Unsure what to do while Felix rested at the table next to me, I waited.

A scarred man at a nearby table shaved with his knife, smooth and practiced. It was an unsettling sight---I could almost sense the thoughts whirling inside his head as he held the blade to his neck. After a long moment the blade continued, leaving a spot of blood along his throat.

I decided that was enough interaction with my fellow prisoners.

Fortunately, none of them paid me much heed. I appreciated their silence. There was much to think about. So much had happened recently that I needed some time to center myself. I wanted to meditate but clearing my mind seemed quite unlikely under these circumstances.

Instead I reached for my power again, straining for any glimpse. For anything.

During my physical training the connection between my mind and muscles had improved. Before, I had never bothered to consider how every part interacted outside of some rudimentary interest in studying anatomy. Now I could sense specific muscle groups I was unaware of before, a side effect of gaining a greater mastery over myself.

Likewise what had started as a vague feeling of magic in the back of my mind had improved as I became more familiar with it. The shape of my power became clearer, more defined. So I did not search for my magic, not exactly. I looked for anything inside of me that may be related to it.

And there was something. Just a sensation, hard to pin down, in my general vicinity. I closed my eyes and turned my head like a hound locking onto a scent. When I open them I was facing in the direction of the Captain. Unsurprising. The demon would have powers of its own, perhaps even beyond its innate mastery of karma. Still, the knowledge that I could sense other magical beings was fascinating. And it meant that they could also sense me.

I closed my eyes once more and continued to explore. Controlling my breathing helped, and though it had seemed impossible before, I found myself naturally drifting into the trance state of meditation. My awareness brushed around the area, forming an image of the surroundings in my mind. It stopped whenever it encountered the boundary of the tesseract, a tightly-woven net of silver threads that repulsed anything it touched.

At first I wondered if I was experiencing some sort of astral projection, my spirit slipping from my body to view the immaterial plane. Supposedly some individuals could navigate through this mental realm, though it was rare among humans. I decided that what I was doing was instead some sort of visualization I had developed; it was a new sense, like a blind man gaining the ability to see. Maybe it was both astral projection and a new sense, my mind attempting to narrowly define something much greater than a simple concept.

Then a hand clapped down on my shoulder.

My eyes snapped open. Vertigo washed over me at the sudden disorientation as I readjusted to my normal senses. Annoyed, I looked over to see Sensi. She held an amber-and-ivory cigarette holder, a curlicue of smoke drifting past her expressionless face.

"We need to talk," she said.

"Yes, we do."

"Follow me, then." She turned away and glanced back over her shoulder. "Bring Felix, if you can."

I squeezed his trapezius muscle again until he woke up. Once more he tried to shove my arm aside but this time I refused to relent. His attempts gathered strength until he was forced to regard me with a baleful look.

"We're moving," I said. "I'm not leaving you passed out here."

He muttered something that sounded vaguely like, "Do it all the time..."

I slipped his shoulder over mine and begrudgingly he walked with me as we followed Sensi. I had no idea where she planned to move us, as that area seemed just as fine as any other. As we approached the far wall she raised one hand. Perhaps it was a trick of my eyes but all the shadows around us appeared to shift slightly.

A black door materialized on the wall.

Inside was a lush suite, tasteful and expensive, just as large as either of Amelie in Yellow's floors. A roaring fireplace filled the area with drowsy warmth. Most of the area was open, including a small, stocked kitchen and the central meeting room, but there were a few closed doors I assumed were bedrooms.

Wherever this was, it was not physically attached to Amelie in Yellow---at least, not in a way that was visible from the exterior. And all this meant one thing: she was able to use magic.

I helped Felix onto a divan in the meeting room before taking my own seat. "Let's talk, then."

"We were never formally introduced," she said. "My name is Sensi. I'm the owner of this establishment and many others. An elder philosopher of the Odena sect. And as you have now seen, an Echo of the Huntress."

"An Echo?" I had heard the term before. Augur used it to describe mortals that made a pact with the Goetia in return for some of their power, but the Huntress was the Archon of Shadows, not a demon.

"The Archons are the only humans able to cast magic of their own volition," she said. "Everyone else is borrowing from them. They in turn are borrowing their power from the Increate, who blesses them with a partial understanding of the anima."

"The anima?"

She gave me a look that revealed her opinion of my education. "The anima is the universal force of law and order, forming the foundation of all existence. The Archons impart an echo of their knowledge onto others through a reflection of their consciousness. This in turn grants us some small fraction of their powers."

That didn't sound exactly right. My power was not borrowed from anyone else and I was certainly no Archon. Either way, it was not my place to correct her.

I resisted the urge to scratch my cheek. To keep my hands busy I examined my fingernails, realizing a moment later that this seemed even more suspicious. “I think I understand to some extent. Many philosophers have theorized on the source of the Archon’s divinity. Still, I am not sure I follow when you say that your power is a reflection of the Huntress’ consciousness onto yours.”

Sensi set aside her cigarette holder and folded her hands on the table. “The process of becoming an Echo is not like joining the soldiery and receiving a spear. The Huntress merged her consciousness with mine in order to introduce me to the realm of shadows. It is a spiritual intimacy unlike anything I have ever experienced. Sex, romantic love, the bond between mother and child---nothing compares."

"So magic is simply a profound understanding of the universe and how to shape it. It's something that can be taught."

