Blaine was first to the door. He twisted the handle and let it fall open. The door fanned outwards, and his silhouette was framed in crystal blue sky and dusty earth. A surge of wind forced its way into the room, causing his hair and clothes to flutter at his side.

Torturously dramatic.

Brad nudged him out the door and the others followed. I was the last to venture outside because I took a detour to the kitchen to collect my things. Grappling guns, carving wand. I couldn't imagine needing them for this, but it gave me comfort. Security.

"Wow, good one, Brad. This doesn't look out of place at all," Addy's voice carried from outside.

I couldn't hear the response.

Ok, enough stalling.

I stepped through the doorway and back into the world.

The first thing to register was the heat. The wind literally smacked me in the face with it. I was reminded of the mall back in Pittsburgh wherein customers were blasted with warm air whenever they passed through the automatic doors. Or of the time Brad tried to heat our apartment by placing a fan in front of a portable radiator. Home.

We were far from home.

A flicker of light caused me to turn, and I watched as Photo captured the break room in a protective shield and erased it from existence. Every wall and object blurred together, the colors bending and blending. Then, all at once, the matter was sucked sideways and absorbed into the membrane of Photo's bubble.

Gone. No place to run back to if our plan went sideways. We were committed now, out here in the middle of nothing.

Mountains on all sides, dead, in a myriad of browns and greys. The valley we stood in was made from interlocking shelves of brown rock. Craggy, bumpy, with ridges running across the landscape like veins under the skin. The eight of us walked atop a hill of reddish rock, whose height was dwarfed by the features surrounding us. All of this under a sky so blue that it might have been fake.

The only unnatural structure was twenty meters away. With direction from Blaine and Brad, Photo had constructed an altar from the purest of white marble. Nine corinthian pillars formed a circle around a shorter, fatter pillar in the center. Atop the central pillar sat a white throne studded in sapphires.

This is their preliminary quest?

It seemed wrong. Nearly every Dungeons and Dragons campaign I had been a part of started in a trope-y setting. A village, a bar, a prison cell, a boat, a train. But never an altar in the middle of nowhere.

For the briefest moment, I lamented the fact that Photo had apparently built everything for the game on their own. When they told us we would "have access to parts of their anatomy" I assumed that meant giving us the tools necessary to construct our ideas. Crazy devices like a reality-editing paint brush or x-ray goggles for seeing underground.

Not so, apparently. Another rough translation.

Friends and acquaintances milled around the altar. The wisps frolicked through the air above our heads, clearly eager to begin.

One of the wisps stretched itself horizontally, and a floating marble platform appeared, one meter in width and nine meters in length. That same wisp transformed again, this time forming a spherical bubble around the floating platform, ten meters in diameter. The moment the white outline solidified, both bubble and platform disappeared from sight.

Please take a seat on the bench.

No one reacted, because no one could see a bench anywhere.

Then, Kioshi walked to where the bubble had been. When he drew close, his torso vanished, then his head and waist, and then his legs. Like someone had put two erasers on his chest and wiped them away from each other.

Ah. Invisibility shield.

"Come on, Photo, you can do better than that," Addy chided the literal God, "Why don't you give us some proper seating? Recliners, and maybe a bean-bag chair for Brad."

Seemingly in response to this, a wisp disappeared into the illusion, re-exiting a moment later.

I apologize. I do not know discomfort.

"I won't hold it against you," Addy said, before following Kioshi's lead.

When I passed through the barrier, nothing exceptional happened. No magical fizzle. No woosh. Only the sudden appearance of Addy, Kioshi, and a floating slab containing seven white recliners and a big neon green bean-bag chair.

I took a seat next to Addy, hopping up from the ground and climbing into the chair.

"Ah, what the fuck? He actually listened?" Brad whined, seeing his seating arrangements.

"It actually listened," Addy corrected him. But he was wrong.

"They did," I corrected Addy.

We.

"Not a pronoun," Addy stated, before adding, "Are we seriously doing this right now?"

'We' is a pronoun.

"Yeah, but it doesn't really work the way you... ah, fuck it. 'We' it is."

The others took their seats, with Layla claiming the seat to my left. Meanwhile, one of the wisps became a second layer of shielding around us.

"What's that one for?" Addy asked.

Sound.

"Neat."

What is the desired sample size for this game?

"Eh. At least three."

I will displace some humans to this valley.

Displace - a synonym for kidnap. An ugly feeling welled inside me.

Last chance to back out. Are we really going to do this? Become the same "game master" that drove me to near-insanity?

