"Disciple Aamon, the time is right."
The man named Aamon was tall and spindly, like someone who had gone through a ritual to turn themselves into a skeleton but stopped halfway. Under his hood was the face of an old man. His features had long since succumbed to age but his eyes were clear and filled with a cold intelligence. He withdrew from his robes a vial of blood.
It was small, only large enough to contain a few milliliters of blood. Despite its small volume, it was leagues and bounds the most precious thing he owned. Inside it contained the blood of the enigmatic being known as the Dragon Emperor.
Reality seemed to bend around its presence.
He didn't know how Corpus of the Abyss and Zurrernon had gotten a hold of it and kept it preserved over the centuries, all he knew was that it was genuine. It was as red as the day he had stolen it from that damnable night lich and fled the cult.
"Isaq, ready the chalk." Aamon called to one of the figures.
"Already on it, Disciple."
The cultist named Isaq lowered a mortar filled with a fine, powdery chalk onto the ground at Aamon's feet. The chalk was made from the ground up bones of countless people, whose souls were bound to it through necromantic magic.
Aamon willed his hands to stay steady as undid the stopper of the precious vial. Everything had been calculated to the amount of blood they had to within a razor's margain. If a single drop was wasted the ritual would surely fail.
He swallowed a dry and dusty bubble of air down his old throat. The stopper of the vial came loose. He resisted the urge to sniff it as even the fumes were priceless.
He lowered it to the mortar and tipped it over. The blood spilled out like syrup into the mortar. The walls of the vial were enchanted so that no substance could stick to it and go to waste, the same was true with the mortar and the pestle.
"Isaq, carefully now."
As much as Aamon did not wish to allow someone else to handle the blood, he did not trust his shakey old hands to mix it without waste.
Isaq carefully mixed the blood and chalk material into a pinkish paste. "Is this good?" He asked.
"No, not yet, a little more."
Isaq continued to mix a minute longer.
"Okay, now." Aamon said. "It's ready. Get the tracers. Trace the circle."
He called to the rest of the figures around the room. "Everyone, help too. We must go quickly, before the blood separates from the chalk."
The figures took turns dipping thin metal needle-like tools into the mortar, collecting small amounts of the paste at the end of the tools.
"Careful, please."
They then returned to the center of the room and began to trace the faint outline of a pattern on the ground with the paste. They moved back and forth between the mortar and the pattern until it was complete.
"Check that all is connected. Triple check." Aamon said. "We have only one attempt."
He moved along the concentric circles and spirals to make certain that everything was perfect. This ritual was a culmination of decades — no, centuries — of magical and historical research and he would not allow it to fail.
"It looks set, take your places everyone."
The cultists spread out around the perimeter of the circle.
"Now then…" Aamon cleared his throat.
"Every 100 years, this world becomes fit to accept data from beyond. We will cast our net into the heavens, pull forth the deepest secrets of this world, and remake it in our image. Are you ready?"
"Yes!" They replied in unison.
"Then let us begin." He spoke a phrase in the language of the ancient dragon lords. It was a language that predated the common, auto translated language that suffused the world upon the arrival of the six great gods. The other cultists responded in kind.
"Keep going," He said.
Not many people knew of the auto translation effect that translated spoken language, afterall, if it was all you knew growing up, how would you ever find out that different spoken languages existed? But records from beyond 600 years ago confirmed that such an effect was in place.
The cultists continued to repeat the phrase in the dragon language. For one reason or another, the draconic language known only to the true dragon lords seemed to be an exception to this auto translation, and moreover, seemed to hold a mysterious power that could be harnessed to better control wild magic adjacent phenomenon.
"Infuse mana… now!"
At his command, the intricate patterns on the ground began to glow red. The pink lines of paste detached from the ground with the sound static and the ripping of velcro. The floating lines of paste curled inward on themselves, wrapping and warping in choreographed movements.
"It's working, Disciple Aamon!" One of the cultists said.
They had not succeeded yet, but Aamon could not suppress his smile.
Under normal circumstances, it would be impossible for someone like him to use wild magic. Yet here they were, tapping into the original magics of the world.
Through exploiting loopholes and conducting countless experiments, he had found a way to hijack the two systems, Tiered and Wild Magic. Even after 600 years, the two systems had yet to fully merge, leaving seams between the two that were deep enough to grip and unravel.
This ritual required eliminating a piece of a true dragon lord from existence, along with the souls of countless people, but that was a small price to pay for what they could potentially gain. If they could acquire even a tenth of the knowledge or power of a being like one of the six great gods or greed kings, it would have all been worth it.
The twisting lines of paste converged on a center point and then slipped past one another— literally phasing through each other as though they had entered another plane of existence.
As a practiced necromancer Aamon could feel a rhythmic beating in his heart and felt like he could almost see it; an ethereal rope extending from each of the lines of paste, pulled by thousands of human hands from thousands of human souls, rhythmically pulling on the rope in response to the draconic chanting like a ghostly game of tug of war.
As the lines diverged a black void appeared between them, as though a new universe was being unzipped in the space between them.
"We can't hold this much longer Disciple!" A cultist cried.
He saw a cultist fall over dead as his soul slipped from his body with a hiss. This was a potential risk they had calculated for. It was within their acceptable tolerance threshold, but still, Aamon couldn't help but worry.
There were 14 of them in total: 10 of them were second tier magic casters, and 4 of them were third tier magic casters. And yet all of them combined could only handle a few drops of blood for only a minute despite being backed by thousands of human souls.
He had considered that the blood of the Dragon Emperor would be harder to control than that of his children's, but he did not think it would be that much more difficult.
「Acid Splash」 Aamon launched a pool of acid at the cultist's body whose soul had slipped out. This was standard procedure. Due to the potent negative energy being controlled by their ritual, there was a good chance of the body turning into an undead and disrupting the other cultist's concentration.
He calmed himself as he watched the body dissolve. Rushing the extraction would be the stupidest thing to do in this situation. He had faith in his subordinates to pull through and waited for his moment.
The black void in the center of the room continued to unzip. Slowly, slowly…
The hole in reality reached about one meter in diameter. The optimal size.
"Aamon! Now-!"
「Over Magic: Astral Projection Modified」 Aamon had already cast his spell.
It was normally a sixth tier divination spell that could alter one's point of view to a point in space, allowing them to cast certain psychic type spells from that point, and then allow one to physically travel there. But Aamon could only cast up to the fourth tier spells. Additionally, he reasoned that physical transfer through this void would be suicidal.
Therefore, he spent a great deal of time dissecting the spell formation into its barest elements and reconstructing it into a new spell so that it merely shifted his mind's perspective. His new spell was fifth tier, so using the 「Over Magic」 meta magic, he would be able to cast it with the cost of nearly all of his mana. A trivial price to pay in comparison to what they might obtain.
A wispy tendril extended from his body and plunged into the void.
He felt his mind cross into a place that separated realities.
He found itself floating in a weightless void, tethered to the only world he ever knew by a thin silvery cord.
He activated his talent. 「Visions of Apocrypha」
The talent allowed him to see written information as though it were a luminous aura. For example, a small pamphlet about cooking would appear as a dull glow, whilst a large tome detailing the methods for casting numerous spells would appear as bright as a raging bonfire. The color and shape of the light he saw would also indicate certain things about what the information contained.
This talent had defined the course of his life. He was a natural researcher because of it, easily able to dive though scattered fragments of lore and ancient libraries to search for what he needed.
Upon activating his talent, his mind was flooded with colors and shapes beyond his imagination. Bright lights and patterns appeared around him like constellations in the night sky.
