My breathing recovered by the time I reached Amelie in Yellow, though the usual fatigue of exerting my power had settled in. Three separate people asked if I was alright and need help, likely because of the blood soaking through my clothing. I did not think much of it was mine. I needed to find Felix and figure out what was going on. Until I was able to recuperate I could not afford to stress myself. I would spend thirty minutes inside at most.

It had been less than a day since the events at the Amphitheater. The Goetia were the most logical explanation behind my memory being altered. What was happening seemed to suggest karma magic, though I still had little idea what exactly the demon lords were capable of. At least they were not omniscient.

On the other hand, the spell was broken after I killed the Magister and his guards, so perhaps they were the culprits. In the worst case scenario, Magisters with fire and karma magic were hunting me. Answers waited for me inside.

After I pushed open the door and walked in it only took a moment to notice something was wrong. The lighting had been allowed to die off. Only pallid moonlight from the windows illuminated the first floor. The diaphanous silks that usually curtained off the beds puddled on the floor as if someone had torn them down. A few figures lounged about, some of them moaning pitifully.

I stood at the bottom of the stairs leading to the upper floor. Sounds and light drifted down, warped as if I were looking up from the bottom of a lake. Disconcerted, I turned to leave. Before I reached the exit I collided with an invisible barrier that yielded slightly before thrusting me backwards.

After a moment of panic I reached for my power. For the first time since it manifested, I was unable to sense it at all. Even when the backlash of using my power too much made it excruciating, I could always squeeze out another second or two. Now there was simply nothing.

I pressed the tip of my scabbard against the barrier. It recoiled a few inches before repelling the leather backward with force equal to what I exerted on it. Something about it made me think of a living membrane, more complex than a simple area restricting spell.

Nowhere to go but up. The thought terrified me but I had no choice. I ascended the stairs, hand on the rail to steady myself. No guards in sight. As I reached the second floor I felt as if I had stepped into a play, nervous actors all too aware of their role. Men drank and played cards and dice, their faces gleaming oily in the dim tallow-light. I saw only one Amelie, maskless and staring at the floor, the kohl around her eyes streaked down her cheeks like painted tears. Her hands trembled in her lap.

There seemed to be a pressure to the air, an eddy of unease focused on the center of the room. My mind shied away from source, the same instinct we develop when we learn not to look too closely at the sun. Again and again my gaze wandered from that focus but, too stubborn to be deceived, I willed myself to look at the lone figure perched behind the table. Nobody stood within a dozen feet of the thing.

Grey pupils stared back at me within pools of yellowed sclera. Its many-fingered hands were clasped on the pitted wood, the nails like shards of chipped obsidian. I could not tell if it was a man or woman or beyond such things. There was a sickly beauty to it despite its state of decay; ulcers along the cheeks exposed perfect teeth, a jagged expanse of scar marred its swan-like neck.

Its robes were fine-cut, dyed purple like those of the merchant lords of the Twilight Isles. A sword pierced its chest where its heart would be, a strange weapon with a blade made of porcelain or ivory. Blue ichor stained the fabric around it.

The demon stood, an unfolding of limbs, half-again the height of a man. It extended a hand toward me. Its voice was airy, mocking. “Welcome, my friend.”

My heartbeat pounded at my temple. I reached for my magic again. Nothing. For a moment I felt like a man who had lost his sense of balance, my head swimming. The demon tilted its head at me, the lines around its eyes crinkling in amusement.

I looked around. Everyone pretended that nothing amiss was happening in front of them. They were poor actors.

“Are you one of the Goetia?” I said.

The demon giggled, the carefree sound of a little girl at play. “If my master’s master descended upon this city you would know. The wings of Duke Astaroth would flatten the world from horizon to horizon. His breath would turn all these works of stone and wood to chaos. I am but a humble emissary, a Captain of one of His forty legions.”

A Captain. Not as bad, but certainly bad enough. I clasped my hands behind my back to keep them from trembling. It didn’t help.

“To capture Astaroth's attention is a great honor.” The demon rested a hand on the handle of the sword impaled through its chest. “Of all the silly men that walk upon this earth philosophers delight him the most. How far off you all are. Your humanity eclipses the truth. This is a universe of formulae, perfectly tuned. Even the void obeys the fundamental laws. In his realm he keeps a great Tome, larger than this city, detailing the path of every world and the path of everything upon them. Through his wisdom, you too may know the truth one day.”

I took the demon speaking to me instead of slaying me where I stood to be a good sign. The occupants of Amelie in Yellow looked haggard and sullen but at least they were alive. There must be an actual plan at work here instead of mindless revenge. Still, whatever these people had experienced to shatter their spirits in one night was concerning.

"What is happening?" I said.

The demon placed the fingers of one hand against its lips. "The Great Lord has decided to plant this tesseract within your so-called Civilized Lands. Such an honor is rarely bestowed upon mere mortals. I am the overseer of this new domain until I see fit to end our time together."

"A tesseract?" I had never heard the word before.

