Wanting to get this whole magic thing over with, Al ran along the glowing path which would lead him to one of his demon teachers, Radimael, the old man of knowledge. Soon the route wound its way to the upper equatorial level of a different residence sphere. He stopped at the highlighted closed portal and shook his head.

This was bad. The very idea of magic degraded certain adults’ brains. Magic thinking made them incapable of making rational choices. Fantasy claimed the world would reverse its very spin if they just believed, thought, or prayed hard enough. Magicians and gods could right every wrong with but the proper spell.

He should walk away from Radimael’s apartment and lie — sorry, but I couldn’t find the demon.

But Al had agreed to group with Mitchel, and that he would play the wizard. To back out now would put the rest of the agreement in question.

So he raised his fist to tap on the wall while trying to remind himself that game magic was more like weaponless weapons, metaphorical power for the powerless, system simplicities, and cost-effective cheats. A computer environment was the ideal physics environment — no outside force existed until someone could model it. That meant it was easier to model magic than model things like weapon recoil. Beyul’s magic should be equally benign.

No matter his dislike of Mitchel … no that was the wrong attitude here. He needed a knowledgeable group to speed run the game. Despite everything, Mitchel held a considerable number of real facts amongst all the science fiction trivia the young man collected.

Al drew in a deep breath and gently rapped his knuckles against the closed portal.

Al had gained his black belts through hard work and giving the impression of single-minded devotion. With a shake of his head, he knew he couldn’t do the same for magic. Magic and these fantasy games were just an antithesis to who he was. Besides, he acknowledged with a smile, his pretending was often better than other’s undivided attention.

The portal opened revealing an elderly demon with twisty and wavy gazelle-styled horns, and a shock of white hair running down through the middle of its head. On either temple, the demon had a triangle and a seven-pointed-star tattooed. It had a goatee which ran from candy-apple red down to yellow at the tip, and circular burn marks on his neck. “Ah,” the demon said on the inhale. “Come in.”

The demon turned and walked with difficulty toward a round table with three stools.

Nabmohze, the girl, the other player, from the crucifixion site, already sat at the table. She looked at him, stood and run toward him. “Asazsuzuh.” She hugged him. “They said they were operating on you.”

Al studied her for a heartbeat.

Nabmohze was his age with dark skin, black hair and eyes, and crooked teeth.

“Yes,” he said. “Elnham repaired my spinal cord. I can walk now.” He touched the still tender injection points along his spine — where the microscopic tools were injected. The game was surreal in its mangling of the possible with the fantastical.

Al returned his attention to Nabmohze and tried not to judge her intellectual capacity, but judging others thusly was a defensive action on his part.

If she was here with Radimael to receive at-risk knowledges, hopefully, she was above average. Average people, with whom he had to interact, were draining. Draining to always limit himself, to always dumb himself down to their level, to always double check what he was about to say.

Al preferred not to interact with those below his IQ-pain-threshold because he messed up far too often.

Once he made a mistake, he stopped being a person to them.

But he spared Nabmohze a smile.

She looked him over and seemed puzzled by what to say — weighing appropriate social responses. “How long were you paralyzed?” she asked clumsily.

He gave her a genuine smile. “Eighteen months.”

She frowned. “Not more specific?”

“Thirteen thousand one hundred eighty-nine hours.” He hoped he got the time differential between being in the game and the external real-world correct. The ratio was an estimate based off of two points of data which had one questionable significant digit each.

She took his hand and dragged him toward the table. “I like you.”

“Why?”

She shrugged. “Very few people would bother to convert five hundred forty-nine days and fourteen hours into just hours.”

Al smiled.

That was the first time anyone bothered to unpack one of his comments even if it took her three seconds to work through the calculations.

He could like her, could work with her. And that meant he needed to be wary. All too often friends became the tools for —

He shoved that thought out of his mind; he was here to speed run the magic system. And two wizards might be better than one for speed running the game.

“Um?” he gestured toward Radimael.

“Huh?” Her eyes eventually comprehended, and she led him the rest of the way.

“Asazsuzah, this is Marchio Radimael, our Noble Master. Noble Master Radimael, this is Asazsuzah, your other slave disciple.”

