocking our provisions outside the school, and pick up the search again tomorrow."

    As they left the room, Leo glanced back. He expected to see the creature still staring at them. Instead, it had lowered its head, once again a motionless gargoyle. Somehow, that was just as bad as its stare.

 7 - Foraging

    Although it had only been two days, Leo felt like he''d been in Arkfel for a month. But that was just a feeling. The truth was that he barely knew anything about his new surroundings.

    "The main door to the school is just off that big chamber?"

    "That''s right, the front door, so to speak. I don''t know how you missed it," said Harald.

    "So everything I''ve seen is just the part near the entrance? How much more is there?"

    Harald shrugged. "You''ll see when we get outside and you can get a look at the place. We''ve been here for two weeks, and I don''t think we''ve seen more than a fraction of it."

    They were once again chatting while they followed the main group -- quietly, after Karn had snapped at them for being too loud. Karn and Nemtal were carrying bows they''d picked up when they returned to their safe room, while Suzat held a compact wooden crossbow. The others had gathered their packs and a variety of implements, half of which Leo didn''t recognize.

    He was excited to see what lay outside the gloomy, dusty halls of the school, but at the same time, a bit scared. Would it look like his own world? Or would it be bizarre and dangerous? He briefly imagined an Avatar-esque world with enormous trees and huge monsters.

    But if he asked about it, that would ruin the surprise. And he figured he was safe enough, tagging along with the expedition.

    They were headed for the hall with the large staircase, which Leo had begun thinking of as Chandelier Hall. It wasn''t far from the safe room the expedition had claimed, but due to Karn''s slow scouting pace, their progress was painstakingly slow. He suspected the expedition had already killed everything nearby. They acted like the shadows could be hiding anything, though, which left Leo on edge. What if they were right?

    "Do you guys have to hunt for everything you eat? Why didn''t you bring more supplies?"

    Harald glanced at him, then shook his head. "We did bring some supplies, but we''re saving them as long as possible. As for why we didn''t bring more, well. For one thing, the old roads are overgrown or in ruins, so we couldn''t bring a wagon. Even pack animals would struggle. We had to cross a gorge where the bridge is out, for instance."

    "So it''s rough terrain? What''s the other thing?"

    Harald lowered his voice even further. "The King didn''t provide much funding for this expedition. Most of it was funded by Nemtal, actually."

    "By Nemtal? He''s rich?"

    "He''s a former Kingsguard. They''re... an elite unit. You''ll have to ask him if you want to know more."

    They entered Chandelier Hall, which looked exactly as it had the other two times Leo had passed through. Dust hung in the air, illuminated by a beam of light coming from a high window on one wall. Once Harald finished whispering, the only sound was their echoing footsteps.

    The Hall was shaped like a long rectangle, with the stairs on one end and corridors leading off the long sides. Leo guessed the gate must be at the end with the window. Karn led them towad it, their feet crunching on the gravel left by the battle with the living statue.

    Leo wished he could have seen that fight, if only from a distance.

    The gate wasn''t directly on the wall, it turned out. There was a dark antechamber between the Hall and the gate. Nemtal sent his Light ahead to illuminate it.

    Like the door to the classroom, the gate was made out of dark wood that seemed immune to time''s passage. But it was huge: easily ten feet across, and probably twice as tall. It was covered in designs of robed men doing various, unclear tasks. There was an ancient rug on the floor, too, but it was nearly completely covered in a mat of mold and fungus.

    "Sides," said Nemtal, motioning to either side of the door, where the others were already lined up in rough semicircles. Harald, Janso and Lidya had taken one side, weapons at the ready, while Nemtal and Suzat stood on the other side. Leo figured it out after a second and joined them, while Karn readied himself to open the gate.

    After taking a last look over the group, Karn grasped the door''s lever and pulled at it. The doors split open in the middle, both sides moving although only one was being pulled.

    Daylight burst into the antechamber, washing away the dim glow of Nemtal''s orb, followed by a flood of fresh air.

    Anticlimax. Everyone was standing at the ready, but there was nothing outside. But Leo''s attention was rapt.

    Was it only so beautiful because he''d been locked in a dark, dank ruin for two days -- like a starving person tasting food for the first time? Or was this world really more vivid than his own?

    A long, gentle slope filled with gorse-like bushes declined away from the gate of the school, split in the middle by an crumbling road. Perhaps half a mile away, thin, ruined structures of stone or brick rose up. After a moment, he realized that they were chimneys, probably left behind after the house around them had collapsed. Beyond that, the forest began, and even further beyond, the mountains. A layer of cloud lay between a few of the tallest trees and mountains, and the sky above the peaks was a gentle, pink hue that reminded Leo of a Fall afternoon.

    After a moment of staring, his view was cut off by the others cautiously moving past the door. He closed his mouth, walking forward to where he could resume his view.

    There was something odd about it the entire tableau. After a moment, he realized what it was.

    "Harald? How tall are those trees, over there?"

    After a quick scan of his surroundings, Harald squinted toward the distant trees. "Those are balto trees, I think. Those can reach five, six hundred feet, or so?"

    Leo tried to remember the largest trees he''d heard of on Earth. Some type of redwood, probably? He was fairly sure those topped out around four hundred feet.This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

    He looked around for other details. To his left and right, he could see other buildings made out of the same grey stone as the school nestled among trees and hills.

    Something above caught his eye. Looking up, he saw a black moon hanging overhead. It was full, and looked slightly larger than Earth''s moon.

    "How many moons do you have?" he asked, not looking down.