Did I have a choice?

I shoved the feeling down, deep into my gut. No room for doubt. This was a terribly small price to pay for a chance at saving the world. Some of my favorite fictional characters would be jealous, even envious.

One wisp became a concave surface and another became a stepped pyramid. The two joined together in their usual way and sped off into the distance at a speed that was hard to track. A third wisp-

All of my thoughts were replaced by mental images. A scene that forced its way into my mind, overriding all other processes. When the image stabilized, a fraction of my control returned to me.

It was like hearing Photo's or Kioshi's voice in my mind but in a visual format. Following Photo's journey through the mountainside. Zipping over hills and through outcroppings of rock at a breakneck speed. Zooming towards an old grey barn next to a mostly dried-up pond.

Vivid, life-like, real. Only more so. This perspective seemed to transcend the human experience, and I couldn't pinpoint why that was. Something about all of the extra details I was processing, none of which I could make sense of.

Photo stopped outside of the barn, and I could see one of the wisps changing shape in my peripheral vision. White lines connecting to white vertices. Having taken a new shape, Photo phased through the barn wall.

The interior was empty. Dirt floor with dead hay swept to the corners of the room. Rotting posts held the decrepit structure together.

Six men were gathered inside, five of which held handguns and rifles. Four of them were huddled together, discussing something. Torn clothes, rugged appearance. The classic badass archetype.

The other two guys wore casual clothing and waited a dozen paces away. One of them held a large plastic bag filled with hundreds of smaller pink baggies.

"Fucking perfect," Addy spoke, rattling me. I had been so engrossed in the scene that I forgot about reality. What did he mean 'perfect?' I was still at a loss for what was going on.

The four men finished their discussion and fanned out. One of the badasses - a bald man chewing on something blue - spoke, "We'll give you eleven-fifty."

"You told us fifty percent," the man holding the bags contested.

"That is fifty percent. Demand is low right now. Sim-ple e-co-nom-ics."

"Twelve hundred even."

The bald man paused to consider, loudly smacking his lips as he chewed. One of the henchmen leaned hard against a narrow post, which easily could have snapped under his weight.

"You're a man of principle, I take it?" the bald man guessed, "Wouldja turn it down if it was - oh - let's make it... ten dollars short? One dollar? A penny?"

"Word is bond," the bag man spoke, "I would take any of those offers. And I would think less of you."

"A penny short and I'm in your little black book? Pah, so trivial! Alrighty, then. Twelve hundred even," the bald man agreed. He withdrew a fifty-dollar bill from his wallet and passed it to one of his men. The man wrapped the bill into an already-large spool of dollars, then took two more spools from his pockets.

Then he dropped them.

He and another of the badasses swayed dizzily, stumbling forward and sideways, on the verge of collapse. The man with the pink bags did something similar.

Photo was drugging them, as they had done to us many times.

The bald man spat out his gum and drew a gun, "Foul play!"

Guns were drawn on both sides. Baldy was the first to open fire.

The bag man and his friend ran for it, with the friend firing blindly behind them. He got a lucky shot off on Baldy, and Baldy crumpled, clutching a hole in his stomach.

The henchmen returned the favor by putting two holes through the bag man. The bag man fell, dead before he hit the ground.

"Photo, save them!" Maisie screeched.

They would become our kin. Light refracted is light diminished. I am already near capacity.

"Save them!" Maisie begged, unwilling to stop and decipher the riddle.

Ok.

During the short exchange, another of the henchmen had taken a hit and was bleeding out in the dirt. The bag man's friend was a good shot and was nearly out of the barn. It was two versus one now.

Two of Photo's wisps descended on the combatants, transforming while they moved. They became hemispherical shields around each group.

The men didn't have time to consider the new feature before firing again, and...

Bullets ricocheted within the two bubbles.

I would have averted my eyes if it were an option. Maisie screamed and Brad moaned out an "Oh no."

I...

The image cut out a moment later. Photo ending the broadcast.

Mixed and murmured reactions to my left and right. I fixed my gaze on the horizon. I didn't want to look. I was still digesting... what had just happened.

What...

Six deaths which might have been - at least partially - my fault.

What had I thought, again? What stupid rationalization had I made? Something about this being a 'small price to pay?'

Easier fucking said than done.

Even so, the plan hadn't been to kill them. It had just sort of happened...

And now they're gone. Ended.

That was, that wasn't...

Not ideal.

My relationship with death wasn't fantastic. It wasn't even passable. I was not ok with the idea of people dying. I didn't believe in an afterlife. No concept of God. For me, this was it. All of it.