The old demon nodded. “Come sit. Together we shall learn the hidden secrets of the universe.” It set a tall crystal glass in front of Al. “How would thou fill this glass with water?”

“Take it to the faucet?”

“Good,” Radimael said. “But if thou and this glass were alone in the desert, how then would thee fill it?”

“With or without a canteen?”

“Excellent. One should always look to conveniences and to planning first. How else?”

Al frowned. “Trap and condense available moisture. If supplies were available.”

“Ah. Thou begins to see the true nature of the task. Can thou visualize the set up needed?”

“Yes.”

“Try it, in this room with this glass. Visualize what thou needs.”

Al drew upon the memories of a survival class his father insisted the family take. He imaged the moisture pit with its cover and pebble. The glass became the collection container.

“Good,” Radimael said. “Concentrate on that image.” The demon’s voice became softer as if coming from a greater distance. “Remember everything thou knows about water and its states. Add that knowledge to thy visualization.”

Temperatures, molecular composition, molecular vibrations, humidity, dew points, air currents, and heat exchange went into the image he superimposed on reality.

“Concentrate on thine visualization. Ignore what thine eyes see. See only thine visualization. See the water beading. See the water beads combining into larger beads. See the water beads grow into drops. See the drops falling, falling, falling into the glass.”

Al saw the trickle of water falling from a sheet of moisture into the glass. He heard it.

He blinked and felt lightheaded. With a shake of his head, he forced his brain back into reality.

But, there in the room with Radimael and Nabmozhe was a thin stream of water falling through the air and landing in the glass.

Al blinked.

The water continued to fall.

He shook his head, again — he must have missed reality.

But the stream of water remained.

He rubbed his eyes.

The water continued to fill the glass.

Radimael made a hand gesture, and the water stopped. The water in the glass was almost to the rim. “Most impressive for a first attempt.” The demon sounded displeased.

Al kept his expression as passive as he could. He wanted to smack his forehead. At some point, for just a moment he had ignored the most crucial detail. Of course, magic works in the game.

But, this temporary belief was more than mere ignorance, more than the mere ignoring reality in favor of believing the story. He had really believed he had created water for a moment. Someone or something had tried to convince him that magic was real.

He needed to be more careful about the garbage getting into his subconscious. Otherwise, he might become one of those who babbled incoherently about aliens, UFOs, or angels coming to avert the eminent environmental disaster.

Al pasted an innocent smile onto his face. “How so?”

Radimael offered the glass to Al, “Take a sip. Just taste it.”

Al hesitantly sipped at the water. He stuck his tongue out and scrunched up his face. “That’s awful.”

“Distilled water,” Radimael nodded. “And toxic in sufficient quantities. It will leech necessary minerals from thine body.” He made another hand gesture, and the water vanished. Picking up the glass, he put it into a glass rack which then slid down into the table. With another gesture, a volumetric display rose out of the table’s surface.

The projection was a spiral galaxy spinning with a pair of pyramids, one pointing up and one pointing down floating out of the galactic core.

Radimael expression became suspicious and hostile. He jabbed a gnarled clawed finger into the highlighted sphere. “The initial speculation about you First Humans was that you came from a Tech heavy world in this volume.”

The highlighted sphere expanded, and Radimael continued, “We theorized that because all the initial sightings of your kind were confined to this volume. While most of you remain within the Sea’s boundary foam, a few ventured into the worlds above or below which are influenced by other Forces. Some of you ventured far spinward and widdershins, but always within that bubble.”

The highlighted area retreated back into being a tiny portion of the galaxy pinned between the pyramid points.

Radimael shook its head. “Then you vanished.” It leaned forward and bared its still sharp fangs. “Now you are back. Only a few sightings.” It waved a hand, and hundreds of bubbles glittered like Christmas ornaments upon the holographic pyramids. “But this time all over the place spreding—” balls of various colors appeared in the bubbles amongst the galaxy and pyramids “— but you are growing in number, again. But much faster. The initial data can lead one to hypothesize there will be billions of you this time. And, now you are here.” It stabbed the table and glared at Al. “Are you invading us, too?”

