“You!” Marcus’ eyes bulged out as he screamed in rage.

He struggled against the invisible bindings, writhing and wiggling in midair like he was hanging on strings, without moving from where he was floating. Toora looked at him mutely and in shock, then at the mysterious man. She tried to get a grip of her own magic, fighting against the swirling maelstrom of guilt, regret and sheer fear her mind was experiencing. She still had most of her mana despite the strange drain she had felt earlier, but without a staff and with her hands bound, she couldn’t do much. All the while, her brain couldn’t but think of the decisions that had led her to this moment in time; about how much she knew it would happen, and still let happen.

“You! Motherfucker! You killed them! You killed Lisa! Pearson! They are all dead!” Marcus yelled at the top of his lungs, and every word was like a stab wound she felt in her psyche.

The man cocked his head. “I killed them?” his voice was full of mock disbelief. “I didn’t kill them.”

“Let me down!” Marcus screamed at the top of his lungs.

The man shook his head. “I don’t think so. Maybe if you chill the eff down?”

Marcus continued to struggle. His muscles were red and bulging, almost tearing from the strain he was putting on them, and throbbing veins were now visible on his drenched forehead. Toora’s eyes widened. She saw that the mysterious man had noticed her reaction, and flinched for a moment as if in fear, which in turn made Marcus struggle even harder against the invisible bindings.

“Stop it! Just… calm down.” The man put his hands in front of him, facing the ground in a calming gesture. “Let’s talk, okay?”

Marcus did not listen.

“It’s not his fault!” Toora said, and the words left her mouth with a struggle, through grit teeth and falling tears. She almost bit her tongue before continuing. “It not his fault. It’s mine. I… miscalculated.”

Marcus’ head snapped to her. “What are you talking about.” He snarled. His words were without pauses, a torrent of spit and anger he couldn’t contain anymore. “It was him. Him!”

He struggled even more, redoubling his efforts. She felt him begin to accumulate mana in his body, as one of his skills as a ranger was no doubt about to activate. Her eyes didn’t leave him as her mind spun wildly in an attempt to find a solution to this situation that didn’t end up with the both of them dead. She tried to yell something, but the words got caught in her throat. She only watched as the bright green flash of magic bathed the room and its shiny silver walls; on the corner of her vision she saw the man flinch at the sudden light and action, and Marcus broke free of his bindings and fell to the ground. He immediately jumped forward, his whole body almost steaming from the overdrive he had put it through.

He had, she realized, activated a different spell that was not part of standard ranger school of magic he said he used. One she thought was impossible for someone like him to attain that sent his body into a berserk status, at the cost of his very own life force. Something that could only come naturally to someone who had been pushed over the edge, and then beyond.

For a moment, she wondered. She wondered if he had broken the human condition, the human limits. Her mind was, strangely, crystal clear in its attempts at explaining and analyzing the phenomenon with rabid curiosity. Maybe he had found a way to get over magic system limitations? Or maybe he had awakened his innate magic? Or, maybe, this had always been a part of his magic system, and the school of magic he used was not the standard ranger system offered by the guild, but something more special.

It didn’t matter.

He shot forward like a missile. And right at that moment, she felt the forces surrounding her disappear.

“Marcus, no!” she screamed as she wildly moved her arms and hands, doing her best not to mess up the complicated movements she needed to cast her own magic.

A loud explosion shook the room, and she was sent flying against a wall. The spell she was preparing broke down, and backfired on her, unable to contain the now rampant energies. She didn’t know if it was the runaway magic or the violent hit of her head against the wall, but when she came back to her senses she was no longer there.

***

“Don’t move.” The man said, as soon as he noticed that she was awake. She was strapped to a mobile bed, hands tightly bound, inside a small room. At the center of the room was a glowing ball of light, like a semi translucent film of water, at the middle of which she could almost make out the shape of a minuscule point that seemed so deep as to be infinite.

The air was oppressive, heavy, and she struggled to breathe. It was like the forest, just a hundred times worse, and after checking her own body she realized that the room was somehow sapping her of all her mana. It did so at a rate that was, strangely, almost as fast as she regenerated it, leaving barely enough for her to survive.

The man was pacing around the central sphere, holding his head in his hands.