He delighted in his old heart, the risks he had taken to get here had all been worth it. His theories had been proven true.
"Data."
It was a difficult to translate word that came from the oldest writings in the Slane Theocracy. A word supposedly taken directly from the mouths of the gods themselves. It was something whose meaning was very close to "information" or "knowledge", but not exactly.
It was Aamon's theory that when the great gods arrived that they did not just introduce tier magic, but the underlying "Data" that supported its structure, and by which the laws of the world were re-sculpted.
Those were the lights that Aamon was certain he was viewing now. He was viewing "Data" , the very fabric of their reality. He looked behind him. His own world appeared as just a dimly lit sphere compared to the stars around him.
This must be what the Dragon Emperor had seen all those centuries ago.
He couldn't afford the time to just bask in his accomplishment.
"Yggdrasil."
That was also a word that appeared in the ancient texts. It was the world of the six great gods. He knew the color, shape, and brightness that information containing that word made in his 「Visions of Apocrypha」, so even if he couldn't make sense of the constellations around him pertaining to countless realities, he could at least find Yggdrasil.
It did not take long to find. There was afterall, a great constellation filling his field of vision. He could make out the shape of a vast tree reaching out and caressing the world he came from. He thought that the fact that Yggdrasil seemed to be connected to his world was the result of the Dragon Emperor's meddling.
Aamon and his group were just mere humans utilizing a single vial of that dragon's blood along with a few thousand souls they had collected over the years. They certainly could not do something as grand as connecting worlds as the Dragons Emperor had, where just the aftershocks of that initial connection brought along gods and entire cities.
All Aamon intended to do was take something small and dense from that place.
As he peered at the individual points of light making up this constellation he saw that they were not actually individual points but clusters made of many lights. And as he peered even longer he saw that even those lights were made of more clusters, and that those clusters were made of even more clusters. The information coming into view was so dense that even just a single leaf of that tree would contain as much information as every library in the world.
He considered casting his 「Psychic Net」 now on the nearest cluster of lights he could see and dragging it back with him. But if he did that, that would be the last of his mana and the end of this once in a lifetime journey.
He looked behind him once more.
The hole he had entered from was shrinking, but slower than he initially thought. Was it because they had miscalculated, or was it because this void distorted his sense of time? Regardless, words of praise for his subordinates flooded his heart. Many of them were assuredly perishing from over exertion at this very moment to give him this precious time.
He swore not to let them down by just taking the first thing he saw and leaving. He needed to be greedy for their sake.
「Visions of Apocrypha」. Now acclimated to the light, he opened his eyes wider than before, taking in whatever light he could. Like a long exposure camera shot, a secondary structure around the tree slowly brightened into view.
He came to a sudden realization. There was something even bigger than the great tree. In fact, Yggrdasil seemed to be just a limb distending out of something much larger.
Impossible
Was a thought that crossed his mind. The divine tree of Yggdrasil was already a world possessing data orders of magnitude more dense than his own, yet even Yggdrasil appeared to be just a mere speck compared to the data of whatever world it was growing out of.
Whatever that world was, it had countless Yggdrasil-sized worlds simply bursting from it— a super structure of constellations.
He felt the hole behind him growing smaller. He would not have adequate time to investigate further.
He pondered briefly why the Dragon Emperor had chosen to incorporate data from Yggdrasil rather than data from this super structure. Was it too dangerous? Was it not compatible somehow? He did not know.
But, acting cowardly in this historic moment right now would feel like an insult to every researcher, every true adventurer, and any and all who sought to conquer the unknown
With the last bit of time he had left, he willed his astrally projected self to dive into the superstructure beyond Yggdrasil. The points of light around him blurred into horizontal lines as he moved in an instant.
He came to a stop just within the superstructure and looked around frantically at the myriad points of light, searching for whatever shown brightest.
The tether connecting him to his own world tightened. With no time to decide he cast his spell at the brightest thing he currently saw within range. 「Psychic Net」
A wave of psychic energy emitted from his forehead and enclosed on the point of light before him. There was a terribly awkward feeling of his mind brushing against something that was utterly alien. Whatever that light represented, it felt infinitely larger than him, as though it occupied a strictly higher dimension.
He interpreted this as himself being but a two-dimensional painting and this thing within his net was a three-dimensional sculpture. Whatever he was connecting with, his mind could only grasp the concept of the paint that covered it.
The tether began to pull him back towards his world. Once more, the lights around him blurred into horizontal lines as he moved at blinding speeds. His 「Psychic net」 began to tear and slip as though the paint was sloughing off whatever it was he was holding onto. But Aamon was determined to hold on to the data and maintained his grip.
He passed through the hole back to his own world.
Instantly, he was back in his physical body. And with his own flesh and blood eyes he saw the void before him close with a blinding flash of light. His mind recoiled as his 「Psychic Net」 whipped back into his skull.
He was certain they had got something. His mood soared,
And for just a brief moment, he felt a chill. It was just a tiny thought, barely noticeable beneath his ecstasy at their success. But he felt he had just irreversibly contaminated all of reality— and that he had doomed them all.
The feeling passed.
The flash of light dimmed from his eyes and he heard the cultists' exhausted cries.
The cultists who had managed to remain standing throughout the entire ritual collapsed to their knees.
"We did it….We did it, disciple Aamon."
Aamon stared at the object that his net had supposedly pulled from the realm beyond realms.
"No, this isn't right. Something is wrong."
Laying in the center of the circle was a peacefully sleeping human man. The cultists wiped the light from their eyes and looked at the man with confusion.
"I-It was supposed to be a concentrated source of data." Aamon stuttured. "A grimoire, a tome. A concentrated bank of knowledge of some kind, not a person. That's what it looked like to my 「Visions of Apocrypha」. My talent only reacts to written information. People should not show up on it."
Worried glances were being exchanged amongst the cultists. "Could it be a god?"
Aamon cautiously approached the mysterious man sleeping in the center of the room. He examined him closely for clues. Anything that could give them a hint about what he was.
The man looked to be in his late forties. His features were sharp and well defined with a wolf-like appearance. His nose and chin looked to be chiseled from stone and they came to sharp points, and his cheeks were flat and smooth. He had short hair that would've been some kind of umber had not already started to gray.
Aamon passed his hand over him, afraid to touch him. "I don't understand."
"What is it, disciple Aamon?"
He passed his hand over him several more times. "He just seems like an ordinary human."
"Is it possible we did something wrong and caught someone from a random village somewhere? Maybe we overshot and grabbed something from this world?"
Aamon scratched his chin, "No, no. Surely not." He refused to believe that their ritual had failed. He had just been on a journey through the very fabric of reality. There was simply no way that was a mere hallucination. There was simply no way that the creature he was looking at was of this world.
They looked at the man's alien clothing. He was wearing a t-shirt and sweatpants. And around his wrist was a magnetic bracelet.
"I've never seen clothes like this before."
The cultists looked amongst each other and to Aamon for guidance on what they should do next. "What do we do?"
Aamon scratched his head in confusion. "Let me… Let me try something."
「Visions of Apocrypha」
He suddenly cried in pain as his field of vision flooded with light. He immediately turned off his talent. "So dense!"
"But how?" One of the cultists asked. "I thought your eyes only worked on books."
Aamon closed one eye and squinted, looking through a thin partition in his fingers at the man. 「Visions of Apocrypha」. Once more, the man emitted bright light, but now he could see that it was emitting not from the man as a whole, but from a point on his chest.
"S-Search him! Immediately!" Aamon sputtered. He turned off his talent, his eyes glowing with a wild anticipation.
Aamon did not wait for the other cultists to move despite just giving them an order and immediately began rummaging through the man's clothing.
