“Where am I?” The man sat on a stone table, surrounding him were cylindrical walls with small, overgrown windows.

He didn’t remember opening his eyes, he must have been staring off into the distant stone wall for a few minutes already.

The few rays of light that came in through the leaf and vine filled windows allowed Otto to see the particles of dust drift around the room.

“Is this some sort of dream?” he wondered.

Otto pinched his hand; the slight pain served as a fairly convincing argument against this being a dream.

The man got up; he could feel the cold, rough wood under his feet.

“I’m barefoot?” he looked down to the dusty floor only to notice that he was completely naked.

“Oh shit!” He looked around seeing dust-covered, wooden shelves filled with nothing but empty bottles and rotting papers.

“Where the fuck am I!? Was I kidnapped?!” He covered his nudity with both hands as he slowly inched across the room to what looked like a stairwell.

The old, wooden floor creaking loudly as he slowly stepped forward.

“The last thing I remember was coming in from the office and going to bed… I definitely locked the doors…”

The man continued to contemplate the hypothetical kidnapping as he made his way down the wooden stairs.

“Did they pick the lock?”

“Maybe they were already in the house before I went to bed…”

“They must have hidden under the bed, then they injected me with knock-out drugs in my sleep and kidnap-…” his train of thought was cut off when his foot slipped on something wet on the stairs causing him to tumbled down the wooden stairs loudly.

For several seconds he continued rolling down the stairs until he eventually landed in a pool of stale, algae-filled water.

Otto took a deep breath as he slowly got up.

He removed the slimy algae off his arms and torso before crawling back onto the dry steps.

The man patted his limbs, squeezing his hands and legs in paces to check for any broken bones.

After confirming the miraculous fact that he didn’t break anything in the previous tumble, Otto took a second to evaluate the situation.

He thought back to the slippery substance placed on the stairs.

“This is probably some sort of hidden camera show…” he thought.

He stood up looking around for any cameras.

“I did not consent to being filmed naked!” the man announced.

He turned to check for any cameras located near the water.

“I’m a pretty well-off coder! I won’t hesitate to sue!” he added.

Again, he was met with nothing but silence.

“Alright… so I’m either being kidnapped or in some sort of hidden-camera show…”

“No… all those shows are staged; they wouldn’t risk getting sued over this kind of thing…”

The man scratched his head.

After another few seconds of silence, he decided to call out for help, if the kidnappers were planning on capturing him again, the sound of him falling down the stairs would have been enough.

“Hello?” he called out.

He walked back up the stairs, away from the pit of green, stagnant water.

He looked around the room directly above the water-flooded room.

In the centre of the room was a big, wooden table, large clay pots lined the walls.

Otto walked over to the table, an old, dusty bowl stood on it, a two-pronged fork lay beside the bowl.

“The coating of dust is even… nobody’s been here in a while…”

The man pulled one of the wooden chairs away from the table; he dragged it over to the overgrown window.

Otto stood atop the chair, peering out the window and seeing a massive field of white flowers, it stretched far into the distance.

He was very hight up in some sort of tower, he looked down and saw a that the tower itself was located in the centre of a lake of some sort.

The entire field of flowers was located in what looked like a massive, grassy crater.

That was definitely strange, Otto grew up, lived and worked in the city however the flower could still be explained.

The two big suns in the distance couldn’t.

Both were shades of red and yellow, slowly shifting between the two colours as they spun in a circle.

“…”

“Did the kidnappers replace the sun?” Otto thought scratching his chin.

Instinctively, Otto used his left hand to smack his right hand as if to knock the stupid idea out of his mind.

“Yeah… that’s unlikely…” he remarked.

The window was too small for him to squeeze through, not to mention the idea of falling that far down would be pushing his luck.

He reached his hand outside the tower only to have it get zapped with what felt like electricity.

“Ouch!”

Otto yanked his hand back seeing the blackened flesh on his middle and index finger.

“S-shit!”

He couldn’t even feel them, with his other hand he touched the burned fingers only for them to crumble away into dust; leaving the cauterized flesh at the base of where those two fingers used to be.

“…”

“I NEEDED THOSE FOR WORK YOU BASTARDS!” he exclaimed, he rushed down to the previous layer of the tower, plunging his fingers in the water, when he pulled his hand back up, he was shocked to see his fingers were back.

