The rotating sphere of the mindshield generator loomed in front of Aaron. This is risky. But less final than suicide. Mental damage takes time. I should have a buffer.

He pondered the problem before settling on an approach. I'll slowly escalate and see what it gets me. Hunger will only become an issue in a day or two.

His jaw tensed. However long I've already been here?

He stared at the sphere and screamed. Vibrations spread across its black shell—fuzzy, erratic. Then, by will alone, he held the resonance, watching it hum with power.

Then he frowned.

Vibrations. I can transmit words. But until now, I subvocalized.

He closed his eyes and imagined the word "help." He said it out loud, then repeated it. Played with the sound until he could feel it and know it like a lover. His eyes shot open. He looked at the sphere.

Then he spoke, and infused his will into the magnetic field.

"HELP! HELP! HELP!"

The tone filled the space without any source. His world was the word, and the word was his world, because he willed it so. Aaron gave a genuine smile for the first time in a long while. This is what magic should be about.

The process continued. After some time, Aaron sat down and began rewriting the partially dissolved journals. Just by looking at the pages, he was already beyond the need for tools. This would be fun if it wasn't so dire.

After he had restored the book, he got up.

"Quetzy?"

The darkness remained silent apart from his call for help. Okay. On to the second stage.

He got on his knees and looked at the bottom of the rotating sphere. With a quick effort of will, he opened a hole, which allowed him to see the icy superconductive ring inside. Next, he willed the sphere to float up, several steps over his head. He reached out his hand.

Don't be blinded again, idiot.

He willed his eyes to adapt—to avoid the embarrassing incident from last time. Electrical charge. His intention let electricity crackle between his fingers. Then he unleashed it. A bright torrent of thunderous electricity poured into the sphere, into the superconducting magnet and charged it. Ghostly fingers of lightning danced between the magnet and its shell.

The ice had long since turned to vapor, but the vacuum kept it intact, and the superconductor near absolute zero. He lowered his arm, nodded, and exhaled. His head was floating up as if in water, attached to the enormous electric charge above him.

He sensed the magnetic field. Before, it had been an ephemeral silk cloth that slid around him. Now it was a maelstrom of syrup. Aaron let his awareness drift. Far, far out in the void—many thoughts of step from him—he found the ephemeral silk again.

Okay. Let's try it again.

He imagined the word, and it became all-encompassing.

"HELP! HELP! HELP!"

But again, after a long run of writing and waiting, nothing changed. No response. No movement. No rescue. Nothing. Aaron exhaled and let go of the sphere, returning to the cold world of stone and blood. He grimaced and left his dreamgarden. He took the five syringes out of the satchel.

I don't have any clue how many work. But more is better, right?

He prepared one of the syringes and, with a relaxing exhale, pushed it into the side of his thigh. A numbness flooded his body. And he began bounding with energy.

I could run a marathon. Fuck does this feel good. The pain is gone.

Grinning, Aaron stabbed in the second. Then the third. Breath ragged, body alight, he poured in the rest. His mind slipped—giddy, unmoored. This feels like I am floating! Yay!

His body buzzed with numb delight, and his mind escaped his rationality. The floor felt like velvet. The world unraveled into color and static. But then the energy came back, and he began playing with the stretch. The way the blue field pulsed was infinitely intriguing.

He dropped the satchel.

"What did I want to do? Why are my eyes so funny? Where am I?" He giggled before sadness hit him like a brick wall. He sat down and pondered, energetically stroking his chin. Because that is what you do when you ponder.

Help. A frown crawled onto his face. I was crying for help. Why? He remembered a different place. I want to get up and run. But…

Aaron drifted off. Into a cold place that was oddly comforting. Memories emerged like drowned corpses. The chimp. The Watcher. The mana potions.

All five. Of course they had side effects. Figures.

He fell to the swirling syrup of his mindshield. And made the world vibrate with the word again as soon as he landed.

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"HELP!"

The world rang like a titanic bell. Air rippled. Aaron covered his ears.

Yeah. Overkill.

He held his hand up, and again the light jumped up. The air—not the magnetic field—seemed to claw at him like a pack of hyenas. He was buffeted and shifted about. But the dreamgarden's irreality reverberated with his mind.

"HELP! HELP! HELP!"

Aaron's thoughts wound to a dim, thin thread.

It works. Good. If it isn't enough, I have to try the final option. I don't want to do that.

His thoughts spiraled—disconnected, pointless, looping back on themselves. Why is it getting darker?

Blackness closed in on his vision from all sides. The feature-shimmering void and even the glinting diamond pillar lost all color. The tunnel closed in ever further until the darkness welcomed him like a long-lost brother.

Everything went still. Then movement—a softness beneath him that wasn't stone, and warmth crawling over his skin like silk.

Fabric. I'm lying on fabric.

He sank deep into it as the darkness returned.

An indeterminate amount of time later, word fragments drifted toward him like the flotsam of a shipwreck.

"...Sage… Blood… Overdose… Eyes… Torture—"

Something cold gripped around his insides. Torture? No no no no! Not happening!