    Lydia spoke up, from beside him. "That''s not a moon. That''s Lemyr."

    "Lemyr?"

    "Lemyr. The god-daemon of madness." The way she pronounced "daemon" was a bit different from the word Leo was more familiar with, "demon".

    He blinked, staring upward intently. After a moment, he began to make out detail.

    It wasn''t a moon. It was a vortex. His eyes traced a path around the outer edge of darkness, into a gentle curve that repeated over and over.

    Abruptly, a hand covered his eyes, pushing his face back down to the level. "Don''t stare," he heard Nemtal say. "Lemyr is cursed by Corum and Gateb, the Twin Gods of Charun." He removed the hand, leaving Leo staring out toward the trees again.

    His mind was still following that path, around and around. What was in the middle? He shuddered, trying to push away a foreboding feeling.

    "Ask your questions later. Listen up."

    Nemtal proceeded to divide the party into two groups. One, the group with bows, would go hunting for animals. The other would take Leo foraging for whatever the surrounding forests would yield. A few ingredients were discussed, none of which he''d ever heard of.

    The bow hunters tramped off down the road. Lydia, Janso and Leo were left behind, with Harald as their apparent leader. Instead of following the road, he beckoned them to begin moving through the brush under the wall of the school.

    "We''ll stay close to the walls, in case we see anything dangerous."

    Magical mountain lions? Giant bears? Some mythical creature like a wyvern? Or something he''d never heard of? Leo began to regret not spending his time asking for a list of what might qualify as "anything dangerous".

    On the other hand, nobody looked armed for bear. Lydia and Janso were carrying short spears, while Harald had a long knife and a hatchet sheathed on either side of his belt. Leo had... his illusions. He wondered if he could disguise himself as a bush. He made a mental note to try it later.

    Actually, he did have a knife, but it was still in the pack they''d given him, which had been owned by one of the dead expedition members. He felt strange about going through his new possessions, though, and he figured he''d barely know what to do with a knife, anyway.

    He followed along as they turned left out of the gate, following the wall.

    The wall loomed overhead like a cliff, and the ground was paved with ancient, cracked cobbles, which had low grass and weeds growing up between the edges. Ten feet beyond the wall the underbrush began, but for some reason it hadn''t turned into a full forest during the long neglect of the area.

    He spotted long, flat stones in the brush twice before realizing what they were: overgrown or collapsed benches. A statue, features long weathered away and coiled with creepers, poked up out of a large bush. Perhaps the whole area had once been a park. Now the foliage was so thick that Leo couldn''t see how they''d make their way into it.

    The walk did give him a sense of just how massive Arkfel was. This single side of the walls stretched on -- he wanted to gauge the size against a city block, but it was hard to tell without roads and other structures around for scale. Still, it felt at least as large as, say, a conference center or a mall, and it was all made of stone, which somehow made it even more impressive.

    Finally, they rounded the corner.

    The school stretched back away from them, and then sprawled outward. Like a college campus, it wasn''t all one building. But the building Leo had been in-

    It was huge. Massive. And was it four stories tall? Five? From somewhere within, a tower loomed upward, its top just visible over the walls. He spotted another further back, which was even taller. Like a skyscraper, almost.

    The haft of a spear butted into his ribs, not very gently. Startled, he stumbled back.

    "If you keep getting distracted by things above you, you won''t see the poisonous snakes until it''s too late." Lydia gave him a nasty smirk before turning and walking off, following after Harald.

    Snakes? He looked down at the ground, then up at where they were headed.

    In the expanding triangle of space between the main school building and the next one that Leo could see through the foliage, there was a forest. Not the giant trees he''d seen before, but a low, wide sort of hardwood that looked similar to an oak tree. Maybe they were oak trees. Leo was a city kid, not an arborist.

    The others were heading into the grove, so Leo followed, keeping an eye on the ground in front of his feet.

    As they moved, they spread out, seemingly by an unspoken understanding of what to do. Each searcher was scanning an area around themselves, seemingly on the lookout for anything interesting. Leo noticed Lydia pause to dig at the leaves with her spear before moving on. He''d lost sight of Harald behind a stand of bushes, which actually seemed to have some berries. Probably inedible, since everyone had ignored them. He wondered what they were looking for. Mushrooms? Tubers? Nuts?

    Not having much else to do and no idea of what to look for, he trailed behind Janso, who was nearest and roughly in the middle of the group.

    He''d been in the wilderness before in his own world, of course. He''d just never thought of looking for food in the wild -- or even met anyone who knew how. He had a couple friends who liked to hunt for magic mushrooms, and that was about it.

    So instead of looking for food, he just looked around. Overall, it did look generally like an Earth forest. There were trees, and the forest floor was cluttered, with smaller plants, stands of grass or fallen branches. He could hear animal noises in the distance, most of which sounded like some variety of bird. He even heard one that sounded like a crow''s caw.

    But there were differences, albeit hard to quantify. Things seemed -- bigger, for lack of a better word. Some of the trees were so wide around that he could imagine driving a car through a hole in the middle. He remembered there was a famous tree on Earth that you could do that with. But that was a special, unusually large tree, right? Some of the branches overhead looked large enough to be a tree in their own right. Even the roots were massive, with gnarled humps rising high out of the ground.

    As they got further from the school, Leo also noticed a rich, herbal scent in the air. It changed slightly as he moved, apparently coming from different plants around him. But he didn''t remember forests back home smelling so good.

    Janso had paused ahead of him, squatting to peel away the bark from a fallen branch. After a moment, he pulled a thin bag from behind his belt, and began to transfer something into it. Leo moved over to see what it was.

