Back in Noble Master Roar’s domed training room, Al flowed through the labyrinth within the red ruby knowledge crystal before him. When he reached the center, he absorbed the knowledge — a massive distillation of psychology and sociology and neurology and neurobiology and other -ologies he wasn’t sure had names in the real world.

The gemstone shattered.

Al pulled all of the particles into his mind. He rocked backward and wobbled before he caught himself against the table Noble Master Radimael summoned.

Four, he counted the number of fist-sized knowledge crystals Noble Master Radimael placed before him.

So far, Noble Master Radimael had used the trigger word thrice to force Al to absorb a knowledge.

Al blinked and forced his way out of the awake-but-sleeping hypnotic state. He shook his head. Escaping back into reality took a third head shake.

His head throbbed at the quantity of information he had just acquired. His brain was still trying to ‘chunk’ all of the knowledge into blocks of useful information which could later be manipulated as if they were simple, single bits.

He remained dazed and disoriented, but he knew he was boarding on entering a dissociative fugue — losing his identity, his personality, his self.

Fear prickled his neck.

He tried to back away from the gray nothingness which threatened to consume him.

This shouldn’t be happening.

He was in a game.

Stuffing actual knowledge into his brain was impossible. Or should have been.

The connection suits weren’t meant to be able to cause dissociative fugues.

He closed his eyes which made matters worse. “Break.”

Noble Master Radimael slammed another fist-sized gemstone on the table before him.

Before his Noble Master commanded him to absorb knowledges …

Al knew his memories were there — just scattered in the grayed out sections of his mind. Not gray due to inactivity or inaccessibility. Too many words, charts, diagrams, drawings, statues, models, maps, and stuff were all blurred together.

“Please, no.”

He had arrived in the training room. Noble Master Roar had been growling behind him — mechanical hand on his shoulder — had been pushing him up the ramp.

Other than the golden mechanical demon and the strange demon spiders which hissed from its shadow, there had been a table. Noble Master Radimael had calmly sat at the low table sipping something from a teacup; the matching Japanese tea set sat beside him.

Al wrenched his attention back to the present, just in time.

Noble Master Radimael spoke that awful trigger word.

Al smashed through the labyrinth crumbling the knowledge crystal to dust. Everything entered into his mind. Four, he thought and then realized that he had already used that number — more than once. He considered his problem. Seven. How had he scrambled memories — that had never happened to him.

“Enough,” Noble Master Roar said and grabbed Al by the faux leather halter. With one massive hand, his Noble Master lifted him away from the table and set him on the mat.

Fires of fury still burned in the Noble Master’s eyes. Angry heat pulsed off of the demon making even looking at the Noble Master painful.

By trained instinct, Al settled into a defensive stance and considered his other Noble Master, Noble Master Atasar Roar. This was a standard training situation — defending against an armed opponent. Except, none of his prior instructors were mad at him, except (sometimes) his siblings. He inwardly sighed.

He hated adults.

That wasn’t true.

Sometimes he wished adults either came with instruction manuals or leashes.

Adults had such fragile egos. Adults rarely had well-defined limits before they started their tantrums. Adults could be far more violent than children during their outbursts.

But at the moment, Al hated his Noble Masters because they put him into this confused state where nothing was in focus, where his mind didn’t work correctly, where he wasn’t properly balanced. He needed to break free and regain himself.

He tried to drag his ch’i back into motion. He pressed down against the floor to draw up through the soles of his feet working to firm his weakened legs, to straighten his back, to keep him upright. Each breath needed to be deeper than the prior in order to pull ch’i from the air to his Lower Jiao. Arms moved to swirl the ch’i within his body to drive the ch’i into his limbs, to strengthen his twelve-year-old frame.

The Noble Master stood beneath the dome of the practice room and crystalized his soul blade. He shook with rage. “Never!” Noble Master Roar roared. He thrust his soul blade at Al.

Al twisted his shoulders and blocked the thrusting arm. Despite there being no way he could physically stop or overpower his Noble Master, he thought he could twist and time his blocks just enough that each attack would miss.

Al’s hit Noble Master Roar’s wrist.

Ch’i pressed against the deadly thrust. The sword tip slid within a hair’s breadth of Al’s flesh. The blade snagged on a strap of the soul armor further knocking the edge away from Al’s ruddy skin.

And then the weapon thrust had passed.