And six of those 'its' were done now.

'Small price to pay.' I hadn't even considered our other options. Less costly, less risky options. Smarter options. What-

What were we even doing here? Photo didn't seem to have a clue. Was this even a good plan? Kioshi didn't seem to think so. And the cost if our mediocre plan failed was my entire species. Perhaps more. Billions of human deaths. Countless other deaths!

"Fuck," I pronounced, grinding teeth against lips to draw out the 'fff' sound.

"You can say that again," Addy muttered.

"Fuck," I restated, for all to hear.

Six become zero, and the Oneness mourns this loss of light. My understanding also grows. Hostility must be countered and reflected. I will be less gentle this time.

Jarring confusion as my mind's eye was filled with Photo's perspective once more. Roving. Scanning the wasteland for new victims.

"No! Stop!" Maise cried out in the same moment I shouted, "Wait!"

Photo did neither.

Already I slow my movements for the benefit of your terrestrial minds. I cannot bear to slow further. The Zeiton do not slow their approach.

"Stop hurting people!" Maisie pleaded.

'Hurt.' Interesting word choice, considering we were doing much worse than that.

Our kind has existed from the beginning. We have studied, experimented, we are enlightened. We still know little of our universe, far less of this universe, and further less of human behavior. Time is fading. I must simplify my methods, become one singular ray. If force was required to contain one sample, then force must be used for all. I am sorry for your discomfort.

Photo found a patch of green amidst the dead landscape and hastened their approach. Shutting my eyes did nothing. I couldn't divert my focus away from the unfolding disaster.

Maisie was audibly fumbling for a rebuttal.

A miniature forest of trees with no rigid shape to it. Sparse grass littered with fruit. A trailer home, with old wooden panels and stained windows. Photo glided through it all, phasing through the walls of the home with ease.

Three people inside. Two girls were engaged in a sword fight, each wielding a floppy foam pipe. Younger than pre-teens, but not toddlers. The third was a burly man with wild brown hair and chin scruff. He sat in the corner of the room, observing the fight and laughing joyously. The father? He was young. Perhaps younger than me, even.

Photo manifested as a blue ball of energy which filled the room.

Instant reactions from the family members. Full-body spasms. The girls dropped like flies, convulsing on the floor, their muscles locking up. The man's mouth was open and his eyebrows were fixed. He was trying to scream and failing.

Maisie was trying to scream and succeeding. It wasn't constructive.

And me? I didn't know what to make of this. Wasn't sure how to feel about this. Those feelings wouldn't matter. Wouldn't change anything.

Photo was committed to its plan.

The three victims writhed, mouths locked open. Their expressions were fixed. Anger, terror. Creepy enjoyment on the older girl's face. Everyone's skin shone blue in the malevolent light.

It was becoming too much. All of it, too much. Too much.

Fuck!

I forced my mind to shut down. I couldn't do this right now. Didn't want to consider their pain, Photo's morals, nor my role in things. If I did, I might crack down the center. This was definitely too much.

I watched, my thoughts muted. Going cold. Merely observing.

The girls eventually passed out, but their bodies continued to rock and jolt. The man endeavored to stand from his chair, but the stabbing energy seized at his legs. He toppled forward, his teeth digging into thick grey carpet.

"Photo, my good man. This seems excessive," Teddy remarked.

The opposite is the truth. I am shocking and dosing this man, and still he remains lucid. I cannot bring him down without increasing the intensity.

"Don't! No!" Maisie rasped. Her voice was starting to break. She was at her limit.

'Increasing the intensity.' Huh. That sounded bad.

The blue light shone brighter, whiter, and sparks began to appear in random nooks and corners. One of them leapt from floor to girl, to man, to ceiling. Another singed the hair on the man's arms.

As the light swelled, so did the static in my head. Overriding my control. An amorphous tangle of thoughts shouting for action. Begging me to 'do something right goddamn now!'

But what could I do? This was happening miles away. They would die, and that would be it. Three more deaths, bringing us to a total of nine. Including Photo, there were nine of us present. Did that mean I was fully accountable for at least one of the murders? Basic arithmetic said yes. And the deaths would happen any moment. The light was still getting brighter. Brighter. Too much.

I stood from my chair, nearly falling because the platform was situated half a meter off of the ground. I looked around. My arm muscles were tense. Stiff as boards. I needed something. Needed something and needed to do something. What did I need? To act, to cower, I needed...