    Bugs. Janso was stripping away bark then grabbing large beetles before they could scurry away and flicking them into the bag. Leo hesitated. He''d been about to offer to help, but...

    Janso glanced at him briefly, a grin appearing on his face as he continued at his task. "Compass beetles," he said. "I bet they don''t eat bugs in your world, huh?"

    "Ah, no. Not in my culture."

    "Oh? You had a lot of different cultures? Right, only humans in your world. Well, here we don''t eat bugs either. Usually."

    "But you eat those." Leo watched as Janso shifted around, trying to find another spot with loose bark.

    "The expedition eats a lot of things. We try to forage as quickly as possible and take whatever we find first. One of Nemtal''s friends spent weeks training us to find things like this before we left."

    "So you, uh. Cook them? Or just..."

    Janso chuckled, standing up to move to the other side of the log. "They''re too chewy unless we grind them up. They''ll go into a stew, so you won''t notice a thing."

    Leo eyed one of the beetles as it tried and failed to evade Janso''s fingers. Actually, it didn''t look that disgusting compared to what else might be lurking in rotting wood. Grubs?

    Maybe it was better if he didn''t know any more about what went into the stew. Ignorance could be bliss.

    "Is there any kind of magic that can create food?"

    "Not that we have in Charun. There are stories-"

    Janso broke off, looking over his shoulder. Some distance away, they''d heard a shout. Now there were crashing and snapping noises. And something... yipping? Leo caught a glimpse of Harald running toward them between the trees.

    "Trouble! Gather up!" Harald shouted as he neared them.

 8 - In Every World

    Something had caught wind of the foraging party. Now everyone was gathered up. Janso handed off his bag of beetles to Leo and raised his spear, while Lydia was already scanning the distance.

    Leo tied off the bag and stuffed it into his pack without looking, trying to see what was coming. Whatever was out there in the trees, there were many of them, calling back in forth in high-pitched cries.

    Over a hundred feet away, something large trotted around the bole of a tree. It was a -- pig? But it had more fur than any pig Leo had ever seen. And once he''d managed to pry his eyes away from its enormous bulk and the tusks that curled wickedly around its flat snout, he noticed that there was something riding it.

    The rider had grey skin with mottled greenish tinges, and in stark contrast to the boar, it was stick thin. It was nearly nude, aside from a loincloth and a tall hat that appeared to be made of bark and leaves. It had its own tiny set of tusks. And it was using a crooked branch to urge the boar ahead, along with yipping ullulations. Around it, Leo began to catch glimpses of a ragtag group of similar creatures, skulking closer with sharpened sticks and slings.

    "Wood goblins," Harald said, a grim note to his voice. Leo noticed that Janso had backed up a bit, leaving Harald and Lydia as the front line. Lydia, meanwhile, had her spear in position to hurl.

    "Hold," said Harald. "That warthog is vicious if it''s provoked."

    "They''ll provoke it," said Lydia, her eyes locked on her target. "We should attack first."

    "We''ll all attack at once. Janso, hit the rider. Lydia, the hog. I''ll back you up. Leo, stay back and use your knife if you have to."

    In the time it took to exchange those terse comments, the hog advanced to within twenty feet, picking up speed as its rider lashed it on with its branch. The goblins carrying spears scrambled to keep up, while the three with slings stopped and began to hurl stones.

    Leo was unlucky enough to be the first hit. He was digging through his pack for a rock when a rock smacked painfully into his bicep. He yelped, giving up on the knife and looking for cover.

    Time seemed to accelerate. Another stone whizzed by his head, and then one thudded against Janso''s shoulder, drawing a cry of pain. Harald was barked a command, crouched in readiness for the hog''s rush. Lydia stepped forward--

    And suddenly there was heat, as fire arced back from the tip of Lydia''s javelin. She cried out and hurled it, leaving a blazing afterimage. The dart caught the hog at an angle, eliciting a squeal of anguish as it stumbled. A wave of diffuse flame followed from Harald, sending the goblins behind the hog scattering.

    For a moment, Leo thought they were running. Then he realized that they were just spreading out to flank the less numerous humans. The rider jerked the javelin free with a gout of blood and yelled something, sending the warthog charging forward again.

    Just as Leo was readying himself to cast Phantasm, another stone hit him in the leg, nearly making him fall. As he grabbed his leg, he saw that three of the goblins had rounded Lydia''s side and were approaching him. Their own small, crooked spears were leveled, the tips pointing at him. Their faces looked crumpled, collapsed, like a century-old human''s, but the deadly intent was still clear.

    Instinct warred in him. He wanted to run away, but that would leave the goblins behind Lydia. He could try Dread Aspect, but if the goblins weren''t fooled, they''d probably kill both him and Lydia. He didn''t have time to grab his knife, even if he had any idea how to use it properly, which he didn''t.

    He hit on a third idea. A very poor idea, some corner of his mind screamed, but it seemed the only one that made sense. He began yelling incoherently and ran off at an angle, hobbling because of the spasming muscle in his leg and trying to keep an eye on both the ground in front of him and the goblins.You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

    As he''d hoped, the goblins pursued him, but their short stature meant that he could keep just ahead of them. But they seemed to realize the same and began to turn back.

    "Hey! Assholes!" Leo stopped, grabbing a rotten branch off the ground to hurl at the goblins.

    That did the trick. Snarling, they leaped toward him. And Leo -- ran.

    Normally, he was indifferent to exercise. Now, as adrenaline overpowered the ache in his leg, he found himself leaping and jumping like he was on an obstacle course, dodging around roots, over falling branches and around forest giants. He''d had no idea he could be run so fast.