Usually, in the real world, this sort of exercise was done with wooden or rattan weapons or rubber blades.

But he knew of ‘live weapons’ training and demonstrates.

But his parents didn't want him near ‘real weapons’ so he had to borrow those from his siblings when no one could say no.

“Never have I been so embarrassed,” the Noble Master continued yelling as he again stabbed at Al.

Al’s ch’i faltered. From his father, he had learned to use ch’i offensively. To breathe in during blocks to draw in the ch’i and hold it ready for the counter strike. But, Noble Master Roar was so much faster than any human. And Al had forced the ch’i outward to survive the first thrust. He stepped back to gain a hint of separation. And he attempted to recycle the ch’i he still held.

He crossed his arms and drove Noble Master Roar’s arm upward drawing hard from the ground. The blade tip slid past his eye and temple.

“Never, have I had a slave foisted upon me.”

Al stepped back again even as he properly drew in ch’i to his cooling lower jiao. He deliberately fell backward and slapped both hands against the mat but not to break his body’s momentum, his body’s torque.

He had suffered while learning this kick because his legs had been useless — deadweight dragging against the whiplike motion.

Al forced ch’i out of with his breath accelerating his backward motion and exceeding the pull of gravity if only marginally.

The sword thrust cleared his navel even as his body arched. Again the tip snagged on one of the straps of soul armor which looked like leather straps. Then the armor repulsed the sword another centimeter.

Al pulled his head back toward the mat.

The lunge ramming the blade toward throat … submaxillary triangle … chin … nose … clear.

His head landed on the mat and became the fulcrum for the attack to drive his legs upward. He poured the torpid ch’i into his neck, his arm, his spine, and his legs. He forced his legs to rise toward Noble Master Roar. He pushed his remaining breath out with a “Hai!” forcing the ch’i to condense into a think syrup within the meridians of his legs.

Angular momentum dragged the ch’i toward his feet — completely reversing the flow, the drawing of ch’i up from the floor. And like diesel fuel, the over condensed ch’i ignited.

His feet connected with the Noble Master’s bare chest. His knees struck the Noble Master’s thrusting arm forcing the sword further away from his body.

The ch’i in the wood meridians blazed boiling the ch’i in the water meridians and liquifying the ch’i in the earth meridians.

Pain and light and force erupted from Al’s feet. As if he strapped rockets to his feet, he was spun upward and over to crash face down on the mat. His feet hit the Noble Master’s chin during the arc.

Al screamed and tried to grab his legs, but everything hurt too much to respond.

Elnham was right — pushing his legs to perform was a bad, agonizing mistake. Part of him hoped he hadn’t ruined his legs beyond the ability to walk. Mostly he screamed and leaked tears from his eyes.

The pain maliciously whispered to Al, ‘you’ve done enough damage this time to be wheelchair bound forever.’

He wanted to scream in defiance and denial, but those were lost to the cries of pain.

A hand touched Al’s back, and the pain faded.

Noble Master Roar gave a pleased grunt. “Never, has my training been called into question before the disciple stood before me.” Instead of the angry tirade Al expected, Noble Master Roar’s voice was gentle almost musing. “Thou needs a lot of training, pup — if thou art to fulfill the duties of the Paladin of the Realm. But thou has a solid beginning. Better than most, although not all, of my students when they first arrive.” It gave Al a grin. “Thou would give many a prince a good fight. Mayhap cost a few their desired victory.”

Al curled into a ball of pain and misery.

“Creosote,” Noble Master Roar finally announced.

Al frowned and tracked his face toward the sound. “Creosote?” He worked to concentrate on the sounds instead of the burning inside him.

“Yes. When was the last time you used your legs?”

“Eighteen months ago.”

“If fires burn continuously and burn hot, chimneys remain clean. But short burn, cool, short burn, cool cycled intermittently allows vaporized oils and alcohols to layer the chimney’s walls becoming a tar-like substance. Once a hot fire starts, the creosote ignites. Dangerous.” His Noble Master shook its head. “Ch’i can be like that. Cold ch’i crystalizes into tiny grains. Volatile. Your sudden use of ch’i caused the creosote in your meridians to start burning. Painful. Deadly.”

Al grimaced as the fiery pain reached into his hips. “I thought burning ch’i was a good thing.”

His Noble Master shrugged. “Burning wood for warmth can be good or bad — even in winter.”