“You made me use the last of the Hume Energy, dammit!” he yelled. “And as long as you are here, I am wasting all of the Hume Energy that the tower generates to keep Axiom working to keep you in turn, contained. I need to finish repairs! Tell me, why shouldn’t I kill you?”

She struggled to take a breath deep enough to talk. He approached her, and undid the straps just a little to allow her to breathe better. He looked at her for a long moment, breathing deeply to calm himself down.

“I’m going to undo the straps binding you to the stretcher. You do one weird move,” he held up one finger, and behind it she saw his deep eyes focused on her own, with an intensity and threat she felt her breath catch up in her throat, “one move, and you die.”

She slowly, very carefully sat upright.

“Good.” He said. “Now, who are you?”

“My name is Toora.” She said. “Is my friend…”

The man shook his head. “I ask the questions.” his voice was cold, at first, but halfway through it lost its chill and she felt that there was something else beneath it. Like a faint light, she began to feel a shred of hope. Maybe she could make it out of here alive.

She thought about Marcus. Tears pooled up in her eyes, but she furiously blinked them away as soon as they came, and yet they obfuscated her vision.

“I- he—” she sobbed. “It’s all my fault. I should have never…”

The man stopped pacing, coming to rest against the wall with his weight on one leg. “Did you-”

“I brought them here!” she wanted to punch herself, to grab the white sheet of this bed and rip it.

“Why would you do that?” he sounded in pain, and tired. With a groan, he pushed himself away from the wall and limped back towards her. “You lead a team to invade a mysterious tower you don’t understand, and then you cry when things go south… what did you expect would happen?”

“I thought… I thought that we could find something in here, to help us.”

He looked at the central light for a long moment. “Help you with what, exactly?”

“Help us become famous!” she felt hysterical, and her words rang empty in her ears. Oh, the hubris, oh, the vanity. Was this how she was going to die? Was this the reason all her friends died? “I wanted us to be respected adventurers! Instead, I brought them all to their deaths.”

“So, you are telling me, that you just so happened to arrive here in search of treasure, exactly when the forcefield defending the tower was failing? I don’t buy it.” His words were hard now, sharp. He looked at her with newfound intensity, and all the softness from before was vanished into thin air.

“I…”

“Tell me!” he boomed.

“I have visions, at times. Of possible opportunities. I followed the visions here.”

“Visions. That’s very… weird?” he deflated. “Are they connected to the strange sort of energy you were using earlier when you knocked yourself out?”

He was inquisitive and curious now, almost unrecognizable from the person he was a moment earlier.

Toora was puzzled. “You mean magic?”

“Magic? Don’t tell me…”

“It is magic, yeah. Visions are my innate magic.”

“Shit.” His face darkened. He recovered quickly, but she managed to get a glimpse of something hidden deep within, barely visible on his face half illuminated by the sphere behind him. “Magic, here. They did it, after all…”

“Uh?”

“Nothing.” He waved the matter away. “No matter. But tell me, what did you see in the visions?”

“I saw the tower. I saw the door, and I saw the shadows retreat into it right as they did. I saw us safely passing through the field of death.”

He shook his head. “But that didn’t happen.”

“No, it didn’t.” she felt tears form anew, and her eyes burned from the dried up tears from before as the new salty ones wet her skin.

“I don’t want to kill you. But... What should I even do? I can’t trust you, not with your… magic.” He started pacing again.

“Please.” She begged. The light of hope seemed to slip farther and farther away. “The visions brought me here for a reason!”

“Hmm. That’s not really working in your favor.”

Her heart sank. “I swear! I have no one left, nothing left outside waiting for me. I have no reason to harm you!”

“Why not? You could just go back and become famous, just like you wanted.”

“How?” she cried, but she didn’t care about her looks, about her breaking voice or the snot on her face. “I am trapped in here by the—”

The man cursed. “The Null Zone, right! I forgot about that.”

“Please. I don’t want to die.” She sobbed.

“I can’t trust you. I just… can’t!”

“Please! I’ll do anything to prove to you that I am not a threat! Anything!”

“Let me think. Okay. Give me a few minutes, I’ll be back.”

He left the room. For a moment, it felt eerily calm, and silent, but after a while she gradually became aware of the soft hum coming from the central sphere. She felt that her eyes were drawn to it, and she stared for what felt like an eternity. Her body hurt, the magic being drained until just a smidgeon of it was left in her hurt like the worst of tortures. But she endured.