"Are you sure it's alright to touch him?" The cultists asked.
"F-Found it! I found it!"
Aamon's hands quivered. He slowly pulled up a necklace from beneath the man's shirt. Attached at the end of it was a strange looking object.
"This is it. This is what my eyes were reacting to."
"What is that thing"
"I don't… I don't know. Someone. Help me get this off him."
One of the cultists carefully raised the man's head off the ground so that Aamon could remove the necklace.
"Careful. Don't wake him."
They delicately extricated the necklace.
"Light. Someone give me a light."
One of the cultists cast a spell and a pale blue light appeared over head. Aamon held up the object to it and turned it around in the light.
The object attached to the end of the necklace was a transparent, oblong prism no larger than Aamon's thumb with a small metal distention at the end. The outside was made of a solid, transparent material, but the material felt too soft in his hands to be glass. Inside of it was a thin wafer of metal engraved with a multitude of colorful green and gold paths.
There was a set of unfamiliar characters written along its side:
WESLEY'S THUMBDRIVE DO NOT TOUCH
Aamon felt he had seen examples of a few of the characters in his research, but he could not place them. And even had he recalled where the language was from, it was unlikely that he would be able to decipher the message.
"What do you think it is?" Someone asked.
Another cultist replied. "Maybe it is one of those 'Data Crystals'."
Aamons eyes lit up at the word.
In his research into the gods, he had come across tales describing a peculiar type of item that they carried in their possession. The item in question resembled a crystal.
His 「Visions of Apocrypha」 had reacted so violently to it, so it must be true. The man must have just been pulled along as collateral while his psychic net targeted the data crystal.
Aamon's old body quaked from his ragged breathing.
"Are you okay, Disciple Aamon?" Someone asked.
Sweat rolled down his face as he stared at the little object. "Y-Yes.. I'm okay. You were right, this indeed is a Data Crystal. It doesn't match the descriptions perfectly but my 「Visions of Apocrypha」 do not lie. It is overflowing with information, with data."
From what he read, when a data crystal was used, it put the gods into a 'mode of creation'. It allowed them to create artifacts, buildings, and even people from nothing. Supposedly even the gods themselves were made from these acts of creation.
The cultists' eyes became transfixed on little, semi-transparent object.
"This was one possibility." Aamon said.
Indeed, he had considered briefly that whatever he might eventually pull from the other side would manifest as a crystal of pure data, he just simply thought it was more likely that it would manifest as a tome or grimoire.
He shakily sat down on the stone floor to stabilize himself. Sweat rolled from his face.
"Well… what are we going to do with it?" Someone asked. "Do we use it right now?"
Aamon looked back and forth between the sleeping man and the object.
The cultists began voicing their thoughts.
"-Disciple, we should use it before whoever that is wakes up."
"-What do we use it for?"
"-Do we know how powerful it is?"
Aamon raised his voice. "Quiet. Quiet! -Shut up!" Aamon shouted. "...Let me think."
The cultist quieted down and Aamon retreated into thought.
Data Crystals imbue one with the godlike power to make or empower anything, provided there is enough 'data'. It's one time use only according to accounts, but does that mean I can only use it to make one thing? Or perhaps it's like wishing and I get one wish? I don't know. I don't know if we can even determine how much 'data' is even in this thing.
Do I wish for everyone's desires directly, or is it safer just to imbue us with the power necessary to do so. Or can I even use it to affect someone that's not me. Augh! I don't know enough about this!
He dug his nails deep into his forehead in frustration. He looked at the sleeping man.
What brother Yarran just said was right. We should use it before whoever this is wakes up. We don't have time to look through our notes for answers. Okay.
"...Okay. Okay everyone. Quiet. I'm going to use it."
Events were escalating much faster than he would've ever imagined just a few minutes prior. But he figured this was as it should be. No one would ever really know what it was like to ascend into temporary god-hood until that moment actually came.
That being said, do I even know how to use it?
He held his hand high and tried activating it as he would a normal magic item. "Data crystal. Activate!" It had no effect. The crystal sat lifelessly in his hand.
"Disciple?" One of the cultists asked.
"It's not activating like a normal magic item should." Aamon said. "Someone else try."
"Wait, really?"
"Do you have any better ideas?" Aamon said.
He handed the crystal to one of the cultists and they began passing it around. As was the case with Aamon, no one seemed to be able to use it.
After all our work to get here, this is the hurdle that's going to stop us!? Because we can't activate the damn thing!?
"I have an idea." One of the cultists said.
"What is it?"
"Why don't we try opening it?"
"Opening it?" Aamon asked. "You mean physically? With our hands?"
The cultist shrugged. "I was thinking that the colorful stuff inside could be the actual "data", and the crystal around it is just there to seal it."
"Hmm…" Aamon took the crystal back from him. He examined the end of it where a small trapezoid of unprotected metal distended outwards. It did appear to be just long enough for a pair of fingers to get a good grip on it.
He pulled on it and he felt its innards wobble slightly. "You may be right, there is some give to it."
From what was written about the few accounts of gods using data crystals, the physical crystals themselves would crumble and dissolve into nothing upon use. Given that knowledge, it wasn't out of the realm of possibility that using one may simply be akin to cracking open an egg and discarding the shell.
Aamon's hands were old and no longer possessed the finger strength to grip a pen for even more than an hour at a time. He passed the crystal to one of the younger cultists. "Try pulling on that distention."
"Okay, I'll try." The cultist was visibly nervous.
He tugged at it softly. "There is a little bit of give. Not much though. Are you sure this won't break it?"
"Break it?" Aamon said.
What that cultist held in his hand was a manifestation of pure data. An artifact used as the fuel of gods.
"Mere human hands couldn't break such a thing."
The cultist steeled himself. "Okay, I'm going to try opening it."
Everyone watched in anticipation as the cultist pulled and pulled and pulled. And then…
Pop.
The innards of the crystal separated from the transparent shell and spilled onto the floor. The thin metal wafer splintered and scattered across the stones.
"Was it supposed to do that?"
Aamon activated his 「Visions of Apocrypha」.
The light he had once seen, the data, was completely gone.
…
Wesley Asimov Stockwell slowly opened his eyes. It felt like a strangely long time had passed since he went to bed. His head was groggy, like his neurons had been rearranged during his rest and were now trying to fall back into their correct positions.
Hm? What…?
He was not in his hotel room as he should've been. Instead, he found himself in a dry, compact, stone brick room. The only light source was a magical point of pale blue light that lazily wandered through the air.
Where am I? He thought.
He felt the cold, hard surface of the stone floor beneath him. His body felt strange. He felt off balance and it took great effort to sit up.
His faculties began to return. He blinked a few times.
Am I…?
He suddenly flapped his arms and patted his face a few times..
I'm not dreaming. Then why does…?
It still felt oddly like a dream to him. For a reason he could not explain to himself, he felt not entirely "whole". His body felt the same weight it always did, and the air passing through his lungs moved like normal, but for some reason they did not feel "substantive." It was a peculiar thought. Something he had not experienced before even while on hallucinogens or other drugs.
Is this what they call Jamais Vu? He quickly thought. The material world felt normal on his senses, so then why did he feel like something was different?
He noticed the characteristic smell-like sensation programmed into his neurons that served to tell him that the dendritic interfacer nanomachines in his spinal fluid had detected an error. He closed his eyes and gave a practiced mental command.
In response, the nanomachines routed their information into his optic nerves. A diagram of Stockwell's body appeared in his vision, annotated by various pieces of information.
General error?