Al stared at him. “How?”

“Warm air rises. Cold air flows across the ground to replace it. Can be deadly.”

“Wind chill,” Al whispered through clenched teeth.

“Yes.”

“How do we fix me?”

Noble Master Roar shook his head. “Painfully. While creosote can be scraped off the chimney walls, sometimes it is better to ignite the creosote, watch the fire closely, put out the fire, and repeat until the chimney is safe to use again.

“With ch’i, we do much the same. Ignite the ch’i creosote, let it burn for a time, put out the fire, heal the physical damage, and repeat as needed. The question is, how long can thee stand to suffer?”

Al shuddered — jarring the burning meridians running through his legs. “The pain —” he inhaled sharply “— gets worse?”

“The longer the ch’i fire rages, the more painful the flames will be. And the more damage will be done to your physical body.”

Already the burning had surrounded his groin, and the flames within his earth, metal, and water meridians licked up his abdomen and back.

He just nodded and concentrated on his breathing — in for three, hold, out for three.

Despite the increasing pain, he reached for the pain resistance skill which Noble Master Radimael had given him. Slowly he wrapped himself within a cloak of deep meditation slipping deeper into an internal mental fortress. He sealed the gates against the assaulting horde of pain.

And just breathed.

An explosion rocked the fortress as the twin lower jiao were consumed by the burning ch’i creosote in his water meridians.

Crenelations shook and crumbled.

Al stared up into the night sky over the fortress for a long moment.

If he could stabilize the rest of his body, the fires could rage longer and clean out more of the crystalized ch’i.

At the same time, he reminded himself, this is just a game.

He smiled — that meant this would work.

Al quickly sat in lotus position beneath the stars and surrounded by the fortress protecting him from the ch’i fires consuming his meridians.

Breathing in through his belly button, he focused on the energy flowing through muladrara, the lowest of the chakras.

The red gem-like structure had flames raging all around, but it remained cool beneath his perception.

Drawing upon the prana there he tugged it upward to svadhisthana. Then he exhaled and pushed the prana back down synchronizing the flow back and forth between the two chakras — pulling power up as he inhaled and pushing it down as he exhaled.

Svadhisthana was also surrounded by the ch’i fires. And as he breathed, both chakras began to shudder under the assault.

He breathed deeper and pushed the prana flow higher until in connected to nabhi-manipura — the chakra currently acting like a frying pan with ch’i flames licking its sides.

After a few breaths, the cycling prana stabilized his lower three chakras.

He took in another breath to push the prana higher, but the ch’i creosote in the bottom of his prime meridian exploded.

Muladrara rocked violently sending shockwaves upward threatening to cause the entire tower of chakras to collapse.

Walls of the fortress about him crumbled. Shafts of pain stabbed him.

Flames raced up the prime meridian squeezing mulahrara attempting to crack and shatter the chakra.

Al concentrated on just getting his lungs to expand and contract. Once he started breathing again, he studied muladrara.

The chakra kept bouncing and twisting and tumbling in the torrent of currents caused by the ch’i fire; it was no longer suitable to use as a base for the chakra tower.

But the topmost chakra connected to the universe.

He looked up at sahasrara — the violet chakra which looked more like an aura or halo than a gem.

The instability of the tower had yet to reach it.

If he could draw prana down, then perhaps the whole would act more like a wind chime and be able to weather the ch’i fire.

He breathed in and pulled the prana up to anahata. He cycled the energy only once.

Already the flames in the prime meridian were pressing in upon svadhisthana.

Then he pushed his breath to raise the energy to vishuddhi, the chakra in his throat.

Six pious connections encircled his throat like its own spiked collar binding him to his high school’s defensive line. Tiny drops of dew sliding along white threads trickled into him and flowed along the crystal sheaths about his bones and flowed through his skin and flowed out into his armor.

He gently tugged on the threads and knotted them into a macrame lattice about the blue chakra.

One of his early teachers decided her students should learn fiber crafts for the art portion of the class. His clumsy fingers struggled with the yarn. His hands cramped holding the proper tension on the strings looped about his fingers. In the end, he despised knitting and crocheting and macrame, but he could do it — one clumsy knot, loop, and wrap at a time.

The pious threads held the chakra tower stable despite both muladrara and svadhisthana chakras bouncing about in the turbulence caused by the ch’i fires and the crushing pressure being applied to nabhi-manipura.