"I could explain," it said,"but oh, how marvelous it is when each of you discover the truth for yourselves! Please, feel obligated to introduce yourself to your fellow prisoners. I, of course, already know much about you, young Leones. One of Astaroth's closest viziers personally updated me when you met the qualifications to enter."

The sinking feeling in my gut deepened.

"What qualifications?"

The demon's long, grey tongue snaked out and licked the lower half of its face. "A sufficient amount of corruption. As your soul has grown more tainted, you have started to become aware of our presence. And now you have done a great favor for us by ridding the world of one of those pesky Magisters. To murder three fellow humans with no remorse shows promise. How truly delicious. But please, go introduce yourself to the others."

I stood there speechless. The Captain returned to its seat. Upon its table lay a number of parchments, along with a red ink I had no doubt was blood. The demon took up its quill and began to write. Eventually it broke through that the Captain, my jailor, had dismissed me.

Once again I tried using my power without success. I was trapped.

Perhaps I could at least find some familiar faces. I prowled through the area, recognizing a few people I had seen here before but never spoken with. Everyone here must have met the qualifications to enter in their own way. They did look like a disreputable bunch, most of them armed, faces suspicious.

Then, off in a corner, I spotted Felix.

I hurried over, calling his name. Blearily he looked up at me, an opium pipe clutched between his hands. A humorless smile twisted his face.

"Another hallucination, is it?" he said. "Why do you keep torturing me, Leones?"

Taken aback, I paused for a moment before grabbing his shoulder. My friend looked shocked at the physical contact. He tossed his pipe aside and snatched my hand in both of his, squeezing as if unable to believe I was actually there.

"How long has it been now?" he said.

"A day."

He dropped my hand. "It must be true, then. Some new people like yourself have appeared over the past few weeks, claiming it has only been a few hours. I've been tracking how long I've been in here, though it is difficult to tell days apart. It's always nighttime out the windows. I've been here forty days now, I think. Forty days, Leones."

Time distortion? That explained why my magic was useless within the tesseract. That only raised more questions.

"If it's been that long," I said, "how does everyone look so relatively clean? Not that this looks like a formal ball, but the smell alone should be horrendous."

"That's how I've been keeping track of time. Approximately every twenty four hours the entire place returns to how it used to be. Our clothes are repaired, the furniture returns. Can't tell you how many chairs I've broken. The only good part is endless opium and alcohol."

"Not the worst prison for you, then," I said.

Felix did not even bother acknowledging my awful joke. "I feel like I'm losing my mind. If that's really you, Leones, I can't tell you how happy I am to see you. Even if it means you are stuck here as well."

He walked over the bar and climbed over the counter. Despite their daily regeneration, several of the bottles of alcohol had already been drained. My friend selected a bottle of brandy, squinted at the label, and poured us both a drink. I kept my eyes on the Captain the whole time, but the demon seemed content with its writing.

I accepted the brandy, certain I was in a nightmare and equally certain that I was not. The glass was cool and smooth in my hand. The liquor smelled like smoke and burned my sinuses. Real. Absolutely real.

"When did this happen?" I said.

"Not long after you left." He took several large swallows at once, eyes squeezed close. When he was finished he cleared his throat. "The night was already starting to wind down, but suddenly most of the crowd up and left. Most of them didn't even say anything. Just grabbed their coats and walked out the door. A few minutes later, one of the prisoners attempted to leave and found himself repulsed by the barrier. That's when we knew something was wrong. Everyone was panicked, trying to escape, until the Captain showed up and demanded we calm down."

“We have to fight our way out," I said. "We can beat this thing. They do it all the time on the Frontier.”

He shook his head. “We’ve tried. We’ve tried everything. I doubt Champion Jokul could even put a scratch on it. I mean, the bastard is wearing a sword in its heart like a piece of jewelry. Even if we defeated the Captain, that doesn't mean the tesseract will end. Take a seat and try to enjoy yourself at least. As terrible as it is to say, I’m glad to see you here. The others don’t exactly provide the greatest entertainment. No one wants to practice with swords unless it's a serious fight. And all this demon does is praise its master and draw runes all day.”

I drained the brandy as quickly as possible.

"I have to admit," he said, pouring us both another drink, "this has been a great opportunity to practice my bladeforms. Not much else to do. I can now go a minute into the second legato. The gap between us widens."

Not quite, I thought to myself. I was not nearly so deep into the second legato, only only able to dance an awkward seventeen seconds of it, but it was still more progress than he had made with forty days to practice. I would definitely have to experiment more with my memory palace.

"Aren't you going to ask the obvious?" I said.

He laughed. "I figured you would explain all the blood at some point."

So I told him about my encounter with the Magister and his guards. I was unsure how Felix would react to the story, but he merely nodded along, sipping his drink and fiddling with his pipe.

When I was finished he removed a box of matches from his pocket. From it he selected a sulphur match and struck it against his thumbnail. He lifted the opium pipe to his mouth and relit the nugget, then flicked his wrist to extinguish the flame. It was smooth, practiced, as if he had done it thousands of times.