Al shook his head. “No. We were told we had a mystery to solve and given a deadline. We are just here looking for clues.”

Radimael sat back and frowned. “We no longer take kindly to strangers and trespassers. At most, we would have healed your wounds, have given you some supplies, and have returned you to the desert. If you survived long enough to become demons, someone else might have welcomed you.”

Nabmohze said, “But even if we survived you would not have accepted us here.”

Radimael shook his head. “No.”

Al grinned. “You are not truly a refugee camp.”

Radimael clapped his hands together. Its expression became one of distaste. “Perceptive.” The volumetric display vanished, and Radimael stood with a gasp and a grimace of pain.

Al realized he had made a mistake. “What are you going to do with us?”

Radimael grinned to show its fangs. “Very perceptive. That depends upon the Council. Until their decision, someone, very traditional, has demanded to see thee, Asazsuzuh. We must get thee presentable.”

Al shook his head. “Wait. Do you mean the demon —”

Radimael slammed a pair of amethyst gems the size of its fists on to the table — one for Al and one for Nabmohze. “Concentrate upon the gem.”

Al found his eyes locked on the gem — unable to look elsewhere. The room and the sounds about him faded.

Radimael kept speaking, but his words seemed to travel across a great distance and became less and less important.

For Al, there was only the gem. He found a facet of the gem with an inviting door which he flew through it into a labyrinth. He knew that in the center was knowledge.

“When thou reaches the center absorb as much of the knowledge as thou can.”

That was simple — absorbing knowledge was what Al did; he had always taken in knowledge and had gone looking for more.

In this case, he stripped the gem of all its knowledge on the demon culture. He pulled everything into his mind until the gemstone crumbled about him, and then he pulled in the fragments. He gave a cocky grin and was ready to return to the outer world.

But Radimael was still whispering commands to him.

And Al remained in the trance state — still unable to move his eyes from where the crystal had been.

His body stood up off the stool and stripped out of the dobak and underwear.

Cold, clear quartz crystals were placed against his skin at various places on his body — forearms, forelegs, below the navel, mid-chest, back of the neck.

From the knowledge in the amethyst crystal, he knew what was being done. He had been named a slave disciple. Although the other demons had thrown around the title, they never bothered to explain it. All non-demons in the Abyss were considered slaves — either formally collared or allowed to wander loose. If a slave demonstrated usefulness, a teacher could raise the slave to be a slave disciple — the first rung on the path to citizenship. From slave disciple, one often advanced to either slave warrior or slave scholar, but since Al had demonstrated the ability to summon a soul blade during the desert run, he could become either a slave knight or slave paladin. After his body fully transformed into a demon, he could gain his citizenship and become a true knight or paladin.

The quartz crystals embedded into his body would demonstrate whatever rank he achieved.

Well, that was easy.

The demons had given him a goal — expressing soul armor. But should he?

The higher the rank he demonstrated, the more likely he could keep the group together. But, if he failed to reach a certain threshold, he would be separated from them for more specialized training.

Without prompting from the Noble Master Radimael, Al made his decision.

With a bit of concentration, Al placed himself into the memory of the exact moment his soul entered the hilt and began filling the soul blade with that multihued-orange liquid. He allowed his soul to touch the crystals letting the fluid fill the armor’s chambers and solidify.

Without moving, he felt the shape of each piece of soul armor and made sure it conformed to his slave disciple status. Except. He made the wrist manacles flare into vambraces. Ankle manacles flowed into being greaves. The ones on his front side became a jock strap and harness which he tweaked to the limits of slave disciple acceptable wear — short boxer briefs. From the back of his neck, came the new collar which spread up his throat to the bottom of his chin and down his throat to cover his clavicle — a bevor. He darkened the pieces the best he could to look like leather — the acceptable material for a slave disciple. Thus far, he had demonstrated he could be a slave knight.

Noble Master Radimael brought forth its magic and pressed a spell against the armor.

Surprised, Al let some of the armor slip and thin.

No. He needed this rank. Well, he needed at least slave paladin.

Al gathered his concentration and pressed his soul outward against the magic coming at him. Then he locked each piece against the pressure keeping his soul’s energy from returning into his body through the crystals so recently embedded into his skin.