Two arms folded around me, and I was pulled against someone's body. Warmth, security, pressure. Something new, something needed, and undeserved. Holding me for their sake and for my own.

A hug.

I couldn't see who. All I could see were the shaking forms and the burning blue light. My eyes stung, even though they were not in current use.

Why is the world like this? Does the universe know no compassion?

I knew the answer. I wanted that answer to change. None of this was okay.

The man's light finally went out, and his muscles relaxed. Photo retracted the harmful energy and collected the limp forms into a translucent bubble.

The transmission ended.

I breathed, then breathed again. Deep breaths.

This isn't your fault. This isn't on you.

Maisie stepped away from me, cradling her arms and rocking back and forth.

I nodded to her. It was all I could do. She nodded back.

Each of us climbed into our respective seats. I settled into mine and the chair felt larger around me. Like a kid in a giant's throne.

I shouldn't be here. I'm hardly qualified.

Unfortunately, just like everything else, I didn't have a choice in the matter. I was committed.

A glint on the horizon signaled the return of three of Photo's wisps. They made their way across the landscape, tracing a straight line rather than aligning to the hills and the valleys. They looked supernatural, like three ghost orbs creeping towards me from a mile away.

When they reached the altar, the bubble disintegrated. Three ragdolls dropped onto solid rock. Our would-be players, given they were still alive.

It is time to play. I think they will have a happy time. Brad, are you ready?

"Hah," Brad laughed, nervous, "Can I say no?"

Yes.

A wisp attached itself to Brad and swallowed him into a bubble. Brad floated out of his bean-bag chair and his clothes began to glow with pure starlight.

"What the fuck? I said no! I don't consent!" Brad objected, floating and flailing like a puppet without strings.

I am sorry. I do not trust your judgment.

Despite everything, Addy cackled. Layla did much the same. Two morons kicking up a fuss on either side of me.

Photo positioned Brad between the altar and the bodies and then dodged back into the invisibility field. Brad now wore a priest's garb. Black pants, black dress shirt, white collar. There was a large silver cross in his hand, and he used it to shield his eyes from the sun.

Addy roared with laughter, gasping and sputtering and crying. Brad didn't react to the laughing. He probably couldn't hear it. The three bodies lay restless before him. Brad inched closer and poked the burly man's shoulder with the end of the cross.

The man's hands snapped out, grabbing Brad's ankles and pulling. Brad fell on his ass. By the time he could make sense of things, the stranger was on top of him, hands around his neck in a chokehold.

I burst from my seat, and something yanked on my shirt, reigning me in.

Addy.

"We can't interrupt," he said, "Besides, this is golden."

"If Brad's life is in danger, Photo won't save him! We have to stop this!" I reasoned, frantic. An adrenaline spike had me shifting into second gear, then third.

Then, as quick as he had put hands around Brad's throat, the stranger retracted them.

"Sorry, bud," the man said, "Instincts."

"Don't worry about it," Brad replied, sounding hoarse.

The man helped Brad to his feet. His two girls stirred, rising from the earth and squinting at the unfamiliar setting. The man patted each of them on the back, then offered a handshake to Brad. Brad accepted.

I couldn't believe how friendly the guy was being. I wouldn't have blamed him for showing more hostility.

"I'm Kendra. These are my sisters, Cassie and Cecilia," the man said, pointing to each of the girls, "You are...?"

"Brad. Ah, I mean Father Quill. Brad is my... nonreligious name."

Whatever that meant.

"Good to meet you, Father," Kendra said, "Mind telling me how we got here?"

"Yes. Right. I- ah- had to summon you here. For a quest that needs doing."

"Is that so?" Kendra said, drawing out each word.

His gargantuan hands returned to Brad's throat and began to squeeze. I sat up in my chair, alarms blaring.

"Photo, send me in now!" Blaine shouted.

Two bubbles encased Blaine, shimmering and carrying him to a spot above the throne and the altar. One of the bubbles popped, and the other held him in place, surrounding him in a magnificent white aura.

He had wings now. Actual angel wings. Billowing white robes dangled past his toes. He wielded a sword in both hands, held cross-wise across his body. Sapphires crusted the pommel and starlight sparkled across the blade.

Kendra eased his grip on Brad's throat, and then released it. He gawked at the personage of light and fell to one knee. His sisters tried to mimic the action, legs wobbling. Blaine hovered above them all, adorning a displeased countenance.

Addy smirked and whispered secret musings in my ear.

"Would you look at that?" he said, voice rich with irony, "A devil in angel's clothing."