“That is...unexpected, to say the least. I imagine there's some bad blood between you. You can tell me some day, if you feel comfortable with it. I'd like to share my own story with you, if you don't mind. A confession of sorts.”

“Sure,” I said.

He closed his eyes in pleasure and exhaled a cloud of pungent smoke. “Thank you. Like I said, don’t feel compelled to tell me about your past. If we remain here for a while I think you will.”

It was a story I did not want to hear, but he had to tell it.

Felix was from the slums of Odena, born to an opiate addict mother and a religious father who found pleasure to be an abomination. Complete opposites but they stuck with each other for no apparent reason. Felix barely survived his birth, little larger than a hand. His mother died from hemorrhage.

His father raised him the best he could, which meant the fist and the belt. Felix was a clever boy, curious about the world, always asking questions his father could never answer. Religious texts did not explain why water became ice at a certain temperature or why the sky was blue, thus such knowledge was unnecessary, even blasphemous. One day when he was around seven his father lashed out in annoyance. When Felix fell he twisted and struck the ground, caving in part of his skull. Here he tapped a spot hidden behind his bangs.

Modern anatomy claims that the soul resides in the front of the brain. To protect it the Increate shaped the human skull so that the brow is the thickest section of bone. For Felix it proved insufficient, and so he received the absurd diagnosis of fragmentation of the soul.

The kind and curious boy became erratic and self-destructive. One day he learned where his father stashed his meager savings and, hoping to double his father’s money and earn his respect, lost it all gambling. The beating left him in an infirmary for months, recovering slowly and developing a laudanum addiction along the way. His father never visited, and when some of the nurses pressured him into coming, he disowned Felix and refused to pay the physikers.

To settle his debt Felix was forced to work as an assistant for two years, bandaging the gangrenous legs of vagrants and stealing laudanum when the opportunity presented itself. The Church owned the infirmary and staffed it with matrons who found Felix’s behavior less than holy. He had never imagined he would miss his father until then. Their lectures and disappointment bothered him in a way the fist never could.

During this time he met Lyra and some other street urchins that he spent most of his free time with. He ran away often. The matrons hunted him down until he was a month from completing his indenture. They no longer cared enough to waste their time.

While wandering the streets he came across a duel between two swordsmen. A large crowd had gathered and he managed to weave his way to the front. The duel lasted for less than five seconds. Asalen de Odena parried his opponent’s blow and killed him with a counterthrust to the neck. The man drowned in his own blood. Asalen reminded Felix of his father: tall, greying at the temples, and quick to violence.

The duel occurred because the man’s eyes had lingered a bit too long on Asalen’s wife as they strolled through the streets. She loved the duels as much as he did. Both were quite convinced of their greatness. When Felix begged them to accept him as a squire, Asalen agreed with the solemnity of a lord accepting a new vassal. They must have sensed Felix was broken, just like themselves.

Thus, at nine years of age, Felix became a swordsman. Too good of a swordsman too quickly, to Asalen’s annoyance. His father and the matrons of the infirmary had taught him how to take a beating too well; he would always stand back up.

As long as Felix appealed to his pride Asalen would spare him the flat of his blade. One day Felix slashed his master's forearm and he was beaten within an inch of his life. The wife had been only too happy to join in. This beating he did not stand up from.

It took Felix another two months to recover. Asalen and his wife returned to Odena, forgetting the boy they had left bleeding in the streets. He did not forget them.

Here Felix paused, tears in his eyes. The grin on his face made me think he was closer to madness than I suspected. He found them and killed them in the night. He was only nine years old, but they weren't expecting the knife. He made it fast---he was no monster, no matter what his father and the matrons claimed. From there he went to the philosophers and they must have seen something in him, and so he entered his third life.

“Not that my life has been an endless stream of beatings and misery,” said Felix, his words slurred. “But that’s human, to focus on all the wrongs that we suffered. Maybe I deserved it, too. I stole and my father beat me. I brought others misery and they brought misery to me. That’s justice, isn’t it? It didn’t feel just to me. It’s like water in a cup. Maybe that doesn’t make sense. I’m like water without a cup, and people became upset because I can’t hold the shape they want me to. All that water wants is a cup.”

“I see.”

“That made no sense. It made sense in my head.” He drummed his fingers along the counter, eyes downcast. His movements became more languid, more relaxed, as if he had unloaded some great weight off his shoulders.

“I see,” I said again to fill the silence.

His chin drifted down to his chest. His eyes closed.

I came to my feet and counted his slow, ragged breaths for a minute. Nine. I copied what I had seen Amelies do before, squeezing his trapezius muscle with one hand. He moaned and slapped my hand away before returning to his slumber. At least he seemed peaceful at rest.

I considered his story for a long time. It explained quite a bit. He had revealed himself as a murderer but given the circumstances I found I didn’t care. The worst of my nightmares came from when the Magisters destroyed my home. I could still picture their faces, their flames, and though he was not present in reality, sometimes I saw the bandaged figure of Archon Nony, looming over everything. No, what Felix had done made perfect sense to me.