Uncertainly, Otto grabbed a hold of his brand-new fingers.

“What the actually fuck!?”

“This is a dream!” he exclaimed.

“It has to be!”

He marched back to the room above, walking up to the table and grabbing the fork.

Otto placed his hand on the table, holding the fork in the other hand.

“…” he hesitated.

“C-come on! It’s just a dream, Otto! Quit being a baby…”

He lifted the fork above his hand.

“But what if it hurts?”

“Of course it’ll hurt! You’re stabbing yourself with a fork!”

“Why should I stab myself then?!”

He put the fork down.

Suddenly he grabbed the fork with his other hand; he proceeded to stab his now unsuspecting hand with the fort.

“A surprise attack?!” he demanded.

“Also…-”

“AHHHH FUCK IT HURTS!” he pulled the fork out with a yelp before he looked at his hand.

The blood dried out and the two deep holes in his hand filled up with flesh; moments later the skin grew over.

Seeing this the man sat down.

“Alright… I can’t deny it any more…” he thought.

“I know it’s crazy but I’ve seen the proof…”

“The kidnappers cursed me with immortality!” the man slammed his hands into the wooden floor.

“Damn it! I’m just a coder in his late twenties! I’m not ready for this kind of responsibility!”

“Pick a Chinese emperor or something! I heard those guys were into immortality!” the man exclaimed.

His other hand grabbed the blood-stained fork, he understood his own body-language well.

This specific action meant: “THIS IS A FUCKING THREAT, OTTO!”

“O-ok…” Otto put the fork away and breathed a sigh.

“Alright… let’s think over the facts…” the man began.

“I’m somewhere with a weird double-sun, magic healing fingers and magic lighting barriers stopping me from leaving the tower…” he froze as he heard his own words.

“Magic?” he questioned aloud.

“Magic…”

He extended his hand forward.

“Alakazam, get me the hell out of this tower!” he exclaimed.

Nothing happened.

He collapsed to the ground.

“I KNEW IT! MAGIC ISN’T REAL! IT’S ALL FAKE! HOW COULD I HAVE BEEN SO NAIIVE!” he cried.

After a few minutes of self-critique, Otto got back up to his feet, patting the dust off himself.

“Alright, now that that’s dealt with… I need to get out…”

He headed up to the next floor in hopes of some instructions or maybe a phone.

He walked back to the top floor where he woke up.

Unlike before, he spotted something that could come in handy.

On the stone table he woke up on, a black book lay.

“Huh?”

He walked up to it, the book itself was pretty thick, it had at least a thousand pages, each page inside was A4 in size.

Otto began to read the first page of the book expecting some instructions or a ransom.

“Magic for dummies, by Murlin E…”

“Chapter one… what is magic?”

“I dunno…”

Otto thrust the book across the room, it landed against a wall causing a loud thud to emanate across the entire building.

“I don’t have time for stupid fairy tales! I need to figure a way out of here!”

He headed downstairs, considered going into the water for a few minutes before going back upstairs.

And so, after a few more minutes, Otto decided to go back upstairs and grab the book he previously discarded.

“Turns out I do have the time to waste on fairy tales…” he admitted.

Otto began reading the book again.

“Chapter one, what is magic?”

“I dunno…”

“But you don’t wonder ‘what is a spoon’ before eating your dinner, do you?”

Otto raised an eyebrow.

“I’m not sure this man is qualified to teach me made-up magic…” he thought.

“At its core, magic is a command, a command to what? No clue.”

“Something is willing to grant you any wish as long as you know the language to ask it with, so why waste the opportunity twirling your moustache and meeting with your rich friends to discuss some fuckin’ pseudo-intellectual theory about space goats giving you magic powers…”

“…M-Murlin… are you ok?” Otto thought looking at the next paragraph.

“Anyway… back to the topic at hand! Magic… you say a phrase and stuff happens!”

“First of all, you might still be buying to the idea that magic needs to be powered by mana…”

“It’s ok, I was stupid, ignorant and ugly just like you!”

“HEY!”

“But the fact is, you only have about 15 universal-magic-energetic-value-units, referred to from this point forward with the β symbol,”

“Isn’t that the beta symbol?” Otto thought.

