The empty grey walls of the complex weighed down on the dreary workers within. The rooms were suffocating, a heavy clutter of paper drafts or abandoned metal spilled over as rivers through the halls and cubicles. The only grace to the office’s traffic was the reduced occupants who had to navigate it. The entire building had been buried in this encompassing depressive aura.

An exhausted man folded over his desk bundling up his white lab coat to use as a makeshift pillow. He tried to subdue the grating swarm of thoughts that stung at his conscious. He desperately desired even just a few minutes of shut eye, but his mind denied him permission. His brain had been chained down to the problem; his thoughts corrupted by the formula. It seemed perfect, the elegance with which it was laid out before him could only be described as beautiful.

“Now’s not the time to be sleeping Mason.” A young blond woman tapped a warm cup of liquid against Mason’s cheek to knock him out of his stupor. Mason gave the woman a thankful smile as he accepted the drink.

“Thanks Starlet. Though it’s not like I would even be able to sleep anyways.” Mason lifted his cup in the air in cheers and took a fine sip.

Starlet tilted her head down the hallway as she spoke “Another meeting is starting, and you can’t skip out on this one.” Mason let out a tired grown which did nothing but make Starlet laugh. Mason weakly lifted himself out of his cubicle and tried to wipe the drool off of his lab coat before putting it on.

Mason had to break into a short jog to catch up to Starlet who had already started walking away. Mason could not look more dissonant next to Starlet, his poor posture, dirty clothes and averting eyes contrasted starkly against the confident and well-kept woman.

He always felt uncomfortable with her; her presence was simply too overbearing for him, although admittedly he thought that of pretty much everyone. The awkward silence that permeated between the two was the usual comfort which Mason happily resided within but Starlet couldn’t stand it and so she had to break the silence. “Have you been to the new bar just down the street?”

Mason managed to reply in a low whisper “No.”

“Neither have I. We should go sometime; we can’t always be in the office.”

Mason stuttered in his steps briefly. He hurriedly returned to his usual walk hoping she hadn’t noticed. He didn’t know how to respond; he wasn’t even sure in which regards the question was asked. Mason refused to make eye contact keeping his eyes firmly planted on his feet. “…okay.” Mason hadn’t noticed since he was so adamant on averting his gaze, but Starlet smiled at his response.

The two finally arrived at a large open room with a singular circular table placed in the middle. The rest of the employees had all already made it there crowding the room up. A well-built older man with greyed hair obscured by a tall velvet hat gave the two a smile as he spoke. “And now everyone is here, glad that you could finally make it Mason.”

Mason kept his head down, he didn’t want to know how many people in this room were watching him, judging, questioning. He separated himself from Starlet and planted himself on a far away chair deep into the corners of the room.

The man with the velvet hat didn’t pay much attention to Mason, he turned back to the rest of the staff and spoke. “Okay now that everybody is here, we can get things started. Or more importantly, and I am going to preface this with a please, get things finished. I’ll be honest here; we need to start seeing some results very soon or else this department will be shut down. For real this time.”

An older woman who leant onto an intricate and clearly expensive cane followed up “So basically you’re saying the department is getting shut down.”

A younger man that Mason recognized as the one that had just joined the company a few weeks ago chimed in. “Wait, if the department is getting shut down then what happens to all of us? Do we get reassigned or…?”

The man with the velvet hat quickly jumped to respond before everyone got started. “I’m not going to sugar coat things. If we get shut down then probably only our more experienced members will be getting reassigned, but sadly not everyone can be moved.” An immediate explosion of voices and panic filled the room.

“How can this even happen!?”

“Surely the board can’t pull something this big without the sponsors permission?”

“Does this sponsor even exist? They haven’t shown themselves for two years!”

“But still, the sponsor restarted this company specifically for our department.”

Mason hated meetings. He kept himself hidden in his corner and avoided any invitation to join in on the conversation. Mason was not apathetic to the company politics at foot. Even if he was guaranteed to stay in the company if this department failed, he still wanted to avoid that at all costs. Mason didn’t work here for the money, it was the research; he was here for what they could make, for what this department could make.

The man with the velvet hat shouted at the top of his lungs “HEY!”. The entire room fell to a tense silence. The man with the velvet hat softened his face placing a gentle smile on it as he spoke. “But it won’t need to come down to that if we can just have something to show for ourselves. So, can anyone here give me something, anything.”

No one spoke up. Heads turned and glances were thrown at hopeful candidates. Eventually all the heads landed on Mason. The man with the velvet hat asked. “Mason? You got to give us something.”

Mason pushed his head down as much as he could, he hated this concentration, he hated the attention. He barely managed to mumble out his meek answer. “The formula”.

“What was that Mason? I couldn’t quite hear you.”

Mason raised his head ever so slightly and spoke loudly enough for the entire room to hear. “The formula.”

“You found a solution to the formula!?”

Those words grated against Mason’s ears like the man was purposefully tormenting him. “No, we can use THE formula.”

The man with the velvet hat released a frustrated sigh. “We’ve talked about this Mason.”

“But its right!”

“No Mason!”