    For about a full minute, before he began to get winded. Then he realized the problem. Being indifferent to hard exercise meant he couldn''t take much of it. And the goblins seemed set for a long chase, gabbling to each other as they spread out and herded him forward.

    Worse, the sound of the battle had faded. Leo suddenly realized that he wouldn''t be able to get around the goblins to reach the others, even if he was totally sure of where they were. His landmark was the school, but now he couldn''t spot it.

    A few minutes into the chase, Leo''s chest was heaving with exertion and sweat was beginning to soak his clothes. The ache in his leg had come back with a vengeance, and his knees were beginning to tremble with effort when he had to clamber over obstacles. The goblins were about the same distance away, but they didn''t seem tired at all. In fact, they seemed to be having a conversation, yipping and snarling back and forth at each other as they trotted along after Leo.

    Off to his right, he spotted something grey. A stone structure, rising up in the trees. Out of desperation, he came up with a new plan.

    As he came to the next large trunk, he ducked around it and stopped. Panting and trying to still the shaking in his hands, he closed his eyes and concentrated.

    For a long, panic-inducing moment, nothing happened. Then Leo felt the power course through him. He opened his eyes as an illusory spikejaw shimmered into existence in front of him, its spined raised threateningly and mouth slavering.

    "Go," he whispered, giving voice to his mental commands. The spikejaw darted off to his right, around the huge bole of the tree. He turned and peeked around the side, tracking its progress.

    The spikejaw course-corrected toward the goblin that had been trying to flank around Leo''s right. Suddenly terrified, the small humanoid wailed and ran toward its compatriots, giving Leo the opening he needed. He took off at a stumbling run, heading for the structure he''d spotted.

    He heard more high-pitched behind him, at first frightened. Then, as he reached the halfway point toward the structure, the noises took on an enraged tone. They''d found out it was a fake.

    Eyes narrowed, Leo pumped his legs, focusing on that structure and hoping against hope that there was some succor to be found there. A doorway he could duck through and hold against the goblins, maybe. A place to hide. Anything.

    The wall he reached was two or three stories high and crumbling, with pieces of stone layering the forest floor. There were gaping, empty windows, but too high for him to reach. No door. After a moment of indecision, he stumbled around to the right of the building.

    That turned out to be the correct decision. There was a door. And, amazingly, it was intact -- and despite long years exposed to the weather, its engravings appeared similar to the door that Nemtal had brought him to earlier in the day. A warded door, for students of the school.

    Whispering a prayer to whatever cruel gods this world held, Leo staggered up to the door and grasped the handle. It went cold against his palm, then he heard a loud click. He swung it open, slipped into the darkness behind it, and without thinking any further, slammed it closed behind him.

    Then he immediately thought of the monsters laying in wait for him. Which he''d locked himself in with.

    He couldn''t restrain his panting, wheezing breath, though, so he just leaned against the door and accepted whatever fate had in store for him. Which was -- nothing.

    As his breathing slowed, Leo''s eyes adapted to the dimmer lighting. But there was light, streaming in through the empty windows of the building. He was in a small vestibule of some sort, which had several steps leading up to the main floor. Several bulky shapes resolved into heaps of wreckage, perhaps furniture that had long since given way to nature. The entire floor was matted with old leaves and moss, but nothing living that he could see. Through the windows, he could hear his pursuers closing in on the building, but he felt fairly certain that they wouldn''t be able to open the door.

    Trying to be as quiet as he could, he forced his legs to carry him up the steps and limped across the floor to his left, headed for one of the windows. Hiding behind the wall, he peeked through it.

    Sure enough, the goblins had figured out that he''d gone into the school. Moving as if they knew where the door was, two went around the right of the building, while one circled the left. A few seconds later, he heard one of them rattle at the handle of the door. It didn''t budge.

    Leo let out a sigh of relief, sagging against the window.

    Then he heard it. A high-pitched yipping, carrying out into the forest. Then repeating. All three of the goblins seemed to be shouting together. And he realized what they were doing.

    They were calling for reinforcements.

 9 - Trapped

    In the face of true exhaustion, even a band of midget murderers wasn''t enough to stir Leo to action.

    The wood goblins outside couldn''t find a way into the building. Leo was slumped down on the floor, the wave of adrenaline receding. His legs had become soggy noodles, his lungs lumps of aching pudding. He was too out of shape to engage in long chases.

    But his mind kept working. What was he going to do?

    In time, the wood goblins would find a way into the windows, which were perhaps fifteen feet off the ground. Too high for them to reach, even standing on each other''s shoulders. But they clearly weren''t idiots. They probably had ropes. Or they could build a makeshift ladder, or leap off the branches of nearby trees.

    He had a knife -- now sheathed on his belt -- but that wasn''t much use against their numbers, assuming he could even bring himself to stab a creature that looked roughly like an ugly human child. He could hear answering yips in the distance now, a fresh band wood goblins coming to meet his three initial pursuers. There was no sign of the expedition members he''d been with. Harald, Lydia and Janso. He wondered for a moment whether they''d survived. But even if they were fine, Leo couldn''t rely on them swooping in to rescue him.

    He looked around the building. From where he sat, he could see most of the interior of his level. It had been built in an open layout, with a large staircase on one side leading up to the next floor.

    So that was one option: he could go up, and try to find a position to defend from. But that left him trapped on the next level. Even if the goblins were afraid of his knife, they could just wait for him to fall asleep or run out of water.

