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.

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.