“15β is enough to create a few sparks before passing out!”

“Since mana is deeply entangled with one’s soul, running out of mana often results in death!”

“That’s why a real mage and not those 50β mage-court show-offs use the mana as a catalyst!”

“Any substance can be converted into β, the numbers are quite varied, though you’ll find a list of a few well-documented sources in the back! 😉”

“Did Murlin seriously include a winky face in his magic manual?!”

“So! Here’s the thing! You use a spell that costs… let’s say 5β, that converts your kinetic energy into β, returning the 5 into your mana-pool and allowing you to consume more kinetic-energy β to cast the rest of the spell!”

“…”

“Alright, firstly, let’s break down the core of a spell.”

“All you need for a spell that could serve any purpose is an element, shape and size!”

“So, for a fire element, you’d say Igni – please note all element ends in the letter ‘i’…”

“The key-word ‘Elsete’ needs to be said before you specify the element, you can change the element mid-way through any spell!”

“Next you specify the shape, this is done with the ‘Morfhum’ key-word – please note, all modifiers end in ‘hum’…”

“Lastly you need to specify the size with the ‘Gurhum’ modifier!”

“In order to make this book easy to understand in every country I included my own metric system! µ is the exact size of a human fist – as such you could specify 2µ or 0.5µ”

“Simply remembering this is enough for the spell to work, you could come up with your own metric of course!”

"Keep in mind, the bigger you want the spell, the more mana/β it'll use up,"

"The rate is precisely 1β per per 10µ"

“Alright! Each modifier has certain parameters you need to specify, I have a big list of them throughout the book, I recommend you get to them in the order the book leads you!”

“So, let’s say you want to make a ball of fire in your hand – only ten shapes are available to you by default, if you want to make your own, you’ll have to keep reading! :D”

“Another text emoji…”

“Alright! Before you cast your spell, you need to know one last thing!”

“After specifying the parameters, you must specify when you stopped specifying them!”

“For that, we use the ‘Vace’ keyword! – Keep in mind, it’s often written as “«” in text.”

“Now then! Simply read the following words out loud!”

“Elsete Igni « Morfhum Orb « Gurhum 1µ «”

Otto observed the words, “Am I seriously going to read out a magic spell expecting something to happen?” he thought.

He breathed a sigh as he read over the words one more time.

Otto read the words out loud as a large ball of flames erupted from his torso, it disappeared within a second leaving a few burns on his skin.

“WHAT THE HELL!?” he demanded, he looked back to the book as if he expected it to react.

“Was that actually magic?!”

“Also…-”

“AH! THAT HURT! AGAIN!”

Within a few seconds, his burns disappeared.

Below the current paragraph, it read: “Go on, give it a shot!”

“Seriously! Try it!”

“Did you do it?”

“If you did, flip to the other page!”

Otto did as the book instructed.

“😏”

“You fell for it…”

“What did you think was going to happen if you don’t specify a place for the fire to appear?”

Otto breathed a sigh.

“WHAT KIND OF TEACHER ARE YOU!?”

“You need to specify the place the spell will originate from, by default it will appear at your centre of mass!”

“Now, you may need multiple sets of coordinates for your spells, like if you want to shoot fire from each fingertip! But for now, let’s just use one!”

“You must specify the coordinate with the key-word ‘Orienthum’ – notice, this is just the word orientation but magicked…”

“The parameters can either be numerical, pointed to or named,”

“So, you could say Orientum hand « ! Or Orienthum here «’ after pointing to your hand or head or wherever 😉”

“…what’s with the winky face!?”

“…”

“WHERE DO YOU THINK I’M CASTING MY SPELL FROM!?”

“Now, you specify the specific coordinate you’re setting with the key-word ‘tag’”

“So, you could say…”

“Orienthum tag myFingerLol « here «”

“Notice the ‘«’ symbol was used twice, once to close the ‘tag’ modifier and once to close the ‘orienthum’ modifier!”

“Keep in mind – for the sake of readability, the name of a part should be one word!”

“Elsete Igni « Morfhum Orb « Gurhum 1µ « Orienthum palm «”

Otto read the words out as instructed as a ball of flames appeared on his palm for a second before disappearing.

“Woah… that hurt… but it was really cool too!”

Moments later, Otto collapsed from mana loss.