Following the prana flow down, Al wove the pious threads about the flow and knotted another macrame lattice about anahata.

The flames licked his heart and the green gem.

Al dove deeper into the fire weaving and knotting as he went. He crafted a lattice about svadhisthana and then about muladrara which slowed their tumbling and bouncing. But nothing allow muladrara to be stable enough to maintain the tower. So he drew in a breath and pushed upward from vishuddhi through ajna and finally past sahasrana into the universe.

The chakra tower stabilized and hummed with the flow of prana entering and leaving his body.

He allowed himself to become a bit more externally aware.

The fortress he formed to keep out the pain was nothing more than broken boulders where the walls once stood, yet somehow those wrecked walls keep the assault outside.

But the fires kept rising filling his lungs touching his throat.

Al grabbed the pious threads and wove them up to ajna and made yet another macrame lattice. Then he wove his way up to sahasrana, and …

Al stood in a forest clearing underneath the rising no-longer-quite-full moon.

The pain was something very distant, and he took in a deep unencumbered breath.

The scent of the lake and dead pine filled the air.

He spun in a circle looking at the stars, the dead pines, the objects about him, the floor of the clearing. Then he recognized the area as one of the many lakeside lots along the lake’s hundred ten mile shoreline.

A beaten down trailer with fresh tires stood in the middle of the lot. A detached weathered pallet porch with a two step stair looked out over the rippling water. Light and a broken cackle of a laugh spilled out through the trailer’s closed curtains and open windows.

The lone figure silhouetted against the glittering wave tips turned sharply toward Al. The moonlight shone upon the face — the face of Sandy Jerkins. “You,” Sandy growled then glanced at the trailer’s door. He stepped off the porch which groaned in relief. Sandy winced and looked at the door again, then he moved toward Al. “You can’t be here,” he hissed in a way he apparently hoped would be lost in the wind rustling the red needles stuck to the dead pines.

“Your ‘uncle’ is home?”

Sandy glanced over his shoulder. “He doesn’t live here.” He sighed as if defeated. “Yes.” Then his head came up, and he glared at Al. “You can walk now?” Anger overrode his sense of caution.

Al looked at how far above the ground his head was. “I had surgeries over the summer.”

Which was true, but they failed to solve his lack of walking.

Sandy glowered then nodded. “It feels good, doesn’t it? Even though they tell you not to overdo. After all, that time stuck without being able to go anywhere on your own. It feels —” his voice cracked “— freeing to be able to just walk.”

Al remembered a single time when Sandy had gone Christmas shopping in a wheelchair.

The linebacker’s anger had scorched the crowds, and any who had commented received an acid tongue lashing.

What had surprised Al was how literary the young man’s curses were.

It was as if Sandy had taken the unabridged Shakespeare, highlighted all of the insults, and then he had memorized them until he could combine them in new and interesting ways.

During that brief foray, Al had heard an extensive vocabulary — impressively vast as if Sandy had given the same treatment to the Oxford English Dictionary.

But apparently, Sandy had been on prescription pain medications for the leg in the brace because after a few minutes, Sandy had fallen asleep.

In the present night, Sandy resumed his glare. “Why are you here?”

Al caught something in the tone and made him pause. In the space of a single heartbeat, less than a second, Al considered several possibilities and discarded most of them. The question, he decided, is a search for confirmation. He narrowed his eyes. There was still too much he didn’t know about the situation.

“You called,” he said in the most gentle version of his why-are-you-being-an-idiot-this-time tone. A simple lie, a simple guess.

Sandy’s head snapped back in surprise. “You … you heard?” He looked over his shoulder to the trailer house and then the lake.

Al shook his head.

As a guess, Sandy was trying to understand the sudden and inflicted devotion which had been forged within the linebacker.

“Not heard or at least not the words,” he temporized. “It was more a feeling or a sense that you wanted me here.”

After all, Al had no real idea of how he ended up standing back on Earth in the night at Sandy’s home. His standing before Sandy might well be the result of Sandy’s prayer having drawn him here while his … other body … writhed in the Abyss while being consumed by the ch’i fires.

“I don’t … I didn’t …” Sandy stammered. “I mean, I pray with the football team — it’s required. But I don’t …” He sighed and hung his head. “… you know.”