The medical nanomachines in his body constantly monitored him for signs of abnormalities that would be present in cases of disease or injury and would display their findings on the diagram. However, apparently they did not find anything specific ailing him, only that there was a "general systems error."
Must be finally getting low.
He had a top shelf monitoring system in place, but still, it needed to be re-calibrated every six months and resupplied with fresh nanomachines every year. It had been some time since he had last refreshed his supply and he had been meaning to do it soon.
He could tell by the dimness of the projected image that his system was running low. He probably only had a week's worth of nanomachines left. He dismissed the warning and the image faded from his optic nerve.
It wasn't worth thinking about any more since the odd feeling he had was quickly fading.
He chalked it up to grogginess from sleep. Afterall, he had had a relatively low intake of amphetamine the day prior, it only made sense to him that his awareness would be a little skewed.
He opened his eyes and saw a pair of cloaked figures standing before him.
"Greetings, my name is Aamon, and this is my assistant, Isaq. We are the ones who brought you here."
And now upon that sensation fading, his demeanor flashed to surprise.
"W-Wait, what is this?" He raised his voice. "Who are you people!?" .
"It wasn't our intention to disturb you, we promise."
"...What?"
Aamon was unsure of how to best handle the strange man. In all likelihood, he was a god. They dared not take an aggressive action towards him.
Aamon took a deep breath and was half relieved at the man's confused response. On the surface, it seemed to him that the person they had just summoned was just a simple human. They could still very well be a god, just not possessing the omniscient knowledge of one.
Stockwell's eyes seemed to fall on the pale blue light for some reason despite the robed figures in front of him being the immediate threat.
What the hell is going on here?
"As I said, my name is Aamon. We are the ones who grabbed you from wherever you were beforehand. Mistakenly, I must reiterate. But while you are here, we would very much appreciate it if you could answer some of our questions. Could I ask your name?"
Stockwell fell silent as he scanned the room.
Closed stone room. Who the hell makes a room with stones? An antique building? The air is clean so it must have modern ventilation- Wait is this a kidnapping? How did they break into the hotel? They speak English with an American accent which is strange for Neo Kyoto. No…
A sudden realization came over him.
This is a prank of some kind! It has to be. If this was a kidnapping they would've tied me up. And who wears creepy cult robes and says "we are the ones who brought you here" like that? They must be filming this to see my reaction— What even is that light? An optical illusion?
"Hello?" Aamon asked.
Just be cool.
"Oh come on, what is?" He said with a smirk. "This has to be some kind of prank. I'm right, aren't I? There's got to be a camera hidden in one of the crannies somewhere…"
He trailed off when he noticed the genuine confusion on Aamon's face.
"It's alright, you can come clean." Stockwell said.
Aamon and Isaq exchanged glances.
"No, sir." Aamon said. "I should reiterate. We brought you here. You are currently in the underground crypt we're using as a base and there are many, many questions we'd like you to answer. Firstly, what is your name? What do we call you?"
…sticking to character.
"You know who I am." He said it with sincerity, and with a tone that conveyed that he wasn't very amused.
"What?" Aamon said confusedly.
"Afterall, if this was a kidnapping of some kind, my security detail would already be on their way. I'm sure you have more important things to worry about."
Isaq shifted with a worried look as Aamon sat internalizing this for a second, "So who are you then?"
"Wesley Asimov Stockwell?" Stockwell said rhetorically.
Aamon's face showed no sign of recognition.
Really good actors.
"Chief executive of Elizabeth Fusion? 2122 Nobel Prize in physics? 2132 in chemistry? Second richest man in the world? Ringing any bells?"
Again, the pair did not show any signs of recognition.
"I sponsored the mission to Europa last year? There's a unit of measurement named after me? I could probably buy this whole country if I wanted to?"
Aamon squinted with contemplation. "And what country would that be?"
The question startled Stockwell. He looked around the decrepit stone room. For some reason his eyes kept glancing back to the pale blue light that was wandering through the air. "This is Japan right?"
Aamon sat deep in thought as he tried to determine the nature of the person in front of him. He decided it would be best to make him understand exactly where he is.
"You are no longer in your previous… um, plane of existence. This is the Re-Estize kingdom, and we are the people who summoned you."
"Re-Es… What plane of existence? Okay, now you're actually just fucking with me. You speak perfect English with an American accent, so you have to be from the States right?"
Aamon let a brief sign of confusion cross his face but he paid Stockwell's answer little heed. "We spent a great deal of effort in getting you here. So please cooperate with us and answer our questions."
Stockwell suddenly stopped. Seemingly independent of Aamon's questions. He had been feeling that something was very out of place since he woke up, and not just because he had been kidnapped.
That light has moved across the entire room now, if it's an optical illusion, where is it coming from?
"After you tell me how you're doing that magic trick."
"Excuse me?"
Stockwell's eyes locked on to the pale blue light, "The light. How are you doing it?"
"What do you mean? It's magic obviously."
"I just now realized that that was what had been bugging me since I woke up. It's just a single point. I can't see any solid shape in there." He looked up at the ceiling.
He then waved his arms around the point of light. No strings. So it can't be an LED on a thread.
Stockwell sneered, "Okay, but how."
Aamon stopped and looked at the man as if trying to discern if he was serious, he gave a safe answer. "Like I said, it's magic."
"Yeah you said that." Stockwell spat. "But what's the trick? How are you doing it?"
Stockwell cupped his hands over the light, causing the skin between his fingers to glow red as light passed through his flesh.
He then tried swatting the light. His hand passed right through it as though nothing were there. What the hell!?
He slowly passed the width of his forearm through the point of light floating in space. He felt no heat or charge from it. Even when he cast the room in darkness by carefully holding up his arm so that his ulna bone perfectly engulfed the light, he felt nothing.
He was at a loss.
"Okay, I give up." Stockwell reversed his aggressive tone from earlier in hopes that a more amiable tone would loosen the cultist's lips. "Tell me how it's done."
Aamon exchanged another glance with Isaq. He turned back to stockwell with genuine puzzlement.
"It's the zero tier spell, 「Candlelight」. Are you not familiar with it?"
Stockwell scowled at him. "The hell are you talking about?"
Aamon looked towards Isaq.
Isaq removed his hand from his robe and made a small circle in the air. Immediately a glowing ring of magic appeared followed by the appearance of a floating point of light identical to the first one. 「Candlelight」.
Stockwell's jaw hung open. What!?
He approached Isaq and shouted. "Do that again!"
That looked insanely realistic. Does he have a 3d projector beneath his sleeves?
Isaq shared another glace with Aamon and received a bewildered nod in return. "Do as he says."
Isaq began to cast the spell again. Stockwell focused on every detail his eyes could make out. 「Candlelight」. A third point of light appeared.
Stockwell walked around the room, viewing the lights from different angles and seeing how the lighting and shadows changed and moved. There was nothing amiss to indicate an optical illusion.
How!?
Never before had he been so bewildered by a magic trick before. Stockwell was a man of science, his mind would simply not allow him to entertain the existence of something that could not be explained by the standard model of physics.
This entire kidnapping business seemed to fall to the back of his mind as he pondered the mysterious light.
His mind ran through possibilities.
He found one.
Yes! That has to be it! Remote excitation of the photon field. It's theoretically possible with reverse quantum-analog formulators —but the range on that should only be a centimeter at most.
He looked around the room and saw no state of the art, experimental equipment.
His mind quickly settled on a different explanation for the floating points of light that still fit within his model of reality.
Wait! This is VR! But how? I don't have a neural port. Did they anesthetize me and install one? Or is this just a really good head set?
Much to the confusion of Aamon and Isaq, Stockwell appeared to make the motion of trying to pull off an imaginary helmet.