    Could he disguise himself using his illusion magic? For a moment, hope flared. But he didn''t know how to do that. He still only had a shaky idea of how his magic worked, and how much his spells could be modified.

    Even assuming he could figure it out, the wood goblins had already seen one of his illusions. So they were probably wise to his tricks. It was unlikely they''d leave the building without searching every corner.

    All in all, he was out of ideas. And those previously distant yipping sounds were getting close. What if they quickly found a way in? What if those yips were actually a language and they''d already come up with a plan?

    A mental image of wood goblins swaming over him brought a fresh jolt of adrenaline. With a groan, he clambered to his feet and began exploring the building.

    First he peeked through a door in the back of the large room he was in. There was another room back there. It was mostly heaped with decomposing wreckage, the same as the main room, but some of its furnishings were made of stone. He recognized cabinets and what looked to be an enormous wood-fired oven. A dark doorway gaped at the far corner of the room.

    A quick investigation showed that the door led to steps down. Down to a very, very dark basement. Looking into that void, Leo felt a stirring of fear.

    He ducked back out of the room, weakly trotting over to the staircase up. He could hear the wood goblins having a conversation, of sorts, outside of the windows as he moved up, helping himself along with a hand on the wall.

    His heart was hammering in his chest again. If they found a way in while he was upstairs, the only choice he''d have would be to hole up and defend a room. But at the moment, finding something upstairs was his best option -- besides going into the dark of the basement.

    He skidded to a halt in the first room, quickly looking around. Perhaps it had been a bedroom at some point. Now there was only a clutter centered against one wall, and some assorted piles at other points. A narrow doorway led into an equally narrow room. A closet?

    He went back out, and on to other rooms along the upstairs hallway. Two more rooms looked roughly like bedrooms, one with an additional room that held a ceramic tub. Another room had been a bathroom, with an strangely shaped toilet that was still in decent condition.

    At the end of the hallway, the last room proved to be something different. A study?

    Oddly enough, parts of it had survived the years and weather. A large glass window was cruddy with age and grime, but without a single broken pane. A ramshackle, sagging desk had once been grand, perhaps eight feet wide and facing the door. And there were wooden bookcases, filled with an assortment of junk and ancient books.

    He scanned over the shelves first, looking for anything usable. They appeared to have been used mostly for display. Several strange objects looked like seashells, albeit nothing he recognized. He skipped over several small statues, a pair of ornate urns, and a large, weirdly shaped skull with inset eyes of black stone. A section of books hadn''t completely disintegrated, but they were slowly decomposing under the efforts of a black fungus and probably unreadable.

    After a few moments of hesitation, he grabbed the one object that caught his eye. It was a ring, although far too large for human fingers, made of some dark, glossy stone. He rubbed the dust off before stuffing it in his bag.

    He moved on to the desk, circling around the enormous thing and kicking aside the remnants of a chair. As he''d thought, the desk had drawers.

    The handle pulled off the first he tried to open, leaving him with a handful of soft, splintering wood. The drawer was either locked somehow, or held in place by the warped wood around it.

    Hearing a clattering and yips from outside, Leo quickly pulled out his dagger and used the tip to pry open the drawer, breaking off more rotting wood as he went. As he opened it, he saw a pile of what might have once been paper in the bottom, and the remnants of a lock that had fallen off from his efforts.

    The drawer above it and a tray in the center of the desk yielded similar results, with only an indistinguishable mess in the bottom. But a drawer on the right side of the desk held something more interesting.Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

    They looked like books, more or less. Or more like -- small scrapbooks? The cover was a dark, matte red that might have been leather. He picked up the top one. Its slightly cold cover crackled with age as he opened it, and a bit of fine dust trickled down from the spine.

    The inside page, for there was only one, was blank. The roughly textured, parchment-like paper had become damaged, mottled with age and a stain that spread inward toward the center. But unlike the books on the shelves, it only looked a few decades old, not two hundred years.

    Confused, he closed the book to look it over again. After a moment, he realized that it was like something he''d seen before. The memdex that Harald had shown him. Not identical, but similar enough that it was probably the same thing.

    Another noise came from outside. Wasting no more time, Leo dug down through the stack of memdexes, opening each to briefly look inside. There were eight in all, and only the second from the bottom had a relatively undamaged interior page.

    He quickly piled the rest back into the drawer, pushed it closed, and put the memdex into his bag. Feeling like he was running out of time, he stepped back outside, trotting down the hall and onto the stairs.

    A wood goblin looked up, hanging halfway over the window sill at the bottom of the stairs. They stayed in place for a moment, mutely staring at each other, before the goblin grunted and pushed, tumbling into the building.

    Fear surged through Leo. Giving an inarticulate cry, he rushed down the stairs.

    The goblin scrambled to its feet, quickly seeming to realize that it had miscalculated: it had left behind its weapon to climb in, and it was far smaller than its opponent. Leo bowled the creature over and ran on a couple feet before turning back, also experiencing a realization.

    Once, in high school, he''d done a tryout for the wrestling team, running drills then having a two minute long match with someone the same size. He remembered a surprisingly exhausting grapple and the seeming impossibility of making significant headway against someone of roughly equal size and strength.

    But a vicious humanoid -- who was the size of a ten year old?

    As the goblin toppled back out of the window with a squawk, he didn''t even feel too guilty. He brushed at some scratches its sharp fingernails had left on his arm, hoping they wouldn''t become infected. Then he leaned forward to peak over the windowsill.

    There were about ten wood goblins in all, clustered around their fallen comrade. Two of the new arrivals looked rather more fierce than the others, wearing circlets of teeth around their biceps and crude helmets. One was looking up. As it made eye contact with Leo, it hefted its spear.