The pressure against him increased.

Al used the pressure to help pull the crystals deeper into his body and shape them. Noble Master Roar’s symbol needed appear on the vambraces. Al visualized the crystals becoming liquid and flowing into the appropriate shape.

Ideally, he needed to change the color of the crystals — not into a common gemstone color but into a shiny metallic color.

Al found silver to be easy enough.

Something pressed against his diaphragm — squeezing tighter with each exhale.

Al staggered.

No.

He tightened his abdominal muscles just as he would if he were taking a punch there. He pressed out thin fibers of his soul from his embedded crystals, but not into the air — through his skin.

Pain.

Fire burned across his body.

He wanted to retreat, to back down, to accept the limited slave knight. But he promised. Exactly who he had promised didn’t immediately leap into his thoughts. For the agonizing moment, just that he had promised was enough to grasp.

Al gritted his teeth even as tears stung his eyes.

He wove his soul threads back through the liquid crystal changing the embedded crystals to metal gold in color.

The pressure didn’t ease so much as Al stopped losing more and more access to his lungs.

He breathed to the full depth the pressure allowed, but he had lost too much too early.

His breaths were too shallow and too short.

And he still hadn’t reached the level of slave paladin. He needed more crystals.

Something smashed into his leg.

The soul weave within the skin held, but the bone broke. No, his femur shattered. And the surrounding muscles were mangled.

Al shifted his weight to his remaining leg.

He wanted to scream, but, by tradition, paladins could not. Instead, he tried to breathe around the mounting pain. But his lungs were hampered. He whimpered but stayed standing.

He squeezed his eyes shut. He needed to repair his own leg — somehow.

No. He was not defeated. He refused to be defeated. He refused to be anything less than a slave paladin.

The only things he had to work with were his soul and the crystals.

He had changed two of the crystals into a liquid to form symbols and had drawn all the crystals deeper into his body. That must be the method with which he needed to continue.

He unleashed his scream into the crystals and felt them quiver. With a touch of his soul, they seemed to become liquid.

His bones. He needed the crystals to support and strengthen his bones.

And the crystals began to flow — coating and creating lacy threads over his bones.

He visualized the crystals collecting the fragments of his femur and pull the pieces back into position.

With a bit of pressure from his soul, the liquid crystal fused the bone into being whole, again.

Next, he had to repair the muscles.

His pain scrunched face drooped. His mind darkened.

He was still short on air and unable to take a full breath.

The strain of demonstrating that he was a paladin was exceeding his ability to breathe.

He would either need to give up or risk losing consciousness.

No. He would succeed. He had promised.

Taking the little breath he could, he forced a soul weave through his muscles.

Dark spots bloomed before his vision.

The ruptured quadriceps knitted back together.

But, his body was shaking.

He needed one more thing.

He pressed drops of the crystal away from his bones and to partially emerge from his skin in the last of the required locations.

Then he turned to face Noble Master Radimael and allowed his body to drop to his knees. Al lifted his numb arm to place his right hand against his forehead — specifically his right thumb and first finger pinched together like he was holding a quill.

He bowed below the proper slave disciple to Noble Master depth — the fingers against his forehead nearly touching the floor.

Noble Master Radimael released him from the trance state and the pressure spells.

Al blinked at the floor but dared not move. He winched — now feeling the pain from being branded on both pectorals with the symbols of his Noble Masters.

A moment later he let out a massive exhalation purging his body of built-up carbon dioxide.

For the moment, he could only wonder when the branding had been done.

In a way, it didn’t matter. Paladins didn’t surrender to mere pain.

He just drew in as much air as he could. Then he concentrated on getting his breathing back to something stable.

Noble Master Radimael grabbed Al by the hair and hauled the boy to his feet. “Thou has no idea what thee has done.”

I made slave paladin rank, Al thought. He kept his mouth shut. The only thing keeping him from being reduced to the base slave rank, again, was the pleasure of his Noble Masters. If they stripped him of the slave paladin or even slave disciple rank, he would be punished.