No headset. Has to be a neural port then. There is a way to test, there have got to be inconsistencies.
"What are you doing?" Aamon asked.
Stockwell ignored their question. According to his current hypothesis, the two figures were probably just computer programs or avatars. They were inconsequential.
He jumped up and down. Gravity seems right.
He did a push up. He felt a familiar strain in his arms. I have the same strength and weight as normal, did they really take the time to simulate that?
He waved his hand quickly, feeling the wind through his fingers. He then pursed his lips and let out a cheerful whistle. Aerodynamics and acoustics seem realistic —must take a hell of a lot of processing power to compute that.
Aamon and Isaq quietly watched the man perform his bizarre rituals.
After Stockwell exhausted the most obvious tests, he moved to something more extreme. All neural-nano interfacers are hard wired to bypass acute pain.
He took a deep breath and crouched down. Suddenly, he punched the solid stone floor with his bare knuckles. It wasn't with his full strength, but he put enough strength into it to be sure that it would hurt.
"-Gah!" He let out a pained cry.
Shize! I'm bleeding!
A small trail of blood trickled from his knuckles.
"What are you doing!?" Aamon cried with bewilderment.
Stockwell brought his knuckles to his nose and smelled it. It did indeed smell like blood.
No way, since when could neural interfacers ever simulate smells correctly? He licked the blood and, as he dreaded, it had the characteristic iron tang of blood. And taste… just
A confusion fell over him followed by a dark fear. This is real.. But. He looked back at the floating lights.
I must be missing something, I must be. Something is right here. It's this room! Right!? Something is wrong with this room. This is a virtual stage! Yes! This must be something like that.
His mind turned in circles.
There's a production studio right around the corner!
He ran past the cultists and out the doorway.
Aamon gasped with alarm. "W-Wait!"
Stockwell entered the hallway and saw a crowd of cultists waiting just beyond the door who appeared to have been listening in. They stared at him with bewilderment.
"Out of my way!" He shouted.
The cultists seemed hesitant to stop him and allowed Stockwell to shove them aside.
"Where's the exit!?"
"Wait!" Aamon cried out from behind him.
Stockwell ignored the voice and continued to run.
Almost immediately, he came face to face with a monster.
Rounding the corner in front of him was a pale edifice of animated human bones. An undead creature known simply as a skeleton. It wore a rusty breastplate and held in its hand a sword with half a blade.
By all rights, Stockwell should've discounted it as some kind of Halloween animatronic, but he couldn't.
Its movements had weight and he could feel a gaze on him emanating from the creature's hollow eye sockets.
What!
He skidded to a halt before the monster.
He heard Aamon's out of breath voice in the distance behind him.
"Stop him!"
「Shock!」
A thin white stream of lightning arced from the tip from one of the cultist's fingers and collided with Stockwell's back.
Stokwell felt his nerves seize as the spell took hold of his body. He collapsed to the ground in a spasm.
"Restrain him." Aamon said to the cultists. "We'll decide how to proceed from there."
That man was the culmination of Aamon's entire life's work. There was no way they could just let him walk out of the crypt. At least without knowing anything yet.
…
One of the rooms in the crypt had been hastily converted into a torture room. Various metal tools hung from brackets fastened into the stone walls. In the middle of the room stood a torture rack made of knotted wood and bearing thick leather and iron restraints.
"Answer the question, Stockwell."
Stockwell laid sprawled on the rack while Aamon held a piece of paper to his face.
How long have I been in this god forsaken crypt? Two months? Three Months? When was the last time I saw daylight? How did it turn out like this?
A torturer slowly fed a wire sideways into Stockwell's chest and blood was spurting out from around the hole where it entered. Stockwell was mumbling gibberish incoherently between his reflexive cries of pain.
The torturer stopped and looked back at Aamon, "I don't think he's listening, disciple Aamon. He's clearly insane."
Aamon's clear and calculating eyes stared intently at Stockwell's madly face. "No, he's faking it. He's still knows what we're saying."
"If you say so." The torturer resumed feeding wire into his chest.
Stockwell released another gasp of pain and continued to mumble gibberish.
Dear god, that hurts! Stop the torture already! Can't you see Mr. Aamon, I'm insane! Why won't you believe that I'm a madman!? Why won't you believe that I know nothing about magic!?
Stockwell tried recalling the series of events that had led to this situation. He remembered the earliest conversations he had with Aamon turning more and more hostile as he claimed ignorance of gods and magic. He got the notion that Aamon was desperate for something and that he thought that Stockwell was hiding something.
He had confessed to everything he knew of net positive nucleon tessellation for the type IV fusion process. It was the most valuable information he knew of. On Earth, such a discovery had made him a trillionaire.
But Aamon could not understand.
This idot can never understand!
Stockwell gritted his teeth. Everything of value he knew was gibberish to Aamon. He had told him as such but the torture did not end. Aamon simply did not believe him. The methods of interrogation grew more and more violent until they had arrived at this point here.
He felt the glowing wire creep upwards towards his chest cavity like a thin viper dripping venom into his flesh.
He had never regretted opting out of subdermal armor until now. For the elites on earth where assasination was a problem, most people opted to have ballistic shielding installed beneath their skin. This shielding itched constantly so nerve blockers needed to be installed as well, but Stockwell didn't want to take those, since studies showed that the numbing effect of the nerve blockers could have an effect on metal processes.
The only ballistic shielding Stockwell had was on his skull and spine, but that was more for stopping others from remotely accessing his nanomachines rather than for physical protection.
The only other body modifications he had were a pair of biomesh lungs and brachial filter, a coronary regulator, and an artificial kidney to replace the one he sold when he was younger— all useless for his current situation.
If he had subdermal armor and a muscle actuator, he would probably be able to bust himself out of the crypt, but alas…
Aamon's voice was void of mercy. "Answer the question Mr. Stockwell, I know you can read the language. You wouldn't have had that writing on you clothes if you couldn't."
Stockwell continued to cry in pain as the wire dug in between his ribs. Of course I can't read Japanese! I picked that shirt up at the airport gift shop because I needed pajamas! I speak English for christ's sake!
Aamon sighed for the thousandth time as he realized he wouldn't get any useful information from his prisoner today either.
"Cut the wire and heal the wound over it, throw him back in his cell and make him dig it out himself. We'll resume the questioning at the same time tomorrow."
"Understood, disciple Aamon."
Aamon left the room and the torturer started to undo the rack's restraints.
...
Stockwell was dragged through the labyrinth-esque crypt by a pair of cultists. His bare chest was covered with ugly scars and bruises. He was madly mumbling gibberish under his breath.
They think I'm a god, or a devil or something. They take me out and torture me routinely, asking me all these questions about magic. I've been trying to fake madness as best as I can, but their leader, Aamon, it's like he can see right through me. He won't stop the damn questioning, he refuses to give up.
Leading ahead of them were two points of pale blue light that floated through the damp air. He saw an animated skeleton shamble pass them.
Magic is real, there is no other explanation at this point. The lights, the skeletons, the lightning shooting from hands. I have no choice but to believe I really have been summoned into a different universe with its own set of physical laws.
It was not an easy conclusion for him to land on since it was based on information he had gained from Aamon. But until further evidence pointed to the contrary, he had no choice but oppertate under the notion that he was not on Earth.
He laughed softly in amusement recalling how Aamon presented the broken thumb drive with a desperate look on his face. Idiots thought they could access the data inside by breaking it open. It's actually almost comical.