    Leo ducked out of the way, just in time for the wooden shaft to fly past, arcing into the room before it clattered to the floor.

    How had the goblin gotten in? He hadn''t seen anything like a rope or ladder. So maybe they had built a human pyramid. Well, goblin pyramid.

    He retrieved the spear, considering hurling it back out the window at the goblins. But then he got another idea.

    It was surprisingly hard to create an illusion of himself. Twice, the air only shimmered before the semblance dissipated. He rubbed his arms, having become chilly in the process of trying to cast the illusion.

    Then he remembered the size limitation. With a moment of concentration, he was able to create an illusion of himself -- without legs. It floated in midair, only complete from the waist up. Even then, it didn''t look quite like him. The face was warped, and as he glanced down at his own clothes, he realized that the attire on the illusion didn''t quite match.

    But, he guessed, the goblins wouldn''t have time to examine it, even if they had a clear idea of what he looked like. Taking a deep breath, he made a twisting motion with his hand to make the deception turn around toward the window, then lowered his palm, concentrating, until its waist was about even with the window sill. His illusions were able to move autonomously, but the hand gestures felt helpful for fine positioning.

    Then he sent it forward, as if it were leaning to look out of the window.

    After a moment, a spear flashed upward. Leo jerked the illusion back away from the window, and with his own voice, gave out a pained scream. Then he screamed a couple more times, for good measure.

    After that, he listened closely. The goblins might not have bought the ruse. If they''d been watching closely enough, they might have seen the spear penetrate far too deeply into the chest to be real. He hoped they were too stupid to work it out.

    There was an excited exchange of yipping and snarling from outside. He heard a flurry of motion, scrabbling around in the leaves. Hoping he could add to the realism, he gave a loud groan, ending with a sob.

    Mentally, he gave his acting skills a B minus.

    More noises from outside. He thought about going to peek out of the other window, but if they saw him, he''d ruin the whole thing. Instead, he just moved over to the wall by the window, staying ducked down so they wouldn''t see him moving. Then he turned to listen.

    The next couple minutes were torture. He could at least he could tell that they weren''t moving away from this particular window, but he wasn''t sure what they were doing. He just heard various scuffling noises, along with an ongoing conversation in their yipping language.

    Then he heard a scrape against the wall just outside the window. He readied himself.

    A set of small, sharp-clawed fingers reached onto the windowsill, straining for purchase. More yips. The greyish fingers of the hand tightened, and another hand appeared. The goblin began to pull itself up.

    A bark-helmeted head appeared, coming over the windowsill. Then the rest of the creature began to follow. But only until Leo''s kick caught it full in the face. The goblin flew backward without a sound, and he heard a heavy impact on the ground outside.

    He couldn''t help it. He laughed. Partly in relief that his trick had worked, and partly over the comedy of the situation. But he quickly sobered as he heard the outraged yells from outside. These were, after all, creatures bent on murdering him. Doubly so, now.

    Just to let them know that he was in good enough health to mock their efforts, Leo forced another laugh. Then, for good measure, he leaned over to hurl down the spear he was holding. He felt sure it hadn''t hit anything, but more outraged cries followed.

    There was a minute of conferral outside, during which Leo leaned against the wall, resting and letting his mind go blank. Clearly, the wood goblins weren''t going to be able to climb up without a better plan. He''d shown them that they couldn''t even trust their own eyes, when it came to where he was or what he was doing.

    As it turned out, they didn''t take long to formulate a new plan. As they had before, the goblins raised their voices in ululating cries. Shouting for even more reinforcements to come and help them out.

    Leo groaned, sagging down. He hadn''t known exactly what to expect, but he''d felt a moment of hope that the goblins would just give up and leave. Clearly, whatever else they did or didn''t have in common with humans, they could be stubborn. And, most likely, hold a grudge.

    He gripped his hair in his hands, staring at the floor and trying to think of what to do next. He could try to fool them again and jump out of a window on the other side of the building, running away into the forest. But he had a feeling they were expecting that move. There was probably a lookout keeping watch, and his illusion-making abilities couldn''t turn him invisible.

    Likewise, he couldn''t just keep defending the building against them. There were too many windows for him to cover if the wood goblins split up, and the second floor of the house didn''t have anything more defensible than a narrow doorway. He imagined himself dying in a bathroom or closet to a horde of persistent goblins.

    That left one place to go. The basement.

    And he didn''t even have a light.

 10 - Into the Dark

    The dark was like a tomb. An overpowering musty smell and something else unidentifiable hung in the air. Small sounds quickly fled, and there was no sense of distance.

    Or safety. Leo had negotiated the stairs down to the basement without much trouble, since there was still a dim light filtering in from above. At the bottom of the stairs there had been an immediate left turn into a hallway. He had walked slowly down it, his arms out to either side and hands trailing along the rough walls. Twice, his fingers had crossed gaps that held closed doors, before he encountered another turn.

    Some distance further on, he halted. His heart was hammering in his chest. The dark was peaceful in a way, true. But he was all too aware that he was in a world with monsters -- real monsters, some of whom certainly lived in the dark. What might be lurking down here, in wait?

    Back the way he''d come, up the stairs, were the wood goblins. He felt certain that, given time, they''d figure out where he''d gone and follow him down here. So he couldn''t go back up, nor could he just stay still and hide, as he so desperately wanted to.

    But he couldn''t seem to force himself to go on any further into the dark, either.

    As a compromise, he sat down and tried to calm himself. Then he tried to think.