One of the other employees leaned forward questioning. “Wait, what’s this formula about. If there is some vital information being withheld, I think we, especially now, have the right to know about it.” The employee was met with a resounding hum of approval.

The man with the velvet hat was quick to try and regain control over the room. “There is nothing important being withheld from you-“

Mason shouted out interrupting the man with the velvet hat. “That’s bs and you know it!” Everyone was stunned. No one had ever heard Mason get so loud nor confrontational before. He even interrupted the boss. Mason for the first time in his life ignored the stares and kept his attention firmly on the man with the velvet hat. “There is no way around it. If the formula is right its right. You can’t just reject the answer and expect me to be able to find an answer that won’t just end up being the same thing. Anything I write would just be inferior to the point of not even being worth showcasing.”

Starlet finally stepped up. “Okay what is going on here? Have we been sleeping on something this whole time?”

The man with the velvet hat was about to alleviate the crowd “No, no-“

Mason interrupted him once again. “The White Witch.” That definitely got the crowds attention. The man with the velvet hat stared at Mason in absolute terror. Everyone else was waiting for an explanation to why that name could ever be related to their work. Mason continued. “The White Witch visited us one night when it was just the boss and I left in the office. She solved the formula for us. She completed the research just like that. But we refused to use it, he told me to find a different solution, one that we could trust. But…”

Mason turned to face the man with the velvet hat directly “But you can’t rewrite what’s right! I’ve looked over the problem hundreds even thousands of times and it always comes back to the same thing. I can’t do it better.”

A quiet discord shuffled

Through the room, panicked whispers and wary questions slithered from ear to ear. One of the employees more confused than anything else asked “Why did she help us?”

Another person chimed in. “What does she have to benefit from this?”

“Maybe her interest is a sign that we shouldn’t do this, maybe the department should be shut down.”

The man with the velvet hat planted his face into his hands and simply shook his head. “This is why I didn’t want to tell anyone.”

Starlet watched the chaos unravel all around her. She briefly turned to Mason seeing fear exude from his eyes. She could tell he was mortified at finding his life’s work slip away from him because of a single creature. Starlet spoke up with a confidence and vigor that attracted the crowd’s attention. “Who cares if the White Witch wrote the formula? Like Mason said it’s just a matter of being right or wrong and he says its right. Does it matter what her motivations are if for this brief minuscule moment, it just so happens to overlap with ours? For goodness sake people were researchers! We do research and we have made and will continue to make an unending number of sacrifices for it. Leave the stunting of scientific progress and collaboration to the politicians and nobles. Leave progress to us, no matter the cost.”

The atmosphere in the room softened slightly. Less of a blinding tirade of confusion and concern and more into a hushed debate of action. The old lady leaning on her cane scoffed at Starlet. “Just because we’re scientists does not somehow exempt us from ethics. There is a right and wrong that exists in this world and if the White Witch wants something to happen then you can be sure that it is on the wrong side of things.”

The crowd swayed back and forth, science or ethics? Some argued that the progress of science was ethical in and of itself, others harshly disagreed. The man with the velvet hat smacked the table before him continually until everyone had gotten silent. “Since when did I become a judge? Fine since I see that there is no longer any way for anyone here to make progress without getting past this then why don’t we leave it to a vote. Everyone that wants to use the formula raise your hand.”

There was no immediate action in response. It was one thing to talk about the rightness of your thoughts but to then turn those in actions had a whole other connotation to it. The first to raise their hand was Mason, sheepishly so, he did not hesitate to raise his hand because he doubted his stance but rather more in fear of the ire he was to attract.

Starlet as if she had been waiting for Mason to take the lead immediately shot her hand up the second Mason’s did. With Starlet’s call to action more and more employees joined in. The more hands were raised the more confident others were in raising theirs. Though the mixture of raised hands and lowered hands were still even enough to require a thorough counting to make out the victor. A tense lull filled the room as everyone tried counting the results in their head. This single vote reminiscent of what they would see their children do to pick a game was now being used to decide the fate of the entire department, she didn’t want to be arrogant but this decision could probably affect the entire world even though the world wouldn’t know it.

Once people had stopped changing their minds the man with the velvet hat began counting until eventually, he pointed at the last head in the room. “Alright then that makes nineteen to seventeen. In that case it has been decided by democratic vote- “He made sure to emphasize the word democratic. “that we will move forward with this project without using the White Witch’s formula.”

Mason deflated in his seat. He actually thought that they had a chance, that they could actually accomplish something truly great but all because of their weak-willed stigmas they allowed themselves blindness to the facts. Mason was irreplaceable in the company, no one else could quite innovate the way he could, which is why no one else understood as well as he did, how denying the White Witch’s formula was denying the project.

The rest of the meeting sort of blurred out of focus for Mason. He only payed attention for the eventual dismissal when he would then return to his office. There wasn’t much for him to really do anymore. The formula he was supposed to create was already complete on the piece of paper right before him, just in somebody else’s handwriting.