That thumb drive was likely the most dangerous thing on Earth at the time of him being summoned. It had contained vast amounts of undisclosed scientific research conducted by Elizabeth Fusion Inc. It could easily distibalize the global energy supply if a competitor got a hold of it, or destroy what was left of the planet if a terrorist group reversed engineered a self propelled fusion device from its contents.
Stockwell did not care much about it though. The moment the inside of a QD-drive became exposed to oxygen the information was forever lost. Besides, Stockwell had more pressing matters to deal with at the moment.
They reached Stockwell's cell. It was a completely sealed stone room with a heavy iron door, the only light source was a pale blue magical light. They threw him in without any sort of care and closed the door behind him.
They never even bother to take out the wires.
He began picking the metal out of his flesh, it made squelching noises as he dug his gore covered fingers into his flesh and pulled at the head of the wire. His body had long since acclimated to the pain. He lurched as he pulled the bloody wire out of his body, it was nearly half a foot in length. He threw it into a pile of wooden and metal scraps— fragments of broken torture devices that he hand been forced to dig out of his body.
He had been faking madness as a strategy to escape torture, but now he could really feel his sanity slipping away in the moments he was left alone in the darkness of his cell.
However, it still wasn't as bad as the first couple weeks. After the repteted torture and healing, the medical nanomachines in his tissues had been depleted, causing amphetemine withdrawal symptoms to manifest.
If he could withstand the hellish experiences of going through severe withdrawal, social isolation, interrogation, physical torture, and the existential realisation of having been transported to another reality, then he could withstand anything.
His face curled into a wolfish grin as he began organizing the pieces of usable metal and wood from the broken torutre devices. This project is the only thing keeping me sane and by god I'm not going to lose my mind until see it through.
…
"Hello? Mr. Stockwell?" There was a woman's voice coming from the other side of the door.
Who is that? I guess I should go greet them.
Stockwell stood up and approached the iron door. He started to mumble. He had perfected the art of acting like a madman.
The hatch on the top of the door slid open, revealing the face of a hooded young woman. He had seen her once or twice before whilst being dragged about the crypt during the months prior, but he had not seen her close up before.
The first thing he noticed was that she wore an eye patch.
She stared back into Stockwell's blank, wayward green eyes, as if trying to discern if there was truly an inherent madness behind them.
She spoke through his mumbling. "...Anyways, I've been assigned to give you your meals from now on."
She opened the hatch at the bottom of the door and slid in a tray of textureless gruel.
Stockwell didn't respond and simply continued his mumbling.
She closed the hatch and stood back up and looked into Stockwell's eyes once more. "...Are you really insane? If you're trying to trick us I understand that. But it's okay, you don't have to act like that around me."
He continued his mumbling.
She pleaded "I want to be your friend. I'm on your side."
Stockwell stopped for a moment. It would be unwise to lower his guard before one of his captors. His immediate thought was that this woman was someone trying to play good cop, since it was clear that bad cop wasn't getting Aamon anywhere.
In fact, he was certain this was a scheme by Aamon to get him to open up.
But for months his mind had known no one but advisories, and it desperately craved some form of positive social interaction regardless of its source. He was only human after all.
It also didn't help that he found her voice oddly soothing.
"You say you want to be my friend?" He asked.
The sudden reply startled the woman. "-Ah."
She recollected herself. "Yes.
Stockwell did not waste any time in his replies. As much as he wanted a friend right now, he needed to establish what her goal was and socialize from there. "And what makes you think that I want to be your friend? You and your compatriots haven't been very nice to me."
"I-"
The woman glanced down the corridor to make sure no one was watching. Her voice became hushed.
"-I'm not one of these people."
"Not one of them? You wear those robes, and I've seen you before around this crypt."
"No, no- " She looked over her shoulder again. "I mean, yes, I'm one of them. But not one of them."
"Elaborate"
"I mean that I've been here since I was born. Aamon is my grandfather and I-…" Her voice was frustrated. "Never mind… sorry to have bothered you."
She backed away from the door.
As Stockwell watched her leave, he was disappointed.
He had hoped that she would not give up so quickly.
Perhaps I pushed back against the good cop too hard? Or was she just not prepared to meet resistance?
He wanted to talk to her more. And even more so, he saw certain use for her.
He called out to her as she left. "What's your name?"
She turned around, not expecting to have been called to. "Oh.. uh, it's Vera."
"I'm Wesley."
He did his best to smile even though she couldn't see it from her position. "You have a lovely voice, Vera. Please, feel free to talk to me whenever you want."
She paused in a manner that suggested she wanted to say something. Ultimately, she decided against it and continued down the corridor.
She disappeared around the corner.
…
Aamon addressed Vera as she entered his study. "How did it go?"
Vera shook her head in defeat. "He saw right through my act before I could even get to the first talking point."
"That's a disappointment." Aamon muttered bitterly.
Stockwell is still cogent and combative.
Aamon had noticed that from the very first day Stockwell was brought to this world that the man possessed an analytical quality to him. He could see it in his eyes that the man was an information sponge and was constantly performing calculations somewhere deep in his mind.
Even after three months…
Aamon had hoped the isolation and torture would force him into a vulnerable enough state where he would open up his heart to someone.
We needed more time to break him.
Aamon was impressed by the man's fortitude. Stockwell struck him as a man of extreme stubbornness who did not let go of grudges easily.
Aamon looked at the broken remnants of the data crystal on his desk. The "thumb drive" as Stockwell had called it.
In the three months since the man's arrival, they had achieved absolutely nothing.
All Stockwell had done was laugh hysterically when they had shown him the crystal and replied with a "no shit" when informed of the data loss.
All the information Stockwell gave them said that restoring the crystal was impossible.
Maybe I should give up on getting it back…No!
Three people died during the ritual to summon that man. One from forced mana exhaustion and two from soul displacement. It would be an insult to them to give in to Stockwell's stubbornness.
The man claimed to be a "scientist" and spoke in gibberish. This was an act concealing the man's true nature. It had to be. He could see it in his eyes. He had valuable things to teach them. He just didn't want to.
Because that's just how petty Stockwell was.
Aamon was sure of this.
"He did say that I was free to talk to him at any time though." Vera interrupted his thoughts.
"He did?"
"Yes, he seemed to brighten up as I left." She responded.
He "brightened up"? Since when does that man ever brighten up? Aamon thought. Maybe he's trying to extract information from her.
"He's probably trying to play you against us. But that's fine. Play along." Aamon said.
"Really?"
"Yes. If he asks for things that make his life easier, do so. The goal is for you to build good rapport with him." Aamon said.
"I know… But he saw through that already?"
"I'm aware, but he doesn't know that we know that he saw through it. He probably just thinks you're bad at playing your role." Aamon said. "So long as he thinks he's the one controlling the situation, his tongue will be looser. Even false information is information."
"Okay. I understand." Vera said.
"Good." Aamon replied. "Don't go see him right away. Make him wait a day."
"Understood." Vera said.
Aamon watched her leave. He could just barely tell that the points of her ears were sharp. Or perhaps he was just imagining it. She should only be ⅛ elf, physiological differences shouldn't be noticeable.
A rape baby of a rape baby of a rape baby… that whole damned blood line is nothing but rapists.
He shook that line of thought out of his head. His inner theocrat had still yet to die.
He was disappointed that Vera never had the natural talents their work required. When he took over as her guardian when she was young, he had wanted to turn her into some capable of conducting magical research, but she hadn't the mind nor the temperament for it.
Then when he wished to teach her magic, it was revealed that she had a talent that made her better at using ranged weapons. An utterly useless talent for a magic caster to have.
It was a miracle they had gotten her up to third tier casting at all.