    The building he was in had clearly been empty for many years, and in all that time, it looked like nothing had ever made its home there. The front door had been intact and locked. And this basement was just an extension of the house. So in all likelihood, there actually wasn''t anything there, except dust. And spiders -- he''d felt a floating cobweb cross his face.

    On the other hand, he didn''t have a plan. It was dark enough to hide him from the goblins, that was true. But to find a good hiding spot, he first had to be able to see.

    Maybe his magic could help?

    Nemtal had mentioned that his Light spell was a cantrip. Easy to learn. Leo spent a moment cursing himself for not asking to learn it.

    That was water under the bridge. But perhaps he could figure it out. He was capable of making illusions, after all.

    He raised his hand in the darkness, concentrating. "Let there be... light," he spoke.

    And it appeared! A ball of bright blue light, similar to the orb he''d followed around Arkfel when he first arrived. Joy bloomed in his heart. He had light!

    A bright light, in fact. So bright that he couldn''t see anything else. He blinked at it, then squeezed his eyes and looked away before opening them slightly, peering into the darkness.

    No details appeared. The darkness was complete. But, paradoxically, there was a ball of pure light.

    "That''s weird," he muttered.

    Lifting his hand, he directed the light slowly away from himself. At some point, it touched the wall. He could tell, because part of the ball began to disappear from view. But he still couldn''t make out a single detail of the wall.

    Suddenly, he recalled trying to use Phantasm to create a light before, in the classroom. Nemtal had had to bring his own Light over. Leo groaned, using his hand to rub his face.

    "I get it," he whispered to the darkness. "It''s not a real light. It''s just the illusion of a light."

    He thought about that for a moment. It made sense, in a way, and simultaneously told him something about his illusion magic. His illusions didn''t create or interact with light, as he''d thought at first. Instead, they existed only in the mind of the beholder. His illusion magic was, in fact, mental manipulation magic.

    That realization had interesting implications. Leo knew the human brain was an incredibly complex organ. Too complex for another mind to fool as completely as illusion magic did. So there had to be some being in this world that made the magic happen. Leo''s soul had been "restructured" by the golem, true, but the idea of an outside entity just made sense.

    What could that outside entity do? Illusion magic meant it was capable of mental manipulation and control. But the expedition''s fire magic was real. So this entity could also break the laws of thermodynamics, making energy appear from nowhere. What else could it do? Could it create matter? If it could create energy, then why not?

    Leo shook his head. Sitting alone in silence and darkness -- his illusory orb had vanished -- made it too easy to get lost in his musings. And he still had a pack of bloodthirsty wood goblins after him. He filed away his thoughts and went back to considering how he''d create a light.

    He got the idea to use his illusions to test where the walls were -- creating a sort of outline. As he''d seen from the light orb, the illusions were cut off by solid matter, so when an illusion disappeared, that meant it had gone through something solid. A flat plane of light that he moved around could do that, more or less.

    But it would take a lot of time and careful positioning to use his illusions that way, so it would be slow. And Phantasm was limited in size, so he''d have to scan everything with small squares of light, making the process even slower. Even if he pull it off, it wouldn''t be good for seeing details.

    And that left him with... nothing. While the spells the golem had taught him were fairly impressive, there were only two of them.

    Could he figure out the actual Light spell? Nemtal had made it sound easy. A cantrip, usable by anyone. And according to Harald, magic users in Charun didn''t have anything like the golem to help them. They just learned by practice, the way you would learn to throw a fastball, or use chopsticks.

    Using magic was, so far, a lot like muscle memory. For Phantasm and Dread Aspect -- he didn''t understand the spells, but he knew the movement. Even though he had no idea what "muscle" it used.

    He tried thinking through the process of using Phantasm. Like imagining yourself moving your body, it seemed possible to imagine yourself casting a spell, without actually doing it.

    It was like his thinking mind shut off for a moment. For just a moment, his entire mind was bent on --The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

    Bent. That was an interesting word. It was like his mind took on a shape. The shape of the spell?

    He imagined a rune representing the spell. That wasn''t quite right, though. There was an actual function to the different "muscles" in his mind. He imagined casting Dread Aspect. That used somewhat different muscles than Phantasm.

    "This feeling is how I create a Phantasm, and it''s also used in Dread Aspect," he muttered. "So let''s call that the mental manipulation muscle. Which leaves this feeling..."

    He flexed the mental ability he was focused on. What was it used for? He had the feeling it was the power source that made the spell actually work. Which meant if he used it in absence of any spell, he''d just release raw power. Right?

    He took a deep breath, then focused on it. "Light."

    The same chilled feeling he got while casting spells seeped through him. Then he felt something else. Warmth? At the same time, he saw a faint, pastel aura flare around himself.

    Raw power, but not what he wanted. "Too much to hope it would become light," he mumbled.

    He began trying to use other movements of his mental body along with that release of power. "Light. Light. Light," he repeated each time, willing his power to become visible. He felt power ebbing away from him, the persistent feeling of chill invading his limbs, but he pushed on.

    Finally, after too many attempts to count, there was a flare of light. He blinked. He was dazzled, the ghost of the light still throbbing in his eyes, but it was definitely gone. Yet he also knew he''d seen, just for a moment, grey brick walls around him.

    "Light."

    This time, he was looking away from the flash, down the hallway. And he could see that it extended much further, out to a room that he couldn''t make out in that brief moment.

    He chewed his lip, struggling to keep his thoughts in order in the face of his growing mental exhaustion. He''d figured out how to make a light, but only for a moment. It would be like navigating by the flashes of lightning on a stormy night. Possible, but not optimal.