"Yes, to some extent," she said. "The anima is linked to consciousness. You will never see a horse burn a city with its mind, though they possess some degree of intelligence. Consciousness has no link to reasoning or learning or anything of the sort. For instance, the nagas operate as a hive mind where only the queen could be considered sentient. Yet despite their lack of consciousness they are capable of functioning when their queen perishes. Their society will stagnate but their daily routines are unchanged. They are known to be highly adaptable in individual combat and are even capable of mobilizing as self-sufficient groups. Demons are another excellent example. The Goetia are certainly conscious but their minions are not.”

"What about the Captain?" I said. "It spoke to me. We had a conversation."

“Even speech is not indicative of consciousness. The lion roars, the horse neighs, but they do not sit at the high table. Language no doubt affects the shape of our thoughts and may even be the foundation of consciousness. Still, it is not the same thing as true understanding. The Captain is simply following its orders with a high degree of intelligence. It is possible that its link to Astaroth grants it some rudimentary consciousness through a reflected anima, but it has no individual self beyond that.”

I rubbed my jaw. "So are there people that have multiple magical abilities? Can you be an Echo of multiple different beings?"

"There are a few," she said, "but they become unstable. Some people with strong willpower can handle two, but as you go beyond that, the mental strain is untenable. Having a single consciousness reflected onto your own causes problems, let alone multiple. I have memories of another life, another time. On occasion I look at myself in the mirror and feel that I am looking at a complete stranger. It is not an easy way to live. It must also take its toll on the Archons themselves or they would create armies of us. Their magic is intrinsically linked with their being; to give some away, they must lose part of themselves."

I thought of the power that lived in the back of my mind. Part of the anima. Sensi was the first person to reveal any insight on the topic and I intended to find out as much as possible. She must have suspected I possessed some magic of my own. She would have watched for a tell-tale flush of my cheeks, a widening of my eyes, perhaps my shoulders leaning forward a touch.

To be an Archon meant incomprehensible power. I could reverse time for an hour: a useful trick but several orders of magnitude below conjuring infernos from the air and freezing entire cities. Yet I could not shake the feeling that my situation was altogether different than Sensi's. Occasionally I felt a sense of derealization, as if the universe around me was wrong and existence itself utterly bizarre, but I never experienced anyone else's memories. Not that I could tell. They were mine, just jumbled occasionally from living the same moment multiple times.

“I want to try something with you,” said Sensi. She held a deck of cards that seemed to have appeared from nowhere. I wondered if that was part of her power or if she just wanted to throw me off with some clever sleight of hand.

“Gambling? Maybe you should have talked to Felix instead.”

“That boy has gone mad. I suspect he was on the edge before being trapped here. He used to come here all the time, one of the only people who didn’t wear a mask. When I look at him I feel like his face is a better mask than any costume we wear.”

I blinked in surprise. He had not seemed too bad to me, but maybe that meant I was on the edge myself. It is hard to recognize you are heading down a dangerous path with someone walking just a step ahead of you.

Another thing to think about later. I changed the subject. “What are the cards for?”

She stared at me for an uncomfortably long time before spreading the cards on the table before us. At quick count I guessed there were around fifteen. They seemed sturdy and gleamed in the candlelight as if made of thin wafers of metal. Runes of gold paint covered their grey surfaces, the lines so small and delicate I wondered if any human hand could have formed them.

“Tarot cards,” she said. “Descended from one of the ancient methods of divination. Sortilege, also known as casting the lots. Priests claimed they could read the future by throwing the knucklebones of saints. They tended to only be as accurate as random guesswork. But sometimes, in some unique situations, they were accurate in ways you would never expect.”

I looked at the cards with suspicion. “And you think this is an accurate way of reading the future?”

“I certainly enjoy doing it at least. Do you have any better ideas on how we can spend the foreseeable eternity?”

Not the response I was expecting but she had a point. I offered her a small shrug.

She kept her eyes on me as if to make a point as her fingers roamed over the cardbacks. “Each of these cards symbolizes a different destiny. One of them shows Paradise, another shows War, and so on. Each may show hundreds of different pictures depending on who they are flipped for. If someone flipped War for me, it would show something completely different than War for you.”

She must have noticed my skeptical look. A flick of her wrists turned all of the cards upside down, revealing the other side of the cards were all blank. Another flick returned them to their original position.

“Choose,” she said.

I tapped one at random. It felt more like wood, unnaturally smooth beneath my fingertip. She flipped the card to reveal an intricate painting.

It was pure white except for two figures etched in such perfect detail I became certain no human artist created this deck. A golden dragon with three heads lay on its side, a splash of red around its neck. The other figure was much smaller, a silhouette in the shape of a man, shaded in a more yellow-tinged white reminiscent of bone. At the bottom was a sigil I vaguely recognized as one of the marks of the Goetia.

Sensi looked down in surprise, her lips parted. She considered it for a long while before I spoke up.

“And that means?”

She pushed the card until it was in front of me. “This card symbolizes the Goetia. Not surprising since we are in the presence of one of their Captains. In theory this card could reveal scenes linked to each of the Seventy Seven, but we will never see some of them. Many of the Goetia never involve themselves in human affairs so no one will ever see their depiction. This is a symbol of the Lord of the Void.”

“Does that refer to one in particular?”

“Yes,” she said, “which is what concerns me. Since the Captain is one of Astaroth's minions I would expect to see The Lord of the Tome. He usually is seen in a library or standing against a background of writing. If I had flipped Morningstar, I would have burned this deck. His appearance means the end has come. Your card is more neutral but I would hesitate to call this a good omen.”

“So which one of the Goetia is he?”

Sensi looked around the room as if searching for an invisible presence. It reminded me of the last time I saw Augur, right before he asked me if I was conspiring with demons. “Paimon.”