Regrettably, that was only as an elementalist. Vera had no aptitude for necromancy whatsoever. The best she could manage was to create skeletons and zombies and other 1st tier necromancy spells.
Regardless, third tier casters were still rare. It was just unfortunate her talent didn't match the path he had chosen for her.
Ultimately, he had tasked her to befriend Stockwell simply because she had the loveliest voice in the crypt. He hoped he would not regret it.
…
Stockwell worked in near-complete darkness since the magical light in his cell was incredibly weak. He was scouring through the fragments of broken torture devises that he had accrued in his cell. He was looking for more usable bits of wood and metal. Specifically iron as well as potentially non ferric metal.
Those fools, they think I'm powerless, they neglected to look for the bracelet I had, they have no idea what a magnet and some iron scraps are capable of.
He rummaged beneath his bed roll for his magnetic bracelet and began assembling something. That Aamon is too confident in his magic, says he'd "like to see me struggle" trying to get out of this magically sealed cell. I can't wait to see his face as he is… he is- ha ha ha~
Stockwell's mouth curled into a truly insane grin. I just need a few more bits of metal to get this working. I hope the torturers use that spikey one today, that one tends to leave the most metal in my body for me to pick out later.
His hands continued to move in the pale blue light, he began to laugh maniacally to himself.
I'm looking forward to torture? Maybe I really am going insane.
There was a rhythmic thumping on the cell's door. "Mr. Stockwell?"
Yes, it's her again.
Stockwell stopped his hands and went to meet her at the door's window.
She was trying not to look him in the eyes, "I've brought you your meal."
She opened the door's bottom hatch and was about to slide in the tray of gruel, but she stopped halfway.
"I'm sorry." She said, "Maybe we got off on the wrong foot. I'm willing to help you in any way I can."
So she's not giving up? That's alright with me. I can still use this.
"No, I'm sorry." Stockwell said. "I was being rude to you and jumping to assumptions. It's just so hard being here I'm sure you can understand."
"Y-Yes! Of course. I'm so glad you understand. Is there anything I can do to make your life a little easier?"
"Yes, actually." Stockwell said. "Would it trouble you to improve my meals a bit?"
"No, not all! What do you need?" She said so almost overly enthusiastically.
"Firstly, I'd like some more food variety, something with a lot more protein, I can feel my muscles atrophying. Also, I don't know what vitamin I'm lacking but I've got to be lacking something, so feel free to mix it up a little. Next, I'll need salt, lots of it, everything is so bland. Some extra water too, no—a full extra bucket of water. I also want some alcohol, the strongest you can get. In addition to that, I want peppers. The spiciest chili peppers you can find. And finally, some pieces of cloth to use as napkins and some utensils would be appreciated."
She stared at him with a puzzled expression.
"Was something I said strange?" Stockwell leveled his gaze. "Are my dietary choices disturbing you?"
"No. It's just —wow. Yes, I can do that. Anything else?"
"That's it."
"Really? You just want food? That's it, nothing to like… help you?"
"That's it, really." Stockwell said. "You seem like a nice person, Vera, so I wouldn't dare ask anything of you that would anger Aamon."
"...I understand." Vera eventually said.
"I'm happy to have a friend here. I'm looking forward to learning more about you." Stockwell said.
"Yes!" Vera smiled eagerly. "I'm busy today but I'll be sure to get you something nice tomorrow!"
She slid the door for the food close and left Stockwell to his thoughts.
…
Several months passed. And now that he was receiving meals on a regular schedule he could actually measure how many months had passed.
He had conversations with Vera on a regular schedule too where they talked at length about one another's lives. Vera spoke of her dealings with the magicians guild, the Re-Estize kingdom, Slane Theocracy, and her life in the cult, while Stockwell mostly spoke of his childhood and his mother. And, when topics about Earth's society in general inevitably came up, he made sure to describe his planet in as complex terms as possible.
This was so that Vera could not understand.
In their conversations, Stockwell had deduced that the world outside this crypt had a medieval European level of technology. Knowing this, Stockwell now suspected that Aamon's true goal was to siphon every bit of scientific knowledge that Stockwell knew. And now that it was clear to him what Aamon wanted, there was no way in hell that Stockwell would give him what he wanted.
As for information about Vera herself and the cult that summoned him, most of what Stockwell could determine was that while Aamon himself defected from a group known as "Corpus of the Abyss", many of the cultists were from a group known as "Zuerenorn". Vera herself was raised by Aamon for as long as she can remember.
They practiced necromancy and killed others on a regular basis.
Vera spoke of killing people with her own hands so casually and from such a young age it was frankly disturbing. Something was clearly wrong with her moral compass and Stockwell honestly thought she was a psychopath when they first started talking to each other.
Though as the conversations went on, he couldn't help but see her as a nice person. She seemed to show genuine empathy for his plight at times beyond her god cop act and most of all, she seemed very lonely. Apparently the reason she wore an eye patch all of the time was because she had heterochromia, a trait inherited from her father's side of the family that she was ashamed of.
Of course, Stockwell was aware of the phenomenon known as "Stockholm Syndrome". He needed to constantly remind himself not to develop a genuine friendship with Vera.
Regardless, the meals she was providing him were extremely useful in a way that no one in the cult seemed to know about.
"Is there anything else you need?" Vera asked.
Stockwell dipped his finger in the small cup of alcohol she had placed on his tray. He tasted a small drop of it on his tongue and swished it around his mouth, taking in its burning sensation.
"I would like some stronger alcohol next time." He said through the door.
"Really?" Vera exclaimed. "But that's the strongest I can get in the market."
"Then don't go to the market. Go directly to the distillery and ask them to give you something stronger. As strong as they can make it. Pure alcohol, if possible even."
Vera blinked in surprise. "You really like alcohol don't you? How do you even stomach that?"
Stockwell set aside the alcohol and went back to the tray. In addition to his meal of bread and fish was a large pile of salt, a pair of chili peppers, and a large bucket of water.
"Does Aamon say anything about my meals?"
Vera shook her head reluctantly. "It isn't just him. Everyone says you have very odd eating habits. This much salt can't be good for your health."
"It's just a spice, Vera. And well, even if it was bad for me, so much torture wouldn't exactally be good for my health now, could it?" He said sharply.
Vera looked down in embarrassment. "I...I wish I could do more for you. If you wanted me to smuggle something for you or-"
"Its okay, Vera." Stockwell said reassuringly. "Just talking with me is more than enough. All you have to do is keep making sure you're allowed to continue giving me my odd little meals and everything will turn out just fine. Bringing me something would make Aamon very suspicious of you. Do you understand?"
"I understand."
"Good, thankyou Vera."
"By the way, some of the members have taken to calling you "Rhamnusia.""
"Rhamnusia?"
"It's a name from an old children's story," Vera explained, "about a demon who punishes mortals for their hubris. They're scared that you're secretly a demon, and that you're here to punish us for trying to tamper with the realm of the gods. They think you're faking madness, that you're actually lying in wait for the chance to smite us."
Hmm? Rhamnusia? Isn't that a Greek god? I must say that I'm not particularly displeased with my reputation… But how did the name of a Greek god end up in this world?
He had deduced prior that there must have been some form of auto translation going on in this world. Afterall, England did not exist here and thus there was no way for these people to actually be speaking English. Proper nouns are not something that can usually be translated however.
All he could assume was that the definition of the god itself was more important than their name in regards to the translation. Going by that logic, a god of the ocean might sound like "Poseidon" to his ears.
"Really? What makes them think I'm some kind of demon?"
"I mean… You did come from beyond this world, after all you've told me and Aamon, that I'm sure of. And… when you're being escorted outside your cell, some of the others have reported that your eyes are… spooky."