    Phantasm lasted for a longer period of time, maybe thirty seconds or so. What was it about Phantasm that he did? Maybe it was--

    "Light."

    This time, light flared into being and stayed put. As Leo''s eyes quickly adjusted, he realized that it was actually fairly dim, not even as strong as Nemtal''s true Light spell had been.

    He also couldn''t move it, even when he waved his hand and willed it to shift position. That was probably another, separate part of the actual Light spell. In any case, he didn''t have time to sit around and puzzle it out. Instead, he examined his surroundings.

    Behind him, he could see the turn that had brought him to this part of the hallway. It had felt like a long distance when he was walking in the dark, but with light to see by, he guessed it was only ten or so feet away. There were no doors along that part of the hall. And going back that way, of course, would bring him closer to the wood goblins, who might already have entered the house through the windows by now.

    The other way, the hall extended perhaps twenty feet. Close to him, there was a door on the left side of the hall, and an empty doorway on the right. At the end, the hall let out into a room. That room was too large for him to see its back wall, but he could make out shapes on the floor.

    He took a deep breath, moving forward.

    His body, of course, immediately blocked most of the light, leaving him mostly blind again.

    "Light."

    A new ball of light flared ahead, and he moved forward to examine the doors.

    The door on the left was made of wood, and had no visible handle. Despite visible aging, it didn''t budge when he pushed on it. The dry, still atmosphere of the basement had helped preserve it, but it also appeared to be made from some heavy, unusually dense wood. He considered trying to kick it in, but he didn''t want to make noise.

    The darkness around him gave him a constant itching between his shoulderblades, as if something were lurking just out of sight, waiting for him to make the wrong move.

    He turned and regarded the empty doorway on the other side of him. The light, just below his chest, barely illuminated anything in that room. So he cast it again inside the room, trying to ignore the draining feeling of casting. It was just a small spell so he should be able to cast it repeatedly, he told himself.

    The room was about fifteen by ten feet, with shelving on either side, now collapsed onto the floor. He saw the remnants of containers in the litter. They didn''t seem worth digging through, so he backed out of the room.

    He ignored the tightening feeling in his chest as he walked down the hall into the large room at the end. The unidentifiable smell that pervaded the basement was growing more powerful. It was... sweet? But also rotten. He was trying to conserve his energy, so by the time he reached the entry, he was once again cloaked in utter gloom.

    Once inside, he swallowed his fear to cast the spell. "Light." And the details sprang into view.

    He found himself cowering, his arms raised to ward off blows from the towering figures all around him. But they were only pillars. Strangely shaped ones.

    What had they been used for? There was a dull crystalline tube lodged in the side of each pillar. At the bottom of the tubes, there was a small funnel or pipe of some sort. He also noticed strange, dark stains spreading across the floor.

    It took him a long moment to figure out a possible explanation. The building above looked like it had been someone''s home, or rather, mansion. And what did rich people have under their houses? Wine cellars, of course.

    A wine cellar in his world had bottles or casks, of course, not weird crystalline tubes. But the tubes had clearly been storing liquid. Some still were, while the pipe on others had broken or fallen off during the long years of abandonment, spilling the contents across the floor. As he looked closer, he saw the dark stains were actually a carpet of mold. Touching it with his foot made the delicate tendrils crumble. It had been a long time since the liquid spilled out.

    He set out into the room, the mold softly crunching underfoot as he walked.

    This basement room turned out to be even larger than the size of the main floor above, by Leo''s reckoning. After passing through the forest of crystal pillars, casting his light spell every so often, he came to a section that appeared to have been excavated but never used. The walls on either side closed in, made only of rough-hewn stone that looked like a cave. The floor, similarly, had become rough and unpolished.

    In the back of the cellar, he found a locked door. The same type of magic door that had been inside the school, and at the entrance of this mansion.

    He breathed a sigh of relief. The wood goblins couldn''t get past this kind of door. So even if it only led to a dead end room, he could just hide behind it for a day or so, by which time the goblins would certainly get bored and leave.

    They hadn''t pursued him into the basement so far, though, which meant he still had time to go back and explore the rest of the doors he''d passed before he created his light spell. He''d just take a look at what was behind the door before going back.

    The familiar chill went through his palm, allowing him to turn the handle of the door and pull it. At first he just opened it a crack. As he did, air began to flow past him, and he felt an answering stream of colder air pushing in from the other side. Not hearing anything or seeing any movement from the other side, Leo pulled the door open wider.

    The light dimly illuminated a passage that looked neither like a natural cave or a human-built hallway. It was roughly circular, with rippling stone walls and a sheen of flowing water at the bottom. Curious how far back the cave ran, he created a light past the doorway and stepped down, careful to position his feet on either side of the water.

    To the right, the passage curved, while to the left, it simply ran on out of sight. After reassuring himself that nothing was lurking in the darkness, he looked down, curious what his boot was touching.

    There was a low, black plant growing out of the water. He frowned and bent down to touch it before stopping, narrowing his eyes. It looked like a plant, true, but it was in a place that plants shouldn''t be able to grow. He straightened back up, shivering from the cold air, or perhaps the prospect of exploring that strange tunnel.

    But he still had more of the basement to look through, assuming the goblins hadn''t followed him in yet. He turned to go back through the door.

    And stopped dead, staring at the wall. The door was gone. Only the rough cave wall remained.

    Suddenly distraught, he ran his hands over the rock, cursing under his breath as he searched for any kind of seam or crack. But there was nothing. It was as if the door had never existed.

    Once again, he was trapped.