“I’m a person. I am, more or less, the same kid you’ve tormented for the last five years.”

Sandy took in a shaky breath. “Am I supposed to apologize for that?” His voice pinched, and his face screamed in fear.

Al waved his hand in a dismissive gesture. “I don’t know. This is new to me, too. I don’t understand it. I don’t know how it works.”

“You?”

“Yes. Yes. You can call the Lodge and set up another party,” the words came out bitter. He turned as if to walk away, but mostly it was so he wasn’t staring at Sandy while he worked to staunch the tears before they started. Some times the pain was hot and angry. Other times the pain was cold and wet and sad.

“No,” Sandy said. “I won’t. I wanted to know, to have you tell me what you did, to have you explain what is happening.” He kicked a rock which went bouncing down the lot toward the lake. “But if you don’t know, what does that mean for me? For us?”

“Someone said that I accepted your sacrifice.”

“What does that mean?”

Al turned back to Sandy and shook his head. “Do you feel something is missing?”

“Yes.” Sandy turned to stare at the trailer. “It’s like a big ugly weight has been lifted off me. Tonight is the first …” He shook his head. “You don’t know what … You don’t know.”

“I kind of do. I saw a lot of what happened inside your brain.”

“So, you picked me because you felt sorry for me?”

Al stepped up beside Sandy. “No. I chose you because you were the worst of my tormentors.”

Sandy swallowed. “So, this isn’t a good thing. You hate me. This is your way of getting even.”

“No. Yes. No.” Al turned and walked toward the lake giving the trailer a wide berth. “Yes, I hate you, but I don’t think this whatever works that way. But just as you can ask me to be here, I can ask you to do things … and even if I don’t, you do things … like the lunch room …”

“Something forced us to do those things. We couldn’t not do them.” Sandy was silent for a moment, then asked, “What are we to you? Some sort of con slaves?”

Al glanced up at the linebacker and shook his head. “No, this isn’t covered under the slavery exception of the thirteenth amendment. And the con slaves we bought are … because of Alex. He bought his friends’ prison sentences, and then the nuns got involved.

“What do nuns have to do with con slaves?”

“Stop, please,” Al whined. “You want to know my biggest mistake? Telling Alex about some of the anti-slavery forces scattered throughout history. Something broke inside him. In the morning he drives off to the convent and convinces the nuns to buy whole lots of con slaves. We own six. The rest are leased from the nuns.”

Sandy’s body shook, and his words hissed with anger, “How does buying con slaves work to stop slavery?”

Al shook his head. “Despite hating you, I’m not going to say, and you are not going to go looking for answers. When you figure it out, you’ll be part of the conspiracy. And that would be a shitty thing to do to my assholes.”

Sandy flinched and looked away. “Fine.” Then he blew off a breath. “You found out about the assholes comment.”

Al shrugged. “I was trying to understand what I am to you. I didn’t figure it out, so?”

“I don’t know.” Sandy shook his head. “It’s not like you are a coach or my father or my uncle or a teacher. I don’t have a lot of experience for comparison.”

Al frowned and nodded. “But I’m some sort of authority figure to you.”

Sandy stared up at the stars showing through the dead trees. “Yeah. I guess. You came with a title, but I don’t understand it. I looked it up — paladin — one of the Peers of Charlemagne’s court — something akin to a Knight of the Round Table, I guess. Equally fictitious, and one is probably based on the stories of the other. But you are supposed to represent valor, and you’re supposed to fight with bravery and chivalry. More than a soldier or a sheriff.

“But if I’m to be your asshole, what does that mean for me?” He looked back down at the trail before them and put out a hand in front of Al. “It gets steep there. You don’t want to set your therapy back by trying it.”

Al nodded and turned back. “So, why did you call for me?”

Sandy walked in silence, his jaw working between little shakes of his head.

“Just say it,” Al prompted.

Sandy looked down at him. “I want it to end. My uncle, my brothers, me. I can’t do it. I need you to. But, I need you to do it in the right way. If this is a punishment, take my uncle’s sacrifice. If this is some strange ... intervention … to make me a better person …” he shook his head “… I guess Whitney needs to be set back on the right path. Leslie is going wrong. But there should be hope for Meredith and Angel … and maybe Lynn. But, please, don’t do it to punish them. Hell, I’m not even sure my uncle deserves to be punished. It just … It just needs to stop.”