According to the amethyst crystal, typical punishments required the slave to demonstrate strength, endurance, and resiliency. A human in peak physical fitness would struggle to live, would struggle to prove himself worthy of living. Such a penalty would definitely kill a prepubescent like him, and there was still no respawn.

With neither weapon nor magic, he had no way to effectively fight his way free — and that assumed the summoning codes he memorized when Elnham disappeared from in front of him hadn’t been changed.

Besides, the demons weren’t going to let the humans leave.

They had stumbled into the refugee’s capital. They were liabilities to the secret of the hidden capital. They were liabilities to the secret location of this ruling Council.

Al, Mitchel, Nabmohze, and any other players here were prisoners. The only chance they had to leave, to find clues, to solve the mystery, to find Laura required they gain the trust of the demons. And that meant they would need to become agents for the demons.

His only option — their only option — was to play along until other possibilities presented themselves. They needed to become unquestionably loyal to the demon cause, at least in the eyes of the demons.

He had his not inconsiderable intelligence. But his mind just worked faster than others. He still needed information and knowledge.

As for the others, he needed to determine their strengths and find was to maximize those strengths for the benefit of the demons. But, and this was the important part, make them more beneficial outside, more beneficial in the desert, more beneficial heading to another world.

But he had achieved his immediate goal — slave paladin. And both he and Noble Master Radimael knew he had.

And no matter what happened next, his avatar body carried the marks of that trial and carried the marks of his success.

No one would be able to deny his ability to achieve the rank.

But the glare from his Noble Master spread ripples of goosebumps over his exposed flesh.

“I was ordered to take thee on as my slave disciple.” The Noble Master’s voice was cold with contained fury. “I have never been ordered to take on anyone as a disciple. I have rejected princes. But they declared thee able to handle many knowledges. I laughed at them. I rejected their assertions.”

The demon’s eyes narrowed, and its pupils narrowed into rounded ‘Y’s with tiny round holes at each of the ends. “Thou hast proven me wrong. I hate being wrong.”

“The Heir wants to see thee.” Noble Master Radimael pointed to the open portal. “Make thyself presentable.” The demon leaned close to Al’s ear. “Thou best hope the Heir has a sense of the political winds, or thou hast signed all of our death warrants.”

Al took a couple steps backward, knelt, and performed the same bow again. “Yes, Noble Master.” He rose and walked into the water closet. And he considered his latest problem.

From the amethyst crystal, he gained a very weak understanding of the politics before and nothing since the fall of the demons’ Capital. Again people were expecting something from him without providing the needed information.

He touched the control orb which rested half buried in the back wall of the closet.

His father had once growled about a teen boy in a video show attempting his feeble hand at politics. “Politics isn’t about what you say,” their father announced. “Politics is about how you say it. His problems are easily solved.” Then their father turned to Al and his half-siblings. “What does he say to resolve all his problems? How should he say it?”

Al and his siblings just stared back blankly.

Their father grumbled, “And that is why teens should never be forced into politics.”

As the eldest at the time, Alex had taken the proclamation as a challenge studying speeches and whatnot until he rose to be the most popular kid in school; even their teachers were in his corner.

Artie went for a more subtle approach; she found ways to convince individuals of her point-of-view as often with careful threats of violence as not.

But Al just couldn’t see how words could make a difference. Words had no mass, no velocity, no momentum. Words were without physical composition. And the words used by even the great orators were filled with falsehoods, misdirections, and fallacies — even those who happened to be on the right side of history, peace, and positive growth. How could something wholly divorced from physics from logic from reason affect the world? In the end, Al concluded that adults were brain damaged and that politics like fiction in their most benign forms were a waste of the resources used to produce them — at its worst, politics were a poison strong enough to threaten humanity’s survival as a species.

A not so small part of him had hoped that the in-game characters could be better than the people in real life.

Warm water sluiced over him and washed away the sweat from earlier and the smell of burned flesh. The water pounded into his muscles to break up the crystals of lactic acid before they caused muscle soreness.

Then he chided himself for believing there was any place for him and for his views of how the world should be.

The water turned frigid to remove any inflammation and to force his muscles to contract and squeeze the lactic acid back into his blood stream to be recycled.

As the water vanished from the water closet, Al resolved to guard his expectations better.