"Spooky?" Stockwell couldn't help but suppress a chuckle.
"Stockwell…" Vera crouched down to the window and placed her hand on the door. Her voice grew quiet. "They've been torturing you routinely for 5 months now. You haven't given Aamon any useful information. When you're being escorted around the crypt, you never avert your gaze like a wounded animal, and despite your mumbling, everyone can tell from your gaze that you're absolutely sane. Whenever you look at someone, it's like you're dissecting them with your eyes. It's a little scary, frankly."
They're scared? Because I have a mean glare and haven't broken yet? Is that really all it takes?
As Stockwell thought about it, he came to a more rational conclusion. They're frustrated. The cultsists must be trying to reason away their failures by blaming it on Stockwell being some super natural entity immune to torture.
As he thought, Vera interrupted his thoughts. "...Are you a demon?"
Her voice was cautious.
Stockwell didn't necessarily feel a reason to deny her, but it was unlikely that if he said "yes, I am Rhamnusia, congratulations, you found out," that she and the other cultists would just bow down to him. If anything, they would fight with all their hearts to try to kill him.
But he also didn't want to assuage all worry within the cult. This actually worked quite well with his plans.
"Well, I won't deny that the world I come from is quite hellish," Stockwell said jokingly, "and the people equally so. The air here is certainly much cleaner. But really, we're all just humans. You have nothing to be scared of."
"Really?" Vera seemed relieved.
"Yes." Stockwell replied in a knowing manner. "We're friends, right? I wouldn't think of hurting my only friend here."
The implications of the last sentence seemed to have the right effect on her.
She took a step back from the door. There was clearly some anxiety in the way she moved. She coughed and cleared her throat.
"*Ahem*.Right."
She took a breath. "I'll be on my way then. See you tomorrow."
She left Stockwell to his own devices.
...
Stockwell worked in near-total darkness. But such a thing did not impede him since he had only a few items to keep track of in his life and always knew exactly where they were. His precious few treasures felt like extensions of his own body that he could feel through his own proprioception.
It had become an obsession that overtook his mind. It was all he thought about.
He would've much preferred to have gotten started on these projects earlier, but only in the recent months did the security around him get lax enough that he would have uninterrupted hours to work along with minimal cell inspections.
He could practically see every little molecule of ethanol in his head as he squeezed the mixture of crushed peppers and alcohol through the cloth held tightly in his hand. He understood empirically that actually seeing molecules was impossible; a single molecule of ethanol was far smaller than any visible wavelength of light, and yet he saw them in his mind's eye. He felt he could intuit every little molecule of capsaicin being swept away from the peppers and dissolved into the alcohol.
Such a thing could only be the result of delusions, he reasoned in the back of his mind. Likely the result of his entire life now being distilled down into a stone cell with nothing for his mind to do but scheme in the darkness. But his work persisted.
He squeezed several more batches of ethanol and crushed peppers through his cloth napkins Vera had provided him into a small cup. The contents would be left to evaporate and the process would be repeated ad infinitum.
As soon as he was finished dealing with that day's ration of peppers, he moved on to the salt. He threw the large pile of salt into the bucket of water and stirred with his hand until all of it was dissolved into a concentrated brine.
Stockwell then removed a large stone brick from the cell wall.
He had chipped away at the mortar around one of the bricks over many weeks and when Aamon had found out about it, all the cult leader did was laugh. It was an odd reaction for a captor to have.
But when Stockwell had finally removed that brick for the first time, it became clear to him why his captors were not concerned about the brick walls.
A translucent, magical barrier existed just behind the bricks. It was a thin membrane that stretched and pushed back upon anything trying to force their way through like a thin piece of stretchy magical fabric.
Stockwell was able to pierce through it, but only with just the palm of his hand and it took all of his strength and body weight to do so.
And more importantly, there existed another barrier right behind the first one. And even if he did manage to get past both barriers, the cell itself was still situated underground so he would still need to dig through several meters of soil and rock to reach the surface.
In other words, the cell was completely impossible for him to force his way out of.
However, such a thing did not concern him. He did not intend to escape in such a manner.
He set the brick aside and reached into the void of the wall it had once occupied. There were a scant few centimeters of empty space between the back side of the wall and the first magical barrier, and he made sure to utilize every single micrometer of that precious space.
This was actually the second brick he removed from his cell wall, but the cultists only knew about the first one. It was a distraction that made cell inspections easier for him since they were unlikely to look for a space they had no idea existed.
From his hiding place between the back wall and the magical barrier, he withdrew an amalgamation of wood and metal. In short, it was a wheel of magnetized iron; bits of dinner utensils and toruter devices, attached to a spindle of wood held together by thin strands of twine and string ripped from his own clothing.
It had taken months of hoarding and using the small permanent magnets in his bracelet to magnetize larger pieces of iron to get to this point, but it was worth it. If the spindle was spun fast enough, he could produce enough electrical current to electrolyze a tiny amount of the brine. He would have to spin the spindle until his hand bled raw to get the amount of current and voltage he needed, but blood was an easy price to pay for hydrogen and chlorine.
The hydrogen would be left to vent into his cell and collect on the ceiling and so long as he was careful, without any air flow in his cell, the small amount of dense chlorine gas would build up in the surface of the brine where it could gently be scooped out with a cup.
He would then force the end of this cup into the magical barrier with all of his strength and plunger its continents into the space between the two barriers.
This was not efficient in the slightest.
But he had so, so much time.
He should also be able to withstand a minor amount of chronic chlorine exposure over the months. His biomesh lungs and brachial filter were rated to be able to withstand Earth's hazardous atmosphere for up to 12 hours without a mask.
He figured within a year or two, he could turn this cell of his into a death trap.
…
Months had passed, and he had learned all he needed too. His preparations were complete. There was just one final hurdle.
He saw Vera begin turning to leave.
"Wait, Vera, before you go." Stockwell said.
His plan accounted for the people in the crypt, but not so for the animated skeletons that wandered around as guards.
According to Vera, the reason they were set up in this crypt to begin with was that it naturally spawned the undead and that they were able to use necromancy spells to force them under their control.
However, Vera, like some of the others in the crypt, did not possess the right skills to dominate undead and as such wore special around their wrist that made them invisible to the skeletons.
He needed that charm.
"Yes? What is it?" Vera asked.
"Could I hold onto that skeleton charm until tomorrow?"
"The charm?" Vera looked at the charm on her wrist. It was a delicate looking bracelet made of small bits of human bone and teeth threaded together.
She looked back at Stockwell and studied his face.
"I thought you said you didn't want me to give you anything useful? That you didn't want to make Aamon suspicious?"
"It's just until next time you see me." Stockwell said. "Also, why would you giving me the charm make Aamon suspicious, since you won't be telling him about it right?"
Vera realized that he was essentially asking her who's side she was on. She paused in thought.
"Why the hesitation?" Stockwell asked. "I thought you were my friend."
"R-Right."
Vera undid the charm and handed it through the door to Stockwell.
The reasoning was simple for Vera. Even if Stockwell was planning some kind of escape and was captured in the process, she could claim that she was just doing her job to get on his good side, and that they were able to gain more insight into Stockwell's knowledge thanks to her.
On the other hand if somehow Stockwell managed to escape in his current condition, then it was possible that he really was Rhamnusia, or some other extra-planar deity here to smite them. In that case it was probably wise to be on his side.
There was no reason she had to tell Aamon right this second.
Stockwell took the bracelet and absconded with it into the darkness of the cell.
"Thank you. You should probably leave the crypt for today."