“Lower your magical defenses, all of them. And empty yourself of all magic.”

She hesitated for a moment. “I— I can’t. I will die if I do.”

“I won’t let that happen, don’t worry. You need to trust me first if you want me to believe your claims.”

“Okay.”

She did as he asked, almost without hesitation. She didn’t know what to think, or how to react, well aware of how easily and without hesitation she had just done what in normal times she would never have. To her surprise, there was no pain, nor did her vision fade to eternal darkness. In front of her, the man was waving to get her attention.

“Now, look at me in the eye. Focus on my words, and empty your mind. If I free you, will you attack me, or plot your revenge?”

“No.”

He sighed. “Good for me. Now,” he offered her a hand and helped her up, “come with me. I feel like I need to enlighten you as to the real nature of the Null Field.”

“What do you mean?” she asked, well aware of her tone of voice betraying hope, surprise, a bit of fear. She didn’t care.

“It doesn’t destroy things,” the man explained. “Or rather it does, just not in the way you think. You should call yourself lucky that the computer system came back online with the rest of the tower.”

She felt her heart beat so fast. “So… my friends! Are they alive?”

“The woman in heavy armor is, in a way at least. As for the guy who got cut in half… unfortunately there was nothing I could do. The Null Field was not made with such a scenario in mind.”

“A- and Marcus?”

“He too is alive. But I can’t say if it’s a good thing or a bad thing, given his current condition. Anyway, my name is Edmund. I’m sorry we meet under such circumstances.”

He offered her his hand, and she shook it without thinking. Her mind was focused on other things at the moment, and she let herself be led through uncountable corridors and stairs. It took a while for her to realize that after she had left the room with the sphere, the oppressiveness had vanished. She had magic again. The only strange sensation she was feeling was a weird tingle, and a small amount of magic being drained right where their hands were touching.

“Indeed, you have magic again.”

“What?” she said with a start, feeling a numbness in her chest and her heart beat like crazy.

“Don’t worry. I just felt you flex it for a moment.”

“Oh,” she relaxed.

“The ‘shadows’, as you called them, how far did they extend?”

“The whole forest. Several miles.”

He hummed. “And did they have the same effect on you as what you were feeling in the Portal room?”

“No. It was much less severe.”

He seemed pleased. “How much less severe?”

She thought for a moment. “Around a hundred times less.”

“I see,” he nodded. “To think… Axiom of Choice, that’s the official name of the thing you experienced by the way. I never though it could extend that far and for so long with such damaged machinery. It must have been your entry into the forest that gave it the last push it needed to go critical. Then, the Pylon woke me up.”

“And now? Is it fixed?”

“No,” he shook his head. He seemed… sad. “It’s working with minimum power, and even then it’s drawing more than half of what the Pylon is producing. I have disabled all of its functions outside the tower, keeping it active only in the Null Field, in the portal room, and in the cell we are going to now. The last one is to contain your friend, by the way.”

He stopped and turned to face her. “Under no circumstances, and I’m telling you this because it’s very important, shall Axiom stop working in the portal room. Ever.”

She nodded, daring not ask what he meant by that, or what the consequences would be. If her gut was right, though, it had to do with the singular point in space in the middle of the watery film, inside the floating light, and she recalled how her mind felt drawn to it. She wondered if the water film had something to do with it, and how it would feel should she look at it without the protection.

After a while, she found courage to speak again. “Please, tell me more about the Null Field. I need to know that Lisa is safe.”

“Okay. Given your… attire, I presume you don’t know what a computer is?” he asked calmly.

“No…”

“Alright, it’s not a problem. Let’s just say that the Null Field doesn’t destroy things, it moves them. They get stored in a digital memory, think of it as a pocket dimension. You know what those are?”

“Yeah.” She nodded.

“Interesting, interesting. Anyway, with the proper equipment, I can rematerialize your friend from its digitalized image. She won’t feel the passing of time either, so for her it will be like she just got teleported somewhere else.”

“What about Pearson? There really is nothing you can do?”

“The guy who got cut in half? I can materialize the two separate halves but… unless necromancers exist I doubt there’s much we can do. Ah, we are here. Ready to see your friend?”