Mason could feel the eyes bore into him; he kept his head low, tried to avoid contact but he knew what they were. They were shunning him, he was now a monster in their den, a madness incarnate who would choose completing his own research over the safety of all humanity. Maybe they were right. He didn’t care what the White Witch could gain from this, he only cared about what he could gain, and he could gain everything.

Time continued to push forward even if at an unbearably slow pace and eventually the workday was over. Mason hadn’t even noticed that most of the staff had gone home already, he was mesmerized by the formula. Spent the entire day just staring at it. It was only thanks to Starlet shaking him out of his hypnosis that he saw how empty the place had become.

Mason looked up to Starlet, he noticed her beautiful brown eyes for the first time. Her eyes were a large almond shape, still filled with energy despite how depressive her surroundings were.

Starlet gave Mason her best smile and spoke with a chipper tune. “Still up for the bar?”

Mason looked down to the formula on his desk then turned back to Starlet to return her smile. “More than ever.”

Mason collected his satchel and a few belongings, including a second copy of the formula, and followed Starlet on her way out of the office. She filled the silence of the office with some petty conversation. “So if you were able to use that secret formula of yours.” Starlet threw her eyes to the satchel on Mason’s side. He placed his hands over his satchel as if that could somehow protect his paper from her attention. “how long do you think it would take to finish the project?”

Mason kept his chin to his chest and his hands buried as deeply into his pockets as they could get. “Well everyone else would have to redo and change what they were doing to integrate the new formula into it.”

Starlet ruptured into a fit of exhilarated giggles. “Oh, come off it Mason. I know you well enough to know that you haven’t been blankly admiring that formula in your bag ever since you got it. If my guess is right, then you’ve already tested every angle and every possibility. I bet you’ve already integrated the formula into everything on your own. Am I wrong?”

It was very difficult interacting with Starlet. She was very forward and loud, constantly talking and prodding. Why did she know him so well exactly? He hadn’t remembered interacting with her enough to have any kind of personal understanding among them. Whatever her method was, it was perfect. Mason only had one answer he could give her. “You’re not wrong.”

That magnificent smile returned to her face. “So how long would it take to implement it all?”

Mason let out a frustrated groan, if she was going to let him vent then he would vent. “That’s the worst part of this whole thing. It would only take a few hours. For example, if we started now, we could probably get it all done by the time work started tomorrow. It’s insane how smoothly that formula just makes everything fall together. To throw away such a perfect piece of math it actually hurts.

Starlet’s walk broke into a full-on skip as she approached the locked doors of the closed office. Her smile grew tenfold and Mason couldn’t help but sense a little cheekiness hidden within it. She interrupted his not so subtle admiration. “Your wording could not have been more perfect because-“ Starlet opened the door revealing half of the departments staff awkwardly shuffling in place while they waited. Starlet resumed “Plans have changed, we’re not going to the bar.”

The day star had barely breached the horizon, but the office was already filled with a large portion of the staff. Starlet had managed to convince every one of the employees who had raised their hand in favor of the formula to go rogue and set the whole thing up behind the boss’s back.

Using Mason’s frankly concerningly detailed notebooks, plural, on integrating the formula things were able to move rapidly. They were no longer in the hall of cubicles. Everyone had now gathered in a large workshop room. At the center of the room was the project mounted on to a large slab of metal; the space around it was completely empty an cautionary paint drew a square to segregate the project from the rest of the room. The only things to breach the paints warning were a large assortment of thick tubes and cables; they were strange ropes from the ancient civilization that they had yet to understand. The incalescent fire evaded their study, but they at least knew it could be used to turn the project on.

The project was vaguely shaped like a human if it had all of its skin removed and were made of metal. It was an efficient contraption only formed of exactly what was required. It did not bother with a large lumbering head, instead it had a small cube filled with every sensor it required.

This project like all of the projects from the TOIL initiative was an artifact from the ancient civilization. And just like every other project of the TOIL initiative it was their job to reverse engineer the construct and recreate it. Now with the formula fully integrated all Mason had to do was press this one button and it would be done.

Mason softly placed his hand on the button, everyone around watching intently with pencil and paper at the ready. He pressed down and the action was immediately followed by the chime of a bell and the whirring of mechanical locomotion. The project seemed to come to life slowly flexing and testing its body, meanwhile in front of the project a small pink rhombus grew out of thin air, or it was a rhombus, but its body would reject any stable state. It would shift and transform, shrink and grow, continuously morphing into other forms. The pink shape finally locked into a form resembling that of a featureless human with only one limb. The arm was outstretched towards the project holding a glowing parchment.

The project and the pink rhombus stared blankly at each other either one waiting for the other to act. One of the employees let out an amazed gasp. “Is that the Chauffer?”

“Who?”

“The Chauffer, it’s the thing that hands out the invitations for The Tournament. I think it’s trying to invite the artifact.”

Starlet laughed out as she approached the chauffer and took the piece of paper. The pink rhombus shifted and morphed mirroring its entrance in reverse as it eventually shrunk out of existence. “Well what better way to test out the greatest weapon of the ancient civilization than on the greatest of our civilization. Now what does this say?

You have been invited to

The Tournament

You are The Toil”