He tried to move his body, but it hurt. Someone was roasting all his muscles in lava. A scream gurgled up his throat, but no sound emerged.

I can't move the muscles in my jaw. Fuck fuck fuck!

Then an urgent voice cut through the morass of panic. "Awake… asleep again."

Aaron felt a hand touch his forehead. He tried to struggle, but could literally not move a muscle. Only burning pain greeted him. He drew distant. From the pain. From himself.

The darkness embraced him again.

His eyelids fluttered open, but blinding light forced them shut again.

My eyes? I was blind, right?

Aaron kept the eyes closed, enjoying the dark red, almost black inside of his eyelids. He lay in a soft bed, under a silken blanket. Experimentally, he tensed the injured arm's biceps.

No burning pain. No numb aftereffects. It just felt normal. He scanned his body—but all the wounds were gone. As if they had never even existed.

Aaron leaned back into the pillow.

I made it out. I should feel relieved. But the Watcher's judgment still pisses me off.

Then he remembered and his breath caught. 'Quetzy?'

Aaron heard a distant purr, and the familiar warmth of Quet

zy's embrace spread through his chest. He let out a huge sigh.

Seems like I got out of there intact. Why do my days keep escalating like this? Chosen One is a terrible job, and my employer is an A-grade asshole. I will get back at you, don't worry, you fucker.

A calm voice reached him.

"You are safe here. If you can, please try to open your eyes as much as possible, so they can adapt to the light."

Aaron furrowed his brow and complied. I know that voice. From where?

Aaron tried to speak, but his hoarse throat refused to comply with anything more complex than a violent cough. Fucking great.

"I'm sorry—do have a drink."

Aaron greedily sucked from the bottle that was held to his lips. The barely tolerable slit of light dimmed slightly.

"Th—thanks," Aaron rasped with the voice of an ancient mummy. "What happened? Where am I?"

A familiar sardonic voice made itself heard for the first time. "We are in an estate belonging to my good friend—also known as the Knowing Sage."

Relief mixed with anxiety. The Mindmage and the Knowing Sage?

The Sage spoke up, his voice still calm and kind, but now it alarmed something deep within Aaron.

"After your trick with the mindshield, we got an indication of where you were. Following that, I was able to divine the way to you."

The Mindmage cleared his throat. "Before we proceed, there is a question of vital import. What exactly did Magister Charos do to you? Be honest, please. The incident has already caused political uproar, and there were instances of factional and cabalistic violence."

Aaron managed to open his eyes a bit further and was finally able to make out bright and darker regions. He smiled and explained what had happened—the experiment, the mutated chimpanzee, his meeting with the Watcher.

Only Quetzy was left out.

Aaron fell silent, trying to process the weight of what he'd just said. Then the Mind Mage cut through the quiet like a scalpel. "Fists Edict! You need to tell me what the Watcher wants. The issue with slavery the gods care about? It has nothing to do with abolitionism. Superiority and servitude are perfectly natural."

The Knowing Sage snorted. "We can leave philosophy out of this. The issue is that the Purists are purging mageborn children from the lower classes in all of the leagues except the League of Grain."

Aaron's eyebrows shot up, and he yelped in pain from the light. "They're doing what!? Why is no one stopping them?"

The Mindmage replied, anger obvious beneath his words. "Because it serves social stability. Our republics require balance, and this is the compromise the Purists have established with most other groups."

Aaron heard the sound of glass shattering and the Mindmage cursed. "Mother's mercy, my blood boils each time I think of this despicable compromise. Sorry about your glass, Sage."

Aaron was frozen with anger and shook. Ethnic cleansing. Of children. Right under my nose. And for no other reason than to not rock the political boat. Fuck.

The Knowing Sage tisked. "Yet that doesn't justify the tyranny you seek to install over all of us. The arbitrary power of a tyrant is always less wise than that of a council of the worthy."

"Do you think Aaron would become a deranged tyrant? His personality—you tested so shamelessly—tells you he is, if anything, too prone to question himself."

"Our civilization is built on the rejection of tyranny. You would destroy what makes us us to preserve us."

"Stop this," Aaron hissed at the two powerful men. "They are murdering children. That has to stop. But we don't need to establish a dictatorship in order to do any kind of reform. There are softer ways."

No one spoke. Aaron's pulse pounded in his ears. His mind flitted between fury, horror, and the chill logic of leverage. Civil war is bad. But this sounds like a problem of levers, not of monsters.

Then the Knowing Sage interrupted his musings. "So what do you suggest, Champion?"

Aaron pressed his lips together and steeled his resolve. It stinks of tyranny. But compared to quiet genocide? Tyranny might be mercy.

"I would need more information, so this is a working proposal. Civil war is bad. But the purge is worse. We need leverage. Not force. Leverage. The leaders are likely too powerful. So go after their families. Take hostages under the aegis of a sage and treat them as guests. Use that to reform the system."

The Knowing Sage began laughing. "And you do not think he could become a tyrant? Boy, you should read up on the origin of the Argo in the Age of Monarchs. The tyrants of old took in the elites' children for this very reason."

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